It's manic at Manick

While looking for software that performs DVD ripping, ISO creation, ISO burning etc it’s easy to get swamped in the hundreds of options available. However I tend to be wary of paying for such utilities generally as many seem to be mere wrappers around existing code or even open source code.
Anyway – I’d recommend a trip over to Doom9.net for a look around they have a great list of tools for use in this area.
I was making a duplicate of a data dvd and also wanted a ISO to backup to my external hdd.
I used DVD Decrypter to rip it to an ISO and then used Daemon Tools to mount the ISO and check it was ok, and finally DVD Decrypter again to burn it to another DVD. I could obviously just have moved the data files in explorer as this was just a data disc and have created a backup disc that way, but I prefer to have an ISO of an important disc.

As a footnote the developer of DVD Decrypter is Lightning UK and they/he had to stop work on it some time ago after receiving a cease and desist notice – however they/he now provide ImgBurn here: http://www.imgburn.com

Great work – thanks a lot to them.

I’m currently doing some work for a food manufacturing company. During various discussions we’ve been having regarding BOMs for their products it’s become evident that the food industry has to overcome various challenges that are atypical of manufacturing as a whole.

These issues centre around the following observations:

Anyway – I found this short whitepaper to be extremely useful in claryfying some of these ideas and will likely refer to it again – hence it being on my blog.

After somebody asked me recently if I knew of any software to recover images from a corrupt usb drive I knew that I did but couldn’t quite remember the name of said software – well after searching my hdd I found what I used last time and it’s certainly very good as well as being Open Source. It’s available here http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

It actually works on many different file types – I used it to recover some images from a friends corrupt USB stick recently and it proved extremely useful.

I’ve just been researching the market for remote desktop support software. There’s so much out there now it’s difficult to know where to look. I like to go Open Source and found a useful list of free options here: http://www.wareprise.com/2008/11/28/list-of-free-remote-desktop-software-for-telecommuters/

Not posted for such a long while thought I’d better make sure I hadn’t forgotten how to type. Well Happy New Year anyway!

In an effort to reduce spam I decided I’d look at what good Open Source Anti-Spam software was available. I require it to work with Microsoft Exchange Server.
I soon settled on Spam Assassin which is written in Perl and very well regarded in the Linux world.
So, to set this up as I have you’ll need to download and install Perl, which under Windows means using ActiveState ActivePerl.
When Perl is installed head over here for info on how to Install SpamAssassin under Windows.

If for any reason you get any errors along the lines of ‘Package not found’ while attempting the ‘ppm install xxxxxx’ commands then that’s a problem with ActiveStates repository. A solution is to configure Perl to use a different repository.
#perl on Efnet IRC soon came up with adding theoryX as an additional repository.
You can use this command from your Perl bin directory:
C:\Perl\bin>ppm repo add theory58S http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms

and you will see

C:\Perl\bin>ppm repo add theory58S http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms
Repositories:
[1] ActiveState Package Repository
[2] theory58S

now your ppm install commands should work and you can continue the install process.