Go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\

Add a new key called “cmd” and set it’s default value at”Command Prompt Here”. Then to “cmd” add a new key called “command” and change it’s default value to “cmd.exe /k pushd %L”. Do the same for:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell

In other words add the “cmd” and set it’s default value, then add “command” to that and set it’s default value as above. Or you can download this reg file (CAUTION! Event though I use this myself, editing your registry may be really bad. Like no more using your computer bad. DON’T ADD THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!):

MyCommandPromptHere reg file

In order to remove these entries, you can manually delete these keys, or you can right a reg file that looks like this:

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\cmd]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\cmd]

Neat eh? To remove registry keys, just create a plain text file, paste in the registry entry you want to remove, add a minus sign in front of the key and inside the bracket, and save the plan text file with a “.reg” extension. Run the file and presto, no more entry. Almost scary how easy that is…

I’ve included the above code already in the 7z file with the MyCommandPromptHere.reg as well, and you can find out a little more about modifying registry entries here. Enjoy!!

Project Background

Anyway, the back story for this project is; about 3 years ago, my daughter (around 6 at the time) accidentally spilled a cup of coffee (no she wasn’t drinking it!) onto a brand new Seagate 5GB USB 2.0 Pocket Hard Drive. I had set a cup of coffee down next to the new drive on the coffee table, and needed to go back into the kitchen for something. I specifically warned her to be careful not to bump the coffee or the table because I didn’t want my coffee spilled. Well, that must have triggered some inborn child-instinct that says “be extremely reckless when told to be careful.”

At any rate, the coffee got spilled and I got a chance to get a look at the internals of my new drive while I was drying it out. While doing this, I got to thinking about how small the microdrive was and how it could fit into a lot of different casings. Of course, I was also thinking of how to better protect it from liquid damage and how I had so many – now less useful, smaller capacity – thumb drives laying around.

I thought that if I could get a small enough USB hub that I could fit that inside a piece of PVC or other sealable container and plug the thumb drives into it. With my new drive back together, dry and ready to go, that’s just what I did! After all I had to figure something out to do with all those old thumb drives!

Materials and Build

I got a USB hub and some other pieces and started to work. Of course, all these parts took quite some time to gather. I managed to get a few left over parts from work (sealable caps from network connectors) and ordered a USB-B jack for plugging in a USB-A to USB-B cable into. I could have easily gotten a smaller, mini-USB connector and cable assembly, but my soldering skills are not that hot.

I ordered a 4-port USB hub (to give you some idea of how old this project is, I bought the hub on ThinkGeek and they no longer carry the hub I bought) which had two stacked 2-port USB-A jacks. I also needed some plastic resin to seal the USB jack. I used a 2″ PVC compression coupling as a housing and a couple of 2″ long PVC pipe sections as end pieces.

I removed most of the housing and USB cable from the hub and replaced the USB plug on the cable with the jack I’d gotten. Then I sealed the jack inside the PVC pipe with the plastic resin. Before I did that however, I needed to close the back of the USB jack with a glue stick gun to keep the resin from filling the jack and making it useless. I still ended up getting some inside, but it wasn’t much as I can still insert the USB plug into it.

In order to get all the thumb drives into the tube, I had to strip the housings from them. I used a thin piece of plastic to separate the drives and keep them from performing their own circuit bending operations on any of my data. I had to scrape some tracks into the inside of the compression fitting in order to get the hub’s circuit board in all the way. The other end of the tube was going to hold another USB-A jack, to be used as a kind of feed through USB port, but as it turns out, I didn’t fill the back of that connector correctly and the resin filled the jack. In any event I don’t think the cable connecting the 4th USB port to that jack would have allowed the hub to fit in far enough to fit along with all the drives. So it’s probably better that I just used it for a 4th thumb drive anyway.

The Cable

I also used a piece of conduit as a cable keeper, so that my USB cable doesn’t get tangled with other cables when in transit. I use this trick, albeit with a shorter section of larger diameter conduit, with my laptop cords too. I slit the conduit or take a ¼” strip longitudinally out of the center (depending on rigidity), neatly bundle the cables (folding in half 3 – 4 times), insert into conduit, and viola – instant portable cable minder.

Software

Well all this is well and good, but there’s a problem I didn’t foresee. That would be what a pain in the but this is to unmount all these devices on Windows. With a GNU/Linux system, you simply right a script to unmount the drives all at once (and presumably put that on one of the USB drives), Windows on the other hand, sucks for this kind of functionality. But there is a half-assed solution to the half-assed situation I’ve put myself in. The command:

mountvol X: /d

Where “X” = your thumb drives’ drive letter, works to safely unmount the volume under Windows (thanks and attribution to Joel on Software), but doesn’t solve disconnecting Windows from the device (you still have the little “Safely Remove Hardware” icon on your system tray). So you need the DevCon tool available here. Now you can use the mountvol command and:

devcon remove @usb\*

Conclusion

Hot, no? Actually yes, this set up does get pretty hot after a while. I guess that’s a drawback of having this in a sealed container. Another drawback, I’ll never be able to take this on an airplane… :(

If you’re looking for something to do with all those old USB drives that are getting exponentially smaller with every passing day, then this might be a solution for what to do with your old drives. But I think the next time I do this, I’ll use the left over clear resin and do something a little more slick, like Russell Jones, and encase the whole shebang in a clear plastic block.

• a file archiver – my favorite is 7-zip, but you can just as easily use any archiving program that is compatible with zip files
• a text plain text editor

For more advanced webapps, a more advanced context highlighting text editor can be helpful for coding custom style sheets or adding javascript customizations. And don’t forget icons! I use a combination of Paint.Net and @icon sushi (which covers everything but MacOS, which is because I can’t seem to find software for Linux or Windows to accommodate icons for it – recommendations anyone?).

The No “.webapp” WebApp

There are several ways to open webpages with Prism or WebRunner. The first and easiest is to install Prism, then create a link to it on your desktop. Then change that link adding the option “-uri” and the url of the page you want to open. Here are two examples:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri http://web_url_of_site c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri c:\location\of\local_file

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -uri http://web_url_of_site /your/path/to_prism/prism -uri /location/of/local_file

This method does not require a webapp file, it just launches the website or file you specify. This means, no icons are required, but you also don’t get to add any custom themes or js files. This would be a really good method to use with applications like Wiki on a Stick (woas).

WebApp Bundles

The second method is also pretty straight forward (until you make it complex by adding more functionality). For the most basic webApp bundle you only need to create one file; the webapp.ini. Here’s the content from the example webapp.ini on the Prism wiki:

[Parameters] id=unique-app-id@unique-author-id.whatever uri=http://[the-url-what-you-want-to-connect-to]/ status=yes location=no sidebar=no navigation=no

The “id” parameter is required to be unique. I’ve been using my website’s url (as most others have done as well) preceded by the name of the site, but any unique identifier will work. The “uri” parameter is required and will accept both url of the target website as well as local file paths. Everything after that appears to be optional and the values show are the defaults. These remaining parameters are options to tell Prism whether or not to show certain GUI elements (“status” = status bar;”location” = address bar;”sidebar” = sidebar;”navigation” = well, quite frankly, I have no idea – maybe navigation buttons that haven’t been implemented yet?).

The next step after saving your changes to this document, is to use your archiving program to zip up this file creating, as an example, “your_webapp.zip”. Replace the “zip” extension with “webapp” and you’re ready to roll! Now either double click the webapp file or you can launch the webapp from the command line thusly:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -webapp your_webapp_bundle

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -webapp your_webapp_bundle

For more advanced webapps you can add icons, scripting and style sheet support (see the Prism page for more details).

Happy coding!

Prism
Prism/WebApp Bundle
Prism/Scripting
Prism/Styling
7-Zip
Paint.Net
@icon sushi
Wiki on a Stick

Plenty of GNU/Linux resources from people all over the world on the internet. And that’s where this post comes in! IBM is dedicated to GNU/Linux, and not just by pouring millions into development and patenting! They have this huge database of how-tos, articles, download links and so forth available from their Linux developerWorks website. Like this nice little walk-through on how to use linux scripts to build your own wireless ISP. Now, you’d expect IBM to promote IBM Linux products (do they have those?), well, they don’t. This site’s instructions, recommendations and walk-throughs are all based around software that can be downloaded freely from other sources on the internet (checkout their downloads page if you don’t believe me!).

Links:
IBM developerWorks – Linux
IBM developerWorks – New to Linux
IBM developerWorks – Technical Library (be sure to checkout their LPI certification prep series!)