Every now and again, two of my favourite subjects come together (No, not blackmail and hard discs) - Technology and Motorsports.

Formula 1 star of the McLaren-Mercedes team, Lewis Hamilton, has been the focus of a blackmail attempt by a man in Germany, named simply “Dieter.” Dieter somehow obtained a hard drive, that had supposedly been disposed of some months before, that contained documents and other personal information. For those who are unfamiliar with the McLaren-Mercedes scandal of last year, the team were found guilty of using secrets from another team to improve their own car - and this hard drive could possibly had more such evidence on it. Trying to sell the hard drive to the German motorsport magazine, “Bild”, Dieter was arrested by police after the magazine tipped off the authorities, as reported by the Daily Telegraph today.

So how do you properly and permanently remove sensitive information from your hard disc?

Remember - when you delete things in Windows the data is usually still there - just because you can’t access the information doesn’t mean somebody else won’t be able to. The very nature of deleting a file just means renaming the first character of the filename, to let the system know the space it takes up can be used for new files - and the data is still there until new files are written in the same place. And even if the space the file used to occupy is overwritten with different files, there are techniques that can be employed to find out what used to be on the surface of the disc. Once you know this, you need something a little better than the recycle bin in windows to remove your sensitive data, and there are three methods you can use to do it:

The first way is with a program that allows you to securely delete files - rather than by using the recycle bin in Windows, download Eraser. It has a drag and drop interface that allows you to do a multiple-pass wipe so that the bytes the file occupies get overwritten properly, making it practically impossible to retrieve the data that used to be your file. Amongst others, by default, it uses the “Gutmann” method of wiping that employees 35 separate passes of specially selected data to make sure nobody can retrieve the information, chemically, from the drive. This should be enough if you just need to remove the odd file that’s a bit sensitive. It is geared towards doing things in batches, so you could drag files you want to remove into the program and before you log out, process them all in one go. This takes care of single file deletes.

The second way is a little more abstract, and Eraser is up to the task of removing this type of data too. Remember when your files are removed, they aren’t actually erased, the space is allocated back to the system to write files into? Baring this in mind, all the files you’ve deleted previously, will have data scattered all over the drive, in places ready to be overwritten, but for whatever reason the system hasn’t got around to using yet. So the second method is to wipe your free space on the drive. Every byte that isn’t allocated to a file will be subjected to the same rigorous treatment, using the same methods.

When you’ve come to the point when you’re ready to throw the hard drive away and want to be sure there’s nothing left on it, the last method to remove data is to wipe the whole drive. And the best way to do this is to melt it down! Failing that, if you don’t have a kiln in your house, try DBAN (Darik’s Boot And Nuke). Download DBAN, burn it to a CD, boot from that CD and you will be able to wipe any drive in the system with multiple passes of random data. Eraser, above, also supports wiping whole drives and can create a “Nuke Disc” to boot from. DBAN, however is a personal favourite, and I’ve never had problems with using it. This should securely remove the data - although of course, nothing is as secure or cool as melting it - plus you get the added advantage of doing something cool to video and put on youtube!

It’s a common question, and most people don’t really look for the answer. If you make the switch to using OpenDNS, all of a sudden the feature of typing anything into your address bar in firefox, and being redirected to the best-match page from google doesn’t work. And it’s surprising how used to that feature you get. I, for instance, just type “gmail” into the address bar and Firefox/Google gets me to where I want to go. Some people I know of have actually got rid of OpenDNS for this reason alone. Well all is not lost! Don’t change your settings just yet - you can make a simple tweak in Firefox to make it all better.

First things first, go to the address bar of Firefox and type about:config. What appears is a list of the configurable variables that Firefox uses. Beware, messing with the wrong ones can break your browser. We’re interested in only one of them. In the filter box, type keyword. Double click the keyword.URL entry in the list and change the contents of the box that appears to http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q= click OK and you’re done. And for those of us in the UK, just substitute the google.com with a google.co.uk.

Anything you now type into the address bar of Firefox, if it’s not a valid website address, will be redirected to Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. I’m Feeling Lucky, for the uninitiated, is a button next to Search on the Google homepage that you can use if you’re sure the first entry that’s going to be returned by Google’s normal search will be what you’re looking for. Firefox will now act exactly the same way when you type your search term into the address bar - bypassing that horrible OpenDNS search page.

That nasty judge. The registrar had no choice but to remove the entries it has for wikileaks.org so people couldn’t get to the site anymore after his ruling. Well, you can add your own entry, locally to any system so you can always get to wikileaks.org. How? Well you need to change a file called “hosts”

In Windows, the hosts file is found in your Windows directory. To be precise it’s Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc (assuming your windows installation is in windows. If it’s in WINNT or something, then just change the path accordingly.)

In Linux or Unix, this file is normally found in /etc (the etc directory in root.)

In Mac OSX you can find the file in either /private/etc or, like Unix, the /etc directory.

So you know where the file is, now what? Open it up in the text editor of your choice and edit the file. The easiest way to open it, as it doesn’t have an extension (like .txt) is to open the the text editor first - notepad, vi or whatever - then navigate to your folder of choice and open it. Now, I think a quick networking 101 is required:

A domain name, such as google.com, is just a name pointing to an IP address. The domain names are just there for our benefit, not the internet’s, the server’s or the router’s. Just for us - after all It’s much easier to remember a catchy name like skymonkey.org, than it is to remember a string of numbers. So that’s where name servers & DNS step in. A name server holds a big list of domain names matched against IP addresses. So when you type in google.com in your browser, the first thing it does is get in contact with a nameserver and try to make sense of it - to convert it to something the browser, rather than you, understands. The nameserver will either return the IP address associated with google.com, or direct the browser to the next place that it thinks will know. And so on, until the browser has an IP address to connect to. The connection happens and you view google.com, or skymonkey.org in all it’s glory. So how does this hosts file fit in with the scheme of things then?

The hosts file you see before you (hopefully), is the first thing your computer looks at when trying to resolve domain names. Before it will go to a nameserver it will check it’s own hosts file for any entries there. If it finds a positive match for a domain name you’re looking for then bingo, it will serve that IP address up first. Now if you know that a certain registrar in America has removed the entries for a certain domain name, you can use your new-found knowledge to add you own entries for - er-hum, shall we say “wikileaks.org”

So the data to add? Probably the simplest part. Go to the bottom of the file and create a new line (just hit return or whatever.) Then type in the following IP address: 88.80.13.160 hit the tab key, or hit the space bar (to create a gap) and then type www.wikileaks.org

And that is it! All done. Save the file - open up your browser of choice and type wikileaks.org into the address bar. Now sit back and enjoy the smug grin on your face as you realise the system hasn’t stopped you or others from exercising your freedom of speech.

I know what you’re thinking, it sounds like one of those websites that offer the "free download" and then you find out that it’s the product you’re going to have to pay for - not the download. A clever and annoying play on words..

Anyway, that’s not the case here. This truly is free. Windowblinds? Windowsblinds? We don’t need no stinking Windowblinds! That’s right, why should you pay for a 3rd party app like Windowblinds to skin your OS, when it’s already built right into XP?! The reason is, and you may not realise this, but why you normally have 2 or 3 skins in XP is because that’s how Microsoft want it (in an almost applesque sort of way.) And the reason you can’t install 3rd party skins in Windows is a file called "uxtheme.dll." This little file prevents any themes that aren’t signed by Microsoft from showing up in the menu and being used by the Windows XP GUI.

So you need a fix for this file. And it comes in the shape of the "UX Theme Multi-patcher." A program to undo what Microsoft did. Run it once and it will patch your "uxtheme.dll" file. After this is done (and you did read what the little box said, didn’t you?) Windows will try to warn you that a system file has changed. This is perfectly normal and you can safely cancel windows from trying to put the old file back. Once done, do a reboot and visit the following sites for some nice themes (I’ve included the one in the example to get you started.)

• UX Theme Multi-patcher
• "Cerulean Theme" from example
• ThemeXP.org
• XPTheme.info
• Belchfire
• Customize

Please bare in mind that you do this at your own risk - don’t blame me if you fry Windows. However, that being said I’ve never heard of anyone having problems installing this fix.. And if you want the original uxtheme.dll file back, just run the Multi-Patcher again.

Update: If you’ve installed Windows XP SP3, it will overwrite your patched ‘uxtheme.dll’ file. You have to amend it manually. To do this, boot into safe mode and replace the uxtheme.dll file in the Windows\System32 directory with this one. This is at your own risk, so always make backups first before messing with your system! I can say it worked a treat for me with no problems

Quite a quick post this one (which is testament to how easy it is) to show you how to share your iTunes library over the internet, without any complicated SSH tunnels, or port forwarding or anything - but still have it secure. Also, this method allows multiple remote connections with ease (as long as the computer hosting the iTunes library has enough upload bandwidth, of course.) How?

First things first, share your iTunes library on the host machine. Edit preferences, Sharing, Share My Library Over My Local Network (ticked.) Secondly - obviously - make sure you have iTunes installed on your work PC, or any other PC you want access to your iTunes library. And the second to last step - install Hamachi (google it) on both computers. Turn on Hamachi on both machines - create a new network on the host machine & connect to it using the client machine. Start iTunes on both PCs and bingo! You can even play protected content, just by authorising your works PC. Simplicity itself!

Partly because I just completed portal for the second time, and partly because I’ve always wondered - here’s how you extract the end credits music (which is both really well written, and also sums up the whole game.) WARNING - If you haven’t completed the game, don’t extract the portal music, as it contains spoilers for the game.. Of course, you can use the same program to extract other music from Half Life 2 & Episode 1/2.

The first thing you need is a crafty download - the program gcfscape, available [here] is the answer. It allows you to extract .gcf files in Half Life 2, which are like zip files, to their component parts. For the portal music, navigate to & open the file “portal content.gcf” which can be found in your “Valve” installation folder in “Steam\SteamApps\”. When opened, navigate within the file to “portal\sounds\music” and extract the file “portal_still_alive.mp3″ by right-clicking it. You can also get the Half Life 2 songs from “Steam\SteamApps\source sounds.gcf”

Obviously written because I’m a big wordpress fan - this very blog uses it, and I can’t sing the wordpress group’s efforts in creating an awesome piece of software. However, there is always room for improvement and it always amazes me how the users in the community can take the software and adapt it for their needs. Normally writing plug-ins for wordpress is enough, but sometimes they’ll shoe-horn the software to do something the developers never thought of. Have a look at this tutorial of usable tips and tricks, which includes the source code, to transform your wordpress blog into something a little different. I think I’ll have a little look myself… [SHOW ME]

YouConvert is the name of the website that lets you convert your files between all the well known file formats. You can convert audio files, documents, videos and images. It’s really simple and do you know the best thing? It’s all for free! Firstly you select the type of media you want to convert, find the file on your PC, enter your email address and away it goes into the youconvert servers for conversion. When the conversion is complete, you are sent an email (it took about a minute after I uploaded a wav for conversion to mp3) and this gives you a link to download your new file from the website. All in all, very painless and smooth. I wonder what the business model is?? [SHOW ME]

I’ve had a need for this for a while, but just haven’t had the time to do a bit of research - I wish I had sooner, because it’s really easy! The problem I had (and you might have too) is that you have multiple users on the same PC, who all want to listen to the same things - essentially all needing the same library.

By default, iTunes creates a file called “iTunes Library.itl” in the My Documents\My Music\iTunes folder. This is very useful, prevents the casual user from having to set anything up, and keeps everything organised for them. However, if you have multiple users it seems a bit of a waste, as each user has a copy of their library, which doesn’t reflect any changes other people make. So what to do?

1) Locate your music somewhere everyone can access it.

I know it sounds obvious, but most people leave their music in the default location, which is in that iTunes folder again, in your My Documents. Thankfully iTunes makes it pretty simple to change where it looks for music. Within iTunes, go to the edit menu, select the preferences entry and in the resulting box that appears, go to the Advanced tab. Replace the My Documents version with something else.. For instance I’ve got a separate HD for all of my music, which I’ve mounted as a folder in Windows on the C drive. So all of my music is available to everyone from C:\Music. I would also suggest you let iTunes manage your music, and make sure Copy Files to iTunes folder is ticked too, again just to keep everything central (by default iTunes will leave the music where it is and only add an entry to it in the Library - We obviously don’t want this.) And remember you need to go into every user and change this location setting within iTunes, and make sure the correct boxes are ticked underneath!

2) Centralise your iTunes Library.itl file.

This bit again is quite simple, but requires a little thought. Pick the user who has the most “complete” library, that is the person that’s spent the most time fiddling with the track names, or making sure the track numbers all line up. Once that’s been worked out, log in as that person, navigate to their My Documents folder, into My Music and the iTunes folder. You should notice quite a few things here and various folders. It’s just the .itl file we’re really interested in. Take a copy and place it somewhere central where everyone has access (mine is in C:\Music - to prevent me getting confused!) Now we need to let iTunes know what we’ve done, and the easiest way is to open iTunes whilst holding down the shift key. This will pop a little box open allowing you to choose where your library file is. Simply point it to your centrally located one, hit OK and you’re done!

Be aware (or beware) that this new Library file is accessible by everyone - if they make changes in their login in iTunes, you’ll see them in yours (which is kind of the point to this article) - so as long as you trust them you’re OK. Also as a bonus, if one user buys a new CD and rips the music into iTunes, everyone else can listen to the new tracks too. If other people that log into your machine are prone to screwing things up, I would probably suggest keeping their Library separate from everyone else’s (plus it makes them feel persecuted, so maybe they’ll change their meddling ways..) =)

This website will help you in your install woes.. We’ve all downloaded a freeware or shareware app that requires a certain dll to run, but wasn’t included in the install. Now you can solve the problem by visiting afreeDLL. [SHOW ME]