AkinsTech

While fooling around with Camstudio the other day, I thought “Hmmm, why don’t I actually make a video about something useful?” So I thought about it for a bit, and decided to pick something that I consider really basic, but something many administrators and PC experts overlook. It’s a custom toolbar to hold your common administrative shortcuts. While the actual toolbar creation is nothing earth-shattering, I think the idea of organizing administrative functions into such a toolbar is. I know this because time and time again I am asked “How did you get that toolbar down there?”

Therefore, here you go…a short crude video narrated by yours truly…on how to create an Admin Toolbar, and what I think you should put in it. If you can manage to make it through all my “ummms” and “uhhhs”, and the fact that I’m a bit nasally from a cold, you just might find it semi-useful. Just remember that I did this without any rehearsal, and did it in a single 15-minute take…so if it sucks, don’t send me hate mail! Who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll do another one of these on a more interesting topic, with a bit more preparation.

Video – Creating a Handy Admin Toolbar

Oh, and by the way, if you ever need to put together a PC training video or capture activity on your computer into video, I highly recommend CamStudio. It’s a free open source program and it works excellent. Far better than anything out there in my opinion. Install it and you’ll be making videos in minutes. Check it out.

If you’re going to be using more than a handful of scripts to perform common tasks, it’s important to setup your PC properly to do this. Many people, looking for a script to solve a problem, will download that script and just stick it in any random folder on their PC. While this might not present any problems on a one-time basis, it can be difficult to manage down the road, especially if you ever change PC’s or want to use that script for some other purpose. By designating an area for scripts, making it accessible to the system, and creating an organized structure, you’ll ensure that any scripts you write or download will be easily accessible and can be better managed.

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I think we all agree that all Adobe products are garbage…and that Adobe is one of the companies who are contributing to the over-complication and unnecessary bloating of software. We should avoid them at all costs. None of this is news to anybody… So I don’t know why it is that I decided to install Adobe Reader on my system today, and furthermore, why I am surprised by what happened.

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CD/DVD burning software is another one of those areas where I feel that software vendors have taken the wrong approach….providing these unnecessarily bloated “suites” which perform 101 tasks….when all we really need is 1 task: Burning my CD.  That’s it.  I don’t need you to manage my files, keep track of all my “Projects”, print labels, manage my music, so on and so forth.  Just burn the freakin CD and get out of the way!  Further, most of the major systems insist on loading 2 or 3 executables into memory…software update agents, auto disk-detectors, system control taker-over-er agents…you name it.  Nero, Roxio, all of em…they’re evil, evil software. 

Not only that, burning a CD is something that I have always felt should simply be built-in to the OS.  I don’t have to use a 3rd party piece of software to copy files to a floppy…why should any other medium be different?  I could never justify purchasing one of these bloated CD-Burning software suites because I have always felt it should be included with Windows.  Therefore I have always used the OEM versions of Nero, Roxio, NTI CD Maker, etc…the ones that come with your CD/DVD Burner.  Of course these OEM versions are usually just “starter” versions…enough to get you to upgrade to the full version.  OEM or full, CD Burning software has always been pretty much crap.

Well, leave it to the open source community to solve the problem.  InfraRecorder is a nice compact, tight, fast, stable piece of software which performs ONE function.  It burns CD’s and DVD’s!  And it does it well!  Furthermore, you don’t even need to install it.  Just unzip it to a directory and you’re good to go.  This makes it perfect for locating on a shared drive and just dropping a shortcut on your workstations.  Or carrying it on your Utility CD or USB Drive for use in the field.  The installed program occupies a mere 9MB of space, with the core program only at about 1.5MB.

InfraRecorder has all the basic functions you would expect.  Create a Data Disc, Audio Disc, Copy a Disc, etc.  It contains the full program, as well as an “Express” version which provides a simple “What would you like to do?” task-based interface, similar to Nero’s SmartStart application.  Speaking of which, if you’re familiar with the Nero interface, you will be at home using InfraRecorder. 

Here is the full program window….

And here is the “Express” application…

InfraRecorder will burn or create industry standard ISO images.  This is very nice as many times I like to keep a library of ISO images for my important CD’s.  For instance, I keep my Windows XP, Vista,  Server 2003, Exchange, Office CD’s on my server in ISO format.  If I ever lose or misplace a CD I can easily burn another copy from the ISO image.  ISO-creation is very important to me.  Most of the commercial packages (Nero and Roxio, for instance) require you to purchase their “Premium” or “Ultimate” version to get ISO creation ability.  They encourage you, instead, to use their proprietary formats.  This ensures that you will always need their software to work with the images you create.  Very lame.  Adherence to the standard ISO format is reason alone to use InfraRecorder.

Also surprising, InfraRecorder has the ability to create boot CD’s from floppy img files.  Again, this feature is only included in the “Ultimate” version of Nero, so I am glad to see it included in InfraRecorder.  InfraRecorder follows the well-establish “El Torito” boot disk standard.  I hope to do a “How-To” later about creating floppy img files and boot CD’s.

One thing you should be aware of….if you want to make an Audio compilation disc (not copy an Audio disc, but compile one from existing MP3 files) you’ll need to install the MP3 decoder plugin.  This is a very simple task which simply involves downloading the optional MP3 plugin ZIP file, and copying the included DLL file to InfraRecorder’s ”codecs” directory.  For licensing reasons with the MP3 technology, this file cannot be included with the InfraRecorder download.

Also pretty cool…InfraRecorder includes a “cdrtools” directory which contains several command-line tools for reading/writing and troubleshooting CD/DVD’s from the command line.  Since I am the Command Line Nazi, I am very happy to see this. 

I have been using InfraRecorder for about 2 weeks now and am very impressed with it.  I think I may be permanently replacing Nero with it.

Check it out here: http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/

If you like it, I encourage you to send the guy a donation, or just simply help the project by getting the word out about this excellent piece of software.  Please feel free to let me know about your experiences with it.

While I like the Leviton Structured Media Centers, and the other pre-made enclosure “systems”, sometimes you just can’t beat the simplicity, freedom, flexibility, and price of a simple sheet of plywood. Here’s one I did recently in a 20-yr old house.

The plywood is just 1/2″ exterior grade CDX. It’s secured to the studs with 2″ drywall screws every 10″ or so.

We pulled two CAT-5, two RG-6 and a phone to each room of the house. The patch panel is a standalone (meaning not meant for a media system) 12-port “quick port” style from Leviton. It is basically a frame that accepts the standard quickport inserts which is really nice for mixing and matching cable types.

All phone lines in the house are run with CAT-5 and brought to a simple old-school junction box. The DSL is split off using a DSL Splitter. We have an alarm feed going to an RJ31X jack (in an inside room, near the alarm). Particularly with the phone and DSL, the plywood system is really nice in that you can troubleshoot easily, make changes, and really see what’s going on. Each of the jacks is clearly labeled (for instance “Red/Grn: TO Alarm” and “Ylw/Blk: FROM Alarm”) so that any alarm or phone company technician coming in behind me will know EXACTLY what’s going on. I wish I could say the same for the people *I* come behind…

Anyway, video is inside the grey metal box, distributed with a standard 2Ghz splitter.

The wireless router is my current favorite router….The Buffalo WHR-G54S which is rock solid stable. Buffalo MAY replace this router with a newer one, so get these while you can. Anyway, if you reflash the firmware with the DD-WRT open source router OS, you have a router that performs better and is more stable than just about anything out there. (More on this in a future posting) Also, note that the router is held in place with two blocks of wood. The Buffalo has extremely small mounting lugs in the back, making it quite difficult to wall-mount. So I just cut two pieces of 1×2 pine furring strip and sandwiched the router. Try that with a Leviton system.

Anyway, the beauty of this system is that you can do pretty much anything with it. Mount any device exactly where you want it. Move things around, etc. One of the huge benefits vs. a pre-made system is that you have more than enough room to work in. Furthermore, you aren’t limited to the various “modules” that the manufacturer makes. You simply find what you need and screw it to the wall.

So, I say if you’ve got the room, go for the plywood patch center. They’ll beat the structured media centers every time.