Deploy software via Group Policy’s Scheduled Tasks

There are many ways for a system administrator to deploy software to computers on a domain. This post describes how to create a Group Policy that will deploy a Scheduled Task to your target machines that will run a batch file to perform the installation. You might ask why I would bother with a Scheduled …

GEDCOM Backups

I’m typically pretty good at backing up my computers. One of my most prized piece of data is the GEDCOM file that contains a decade of genealogy research — more than 18,000 linked relatives. I often upload a copy of my genealogy database once a quarter to sites like www.ancestry.com, jasonpearce.tribalpages.com, and www.rootsweb.com about once …

Microsoft Security Essentials Beta no longer available

On Tuesday, 22 Jun 2009, Microsoft released a beta version of its upcoming free anti-virus product, code named Morro. When I checked the site this morning (24 Jun 2009), the download link had been removed and the following Alert was posted: Thank you for your interest in joining the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta. We are …

In Stitches about AutoStitch

This weekend I played with a few free panorama photo stitching programs. In particular, I tested out freeware AutoStitch, freeware GigaPan Stitcher, and open source Hugin (with plugins Panorama Tools, Enblend, and Autopano-SIFT). In short, AutoStitch was the easiest tool to use and produced panorama/stitched photographs equally as well or better than GigaPan or Hugin. …