Archive for March, 2006

Making a bootable USB drive with BartPE or UBCD4Win

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 31, 2006 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

At work, we use a tool called Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD). What this does is allows us to place the CD into a computer that isn’t booting, such as with malware issues, missing .dll files, etc, but not hardware issues, and boot up a version of Windows that is loaded into the system’s memory. By doing this, we can then edit the registry, even if there is malware that would hide the registry entry via a rootkit, delete problem causing files, such as worms that have a known file name, and even back up the files to an external USB HD, so that a client’s information can be saved prior to a format of an otherwise dead system.

I had been asked by my boss, as well as searching independently prior to his asking, for a way to laod the UBCD version of Windows off of a USB drive instead. I had found some sites that gave ways to attempt it, such as Windows In Your Pocket off of Tom’s Hardware, but for whatever reason, that method proved to not work. Earlier this week I decided to give it another go, and I managed to find a program that would make a USB drive bootable and then load a BartPE (Bart Preinstalled Environment) installation onto it. BartPE is what the UBCD is built around, with the UBCD adding many more plugins and other tools to BartPE.

In order to do this, you will need the items listed below. I’m am going to mention the items needed to create the UBCD build as well.

  1. Follow the directions on how to build the UBCD4Win:
    1. A Windows XP CD, with at least Service Pack 1. I know that at BGSU, the bookstore is selling Windows XP on DVDs. I imagine that it really doesn’t affect the process, but don’t quote me on that. If your CD does not have Service Pack 1, you could the service pack and create a bootable CD.
    2. BartPE, UBCD4Win, and the UBCD4Win drivers, from the UBCD4Win download page.
  2. Download PeToUSB and extract it to a folder on your hard drive.

Now that’s left is to follow the directions for building the UBCD4Win and then the readme file for Boot BartPE from USB, and eventually, you’ll have a bootable USB ready to go. I personally used a 512MB Cruzer Titanium. The only downside was that I ended up only having 70MB free once everything was said and done. As UBCD4Win has more on it than BartPE, you could remove items you don’t need from UBCD4Win, or just use BartPE, to get more available room on the USB. Prior to placing UBCD4Win on the USB drive, I had placed BartPE on it, and it worked no problem.

Yes, not every computer out there can boot from USB, but most computers made in the last couple years can. So, if you are going to be working on older computers, you should make sure you have a actual UBCD around.

Now I have a bootable version of Windows with me on my keychain where ever I go.

Spore

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 31, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Larry sent me a Google video link for a game called “Spore”. A short synopsis is as follows…

You begin the game as a small organism that lives in a drop of water. Much like a Pac-Man-esque game, you swim around a two dimensional board, eating food and dodging enemies. When you lay an egg, you can modify/evolve your creature, eventually getting to a larger creature swimming in an ocean. You continue to play the eating/dodging/egg laying game in the water, and eventually can leave the water and venture on to land. You continue along, being able to modify your creature. Eventually, you evolve their brain, and begin playing a Civilization-type game, fighting enemy tribes and making allies of others. From there, you create cities, attempting to control the planet. Once you control the planet, you can venture out into space, colonizing other worlds and meeting other sentient beings on other planets. The cool thing is that the beings on the other planets are based upon the worlds created by other players, and depending on how they have trained their civilization is how they will act when you reach them. It is not a simultaneous multi-player game, but you do get to interact with the civilizations of other players.

I’d really like to know more about this game, as it looks like plenty of fun.

Things I’ve been meaning to put up

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 30, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

There are things I’ve been meaning to place up here, but never got around to. These items are as follow…

  • Religion of Comic Book Characters - Not sure why/how this was made, but random link clicking does provide support to the different religious associations that were made. Much like reading random articles found on Wikipedia about comics, such as House of M and Earth 616, this page will not only prove to be a good use of personal time (if you like comics) for myself, but also for Ryan, once I point him to it.
  • A kid got stuck in a claw machine - I think my only comment on that would be “Worst. Prize. Ever.”
  • Little. Yellow. Different. - If… no, when… I finally decide to have server (or server-like) piece of hardware in my house, I will probably look for something like the Yellow Machine. It might not be that brand per se, but something like it to be sure. Right now, it’s just under $1000 for 1TB (terabyte) of storage, which is 4 times the size of my current computer HD. That makes my 80GB external HD seem worthless. But, as the the Yellow Machine has RAID, that’ll make the storage of information more reliable. I figure that something like that would also be good depending on what type of work Meghan or I end up doing. Right now, she has tons of CDs of data… being able to place those on a RAID-ed system would be nice.
  • The LEGO Dragons - I did a quick search the other day about LEGO dragons and found that page. I particularly liked Tel’Karak Zrahl. I suddenly wished, when I saw that, that I had brought my LEGOs back from my parent’s house since I was there over the weekend.
  • Replace your computer fans with cooking oil - Ryan sent this to me a couple weeks ago, but I never quite got around to commenting on it. As the case was, this was something done at the beginning of the year, so you may have heard of it already (I say that as if I have an audience or something). I’m surprised that our current computing technology can actually be place in oil and not suffer adverse effects. Hell, I’m even more surprised that placing the components in distilled (de-ionized) water caused the equipment to stop working, but not suffer any other damage.
  • eFlick service - Andy, a friend of mine from back home, sent me a link to a story about the Denver Public Library’s new online movie lease program. At his current job, he’s been (somehow) involved with this project, I think from the tech support end. Good for him.
  • While I’m talking about friends, I was home this back weekend for a fund raising dinner for Keith, older brother of my friend Kevin. I’ve known Kevin since first grade, and Keith just about as long. The dinner was to raise money to help pay for Keith’s medical expenses as he is currently fighting cancer. I can’t quite remember what type of cancer, but I hope he and his family make it through everything OK.
  • Another friend, Chris, got a job at Microsoft doing some sort of UI development or something. I have no idea, as he has apparently been sucked into a location where he can’t respond to e-mails or login to chat. He can, apparently, still take his turns in Advance Wars By Web.
  • How to destroy the Earth - A nice, long page listing various ways you could destroy the Earth. The best part is that thought was actually applied to these options, and rankings given to them based upon feasibility/likeliness. I enjoyed this site quite a bit, and haven’t quite had a chance to explore it fully.
  • The Last Question - This is an online version of a story by Issac Asimov. I doubt that it should be on the Internet, but it is definitely worth reading if you have the time; it’s a good story.
  • Windows is so slow, but why? - This two page article is from the New York Times, and I found it to be worth reading. It talks about why the Windows code base is so big (backwards compatibility for starters, which Apple doesn’t easily have), and why Windows Vista has been delayed more.

I think that’s it for my list. I’ve been spending some of my free time (probably far too much) playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. I’ve been running with a group called “Damn Koblods” (intentional misspelling) which references the quest “Kobold Assault”. Anyone can tell you that it is one of the first continuous group quests that you don’t get a reprieve from. We all started some new characters last night, and switched who does what. Oddly enough, not only am I a cleric, I’m playing a human, which is odd, considering that my other 3 characters (even though I haven’t really played two of them that much) are warforged. My main character, Matthew Freeforged, has been withing 6000 XP of 6th level for the last 4 or 5 nights. I’ll get there one of these days. (If you have not played DDO but have played regular 3rd Edition D&D, I would be short by 600 instead.)

On a related note, Becky may be starting a D&D game on April 8th. Woot. I realized that my character for this game might have some qualities of my previous character, Fannon, but I think that is because of a couple things:

  1. That’s just the type of person I am, and the qualities are in all my characters.
  2. I didn’t get to finish the character concept of Fannon, so I still have the desire to play a similar character.

I think that’s it for now. Have a good one.

We Quit

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 25, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I haven’t stumbled (i.e., used StumbleUpon) at home much recently, but I’m waiting on laundry to finish up and I figured “what the hell”. The third page I came across was a blog called Beyond Robson, and it had the following image for a post dated February 5, 2006: The content of the post was:

Like the four shining heroes raising Old Glory at Iwo Jima, like Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the chapel door, like John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising their hands at the Olympics in defiance; every act of resistance is a battle won, no matter how big or small. That is why, to my delight, walking past Blenz on Hastings to the Spartacus Books grand re-opening, I discovered a few notes taped to the door. Four employees, sick of slave wage labour and an ungrateful boss, up and left. Walked out, en masse, in the ultimate act of defiance against corporate middle management. For that one moment, anyone who has ever had a shitty boss stood and rejoiced. Every one who has worked for minimum wage stood together in defiance. We raise our glass to you.

I found this to be an excellent post. Partially, it is because my JAQ (Job Analysis Questionnaire) at work is still being worked on. As my job there started on July of 2004, that brings me to 21 months of not having the ability to apply for the job for real. True, that means I’ve got to keep the job, but it’s common for the person who has the job/position the JAQ was written for to get/keep the job. That means for the last 21 months, I haven’t had “real” vacation/sick days; I technically have to work over for any time missed. That’s not too bad, but that means I have to stress myself to work longer to get a day off, which practically negates the reason for taking a day off. Anyway, my JAQ is still going through all the red tape (and I will never see a reason not to call it red tape) and whatnot, and is probably sitting under a pile of papers somewhere. The worse part is, someone in the department recently had a position created as an assistant to someone else. There was no job yet, so a JAQ was created. The JAQ was revised. The JAQ was signed off on. Done… she now has the job. Unless I’m mistaken, the entire process took about 6 months. I wish I had a relative somewhere high-hanking in the university; then my JAQ would be finished too.

Update 3-25-06 3:42 PM: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the fact that I do not have any medical insurance through the university until I get the job through the JAQ. So, not only do I not technically get sick days, if I get sick enough to go to the doctor, I would have to pay for all of it. Fortunately, Meghan and I have a policy through some other insurance provider, so that we wouldn’t have to pay the full cost. However, it’s probably more expensive than if I got it through the university, and it would be nice not to have that expense.

Map of the (NA) Internet

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 23, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Came across this today at information aesthetics, which is part of a larger pdf file which can be found here as part of this entry. I’m tempted to make it a multi-page printout and send it to the color printer here in the office, as I think a 2×2 or 3×3 copy of it would look nice. Mind you, this is just of the North American continent, no the entire world, and it is the routers. To put it better:

…it is not geographic. Things on the right aren’t on the East Coast and so forth. It looks the way it looks for readability purposes. The lines are actual connections between routers, but the length of the lines, again, do not correspond to geographic distance.

The map is interesting to look at. Hopefully I’ll be able to take a better look at it in the upcoming week. Just by reading the byline (form follows data - towards creative information visualization) and looking over some of the recent entries on information aesthetics, I’m going to have to look more into that site, as it appears rather interesting. Really, I’m a sucker for any maps that attempt to map things, especially if it deals with people, groups, and cyber-stuff.

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