Comparing nappy disposal systems - a review: Korbell vs Tommee Tippee

Last year I was dragged along to the Baby Show, where I was introduced to the Korbell nappy disposal system, which was supposedly better and more eco-friendly than nappy wrappers. I was given a quick demo and told about the huge Baby Show discount - and was sold on the spot.

Why? Well, we'd been using Tommee Tippee's Hygiene Plus nappy wrapper for well over a year, and though it worked well, I was on the lookout for a system that was less of a hassle to empty, and easier to put nappies in.

Now, putting nappies in a nappy wrapper generally involves pushing the nappy down into the wrapper, and then turning a wheel to wrap it. Emptying it requires cutting the wrapping film and tipping the contents of the bucket into your outside bin. Not much of a hassle really, but then I'm a lazy dad.

We've been using the Korbell system for a good few months now. How does it stack up? Well...

Advantages:

• Very easy to put nappies in - you just drop them in through a flap (which moves out of the way itself under the weight of the nappy) and that's it.
• Very easy to empty - the film cassette produces ready-made waste bags, so when it's full you just pull out the bag, cut it (with the in-built cutter, which is sharp & quick) and tie it, and it's just like a bin bag ready to be thrown out. You no longer need to bring the bucket outside or bring another bag to empty the bucket into.
• Economical. Cassettes last a long time.

Disadvantages:

• It smells. Unlike a nappy wrapper which wraps each individual nappy in film, with the Korbell system it all goes into one bag, with the bin flap the only thing to keep the smell in. You'll notice once you've got a few poo nappies in there, the next time you drop a nappy in, the flap opens for a split-second which is long enough to let a bit of the poo smell out. What's worse is that when it gets closer to full, the flap may stay open after you drop a nappy in, requiring you to push the nappy down past the flap, which may then snag your hand when it shuts (which is pretty annoying when you've a nose full of poo smell thanks to the flap staying open).
• Easier to get mess on. When you've got a particularly dirty nappy, there's a good chance you'll get poo on the flap and have to clean it off. With a nappy wrapper, the design generally ensures that all the poo stays on the wrapping film (which covers the bin's entry point) rather than getting on the bin itself.
• Requires more frequent emptying. Wrappers generally squeeze the nappy a bit, meaning less air goes in and the space inside the nappy bucket is more efficiently used. As there's no wrapping here, more air stays in the bag and you'll find yourself making trips to the outside bin more often. At least it's easier to empty though.

In conclusion, both have their advantages and disadvantages, and you can't have it all. Or can you? We started to put all poo nappies into the Tommee Tippee nappy wrapper, and the wee ones in the Korbell bin. Result - now I empty them less often!

Stupid things spotted on Twitter re. Iran protests

A few stupid things I spotted on Twitter with the #iranelection hashtag:

• Advising protesters to hold a Quran ('Koran') when they go out to protest, saying "it is a sin in Islamic law to beat a person holding a Koran" (or similar - see examples) - implying that protesters with a Quran will be immune from police/militia beatings. Firstly, it's not technically 'against Islamic law'. Secondly - if they want to beat you, they'll simply take the Quran off you, and then beat you. No problem there - criminals (real & imagined) holding the Quran don't get leniency.
  
  
• Advising protesters to mix ammonia & bleach to make a 'poisonous' solution to throw at and harm Basiji militia (examples). If it works, you give the government a good reason to shoot protesters, and legitimate evidence that they're 'hooligans'.
  
  
• Publicly tweeting the addresses of proxy servers 'for Iranians to use'. Great, now the government knows which IP addresses to block (example from the usually tech-savvy Stephen Fry).
  
  
• Links to perform denial-of-service attacks on Iranian government websites (especially pro-government news sources). Iran doesn't have big bandwidth pipes, and the bandwidth soaked up by a DDoS reduces bandwidth for all Iranians - including protesters trying to get their message out (who are already battling government net restrictions!). Though with this one, some sensible Twitterers have also advised against it (examples).
  

More PCs being used where they shouldn't

This sort of thing is now far too common. The above shot (click on it to enlarge) was taken at a railway station, and the display is supposed to show details of the next train. Instead it hung at the BIOS info screen, and I'm guessing the operating system (Windows?) failed to boot up.

Why, apart from laziness, would you plump for a PC to run this display?

Virtumonde - Getting rid of a persistent trojan

In one of my worst Sundays for a long time, I spent most of today trying to prise the persistent trojan 'Virtumonde' a.k.a. 'Vundo' out of my Windows laptop.

The trojan has tens of thousands of variants, and only the more common ones are caught by virus scanners. I was unfortunate to get one of the rarer ones, which managed to elude even Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 (one of the best). Although Kaspersky recognised and blocked attempts to download dodgy files from the net, it didn't recognise the trojan that was behind the attempts. When I discovered the trojan's location using Spybot Search & Destroy, I tried pointing Kaspersky straight at the dodgy file, and it still passed it clean. And yes, this was with today's virus definition updates.

That said, if Kaspersky wasn't pro-active in scanning the contents of internet traffic, I wouldn't have even realised I had the trojan, and probably would have continued thinking the slowness was just because my laptop was old. Other scanners would have missed this completely.

To make my Sunday as bad as possible, the trojan had hooked itself deep into Windows. In addition to the usual load-at-startup stuff, it had made itself a Windows service (which didn't appear in the Services list) and become memory-resident. When I deleted the hooks it had placed in the Windows Registry, identified by the tools Spybot and HijackThis, they would appear back within seconds.

The files I deleted kept re-appearing with new (randomly generated) names. I ran the Spybot and HijackThis tools a few times to try and weed it out, but it persisted. It was no use making Spybot start before the rest of Windows, because the trojan would load even before that. Therefore I couldn't delete it's main DLL file (also randomly named) because it was always in use, even when I booted in safe mode.

I tried using KillBox, which can move/delete in-use files, but the DLL file stubbornly stayed put. KillBox queued the file for deletion at Windows boot-up, but this instruction was immediately removed by the trojan process! In desperation I downloaded OTMoveIt3 by OldTimer, which also attempts to move in-use files, but without the nice interface (see image below with example syntax). Somehow it managed what Killbox couldn't, and move the file to safe location where I could delete it.


The trojan was still resident in memory though, and was still replacing it's registry hooks soon after I deleted them - but this time the hooks were pointing to the now non-existent DLL file. A restart took the trojan out of the memory, which enabled me to delete it's hooks in the Registry once and for all - a good half-day after identifying the problem.

At least it didn't attempt to spread to other PCs or delete files - which is some consolation, as re-installing everything would have taken days.

It's experiences like these that make me think of switching to a *nix platform, like Linux or Mac OS X.

Mac users have been relatively lucky - vulnerabilities clearly exist but it's nowhere near the same numbers or nastiness as it is with Windows. That said, there's a lot of unprotected Macs out there, and malware writers will look to target this population as Mac usage increases.

Most Mac users seem to only use a single user account - the one they created when they first switched on their Mac. The problem with this user account is that it's an administrator account - which makes things much easier for malware writers, as it enables them to do more damage without user intervention. If this applies to you, create a standard user profile and switch to it. As with all *nix platforms, an administrator account should only be used when strictly necessary (such as when installing new programmes, or fiddling with hardware or with system settings).

Unnecessary use of technology?

I took this photo in a lift today. The display should have been showing the current floor and a welcome message - but instead we were treated to the above (you can click on the image for a bigger, readable version).

If you really had to use a proper computer operating system to run a lift info display, surely a compact Linux distribution would be more appropriate for the job?

Running Microsoft Windows in a window in Mac OS X... in order to use a Windows-only printer

Soon after setting the Mac Mini up, I found out that my friend also had a Windows-only application he needed to use for his work, as well as a laser printer that only worked in Windows (it was a Canon with a proprietary printing system, no PostScript/PCL or anything like that, and drivers for Windows only). Argh.

You could simply buy a new printer (you're in the Apple world now, money is no object). But why replace a perfectly good printer? The printer was also a multi-function device - and good ones, incorporating laser printers, aren't so cheap.

Apple does publicise the fact that you can install Windows alongside Mac OS X using Boot Camp, but this involves re-booting your PC to run Windows. This will get tiresome if all you need Windows for is a single application and a printer.

Thankfully, there is a solution - which is geeky but straightforward - that lets you run both Mac OS X and Windows at the same time and, with a bit more work, enables you to hit 'print' in any Mac application and print seamlessly.

You can achieve this in 3 big, but not too big, steps:

1) Use VirtualBox to create a virtual PC, and install Windows in it

VirtualBox is a top-notch virtualisation product which is free to download. You can read the background on virtual machines and virtualisation on Wikipedia, so I'll jump straight to what you can use VirtualBox to do. With VirtualBox installed, you can run Windows in a window in Mac OS X! The only condition is that your Mac needs to be a reasonably recent one with an Intel processor. You can download it at the VirtualBox website.

VirtualBox comes with a very good user manual, so I won't go into too much detail here, but I'll outline the steps:

• You'll obviously a Windows CD, and if you're a PC user you should be able to free up a Windows licence to use.
• Fire up VirtualBox, and create a virtual box for the version of Windows you're going to install.
• RAM - Based on my experience with Windows XP, 256MB is enough, and if it's solely for printing, then you can probably use less (e.g. 192MB) without issues.
• CD drive - Make sure you initially give the virtual box control over the CD drive, so you can run the Windows install CD from it. After the installation's done, you can easily change the virtual box set-up so the CD drive isn't handed to the virtual box by default.
  
• Network - Set your networking option to 'host interface', so that the virtual box appears just like another computer on your home network. Also set the network adapter to the Intel Server one, as this is immediately recognised by Windows without the need to install drivers.
• USB - Set up a USB device filter, so that the virtual box is given control of the attached printer. If your printer doesn't have a USB port, parallel-to-USB adapters are available cheaply from eBay.
  
• Finish the set-up, and start the Windows virtual box with the Windows CD in the drive. VirtualBox will 'mount' your CD drive, so the CD icon will disappear from your Windows desktop. VirtualBox will display messages about what your 'keyboard/mouse capture' keys are - make a note of this, as initially you'll need to hit a key to 'release' your keyboard/mouse from the virtual box.
• Wait for the virtual PC to boot from the Windows disc. Follow the instructions to install Windows just like you were installing Windows on a normal PC. While Windows is installing, you can just minimise the VirtualBox window and do whatever you want on the Mac itself while it installs. Cool eh?
  
• Once the Windows installation is complete, use the VirtualBox Devices menu (in the Mac's menu bar, not in the virtual PC window) to unmount the Windows installation CD, so it appears on your Mac desktop again. You can now eject the CD in the normal way.
• From the same VirtualBox menu, click the option to install the 'guest additions'. Now you don't need to worry about 'releasing' your keyboard/mouse anymore. You can go to Display Properties to change your screen resolution (and therefore the size of the VirtualBox window).
  

2) Set up the printer in Windows

Having followed the above steps - specifically the USB filter one - the virtual PC would now be connected to your printer. Without drivers installed, it will most likely appear as an unknown device within the Device Manager (under Control Panel > System).

Head to the manufacturer's website, download the Windows drivers in the usual way and install them, and print a test page from within Windows.

3) Set up PostScript emulation in Windows, and share the PostScript driver with your Mac

If all's well, you can start setting up the bridge to Mac OS X, beautifully documented by Robert Harder - click through for his step-by-step instructions.

Please note that step 5 is slightly different in the latest version of Mac OS X - you should go to 'System Preferences' in your Mac, then 'Print & Fax', and then add the IP printer from there. If you're willing to experiment, you may be able to skip a few steps by looking at the advice given in the users' e-mails posted on that page.

Once you've followed those instructions, it's done! You can now hit print in any Mac application and it will print seamlessly.

A few notes...

• If you minimise VirtualBox, the only hint of the complex solution will be it's icon in the tray at the bottom. The downside is that VirtualBox needs to be always running in order for you to print (though that's no big deal if it's minimised), and more importantly whatever RAM you've allocated to Windows will be lost to Mac OS X while VirtualBox is on. That said, this is unlikely to cause you a problem - on a Mac with 1GB RAM, I gave 256MB to the Windows virtual box without noticing a performance hit to applications running on the Mac.
  
• There's no need to go to all this trouble if your printer has Mac drivers, or if that Windows application you need has a Mac alternative. Use Google and manufacturers' websites to exhaust all Mac options first.
  
• Obviously the Windows virtual box will be susceptible to viruses/malware etc. just like an average Windows PC, but as long as you use it only as a printing pass-through, you don't need to worry about this. But how do you prevent kids from opening up the virtual box and messing about with Windows? You may want to consider installing SteadyState (free from Microsoft) to lock down Windows and prevent anything you don't want from being installed.
• When connecting your Mac to the printer on Windows, if you specified an IP address rather than the computer's name, you will probably want to ensure this IP address is static. Most routers will have an option to assign static LAN IP addresses to computers on the network, identified by their MAC addresses. Fortunately, your virtual box will have it's own unique MAC address (viewable from the VirtualBox set-up), enabling you to do this.
  

First impressions of a Mac Mini.. and getting a British PC keyboard working properly on it

I recently helped set up a friend's new Mac Mini, which doesn't come with a keyboard, mouse or display - instead you use your old PC keyboard, mouse (as long as they have USB connectors) and display with it. It's a good choice for those who might want a Mac, but are put off by the high price (especially considering the fact that nowadays a Mac is just a PC with the Mac OS X operating system). It also very small and comes with a remote control, so it's also great as a media computer connected to a HDTV.

I plugged everything in; set-up was very quick and it was ready to go in minutes. But then I hit my first problem.

I had plugged in a standard British PC keyboard, the sort that you get with any Windows PC sold in the UK. Despite recognising the keyboard, and having it set-up to use a British layout, it still gave me quote marks when I wanted the @ sign (and vice versa), and the \ key was in a different place. The problem was that it thought I was using the British keyboard supplied by Apple - the standard UK Windows PC keyboard isn't supported out-of-the-box.

Thanks to a helpful Mac user at work, I was pointed to Phil Gyford's excellent post on the subject - check out the simple 4-step instructions under the "Moving punctuation keys" section. If you've got a new Mac Mini with the latest version of Mac OS X, in step 1 you'll want to download Andy Pearce's keyboard layout file instead. In step 2, the new layout will then appear as "windows-uk" at the end instead of "British - Windows - 2".