Micro$oft software does love farting around in others' territory

Situation: a Vista user has clicked on an attachment in a "friend's" email, now the machine won't do anything networkily sensible, so is evidently virussed to the eyeballs & beyond. There was no obvious hope of getting something working enough to copy their documents & image off, so...

Response: boot a Kubuntu LiveCD, investigate system without hearing the opinion of any viruses. Install Kubuntu over the "Recovery" partition (/dev/sda2). Plug in another hard drive (machine has only 2x SATA power cables, so need to unplug the DVD drive to do this). Boot Kubuntu, Copy docs/images onto temp hard drive (tar.bz2 as the drive is kinda small).

Boot into Kubuntu, DHCP picks up an address from the ADSL router, can now browse & do banking. Good!

Fetch Windows 7 Eternity disc, Install that, no worries but Kubuntu now invisible.

Boot Kubuntu LiveCD, in recovery mode, re-run GRUB. Kubuntu is now visible.

To avoid the risk of trashing the man MS-Windows partition, shrink it using Windows7 Control Panel, create another partition in the gap, reboot into Kubuntu to copy data files into new partition.

Nope.

Windows7 conveniently moved the /dev/sda2 definition to /dev/sda3 while creating the new partition. What a bunch of interfering azaleas!

Boot Kubuntu DVD into Recovery mode again, re-run GRUB, create a swap partition, mkswap it. Reboot into hard-disk Kubuntu, unpack files onto new NTFS drive (known as J: for reasons best left unexplored).

Boot into Windows 7, agree to check J:'s integrity, documents all present... now to recover Windows Mail (AKA LookOut Express) config & emails... easiest way seems to be installing ThunderBird.

User now has a Kubuntu boot option so that next time MS-Windows twists its knickers into a knot, they have a real alternative.

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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