Securely wipe a disk and all its data.

We all come across a time where we need to get rid of a computer that has a hard drive or just a hard drive itself with your data on it.  So what do you do with the data in it?  If you delete from the OS, there's still possible ways to recover the data from the next person that the hard disk goes to especially if you just do a quick format of the disk.  Doing a quick format essentially removes the pointers to the data.   You might not be able to see it from the OS, but the data is still on the disk.  And with the proper recovery software, the data can be recovered.  To be safe, its best to write the disk with random data.  When doing so, it's nearly impossible to recover data that was written over.  Killdisk, which I've used before is simple and effective.  The free version however, is limited to how many disk/partitions you can wipe at once.  If you've got a Linux machine, you can use the 'dd' command and fill the disk with data from /dev/urandom.  Wiping a disk with random data can take a long time but its the safest way to protect your data from being recovered by someone else.

    https://www.killdisk.com/eraser.html

    dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX (X is the letter of the drive)

Sega Saturn Derby Stallion Edition

   The Sega Saturn came out without much attention during its time.  I was a big Sega fan while I was growing up.  I had the Master System and Genesis consoles while others have the NES and SNES.  I remember being at Kay-Bee Toys around Christmas time one year and saw the Sega Saturn box on the shelf.  I was surprised Sega had another console out as I haven't heard that it was coming out.  I was still on the Genesis and the Sega CD at that point.  Back then, its usually TV commercials, magazines or word of mouth from friends that you get your information from.  I don't remember hearing anything from any of those sources.  Although the Saturn didn't do well in the US, it did better in Japan.  It does have a cult following and is growing now that retro gaming is popular and we start to appreciate the console more and more.  For the import version of the console, there were around 7 or 8 different versions of the console.  One of the rare ones was the Derby Stallion Edition.  This thing looks awesome with the translucent green design.  There's one other translucent design for the Saturn and that's the "This is Cool" console.  That one is a translucent gray.  I love these see through designs on consoles and hand helds.  I got this one off Ebay a couple years ago.  It's in pristine condition with the box, manual and stickers.  I don't remember exactly but I think I sold off my Neo Geo AES to get this.

Vinyl Pickup: U2 - Achtung Baby (1991)

Today I picked up my favorite U2 album.  Achtung Baby came out in 1992 back when I was in high school.  I remember first time playing it on a cassette in my Sony Walkman.  It was the first pre-recorded cassette tape I got that didn't use normal bias tapes.  It was recorded on metal bias tape.  When I first listened to it, the opening track Zoo Station had some weird synthentic drum beats to it.  I thought there was something wrong with the tape and come to realize its normal.  It was a sound that I've never heard before from U2 up to that point.   I had to sell off a bunch of vintage computer magazine to get this original pressing copy of the vinyl.  So many good songs on this album and by far my favorite U2 album and the most different.

Record Store Day 2021 pickup.

 

  

The only thing I wanted from this Record Store Day.  I was actually surprised that there wasn't a line going into the record store.  Printed on 180gram vinyl with the stick figure etching on one side and 4 tracks on the other side.

1. Alive (Promo Single Version)
2. Wash (Original Version
3. I've Got A Feeling
4. Dirty Frank (Original Version)

Encrypt and Decrypt your password in your Powershell script.

Powershell is not a precompiled type of language.  So therefore, anyone can read the contents of the script.  What if you need to use a password to have the script access certain resources?  You can always encrypt your password as a secured string and then decrypt it at runtime.  First you will need to encrypt your password using the code below.

$password = Read-Host -Prompt 'Enter your password to encrypt' -AsSecureString

Then, you will need to dump the output of the secure string into an xml file where you powershell script will call at runtime and decrypt.

$password | Export-Clixml -Path 'C:\securepassword.xml'

You can see that the contents of the file it create, securepassword.xml, has your password in encrypted format.

Next, have you powershell call that file and decrypt it.

$password = Import-CliXml -Path 'c:\securepassword.xml'

$plain_password = [Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto([Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password))

write-host $plain_password

One caveat is that you must run the Import-CliXml command as the same user you use to encrypt the password.

Hippos from the past.

One of my favorite and most memorable toy I played while I was growing up was Hungry Hungry Hippo.  It's a simple game to play in which the objective is to chomp as much marbles as you can by pressing down on a lever which extends the hippo head and opens its mouth.  Upon releasing the lever, the hippo closes its mouth and its head retracts back to its original position taking in any marble in its mouth.  There are many iterations of this toy and this version I got was made in 2012.  It's not as well made as the one I played as a kid back in the 80's.  The marbles are now made of hard plastic instead of the heavier glass marbles in the previous versions.  The overall construction of the toy is less sturdy as earlier models which is disappointing.  Nevertheless, its a great game to play with kids with its simple objective.