Problem Solving Flowchart

If you got a kick out of yesterday's flowchart, I know Keiron did, here's another one. This one has been kicking around our office for years, there is a crumpled up coffee stained copy sat on the desk behind me. It always gets whipped out whenever we find one of those killer bugs on the day of a big software release, or when somebody decides to flip a power supply to the wrong voltage when it's plugged in. You know, all those stupid things you do that you hope won't get noticed.

Anyway, that's probably it from me for a while. I'm off on holiday for a few days, and for the first time in ages, won't have access to a computer. I have some articles in the works for when I get back, so watch this space for something a little more interesting.

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Tech Support Cheat Sheet

Ah this comic is so true and should probably be read by all my friends, family and co-workers. Us computer types don’t know how to use every computer program in the world. What we are good at is working out how they are used based on a few simple rules. Most computer software is designed with the same basic principles in mind so it is familiar and easy to work out where things are, think of the items under the standard Edit menu as a perfect example. However, I do remember when the latest version of MS Office came out with the new Ribbon interface, which left me completely confused, it truly was an experience of walking in another man’s shoes, actually, it was a woman’s shoes, my mums.

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Recover Lost Data With Boomerang

photo credit: rhobinn

You know when you are having one of those days when nothing goes right. Yesterday was one of those days for me. Why Apple make’s it so easy to trash a RAID system using their Disk Utility application, I’ll never know, but that’s exactly what happened to me. In the blink of an eye my whole development system was wiped out. This is something I’m quite used to, before we had an amazingly expensive security system installed, our offices were robbed on a yearly basis, the targets off these crimes were always our development teams Macs, so I’m no stranger to lost work. The problem was I had a days work that was not backed up. After a frantic search my colleague suggested we try Boomerang Disk Recovery.

Using an external boot disk and a copy of Boomerang I was given the chance to recover all of my lost files. The only downside was that after the many hours waiting for it to scan the 1TB system I had to spend a couple of hundred dollers to get everything back. No problem though, a free license key is available that allows you to recover up to 1MB of data. Not much, but just enough to get the text files I needed. They offer variously low priced licenses that are restricted to a couple of megs, well worth the price for a one-off disk rescue. Oh, and it’s also available for Windows.

If anybody can recommend a freeware application that can recover a striped RAID system then I’d love to hear about it. Also, leave any shout-outs for applications, free or otherwise, that have saved you from an IT disaster in the comments.

Boomerang is available here for Mac and Windows.

links for 2008-10-09

• FileZilla
  Lifehackers number 1 FTP application and I can see why. I've now installed this on several machines that I have access to, Mac and Windows versions. It's safe, reliable and more importantly functions exactly the way I want it to.
  (tags: ftp software internet)
• Skitch.com
  Fantastic little screenshot taking application for Mac OS X. Supports uploading of images to the Skitch servers. Could prove to be rather useful as a blogging tool. I'm particularly impressed with the user interface.
  (tags: blogging tool screenshot sharing)
• jQuery UI
  This is a really interesting extension to the jQuery library. If I ever get round to writing my web application I will definitely be using it. Unless of coarse somebody invents a technology that rivals AJAX.
  (tags: ajax programming)