I’ve long been a fan of solarwinds and love using their free tools.

I just wish I could afford to play with some of their paid for tools as they look ultra cool and ultra geeky. That suits me just fine.

The latest free tool to their stable is the “Network Config Generator“.

It looks like it could be a really useful tool to anyone who has a dislike of configuring network devices. There appears to be little restriction on what type of network devices that can be configured by it from firewalls to routers to switches so long as they have a CLI style access.

You can create your own configurations or you can utilise a template. The tool comes with a few templates already built in and more accessible via Thwack (solarwinds forum / resource site) and they are likely wanting to rely on the massed ranks of network engineers to supply more – and I’m certain that will happen.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet myself as it requires a live connection to a device and I don’t have any to hand.

Anyway, check it out if you need it and let me know how you get on.

I got this email yesterday:

Over the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about Wi-Fi being provided free (secure and filtered) by churches and Christians. The idea came to me when I noticed a guy outside of my house in the cold, winter weather accessing my wireless with some kind of hand held device. I was thinking that it would be cool if people were able to access a connection for free BUT there would always be one pop-up at the beginning of the access…sort of a “provided by” message along with some other message. like info about a church or group or the gospel message for that matter, or maybe a link with info on donating to specific charities or disaster relief. I would think that would be only a minor inconvenience if one was able to access the internet for free. What are you’re thoughts on that?

I confess my first thought would not have been a charitable one if I’d seen someone outside my house trying to access my wifi. First I’d think best of luck and then I’d instantly change my pre-shared key . Me, paranoid?

But to answer the question the answer I gave was “I love the idea” … (more…)

I’ve been reading a lot recently and even had an email or two as well as an uncle requesting my personal services with regards to data recovery. So it has caused me to think, can I add my own recipe for data recovery?

The caveats that apply here are:

• This is all my opinion
• This is what has worked for me
• I am not a data recovery expert but have always been successful during the last 25yrs or so.
• Your mileage may vary.

That said, I have had a reasonable amount of experience including my own to work on.

The first rule of any data recovery is:

Don’t Panic

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These look real neat … price dependant of course.

Single or dual – standalone or rack mounted – removable SATA disc backup.

The, I guess, simple idea being that you purchase cheap and readily available SATA hard drives that you store in the usual manner. Only instead of storing tapes, DVDs or similar it is hard drives. The unit connects via means of an external SATA port but both this and the cables are supplied with the unit. The units are also supplied with the Idealstors own backup software named, iBac.

All you need are the drives.

Me like.

There are three (3) main reasons why you might want to and these ignore all the arguments of why you should or shouldn’t partition.

• Organise your work
• Safe guard your data
• Boost your computer’s performance

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