stuart test blog

Testing the capabilities of Windows Live Writer to Blogtown NZ.

I should be able to upload the following image just fine (with the drop shadow too.)

No special configuration required.

I try to stay away from politics as rule-of-thumb, but I find this interesting:

LATEST: Environment Minister David Benson-Pope has resigned from Cabinet after being found to have misled the public.

This wasn’t the first time that this minister was caught being ‘economical with the truth’ and looks like he got what was coming to him.

[Article on Stuff]

I know that it’s not supposed to be good for the economy, but it’s definitely good for those of us that like shopping online at American sites like Amazon. The Kiwi dollar hit the US80c mark after hovering just beneath that for the last few weeks.

So to celebrate, I bought a bunch of books from Amazon, and ordered some Thankyou cards from Shutterfly. (I do feel a bit guilty…) 

Strongest-performing currency in the world – New Zealand, world, sport, business & entertainment news on Stuff.co.nz

A quick step-by-step tutorial on how I secure my 4GB USB drive:

Create the file…

• Download TrueCrypt from here: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php
• Unzip the download, but don’t install it.
• Browse to the “Setup Files” directory.
• Run “TrueCrypt.exe” and click the “Create Volume” button to start the wizard.
• Choose the “Create a standard TrueCrypt volume” option.
• Click the “Select file” button, browse to your USB drive and enter a name for the file – this can be anything and doesn’t need a file extension. I called mine “docs”.
• On the next step, choose your encryption algorithm. They are all secure – some more than others – click the run the “Benchmark” tool to help you decide between security and performance. (I just used AES)
• Choose the hash algorithm – if you know what you’re doing, or else just stick with the default. (They are all secure.)
• Choose the size of the file in the next step. I created a 2GB file so that I’ve still got space on the drive for other, unimportant stuff.
• On the next step, choose your password. This is probably the most important step in the procedure, as a short, insecure password negates the strongest of encryption. Force yourself to pick a long, cryptic password! Update: How to choose a secure password.
• Format the volume on the next step. If you’re a Windows user, NTFS is probably best, otherwise FAT is fine. Note: you aren’t formatting your entire USB drive – just the secure volume that you’re creating. Now you’ve finished the hard part.

Make it portable…

You don’t want to have to install software on each machine that you want to access your secure files on, so follow these steps to make it portable.

• Copy “TrueCrypt.exe” and “TrueCrypt.sys” to the same location on your USB drive as the file that you created in the previous steps.
• Drag and drop the secure file you created earlier on to the “TrueCrypt.exe” file.
• Select a drive letter to mount your secure file, and click the “Mount” button.
• You’ll be prompted for your password and then you can access the new drive.

Time to move on…

When you need to unplug your USB drive, just right click the TrueCrypt icon in the task tray and choose the “Unmount drive” option. TrueCrypt will also close once the drive is unmounted.

Notes…

You can install the TrueCrypt program if you want, but it seems to work just as well if you only use just the two files (“TrueCrypt.exe” and “TrueCrypt.sys”)

These steps can also be used to create a secure file on your hard drive too.

This was tested on Windows XP – I’m not sure how well this works on earlier or later versions of Windows.

If you have any comments or suggestions on how to make this better, let me know in the comments.

Don’t you hate it when you post a comment on a blog and then have to keep checking back to see if someone has replied to your comment. Well if you post a comment on this blog you can choose to receive an email notification when a new comment is made on the same entry.

Each email notification you receive has a link that allows you to prevent any further notifications annoying alerting you.

Credit: http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/

I saw this on MiramarMike’s blog and the on Jim Donovan’s En Avant blog. Take the test at Mingle2 to see how geeky you are!

69% Geek

I’ve updated the search code for this blog so that results no longer jump into the Google site. Results now appear on the following page: http://stuart.amanzi.co.nz/search and I moved the search box to the top of the sidebar.

Here’s an example search.

Old news I know, but I’m still catching up for the last few weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this since the initial announcement and although I think that the cost of individual songs are still prohibitive ($2.39), a full, DRM-free album for $17.99 doesn’t seem to be too bad.

I’ve made a few purchases so far which have all been local artists. Opshop’s latest album is brilliant and sounds a little like a U2 album. And I also picked up Hollie Smith’s beautiful, jazzy, bluesy album.

I wouldn’t have purchased these from iTunes if they were infected with DRM.

Despite the cold (around 11 degrees) it was a beautiful day for a walk along Oriental Parade. The slideshow below was embedded from Picasa Web Albums and the photos were taken with my K800i camera phone.

I bought a new mountain bike on Friday from Crankworks in Wellington. It’s the GT Zaskar Expert which is a model up from the Avalanche Expert that I was originally looking at. It was on special at $1999 (down from RRP of $2700) and Mike at Crankworks gave me a good deal on some Lake SPD shoes too. Oh and I bought a Cateye TripleShot headlight too! So it was a very exciting purchase for me, here are some pictures of what I bought:

First the beautiful bike:

Next the shoes:

And the headlight:

So Andrew and I went for a ride yesterday on our new bikes around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary fenceline on a section which is known as the “Rollercoaster”. Andrew had also recently got a new bike – an Avanti Hammer with some Shimano SPD shoes – so both of us were getting used to riding offroad with SPDs. Very funny indeed, watching us cycle for a few metres, then topple over, then get up again, ride for a bit more, then fall over again!

Then on the way back to the car, with our confidence a little higher, we were screaming down the Rollercoaster and loving it. But then I came up to a turn at the bottom of a steep section and realised I couldn’t turn in time. And because my feet were clipped in, I couldn’t get them out in time to help brake/turn. So I went screaming up the grass verge and flew over the handlebars head first into the bushes.

Fortunately I had a relatively soft landing in the bushes – apart from my hand which got punctured through the glove by a sharp tree stump or branch that was sticking up. So I ended up needing a couple of stitches and a tetnis shot at the after hours medical centre. Here’s the wound just prior to the stitches: