Dan Murphy's Blog

VBS Script to Delete Old Files

Dan — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:07:18 +0000

I have setup my web hosting service to FTP my full backup of my website every Monday. While this automation is great I forgot about one thing to maintain. With each one of these backup files being about 1GB it can start to take up a lot of space if you do not clean up your older files!

So after searching around I came around the .vbs script that looks at the directory and deletes any file older than a specified number of days. In this case I have chosen 60 days. Now a few things to remember, make sure you keep backing up your site if you are running this file otherwise you will delete all of your backups if it is long than 60 days since your last backup! Using Windows scheduler I have made this run shortly after I receive my latest backup file from my web host. This makes my backup process totally automated now even for maintaining files!

Delete Files Older than 60 Days

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October 2009 Snow Storm

Dan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:34:58 +0000

Well it wasn’t a blizzard but it was a lot of snow. One of those southbound storms that just dumps on Denver. One of the odd things about this storm is it snowed for 2 days straight that is pretty rare! Total snow fall is about 21-24 inches.

There are also some pictures of the pumpkins we carved, I bet you can guess the one Laura did and the one I did! Sorry for the blurry-ness joys of taking a picture in the dark you have to hold the camera totally still which obviously I cannot do too well.

I had to dig some trenches for the sidewalks otherwise it floods the sidewalk and freezes and makes a mess!

[Show as slideshow]

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Volery – Create your own Install Package

Dan — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:35:27 +0000

Wow this site may have eliminated the reason for my blog. This is a site that lets you select the applications you want to install and then downloads all the installers into a single install for easy multiple application setup. The best part is this is basically all the software that I use to run my computer! Looks like they are still in a private beta but I was able to get in and test it out, amazing and huge time saver when setting up a family computer which inevitably happens way too often!

Web Site: Volery

UPDATE: now the site is called NiNite

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Windows DreamSpark – Free Software for Students

Dan — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:29:20 +0000

Well looks like Windows is all about getting their software into college students hands for a very reasonable price or for free. This is their latest reach out to students DreamSpark. After supplying your .edu address and confirming it you can download any of the software that they have here and use is for free! This is great and is inline with the Student offering for Windows 7 or for Office 2007

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QDir File Management

Dan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:17:58 +0000

Well I have never been a big fan of Windows explorer, but at the same time never really found a reason to change what it uses by default. Well I have started using Q-Dir to manage my file directory contents and I find it extremely easy and time saving. I guess I just got used to opening two explorer windows and dragging across the windows but this seems to be so much easier! And using the Hotkey tool I found the other day it makes it as easy as a replacement for explorer as ever!

Qdir Website

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Qhotkeys – Assign Hotkeys for Windows

Dan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:52:05 +0000

I was looking for a way to assign a hotkey to Q-Dir for file management as I will never use it unless it is as easy as running Windows-E. Well I ran across this program which is awesome it allows you to assign any hotkeys you want with the Windows button. It has a very easy to use graphical interface to assign the buttons and you can assign anything. So far I have it setup to run Q-Dir, Firefox, Outlook, and Command Prompt (cygwin) in a single hotkey. It is a huge time saver and picks up where Launchy is lacking.

Qliner Hotkeys Website

Download Hotkeys 2.0.1

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D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N Router

Dan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:45:55 +0000

So I ended up picking up a new router after bricking my good old WRT54G which I have had for a long time and served me well but kinda left we wanting more. That is probably why I was pushing a firmware upgrade to the router only to have it fail and brick it. So after doing a bunch of research as far as what was available at MicroCenter and reading reviews from NewEgg and Amazon I ended up with a D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N.

The main thing I was looking for in a router was stability and supportability I had a few other things in my mind that I figured would be awesome if I could find but were not too big of deal breakers. One thing that really led me to choose D-Link was their support network and the forums and their emulator of their firmware. The emulator was nice because it let me test drive the options of the router before buying it, why more companies don’t do that I will never know. Also you have the ability to easily download old firmware if you need to downgrade after an update. The forum was a welcome support link for the router but as usual you have to take those with a grain of sand as there seems to be a lot of angry people out there! Although I did take the biggest advice of the forum and did not upgrade to the latest firmware as it seems to have a lot of issues, and is not something you can remove after installing it. I figured since 80211N just made gold that there would be another update coming soon anyways.

A nice feature of this router is I have the ability to set up schedules. So I can open my FTP port for the 1 hour I need it to do my automated website backups. I can also do some port mapping from incoming external port to another internal port in my network. I also get some very useful logs and a whole bunch of other buttons and options to change (QoS, DHCP Priority Address, Guest Access, Email new Firmware, Uptime Clock). I can also enable a second WiFi hotspot with a different security level for guests so I can easily open and close a non-secure wireless access point. And it has a gigabit switch to boot so that is helpful for all four ports which i have plugged into my PS3, DirecTV, Media Center, and weather station.

It was on sale for $99 at MicroCenter and has turned out to be a very good router. I have tested it by pumping a ton of data through it via Bit-Torrent and Hulu and downloading 1GB files from FTP all at once without a hiccup (well my cable modem did reboot but don’t think that was the router’s fault). So this router gets my vote!

UPDATE – I have found some other settings that are particularly useful with this new router. Looks like you can setup a dynamic DNS account and setup the router to ping the service and update your IP if it changes so you can have a static URL go to your home server.

As far as stability goes this thing seems to be fairly solid, it likes to reboot every once and a great while and does it by itself and just looks like it takes a long time for a page to reload when it happens, so no really effected services. I have also been making a bunch of changes to the config of the router which require reboot so that kinda screws up my uptime counts.

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For Web Designers Website

Dan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:02:54 +0000

This is a pretty amazing site and has a bunch of good content and links. This is great for finding fonts, images, CMS tools, and just great links for web designers. This can save a lot of time.

ForWebDesigners.com

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More Font Websites

Dan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:43:35 +0000

Here are a bunch of free font websites:

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Microsoft Windows 7 for $30 for students

Dan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:35:15 +0000

This is just like the Windows Office for $59 only it is for Windows 7. All you need is a valid .edu address. I knew there was a reason that I went to grad school.

Microsoft 741

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