OCDProgrammer.com

So now that I have my system setup and configure, I wanted to back it up so the next time I can just restore an image to my hard drive instead of having to reinstall everything.

Done a bit of searching and found this LifeHacker posting.  Upon going to DriveImage XML's website I saw a reference to working with BartPE's product (did I mention free?).  BartPE is a bootable version of Windows XP (assuming you have install files for a version of Windows XP to create the CD with).  Drive Image XML is a lot like Norton Ghost in that it allows you to back your hard drive up to an image and then restore that image at a later date.  Adding the two products together gives me a CD that I can pop into my cd drive and then restore the image saved on my external hard drive to my notebook hard drive.  So in the future restoring my old status should take just a few hours, and that includes everything being installed and activated.  

These two products aren't for the novice, but if you find yourself wanting to restore your PC every so often, this is the product for you.

As my previous post alluded to, my blog has had an issue with FeedBurner.  Basically their site is not updating my feed when my scheduled post become visible. 

Matt Shobe (yep, co-founder of FeedBurner) told me that my If-Modified-Since header was inaccurate, and a potential cause of the issue.  So I went on searching for a way to test this header on my Windows XP box.  Couldn't find one, so I emailed Matt and asked him if he could point me in the right direction.

He said you could use Linux (don't have a version installed) or I could possibly use Cygwin.  And I can!  So I grabbed the latest version and looked through all the packages and found two that had curl in them (in the Net component).  Let Cygwin install then ran this line in the command line that appears when you launch Cygwin:
curl -H 'If-Modified-Since: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:59:00 -800' -IL http://www.ocdprogrammer.com/myfeed.axd (don't go to it, it isn't valid)

And sure enough my BlogEngine had a bug in it.  I've since fixed the bug and hope it resolves the issue.  We will find out in the morning as my LifeBlog has a post scheduled for six in the morning.

I am blown away that FeedBurner is as helpful as it is when it comes to support.  Thanks Matt!  Because regardless of whether or not this bug is the cause of my FeedBurner issue, it was a bug and now the BE platform is better since it is fixed.

Was introduced to something new today (well new to me anyways)... Yahoo! Widgets. 

I've not been a fan of Google's widget offerings and how it functions, but I am liking this.  

I set up a few widgets for me:
1. A tempature/forcast widget.
2. A widget for my commute.  Shows me near real-time camera shots of the road I have to travel.
3. A Google Reader widget.

Plus I'm sure I'll find more over time... but the way to use this is to set your widgets up and then right click each of them 'hide' them.  Then when you want to see your widgets, hit F8 and they pop up.  Pretty cool! 

First, credit where credit is due.

http://www.theluebbes.com/post/Let-The-Luebbes-email-you.aspx

Apparently Feedburner allows you (as in YOU) to be sent my post via Email.  Not everybody gets this whole blogging thing, in reality there is no reason for you to visit my site to read my blog.  And if you are on a computer you understand email, so go ahead and subscribe to my blog via email!  This is probably one of the very few features on the web that just blow me away. 

I'll add a link to the left here soon with this ability as well. 

At my previous employer we upgraded to Windows Vista, and one of the neat features I liked about it was a tool called "Windows Snipping Tool".  It allowed you to take much more efficient screen shots of things.  But it wasn't available for my home PC which has XP Pro on it. 

So I went searching for a program to use on XP and I found http://www.windowclippings.com/  This is a really good program that allows me to take specific screen shots without having to open up an image editor to crop it.  Here is a sample screen shot, all I had to do to get this screen shot was hit the Print Screen button and right click the screen to crop or expand my selection, then double click the area I selected.  It spits out a PNG file (which you can change to a few other image formats) and due to my settings sticks the image in my clip board for easy pasting into a document or email.

The last great thing about this is its price... just $10!  While free is better you can't argue with $10.