Block A Country by IP

You might have the need to block visitors from a certain country accessing your website, then again you might not, but if you do the website block a country is a handy little tool. Pick a country(or countries holding CTRL down while selecting), click go and wham a .htaccess file is generated to block the IP ranges for the selected country(s). Free and dead easy to use.

Windows 7 Image Backup Tool

I bought a new laptop and as usual no Windows 7 disc was included. I therefore created my own using the Windows 7 Image Tool rather than seeking out a third party utility just in case my laptop hard drive dies in the future.

1. Open Control Panel, under System and Security open Backup your computer option.

2. In the lift pane, open the link “Create an image backup”.

3. Select the destination drive or Optical drive or network location to store backup files.

4.Click Next to include/exclude drives in the image backup.Note that the disk that Windows is installed on will always be included in the backup.You cannot include the disk that you are saving the backup to.

5.In the next step Windows 7 will give a last chance to confirm the backup settings you have chosen in the last step.Once you are agree with the backup settings just click Start backup button to start backup process.Backup process few minutes to hours depending on the size of the disk.

6.After finishing the backup process Windows 7 prompts you an option to create a recovery CD so that you can restore the created image using the bootable recovery disc.


 

AutoRuns - Windows Auto-Starting Lists

AutoRuns - Works on Windows XP and higher, Windows Server 2003 and higher

Simple terms - view everything that autostarts in your windows operating system

Microsoft blurb
"This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.

Autoruns' Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system and it has support for looking at the auto-starting images configured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included in the download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSV format, Autorunsc."

Mozilla Plugin Checker

Mozilla Plugin Checker

Just stumbled upon this. A plugin checker for mozilla / firefox to make sure you are up to date and if not it provides an easy to way to update from the site. Worth adding to your bookmarks as a double check to make sure your plugins are up to date.

Yourls - URL Shortener

Playing with more scripts this time a url shortener package Yourls . The idea is you can run your own url shortener on a domain you own (or run a public one if you want). Hosting your own private url shortener is of course a way of making sure you do not loose your links when a service shuts down.

It's an ongoing project but the code is working and ready to throw up to give you a short url site along with some stats of clicks for links. However, you will need some experience when it comes to coding if you want to add in some anti spam measures for a public site as they are not currently featured.

Ive had a play with the script over at http://snpy.me

Web2ftp - HTTP to FTP

net2ftp

I work on a host of different machines in different locations and on occasions I find I need ftp access but there is no ftp client is installed on the desktop. It is a pain to download and install one for a one hit wonder and thats where net2ftp comes in. Web based is gives full ftp services and extra frills from a web browser and there is not a sausage to install. If you want to run your own net2ftp site it is also very easy to setup and does not require a mysql database (unless you want access restricted to users), it also comes with a whole host of features.

Nice quick and easy. I am playing / testing it over at zrourl.co.uk but I like it, very useful.

Recover Photos from SD /MMC - PhotoRec (Ubuntu Linux)

Christmas Day a time of taking family photos and returning home to load them onto the computer that is until for reasons Santa does not even know, you cannot access the photo files at all. I might have been tempted to take the memory card outside and shoot it after some sobbing and but it down to fate, misfortune and the failings of technology but a quick search via google I found PhotoRec for Ubuntu.

It is a console based program - dont panic :) - but has a easy to use menu interface.

To install
apt-get install testdisk

Insert your misbehaving SD / MMC card then open a console and type
sudo photorec

PhotoRec should then display all your storages disks on the system. Look for the SD / MMC card, select it and proceed.


The next bits are simply menu choices such as

• the partition table type for a SD /MMC select None
• the file system in use on the storage medium
• where you would like the recovered files to be saved
  

Once you have made your choices. PhotoRec will then display the device you are going to attempt recovery from by way of confirmation and if you are happy select Launch to get it underway.

The program will report to the console on how many files it has recovered along with information such as how long it expects to take. Any files it is able to recover will be
saved to the location you picked.

In my case not only did PhotoRec recover a 128 Christmas photos previously lost it also recovered a further 282 photos which had been deleted from the memory card previously.

One thing to note, in my case, the console ceased to report progress after some considerable time (30 mins) despite indicating an estimated 10 minutes to completion. Depending on how bad your SD / MMC is, you might need to stop the program if there is no further progress (like in my case) despite the drive on the SD /MMC flashing. This wont affect any recovered photos since PhotoRec saves the recovered photos as it goes along.