Geek On The Mountain

iColorFolder is an open source program that provides a quick and easy way to organize folders in a different way. By color. Simply right clicking on a folder will bring up a menu option to quickly change the color of the folder to one of 7 different colors (8 if you include the default color you’re already using). How you use that is entirely up to you. You could color folders based on importance of some sort, some type of categories, by items that should be saved, backup up, or sorted, just to add some color to things, or whatever else you can think of.

Also, it comes with several different skins that you can use to totally change the look of the folders. It can be setup so that just the colored folders have a different appearance or so that even the regular folders look that way as well. There’s also a skin pack that will add more skins to the few that iColorFolder comes with.

I must admit that this is one that I stole from Milenka. While the other apps on the list are things that I’ve found, this is one that she found over a year ago.

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Milenka and her mom went out and got a bunch of girl clothes last night. They’re mostly pink and somewhat frilly. They’re not exactly the cutest thing I’ve seen.

I’ve seen lots of boy clothes. They tend to be cute. They have cute little animals and such on them, or at least the stuff we have tends to. Plus, they’re not pink. I’m really not a huge fan of pink, on the all and all.

So I’ve decided that when it comes to baby clothes, girl clothes just kind of suck. Now I’m sure there are cuter girl clothes out there, but pink dresses with flowers on them just don’t impress me.

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TrueCrypt is an open source, on the fly encryption tool. It supports various encryption algorithms. It can also essentially hide all of your data once it has been encrypted so no one can even tell that you have encrypted data. It is available for Windows and Linux.

TrueCrypt does real-time encryption, meaning that as you work with the data it is immediately encrypted/decrypted for your use. It actually creates a virtual filesystem within a file or on a partition. In practical terms, this means, in windows, that you end up with a drive letter under which all of the encrypted files reside. When mounted, it is accessible just as any other drive is and you can do whatever you want with it. Once unmounted, not only can you not access it, but you can’t even tell what it is. The encrypted file/partition should look pretty much random and it isn’t obvious what it actually is. In the case of a file, it can be named to anything you like, so it can essentially pose as a “normal” file type and be hidden anywhere (you just have to remember where it is). On top of that, you can create a hidden volume within a TrueCrypt volume. A hidden volume is a second TrueCrypt volume that resides within another. The fun part is that it is impossible to tell whether or not a hidden volume exists since both the hidden volume and the one in which it is contained consist of random data. The idea with all of this is that that even if someone obtains/forces you to give them your password, you can still have things be secured.

It supports various algorithms. It can use the government standard AES-256, AES candidate Serpent, the older Tripple-DES, and others as well. It can even combine algorithms (using one after another). When you create a volume, it even lets you run benchmarks between the different algorithms to help you decide which one to use (generally, more secure algorithms are slower).

You can also use a keyfile for the encryption. You specify a file when you create the volume, and then in order to decrypt it, not only do you need the password, but you need to provide the file as well.

It will let you setup hotkeys for various things to perform tasks quickly. For instance, you could setup one to unmount all volumes.

There’s even a traveller mode that allows the program to be run without installing it.

On top of all of this, it’s open source. For security reasons, encryption software is best off being open source, but even if you’re not into the whole thing it does at least mean that you don’t have to shell out any cash to use it.

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…girls. Two girls. At least, that’s what the ultrasound tech seemed to think this morning. I’ve always wondered about how conclusive the whole thing is though. I mean, the whole thing is based on whether or not you can see something. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s there, and at the same time, even if you see something, it might not be the something that you’re looking for. (Though I would assume the former would generally be the greater issue.)

We hadn’t really been expecting two girls. My dad ended up with 5 boys and 1 girl, and of his 3 siblings there is only one girl. Thusly, we figured boys were more likely than girls. Consequently, we’ve mainly prepared for boys. Now Milenka wants me to repaint their room, which is something I’m unlikely to do. She likes to talk about “gender equality” anyways, so why can’t two girls have a blue room and wear blue clothes?

At any rate, they seem to be healthy. They both have three blood vessel umbilical cords and four chambered hearts, which are apparently good things. They both have arms and legs and such. From what we could tell, they were measureing if anything a little ahead of where they should be at 18 weeks.

And speaking of legs, they seemed to be kicking each other the entire time, which is always a good sign…

I believe that we’ll end up with another ultrasound in about 4 weeks, so maybe we’ll see something else then.

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I always like to play with new things. As such, I’ve ran across a number of interesting (and sometimes even useful ) programs in the last couple of months. Some of them are web-based (and hence are perhaps more like a service, I suppose) and some of them aren’t. Most all of them are free, but one or two of them are commercial. Some of them are programs I’ve used for a long time that just fit the theme.

What they all have in common is….nothing, I think. Maybe I’ll see a pattern when I’m through with all of this. It seems most likely at any rate.

I’ve never actually written a series of articles, but this will be one. I’d end up writing about everything anyways, even if it weren’t a series, but this way I can have fun making everything link together. Plus it just seems nice from a design standpoint. Never mind me though..

This post will serve as an index, btw. Each item will be listed below as I post. The first one should show up in a day or two (it won’t be 3 weeks from now, I can guarantee
that )

• TrueCrypt - Real-time disk encryption tool.

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