Eric Cosky

As I was doing some experiments with my Virtual PC setup, I realized my base disk image was just too small. I was trying to install the Windows Driver Development Kit, and the installation failed because the disk simply had no room for it. When I first created my disk image, which is a basic Windows XP installation on a single NTFS partition that filled the VHD with a variety of utilities added to it to make my work easier, I created the VHD using the disk wizard with the disk size to 4 GB. I thought that because I had set it to be a dynamically expanding disk that it would allow the disk to grow to any size I needed later. Unfortunately, I was wrong; the disk is limited to 4GB but it will only be as large as is needed to store the used sectors. This makes sense now that I know more about it, but I was left with a decision to either reinstall XP from scratch or find some way to extend the partition.

File Report Generator Screenshot

This is a very simple utility for creating reports about files. You can drag & drop files into it or use it as a Send To target to build a list of files which are then listed out in a format similar to what you would get by using a command line directory command and redirecting the output to a file. It's a bit nicer though, in that you can gather all the files you want reported on and it will sort by folder and various other options.

It's been just over a year now since I switched this website over to Drupal. It was a bit rough at first, not because it was bad but because it comes with a very lean set of modules and to make your site even moderately nice it can take more effort than other websites seem to require. At least, at first.

If you are still using FTP to access your website, it's time to close that gaping security hole. Every time you log in, your passwords are being sent in plain text which is exposing yourself and your host to risk of attack by anyone with access to the hardware between you and your host. That's a lot of people. Fortunately, there is a replacement for FTP that solves this security problem: SFTP, or "SSH File Transfer Protocol". In plain terms, it's a secure replacement for FTP.