DataMike

The tool that I’ve worked with lately is the Kaspersky Rescue Disk. It’s a Linux boot disk ISO that you can download.  (You’ll need an ISO burning program like CDBurnerXP or BurnCDCC , I guess the option to burn ISO’s is built into Win 7 now) It seems to be updated about every six months, so the computer you use it on has to have a network connection. It usually takes about 5 minutes to find current updates , then another 5-10 minutes to download, then you can start the scan.

Kaspersky Rescue CD (Linux Bootable)

The first thing you have to make sure is that you’re scanning the right partition, one time it indicated a recovery partition as the “C:” drive, but you can check that with a simple built-in file manager by clicking on the start button in the lower left.

Another note is before you start scanning, go to the “scan settings” and change the prompt option to “prompt on completion”, otherwise the scan will stop every time it encounters something and will wait for you to respond.

Select "Prompt On Completion"

The only other problem I had was that one time I had a gigabyte motherboard that would go into suspend every 20 minutes or so until the mouse was moved, and that would also suspend the scan, I couldn’t find the bios setting that would apply for that. The scan itself typically takes about 5 hours, so I do it overnight.

This isn’t to be confused with the rescue disk that can be made with the Kaspersky antivirus product. That’s a Bart/PE or UBCD4WIN type disk that is made with a windows XP disk and is created with up-to-date definitions for use as a boot disk. For that, you actually have to own the Kaspersky product.  (This strikes me as a cool product for your bench computer to produce up-to-date boot disks for an on-site trip.)

Kaspersky also offers the “Kaspersky virus removal tool”, which is a stand alone program (run once) you can download and =is= updated daily, but needs to be run under windows

This is an old video from the late 90’s,and is basically a collection of test video animations (with paths and particles)  I made with TrueSpace.  It’s low rezzy, and very basic, but I thought I’d throw it out there.  (it’s fascinating what you can find on old hard drives, this was an old  MPEG2 video for conversion to VCD, I stripped the Boz Scaggs music for copyright reasons and found some audio at podsafeaudio.com).  Truespace basically tanked after version 6.0 (for me), was bought by Microsoft only to be shut down.  You can get 7.6 at caligari.com for free, although the website supposedly was slated to go down last year.  I’ve since moved to Blender, because it has the community and excitement that TrueSpace once had.  R.I.P. TrueSpace, you will be missed

Two new basic tutorials for Blender 3d on the particle system
Part 1

Part 2

These are some (very) basic tutorials involving curve modeling in Blender 3d. They assume you’re comfortable mousing around the blender environment and changing 3d views. In these you learn to make curves (and paths), control the curves with the bezier handles, and the bevel and taper options. Ultimately, I do the obligatory wine glass modeling with the spin operation, but then do it again with curves for real time modeling of the glass.

PART 1

PART 2

Part 3

This panorama was stitched from 9 photos of about 180 degrees.  You can take an aerial tram from a parking lot to the peak for $7 and hike back down (or up if you’re nuts) in about 2 hours.  It’s not the longest tram (that’s actually in Albuquerque), but it is a pleasant view.  Off in the far distance is Juarez, Mexico.

A view from Ranger Peak in El Paso, Texas

Blender is a free open-source 3d modeling program available from blender.org.

There’s no shortage of tutorials regarding modeling, texturing, animation and other subjects for blender, but basic info on the user interface is tough to come by. Surprising, considering that 90 percent of understanding blender comes from wrapping your head around the interface. Once you get past that, it’s a whole new world and a what was once a dense program suddenly makes a lot of sense.  Some fine tutorials can be found by searching youtube; some more cool tutorials can be found at gryllus.net

The cool thing about the UI is I started to wonder about it being applied to other programs like a word processor. What if you could just slide open a new window in Word, and then make that window another view port in a long document for easy cut and pasting, then make that window into some type of sub-menu system, drawing area, wysiwyg output. or html preview, withouth having to hunt for them in menus. Really cool stuff.

In these four videos, I show how I use my Garmin Etrex handheld GPS  with Google Earth and Google Maps, transferring data to and from.

Obviously, I not going to tell you to pirate DVD’s that you didn’t buy, but I have no problem telling you how to copy your own DVD’s either for backup or to convert to your portable device.  In these two videos I show you how I use Slysoft’s AnyDVD to rip DVD’s and the open source Handbrake to convert the resulting files to different formats.  Along the way, I talk about some other tools I use in the process.

I had to make a new cat 5 cable today, so why not do a test video with my Logitech Quickcam 9000.

The webcam is actually mounted on a mini-tripod by using a spring clip from Home Depot that was drilled and tapped for a 1/4 inch hole.

My "video rig" a Logitech Quickcam 9000