In one of those weird coincidences, someone asked a question to an email DL in MS this morning, about how to securely erase a hard disk (since, as every skoolboy kno, deleting files doesn't really remove them from the HDD, and even formatting a HDD still leaves residue that could be recovered).

A few suggestions came back:

• PDWipe from http://www.digitalintelligence.com/software/disoftware/pdwipe/
• Use the cipher utility in Windows 2003, as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814599
• Use a Degausser deviuce to physically wipe the disk - eg http://www.garner-products.com/PD-8700.htm
• Physically shred the hard disk into tiny bits

As it happened, Robin Harris from ZDNet blogged today about some freeware utilities to go over the disk and overwrite every track, even blocks marked as bad, using the "Secure Erase" function that's built into most ATA disks, but is not typically made accessible by the BIOS. It's a process that's not for the faint hearted, but still seems effective (and appears to be good enough for the US National Security Agency).

The best comment I saw in response to the internal mail was the final suggestion, though:

• Military method – a team with angle grinders destroy the platters + one person to witness that it was done.

I suppose the military really like to do things properly :)

I've been on holiday for the last 2 weeks. Whilst away (and trying not to think about work), we took a boat trip where 12 people went off on a catamaran for the day, 6 of us from the same hotel. During the chit-chat that goes on in such a scenario, we got to talking about the hotel and how its location was surprisingly good for getting around - and one thing struck me: all 3 couples who stayed at this hotel (it was a Hilton, not normally my 1st choice of a vacation hotel, really) had used www.TripAdvisor.com to select where to stay.

Now for the last couple of years, I've used TripAdvisor to research places for holidaying, and it's always come up trumps... sometimes leading us to hotels or locations that we'd not normally have known about, or giving tips on what to do when we get there. I love the fact that it's constantly being updated and that you can take or leave some of the more positive and negative comments based on the style of writing and after forming an opinion about how experienced the author really is (eg. if someone thinks everything is brilliant, maybe they don't have much to compare it with).

There are plenty of web sites I'd use routinely, but there are relatively few that the "general public" might have cottoned onto and not see as a nice (eg. Microsoft Technet isn't going to be on the radar of your average PC user).

Obviously, news sites like news.bbc.co.uk have a general appeal but they're straightforward replacements for other sources of news. Sites like Amazon and any number of other shopping sites can replace the physical shopping in a store, and using their reader reviews might give you more context on what to/not to buy. Shopping comparisons like PriceGrabber or PriceRunner help the user find where the cheapest items are, so replace the need to shop around by going from store to store.

TripAdvisor, on the other hand, is like taking traditional holiday guidebooks and turbocharging them. I've already started researching the next 2 holidays :)

I mentioned a few other travel sites in a previous blog post - all part of the clued-up traveller's kit bag.

Oooh, that's a bit flippant. The whole Vista sidebar thing has kind of passed me by, though it really does make sense on widescreen monitors.

I set about looking for a particular gadget today, though - one of my cats managed to knock my home PC over last night (it's a desktop which I have standing vertically under the desk, propped up on a couple of old plastic floppy disk boxes to allow airflow under).

Following Arnie's destructive rampage, the PC refused to boot. So I had to drag it out from under the desk, and start pulling it apart to figure out what was wrong. After a process of elimination, I figured that the CPU must be the problem and sure enough, the CPU cooler had come loose. On closer inspection, the CPU itself had been yanked out of position (by the weight of the huge heatsink/fan combo) and managed to mangle numerous of the 478 pins...

... which is never going to be a good thing.

Anyway, I eventually gave up trying to straighten the pins (that's one way to make you go cross-eyed) and decided to sacrifice the CPU from another PC that happens to be elsewhere in the house. By the time I'd taken *that* one to bits, put the CPU in my main machine, reassembled both and reinstalled the system unit under the desk, I was pretty happy.

Until about 5 minutes in to using the thing, when it abruptly shut itself down and emitted a selection of beeps on restarting... uh oh, sounds like a thermal shutdown where the system throws itself on its own sword rather than bursting into flames.

It turns out the CPU fan cable had got wrapped around the fan itself so the cooling forces were less than optimal (ie none, apart from the heatsink). After fixing that and reassembling/reinstalling the machine, I went looking for SpeedFan, a great little bit of diagnostic software that displays all the temperatures, fan speeds, voltages etc from the numerous internal sensors within the case (if your system supports it).

There's even a beta SpeedFan gadget, which will report any of the info that Speedfan can grab, right there on the sidebar. Excellent!

More information here.

PS - another tip for Sidebar usage... Windows Key + Space bring it to the fore.

Whatever happened to elaborate and amusing '.sig's? It used to be common practice to have a signature with some kind of witty/pithy quote appended at random to every email.

Nowadays, the autosignature that most email programs can insert (such as Outlook's ability to have multiple autosigs, which vary depending on which account is sending, or whether the mail is a new message or a reply), is typically informative with lots of contact information, job titles, disclaimers etc. I've seen some sigs which are twice as long as the message itself (though there may be a legal requirement in the UK to put company information in the sig, in the same way that letterhead paper would, but some people really go to town).

I've had a lot of people comment on my own sig (or steal it - you're welcome to, if you like), since I tried to make it as small as possible whilst still conveying the maximum information, and using hyper links for the different ways you can contact me:

Ewan Dalton
 | +44 118 909 3318 | ewand@microsoft.com
Solutions Architect – Microsoft UK
  Sent using Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007
Microsoft Limited | Registered in England | No 1624297 | Thames Valley Park, Reading RG6 1WG

or for replies (where real estate is even more important)...

Ewan Dalton |  | Microsoft UK | ewand@microsoft.com |+44 118 909 3318
Microsoft Limited | Registered in England | No 1624297 | Thames Valley Park, Reading RG6 1WG

Since we're using Office Communicator, if someone clicks on the first link (the sip: URL), they'll send me an IM. The 3rd pic (the tel: URL) will call me using Communicator (or whatever else they're using that can support a telURL, such as a Smartphone).

I kind of miss the days where interesting quotes were de rigeur - you know, the kind of thing about BillG saying 640k should be enough for anyone (I'm not actually sure he ever said that, but we'll leave it for now) or Thomas J Watson saying there should be a worldwide market for maybe 5 computers...

Speaking of Thos J Watson, if you have an idle few minutes, you really should check out the IBM Songbook - top marks for IBM to keeping it alive as historical curio in the IBM Archives. My own personal favourite is "To Thos J. Watson, President, I.B.M.", sung to the tune of "Happy Days are Here Again".

Anyway, last word on .sigs. David Harris, author of the now venerable Pegasus Mail (which had support for auto-insertion or random quotes from a .sig file, used to have a cracker or two. One that sticks in my mind (apparently taken from a real newspaper):

After the boat had been secured above the wrecked galleon, the diving apparatus was set in motion by the Captain's 18 year old daughter, Veronica. Within hours she was surrendering her treasure to the excited crew.

I was fortunate enough to listen to Chris Bangle, group chief of design at BMW, talk about design, about his own personal journey to where he is now and what inspires him, when he spoke at Microsoft's TechReady conference in Seattle earlier this year. Paul Foster wrote a good review of that session, closing with a comment that Chris presented to us (bearing in mind the audience was several thousand technical people):

For generations, man has wondered what dreams are. We've had Freud and many others try to define dreaming, but Chris said Microsoft had helped him solve this mystery. Dreams are really just our brains defragmenting over night...

Now Chris is a man who has made quite an impact on car design at BMW, and has legions of fans and detractors in the car industry. His controversial "flame surfacing" design style, which first saw light in the BMW 7-series redesign of a few years ago and has gone to influence every model since, is a great example of the kind of design change which initially many people are resistant to, but get over it in the end and may even look back on it favourably.

When Windows XP came out, a lot of business people complained that it was too glossy and consumer-oriented, and they wanted to swtich off all the nice stuff and make it look like Windows 2000. I haven't heard too many people say the same about Vista, but the question of whether there is a "classic mode" always comes up with any UI redesign, like the Ribbon in Office 2007.

Listening to Chris talk about the way design evolves, and how sometimes it takes a leap forward, it's quite possible to draw comparisons with the world of IT, or wider into consumer devices, fashion etc.

I came across a video of Chris talking to car people, at the Autocar Awards 2006, on his thoughts of the cars of tomorrow. Quite a bit of the content he used was also part of his speech to Microsoft people, but what he said and the emphasis on what points he was making, were subtly different. It's well worth 12 minutes of your time to watch this video - even if you don't like Chris's car designs, you can't deny he's a smart guy who appears really likeable in person.

| Link to video | Link to Autocar TV |