The problem with USB pen drives

USB pen drives are great - all that storage in your pocket and for a low cost too. I used to have a 128MB drive a couple of years back - I thought it was the dogs - I carried around a whole heap of stuff I never could dream of way back when all I had was floppy disks. Then I got a 256MB drive, then 1GB, then 2GB and recently I picked up an 8GB drive that is less than 5cm long (MyMemory.com) for peanuts. Cheap peanuts at that.

Back when I got the 1GB pen drive, I started running lots of Portable Apps on it: portable versions of Thunderbird; Firefox; Sunbird; Toucan; Abiword; Gaim (now Pidgin); Foxit and many more. Then I started to worry about what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands - all my email, my calendar, IM contacts and personal documents would be there for anyone to see. So I decided that I needed to encrypt as much of this personal / application data as possible

After a fairly thorough search, I found two freeware / open source applications that appeared to fit the bill (there were a load of slower, more cumbersome ones):

- Dekart Private Disk (only Lite is free)
- TrueCrypt

Both applications allow create a virtual drive of a predetermined size from a single file. To activate the private disk, you simply start the program, point it at the encrypted file and open it - the file appears as a virtual drive with a pre-assigned (fixed) drive letter, e.g. O:\.
You can then drag all the files and folders you want to encrypt into this drive and when you click on disconnect in the program the drive disappears and the file is encrypted. The encryption type is 256-bit AES - more than strong enough for most purposes - and the speed with which fairly large amounts of data are encrypted and decrypted is quite amazing. I tested with 512MB and 1GB of data. Once you create the initial file for encryption, you set the size - so this file takes up that space from the start, and you can never fill it up data totaling more than that value - so think very carefully about how much space you need before you start - it can take a while to initially create or finally delete one of these virtual drives.

Back when I was testing this out originally (sometime back last August/September), I found Dekart to be better. It could be stored and run from the USB pen drive itself, and ran very smoothly. I found TrueCrypt performed not quite so well.

However, recently, I moved all my portable apps into the virtual drive and found performance to be terrible - Thunderbird was so slow opening up and working with email proved to be unbearable. With a new version of TrueCrypt now available, I find myself curious as to whether or not it has improved and perhaps overtaken Dekart Private Disk.

For now, my email and other data from portable apps remains unencrypted, and I have to remember to disconnect my pen drive every time I leave my desk :(

I hope that TrueCrypt, or a future offering from Dekart will change things.

A Modern Design Classic

The Office of Government Commerce got more than they bargained for when they commissioned a new logo

Who said my MacBook was tacky?

Gold-plated MacBook Air breaks Steve Jobs' heart



I don't know why anyone would think this was done in anything less than the best possible taste...

Be careful what you blog about

Record TV using NGrab, an idiot's guide (made by idiots, for idiots)

Dreambox and Dreambox-like-device users will probably have tried NFS already, but NGrab offers a more robust stream capturing alternative.

What you will need:

1. A Dreambox (or a poor imitation)
   
2. NGrab
   
3. A PC to install it on
   
4. Some disk space

I'm assuming for this part that you have added your Dreambox to your home network

Browse to the following location on your Dreambox menu:
Setup > Expert Setup > Ngrab Streaming Setup

• for "Srv IP address" enter the IP of the PC where you will be setting up NGrab
  
• then click on detect MAC address
  

Install NGrab on your PC, anywhere you like. You can download NGrab (for Windows) from here
You can run it as a normal program, or start it as a service (I can't be bothered running it as a service). To configure NGrab, start the program (or service), then right click its icon in your system tray

From there, go to:

• "Einstellungen", "dBox Einstellungen" and enter the IP address of your Dreambox
• make sure the port matches the port settings in Ngrab Streaming Setup on the Dreambox
• in "Dateisystem Einstellung", browse to the folder where you want to store your recordings
• Click OK when done

There are many other options you can play about with, but this is the bare minimum you need to get your first TV stream down on disk.

Finally, browse your EPG on your Dreambox, choose a program you want to record, hit menu, Timer, and add a timed event. Set the event type to NGrab, hit OK and off you go.

Recordings will cost you about 1GB per 40 minutes of recording.
The default format is m2p, but you can change that. I record directly onto an 8GB flash drive, so I can take it with me.
I have yet to detect a single flaw in the recordings I've made, and I don't have the latest hardware by any means.

Sony backtrack on DRM policy

Finally, Sony admit that they may have gone too far with the whole DRM thing.
Blu-Ray is comprehensively beaten into second place by HD-DVD.
AV-comparatives blows the lid on the hidden spyware that ships with the PS3.
Sam Palmisano confuses Bill Gates with beef jerky and eats him.
Vista SP1 is actually quite good.