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Using winget to automate software deployment to a new laptop
 -  I got my first new laptop in six years this week! The new hardware is definitely exciting, but reviews aren’t really my thing, so while I’ll inevitably tweet about how the Microsoft Surface Laptop fares, that’s not the purpose of this post. This i...
Parsing login sessions from the Windows event log with PowerShell
 -  Faced with a day at home recovering from my most recent COVID-19 booster vaccine, I realised I hadn’t written anything more than a few lines of PowerShell in a while and decided to spend some time working on something interesting. The idea occurre...
Using Tkinter to build simple GUIs for Python apps
 -  I’ve written many Python scripts and apps in the past, including my Windows backup utility Backutil, which is probably the my most complex project to date. But I’ve always designed these to run in the background or on the command line, and haven’t...
Backutil development: Implementing multiprocessing in Python
 -  I’m still hard at work on Backutil, my simple Windows backup utility with automatic rotation features, fitting in little tweaks and improvements around my daily schedule. The latest of these - and perhaps the most impactful in terms of performance...
Backutil development: Building and JOINing SQLite databases in Python
 -  This post is something of a development diary for Backutil - my Python-based utility for backing up files from Windows systems. I published the first version of Backutil (v0.51) at the beginning of 2021, and pushed a small update (v0.52) to fix so...
Introducing Backutil: A Python‐based Windows backup utility
 -  Back in the spring, I decided that 2020 would be the year I would finally see a coding project through to completion. A recent work project shone a light on backup and recovery, and I realised that I should probably be a bit more consistent with m...
Network connections and packet crafting on the Linux command line
 -  The problem with taking leave during a pandemic is that there are very few places you can go that don’t present an unnecessary risk. For me at least, the thought of taking a plane abroad wasn’t appealing, and neither were the Tube journeys that wo...
Python tools for Windows forensics: Mozilla Firefox browsing history
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Python tools for Windows forensics: Microsoft Office recent files
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Raspberry Pi Home Hub: Building and sending a daily email briefing
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Coincidentally, in the space of a week I encountered both Zach Seward's article about Quartz and Craig Mod's excellent podcasts with Tim Ferriss. Both evoked fond memories of my time in journalism and the buzz surrounding digital journalism and media in the 2010s

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