I started studying IT at university, wrote a neat word visualiser and talked about restoring AOMEI backup data.

So, I've just started IT at uni, and it's a bit less intense than I expected! Lots less intensive programming, which is nice I guess. But I do get bored, so I learnt how to connect a database with PHP and Javascript, and hacked together a cute little web app that showcases words, called Wordly. It dynamically resizes well to different screen sizes too, so it looks fab whether you're on a laptop, tablet or phone, which I'm pretty proud of. I'm becoming a big fan of this flat design, because it's kind of easy to make things look good and well thought out!

Anyway, you should check it out at www.mitchellbusby.com/words because you're cool and like words too.

In other news, I've been using AOMEI Backupper (amazing name) to create whole disk backups of my laptop and desktop. It works pretty well, as you can not only restore whole image backups, but mount the backup as if it was a real disk drive, and copy stuff off it at will. My only problem came was when I wanted to retrieve some user files, which Windows locks up and grants access only to authorised users, i.e. not my refreshed laptop which has a new user profile. Now, ordinarily I would just reclaim ownership of this folders, which would take some time but ultimately would grant me full access to everything, but on a write protected drive image this isn't suitable.

So my next method was to copy over all the folders and files in my user directory to the computer, and then reclaim ownership from there. Unfortunately, this is an extremely slow process, as the drive was being copied from a paltry less-than-one-megabyte-per-second, meaning it would take at least a full twelve hours to copy over all my files. To this, I said no.

My final method came from a random forum post, and involves the use of a tool that wholesale ignores NTFS permissions and gives you raw access to the files. All you have to do is:

1. Install TotalCommander (a File Explorer program)

2. Install PSExec (a Microsoft tool that gives low level access to programs - be careful with this one!)

3. Start TotalCommander from a command line with the following command:

psexec -s -i c:totalcmdtotalcmd.exe

4. You can now explore the contents of any folder without needing to change ownership, regardless of permissions.