“groovy mother...”

Windows password cracker. Has an interesting open-source business model: The cracker is GPL, and there are free (but limited) Rainbow tables. To get the full tables, you need to pay $99.

Even billg gets frustrated by the pain of Windows Update.

Wine for OS X and Linux especially designed to play graphically-intensive Windows games. The Orange Box and its contents are supported, and Audio-Surf ran OK for me, with some minor resolution-based oddness. Not sure it’s worth $40, though, when I can just reboot to Boot Camp.

I bought a new laptop drive for my MacBookPro last week, and with SuperDuper, was able to copy my OS X partition and boot off it within hours. The Boot Camp Windows partition, however, stumped me. No amount of disk copying or dd’ing worked.

This tool did. It does all the magick required to successfully copy a Windows partition and tweak the partition table to make Windows boot again. Hurrah!

Posted mostly because it’s clever, but also because I miss hacking on MOD files.

An outstandingly fun Windows game: Drive a car over coloured blocks on a track generated by an MP3 of your choosing. Pick something mellow, and you get a relaxing low-scoring game. But if you want a challenge, throw some pumping techno its way. Works very well with Chemical Brothers and Pixies, I find. Best use of Digital Signal Processing ever!

The excellent TrueCrypt now runs on OS X, as well as Windows and Linux. I’ll definitely be shunting some of my files onto an encrypted thumbdrive later.

“I have finally decided to take the plunge. Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP”

Freeware CD burner app for Windows. If this means I can nuke bloody Nero off my work PC, I’ll be a happy, happy man.

“Microsoft says its efforts have seen a drop in piracy of its software.” Alternatively, the fact that no-one *wants* Vista could be a factor.

Improved version of the essential ssh client for Windows

The project formerly known as “Piano Hero”.

“Vista has an aroma like [Windows] ME, and I am not interested in getting sick again.” Ooh, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s pretty true. Vista and ME are not dissimilar in their not-worth-the-hassle-of-upgrading-ness.

The problems with cultural-sensitivity when you’re shipping something worldwide.

Cool looking little screencast app from TechSmith — An easy way to grab images or video from your desktop, and share them quickly. Works in OS X and Windows.

Lenovo offering disks to let you “downgrade” your newly-purchased Vista-running laptop to XP. Prediction: These will be very popular.

As someone who installed Vista on a PC in January, and regretted it for months, I echo Joel Spolsky’s summation: “I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes.”

“netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled” — The magic incantation that stops network performance SUCKING BALLS (at least on the RhymesWithNose network) in Vista.

Virtual drumming with a wiimote. The video gives a good idea how it works.

Social site tracking what applications you use and how long you use them for. Kind of a Last.FM meets IUseThis.