1. After a bit of research I found out that there is ophcrack. I downloaded the live CD as an ISO image and set VMWare to load that CD.

2. When VMWare starts and before windows starts booting I clicked on the VMWare screen and pressed ESC. This gives me the menu to select the device I want to use to boot.

3. I chose to boot from the CD.

4. The ophcrack live CD starts loading, but when it finishes I get a:  “No partition containing hashes found” error.

5. The problem seems to be that the Windows installation is on a SCSI virtual disk that is not recognised by this distribution of linux. Tried “fdisk -l” on a terminal from within the ophcrack live CD and it didn’t return any results.  To be able to crack the password I need to have access to the “WIndows/System32/config/ folder of my virtual hard disk. So…

6.  I created a second virtual hard disk in the same VMWare virtual machine. I downloaded an ISO image of Ubuntu

7. Installed Ubuntu on the newly created hard disk.

8. Boot using Ubuntu. Ubuntu was able to access the virtual hard disk of the windows installation. I copied the folder “WIndows/System32/config/” on my local Windows 7 installation.

9. Downloaded ophcrack for Windows and installed it on my Windows 7. Also downloaded the XP Free Small Table.

10. Launched ophcrack and clicked on “Tables”->Install and selected the folder where I had downloaded the XP Free Small Table file (if it is a zip file you need to unzip it).

11. Select Load->Encypted SAM and select the “config” folder I had copied from the VMWare installation (through Ubuntu).

12. Got my password in 45 seconds!!

I just came back from work and I decided to use a novel approach based on strict scientific/engineering reasoning. I let it fall down again. I picked it up and it didn’t recognise the Sim card. Ooops… I switched it off, removed and re-inserted the Sim card and turned it on. It’s back to normal! The home button works, the speakers are loud and clear and it charging at this very moment!

The first image shows the view from our house. The second and third images show two lightnings. The third image is quite interesting, because the closest building on that image is around 20 meters away from where I was standing; and the lightning trajectory appears all the way to the bottom of the picture. It’s been ages since I last studied physics, so even if I knew how to explain how this happened, I have now forgotten! My thoughts so far:

• either the lightning struck less than 20 meters away from where I was. It doesn’t seem likely, because I assume I would have felt it striking so close. Moreover the clouds where the lightning started its trip [sic] appear to be far away close to the mountains.
• or the camera was able to capture the trajectory of the lightning behind the trees and buildings!
• or…

Image1

Image2

Image3

…?

The noise level of the CPU Fan of my Sony Vaio VGN-SZ71E laptop was driving me crazy for the past few days. When the laptop was on, you could hear the fan operating even in the room next door. The fan was also producing vibrations, which I could feel when I had my arms on the keyboard palmrest! It’s needless to say you can’t work properly (i.e. concentrate on your work) under these circumstances.

I tried removing the chassis to see if I can replace the fan, but in order to have access to the CPU fan on this laptop model you need to disassemble pretty much everything! Luckily there is a workaround.

I had installed the Sony VAIO Power Management utilities, which allow me to manage the CPU Fan speed (Control Panel -> Power Options->VAIO Power Managent -> CPU Fan Control ). I set it to level  “1-quiet” and I have to say it is much better now.  Probably this has some impact on the performance, but this comes second to the peace of mind when working

It currently works by checking the whole history of the repository, finding how many lines have been added/removed in each file by using the “svn diff” command and creating an HTML report.
A sample of the report can be found here: http://www.freewebs.com/subvstats/samplereport.html

The program should work for relatively small repositories. As soon as I have time I will document it more and generate more statistics. And yes, I am thinking of making it opensource, but not in its current state. I first need to find some time to document the code properly and have a stable version.

Keywords: Subversion, statistics, package, tool, program, software, java, subvstats.

I booked the tickets and I am leaving on Thursday! I will probably stay in Athens for a couple of days and then go back home. I’’ll be coming back on the 21st, hopefully with recharged batteries.

I had a very nice surprise party by Philipp and Arjun yesterday. Unfortunately I didn’t have any my camera at home in order to take a picture of the great cake! Well, we spent the whole day doing nothing…we should do it more often!

Even though I am on holidays, I also organise the data in my hard disk, in order to install the new one I bought.

P.S. Some pics from Norway as promised:

Overview of Trondheim from a hill close to the hotel.

A bear in the hotel.

The river that passes through the city. Wonderful view.

Apart from that I received today a mysterious email from a company asking for my details regarding a senior developer post in C. I don’t think my profile fits their needs, but I will send my details anyway.

Also my scepticism about the domain registration company is growing bigger. I was informed that someone sent an email to the anastasakis.net address three days ago, but I still haven’t received! Looks like I am moving to another company!

That’s it. I am already late for the gym and the rest are going to kill me!