Hello all. Welcome to the first Public Newsletter of 2010.

Things have been pretty hectic recently, and I’ve just not been able to dedicate a lot of time to the blog; particularly in the last week.

As you may or may not know; the entire United Kingdom has been snowed on and frozen for some time, due to Easterly winds coming down from Siberia and the Arctic, which have brought snow and freezing temperatures.

As a result the country, which isn’t snowed on a lot and very seldom gets more than a couple of consecutive days of freezing weather, almost cane to a standstill as it just wasn’t prepared for this type of weather for such a long period of time.

I know the Canadians are calling us Brits wooses for getting jammed up by a few inches of snow; but they’re used to it and get it all the time: Therefore Canada is always ready for this type of weather; whereas the UK isn’t.

Ironically I was making some online friends in East Hampshire only days before the weather turned. East Hampshire happened to be the very worst-affected area when it snowed torrentially for nearly 24 hours almost non-stop, with the town of Petersfield virtually shut down, despite the fact that the main A3 trunk-road passes the West side and top of the town. The A3 itself was closed-down; and many drivers were stranded in their cars, buried in snow and unable to move due to ice. This was the case from just South of Petersfield right up to Liphook and beyond into Berkshire and Surrey.

The kind townspeople of Petersfield arranged shelters for the stranded in local pubs and churches, so that nobody went hungry or froze to death.

Thanks to the internet, which was fully operational throughout, everyone was able to coordinate efforts professionally and communicate weather, traffic, and social reports.

Something else took place on Wednesday (6th Jan) night, when a bare-topped thug in a pair of shorts – in sub-zero temperatures – harassed one of my online acquaintances in the village of Liss, North of Petersfield, and stole her mobile phone. Thanks to the internet the story was soon spread around the area. Unfortunately, despite having a live online webcam positioned nearby, the camera failed to see anything of this incidence.

The poor girl was distraught and terrified afterwards. I spoke over the internet with her and tried to reassure, advise, and comfort her, and it appeared everything was under control and that the police had been informed and were on their way.

If, by any slim chance, somebody from Liss or elsewhere has any information about this incident, or knows who the perpetrator was and happens to read this article; I appeal to them to please contact the police immediately.

So that’s the goings on around the time of writing, and things continue to escalate as more snow and freezing conditions are forecast for the next week for the entire UK.

I’m hopefully laying a few foundations, as it were, for what could be a rather large and exciting event to gradually unfold with regard to this blog at some point in the future. I won’t say any more than that for now, other than it could well involve (maybe multiple) live video streams – But it’s very early days and anything other than pure conjecture at this point is futile. – However I do have hopes; and maybe eventually a plan will be hatched, depending upon circumstance.

The weirdest thing about the weather; which incidentally I predicted a month in advance in more than one place on the internet, (Twitter was one of them.) is that it froze up mid-December as I expected, thawed out for Xmas in the South of England, (During which I had a stinker of a cold.) and then froze the entire country in again afterwards. I wish I could avoid Christmas, just like the Christmas weather did down here in the South. – Humbug

Right; to matters a’la blog, and a recap on what’s been posted since the last Public Newsletter. – Oh, incidentally, I intend to make this Public Newsletter a monthly thing in future, rather than bi-weekly.

S’no Time Like The Present for Maintenance

January 6, 2010 | 0

The UK freezes; but as we wait for a thaw; why not give your box some TLC?

Go on; be kind to your online friend that abides with you and does a lot of work for you.

Something Amazing is Happening Soon…

The amazing thing happening soon is: Blog Masters Club is opening its doors again!

January 5, 2010 | 0

Coming soon: It’s tried, it’s tested, it works – It’s from David Risley and it’ll blow your blog’s potential into the next dimension!

Windows 7 Usage

January 3, 2010 | 0

Statistics regarding usage of Windows 7 seem promising, if this blog’s audience can be taken as a representative sample of computer users generally.

A Twit Too Far?

January 1, 2010 | 0

A new online system for protecting yourself from being followed by spam-bots on Twitter has emerged: Find out why kkomp.com gives it the thumbs-down.

A Phone Running XP? – Yes – Really!

December 31, 2009 | 1

This gadget might end up opening a can of worms; or then again it might prove to be extremely popular. (?)

Battle of the Browsers 2009

December 31, 2009 | 0

2009 saw an exciting time in the Browser Wars saga; yet 2010 promises even more excitement – Maybe even the fall of Microsoft as we know it?

How Many Processor-Cores Should I Have

December 30, 2009 | 0

With single, double, triple, quad-cored processors around, with hex and octo-cored CPUs due to appear soon; what would be best for my computer?

Color Cop (Free Software) – multi-purpose colour picker for Windows

December 29, 2009 | 1

Bloggers, coders, and many more people too, will find this little freebie Windows-only app most useful.

A Bit More About 64-Bit

December 28, 2009 | 0

I want to talk a bit more about 64-bit and memory…

5 Predictions for Tech in 2010

December 26, 2009 | 0

I predicted the December cold snap in the UK a month ahead of the event. Time will tell if these technology predictions come to bear in 2010.

Pure Yuletide Genius!

December 25, 2009 | 0

In a break from the norm; it’s time for some art: In this delightful seasonal video produced days ago, Lisa Jackson brings to you good cheer.

The WordPress Classroom

December 23, 2009 | 0

"My name is Matt Wolfe, and WordPress Changed my life."

Matt Wolfe; famous US internet marketer, had his life changed in such a big way that he felt that he had to share his experience: –
Introducing: The WordPress Classroom

Five Things That Nark Shazza

December 22, 2009 | 1

Normally I’m easy-going; but some things severely nark me nevertheless: Yes, there is a real human here beneath this cloak of technology believe it or not.

You’ll Be Glad It’s Yule…

December 21, 2009 | 1

Have a couple of gifts with PLR, on me.

That just about wraps it up for this one then. If you’re in the new ice-box we’ve come to know as the UK; stay warm and stay well. Only drive if you really have to. – It’s only a matter of time and the extended cold-snap will eventually end. For now it appears that there’s more to come.

Enjoy the (frozen ) week ahead.

Hello and welcome to another public newsletter.

In this newsletter I’ll mention some changes I’ve made to this blog, we’ll take the usual look at and quick review of the last fortnight’s posts, and I’ll include some general small talk.

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

Ok, so to turn and face the strain, and get the ball rolling, I’ll mention that the last thing I’ve done, as far as this blog’s layout is concerned, is to have the latest post displayed in its entirety on the Welcome (home) page. This may change to having excerpts of the last few posts displayed with a “read more” link for each post. – I’m still fighting with php along with the assistance of some paid help, in order to get this optimised. – Bear with me on that. Time may change me; but I won’t change time.

I’ve also changed the logo again, as you may notice: Whilst the simple black-text on a blue background was easy to download and possibly sufficient, it wasn’t exactly particularly eye-catching, and failed to initially capture the reader’s vision.

I apologise to anyone still using dial-up, for the fact that the logo now takes about ten-times the amount of time to download; but such is progress. – In the same way that people no longer spend hours to optimise their blogs in order that any readers still using Internet Explorer 6 (spit) can gain maximum viewing pleasure, so I see no reason to use a minimalistic theme any longer for those still using dial-up. Internet Explorer 6 is yesterday’s browser, despite being the default browser which loads with XP; it’s horrible with a capital H, and these days webmasters expect people to use other browsers, which is easy to do. – Just download and run another browser; it cost nothing and it’s easy. – In the same way, if anyone’s still using dial-up, then I suggest that they start using a decent internet connection: Dial-up is yesteryear’s internet-connection, and should, in the light of necessity, be upgraded.

I’ll carry on making small changes to the logo over time, as I have been doing.

Another thing is that I’ve changed the name of this blog from “Beyond” to “kkomp.com – Beyond”. “Beyond”, by itself, says not-a-lot: Yes; it does convey a sense of being at the forefront or even ahead of that; but as a brand it sucks. kkomp.com says even less than that, true, but the two together are a definite brand-name ( See PC Mech.com: PC Mech is a linguistic invention in itself; although maybe rather more appropriate for a tech blog..): That’s something which will be important as this blog becomes more and more business-oriented and commercialised over time. – Don’t worry; I’m not going to start charging for every article: There’ll always be free content on this blog, but I can’t continue indefinitely to run this blog for no-profit or at a loss. – It’s just totally unrealistic to expect me to do so. – So I will be slowly and gently turning the blog into a moneymaking-venture in addition to hosting much free content.

I do hope that you like the improving layout. Whilst layout is only a part of the whole; it is nevertheless something that contributes to the overall attractiveness of a blog, and a good layout is therefore equally as important as producing great-value content. I’ll be doing another reader-satisfaction-survey in the foreseeable future, and I hope that I get a decent response to this one with regard to numbers participating: The turnout in the case of the last one was worse than that of a British local election.

Promotion

At this point; I’d like to remind you that I’m giving away a free report; “Some Things to Try if XP Crashes During Boot”. Windows XP can, and in certain cases, does, crash during boot-up. This 25-page report in pdf format will give you many tips and ideas for getting your XP computer restarted so that you can diagnose the problem.

You’ll see the purple text at the top of the sidebar on almost every page. Simply insert your email address in the space provided, and click on “Get the Free Report”. You’ll get a confirmation email from FeedBlitz with both a confirmation-link for my email list, as well as a download location for the free report. I ask you to download the free report as well as clicking the confirmation-link.

On The Move

On that note; I’ll be moving my mailing-list from FeedBlitz over to Aweber fairly soon; so at some point those already on my mailing list will receive a confirmation email from Aweber with a link to click to indicate that you still want to receive emails from this blog. I’d ask you to simply click that confirmation-link when you get the email from Aweber, and that’ll be all you’ll need to do. If you’re not on my mailing list then you’re missing out on a free report, insider information, notification of blog updates, the whole shebang. I suggest that if you’re not on the mailing list, you get your free report as well as click the confirmation – link so that you’ll be a part of it and you’ll stop missing out.

Let David Risley teach you the basics of a six-figure problogger business in only 3 days. The course includes 14 videos, and has a 92 page transcript, checklist, and audio podcasts of all modules included. Download my FREE 5-page .pdf report on 3-Day Money

Reviews

And now; a review of the posts that have been posted since the last Public Newsletter: -

 The Friday Moan

It’s great to see that you lot are so rich. I thought there was meant to be a recession on; but obviously that was just negative-media-hype. I’m still looking for the destitute impoverished homeless masses sleeping in the park, but all I’ve seen is a couple of winos. – Should I add that I smelled them first:  Aroma d’vagrant et l’alcohol. I also fail to see the long queues for mostly–empty shelves at the local supermarket. – So much for recession. This one is meant to be as bad as the one in the 1930’s; yet all the evidence seems to point to it being fairly superficial. Both the British and American economies have started to show signs of growth incidentally.

The reason I started off in this way is because, a few weeks back, I launched a small competition that had a small cash-prize associated with it. In the first week 2 people submitted 4 entries between them, and I published one from each person. The first one went straight to Number 10 in the kkomp Top 10 and then sank. The second went straight to Number 9 and floated around between Number 8 and 16 for a week before also sinking.

The object of the exercise was to write a post that would get to Number 1 and stay there over the Xmas Holiday Season. – Impossible? – No; I’ve already written a post that stayed at No 1 for over 6 months. I imagined that my 150+ original visitors per day might like to write something, get published, grab a free piece of internet real-estate, partake in a bit of link-love, and maybe win a small cash prize too.

I was wrong, so you lot miss out: However, since the Season of Goodwill to all Gluttonous Temporary-Alcoholics looms in the not-too-distant future, I’m going to offer a prize to anyone who can get their post to the Number 1 spot in the kkomp Top 10 on Christmas Day and stay there all day, or longer than any other post can on that day.

I don’t quite know why I’m offering to do this, as it appears obvious that you lot are all wealthy and happily well-off thank you very much. However, since I’ve scrapped the original competition due to lack of support, there’s the part of the prize-fund that I haven’t spent on eBay, namely £10UKP still up for grabs. -  If you want it then get submitting your guest posts now to drafts at kustomkomputa dot co dot uk. Whoever is at Number 1 with their post in the kkomp.com Top 10 on Xmas day and stays there the longest wins the tenner. – And yes, if it’s me with any of my posts at Number 1 on that day, I will donate the £10UKP to the Overworked Female Blogger’s Benevolent Fund, of which I am the proprietor and sole benefactor. – So if you want it, rather than allow me to have it, then get writing.

Furthermore…

Furthermore, on a totally different topic, Windows 7 is fantastic: If you don’t have a copy yet then get one: Home Premium is good enough for most people, including myself. If you don’t have a computer capable of running it then get one or build one and run it. I encourage everyone to use the 64-bit version, which requires around 2GBs of RAM minimum. Pretty much all computers built in the last 3 years are capable of running the 64-bit version; except for netbooks, which might find it rather heavy-going, don’t have 2 GB RAM as a rule, and would be better off with the 32-bit version.

RC Running Out of Time

On that note I will remind all of you skinflints and freeloaders who are determined to stick with the Release Candidate of Windows 7 because it costs zilch, nothing; that your free Windows operating system will shut down every 2 hours starting on March 1st 2010. – There really is no point staying in the Freeloader’s Legs all winter in a pokey little room with a packet of extra-strong mints for warmth and an ancient laptop with Windows 7 RC on it ‘til shutdown do you part. – Splash out: The RTM version is more stable than the RC anyway.

Seasoned

Suddenly it’s Autumn / Fall; well it is in the UK anyway: No sooner do the clocks go back than the balmy Indian summer turns into a facsimile of a monsoon, temperatures drop, deciduous trees shed their leaves… Actually it’s not all that bad so far: Despite the early darkness I’ve seen a bumblebee hard at work on my still-blooming lavender on October 25th, and the following day I saw a black ladybird with red spots on a bush…No the red spots were on the ladybird, not the bush, silly.

Enjoy this mild weather in the UK; because I predict that it’ll stay mild with a few exceptions right into early December, and then it’ll unexpectedly turn bitterly cold – I mean arctic cold – for a couple or a few weeks. I predict that there is a 50/50 chance of a traditional Victorian Christmas Day being entirely possible this year due to the natural weather.

What makes me predict this? – The way that nature’s behaving, that’s what. I’m a Witch: I could well be right: Then again, the last time I made a massive and well-publicised weather prediction, that time a prediction of a blazing June and a tropical July, we had one of the worst and wettest summers on record. (1997 if I remember rightly.)

Blog Matters

I’ve recently done some work on improving the design of this blog. – As you will appreciate, although I’m not a designer by trade, I am learning more about aspects of blog design and the science behind it.

You’ll notice that a few months ago I’ve changed the colour-scheme to blue and black with a smattering of red, from pink and red with a smattering of everything else.

This blog actually started off fairly aimlessly and directionless back in June 2008 with a not-very-good pink theme. – I never changed the theme since; I just hacked and customised the heck out of it. What you see today is still using the original basic theme framework called “Serenity Pink”. The logo started life as a pink line that was part of the original theme, would you believe.

On the subject of the logo; you’ll notice that at long last it’s relatively decent: It’s actually a brand, rather than a brand confusion. There is a reason why it’s been so crappy for so long until now: That reason is because I was trying to minimise the work involved by enhancement and recycling of the older crappy logos – aka laziness at its most sneaky. They say that lazy people always end up doing the most work; and in this case that was true. At the end of the day I had to scrap the multiply-re-enhanced design; if one can actually call it a design, and start again from scratch: Something which I should have done in the case of the logo some time ago, like a year ago.

Please understand that when I started this blog I was totally inexperienced with regard to blogging. – Yes really 100% inexperienced and completely without a clue: I’d heard of a blog before, although I wasn’t sure what a blog was; even though I’d read quite a few blogs and didn’t even realise that they were blogs. – That was my total knowledge of blogging at the time. I knew how to use html, was clueless about php, knew a bit about javascript, and was a corporate addict who avoided open-source software as I perceived it as dodgy stuff.

An online acquaintance, namely David Risley, who is now a top problogger, and was rising to that status at the time, suggested that I started a blog and recommended that I do so using WordPress. After further talking with him and mulling the issue over in my mind I decided to give it a go.

Installing WordPress was something that actually made me freak. – Honestly; I unzipped the files, downloaded them to the server, looked again, and screamed!

- I’m a trained and qualified electronics technician. I was never trained in blogging. I’d self-trained in software-maintenance plus basic-peripheral devices-setup-and-maintenance, and made a living from it for a short-time. I learned about hardware initially from sitting in on lectures at college for the computer course, and realised how actually simplistic it was to me on the basis of my electronics background. (I’d actually been studying and practicing practical electronics (Mainly analogue electronics.) as a hobby since age 7. – I only actually qualified in it later in life when I took the initiative to enhance my hobby at an academic level.)

- So I’ve learned and gained experience of computing at both a software and a hardware level, having an electronics background. I’m still learning and gaining experience of blogging right now. I’ve done Yaro Starak’s BecomeaBlogger course, which competently teaches the basics of blogging, and I’m currently undergoing David Risley’s BlogMasters course, which teaches how to blog professionally and properly, as well as how to generate an income from one’s blog as a problogger.

Time is a great hurdle to me currently, as I don’t have oodles of time to spend blogging: However, having said that, when I decide to fully throw my oar into the problogger pond I’ll be devoting most if not all of my time to this blog on a full-time professional basis, and hopefully generating a living from it too.

Does that mean I’m a problogger? Give me a chance; I haven’t even finished the course yet. Could I currently live on the earnings I’m making from this blog? Only if I were a nun with a vow of poverty and all my living expenses paid for by the church and/or state.

Do I intend to become a problogger? Eventually, yes: Hopefully in the not-too-distant future. Do I intend to make a living from this blog? Eventually yes; though maybe not just from this blog. Can I start making a living from and/or monetising this blog now? Well, in a way I am starting to monetise it in line with the BlogMasters training; although there’s a long way to go yet.

I’m not knowledgeable enough or in a position to tell you a lot about problogging at this time: However, when I’ve finished the BlogMasters course I’ll be trained in a lot of the aspects of problogging and will have more to say on the matter, as well as more to practice and implement too.

If you’re interested in problogging as a means of generating a living, then I’ll be advertising the BlogMasters course at some point in early 2010, when I’ve finished it and the doors open again to allow in more students. What I can tell you now is that it’s a six-month course spread out over 19 modules; each with multiple training videos downloadable online, along with transcripts and to-do lists. During the course you’ll get direct access to David Risley himself, to ask questions, make suggestions for enhancing the course material, say what you’d like to learn about, and generally gain the benefit of his expertise in the realm of problogging.

David Risley been blogging, initially as a hobby. since before blogging was called blogging, and he’s gained a wealth of experience over the years by buying lots and lots of training materials from a variety of other bloggers and interacting with them. Also he’s what you might describe as a born-problogger, so he’s used a lot of common-sense and integrated his natural abilities into his rise to success.

On another thread; I currently have a survey running on this blog, and I’d appreciate it if all my readers would complete it for me. It’s a fairly short survey which is conducted via Survey Monkey on behalf of kkomp.com. I forget when it closes; either today or in a week I think. Nobody who takes the survey will be personally identified in any way. The answers that you give to the survey will assist me to enhance this blog further and in a way that you readers would like to see happening. To take part in the survey please click here.

Back to technology

I do like to have a decent working pair of computers at all times: Why a pair? Well, if one should fail then I can always use the other while I’m repairing the failed one. Also I can try out new software on one of them and use the other for more mundane office work.

It is with this in mind that I once again encourage everyone to upgrade to Windows 7: With possibly a few exceptions for the time being. Read the article Windows 7 is Out There: Should You Upgrade? for more on this matter.

Other posts on the subject of Windows 7 recently include: -

How to Create a Task Manager Desktop Icon in Windows 7

Windows 7 has made using your computer much easier –except for one aspect: Calling up the task manager.

In this article we learn how to very simply create a Task Manager icon on your Windows 7 Desktop to simplify the process of calling up the Task Manager.

Can I Run Windows 7 64-bit on the XP Machine I Ran 32-bit on?

In which we look at running Windows 7 64-bit on your existing box.

There is a particular post which I feel will be very valuable to anybody running an online business. In fact it will be beneficial also to anyone who runs a physical corporate business also: -

Expert Help to Boost Your Business – For Free!

Seriously–this "Group Think Tank" process has the capability to increase your profits by up to 1,000%–or more–before the year is over.

A number of top-business experts have got together to share their valuable experience with you at no cost. – Yes that’s right; it’s free of charge expertise from top businesspeople. Can you really afford to miss it? The next session is this coming Thursday. I know I’ll be listening in.

On the subject of business; you might find this post useful also: -

Monetise Your RSS Feed

You could be leaving money on the table if you’re not making the most of monetising your RSS feed.

Yaro Starak’s had the doors open to another of his courses this last week. Oh you didn’t take advantage of it? Well you’ll have to wait until the doors open again in 2010 then. – I did publicise it rather much. – I even had an advert on Google for it: -

Doors Closing Soon … Oops; too late.

Lisa Jackson’s been video-making again: See her Halloween production here: -

Halloween Rules

- Totally off-topic for this blog; but what the heck? A little laughter never hurt anyone.

… And finally; here’s a rundown of the rest of the articles published since the last Public Newsletter: -

Benefits of Doing Your Own Upgrades

All you need is some basic electronics knowledge, general software knowledge,… a steady hand and relatively good hand-eye-coordination, and you’re away.

Keep Your Drivers Up-To-Date

To help get optimum performance from your computer, you should keep your drivers up to date.

How to Back-up Social Media – Bonus Article

Social media has no built-in backup; but there are applications out there which can do the job as far as Facebook and Twitter are concerned.

Computer of The Future: 2020

In this post I project my predictions, based upon my impressions of quickly-advancing technology, of how a computer could be in the year 2020.

An Introduction to Wireless Computer Speakers

Andy Zain tells us a bit about wireless computer speakers in this article: I don’t think this idea will ever go mainstream; but I’m sure that it has its uses.

Fake Antivirus Software is Infecting on a Massive Scale

Partly due to the corporate greed of the kosher affiliate networks, there are now criminal affiliate networks peddling malware. Criminals are making a fortune!

- That’s it for this Public Newsletter then: Enjoy your weekend, and if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere then remember, it’s getting cold outside lately; so why not stay in more, sit in front of the computer, and among other things, read kkomp.com.

I know I previously said that I’d only be doing a Public Newsletter fortnightly, but I decided to write this one as an extra in light of circumstances.

This week has been fraught with frights: Viruses have been the main bane of the week, as I’ve been plagued with infection. (My apologies to anyone who received spam from the email worm.) Yesterday, Thursday 8th October, I designated as malware day on kkomp.com, and published a couple of posts related to malware and its removal.

The first one of these was Is 64-bit Windows Less Prone to Malware Than 32-Bit?; an important question for those seeking extra security.

The second; Microsoft Security Essentials – Excellent Free Antivirus Solution,  tells my recent story with regard to a great piece of free software that is new, just out of beta, and totally effective. – With this guarding your Windows PC, malware has very little chance.

PC Mech:

As I write this newsletter, another great tech site; PC Mech, is having problems, and is temporarily unavailable. The problem appears to be linked to the site’s database from what little I can glean. Owner David Risley is frantically working to restore the prominent tech-site to its former glory by getting it back online.

The site’s server at Pair Networks responds to a ping, as does the database server; so it appears to be a php problem with WordPress installation itself.

This must come as a severe blow to David Risley himself, as he relies on PC Mech for a large proportion of his and his family’s livelihood. Every second the site’s not online is costing him money both in terms of lost income and time taken up in restoring the site or attempting to do so.

This situation is one of a blogger’s worst nightmares, particularly as far as an eminent problogger such as Risley himself is concerned. This site, the one you’re looking at right now, has also been down before; for the reason that the hosting company put the domain on a backroom scripting server because it was taking up too many resources on the shared-platform server that it was on until fairly recently, and following that there were a number of teething troubles following the move to a dedicated server, resulting in around 6 days downtime in total.

Unlike David Risley, I don’t rely totally on my online activities for my income and livelihood at this point in time; although that may one day change.

All I can do is express my hopes that PC Mech is up and running again as soon as possible, and that David and his family, which include his pregnant wife Malika, due to give birth to a boy in January, plus his little daughter Elyana, don’t suffer as a result of the issue.

Added later on: PC Mech is now back online.

Virus:

As I mentioned, I’ve spent the last few days cleaning my system repeatedly after two Trojan downloaders found their way onto a hard-drive. If you ever pick up a virus, a Trojan downloader or two is one of the last types you want: If your anti-malware programs fail to see the downloader then it makes no difference how many pieces of malware they remove; the downloader itself will simply replace them and add more.

I was using F-secure 2009 Internet Security Suite beta version, of which I hold a licence until later this month, as my anti-malware program on my 3-core Windows 7 64-bit box, on the hard-drive of which the downloaders resided. F-Secure didn’t see them, and Avast! free edition failed to spot a backdoor Trojan, an email worm, and a keylogger, on the networked dual-cored box running XP professional 32-bit. Microsoft’s new anti-malware solution did though, fortunately, and it cleaned the system totally.

Other Issues:

*A pinch and a punch; it’s the first of the month.*

- I used to know someone who always said that; although I’m not quite sure why, but I thought I’d use it to open this article anyway.

– Anyway; hello, and welcome to yet another public newsletter from kkomp.com.

Before I go into the drawl of what’s been posted on this blog in the last fortnight, I wanted to make mention of a processor that is shaking the world to some extent: That processor being the AMD ATHLON II X4 620: – Introducing the world’s first quad-core processor to hit the market at only $99 retail! Now that’s budget. – But you may imagine that such a low-priced 4-core processor would be vastly inferior to anything that Intel has to offer for more money. – A’la contraire’, it in fact has a lot to offer, even in comparison with some of the well-known Intel offerings.

For more information on this amazing little device, see this article from Anand Tech.

Now let’s take a butcher’s ‘ook at what’s been going down on this blog: -

Yesterday I posted a review of a very nice and not too pricey power-supply that performs well and is making headway towards getting itself a decent reputation: -

September 30, 2009 – Be Quiet! Dark Power. (Power Supply Review.)

Misca and I collaborated to produce a post outlining the process of partitioning in Windows 7. (What wasn’t mentioned was that this could have an adverse market effect on products such as Paragon Partition Manager and the like.)

September 29, 2009 – How to Create & Delete a Partition in Windows 7

We have a competition of sorts running on this blog; running, in fact, into 2010: Your mission; should you choose to accept it, is to create and submit for publication a post which is so good that it goes to and stays at the No1 spot in the kkomp.com Top 10 for three months. In return you could well get a free piece of internet real-estate, a free link back to your blog or website, and a chance to win some money too!

September 28, 2009 – Can Your Post Make it to The Number One Slot?

There’s something new lurking deep within Windows 7; Virtual-Wi-Fi: Misca explains.

September 25, 2009 – Virtual-Wi-Fi

To clear up any confusion as to where the power goes from the PSU onwards; I’ve written a piece on the electricity supply rails inside your computer, and what voltages you’ll find.

September 24, 2009 – Watt Volt Goes Where?

15 months; 500 posts, and counting: This blog reached this milestone, or thereabouts this September: It was fitting, then, to dedicate an article specially to that event, and take a look back too.

September 23, 2009 – Article 500

Unlike its predecessors; Windows 7 has a rather convenient way of allowing the user to easily upgrade to a higher version, and give more money to Microsoft. – It makes sense if you ask me.

September 22, 2009 – Anytime Upgrade in Windows 7 – AND UK Prices

The cost of hardware continues on its descent, and in this article we take a look around at some components with good overall performance that can be assembled into a decent, fully-working, Intel-dual-core-processor-driven, budget PC, that won’t even cost the arm part of an arm and a leg.

September 21, 2009 – Build a Decent Budget PC for £225GBP

Ironically, fasthosts.co.uk could be the slowest hosts in existence: My server kept crashing, so I paid a small fortune for an engineer’s report, and subsequently decided on a RAM upgrade. Fasthosts tied a RAM stick to a snail and sent it on its way to the server-room: -

September 19, 2009 – 5 Days to Fit RAM

- On that note; the recent server issues with regard to this blog seem to be remedied: I think that this is the twelfth day, if I recall correctly, of unhindered operation since Fasthosts’ attempt at daylight-robbery combined with their rather slothful efforts to upgrade my server as I’d requested, so that it actually worked properly.

(*Lesson 1: If you’re running a blog the size of this blog or bigger, 512MBs RAM in your (Ubuntu Linux) server simply isn’t enough, no matter how you try to avoid spending money on an upgrade etc. – Hiring a server with 1024MBs or more RAM from the outset is a better option; as it will save money in the long run, as well as avoiding downtime when the server repeatedly crashes with an “out_of_memory” error. The sales person who sells the deal may say otherwise; but they’re most likely just out to get some extra money from you when you’re forced to upgrade the RAM after daily crashes.)

Further, on the matter of finances’ again, I’ve projected that it’s going to cost me around £1000GBP, minimum, to run this blog during 2010. I have to recoup this sum from somewhere, plus hopefully more, to make it a commercially viable enterprise.

In the light of the above, please do expect to see the continued presence of advertising, affiliate-marketing, promotions, etc, on this blog; and most of all please do click on those links in such adverts and articles that you find to be of interest to you. While I’m not in 100% control of every type of advertising and its associated products that are being promoted, I will only knowingly promote products, services, and companies, that I know to be of good quality and from a reputable source. – In other words I will not knowingly promote crap and/or scams on this blog.

Finally, for this post, I wish you all well as we wave goodbye to another summer in Northern latitudes, and we prepare for the cold, dark, and somewhat lifeless winter to come. May your glass never be empty or your table ever be bare. – And may you keep acquiring knowledge from this blog and from others; for knowledge is power which leads to enlightenment.

Have a great weekend.

Namaste’

This last week has been fraught with server problems; resulting in a certain amount of downtime. I apologise for the downtime, and i trust that it wasn’t too inconvenient to you.

The server problems appear to have been caused, in the light of an engineer’s report, as well as in the light of my personal analysis, by an “unable to allocate memory” error on the server, caused by a combination of heavy traffic, including spiders, spammers, and hackers trying to exploit patched weaknesses in WordPress, with a heavy server loading due to plugins causing conflict with one another – as well as the overall complexity of the blog structure.

In remedy of this issue, I have removed or deactivated a number of plugins, and have asked engineers at my web-host to upgrade the server. These remedial actions should negate any future downtime for the time being at least, and hopefully also for some time into the future also.

It has been a rather worrying time for me, having just moved the blog over to a new, dedicated, server. Clearly I didn’t take into account all of the factors during the initial setup, and therefore the server setup was insubstantial for the load put upon it.

I’m writing this post at a time before the hardware upgrade has taken place; but you will note from the Service Announcement posted earlier on this blog that the work has been scheduled and should have been completed by the time you read this post.

On another front; you may have noticed that I have started to produce reviews of certain hardware components: -

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3; A Budget-Board +

Intel Core i7 920: The Premium of Hi-Performance Processors

and

Gigabyte P55M-UD4: Another Gigabyte Mobo Without Graphics Capability

Although this is more like a test-sample of such posts at this time; I will be observing the reader statistics to see, in short, whether these posts are a hit or a miss. If they prove popular than I shall produce more posts of this type. – So if you like what you see then do click on more posts of that type, and do also comment on them. (That’s what that box below them from Disqus is all about.)

There have been a couple of guest-posts since the last Public Newsletter: The last one was by 16-year-old Kyle Potts from America. This budding Linux guru gave a few reasons why certain types of people should use Linux. He also explained that many of us use Linux-based apps without even realising it too: -

Linux For Everyone?

In the other guest-post, Misca Nicoleta from Romania explains how installing Windows 7 in your portable device can extend battery life: -

Install Windows 7 on your Portable Device and Increase Battery Life

(It’s September 17th; yet I’ve just heard someone letting off the first firework of the year outside! Why don’t they just start Valentine’s Day on 5th January, after the 12 days of Christmas are up, then start Easter on the 15th February, immediately following which comes the long haul to Father’s Day, followed by the same for Mother’s Day, then combine the preparations for Halloween and Bonfire Night immediately after that, and on 6th November start Christmas?.. Actually that’s almost happening already: People must have such small lives these days!

What am I on about? – Think about it: An entire year to prepare for 8 or so days at their risk of financial ruin every time; repeatedly until death do us part. That amounts to an actual “life”, not including preparation for “life”, of around 640 days, consisting of nothing but avoiding total bankruptcy. – That sucks!

- Oh; I forgot to include the person’s birthday too: ‘Add another 60 to 80-odd days then. – It still sucks!)

- OK back to topic; and I’ve also included a few more delectable morsels for your edification since the last Public Newsletter: -

It’s Probably Not My blog… – Speaks, again, to you myriad of people who are still using IE6 out there, and getting a less-than-perfect browsing experience as a result. IE6 is old hat; and using it can, in a way, be likened running your car on square wheels.

Hard-Drives Are Unreliable – Fact Warns you to be prepared for one of the worst computing disasters happening at any point in time: That being your hard-drive packing up.

Hold a Micro-Party and get a Free Copy of Windows 7 Ultimate – What’s this? An extra day to add to the “700-day-“life””, perhaps?

How to Install WordPress on Your Domain

and

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer : Free WordPress Plugin Are a couple of WordPress-related articles that are fairly well explained by their titles.

…And finally there are the articles related to kkomp.com’s recent short-lived outages: -

Kkomp.com is Under Attack

and

**Kkomp.com Service Announcement**

- I think that just about covers everything.,, Oh and there’s also…

64-Bit – NOW 

– Please let’s bury 32-bit computing in its grave once and for all, as soon as is practically possible. – It’s too limiting and older than IE6!

OK I’m fed up with writing right now: I need a coffee + Also I want to get this post queued on the server before the planned outage where my server is upgraded. Also I need a cigarette: -

Enjoy the weekend; whatever you’re doing.

Two weeks ago today my hosting company took this blog off its usual shared-platform server and put it on an inaccessible backroom scripting server for the third time in 14 months. – This meant that kkomp.com took ages to load on anyone’s computer if it managed to do so at all.

The reason for this was that the site was using too many resources on the shared server. Being a British host; they don’t have the decency to email first and inform you that they are about to do so, thus giving you a chance to do something about it. Rather they plonk the domain on a server with a number of other sites that are also using too many resources; and the server’s resources max out and it’s hardly possible to get through to your site for testing purposes. – Although the ftp server is still fully responsive, and, late at night, the main web server becomes partially responsive when the load on it decreases.

Anyway after they’d done it a third time there was only one decent solution: get it on a dedicated server.

The reason too many resources were being used this time was because of the universal translator plugin I’d installed caching all of the translations it made to disc and referencing them when an identical translation was required. According to Fasthosts, (A Google of the phrase”Fasthosts are shit” will reveal several rather frightening horror-stories about the UK’s most incompetent hosting company.) I was utilising over 50% of the CPU at times.

Having got this domain onto a dedicated server I found that nothing except for the home page worked; every link I clicked and every URL I typed in resulted in an error 404.

Read “August 29, 2009 – I Turned 404 into 200 With a Tiny Bit of php – Part 1”, and part 2, and you’ll see how I put things right.

”Whatever did happen to shazzalive.com anyway?”

Well it’s on my server, and it has something on it; basically just a bare WordPress framework with a default theme currently. I was going to go live with it in January 2010; bit that’s now cancelled for the foreseeable future. I’m sticking to this blog, and, having debugged it, I’ll be developing it further.

I apologise for the recent downtime; but as you’ll clearly understand, it was due to circumstances beyond my control mainly.

After I’d got the blog partially functional I started to panic when the techs at Fasthosts told me that; while the engineers maintained the shared-platform servers, they didn’t do anything at all to the dedicated servers: It was all down to me to sort out any problems, despite having very little knowledge of servers or Linux.

Fasthosts supply a dedicated server with seemingly all of the basic functions, including

mod_rewrite, switched off for security purposes, and won’t help with anything more than less-than-complete basic advice, unless you pay them £60 + VAT per half-hour.

In my panic I put out a call for help from the online Linux community: –

Hello and welcome to another fortnightly Public Newsletter.

In this newsletter I’ll be going through the latest gen on the plans for the future of kkomp.com following the launch of shazzalive.com. You’ll notice that the intentions have changed since the last major announcement in July of this year.

Also I’ll be listing and writing a small piece on articles which have been posted since the last newsletters’ publication.

- So let’s get started by mentioning that; contrary to what was announced in July of this year, I won’t be abandoning this blog following the launch of shazzalive.com. The original intention was to concentrate my full efforts into shazzalive.com, (Or shazzalive.co.uk; whichever takes your fancy: They both go to the same place.) and to leave this blog static online as a reference library, without populating it with further content.

That’s not going to happen: This blog has taken a fair number of months to build up; through which I’ve learned some php, css, and enhanced my blog-editing skills somewhat. – It’s just too much of a sad thing to let it drift into obscurity.

The thing that worries me is how on earth I’ll manage two blogs at once: It’s time-consuming enough managing the one. Nevertheless other mere mortals have managed just that and more; so I’ll be up for the challenge. I do hope you’ll all visit shazzalive regularly, once it’s been launched.

The reason I was going to abandon this blog in the first place was because I had made cock-up after cock-up during my learning process with regard to php and css, and it appeared that I’d edited bits I shouldn’t have and left the blog a bit of a wreck. Having gone through everything with a fine-toothed comb, though, it appears that the problems were nowhere near as bad as I’d estimated, and in reality I was just panicking too much.

So this blog stays.

OK; now let’s have a quick resume’ on what’s been going on over the last two weeks here on kkomp.com: -

Death to Internet Explorer 6

This article tells of the reason why people should stop using Internet Explorer 6. Although it’s the default browser with Windows XP, there’s absolutely no excuse for not upgrading it and/or running another better browser along with it. It’s 8 years old at time of writing, and it certainly shows its age!

Microsoft Banned From Selling Word in the USA

Everyone’s out to get Microsoft recently, and the latest move is from a company that claims that Microsoft has infringed its patent on XML.

Ensure You Get Installation Media with Your New PC. Part 1

- Because if you don’t you’ll end up in a turmoil later. Soon Windows 7 will be shipping installed on new computers. In the rush, don’t forget to ensure that you have a copy of the operating system’s install media.

What Would You Readers Like to See on This Blog?

It can, at times, be harder to decide what to write about than actually writing it. In this article I make a call to readers for a little inspiration.

How to Install Windows 7

With Windows 7 due to  launch on October 22nd, there’s a good chance that you’ll be upgrading your operating system. This article is aimed particularly at people who are upgrading from XP to Windows 7.

Does a Computer Need Time to “Warm Up”?

Remember the old days when switching on the power was followed by a few minutes wait for the valves (vacuum tubes) to warm up? Thank the gods of technology for the transistor.

Useful WordPress Plugins

A few plugins that WordPress users might find useful.

Social-Networking Backup Services

How do you back up your Twitter account? Where do your Facebook comments and articles end up? The short answer is in file 13: Erased after time. (You didn’t honestly imagine that Twitter run petabytes of storage to archive every tweet ever made did you?) If you want to keep your Facebook offerings and/or your tweets then you’ll have to do that on your own computer. Here’s a couple of pieces of software that will assist you to retrieve your offerings.

How to Uninstall IE8 in XP 

People love Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 8; so much so, in fact, that they can’t wait to get rid of it once it finds its way onto their computer. That’s not too hard to do in Vista. In XP it can throw up a number of issues: read this article to discover more. (Whatever you do, though; please please don’t go back to using IE6: Use IE7 and have Firefox. Opera, or Safari as your main browser.)

…And on that note there endeth this Public Newsletter. There’ll be another one published in a fortnight, all being well.

I’m just wondering which fort the fortnight is in? Is that a normal night, a night under siege, a night on the town even? – No not on the town; unless the town’s inside the fort…

If anyone has a clue where the term “fortnight”, as in “two weeks” came from, then please do leave a comment.

I’ll be reading up on some Linux material in order to write some kind an article on that subject, which I might even manage to present on this blog in the coming week.

Pax vobiscum.

Enjoy your weekend.

Blessed be.

From this week onward I’m going to begin the process to make my other blog, shazzalive.com, active.

I’m in two minds about this: Firstly I was going to get shazzalive going full-tilt and eventually abandon this blog. I came to this decision after much contemplation, mainly for the following reasons: -

1) This blog was started along with the very start my blogging career, such that it is. – In fact, forget the word “career”; this blog was started along with the very start of my blogging. As I explained in the post I made on Wednesday; “Heads-Up on the Future of This Blog: Public Newsletter”, there has been a lot of major editing going on – possibly within files that should never have been edited by a newbie to php and blogging – and a lot of boobs have been made doing so: Not all of these boobs appear to have been satisfactorily remedied; therefore errors remain: Such as the “@@@marker@@@ @@@marker@@@” which appears on every page and post on this blog; and which I cannot yet for the life of me understand what is causing the unwanted text to appear.

2) Because I was so unbelievably green when I started out I chose probably the worst theme I could have chosen for the purpose. – That was the arty-farty part of me over-ruling the technical logical side of me: Yes I customised the hell out of it – in the most ill-informed manner, and almost ruined the entire blog in the process at times. Over an entire year’s work and experimentation has eventually produced a somewhat satisfactory result. – I hope: But the underlying php structure of the theme has hardly been changed at all: It’s much the same as it always was; just now mutton dressed as lamb, and still basically crap. (I don’t mean to offend the theme’s original writers here: If I were doing a personal blog on what make-up I wear every day then it would have been ideal. – But for a blog that was intended to be commercial and informative it was crap. – OK I’ll rephrase that: My choice of theme for the purpose was crap.) I’m still using the same theme. Why don’t I change it? Because this theme is constructed a little differently from others to some extent; and the amount of work I’d have to do having changed themes would be colossal. In the meantime my readers will be wondering why it looks worse than it did; if such were possible.

I made the decision to slowly abandon this blog and get shazzalive running. Initially I also made some grandiose plans of transferring all the articles that were worth anything over to shazzalive.com too : I announced what I was going to do; but when I started it I realised that it was going to be one heck of a load of work to undertake.

So for an update on the latest developments: I am still seriously intending to make shazzalive.com my new active blog; but I’m not going to doom this blog yet. It will slowly become inactive and a reference-source only; but it’s not going to disappear completely or be stripped of its content.

Shazzalive.com needs a lot of work done on it yet before it’s ready to start taking newly-created content: I don’t intend to make any of the major gaffes I’ve made first time around: This time; if I’m building an online premises, I’m going to build it solidly and safely before I start using it for business and/or accommodation.

I’m still not 100% sure of exactly what I’m going to do; but I’ll scrub round it and/or make it up as I go along no doubt. (I did that last time; but this time around I have a lot more idea of what I’m doing; plus I have the expert tuition of David Risley in his Blog Masters Club.) I’ll report anything major that happens and/or is going to happen.

Moving on; and the week has seen the affirmation of MicroHoo: The new Microsoft/Yahoo partnership that’s been on the table for over a year by all accounts, and which intends to put Google into second place. Whether or not it will do so remains to be seen: I have my doubts, but I’m not a prophet.

On kkomp.com, since the last official newsletter we have 4 posts including my impromptu midweek newsletter.

These are, in no particular order: -

How to Install/Change a Hard-Drive

A fairly easy subject, unless you happen to be a newbie to computer building/repair; however not the easiest or quickest of posts to write, as the subject matter had to deal with fitting both IDE (PATA) and SATA drives. SATA is pretty much a doddle; while PATA drives had to mention the jumper settings; which was the major part of the text.

Is It Worth The Risk of Running Pirated Software?

Believe me; you do not want to run pirated software if you can help it, and if you can’t help it then you’re either tight, insane, or bankrupt. – I kid you not; it’s more trouble than it’s worth, which isn’t a lot, and it plays havoc with your machine.

Heads-Up on the Future of This Blog

…Was the unofficial, or at least unscheduled newsletter, where I announced all of my plans for this blog, before rethinking them.

How to Adjust the Size of Your Paging File in Windows XP

- Gives some good advice and how-to, about, would you believe, adjusting the size of your paging file in Windows XP; should you wish to do so.

Decisions decisions. The coming weekend will be a busy one for me no doubt. If I go at it hard enough I might well get ahead of schedule. Therefore yet once again I provide friction for my konk by applying my nose to the grindstone yet again.

For your part enjoy the weekend and the coming week, whether you should be coming or going – And I shall endeavour to provide more facts and advice to titillate your ever raging thirst for knowledge.

  Namaste’

Err – namaste’ translates as “I bow to you”, not “I worship you”.

- Anyway don’t let me stop you enjoying yourselves: Carry on regardless.

I really don’t mind. 

My how time flies: The summer seems almost over already! Only a few weeks to go and it’ll be Autumn (Fall in the USA.).

Windows 7 is officially launching on 22nd October don’t forget. If you’re in the UK then you can order your copy at a large discount currently. As it says; quantities are limited, so order your copy today if you haven’t already done so. Time is running out.

I ordered mine from Staples and they had the nerve to charge me an extra £1.xx as it was my first online order from them. – ‘Cheeky f—ers! – ‘You see why I’m so cynical about British business: (Yes I know it’s the British arm of a multinational.) They’re generally out to profit any way they can at the customer’s expense, regardless. If they’d have said that they were going to levy a fee because it was my first online order from them I’d have gone elsewhere: I should have stuck with my gut instinct and ordered from ebuyer, who I buy from rather regularly anyway. As it was they either didn’t tell me about this, or they hid it somewhere in some tiny print on an obscure page.

Despite my cynicism with regard to British businesses, I have found one British business that appears to be rather ethical as far as I can tell. Their name is Daily and they’re a web-hosting company. Read all about them here.

While I was examining a number of companies earlier; some multinational, I took a look at dabs.com: Now usually I have my typical suppliers and I don’t go outside of my favoured supplier clique as a rule. Dabs.com, however, made me look twice, and some of their deals were so good that I even included them on my regular supplier list. Take a look for yourself. – Treat yourself to that new piece of hardware or peripheral that you’ve been meaning to get for so long why not?

You’ll now notice that the logo in the header has been redesigned; which can only be good: The old one was too big and too brightly-coloured; which distracted from the blog’s content.

What other goodies have I produced this last week? Ah yes: Yesterday I showed you how to get all your media files played by Windows Media Player 11. I’ve come up against this several times in the past where one of my customers has phoned up in desperation having just added Nero to find that most of their media files are now opening in Nero Media Player and half of them won’t play. The fix is very simple, and is in the article: -

Claim Back Files Hijacked by Other Media Players

Next some more electronics: I’m not going into details here. Read the article and see for yourself: –

The Dual Balanced Power Supply

That was fairly short and sweet. – Having said that; 4 articles a week, plus a newsletter, is my normal output. It just happened that 2 of the articles were advertising articles this time.

On that theme; I believe that I stated this in a membership-list mailing already. – But I’ll go for it again in a public article, namely this one: I’m thinking of adding podcasts to some of the longer articles, so that they can be listened to as well as read. I need to know if it’s worth my doing so: I don’t want to create podcasts that nobody listens to. Would people please give me feedback on this as to whether they’d like me to include a downloadable audio file or not. Leave a comment in the comments section below. If I get a decent amount of generally positive feedback I’ll certainly consider doing so.

I have a lot of things to get done right now; so I can’t really keep writing any longer. (I have to find and edit pictures from my library for this article too, before adding and positioning them.) Do have a great weekend, and stay tuned during the coming week for more articles from kkomp.com.

Blessings.

Shazza. x

The time for another newsletter, Friday, has come round again; and as a result of the lack of created content over the past week there’s not a lot content-wise to report on. – So I’m not even going to bother listing and linking the two articles I’ve put out this last week. If you want to see them then look them up on the Blog Contents page.

My primary focus this last week has been on de-cluttering the appearance of the blog: The first thing to go was a number of unimportant items on the Welcome page, including the comments, (Comments on a Welcome page eh? I know I was doing things a bit radically; but this was over the top.) followed by the background design of all pages and posts: Whilst the fancy artwork featuring a distorted block-diagram was rather eye-catching, it was that in its very nature that distracted the readers’ attention from the main content. – And when their eye did eventually attempt to wander back to the main text again, their vision encountered another distracting plethora of unimportant widgets and objects.

The solution was, therefore, to some extent obvious: That being lose the junk; which turned out to be a bigger operation than at first anticipated. The background was fairly easy: I simply edited the background .png image in my theme’s images folder using Paint.net. – No problem there. Much of the text on the pages themselves was encapsulated in a double-border within a table. The function of the table is to prevent overflow of text into areas of the screen where it’s not wanted, as well as to divide up the page and precisely position images and text-blocks. – So the table(s) stayed, but the borders had to go. This was to be accomplished by changing a figure 1 to a 0 in a number of locations: In itself an extremely simple operation. – It was a matter of tracking down all the 1s that needed to be changed to 0s that was the hardest part. Perhaps I still haven’t done this with all of them, and missed a few; but for the main part everything appears to be in order.

The result so far seems to be good: Philip Langford, commenting from Facebook, said “It’s looking a lot cleaner and easier to read.” – So the changes appear to be having a positive influence.

Onto another note; David Risley’s Blog Masters course, which I’ve been promoting recently as those on my mailing list will no doubt be aware, has now closed its doors for at least the rest of this year (2009). The take-up rate for this first run was pretty reasonable to say the least, and I can proudly claim that I, as a member, am one of hundreds of bloggers committed to taking their blog to the next level and beyond; with the goal of creating a full time income-stream from it and becoming a problogger.

You may be asking: “What does this mean for me as a reader and devoted follower? Are you going to attempt to fleece me with multiple internet-marketing campaigns advertising amateur-ish products that have no real value just for the sake of making a fast buck?”

Let me reassure you that I’ll not be fleecing anyone: Anything advertised on this blog in the future will have been personally vetted by myself for quality, reliability, and for providing positive solid benefit to my readers and/or customers. Another thing is that there’s no obligation on you, as a reader or devoted follower, to purchase anything that you don’t feel entirely happy with, having clicked on the ad and read the sales letter.

You may also be thinking “I suppose that, in the light of the above, you’ll stop creating valuable free quality content and put a price on everything.”

Quite the opposite in fact: I’ll probably be providing even more valuable free quality content which will cost absolutely nothing to my readers. In addition to that I also invite you readers to send in your own articles. I’ll even reward anyone whose article I publish with the sum of $5USD or thereabouts. All I ask is that you send the content in a file with a .htm or .html extension. You can attach this to an email which you can send using the “Contact Shazza by email – Click here” link in the footer of every page and post on this blog. Include the article, and separately to that a brief 10-lines-or-less “about the author” piece, plus your PayPal email so that I can send you the $5 if I publish your work.

Back to the subject at hand: Yes I do want to make money, obviously; who doesn’t? – So of course I want you to buy my products advertised herein: But only if you’re happy doing so. Yes there will be more adverts appearing on this blog. Yes there will be a lot more offers and promotions… But no there won’t be any loss of quality or value to you as a casual reader.

At some point in the future I intend to open up a members only section of this blog; a section which will contain even more value and be of greater benefit to my readers. This will not be free however: I can’t just place everything from pearls to diamonds, precious rubys and emeralds, at your feet and say “Take it; it’s yours.” I’m already sharing a lot of valuable information for free and will continue to do so.

– But there is a limit on how far I can go before I say “Hey wait a minute: This is extremely valuable and worth one heck of a lot. I can’t just throw this out onto the net for anyone to use as they see fit at any time they choose to do so.”

OK, enough on that for the time being.

I have an offer currently running which gives you the chance to purchase not only a listing of free software that can replace many of the paid-for products which companies such as Adobe and Microsoft would charge an arm and a leg for, but also I’m adding my “Improve Your Existing Box” eBook, previously on sale for $7.99USD, as an extra for a total price of just $7.00USD. If you want to know more then do click this link that’ll take you straight to the sales letter page.

Rabbit rabbit rabbit. – I think I’ve covered as much as time allows me to do right now. It just remains for me to wish you a happy and prosperous weekend. Enjoy.

Kind Regards

Sharron. x

Hi Everyone.

This week I’ve changed things about a bit with regard to the appearance of this blog. Basically I’ve decluttered the theme by removing the distracting artwork at the sides of the screen and replacing it with a slightly-pink-tinted plain background. I also changed the overall background colour from that slightly-over-intensive pinky colour to white. To remove the resultant overall blandness of the site I added a recurring light violet-pastel-coloured oval, which is visible but hardly noticeable, to the centre column.

I redesigned the header; putting the RSS link at the very top of the page, raising the menu-bar up above the logo-banner, and moving the advertising-space from the header into the page-body, further down. This will hopefully improve the “too-much-going on” feel of the blog.

In addition I further decluttered the Welcome page by removing some of the junk that had built up over the last few months, including the derogatory negative comments of Syphilis Syndrone (posting as “Sarah Palin”), which add absolutely nothing whatsoever of value to anything and were just wasting space.

Do you find the new design elements described above easier on the eye and less distracting? I’d be interested to hear your comments on this.

Moving on; and on Monday I came up with some more gumph on Microsoft’s war with the EU over windows: -

EU’s Latest Antitrust-Stab at Microsoft: Furthermore –

Tuesday had me giving you a guide to the minimum spec.s to look for or build into a new computer, with the future in mind: -

What Are the Minimum Specs Required for a Desktop Computer?

For the newbie, and those who need to know as a one off; a step-by-step pictorial guide on how to do the following: -

How to Find and/or Change Your Computer’s Name in XP

I did an article, back in April, about the basics of the extremely common (If you did but know it.) process of changing AC current into DC. Conversely, this week I did an article on the less-common but nevertheless widely-used and equally-useful process of changing DC current to AC: -

How to Change Direct Current into Alternating Current

Lastly, there are still so many self-wired UK 13 Amp plugs in homes across the country, even to this day; many of which are so badly wired by total first-timers that they’re rather dangerous. I transposed my original papers on the subject from my City & Guilds college course in electronics as an article on how to do it properly and safely: -

How to Wire a UK 13 Amp Mains Plug

I hope that you enjoy those articles.

Lastly, as a note for WordPress self-hosted blog users, I’ll remind you that WordPress 2.8.1 is now out and ready for you to use. It resolves a number of issues found in 2.8. For more information on this, click here.

That’s about it for now. I hope you have a generally relaxing and profitable weekend. Look after yourselves.

Shazza.

We start this newsletter with a favourite subject of Brits: The weather. – And has it been a scorcher in the UK this week! Record temperatures, the like of which we haven’t seen since 2006; bringing back memories for me of sitting in that baking college classroom in front of a computer, sweltering hot with my blouse soaking wet from perspiration. Fortunately that blistering heat has moved into central Europe, and England has returned to average temperatures or just above for the time of year.

It’s with this hot weather in mind that I wrote the following article: -

Keep A Cool Box – Let It Breathe

I imagined computers left running 24/7 in hot airless rooms while their owner was out.

If only solid-state drives were cheaper and had more data-storage capacity: If that were the case I’d never use a standard spinning-platter disc again. I wrote an article about solid-state drives: –

About Solid State Drives

If you’ve not enrolled on the Become A Blogger course then you’ve probably missed your chance by the time you read this. – However, if this is the case then there’s always a chance of being first in the queue next time round; so do click on the link anyway: You’ll find that the 10 free videos are still available, plus you can also register your interest in joining up next time.

Become A Blogger Admission Window: Only 5 Days

There is, however, another course in the offing: David Risley’s Blog Masters Club will be launching on the 7th July 2009: Whilst this course is a little more advanced than Become A Blogger, in that it assumes, I believe, that you already have a blog set up and running; it will nevertheless enhance your blogging efforts, and teach you things that will give you the ability to blow your blog’s earning potential sky-high.

David is one of my long-term online associates whom I have a lot of respect for. I know for a fact that he’s been compiling this course and getting it ready to run pretty much full-time for well over 6 months. – That tells you that this is no rush-job from David; and based upon the success of the sensational 3-Day-Money course, I know that this will not only be a winner in itself, but will also put you onto a winner if you enrol in it.

One thing I hope is that you’re not running Windows 7 beta software on the computer you’re reading this on. If you are then prepare to watch it automatically shut down before your eyes at some point within the next two hours. Also if you want to get a free copy of Windows 7 RC you’d better be quick, as there are only around 6 weeks left for you to do so: -

Windows 7 Release Candidate Program Nears the End of the Line

Microsoft are naughty: They’ve strategically positioned an advert aimed at the UK consumer on their website in order to increase the sales numbers for Vista. Whatever you do don’t buy Vista: Wait until 15th July and you can order Windows 7 for £50: -

Microsoft and the Massive 7 UK Con

On rare occasions the event of Windows XP crashing as it boots is due to hardware failure. This part of the series looks at the death of a motherboard: -

Something to Try if Windows XP Crashes During Boot – Part 13

That’s it for this newsletter. If you missed any of the week’s articles then they’re all linked from here as you can see. If you didn’t or couldn’t make it for Become A Blogger then I do seriously suggest that you take a look at Blog Masters Club by clicking the link above.

Enjoy the weekend.

Namaste’

Sharron Field

Author and Creator of kkomp.com

Hello, and welcome to another newsletter here on kkomp.com. In the last week I’ve produced some pretty good articles; although I say so myself. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet I suggest that you click some links in the list below and have a look at anything that takes your fancy for a short to medium read: -

WordPress 2.8 Baker

The above post was more of a link than anything else. Quite obviously WP 2.8 has already been released, and it’s most likely that most WordPress-user-bloggers have already upgraded, even by the time the article was written,and sampled it for themselves. The thing is that not everyone will be aware of exactly what’s been changed straight away, unless it’s staring them straight in the face. – Therefore I thought it a good idea to do a little piece about it and link to the WordPress blog for further details; even if only to somewhat enhance the traffic to the WordPress blog as a thank you.

Something that carries a lot more weight is a computer’s PSU. It supplies quite a vast amount of wattage at low regulated voltages for its size. Only 30 years or so before it was invented and prototyped you’d have been looking at a box at least twice the size of your computer, if not bigger, just to perform the same function and supply the same output. That huge box would have also probably heated your entire house as a side product.

Due to significant advantages in manufacturing technology since then, a lot of miniaturisation has been made possible through component integration and also further advances in technology. Voltage regulators no longer require a set of differential amplifiers built from individual large aluminium-canned power-transistors. (2N3055 keeps appearing in my mind’s eye.) These days the differential amplifiers, multiple-output-stages, everything, is all integrated into a single hi-current regulator package about the size of a matchbox or thereabouts, making the unit cheaper, saving resources, producing less in the way of heat and outputting more in the way of power.

-But, despite higher tolerances and vastly better performance, things still fail eventually: Nothing lasts forever. – When a computer power supply fails the result can be quite catastrophic in some cases; with damage occurring to other sensitive CMOS-based parts.

If you know and understand the warning signs of impending PSU-failure then you can avoid this scenario happening in the case of your machine: Saving you you time, money, and resources. This article will give you some ideas about what to look for: -

‘Dodgy PSU? Replace it Before it Damages Anything Else

Perhaps I’m a bit intolerant, or maybe I just don’t have a high-threshold when it comes to the thoughtless acts of others. – Now when people are thoughtless towards others then that’s just plain wrong, and those people need an attitude adjustment along with having their brain switched on and their thought-processes enhanced in my opinion. However, when a person’s thoughtless actions are detrimental to themselves and/or to the company that they work for, then the expression “thoughtless” takes on an entire new meaning: Brain-dead might be a better description?

OK maybe that’s a bit harsh. I have to take into account that not everybody’s a geeky-type; but it should come as no surprise to anybody that if a computer remembers their data it must be stored somewhere. – When the power’s switched off and switched back on it still remembers the data that’s been inputted into it, so  it must be filed somewhere inside the computer; it’s just obvious logic.

- So when someone puts their old computer in a public place for disposal because they don’t want to use the dinosaur any more, you’d think that they’d remove their sensitive personal data from it wouldn’t you? …But no; many times people don’t bother: They just trust to luck or have too much faith in human nature and hand their identities over to all and sundry to do as they wish with. Likewise when someone sells their old hard-drive on eBay. – Do they bother to clean their data off of it? Do they even attempt to conceal it? In my experience not always, no. If I was a criminal I could now be operating under at least two identities other than my own and have some sort of racket going on with at least one business because of this. – All without even trying!

Read this article: -

Don’t Leave Sensitive Data on Your Old Hard-Drive

The following post was one that I pushed out in a bit of a hurry as an extra article, firstly to explain how I seemingly managed to miss the Summer Solstice; or at least I certainly missed posting about it, and secondly to warn about an unpatched security hole that Microsoft don’t appear to be that bothered about; even though exploit code has been written and released to the wild with regard to it.

Extra: Summer Solstice + Advisory

Is it Worth Running a RAID Array?

Above is a brief article in which I basically share my opinion, for what it’s worth, on the idea of using RAID on servers and also on workstations.

OH WOW! You Simply MUST See This: Is a post that, if I told you was an advert, might put you off reading it. – So what I did was give it an heir of mystery and allow those who are curious enough to drift towards it to do so. It’s not just any old advert though: Firstly, as my regulars will know by now, I don’t advertise crap on this blog. Secondly even I’m excited about this product, and I’m living proof that it’s worth getting excited about as I’m already part of it as a customer who’s benefitting greatly from the quality information-input from it.

In further marketing language; don’t just take my word for it: Read this: -

I’m just about to link you to a video that shows you, step-by-step, how to optimize your YouTube videos to help you drive an insane amount of traffic back to your website.Gideon, the guy who is not only a half of the Become A Blogger course that this article advertises, but who also created the video, tells me that he tried these exact same strategies on one of his own YouTube channels, and got like 67,400 views in just 8 weeks! At first I thought he was just kidding me but then I saw his channel, and my jaw dropped at the
results (He actually shows the same channel inside the video).

- So, yeah… if you want to get more traffic from YouTube, you’ll like this stuff…
http://www.becomeablogger.com/go.php?offer=kkomp&pid=4&u=http://www.becomeablogger.com/blog/youtube-x-factor/

But that’s only a part of it: Read the actual blog post itself for more links, on to an instructional video that actually features in the Become A Blogger course. – At absolutely no cost to yourself. – and another to a page where you can get another 10 instructional videos to do with the course.

Now that’s value in just the advertising alone…

Wednesday 24th June 2009 was this blog’s official first birthday: -

Happy Birthday Beyond

Lastly; when Microsoft launch Windows 7 on October 22nd 2009, they’ll be charging more for the Professional and Enterprise versions that have XP Mode included with them. – But why should you pay Microsoft more for the pleasure when there’s a way to scrub round it using free software? Read this article to find out how you could save yourself a few dollars more: -

How to Avoid Paying Extra for XP Mode(?)

That about sums up the week that was here on kkomp.com/Beyond since the last newsletter. Enjoy your weekend. ‘Next publication is scheduled for Monday; but you never can tell; I might get the bug like I did last weekend and publish something impromptu before then, and maybe I might not – ?

Namaste’

Peace.

In today’s Newsletter I have two major things to announce: -

First is this blog’s first Birthday; which will be on 24th June 2009: the day before the next newsletter is scheduled to be published. This blog has almost made it through the first year; and I’ve learned a lot… But more on that in the Birthday post that’ll be published on the day.

The second, and most important thing I wanted to tell you about, is meant, in a way, to be a secret right at this moment in time. – But I’ve decided to give you advanced knowledge of it, so that you’ll be prepared when it happens:

Now for those of you who have just started, or are thinking of starting, your own blog, there is an amazing course which I myself have just been on. It’s a joint venture by two very prominent internet entrepreneurs; namely Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick. – Both from Australia.

Don’t go tying me kangaroo down just yet, – because this course, this time round, isn’t starting just yet. Oh no; you’ll have to wait until next week for the sign-up window. You see, last time the course launched, the take-up rate was so phenomenal that many expectant people had to be turned away and queued for the next launch, simply because the servers used in distributing the course material would have been unable to cope with the demand. – The load that would have been put on them had any more people joined.

As a result there is now a queue of people already waiting to join the program who have been promised a place; and therefore places are limited as it is, even before the launch starts. That leaves Yaro and Gideon with the dilemma of how to avoid the same type of rush this time round, and the best way of avoiding disappointing people again.

They have come up with a solution: -

Last time round the signup window, in terms of time, was fairly large, and the Becomeablogger course was well advertised on a number of prominent sites for a few weeks. People umm-ed and arr-ed, as they do, for a while; then they all suddenly rushed at the chance at the last minute. – Result: A crush at the turnstile, and many people didn’t get in. This time the number of available places are even more limited due to the waiting queues that have been waiting pretty much all year so far to get in and skyrocket their blog’s popularity, and therefore their chances of generating a proper income from it.

Whoever reads this newsletter, however, has a definite advantage: That of advanced notification, so that they can strike while the iron’s hot and get in there to reserve their place before all the remaining vacancies run out.

So when’s it all happening? What is the crucial time to strike?

Well; the Roadmap to Become a Blogger report is scheduled to be re-released on the 23rd June; but the critical time period, the sign-up window, starts on June 29th and ends on July 3rd. – That’s only allowing a 5-day window to join. – Which means places could be more limited, even, than I think.

Quite obviously you don’t want to miss out on this chance to advance your blog by learning the ways of the blogging – masters. I assume that you’ll want to try everything to get your blog as highly rated as you can, generate a decent amount of traffic, and start earning a profit from it in financial terms. – So by my publishing this advanced disclosure, and also by you reading my article, you’ve put yourself in with a significantly higher chance of being able to do so than many others who didn’t bother to read this, or haven’t heard of kkomp.com and/or “Beyond”.

What I’m going to do, then, is to start advertising in banner form in the page header on almost every page of this blog as soon as the sign-up window opens. The advert will be in place of the 3-Day-Money ad, so keep your eyes peeled for it; because it’ll only be there for 5 days. Even if I am a bit slow to take it down; the official window is only 5 days anyway; so it may transpire that even if you click late you could well be out of luck.

So please do keep your eyes on the top of most of the pages and posts on this blog; otherwise you’ll end up missing out on a course that is so packed with valuable information that I’ve only had time thus far to implement about a half of it all. I personally guarantee that you’ll be enthralled with it all; but only if you apply what you learn.

…Anyway; having covered that, it’s time for the more mundane matters; such as a review of the week here on kkomp.com. – But don’t stop reading just yet: There’s more news of an exciting course which is starting soon further down the page.

Monday. I posted about the sudden drop in the growth of Twitter’s traffic: It had to end sometime; but it appears to have tailed off rather abruptly: -

Twitter’s Recent Traffic Growth Begins to Flatline

Tuesday saw the publishing of another computer-help article: -

How to Recover from a Dying Hard-Drive

On Wednesday I published two differing articles: One being another hardware-related article on the theme of online business: -

Coping With Power Outages. – Maintaining Productivity.

The other being a minor news article dealing with Microsoft’s decision re. IE8 and Windows 7 in Europe: -

Europe Doesn’t Want IE8?

Thursday saw a rather quick post regarding eBay: –
 The Future For eBay

I decided to do this as I saw the video on YouTube earlier and liked the song.

Those are the 5 posts since the last Newsletter.

Don’t forget, if you want to join in on a sensationally-informative course that could lead to your making a considerable income from blogging, to keep your eyes open for the header advert to change. As I said; this’ll be happening on the 29th June 2009, but the sign-up window will only be open for 5 days due to the expected numbers showing an interest, combined with those already queued to join up this time round.

Also happening soon, although I haven’t received final details about it yet, is another course from another prominent internet entrepreneur called David Risley. – David is the man behind the 3-Day-Money course that is currently advertised in the header banner on almost every page and post. (If you haven’t yet seen it then you are seriously missing out!)

You may have noticed the following advertisment on my Welcome page: -

This course may be a little bit more advanced than Gideon and Yaro’s course, and then again it might not: To tell the truth I haven’t yet seen it. I believe that this course is so powerful that nobody gets a pre-launch viewing this time. I may indeed be wrong, but it appears this course is being carefully shielded until the light turns green and it’s released to the wild for customers to purchase.

…Yes it really does cost more than a coffee, and yes it will have you earning more than the cost of a coffee also. This is going to be a powerful make money online course. Interested? I believe there’s a free report somewhere behind the advert, as well as a free video in which David will tell you more about it. It’s got to be worth at least a click, don’t you agree? – And no I don’t get paid-per-click incidentally; so it makes no difference to my finances whether 1 or 1 million people click it; it’s just that you could miss out if you don’t do so.

And finally… Finally that’s it for this week. There is a chance I might post something this weekend if I feel like doing so. I might even post something else later today. – But I prefer to take it easy at weekends, unless I’m doing something like building a computer or similar. Are you doing anything special this weekend? You might like to tell us about it if so…

Have a great weekend.

Blessed Be.

>

Normally I begin a newsletter by rattling on about the British weather: That’s just an English thing, as our weather is so changeable that on rare occasions we can have literally all four seasons in one day. If you look at that from a positive note; that’s not bad value: Spring, Summer, Autumn (Fall), and Winter – All in 24 hours.

A couple of the posts that I’ve made this last week also give you similarly good value: -

  WordPress on Crack

This post was a brief introduction to the product called “WordPress on Crack”. – A course in which you can learn to write your own WordPress plugins in php. I found this a bit difficult to write in a way, as I’m certainly no php expert; which is why I simply introduced the subject matter and sent the reader to a page where the main vendor describes their course.

This course is a bit similar to the British weather, in that you get not only the specified course itself, but also 4 complimentary bonus products in one package. – Once again, that’s not bad value at all.

The next article I wanted to talk about is a review of a course by problogger and internet entrepreneur David Risley: -

3-Day Money – Review

In a matter of just 72 hours you can learn powerful tried and tested marketing secrets, used by David Risley himself to generate a six-figure income, all for much less than a six-figure sum. I have purchased and studied this course myself: It is amazing value for money; but be prepared to spend a while downloading it, as there’s a lot of materials packed into it.

Moving on…

Apple, seemingly minus Steve Jobs (Jobsweh), appear to be at it again; in the United States at least: -

Apple Con Their Customers Again

This has browned off a number of geeky US people, and no doubt they’ll try something similar over here in the UK too.

That’s not the only thing that’s got my goat this week though. (Ooh I am a grumpy bitch at times. )

Something’s Bugging Me…

How on earth can this be? The plot thickens – Like my head.

- And finally it’s back to Apple again: -

Mac OS X Has A Severe Java Vulnerability: Not Yet Patched

I believe, from reports that I’ve heard, that Microsoft have at last patched the Mac version of PowerPoint; but as far as I am aware, this vulnerability still remains, and this is solely up to Apple to sort out.

There’s the usual Friday review of the reviews and posts for the week.

This is Sharron Field, for kkomp.com, wishing you, as usual, a great weekend.

Keep reading this blog for more revelations and facts about the technical world in which we live; geeks and non-geeks alike.

Namaste’

Another weekend looms; and right on cue the British weather is breaking down. Late May in the south of the UK had weather befitting late June/early July. At times it was as warm as Florida in the US. Good things don’t last forever, though, and a change of wind direction is bringing air down from the arctic; and as a result temperatures are set to plummet to below the average for the time of year, as the skies become overcast and a precipitation begins. (It’s dry as a bone outside though, so the gardens could do with it.)

A number of developments have taken place this week. This isn’t really a news-blog though, so I’ve not made too much of a big deal over anything. – In fact I’ve only touched on two related issues.

This month (June 2009) sees this blog’s first birthday. What started as an event comparable to the waste products of an abortion has, I feel, come on in leaps and bounds; particularly this year. This advancement is partly due to advice, free and paid-for, from pro-bloggers and experienced marketers who’ve been there, done it, got the T-shirt.

Particular thanks go to David Risley, who, as well as just receiving his BBB Accreditation this week, has not only provided a huge amount of free publicly-available material, containing hints and tips for bloggers and marketers; but has also interacted with me to a small extent individually, which has assisted me in making the necessary progress to this point.

On that note; I do seriously encourage everyone who is getting into internet marketing in whatever way to purchase David Risley’s “3-Day-Money” course. I can honestly say that it’s a gem, and it’s well worth the fee: It contains hours of video tuition, and the content is also in text-format and podcast-format too.

There’s a lot more in the pipeline from David Risley; coming soon. If you’d like to know more and be notified when new product is released from this six-figure-blogger entrepreneur and also gain access to a free report, just click here to discover more.

- On with the show. – The show must go on…

On this blog since the last newsletter: -

Definitely, to my mind, the headline news this week is that Microsoft have announced a solid launch-date for Windows Seven:

*Breaking News: Microsoft To Launch Windows Seven on 22nd October 2009

Everyone has to start somewhere; and there are still people using a computer for the first time even today. Just for the benefit of such people I wrote a short article about the ethernet port: -

The Ethernet Port – A Newbie’s Guide

This last week I’ve produced a four-part series dealing with how to handle boot issues with Windows XP: -

Something To Try If Windows XP Crashes During Boot – Part 1

Something To Try If Windows XP Crashes During Boot – Part 2

Something To Try If Windows XP Crashes During Boot – Part 3

Something To Try If Windows XP Crashes During Boot – Part 4

Windows Vista has recently had another Service Pack produced for it; To save time downloading it repeatedly if you need to install  it more than once I produced a short guide on how to make your own personal Vista SP2 CD: -

How To Create A Windows Vista Service Pack 2 DVD

Next week heralds the arrival of Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday. This Patch Tuesday promises to have a number of fixes packed into it. However, Microsoft have seen fit to ignore a patch for a version of a piece of their office software for running on a Mac: –

Patch Tuesday is Coming – But Macs May Remain Unpatched

- And that pretty much wraps it all up.

Whatever you’re doing this weekend; do it well and get the most out of it.

Best wishes and bright blessings.

Shazza.

I found a “geek-quiz” on Facebook. ‘About time they did one. Despite getting a good score, I was disappointed that the quiz mainly tests the subject’s recollection of the past in terms of computer technology, rather than their current real computer literacy as its title suggests.

I was rather disillusioned by that, and unimpressed by the standard of the questions. Beggars can’t be choosers though; so it was at least nice to see a technology-related quiz on the social-network.

I also beat the Chess Titans program in Windows Seven with a checkmate the other day; so I see fit to boast about it here too: -

Something else that’s getting my goat is that I appear to be attracting attention lately in ways that I’m not fond of: It appears that every time I go out in the nice weather some male imbecile hollers something unintelligible out of a car window at me. I’m aware that it’s pertaining to the way I dress, coupled with the fact that I’m not small and tend to be noticed. On top of that I have my sun-sign placed in the first house on my birth-chart. Those with such a placement tend to stand out more and have a stronger physical presence than others.

But I like to look nice, and in the hot weather when the sun’s out I like to wear something cool and nice-looking. I don’t wear anything particularly revealing, just pretty and pastel-coloured or white normally.

Unfortunately the intellect of the average young (Teens to mid 20’s) UK male appears to be plummeting in recent years, and they’re becoming very uncouth. I really don’t mind being noticed at all, but when some slobbering half-cut thug with their eyes on stalks shouts something barely intelligible in a strong west-country accent from a passing car, I usually just ignore it. There’s no chance to ask the idiot to repeat it; not that I’d be particularly interested anyway, and unless I scream it loudly and make a spectacle of myself, there’s no chance to tell them that I don’t speak dosser-ese either. If I want to be adored by apes then I’ll go to the zoo.

What tit-bits (Did I just say that?) of information have I produced since the last newsletter for your edification? Only a couple in all honesty. I’ve been working on the site itself. You may notice that I’ve created more pages, listing articles in unofficial categories for the reader’s easy reference. These lists are created manually for the time being; but I’ll eventually write a php script to automatically display the content in the relevant lists.

The recent articles, in reverse order, are: -

Preview Links With CoolPreviews ((FireFox & IE6) Add-on)(Free Software)

A most valuable piece of software for free that allows you to view the target of a hyperlink without actually clicking on it.

I also wrote a short article on the easiest way to make yourself an SP3 disk for Windows XP: -

How To Create An XP Service Pack 3 Disc

… And that’s all this time round.

I’m going to start to produce a bit less free content from now onwards, as I feel that I now have a good enough base to build upon. – However new articles of free content, as well as paid-for content no doubt, will still continue to be produced on a regular basis.

Enjoy the weekend.

Um… Ah yes…The newsletter. OMG I almost forgot. – That’ll teach me not to play chess on a Friday night.

Yes; I’ve been concentrating very hard during a game of chess with my 64-bit box: 3 cores and 8GB RAM wasn’t enough to beat me though. (I hardly ever play chess normally; but after drawing with the machine previously I wanted a rematch.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkomp/3554835219/ <<gloat.>>

- As a result of that my schedule’s gone to pot, (If only…) and I neglected the usual newsletter.

Most girls are out on a Friday night having fun / socialising / going wild / whatever. Me: I prefer to stay in and have fun: It’s easier on the purse, there’s no chance of bumping into fuckwits, and it develops my mind. – Just because I missed Mensa by a whisker doesn’t mean that I’m giving up. – No by Jove: This geek-girl is doing it large with non-narcotic mind-expansion.

OK let’s have a ganders at what’s been going down shall we?

On Monday, despite my blog nearly vanishing from the face of cyberspace due to a brief foray into draconian mentality by my hosting company combined with the annexed incognito state of a certain backroom scripting-server that they decided to transfer my data to; I nevertheless managed, by some miracle, to publish an article which might have the result of saving some of you some desk-space:

How A KVM Switch Can Save You Some Physical Space

On Tuesday the blog all but vanished completely amidst a problem with Fasthost’s data-pipe or some such similar fiasco. Being still on a scripting server deep within the bowels of their equivalent of cyber-Hades, this blog went to the lowest priority possible and wouldn’t even connect at times. I hit the roof and went ballistic, not helped by the fact that I had to spend what seemed like an eternity listening to crappy music at 10 pence a minute before “Slowhosts” as I came to call them, answered the phone.

I ended up getting nowhere as expected, and fired off a quick email to the tune of ‘Get your finger out. I don’t pay you to have problems; I pay you to host my blog so that people can connect to it and read it.’

Eventually I got so hacked off that I went to go-daddy.com and put in for a transfer to them from Slowhosts:

kkomp.com Will be Transferring Hosting to go-daddy.com

I published the above article on this blog the following day as a rewrite of the post I published on shazzalive.co.uk / shazzalive.com just after I blew my top over the whole farcical situation.

Well I got all the “paperwork” on Monday from go-daddy.com, but I’ve heard nothing whatsoever from them since, so I have no idea whether the transfer’s going ahead or not currently.

Wednesday, and during the day, to the credit of my elation, the blog reappeared. – Therefore I posted:

When Can We Expect Windows 7 To Be Released?

- Having gathered a number of snippets of information and come to almost the same conclusion as a number of other blogger(s). – Well 1 is a number; so what’s the problem with that?

Thursday: I took a bite at the 32 / 64-bit theme and found while I was writing that I might have bitten off more than I was able to successfully masticate. Nevertheless I handled the subject to my best intent without too much great gusto; only to have it reviewed by means of a personal attack by the KGB or some other Russian fuckwit who considered himself “God’s gift”; yet had failed to even notice my gender before launching into a facade of egotistical over-inflation of a tiny phallic organ; seemingly doubling as a store for his intelligence, or what there was of it.

It’s Time for The 64-Bit Revolution

As you may note; that got my goat, (I’m a poet but I don’t know it.) and I went straight into verbal counterattack mode with a number of put-downs; despite my brain not having fully booted-up by that time. Having said MS-dos-vidanya to the latest halfwit to pose as someone with a functioning brain-cell; I did my best to put him in touch with Syphilis Syndrone, my internet stalker, and moved on in the hope that the two of them might be able to converge their respective cranial messes… I mean masses, and cannibalise them into something approaching the shape and size of a miniaturised brain, should they ever meet.

The clickety-click-click of key-presses went on well into the small hours, as Windows Seven took far too long to make a backup which eventually turned out to be a fuck-up. Another article was produced, which I gave a final edit on Friday and published. – After nearly wrecking something during a graphics card and RAM upgrade on Thursday.

The Windows 7 System Repair Disk

I must say that I’m highly impressed with the overall job that the softies have done with their new creation; Windows Seven; despite the apparent inability of the Release Candidate to complete a backup successfully on at least one out of two occasions.

Finally as an afterthought; notwithstanding that I almost totally forgot about this regular newsletter, I published the following info about another useful freebie:

Back Up & Synchronise Bookmarks & Passwords With Xmarks (Free Software)

… And now having completed this newsletter to a point that at least triggers some level of satisfaction within my exasperated cranium; I conclude for the rest of the weekend as I remove the matchsticks that candidly prop my eyelids open and dream of the slumber that awaits ‘tween sheets of satin on pillows of silken weave…OMG if I start waxing lyrical I’ll have to put this post in the poetry category.

That’s it. End of… I need to get kipped before it’s time to awake. So do enjoy your weekend. Blessed Be.

Back at the end of March my hosting company, Fasthosts.co.uk, penalised me for accidentally using too many resources on the server, by moving this blog to a restricted scripting server. I thought this was a bit draconian, and I posted to that effect soon afterwards: This happened just after I had installed the Apture plugin. I removed the Apture plugin the following day, and I understood, from their response during a subsequent phone call, that they had put this blog back on the normal shared-platform server.

Today I find that I’m having problems resolving this blog’s IP, as are all other computers and servers. (This is today only in this case; every other day I’ve had no problem with access.) – So I phone the hosting company, who, after a 45-minute phone-call at 10p (About 13 cents or more US.) a minute, informed me that it seems that I was never taken off the restricted scripting server after all.

No wonder my visitor count has been fairly static recently, despite site improvements and traffic-generating tweaks etc. I can only apologise profusely to you if you’ve had problems resolving this site: If the hosting people are telling the truth that is. – I’m wondering why every day other than this one it only takes seconds to resolve this IP and with a 99/100 success-rate; whereas today it takes up to 10 minutes with a 1/3 success rate.

In all honesty it seems that this hosting company I’m with don’t appear to know their arse from their elbow. I’m seriously considering changing the hosting company for this blog as it is. If they piss me off much more I will do just that.

Since the last newsletter I’ve posted a few articles. – I wish I could remember which ones. – Since I can’t call up the contents page without an up-to-10-minute wait; if it resolves at all, I will have to now do that, rather than relying on memory and guesswork. (Honestly if this problem is still the same this time tomorrow I am changing hosting on this blog: I’ve come to the conclusion that British web-hosting is utter crap.) I’ll have a bite to eat while I try to find the contents page, and write the rest of this afterwards, considering it’s a quarter past one PM now.

(Just before I go; I think that this is all something to do with the British love of red-tape and bureaucracy: You see the chap on the phone earlier today told me that he was unable to find an official email from me requesting return of this site to the normal server; so here’s what I think happened: -

I got the email telling me that I’d been penalised for using a few too many bytes on their precious stiff-upper-lipped British what-ho-chaps servers. – Wot-wot. I phoned them and made some hoo-hah about it; (If you’re having trouble making sense of these Brit expressions then just read on regardless.) – so the person I spoke to was reasonable, checked the resources that my site was using after I claimed to have resolved the issue, and popped it back on the normal shared-platform server.

During an audit today, some weeks later; it came to the attention of a “jobsworth” technician that this blog was back on the normal server, had been authorised to be replaced, but a formal request from me by email for it to be so replaced was missing. Therefore; in true British/fascist fashion, since mine papers were not in order; the technician reported to the Server-Houser Obersturnbahnfuhrer in the scripting bunker, who in turn requested permission from the red-tape Gestapo Commandant to replace this blog on the scripting server pending further contact and official email request from myself, my having finally noticed that something was wrong, without any notification. – All this because the trail of red-tape had a tiny piece missing. (Honestly; we Brits can be such mundane tossers at times!)

- That’s what I think happened, being a renowned cynic. If it actually did happen that way then I will go utterly apeshit! – Though possibly to no avail: Watch this space.)

After 1/2 hour I managed to get an awful Blog Contents page. This is foxing ridiculous! – It’s ten times worse than it’s ever been before. Please forgive this dreadful service: I’m ringing the hosting people straight away: This is a joke.

I just spent another £3.00 phoning them, and all they’d say was to all but confirm what I suspected above, and to tell me that they had no idea what the problem was, when or if the problem would be resolved as they didn’t communicate between departments, and that they didn’t care what sort of service I was getting as I was on a scripting server – Which was my own fault as I didn’t reply to the email and join up the trail of red tape. – ‘Mad: I’m firkin furious!

Enough! I’m going to check for loose ends and if there are any then I’ll tie them up; after which I’ll be moving hosting for this blog to another hosting company over the following fortnight. Fasthosts have shot themselves in the foot when they messed with me. – Now they can stick their weapon up their own ass and pull the trigger repeatedly for all I care.

-In the meantime I managed to retrieve the last 5 post-titles: -

(I hope I’m able to post this article having written it. The standards of service of fasthosts.co uk leaves masses to be desired. I’ll do my best. They should change it to slowhosts or uselesshosts.co.uk if you ask me. They’ve made an almighty balls-up somewhere by the feel of it; and I’m certain there’s a lot that they’re not telling me. They’re being extremely and noticeably evasive; even for a bureaucratic British business. In the meantime I’ll carry on typing:)

Beware: Twitter Scammers are Active

- Was the last thing I posted to this blog. – Yesterday I may add; when everything was working well. – Watch out for scam-mongers posing as “friends” on Twitter. Just like Fasthosts all they want is your money. They don’t care about anything else.

The Twitter Bloom Booms Ever Onward

Twitter again: This one’s about the massive growth in Twitter’s traffic over the last 2 months. – Something I missed out on as far as this blog is concerned because of incompetent hosting.

The Importance of a UPS

If you’re not using a UPS to protect your system from sudden power outages then now is a good time to start doing so.

Safety in The Computer Room

If you’re not Fasthosts then you might benefit from a few safety tips contained in the UK HASAW legislation. If you are Fasthosts then you can pull the power lead out, shove it where the sun don’t shine, and switch the power on for all I care.

Electrical Resistors

What exactly is a resistor and how is it constructed? Find out inside this article.

If you haven’t read any of these articles then please do so; (If you can get the page to display properly on your computer.) they’re educational. – Meanwhile I’m going to metaphorically kick some asses by remote I hope. Wish me luck.

Well I unexpectedly made it to 5 posts between this and the last newsletter – which is actually the weekly target – so the content wasn’t quite as sparse as I’d assumed that it might be during this last week, again. – What with all that extra hassle I mentioned in the last newsletter, combined with this week and what I think of as a big event; namely the release of Windows 7 RC, I’m wearing out. I’m sure the bit of grey I had has become greyer, and I don’t remember when I got any decent sleep last. I know it wasn’t last night; because I was tinkering with Windows 7 (64-bit) all night. It gets light quite early in the UK at this time of year; and when the clock struck 5AM it was daylight and I simply didn’t feel at all tired. – Rather than getting 3 – 4 hours, just to keep away the necessity for propping my eyelids open with matchsticks, I had no shuteye at all. – And it’s starting to catch up with me as I type.

The show must go on, however; – and let’s start by reviewing the 5 posts I made during the week that was. Starting at the beginning, I went back to basics and wrote an article for the extremely new geeks on: -

How To Create a .html File

- You may mock; but everyone must begin somewhere.

Having heard of this particular plugin, that being the topic of this post, I installed it on this blog and checked it out. – Yes it is as good as they say. Check it out for yourself if you use WordPress.

Clean Your WordPress Database With WP-Optimize. (Free Software) (WordPress Plugin)

I made a great deal of hype about this, but over a very small timeframe; maybe so tiny that nobody noticed. My eBook; named as the title of the advertising article, that being “Improve Your Existing Box”, is a guide to doing just that. – Rather than going out and spending money that could well be in short supply these days on a brand new box. Please do buy a copy: It’s inexpensive, it’s informative, and you never know when you might need it yourself. – In the light of which I suggest you get your copy so that you have it to hand when considering some type of rebuild.

Improve Your Existing Box

Next; ah yes: Wednesday appeared and tried to run out before I managed to not go another day without any visible input into this blog. As you probably appreciate; Windows 7 RC had been released on Tuesday, and I wanted to get as legally close to decompiling it to find out the wiring on the board as was reasonably possible. First I had to install it, and that alone took much longer than it should have done thanks to a single faulty SATA lead… Long story: Fairly boring anyway, so I’ll give it a miss.

True to my blogarithms I wrote with regard to my initial impressions of fascination and tremendous excitement through bleary eyes in this tickle of art, or art – tickle, voila: –

Initial Impressions of Windows 7 RC

Lastly I had a moan about the fact that Windows 7 was minus at least one file that I found to be almost essential in Windows XP. There’s a file called sndrec32.exe in the system32 folder of XP… I won’t labour to explain it here: read the article: –

Microsoft – Please Include A Sound Recorder in Windows 7

For now that’s it: I am shattered, behind schedule by about an hour, and need to wind down from ASAP onwards into tonight; though doubtless I’ll stay at least semi-active in some way. I promised myself that I’d make  start on Tara Hunt (@missrogue) ‘s new book, called “The Wuffie Factor”. (Pronounced “woofie”) – I won’t go into long explanations right now: Goole is your friend. – I received the book a week or so ago; yet what with one thing and another I’ve so far only managed to transport it from the front room to the bedroom; ready to be read, if I can ever get more than 5 seconds between getting in bed and falling asleep.

Bylas gomego. Commence e’ pas a la trego.

- Which means something like “Dance with me. Don’t stop the rhythm” in Portuguese. – Which is fairly pointless as I don’t actually speak Portuguese, can’t dance to save my life, and will possibly end up on a charge if my brain-dead neighbour plays loud music tonight. – As occasionally happens; usually at the worst time possible.

I’m a heavy sleeper when I get to sleep on rare occasions. – But for whatever reason I need darkness and almost dead-quiet, precious tranquillity, to get off to sleep in the first place. A thumping beat, even if not that loud plus maybe somewhat distant-sounding, is guaranteed to keep me from dropping off. – And I’m feeling wrecked enough to stick his speakers where the sun don’t shine in order to baffle the noise so that I can get the sleep I need tonight.

_ ——————- _

- And so with such jolly and wondrous thoughts resounding between my two still-functioning brain-cells, I shall bid thee au revoir, a la Francais; in order that I can fill your happy world with some more technical what-nots another time.

Peace.

Namaste’.

Due to circumstances beyond my control the amount of fresh articles produced for this blog this week has been rather minimal.

Yesterday I was in London for a medical appointment; following which I was in Bristol for a meeting with a man about a dog. Of course the weather started the day rather abysmally, with dark cloudy Wiltshire skies and outbreaks of rain. It was a bit better in London though, with dark broken clouds and occasional sunshine. I took a taxi initially, and the traffic was pretty minimal compared to its usual pandemonium; (In fact the Capital seemed like a ghost-town.) but found it rather expensive going after a while; so £30 in taxi-fares later I decided to use Public Transport:

London Underground hasn’t improved much if at all. It still has appallingly lax facilities, lack of customer interaction, and maintains its world-renowned dinginess. Having negotiated seemingly more miles of tunnels than the trains I travelled on, up and down escalators plus painfully ancient, dirty, and unkempt flights of stairs, along walkways galore, I finally arrived at Waterloo Station, managed to find a train, and got on my way. If you live overseas and are thinking of visiting London to see the London Underground – please take note: It’s not an experience for the faint-hearted.

Travelling to Bristol the sun made frequent appearances, but vanished when I alighted from the train, and the skies threatened further rain. Eventually I returned to a sunny Wiltshire, totally worn out and still suffering from bad laryngitis after that bad cold I had recently, which made my voice sound like a cross between Bonny Tyler and Arnold Schwarzenegger on helium.

My home-improvements were installed on Monday; during which I was at the height of my cold, and added to which it was cold weather and rained all day, Just to make the day worth complaining about there was a very chilly breeze which blew straight through the window apertures as they were being replaced. If nothing else it certainly changed the air in my abode and blew out some dust and cobwebs; seemingly most of it straight up my nose which led to intense sneezing fits, although my altered body-temperature countered the cold. That day was the only day I can recall since I’ve lived here when I could see my breath indoors.

This month I’m having my bathroom redesigned and the entire shower rebuilt; thus I’m expecting more, if minor, disruption.

Let’s have a look at what’s new this week. ‘Since the last newsletter only 2 articles: -

To round off the month of April I did a piece on

How To Fit a Socket AM2+ Processor

- Which is basically no different to fitting a socket AM2 processor.

Early this morning I rattled off an article on stubborn malware, and the right way to manually remove it so that it doesn’t seem to keep coming back: -

Malware Keeps Coming Back

And that’s all so far.

Have a good week and enjoy the coming weekend. Hopefully next week will be drier and warmer than the picture below (BBC Television weather forecast – from earlier this year.) would have you believe.

Before we review this week a few words on next week: There may not be that many articles written next week as I have to travel to London and Bristol. In addition to that I’m having various home improvements installed, which will no doubt serve to disrupt my office for a while.

Unlike some bloggers I don’t find that I am able to sit down on a Sunday and churn out a week’s worth of articles in an afternoon. I normally progressively write throughout the week; and at times what you see is hot off the keyboard.

Having forewarned you of an impending week of low-output; let’s now review the posts published since the last newsletter of 17th April:

Picture is not of actual build.

On the weekend of 18th and 19th April I embarked upon a project that had been in the pipeline a while, and which I’d brought forward due to circumstances: I built a new computer incorporating an AMD Phenom x 3 2.3GHz CPU and installed Windows 7 beta on it. I decided that you might be interested in looking in on this, so I wrote about it on Monday, including a few pics I took during the build. There are more pics of this on my Flickr pages too: -

Impressions of Win 7 Beta on a New Box

Having had the misfortune to have senselessly taken out 2 extended warranties some years in the past on computers I bought before I began building my own, I thought it would be helpful to do a piece on my view of what amounts to a money-grabbing sales-gimmick: -

Extended Warranties: Are They Worth the Money?

Recently I’ve written a 2-part series about testing a computer power supply. The first part was on simply testing the output to make sure that something is coming out. The second part was on testing the PSU under load; and I told you how to build a simple circuit to load the unit without having to spend a small fortune on proper professional equipment.

Maybe I should have made this article the third part; but I didn’t: -

What Do I Do If My Power Supply’s Voltage Drops Under Load?

- Using some simple elementary calculus we discover exactly what’s going on in that situation, and how to remedy it.

Staying with the theme of supplying DC current; I showed you the very basics of principles of how a power supply turns the high AC mains voltage that it receives into the low-voltage DC current used to run electronic equipment, including your computer: -

How to Change Alternating Current into Direct Current and Supply DC Electronic Circuitry With Power.

- And that’s yer lot: Well, 4 technical articles is, to my mind, quite enough for a week on one site. I’m sure you have other blogs that you read in addition to this one, and I see no point in causing an information overload. – Added to which I do this on my tod and don’t have the time to write reams and reams of text in the form of gazillions of articles at this point in time.

Keep your eyes peeled though; as although content may be a bit scarce this coming week, that doesn’t mean that there’ll be nothing new: Watch this space; or better still, join the mailing list and have notifications of new content delivered to your inbox. – There’s a subscription form or two in the sidebar on the left on every page. – There’s also a bonus for joining too. Take a look for yourself: -

Mailing List Promotion. Click here for details.

Enjoy the weekend. Blessed Be.

I’m currently expecting a parts delivery this afternoon as I write this. Some of the parts are going to go into my latest computer design, which I’m going to run Windows 7 on after RTM. I’ll probably be doing stage 1 construction and testing this weekend. 

Stage 1 involves doing the basics and getting it working. I’ll be starting off using a secondhand 150GB SATA HDD, which will be the main disk while I’m doing the tests etc. When I’ve messed about with it, gleaned all the data I want from it, and built it up fully, I’ll be removing that disk and installing a brand new SATA II 1TB Samsung Spinpoint disk with a 32MB cache to install Windows 7 64-bit on.

- Yes I’m going 64-bit from my purchase of Windows 7 onwards. Whilst I’ll be keeping 32-bit XP Professional on the computer that I’m using currently, I won’t be buying any more 32-bit operating systems. 64-bit is the future in my estimation. 32-bit has had its day: A day lasting about 15-20 years, and a lot of progress has been made during that time. Ten years and a bit ago we thought that 4 gigabytes, which is the limit on the amount of memory that a 32-bit operating system can address, was a massive amount. 3 gigabyte hard-drives were commonplace, and Windows 98SE was the latest offering from Microsoft, running on the FAT32 filing system, on computers sold with 32MB pre-installed RAM and 8MB graphics memory, with a single-cored processor running at somewhere around 400MHz.

Do you remember Socket 7? I had a 355 MHz Cyrix processor in socket 7 from around that time that I fried trying to overclock to 400MHz on the latest PC Chips PC100 motherboard with a full 128MB PC100 RAM installed while listening to the chuntering clicks from the 4800RPM hard-drive.

I’ve got a fairly nice Gigabyte motherboard coming; on which I’ll be fitting a socket AM2+ AMD Phenom X3 2.3 GHz CPU, and initially I’ll be fitting 4 GB DDR2 800MHz RAM since there’s no point having any more with the 32-bit operating system I’ll be testing with. Later on, just before I install 64-bit Windows 7 I’ll put in another 4GB.

I’ve just taken delivery, and the case I ordered looks much better in the real than it does in the picture even. Get a load of this:

The KL-700 ATX Midi Tower Case has a cool smooth look. It is finished in Black and has front USB/Audio. Inside the case there is an 8cm fan located at the rear.  Includes a 450W PSU 20+4pin with 1x SATA

 
Case Features

• Dimensions:445mm(L) 200mm(W) 412mm(H)
• Thickness of steel:0.6mm
• 80mm fan(rear)
• Drive Bays:4 x 5.25" open:1 x 3.5" open:6 x hidden
• Fits full ATX/Micro ATX motherboards

It makes me think about running a RAID array all over again with all those available drive bays. For under £30 with the PSU included it’s a pretty good deal. I’d have preferred it in baby pink, but beggars can’t be choosers. – Black it is.

And so to change the subject: Since the last newsletter there have only been 3 posts; partly because the last newsletter was a bit later then usual, and also because I’ve been busy on other things too.

I wrote the second in the series on How to Test a Power Supply Unit. A decent load can be created using automobile bulbs on the 12 volt lines. A few more 12-volt bulbs on the 3.3 volt lines help to steady the load. Since the 5 volt rails are fairly unused to a comparative extent to the past, I designed LEDs with series resistors into the loading circuits I used, solely to indicate that the lines are working properly.

How to Test a Power Supply Unit: Testing Under Load

I’m not quite sure why people are insisting on deleting this and that operating system file these days; maybe it’s because they find Vista rather bloated in an obese way. Whatever the reason; I’ve written a piece on a Windows file that can be deleted safely under certain circumstances.

What Is pagefile.sys, And Can I Do Without It?

Finally another issue about the dangers of static electricity, and how it can blow your (computer) parts apart without your even realising it. I am, to be honest, mightily surprised that many components make it into the secondhand market in a working condition; seeing the carefree way that many people handle them.

Protect Your Parts

- And so it’s time for another weekend on this wonderful planet of ours that we’ve so far managed to bring to its knees and done our best to almost wreck it. – Personally I think global warming is a natural phenomenon that just happens to be being helped along by humans pouring masses of gases (I’m a poet but I don’t know it.) into the atmosphere.

They say that 25% of greenhouse gases are produced in the stomachs of cows. – Now cows have been around a long time in one form or another; but not in such profuse numbers. I say reforest the earth. Plant more trees to convert the carbon dioxide into oxygen and allow cows to produce methane harmlessly: That way humans don’t have to be so radical about lifestyle changes. – Maybe?

On that note I’ll conclude for now. Have a great weekend; whatever you’re doing.

Hello, and welcome to another newsletter.

This week in the real world the British weather has taken a turn for the worse; with cloud occasional rain, and low temperatures. The forecast for this coming week is rain and showers, with temperatures near normal for the time of year.

It’s Easter weekend in the UK currently; and tomorrow’s Easter Monday, which is a Bank Holiday; aka an excuse for a skive off work for those who rely solely on their 9 to 5 employment. The self-employed don’t get it quite so easy of course, and can use it as a time to catch up on things that are lagging behind in some cases.

Personally I’ll be using it as a day to break out of the usual routine, such that it is, and I’m hoping to be doing more surfing the internet than anything else. I may or may not produce an article also on that day.

On this blog in the last few days I’ve been fairly busy in producing more articles: -

*Yesterday (Saturday 11th April 2009) I produced an article on the Conficker worm’s recent activation; also what it’s doing and how to get rid of it if you’re infected. Conficker Kicks In

*If you’ve been following this blog for some time then you’ll be aware that major changes have taken place re. the theme; mainly during December 2008 and January 2009. I started off using a publicly-available theme, and customised it over time.

It appears that the original theme is no longer available online; so just for the sake of posterity I made it available on this blog.

WordPress Theme: Serenity Pink – Original

*I produced an article on testing a power supply too: Whilst this article only goes into doing very simple testing of the output voltages under zero-load conditions; I’ll be following this up with an article on how to build a simple circuit that will fully-load the PSU so that you can test it under those conditions. How to Test a Power Supply Unit: Testing Voltage Output.

*David Risley has been at it again in Tampa, Florida; producing another work of online-marketing genius. Once again the product is well worth the price. In a 3-day video – course, David reveals everything you need to know to embark upon an online career. I encourage you to buy it if you’re really serious about creating a successful online business. The Three Most Productive Days of Your Life

*For those who are new to the matter of computer hardware; there’s a useful post which will teach them how to visually recognise the difference between a SATA and a PATA drive.  How Do I Tell if a Drive is SATA or PATA?

*As for free antivirus solutions; see the post Free Antivirus Solutions: ‘Any Good?

*I’ve had a recent issue with my RSS feed at http://kkomp.com/kkompRSS.xml , which I’m using as an alternative to the usual blog feed which Feedburner sabotaged in 2008. Everything’s back to pretty much how it should be now. Apology re. The RSS Feed

*Something I recently observed other bloggers using, with success, is the Tweetmeme button. Go here to find out more: The Tweetmeme Button

This blog is always aimed at giving the reader good value; whether or not the content has a price ticket attached to it. Until now virtually all of the content has been totally free of charge. There may be some premium content introduced at a later date that won’t be free but will be exceedingly good value.

I also intend to publish information products in the form of eBooks and the like; which will also be on a pay-per-product basis. – That’s for the future though. Of course free content will always continue to be produced no matter what, and the paid-for products will be a high-quality extra information source.

———————————————–

‘Here’s wishing you all much success and prosperity for the coming week. May good fortune smile down upon you.

Bright Blessings.

Shazza.

The sun is out and the daffodils are blooming in the UK; in fact they’re all but over. Spring is in the air; life returning everywhere. Eostre is just around the corner.

The spring has sprung; the grass has ris’:

I wonder where the birdie is?

It’s on the wing? – Well that’s absurd:

I thought the wing was on the bird!

( – Source Unknown.)

*It’s been quite a week: With the publication of the Akamai report it appears that the figures show that microblogging service Twitter had too much downtime last year; almost doubling that of the second-placed runner.

Twitter’s Fail-Whale Outperforms All Other Social Network Downtime Indicators

*Also in the report is not-exactly-unexpected news that UK broadband is lagging behind a lot of the rest of the world; although the spam and malicious traffic appears to be coming from elsewhere. (Well I suppose if you’re flooding the net with spam you’d want to do it on a broadband connection that’s capable of handling the traffic at a decent speed without overloading.)

The New British Snail

*Is your software up to date and clean? A computer requires servicing regularly or it’ll screw up. – Not the hardware so much as the software.

Service Your Software

*Last week I installed Apture and started using it on my blog. – This resulted in complaints from my hosting service about using too many server resources. Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Why I Had to Stop Using Apture

When you view a website you might not be viewing the most current content: You might be looking at a snapshot taken by your computer.

How to Flush Your Local DNS Cache

*April 1st; April Fools Day; and I wrote an April Fool. – The problem was that as far as I’m aware nobody read it until 2nd April!

Zalman’s Wireless Power

And lastly: These days computer-makers aren’t including floppy-drives in their product; – which is fine and dandy unless the user happens to be running Windows XP and wants to use the Automated System Recovery function.

Using Windows Automated System Recovery With No Floppy Drive: Is it Possible?

Hopefully you’ll find these new articles both interesting and/or useful.

Let’s hope that the good weather and renewal of life continues at its already brisk pace: There’s just too much of Winter in the UK. (It must be utterly awful in places like Siberia!)

I discovered something recently that I feel you might find rather useful. I won’t rabbit on about it here: I’ll just link you to the relevant page.

Whatever you’re doing in whatever place on the planet; have a prosperous and blessed week.

Hello and welcome to another kkomp.com newsletter.

I suppose it’s a good idea to start off with the news that another Firefox update is out. I just opened Firefox and it automatically updated. If you’re running Firefox then yours should follow suit shortly if it hasn’t already done so.

So what’s new on kkomp.com this week? Four articles since last Newsletter sent out on the the 23rd; listed in reverse-order below: -

Zune Theme (Free Software)

It’s been around a few years, granted. The Zune theme makes your desktop look really nice. – And it also saves a tiny bit of power on your monitor with less bright pixels. – In theory at least.

The System File Checker

A function of Windows that Microsoft have conveniently buried deep in the OS; but which can be very useful in efforts to avoid data-corruption. – With regard to the protected Windows files at least.

Capture the Rapture of Apture

Apture is a free piece of software that has many features which you can use to enhance your blog: Particularly useful if you run a Blogger blog or the like, where hard-coding in features and media links can be a lot less than easy at times. The only problem is that you have to publish your post or page first before Apture can be utilised. That can be a bit of a nuisance if your blog is set to notify Twitter, along with other social networks at time of publication.

How to Set Network Permissions + Plus

A networking trick, if needed, to transfer files onto drives that aren’t readily available on the network for whatever reason. The article also describes how to set file and folder permissions related to networking in XP.

If you haven’t read the bounties of kkomp.com yet then why not use this weekend to get stuck in and give your eyeballs a feast?

Enjoy the rest of the weekend; whatever you’re doing.

Blessings.

Sharron Field. – Author and Creator of kkomp.com.

Hey.

This is something new that I’m doing on kkomp.com. I’m hoping to be doing one of these newsletters weekly; probably towards the end of the week rather than the beginning of it as in this case. In these weekly newsletters I’ll be reviewing things for the preceding period since the last newsletter.

This newsletter is only going to be concentrating mainly on the last week – although I will; just for you recap on some of the other popular posts of 2009. For the time being though, let’s look at the preceding week:

I didn’t manage to get as much done as I’d hoped during this last week; and therefore only 5 posts were written. This was due, in part, to a lot of background work that I was doing on this blog as well as my other blog http://shazzalive.com .  (That’s what I term as my “lesser blog”; but do drop by from time to time: Posting may well be sporadic, and you may find it in one heck of a state at times if you happen to browse in and catch me doing an experiment on it: But I’ll try and keep it looking nice most of the time. It’s not only my “lesser” blog; it’s also the test bed and laboratory for some of my more zany ideas for this blog that I feel are just too risky, or risqué’, whatever, to try out here without wrecking something or frightening my readers away. I’ve probably made it sound much worse than it is; but you get my general drift I hope?)

-_-

Back on the track; and last Tuesday I posted a video I discovered by chance on YouTube on how to recycle your old CD-ROM drives; or at least part of them: Use the case as a drive-bay converter so that you can mount your hard-drive(s) – PATA or SATA – in a 5 1/4-inch drive bay, complete with a fan, cooling vent, aerated front-panel:

Drive-Modding

During my brief foray into YouTube I happened to notice a video-review of a very nice top-spec Zalman 1000watt PSU; which became the topic of Wednesday’s article.

Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000W Power Supply Review

I did correct the video presenter’s definition of “rails” – that being power-rails, in the article; as they were described incorrectly – either as an error of the English language, or an error of the video author’s technical knowledge. I hope I didn’t come over as being a bit too forthright and brash about it. – Anyway that article didn’t get a lot of attention compared to some of the others, so Thursday I got even more technical, but in a different direction, and shared an experience re. power-leads with Molex plugs on the end left wandering about inside a computer’s case:

Tidy up Those Power Leads

One thing I didn’t mention in that article is that it can also assist with ventilation if the loose power-leads are nicely tidied away and tied up somewhere, rather than left hanging around.

In

Running Windows? Don’t Rely on Microsoft Alone to Keep Your PC Clean

on Friday, I reminded readers that, although Microsoft are doing a good job in helping prevent malware attacks associated with criminal activity etc, which can be also detrimental to Windows users’ system speeds and the general health of computers, they shouldn’t just rely on the Patch Tuesday updates alone to keep their PCs clean.

If you’re a well – experienced and technically astute reader as far as computers are concerned, then you might think it was a bit of a silly post. – Yet you’d be described (Oops. – Massive typo!) surprised how many people who’s computers I’ve done a malware-clean on who can’t understand why they need an antivirus when Microsoft look after them so well. As to the fact that they had their hard-drive infested with malware and lost all or some of their data because they didn’t back it up; well I think they tried blaming everyone else including me, Bill Gates, and anyone else they could think of. I was tempted to direct them to the nearest mirror; but felt that it might end up backfiring on me somehow.

Saturday I felt that I needed to post again, as I’d missed Monday out: Luck had it that I came across a new WordPress plugin which I took to like a duck to water as soon as I tried it. Read

BetterSearch – WordPress Plugin

and you’ll know which one I mean. You too might like it if you’re running a self-hosted WordPress blog. It’s worth a look if nothing else.

I did say that I’d recap on some other posts from this year too: Well the most popular one so far from this year’s list is How to Upgrade an AMD Socket AM2 Processor . It’s up there at the top of the popular posts competing with a few from 2008 that have only managed to get near the same number of readers in twice the time or more.

Another popular one is Desktop Piano Keyboard – (Free Software) . You’d be surprised how many budding musicians and the like simply want to make their keyboards tinkle without paying a fortune for doing so.

Well I must, like the time, press ever onwards. – So I hope you enjoyed this recap. Please do get your friends to browse in and; whether or not they’re geeks in the true sense of the word, all they need is an interest: Not every article requires a degree in physics and computer science to understand it on this blog. In fact I’d say that such were in an extreme minority. I try to write for the technically-inept as well as the geeks. Everyone has a right to understand science and technology. Hopefully people find the articles herein explanatory and not over-geekistic. I hope to teach everyone who can be bothered at least the basics of whatever I’m writing about.

People could always subscribe to the mailing list. It’s free, and there’s no obligatory contract of subscription: ‘Just that if a subscriber unsubscribes within 2 months they won’t win anything or benefit from any free offers. – Otherwise things get given away, and they might be onto something good, in addition to the reading material etc that I serve up on a regular basis.

Right; pop goes the brain-cell, it’s time for me to bring this newsletter to a close:

Thanks for reading; and I’m looking forwards to bringing you more on hardware, software, practical electronics, & more, in the future. May this week, as others, bring you happiness and success. Blessed be.

Regards

Shazza.