A suggestion for those needing to access their superior computer systems from Windows-based university labs

I often used to forget my USB drive in public computers or at least worry that I would. It was also slightly inconvenient to have to plug my USB drive in after the ring on it broke and I could thus no longer store it on my keychain. I decided that I'd just download my USB drive instead.

The general idea is to create a small Windows self-extracting archive that contains whatever you need and to host it on your awesome computer. The only downside of the current implementation is that there is no way of saving the settings. I've been using this for a few weeks now, and it's been really helpful.

Set up PortableApps (http://portableapps.com) in any directory. Install the following:

* Notepad++Portable
* Portable Keyboard Layout (This just saves time over going through the control panel for those who prefer superior keyboard layouts.)
* PortableAppsMenu
* PuTTYPortable
* WinSCPPortable

I'll upload an archive of these once I remove the address of my computer.

Then adjust the settings if you want. Save your SSH information without your password in PuTTY and WinSCP, configure Notepad++'s settings if you want, change the keyboards in Portable Keyboard Layout if you don't want Dvorak, and remove Portable Keyboard Layout if you have no intention of using anything other than lame QWERTY.

A better system may be one that involves FTP instead of SFTP because that may integrate better with Windows. I haven't looked much into that yet though.

I suggest that you disable the help image in Portable Keyboard Layout, enable text wrapping in Notepad++ and set the username in PuTTY and WinSCP.

Now, make a Windows self-extracting archive(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=847329):

zip -r tom_is_awesome.zip Directory_in_which_you're_setting_this_up
wget http://kolmoskone.homelinux.org/~kaja/kamaa/unzipsfx-552_win32.tar.gz
tar zxf unzipsfx-552_win32.tar.gz
cat unzipsfx-552_win32/unzipsfx.exe tom_is_awesome.zip > tom_is_awesome.exe
zip -A tom_is_awesome.exe

If you don't want to customize the settings at all, you can also just use one that I'll host somewhere once I've removed my computer's address. It will otherwise be configured as I like it.

Then you should set up some easy way to remember that address. Temporarily, I made a page on my website that redirects to this 5.7 mb file on my personal computer. I host it on my computer because I live in a dorm on my university's campus and access my computer it from university labs, making it more efficient to download it from there. I should come up with something better though.

My current version does not include a PDF viewer, but the next one will; it's particularly annoying when you have to keep closing and opening the PDF viewer when copying LaTeX-generated documents with WinSCP because Adobe Reader won't let you edit something it's open.

It wouldn't be hard to save your settings. You'd need to copy the directory to some place on your personal computer each time that you finish using a lab computer, and you'd have a script that generates a new Windows self-extracting archive from it.