Automate disk backups with Macrium Reflect (free)

I've had really good luck with Macrium Reflect Free.  It is a free disk imaging program, and has most of the features of the major corporate players, but there is a free version.

With a little looking around I figured out how to automate backups with the Windows Task Scheduler.

You have to run an initial backup, and save it so you can run it again later, it saves as an XML file.

Now you just have Task Scheduler run a batch file containing the following:
call "C:\Program Files\Macrium\Reflect\Reflect.exe" -e -w "[path to Macrium saved backup document]\[backup name].xml"

This will run the backup on whatever schedule you have set.

Record an MP3 stream with VLC

I wanted to archive an audio stream to add to my personal podcast feed, essentially to time-shift the broadcast for when I wanted to listen to it.

You can use VLC to record the stream, I use a Windows Task Scheduler to start a Batch file that starts VLC and records the stream to a file name with the date in the file name.

Batch File:
@echo off
rem
for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /T') do set year=%%c
for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /T') do set month=%%a
for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /T') do set day=%%b
set TODAY=%year%%month%%day%
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --demux dump --demuxdump-file "[Path]\[show name]\[show name]_%year%%month%%day%.mp3" "[stream path]"

Schedule SyncToy

Found a good article on automating SyncToy Jobs.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/01/01/schedule-synctoy-to-run-and-automatically-and-repetitively/

Decided to use the task scheduler to start up some other software too, should prove to be useful.