After LOTS of reading and research, I’m doing an experiment over the next few weeks where I will be migrating most of my sites as well as a really big new one for work to the Media Temple Grid Servers.

Don’t actually have a lot to say at the moment except that their control panel is really pretty. Their sales team seems competent. What they say they provide is really good…

Lets all see how it goes. Should be interesting… anyone who has read about them since 2006ish has prolly heard the horror stories about crappy speed… downtime… lack of intelligent support… all the bad words you don’t wanna hear about a host. I haven’t been able to find a decent article on them dated much later than December of 2007 that doesn’t talk about the massive improvements in support and uptime. Leads me to believe that the lack of “press” could be due to improvements and lack of stuff for people to bitch about.

anyway… I’m a guinea pug now… we shall see if I regret it.

Some of my sites will be left at my current host… who I have always been happy with.

Client sites wont be moved until I have verified that (mt) is all I hope they are they say they are.

Time will tell…

Decided to create a “Mobile” Category. It will generally be completely unrelated to anything on the site… just plan on posting photos and whatever else i feel like from my phone.

Dunno how much Ill use it but we shall see. I used to have another “moblog” but didn’t use it much because it was generally a pain in the ass… and potentially expensive to send lots of media from my old phone(s).

Anyway… perhaps it will be interesting… perhaps not… but I expect I will have some fun with it.

This Tim guy rocks… add his blog you your RSS reader… I did.

Anyway, his posts on USB drive autorun tools inspired me… read his posts Here and Here

I made a tool based off his code that has a number of cool features… all configured from a single inf file… and using a text file for the message to make sure mac and/or linux users could still get the message…

Heres the scenario… you drop your precious USB drive somewhere and some other dude finds it… he has no idea who’s it is or anything… youre never gonna see it again right? welll lets hope thats not the case…

Lets hope the guy is foolish enough to stick a foreign USB drive in his pc and let it run (well most people are so foolish) … he will see a nice little splash screen and then get a message from you asking him to contact you and return the drive

you can even set it to open up his email client and start to compose the email for him.

the thing can be configured to just show the splash… just the message… etc…
it could even just show the splash and run some usb based software of your choosing and just ignor the whole “I lost my drive” scenario… Hell… let it show you a porno pic and run your cryptography software… whatever you want…

click HERE to download v1.0
Everything you need is included… even the source code if ya wanna tweak it and recompile it… etc…

Read on for the info file and whatnot:

This is just a copy paste from the readme file included in the zip:

Hello… heres how to configure your USB autorun to do what you want…

First the features:

1: Splash Screen
If you make a splash screen and add the size and filename to your ini file, it will show for the amount of time you set in the ini file.

2: PopUp Message
If you make a file to hold a PopUp Message and name it in the ini file, that message will pop up with an “OK” Button

3: AutoEmail PopUp
If you turn it on, and enter an email address it will open the persons email client and auto fill your email address and subject so they can let you know they found your drive.

4: AutoRun another exe file
If you tell it to the program will run an exe file of your chosing from the root of the USB drive

All features run in the order they are listed…
I am not responsible for any potential mis-use of this software… just sharing it so people can recover lost devices whenever possible… or just so the can have cool splash screens etc. I also dont guarantee any part of this app will function on any computer or that it will not damage your computer, your car, your front door… etc… Im pretty sure it wont be mean to your girlfriend though… it seems to like girls quite a bit.

the source file is included so you can tweak it or add to it as you see fit. my exe was compiled with AutoIt3 (http://www.autoitscript.com/)

it only works on PCs (XP with SP2 or later i think cuz of the autorun thing)

——————————— So heres how it works ————————————————-

Your ini file is located in the “KeyRunFiles” folder.
This is what your ini file looks like by default:

[General]
Title=My USB Key
ShowTitle=False
ImageFile=splash.jpg
ImageWidth=187
ImageHeight=83
ShowTime=4
FileName=PleaseReadMe!.txt
MsgTitle=Help! I’m Lost!
AutoEmail=True
Email=IFoundYourDrive@yourdomain.com
EmailSubject=I Found Your USB Key!
RunAfterApp=appname.exe

…
Feature 1 uses the following lines:

Title=My USB Key # This is the title of your splash window

ShowTitle=False # “True” to show the title “False” to show no title. this is case sensitive

ImageFile=splash.jpg # The name of your image (put it in the “KeyRunFiles” folder) if you leave this blank and dont have a file there it will disable the splas window. this is case sensitive

ImageWidth=187 # The width (in pixels) of your image
ImageHeight=83 # The height (in pixels) of your image
ShowTime=4 # The number of seconds to show the splash for from 1 - 9 seconds

Feature 2 uses the following lines:

FileName=PleaseReadMe!.txt # The File containing your message. Goes in the root of your device (same place as the KeyRun.exe) this is case sensitive

MsgTitle=Help! I’m Lost! # The title of the popup message window

Feature 3 uses the following lines:

AutoEmail=True # “True” to send an email “False” not to. this is case sensitive

Email=IFoundYourDrive@yourdomain.com # the email address you want to send to. if this is blank no email will be sent even if you set “AutoEmail” to “True”

EmailSubject=I Found Your USB Key! # The subject of the email

Feature 4 uses the following line:

RunAfterApp=appname.exe # This will run an exe file from the root of the device… could be another autoit program or a usb file manager or whatever you like… if the file is not present the script will just end with no errors (hopefully)

—————- OK thats about it… ———————-

Visit http://www.august8th.com for more info if it is ever forthcoming. Ill do my best to help people and answer questions.
sorry if this file is hard to understand… feel free to reformat it and send it to someone if you like so you can show off your text formatting skillz.

Special thanks to Tim Fehlman of dailycupoftech.com for inspiring me to make this and for writing a lot of the splash and popup code… I love your work man… we should do lunch… have your people call mine… ciao

-JDL