GhettoKeys

Here's another GBM Forum inspired App. this one is a little more specific.

GhettoKeys will allows someone to be able to send UP,DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, F1, PGUP and PGDOWN to any app that's open.

Download: GhettoKeys


here are some basic instructions:

Roll Up App

*Update: Jimc from GBM have made an awesome Rollup Alternative that allows you to roll up windows like real world blinds. This new version of rollup has a method where I attempt to include this ability. I'll make it an optional one in the final. I haven't added the window shake roll up yet... but i will try. {= D

Alright here's another GBM Forum inspired App: *Updated*(see below).
Warner Crocker was nice enough to make a demo about the app in it's original code (using the F2 Key). You can check the video out here.
The App was also mentioned in one of the weekly Gottabemobile.com podcasts: here.

Rollup will "roll up" a windows application so that all you will see is the title bar. There's no animation yet, though i plan on adding if enough people are interested (so let me know).

There's no installation needed. All you do is run the application, then select which application you want to roll up and press F2 to roll it up. If you press F2 again it will roll the application back to it's original position.

The original position data is stored in an INI that will be created the first time you run Rollup.exe. The INI file will be created wherever the Rollup.exe file is located.

To quit out of the application, you can either right click on its icon in the system tray and click EXIT or you can press the "END" key (at which point the icon should go away).

Please let me know if you have any Questions/Requests.

Written in AutoIt Script V 3.2.4.9
Source available upon request.

---------------------------Updates----------------------------
0.9.4 New Features: Rollup_0.9.4.exe
*** Fixed: Button stays on when last/only window is Minimized
*** Fixed: Button stays on when last/only window is Closed.
*** Added: Autoroll Feature (props to Jimc for the idea)
*** Added: Rollup Animation (props to Jimc for the idea)
To Be Added:
Roll Down animation

0.9.3d New Features: Rollup_0.9.3d.exe
*** Fixed: Button gets drawn when user clicks on desktop background.
*** Pressing End Key actually will exit the App.
*** Fixed: App goes ape s@%$ when clicking on the start menu.
---> Vista Start menu needs to be double clicked slowly for it to work.
*** Added: Logic to detect whether user is running a Theme (Classic or Otherwise).
---> This *should* fix the problem of the button overlapping on the minimize button.
*** Added: Quicker Response to events (better event handling)

To Be Fixed:

--- Button stays on when last/only window is minimized of closed

0.9.2 New Features: Rollup_0.9.2.exe

*** Fixed: Crazy button redraw because of bad loop logic.

*** Fixed: Redraw of button when moving window.

*** Fixed: Redraw of Button when resizing window.

To Be Fixed:

--- Button stays on when last/only window is minimized of closed

--- Button gets drawn when user clicks on desktop background

--- App goes ape s@%$ when clicking on the start menu.

0.9 New Features: Rollup_0.9.exe
*** Added Automatic Button to current active window for Tablet PC compatibility.
This creates an annoying behavior of cancelling most submenus, workaround is to click on the icon and pause the app.

0.8 New Features: Rollup_0.8.exe
*** Added a Rollup Button Next to the Min, Max, Close controls.

--- > This feature needs more testing, behavior can be unstable

0.7 New Features: Rollup_0.7.exe

*** Used two Arrays so that Rollup will not write an INI anymore

*** Change the F2 command to just a single mouse click.

Original Version (0.1): Rollup_0.1.exe

---------------------------------------------------------------

Powered by ScribeFire.

Ghetto OQO Stand

I was watching Rob Bushway's video on how to attach(permanently) a stand for the OQO.  It's a great video and an even better solution, but I was in need of a non attached stand.  I was  sitting my cubicle looking for inspiration when I realized that i did in fact have a solution PCMCIA/Cardbus device jewel case. 

We had a few laying around, so I made a few modifications and was able to get my little modded jewel case to support the OQO.  Here it is in all its glory

 

So in the spirit of sharing i will demonstrate the modification necessary to get the jewel case to function as a stand.

step .00:   Get a jewel case

 

you can either get a jewel case online buy ordering them in bulk, or you can buy a cheap PCMCIA/Cardbus and hope the it comes with it.  We got them at work with PCMCIA/Cardbus Smartcard readers.

Step .01 : Remove the plastic stopper bits.

So I used  needle-nose pliers to get the job done.  They obviously get the job done but having something that could file the bits flush would help.  you want to pinch the plastic bits and they should come off.  if you get some resistance just pivot (while still pinching) until the bit comes off.  File down to desired height.  As you can see I used the grooves of the pliers' as my filing tool. 

Step .02 : Externding the support edge

Some may see this step as unnecessary but I felt like this jewel case's edge was much too shallow (especially for an expensive device).    Again with the needle-nose pliers

Step .03 : behold the glory of the Ghetto OQO Stand

Aside from the annoying noise from the jewel it's a pretty sweet quick stand if you ever need one.  you also plug the power into while it's on the stand

Windows Registration Information

So Eddie Van Der Beck over at GBM wrote an article detailing how to change the registered name organization in Vista (although it works in XP as well).

I decided to automate that process and wrap a GUI to this function.

Try it out here:

RegisterOwner.exe

Written in AutoIT Script v3.2.4.9

Please let me know what you think, either on this post or on the GBM Thread

Thanks!

SD Card Reader Toggle

Here's a utility I wrote for GBM users wishing to toggle their SD Card Readers on and off. Specifically form this forum thread.

The app will basically install the devcon utility (which is what is actually enabling and disabling the device) into the c:\temp folder.   The app is a simple toggle, if the SDHost Device is enabled, it will disable it.  If it is disabled, it will enable it.

(note: it usually takes longer to enable than to disable)

This was Written in Autoit V 3.2.2.0

Click Here to Download

I'm open to suggestions so feel free to comment.

PlayList Maker (M3U)

Here's a little DOS Batch file that will output the contents of a folder (and subfolders) to a M3U Playlist.
I put mp3 ogg and mp4 as the defaults, but you can add some more (or take some out).

Create a batchfile (playlist.bat) and add these lines:

@for /f "delims=." %%A in (%0) do set playlist=%%A
@dir *.* /a-d /b/s |findstr "mp3 ogg mp4" > "%playlist%.m3u"

You'll notice that the output is a file of the same name as your bat file without the bat extension (playlist.m3u).

Remember, it recurses folders so you'll get alot of output if you put it on a root folder of your massive mp3 collection. To change it to non recursive (no subfolders) just take out the /s from the second line.

A LinuxBIOS!

So - think you can install Linux on your toaster? how about your [insert devicename here].

Oh yeah?! well how about lower level? How about the Bios? Why in the world would linux run in the Bios? Well check out these links:

Welcome to LinuxBIOS

First desktop motherboard supported by LinuxBIOS: GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4

A small piece of mind and network security. IPCop Install Review

I have been using IPCop for some time. However not to its fullest extent. I have recently upgraded my ISP and am of a mind to try more things and branch out. To me, the obvious first step to that is expanding the capabilities of my firewall and router. I had decided that I had grown beyond the capabilitis of DD-WRT and so I needed something with a little (only a little) more "oomph"

My kit includes an old box I had laying around ($100 off craigslist a year ago):

512 RAM

P3

20Gig Drive

3 10/100 Ethernet cards

CD-ROM

And a freshly burnt .iso of IPCop 1.4.13...

First a background:

IPCop is a derivitave of Smoothwall, another great firewall product. Indeed, I used smoothwall for a time before switching to IPCop, no real reason other than I was interested in setting up a VPN and there was a VPN server module available for IPCop.

Read more about IPCop:

IPCop Homepage

HowToForge.com: Perfect Linux Firewall

-----

One of the things I like about IPCop is that it is very adaptable to different situations. Not just the fact that it is linux, but that it can accept add-on modules. I plan on installing CopFilter (one of those add-on modules I mentioned). And have in the past used the OpenVPN module with secure an stable success.

So I pop in the freshly burnt IPCop install cd (I love the smell of CD Burning in the morning) and it warns me that my disk will be wiped, which is fine, i expected as much, and then proceeds to lead me through my configuration options.

I took the RED+GREEN+ORANGE option because I have plans for my growing home network that include the need for a DMZ separation from my local machines. It was quite simple and very intuitive. It wasn't a "graphical" install but used text based graphics and I used the TAB key a lot - which has never bothered me. Setup was quite painless and when I rebooted I remembered the handy feature of causing the PC Speaker to sing a little song to let me know it was up and running. At first I wondered why - then I realized there were probably a lot of "headless" installs out there. Little things like that impress me, what can I say?

Overall I'd say IPCop was pretty easy to get up and running. It works well out of the box and offers loads of other features that I had found useful. One of which is that it has an option to turn itself into a DNS server for name resolution. So when I am setting up client machines I dont need to know the nameserver addresses of my ISP - i just hit my IPCops ip for name resolution. I like simple.

It also can act as a time server to keep the client boxes on-time.

Another few handy features I'm sure some will apprecaite is the proxy and dyndns. Of course these days routers need to update hostnames, and IPCop is no exception, comes built in with a DynDns updater. It also comes with a proxy page that I have not played with. From the look of it one can get an account on any proxy server and the IPCop will log into it with your supplied info and route all traffic through your proxy.

One of the more valuable aspects is the ability to do intrusion detection. IPCop comes with Snort. It has a section devoted to its logs and the ability to update Snort's intrusion detection rules very simply. It is based on an "Oink code" you can get from the Snort website. Step one in network security is discovering attacks. Snort is a very valuable tool for this.

----

My next step will be to install virtual servers on the DMZ and see how they run with the green network. I am considering Xen with VMWare as a plan "B". More updates to follow...

Triple Boot Blues

I goofed and zaped my Vista Partition last night.

i had the four partitions in the following order[GBs]:
OSX[50], UBUNTU[11] ,VISTA[29], SWAP[01], FreeSpace[05].
I wanted to change the order such that
VISTA[50], OSX[30],UBUNTU[15], SWAP[01].

I ended up zapping Vista. Surprisingly, some of the partition utils were able to recover something, but it was a previous partition that i had PRIOR to tri-booting. I know, odd.

So then I reinstall Vista and Office 2k7. Everything is great, 'cept for the whole MBR/Boot Loader replacement. Then I Install OSX 10.4.8 and i had totally forgotten the work around to getting OSX to install on a PC. Luckily it came back to me when i was calmer. I apply the workaround, which comprises of setting up a partition in fat32 in a partition util and then having OSX "Erase" it. It will then show up as space that you can install ISX on. I do that and i notice that I clicked on the 11GB partition (my Ubuntu install) instead of the resized 28GB partition. Grrrr, well any OSX is done, but now a new MBR/Bootloader takes over. So now i have to reinstall ALL of ubuntu(not just GRUB). I just finished, tested Vista and got this "winload missing" error. Turns out that either OSX or Ubuntu's Boot Loader reassigns the label for the artitions, so Vista was not able to find itself (lol). Quick fix, boot to Vista, go to repair and let it find the error.

Everything's good to go.

Phew!

Mo'Scroll

Since we're in the application posting mood today, I'd figure I'd post some of my other utils/apps here to see if they could benefit anyone. For this post, I am submitting for your review/comments my scrolling app. Originally created for my buddy Kamalot, because of the lack of scroll wheel his Mogo Mouse had. I was in a tabletpcreview forum thread that mentioned this lack of scroll wheel functionality and decided to create a scrolling app.

Title: Mo'Scroll
Description: Adds scrolling functionality to any pointing device.
Instructions:
-Download and run the latest build of the app.
-The MoScroll Icon will appear in the system tray.
-Hold down the right mouse button for x amount of time (by default it's 1 second, but can be adjusted) to get into scroll mode. once in scroll mode, mouse the pointing device up or down to scroll accordingly.

Credits:
Code - Blademonkey.
Icons - Kamalot.
Testing - Greg, Daryl, Sean Tan, Digital Ruse.

Thanks Everyone!

Version: 0.6 Download

Version: 0.7 Download 03/19/2008
New:
-Mouse will be locked vertically in Scroll Mode.

Version: 0.7a Download 03/20/2008
New:
-Hold right mouse button for 3 secs to get into scroll mode.

Version: 0.7b Download 03/26/2008
New:
-Added a timer option (default is 1 second)
-Changed the counter to be a count down.

Version: 0.7c Download 04/08/2008
New:
-Added an option to change how to get to scroll mode in options.

Version: 0.8 Download 04/23/2008
New:
-Changed Lock Scroll Mode counter to progress meter.
-Fixed the Hold Scroll Mode to lock vertical mouse movement.
-Added a method to switch trigger buttons (download INI).
-Fixed system tray icons to change when in scroll mode.

Version: 0.8.0.3 Download 05/12/2008
New:

-Changed Scrolling method (faster and smoother in browsers)
-Changed meter size
-Added Option to Hide "scroll on" text.

Leave feedback in the comments.
Thanks

InkOnTop

I wrote this app to try to address some of the issues of the Ink Desktop people are complaining about on this gottabemobile post:

Ink Desktop for Vista now available

You can download it here:

InkOnTop.exe
Written in AutoIT Script v3.2.2.0

Description:

If Ink Desktop is running, inkontop will set it as always on top and activate it.  This makes the Ink Desktop minimize all other windows (and is unfortunately necessary for the alwaysontop setting to stick).
If Ink Desktop is not running, inkontop will run it based on the information of the shortcut in the start menu.

If you have any questions, please post them as comment on this post.

Tri Boot Havoc

Let me just say that i'm liking the term I came up with of "Taggers" (Tablet Bloggers) from the other post, especially since there's a similarity between a tagger's graffiti and a tablet Pc user's ink. 

So anyways, I decided to kill of my XP partition in the hopes of getting OSX 10.4.7 installed instead.  I wanted to see how OSX would fair on my mighty Thinkpad X60 Tablet.  It turned out to be a bittersweet journey which

Much to my surprise, i had to do little in the way of hacking to get this OS to work.  A little bit of partition hacking was necessary for OSX 10.4.2 where I had to delete an existing partition and format it as a FAT32 for the OSX install program to recognize it as a partition.  Then I would be able to tell the OSX installer to delete the partition, and the remaining space could be used for OSX.  That's odd because if the space was available before OS, or if it was not specifically deleted by OSX it would not be recognized by OSX.  I guess only Apple knows how to correctly delete a partition, and they are not letting any of the other partition(er)s in on the secret {= ).

So back to the install, 10.4.7 did not have any such requirements, it detected it all in one felt swoop, which was nice.  I was, however, obligated to select the pentium SSE2 and SSE3 install options myself.  I was a little dissapointed that the installer hadn't figured out what I had.  I also chose something called JaS which seems to be something new to the OSX release, when i find out what it is I will report back.

So the install goes beautifully, almost too beautifully.  Usually a "beautiful" process is either under reporting errors or ignorant of them.  It turns out that the HFS+ partition is not your standard partition typeb that Grub (the boot loader I am using) can recognize.  As a result the only message i get is "grub Error 17" roughly translated "Cannot Mount specific partition".  And thus starts my trek into understanding Master Boot Records and Boot Loaders.  In my decade of experience, that is one of the most obscure inner workings of a computer that even the most seasoned techie will not be able to fully break down.  Mainly because it's a little disjointed, but i digress.

The grub boot loader wasn't so tough to fix, especially since i was able to do some googling from another  PC.  The reason of why grub wasn't working was a little more obscure.  In installing OSX, the order (or numbering) of my partitions seemed to have changed.  The original partition (Winxp) was partition 1, sda 1 or hd (0,1), it now became partition 0, sda 0, or hd(0,0).  This caused all of the other partition numbering to decriment by 1.  The fix was to boot to the live CD and open up the /etc/grub/menu.lst and change the old numbers to the new ones.  That seemed to have worked for OSX and Ubuntu, but not for Vista. 

Vista had it's own way of booting which seemed to have taken that new numbering scheme into consideration.  The problem is that Vista no longer uses a Boot INI and so it's not as easy to recover.  I also seems that the only way to correct this issue is to use MS specific tools from the recovery console (as opposed to being able to open the boot ini from a linux live cd).  So off the bat, not only am I not able to edit the boot sequence using a regular text editor, i can only do it from a vista tool off of the Vista install/recovery CD.  Lame, but anyways, I figured out that the old boot ini system was replaced with something called Boot Control Data (or BCD for short) and that there were a few bcd tools on the Cd i could use.  Namely BCDEdit, Bootrec, and BootSect.  The BCD data rested in a c:\Boot folder in a file called BCD (no extension).

BCDEdit will let you see what's inside the BCD file, I recommend backing up the BCD file as it may be the only thing keeping you sane.  you can create an entirely new BCD file with BCD edit, which i did.  Then BootRec will allow you to rebuild a BCD to point to an OS if it is detected, which didnt really work for me.  Finally the BootSect function allows you to reset all boot options to what they were after Vista was originally installed. 

After staying up 8 hours, the magic bullet turned out to be:
bootsect.exe -NT60 SYS c: /force
Grub, OSX, Ubuntu, and Vista were all back to functional condition, with enough spare time for me to get ready and head off to work, albeit with absolutely no sleep.

How to make your own Web Proxy: Parts I and II

Today, we are going to learn how to make our own web proxy server on a Windows PC.

Unfortunately (yes, the bad news comes first and early), you'll need a few things to get it going, but I figured that if you're reading this blog, you already have most of the stuff.

Part One: Requirements

This whole project is a Windows-based proxy solution. It will allow you to theoretically connect from with a locked down work environment to a Homemade Proxy server. I realize that there may be better ways to do this using Linux, but this howto is focus for those shackled to the floors of MS.

You can consider this whole project's functionally split between four pieces of software:
-Privoxy: Open source Software Proxy Server for Windows.
-OpenSSH for windows: Open Source SSH Server.
-Putty/PortaPutty: Freeware (close Source) SSH Client.
-Portablefirefox: Portable version of the famous Firefox Browser

Hardware Requirements:
-USB Thumbdrive 128MB+
-A PC/Server outside of your work/target area
-Configurable Out-Facing Home Router (/w port forwarding)
-A Working Internet connection

Software Requirements:
-OpenSSH --> Home PC/Server
-Privoxy --> Home PC/Server
-PortaPutty --> USB Thumbdrive
-PortableFirefox --> USB thumbdrive

User Requirements:
-Knowledge of your Proxy Server's internal/external IP.
-Administrative privileges on the proxy machine.

Part Two: Installation and Configuration

Installation

1 - First thing's first, install OpenSSH on your PC at home.

2 - Second, Install Privoxy on your PC/Server.

3 - Lastly, we want to "install" PortaPutty and Portable Firefox on that Thumbdrive of yours.

Technically we can use any SSH client and Browser that we want, and of course they don't have to be "portable". I chose the portable version of the application because we can save these settings on the thumbdrive and take it with us, but technically you are not forced to use these programs.

Initial Configuration

Configuring Putty is a little bit of a doozy. What we're going to do is employ a technique commonly referred to as tunneling. That is we will take a type connection and forward it through a secure connection, namely SSH. The end result being an infrastructure that reroutes regularly blocked traffic to a non-blocked, secured connection as if to tunnel. This essentially gives you the security of SSH at the minimal cost of having a couple of extra steps in your everyday use.

- OpenSSH: Go to OpenSSH's site and download the latest version. Follow the instructions very carefully and make sure you can SSH into your server from another machine on the same network. This will be the most arduous task as this software is quite old and it requires the user to go through a lot of manual steps. Make sure that after you have installed it, the SSHD service is running as the SYSTEM account and make sure that the server is configured to respond on port/socket 443.

Privoxy:
-Configure it to run off of port 8118 (default).
-Configure Privoxy to run as a Service.

Putty:
-Click on Saved Sessions and type in a name
-In the Host Name area enter the IP Address of your PC/Server
-In the Port area, enter 443
-Select SSH as the Protocol
-Select the named profile and click on the save button.
-Go to: Connections--> SSH-->tunnels.
-In Source Port type: 8118
-In Destination type: 127.0.0.1:8118
-Select the options (Local, Auto).
-Go back to the sessions section
-Highlight "inside" and click save.

You have now configured your putty to reroute all of your PCs 8118 traffic to the server you're connecting to on port 8118.

Portable Firefox:
-Go to -->Tools -->Options, click on Connection Settings
-Select Manual Proxy Configuration
-In the HTTP Proxy input box, type: 127.0.0.1
-In the Port input box, type: 8118

You have no configured your portable firefox browser to seek web traffic at your proxy server's location and not it's default.

Testing

Testing the Proxy:
-Open up Putty
-Select the named profile
-Click connect
-Log in
-Open up your Firefox and check the proxy settings.
-See that you can surf on the net.

If so then you have configured your Proxy correctly. To double check this statement, log into the proxy server and stop the privoxy software.

Congratulations, you have successfully configured your own web proxy server! In the next installment, we will elaborate on tunnel ANY kind of internet traffic through SSH (requests for specific apps/setups are welcomed).

Please note that circumventing your company's firewall or using this knowledge in an illegal manner (as determined and described by the owners of the PC you are going to apply this to) is not condoned by codescribes.

Resources:
http://www.hackaday.com/2005/08/31/how-to-ssh-http-proxy-setup/

WindowsLiveWriter (WLW) + Blog Ink Plugin = Awesome

Looks like Tablet PC bloggers (Taggers? Hmm i think i like that), like myself can rejoice at the fact that someone has made the ultimate Tagger's plugin: an Ink Plugin for WLW.

I'm going to give it a whirl, and possibly edit/post most random stuff.

Update: here it is.

 

You will need to setup a drivehq.com account so that you can publish the ink files to it and then link to them from your blog.

Luckily, Ed has thought of that already for us.

Resource Link: Setting up WLW with DriveHQ
Note: be sure to sign up with a non free email, DriveHQ will prevent you from being able to publish folders in that case.

Windows LiveWriter Beta Post

Well, I have to say, off the bat, the LiveWriter feels a lot more Microsoft-y. It's got the whole Vista/Office 2007 theme/feel to it: spacious and legible. I like it so far.

It does look like LiveWriter mimics in it's windows what the post will end up looking like (I did notice that after having connected to my blog it was downloading a few files).

It may not have a built-in youtube video file module, but it does have the ability to import plugins. A quick glance at the plugins page revealed a plugin that would allow me to add a video from youtube as well as other flashbased video providers. A definite benefit (without having to pay for it).

Though, i do like the feature from BlogJet that allows me to retrieve a previous post and edit it, pretty much on the fly. That's a nice feature to have but i'm not sure it's 60 buckaroos nice.

Edit: spoke too soon, I just found that same feature on LiveWriter, it's under File->Open Posts which pretty much rocks...

I'm gonna have to do a comparison chart/table thingy. I wonder if either one of these programs has a tool to do a quick table.

Update: I'm really digging on Windows LiveWriter.

Blogjet 2.0 {= )

Looks like I will be able to take more time into publishing posts on here, since I will be testing out BlogJet 2.0 for the entirety of the trial period (i’m pretty broke right now).

Apparently, one of the better new features is that you can paste/post youtube videos directly into the app as you’re semi-offline-blogging.  The big advantage here, of course, is the time delayed posts that will give more time for the poster to spellcheck research their posted content, and provide youtube video on the side.

There’s one drawback to this seemingly nifty utility, it costs around 60 bucks!  Looks like there’s a free alternative from Microsoft that I could use.  I’ll try that one too and will let you all know how they both fair.

Blademonkey out.

Vista speech recognition post

So here I am. It's about 5:26 AM and I haven't slept for a while.
I just finished installing a bunch of drivers on the computer. I've also been playing around with windows Vista. I've been playing with the specific feature called speech recognition, and it's pretty impressive. As you may have figured out I'm actually using the speech recognition write this post. As a result my grammar may not be 100% accurate and my spelling will be less than stellar.

It's a really quite interesting watching this thing recognize my own voice (most of the time). I find that speech recognition is quite prejudicial of my accent, but still quite far along than it uses to be 5 years ago. unfortunately I cannot post anymore since Eleni has just informed me that I'm keeping her up.

I have to say that Speech recognition on a tablet PC with Vista feels really good, over you get over the whole geek Factor.it feels right, but I'll probably not use it in public.

{= )

Tablet PC + Ubuntu

Well looks like I can "TriBoot" VISTA+XP+Ubuntu successfully, even after that hap hazardous partition encounter. The next step is getting the X60 Tablet to act like a tablet in Ubuntu.

This post will document my excursion into this foray.

From the stock install, I notice the following things that are not functional:

-Touchscreen
-Wacom Digitizer
-Wifi Nic.

Good thing Ubuntu has found the wired NIC or I'd be out of luck

look for updates!

another all nighter

I stayed up all night attempting to set up a triple-boot (yes it's a dual boot +1).

I got a copy of Vista Business from our MSDN at work and am planning on looting, ahem, testing more Vista stuff. It took a while for me to set up Vista on the tablet and it still is not complete. The fingerprint reader is not being detected and the rotate feature does not kick in when I switch from laptop to tablet mode.

The dual boot was simple, and although Ubuntu has me jumping through hoops, I think i may be able to finish it sometime at work today.

note: You can only have 4 primary partitions on a single HD at any time, so that means that unless you have two physical disks, you would not be able to add to this Triple boot (since Ubuntu requires a swap partition).

here's more stuff:
This is a rave on ubuntu working on a tablet
This is a post on how to get the tablet features working, i'll probably have to revisit those.

Update: Note to self, don't convert primary boot partitions into primary extended/Logical partitions.

I almost had a heart attack when, after having found out that i need TWO partitions for ubuntu, i converted a ERD partition into an extended partition. I couldn't get back to partition magic to delete the change yet, i was still able to boot to either Vista or XP.

After some praying to the IT gods, i decided to run an older version of Partition Magic (7.0) which allowed me to delete the rogue change. Phew.

Note to all, and this is a good tip from EchoBinary, when partitioning for the SWAP mount, you can use a logical partition to mount it to. Now, this still means that you will have maxed out the amount of allowed primary partition, but it will give you the option of having multiple logical drives.

Ubuntu is installing now. Woot!