I know you’re busy, so I’ll let you in on what’s
happening…

I just heard from Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak
that they are closing their doors to their popular
Become A Blogger Premium course.

See here for more details:

http://www.becomeablogger.com/go.php?offer=kkomp&pid=4&u=http://www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

So far, over 850 people have signed up and the
course has already had some raving reviews. For
example, here’s what Christine, one of the
members, said recently:

“Honestly Gideon your videos are great!

Now that I’m looking at doing business on the
internet and watched a few videos from others who
claim to be gurus; theirs are really awful, too
fast to see what they’re doing and not explaining
things in a logical sequence as if done on the
fly.

Your teaching skills and videos are in a class of
their own. Keep up the good work!”

So, obviously, people are loving the course so
far.

But now, Yaro and Gideon want to close the whole
thing down since it’s becoming a bit too popular.

They said they want to focus their energies on
their members, and frankly, getting too many of
them could spread their attention too thin.

So, I thought I’d better let you know about this
if you still wanted to get in before they shut the
doors indefinitely.

Here’s the scoop:

- What: Become A Blogger Premium is closing doors

- When: Friday, Feb 6, 2009 at 11:59pm USA EST

If you don’t want to miss out on this, make sure
you head on over to the following page before it’s
too late:

http://www.becomeablogger.com/go.php?offer=kkomp&pid=4&u=http://www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

I hope you can still get in!

Sharron

PS: Make sure you have a look at the bonuses -
they are worth more than the whole membership
itself!

Don’t procrastinate: Procrastinators miss every opportunity. I know this from experience; and hence the reason why I now grab the bull by the horns and make the most of every open doorway before the door closes again.

When is that door closing again?

“- Friday, February 6 at 11:59pm sharp!”

The way I see it you have two options here: -

1) Save yourself a few dollars by ignoring this notice. Let the door close and move on, learn slowly and by bitter experience, and watch the bloggers who enrolled on this course surge ahead of you because they have been given a head-start.

2) Invest a few dollars in this course while you have the last chance to do so, pass through the open door before it closes, and gain a head start by being taught all the top-tips and techniques by bloggers who’ve made a successful blogging career, earned money by monetising their blogs, and are sharing their knowledge with you. The result of which will be that your blogging efforts stand out, lead the way, due to your foreknowledge and insights, and aren’t wasted while those in the know get all the results.

The choice is yours: You have only a short while left to decide which choice you’d rather make: One which will affect your whole future blogging career.

The door closes: “Friday, February 6 at 11:59pm sharp!”

Time is ticking away.

http://www.becomeablogger.com/go.php?offer=kkomp&pid=4&u=http://www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

Is 7 showing a weakness even at this early stage?

- Probably not; but PC Pro magazine’s staff found a problem whilst running Kaspersky’s Windows 7 antivirus. On the Pro Blog they record the event and relate the problems that they were experiencing running Word 2007 in Windows 7 while Kaspersky’s beta was installed.

Click here to read the account from the site.

As the writer points out; “…this is a free security suite running on a beta operating system. Bugs are to be expected.”

- However I don’t advise running any operating system without security software; even if it is only until the Office Manager finds out. There are other anti-virus etc solutions available; even for Windows 7 beta. I do suggest installing one of them, even if this insight has caused you to give Kaspersky’s free Windows 7 Security Suite a miss for the time being.

Are you running the Windows 7 beta? What’s your own experience? Have you found any bugs in it yet? Did you notice the above issue? I look forward to your comments.

Computer components are a heck of a lot cheaper, as well as better, than they used to be. All the same it’s still a noticeable debit to your capital if you buy the components and assemble one yourself. With this in mind the last thing you need is to find that, on power-up, one or more of the components is dead; causing your machine to function in a limited fashion, improperly, or not function at all.

Whilst it is true that in rare cases a unit does escape the manufacturer’s quality control and finds its way to market in a faulty or dead condition, the most likely cause of a faulty or dead component on initial power-up is exposure to static electricity. This is especially true with regard to components such a processors ( CPU ), RAM, and motherboard, including any and all components supplied fitted to the motherboard, such as BIOS, chipset, etc.

How Do These Components Become Exposed to Static Electricity?

Static electricity is a crafty customer. It builds up everywhere, it’s high=voltage, and the only way to avoid a charge being present in most objects, commonly, is to discharge it.

You’ll notice that the more sensitive components of a computer are supplied packed in a special anti-static type of plastic and/or foam. This is to prevent exposure to static electricity in transit. They have been manufactured in a static-free environment, and are most probably working components that are faultless.

Where they become exposed to static is after delivery to destination; in this case your workroom or workshop. In short; if these components are taken out of their protective anti-static packaging and allowed to touch anything, including you yourself, then they risk exposure to static electricity.

How do I Ensure That The Components Are Not Damaged By Static Electricity?

Firstly, the environment in which the components are unpacked is important: As far as it is possible to do so, ensure all conductive surfaces and objects are connected to electrical earth.  (A water-pipe can be a good earth connection.)

Carpets aren’t a good idea to have present in the unpacking environment: As a person walks across a carpet a static charge builds up in their body.  Also ensure that any surface that the components are placed upon after unpacking is grounded and static-free. Only remove the components from their anti-static packaging when it is absolutely necessary to do so. Install the component immediately it has been unpacked: The less time you take the less chance the component has of exposure to static.

More importantly than any of the above, though, earth yourself: An anti-static wristband connected to electrical earth will remove static charge from your body. These wristbands can be purchased rather inexpensively from a wide range of suppliers. If you don’t have one of these but need to build now; connect a piece of metal jewellery or a metal wristwatch to electrical earth, or wrap a piece of bare wire round your wrist and connect it to earth.

How do The Components Become Damaged by Static Electricity? What Happens to Them?

Briefly: Most computer components consist, at least partly, of transistors; usually millions of them. Each microscopic transistor has three connections; namely drain, source, and gate.

The gate is insulated from the drain and source by an extremely thin insulator; only a few atoms thick. The transistor works by the electrostatic (Not static electricity: ‘Completely different term; although it is often used (Wrongly in my opinion.) in place of static electricity.) field on the gate electrode regulating the transfer of electrons between source and drain. A static electrical charge applied to this is too powerful for the device and breaks down the insulating layer between the gate and the rest of the transistor: Therefore the transistor is unable to function.

- So do be careful and always ensure that you make your best efforts to avoid exposure to static electricity in the computer-building environment. Static electricity is the computer-builders’ enemy, and not a good idea to have around when dealing with sensitive components.

Feedburner are asking everyone to move their feeds over to Google. i hope Google are more professional than Feedburner; but I’m going to wait to see about that before I open an RSS account with Google. I have a gripe with Feedburner; and I very much doubt anything will be any different in terms of the standard of service with Google, at least not initially.

I’ve closed my RSS account with Feedburner; and somehow they managed to sabotage my normal RSS feed when I did that: I’m now locked into a 30-day redirect loop that seems to go nowhere; and nobody can parse my feeds from that URL.

To remedy the situation to a certain extent I’ve set up a second RSS feed, which connects to a lot of the apps and services that the original feed did; such as the newsletter, Facebook, etc. I use a Twitter app with my blog to inform Twitter via xml.RPC. I don’t know if the Ping FM notification system is still working; I can’t remember whether it’s notified via my old feed or xml.RPC. I think probably the latter. My traffic has not been affected in any way anyway, so I’m not too bothered about that right now.

I have to manually update my current feed; which has its drawbacks but also has advantages: It means that I’m totally in control of the feed and can put what I like on it without having to be a php, xml, and RSS expert.

Why did I close my account with Feedburner?

This blog has been up and running for almost 7 months. It’s not long in the scheme of things; it’s not even very long in blogosphere terms. – Yet during those 7 months Feedburner have shut down my RSS feed three times simply because its size limit was larger than they like.

OK but they do let you know that they’ve shut it down don’t they? NO they don’t: they just terminate sending any new entries and expect the customer to notice immediately. They shut off my feed on the 17th January 2009 last time. I noticed on the 21st January that my feed had stopped incrementing. I checked everything. There appeared at first to be nothing coming out of my blog in the way of RSS; but then I remembered Feedburner had taken control of it. On the 22nd I found out that Feedburner had stopped the feed without telling me; so at least 5 articles had escaped notification in certain sectors, and some of my audience who relied on the feed might have been under the impression that I’d stopped publishing.

But surely Feedburner send you an email warning that your feed’s about to run out of space and get too big for them to handle? No, they don’t: Not even that courtesy. In my view they are extremely discourteous, unprofessional, and to all intents and purposes; they suck.

Yes I am aware that their service is free, and yes I am aware that there is a limit on the amount of data that they can store for free: Although I don’t understand why that amount is gigabytes in the case of Microsoft and Gmail; yet only a few kilobytes in the case of Feedburner.

Anyway I made the decision based upon the evidence available that they suck and that I was going to close my account. I went to their website to do so where, in addition to being told that they’d stopped my feed for the first time, (Anyone would think that they’d never heard of email!) I was reminded to transfer my feed to Google which I did without problem. I think I was on Google’s site when I had a last minute change of mind, as my feed remained blocked on Google too, and the GUI was almost the same but with the name Google instead of Feedburner. I searched a while for how to do it and than cancelled my account. there was a box underneath the unsubscribe paraphernalia that was something to do with redirects which was already ticked – I noticed after I’d clicked “submit” but before the page disappeared – Then the page disappeared.

Now when I look for my feed on that GUI it tells me that “This feed is almost toast…” and something about redirection. When I look for my feed I get a blank page, and other feed readers are unable to parse it: they just go round in a redirect-loop and give up after a number of attempts.

But there must be a simple way in the GUI to get the redirect cancelled? No there isn’t: the only way to do it is to post in the Feedburner forums begging the Feedburner staff to do it for you and wait for a reply. I saw a couple of people had waited seven days for someone from Feedburner to reply and rather condescendingly agree to do it: In the meantime the forum chimpanzees, who’d probably wandered over from You-Tube, had posted messages of abuse to the person who’d made the request.

I decided that this was all too much, and that I wasn’t going to fall on my face before the great Feedburner, humbly begging for them to release MY feed whilst subjecting myself to possible abuse from retards. I simply walked away. My feed is toast anyway. – Until they release it; which should be late February. Until then my current feed that I manually update at http://kkomp.com/kkompRSS.xml is all there is. Please subscribe to it. If your feed-reader won’t parse it then get a better reader. Most readers have no problem with it; but one or two are too fussy. I’m not a computer, neither am I an xml expert; so they’ll just have to like it or lump it: At least I know that it won’t be secretly stopped at the whim of some tight-fisted unprofessional company anymore.

I’m not going to use Google instead just yet. ‘Sorry Google, but you appear exactly the same on first impressions; so until you can properly take up where Feedburner left off and provide a better service, I’ll be handling my feeds myself.

For your edification I included this video. Enjoy: -

Feedburner hacked! from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo

Just after writing this article I realised that I had Feedburner Feedsmith plugin installed; so I’ve deactivated it: Possibly my old feed might just spring back to life having done this – ?

There is no doubt that microblogging service Twitter is growing in popularity: Twitter’s traffic increased by nearly 1000%  over previous rates during 2008. The question is: Can Twitter utilise that vast amount of traffic in order to survive?

Robin Goad, research director at internet traffic analyst Hitwise, says that computing enthusiasts more than any other group are responsible for the sharp increase in Twitter’s popularity.

"Technology is absolutely the most popular category discussed in Twitter. Probably the most talked-about topic in Twitter is Twitter itself. All the sort of more ‘geeky’ stuff is what people talk about most."

So a pat on the back for us geeks from Twitter; but realistically we’re using the service for free anyway; so we owe Twitter nothing financially and Twitter owes us nothing in return at this point in time.

"It’s instant and it’s an easy way of communicating," said Goad. "If you’ve got 1,000 followers you can put out a quick 140-character ‘tweet’ and you can immediately communicate to those 1,000 people. Some of those people might pick up what you said and then tweet it to their network and it creates a knock-on effect."

Twitter is even taking off in the UK to an extent; although I don’t under the current circumstances see its usage becoming prominent to the same degree as in the United States: This is partly due to the fact that in the USA a user is able to tweet from their mobile device for no charge; whereas  in the UK this is not possible, thanks largely to the greedy UK telecommunication companies’ reluctance to provide anything without making a huge profit from it.

The leader of the Twitter popularity charts in the UK is Stephen Fry, with over 50,000 followers, seeking intellectual edification no doubt. TV Presenter Jonathan Ross has over 13,000 followers. I wonder if Andrew Sachs is one of them? In the US and also worldwide, Barack Obama is the most popular, with almost 150,000 followers.

"Those are the big celebrity names, but a lot of the people who are big in the ‘Twittersphere’ are people who are into social media or technology and are big bloggers," explained Goad. According to Hitwise, the fastest growing age group of users is 35-44 year olds, who now account for 17.3 per cent of all UK Twitter visitors.

Twitter’s business model; or at least what there is of it, has recently been under scrutiny from a number of sources. Twitter has the ability, bearing in mind its huge traffic numbers, to generate massive potential revenues. To do so, however, it will need to implement strategies that don’t put people off of using it. This area is one of difficulty. At the moment; Twitter doesn’t seem to be making much, if any, money for itself. As a business it will need to do so for its very survival.

The management structure have plans; although they remain somewhat tight-lipped over exactly what those plans are. Slowly but surely there is something going on, as many Twitter users will have noticed; but are plans and subtle changes enough to ensure its survival? The dilemmas it faces may be problematic in the long run unless Twitter’s management balance their actions precisely.

What do you think? Is Twitter here to stay? Can it pull it off and continue growth in its traffic whilst at the same time generate a revenue stream without alienating at least some users? – Or will it be another “here today, gone tomorrow” sensation, like many others before it? I look forward to your comments.

I’m getting a lot of enquiries with regard to this from the search-engines lately: It’s like there’s a rush suddenly developed to get rid of the things for whatever reason. In my personal opinion the Home Hub 2.0 upwards are quite sophisticated. – Much more so than their predecessors anyway; but each to their own. maybe the novelty’s worn off somewhat? Who knows?

Anyway; since I haven’t posted since Friday last; as I’ve been working flat out on other things to do with this blog, I thought it was worth an article all of its own: So voila: Here is the articulated article: – (~ Articulum Articulate’.)

It’s a bit of a conundrum to pin down exactly what people mean by “uninstalling” the Home Hub: ‘See the Home Hub (HH for short.) is never actually installed; hence the reason it doesn’t appear in Device Manager.

To be “installed” in the proper sense of the word; a device should be reliant on a certain standard of interaction and control by the computer’s processor: For instance; if I were to install a graphics card in a computer, the graphics card would interact with the north bridge of the chipset, the processor via the peripheral component interface controllers, (PCI/e to you and me.), the RAM, and the power supply or PSU possibly to a greater extent than any other component, depending on its power consumption requirements related to its performance.

A BT Home Hub, on the other hand, is a router; a glorified router true, but nevertheless a router. (A rose by any other name. – Shakespeare.) It’s essentially as installed in your computer as your uninterruptible power supply or UPS is. (If you don’t have a UPS I really do suggest you get one ASAP: My two have saved me from almost certain data loss, as well as possible hard-disk damage, three times in the last 12 months.) Your UPS connects to your computer; maybe even by means of a USB lead like my Belkin does. It even has related software installed on the computer. – But it’s not counted as an installed device. The software only enables the computer to understand its readout and user interface (UI). It doesn’t actually drive the device itself. That’s the difference: An installed device has a driver for it stored on the hard-disk, which loads up to the device in order for it to do its thing – Like a set of instructions,  when the system is activated. A non-installed device does not. Let me give you an example: –

I’m a human hardware device: I have limbs and a body. I know already how to move almost all parts of my body. My controller, the human CPU, wants me to perform a specific operation that I don’t have a clue how to perform. I know how to move, but I have no idea which moves to make in order to complete the task.

When the machine starts up and the human BIOS has asked me to identify myself so that she can report my status and characteristics to the processor, the human  CPU or processor sends me a set of instructions telling me a number of complex moves that I must execute in a certain way in response to specific commands. I obey, and although I have no idea myself exactly what I’m doing as such, I’m carrying out my role efficiently as a component in the human computer.

I hope that analogy gives you some idea of what it is that I’m getting at. here’s another way to put it: -

A router has its own processor and is a separate entity entirely from the computer. The router is a mini-computer in it’s own right. To say that a router is “installed” in a computer in the same way as one of the drives (A:, C:, D:, E:, etc.) is, for instance, is equivalent to saying that you are installed as part of me just like my arm is. It’s simply not true: We can communicate, we can interact. You might help me in some way if you feel like it; and vice-versa. – But I can’t instruct you to do exactly what I want and know that you’ll carry out my instructions to the letter every time I demand it; like my arm does, for instance, and like a computer’s installed component does too.

A router; on the other hand, is totally autonomous: It receives input from the source, processes it, and sends it to the computer. Likewise it receives input from the computer, processes it, and sends it to source. The computer can tell the router to slow down or “stop talking to me while I finish processing the last data”. It can even say “Shut up until I ask you to talk to me again” in a number of circumstances. If the processor fails inside the computer then the computer’s rendered useless; yet the router goes on sending data regardless.

In the same way, if I die you won’t die; but my arm which is installed will.

Have we laboured that point enough now?

OK; point made: So how do we uninstall the BT software that I installed when I started using the Home Hub?

You mean the Norton Security Suite – Ahem, err… With Difficulty. – But it can be done; using the Norton Uninstaller Tool from Symantec. Everything else, such as the Wireless Connection Manager, (Pointless software: Windows already has one and it’s much better with a decent UI too.) BT/Yahoo software, BT Broadband Desktop Help, and whatever else rubbish they provided, (I think even the Yahoo Toolbar, although it can be deactivated in the browser, comes under this category too.) can be uninstalled via Add/Remove Programs. Look for “BT” and uninstall everything that starts with it. (I hope I haven’t fallen behind the times; my original BT/Yahoo software was supplied around 5 years ago. – Yes I do get online updates.)

And that’s yer lot: It was worth writing for a few extra hits. I think BT and/or BT Home Hub must be one of the, if not THE, most popular subject on this blog. Enjoy your new router. – By the way; BT Home Hubs might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s a lot worse out there. If you can; try before you buy.

Let me know how you get on BTW. See that empty box below? That’s for things called “comments”: You, my readers, have to make them for me. No you don’t need a degree in engineering to make a comment: Just type something, anything: Even tell me you love me if it makes you feel better. (Unfortunately I’m the Ice Maiden’s Boss; so you’ll almost definitely draw a blank.) Just comment; or am I all alone out here in this corner of cyberspace? 

In cyberspace; everyone can hear you scream. – It’s probably recorded on You Tube!

Sorry if this post appears a bit late: I’m watching the Darwin program on BBC4.

Having done so I’m finding it rather difficult to think of any suitable pictures other than the ones I’ve used already: I’ll come up with something eventually though no doubt.

I have been trying to work out what went wrong for some time now, until just now without any success. I was totally baffled and had assumed that I’d tried everything possible without having a full knowledge of php, in attempts to solve the problem with the RSS feed.

 I’d narrowed it down to being a problem with my blog itself; inasmuch as the fact that no RSS feed was being produced by this blog. I’d researched all kinds of reported RSS failures to do with WordPress 2.7 in forums and blogs via Google, and had followed a number of suggestions, all without any positive results. I’d also attempted to apply logical reasoning to the matter, and had even renewed some of the RSS-associated php files from a fresh copy of WordPress 2.7. Nothing seemed to be having any positive effect or making any difference to the RSS failure.

In my quest for knowledge and to stay up to date on the latest trends and ideas in the blogosphere I’d also been devoting a portion of my time to reading and commenting on other blogs, in addition to trying to diagnose the RSS issue. It just happened that not so long ago I started listening to an audio recording of Yaro Starak’s interview with David Risley. Yaro was inquiring about the plugins that David was using. David was saying that he used “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin” as it was a cool tool; as it seems to figure out which posts are related to the post in question fairly accurately , and not only does it display them underneath the post on screen, but it also includes them in the RSS feed…

Holy carp, I didn’t think of that plugin as being related to the RSS feed!

I deactivated the “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin” plugin and the RSS feed came back to life instantly. AT LAST! Success!

“But don’t go celebrating yet girl.” I told myself, cautiously. “Let me first see what happens when that plugin is reactivated.”

Well I’ve reactivated it, and last time I checked the RSS feed was working 100%. Target neutralised! (For the time being at least.)

What caused it to foul up? There must have been a bug somewhere inside that plugin that caused it to get stuck. – and block the RSS feed in anticipation of further data while awaiting another subroutine execution that never happened… Maybe? I’m not a php expert by any means. – Really, I’m not by any means whatsoever. I can barely string two lines of php code together as yet, so I’ll not try and be clever at the risk of making myself look utterly stupid.

I’ll be reporting everything to the creators of the plugin for their analysis. – Including a copy of this post, along with a copy of my entire modified theme folder. In the meantime I hope the RSS feed doesn’t fail again. If it does I’ll at least have some idea of why. – Or at least what’s causing it.

So in summary the RSS feed is working again and David Risley has saved the day yet again; without even realising it! In fact I’m going to give his blog at davidrisley.com a free plug. – As well as the other site he runs at PCMech.com .

Microsoft have released a security update which affects all their operating systems from 2000 to Vista; but they only offer it to Vista and Server 2008 users. Is this a forerunner of a return to the old days of the secret update?

An alert has recently been issued by The National Cyber Alert System of US-CERT (part of the Department of Homeland Security): Flaws in Microsoft Windows’ AutoRun functionality.

AutoRun is a feature of Windows that automatically reads the contents of mapped drives. These mapped drives could be anything: An optical drive, a network share, a USB stick, a memory-card reader, an external hard-drive…

You’ll notice probably that if you insert a CD into the optical drive, the first thing that happens is that it is recognised by the operating system, and AutoRun reads its contents. If that CD should contain malware then that is also read and it instantly infects the system in a lot of cases. – Malware is designed to do just that usually.

The advisory states that the AutoRun and NoDriveTypeAutorun registry values don’t work as advertised in Microsoft’s literature. Even setting the NoDriveTypeAutorun registry value to 0xFF can still result in problems.

There is, however, a fix: -

Microsoft has provided support document KB953252, which describes how to correct the problem of NoDriveTypeAutoRun registry value enforcement. After the update is installed, Windows will obey the NoDriveTypeAutorun registry value. Note that this fix has been released via Microsoft Update to Windows Vista and Server 2008 systems as part of the MS08-038 Security Bulletin.

Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003 users must install the update manually.

Tests have shown that installing this update and setting the NoDriveTypeAutoRun registry value to 0xFF will disable AutoRun.

- Unless Server 2003, XP, and 2000 users know about it, how will they know about it?

Do Microsoft think that only Vista and Server 2008 customers are likely to be compromised via AutoRun? Clearly not. – So why only offer the update to the 2 groups containing users of the latest of their operating systems only? Suspicions would lead one to believe that Microsoft are being favouritistic towards users of the operating systems they’re pushing.

So Microsoft are guilty of favouritism; but on the other side of the coin they’re also guilty of stopping users of older operating systems from installing an important update which will protect their computers.

Having said that though, not even all Vista and Server 2008 customers are competent when it comes to editing the registry. (I myself try to avoid doing so if at all possible.)

In the light of the above; wouldn’t it have been better for Microsoft to include the registry fix in their update; therefore setting the AutoRun-related key to 0xFF by default, and then to make the update available across the board to all customers via Microsoft Update?

This is a rather bad case of Microsoft inefficiency in combating malware attacks. It’s been badly handled without any real foresight whatsoever. In fact it’s reminiscent of a return to the old days where Microsoft would publish a security update and wait until and if the customer discovered it and decided to install it.

‘Sorry Microsoft; but this just isn’t good enough on your part. We your customers have come to expect more from you.

Am I starting to have vision problems in my middle-years, or has OSX suddenly begun to look attractive? What do you think? Have Microsoft gone soft on safe-computing here?

I apologise that for some as yet unknown reason my RSS feed hasn’t been working recently; therefore notification of the latest posts hasn’t been being sent out via the mailing list.

I am doing my utmost to correct this problem and am hoping to get it sorted as quickly as possible. In the meantime please do visit http://kkomp.com regularly to view the latest posts.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

It would appear that I’m not the only one having RSS problems either: More.

In the past I’ve written about hard-disk failures on this and/or other blogs. A hard-disk failure is a pain in the proverbial normally, especially if you forgot to make regular data backups. Even if you’re running a RAID configuration using hot-swappable SATA disks a disk-failure causes unwanted hassle and replacement-expense that one could do without.

Imagine having a single 1.5 terabyte disk with over a terabyte of data on it that fails! You’ve made a backup; but think of the time involved in getting your machine working again. If you have a disk of this size; in fact anything bigger than 500MB, then I would advise the following: -

Either:

1) Have a smaller drive, 250GB or suchlike, fitted in addition to the massive-sized drive, on which resides your operating system and its immediately-related files: ( e.g. drive C: . The huge drive could be drive D: for example. ) . Also take regular backups of both drives.

2) Run a RAID configuration in RAID 1 or greater using 2 or more SATAII large disks (>500MB) of equal size. Take regular backups.

OR 3) A combination of both. (Inc. regular backups.)

Reasons for 1):

If your operating system screws up, gets a virus infection, or you just decide to upgrade it; it’ll be much simpler to have all the files and folders concerned separately contained on a single, smaller drive, while the massive drive exists independently of the system drive and is used for storage alone.

Whilst it’s true that there’s nothing whatsoever to prevent an invading piece of malware attacking the massive drive at the same time as the smaller C: drive, the computer is able to operate with a reinstalled operating system on C: while you are cleaning your massive data store or formatting it and reinstalling from a backup made prior to the malware infection: hence less down-time than there would have been if you’d had to reinstall all your massive amounts of data plus your OS on a single drive.

Reasons for 2):

A RAID 1 or greater configuration will automatically provide some form of backup, so that should a drive fail, or data corruption occur on one drive, there’ll always be a second drive installed as backup. This type of configuration will prevent data corruption to a greater extent, and, in the case of a drive failure, will allow you to hot-swap the faulty drive for a new one with minimal if any down-time.

In the case of a virus infection however, this approach can be problematic as the entire contents of a terabyte or more will need to be cleaned or reinstalled from a backup made prior to infection. – Thus causing a problem of down-time.

This brings me on to the last section:

Reasons for 3):

Firstly, we never properly specified what 3) actually is exactly: We just said that it’s a combination of 1) and 2). Let’s be a little more specific: -

The setup is as follows:

2 or more x 250 GB or similar drives in a RAID 1 or greater configuration containing the OS and associated files.

2 or more x 500GB+ drives in a RAID 1 or greater configuration for storage of your other files.

Most motherboards only have a single RAID controller built into them. The above involves 2 RAID configurations, each on a separate RAID controller. Fortunately the remedy; that is installing a separate RAID controller, isn’t that difficult or expensive.

A VIA VT6421 card is the cheapest option, and fits into a spare PCI slot. Silicon Image also have a RAID controller card that fits into that little-used PCIe x1 slot. Both have their own onboard BIOS although they both require an extra driver.

In the case of the Silicon Image card you’ll find this on the installation CD that is packed with it. It has drivers for pretty much every known OS included on it, including a multitude of flavours of Linux.The VIA VT6421 driver can probably be installed with or from Windows XP; but if not it also comes with a driver CD too.

So having got our RAID controller card fitted we start off (– Assuming that this is a new build.) by fitting 2 or more identical 250GB drives, connecting them to the motherboard’s RAID controller, and configuring then in RAID 1 or greater, depending upon the number of drives, in tandem with installing the operating system on this configuration.#

Having got the machine working we now fit 2 or more identical 500GB+ drives and, ensuring that the RAID controller card’s drivers are installed and working properly, we connect the big drives’ SATA connector leads to the RAID controller’s SATA ports and reboot…

Now you’ll see 2 drives in My Computer: Drive C: , which is the set of 250GB system drives in RAID configuration containing the operating system and associated files, and Drive *: , which is the set of big drives in RAID configuration.

The drawback of this method is cost: Let’s assume that you configure 2 x 250GB drives in RAID1 , as well as 2 x 1TB drives in RAID 1. That’s going to cost you about £120 to £160 extra to just having a single 1 TB HDD installed. (Including the cost of the extra RAID controller card.)

Question: Is it worth it?

For the peace of mind and the reduced hassle when it does screw up then I’d say it probably does balance out with the extra cost, and is worth doing. – Particularly if you have loads of data that is going to cause problems if it can’t be accessed instantly.

Do I use this system? I don’t have enough data on disk currently to justify it. As my CD and DVD collection (Music and data.) begins to degrade with time though, it’ll eventually end up on disk to avoid it being binned along with the failing optical disks. – So yes I’d imagine I will eventually. Probably by that time I’ll be using new computers, most likely running Windows 7, maybe dual-booted with XP (?).

Should you use this system? Only you can decide that. Please comment and tell us why you’d use it or why you wouldn’t.

In his article of 19th January 2009 for cnet.com; Don Reisinger presents several ways in which he feels micro-blogging service Twitter could improve. This article is an analysis of his article with comment from a different perspective; albeit limited to an extent.

(You’ll need to read and cross reference his article in places.)

I too like Twitter; although an addiction it is not in my case. Nevertheless I do find it a useful and well-presented social-network, with some interesting content contributed by many of its users. – Which runs straight on to my first point: Groups:

Reisinger states that he doesn’t know why Twitter didn’t add groups to the service. He further goes on to state that “Maybe the company believes that groups would make it too closely resemble a social network…”

It IS a social network. Adding groups to it would make it just like most of the others; a clique network. If groups are added to twitter it would lose all of its individuality: That is the downside of it.

Friendfeed and Facebook do just that, and I find it a concept that sucks. I tried opening a room in Friendfeed, and instantly saw it as a waste of time. If I wanted to form a clique I’d start a forum. (Yet it might nevertheless prevent Scoble from flooding Friendfeed if he used one. )

Stick with the open-format Twitter: It’s probably a part of the reason you’re number 1.

A Tweet Filter: ‘Good idea: Read Don Reisinger ’s article on that.

Unfollow Notices: There is a site called “Twitterless” that does just that:

Google listing :-

Twitterless :: Get Updates When Someone Stops Following You on Twitter

Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views. …
twitterless.com/ – 7k – Cached – Similar pages –

For whatever reason I’m having trouble connecting to it right now. Eventually it loaded. I note it’s still in beta: That so smacks of Google, even though it has nothing to do with Google.

As Reisinger states: –

“Maybe some wouldn’t like receiving additional e-mails announcing when a user decides to unfollow them, but I think it provides significant value. It can give you hints about what your followers do and don’t like and it makes you a better Twitter user, since the last thing you should be doing is annoying your followers.”

Profile stats:

“I’d love to know how many people view my Twitter page each day. It’s not that I have a vain desire to see how many people are looking me up. Instead, I’d like to know how many of those people become followers.”

“Twitter is all about being part of a community. Knowing what that community likes and doing what you can to appeal to that community is incumbent upon us all. Twitter stream stats would help in that endeavour.”

Hmm; I’m in two minds about that: I’ll throw that totally to my readers to comment on.

200 characters

No;  I don’t buy Don Reisinger ’s argument. Twitter just wouldn’t be Twitter anymore if it changed in that way. 140 is fine. If it’s more you’re looking for then use Friendfeed.

I’ve left this wide open: I invite comments from readers on these matters.

Back in July 2008 I wrote an article about the sensitive and to-all-intents non-political commentary of David Risley on the Obama campaign’s influence upon bloggers and micro-bloggers to the extent that a multitude of articles and comments were being produced in echo-chamber fashion covering everything to do with it almost to the point of recording Obama’s every visit to the toilet. (Draws long breath.)

Whatever Risley’s opposition, the coverage did its job; as I’m sure President Obama will testify to at some point perhaps?

Despite being no political commentator, (Not that he ever tried to be.) David Risley is one of the internet’s success stories; and has from that point gone from strength to strength, building up a strong online business using his own self-generated business-model fashioned after a multitude of tips from many internet gurus and moulded to the Risley model.

His websites include PCMech as well as davidrisley.com. I’m not going to tell you all about them; rather I’ll let him do that:

In the search for quality materials to present on this blog I have in the last few hours discovered this recently-written manual by David Risley himself, and available online from his blog davidrisley.com , called The Future of Blogging Income . In it he shows how, by building up an online business and leaving it on autopilot, he was able to make over $12,000 while away on a 10-day cruise.

With those words I’m going to end this article. Your choice now is to either do nothing and never know; therefore you’ll not be informed how you can do similar yourself; OR you can click on the link and read the e-book: It’s entirely up to you.

No, the e-book won’t cost you anything: It’s totally free of charge. – So why miss out?

http://www.davidrisley.com/blogincome

A common source of blog-traffic is search engines, and, especially in the case of this blog, Google. Whilst it’s true that a search engine will index your blog regardless; there are a few tricks you need to employ in order to get the search-engines to index it in a way that people can easily find; therefore not only driving more traffic to your blog and increasing not just its readership, but also the revenue-potential of any advertising or marketing campaigns that you happen to be running.

In view of the above, there are many sources online from where you can get both free and paid advice on search engine optimisation. – For instance if you join the “becomeablogger” program by Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick, you’ll get some great video tips for search engine optimisation, amongst much other often invaluable content.

One of the many free resources which I have found useful and informative is “The Blogger’s Guide to SEO” by Aaron & Giovanna Wall. This guide not only provides many handy hints and tips, but also hyperlinks to many other useful resources. This free mini-guide is great value-for-free, and I thought it worth a mention herein.

Not forgetting, of course, the becomeablogger paid-program. This program walks the subscriber through every step involved in becoming a blogger; from the preliminaries of resource-preparation on a human and technical level, through the vital steps such as search engine optimisation, plugin installation, content… It’s all there. OK it’s not free, but it’s worth every penny nevertheless. If you click on the promotional banner below you’ll be taken to the free-resources area from where you can subscribe to the course in full.

Whether you’re considering or about to start blogging, or whether you’re currently blogging at this point and you have your own blog already set up and running; the becomeablogger program is for you. I’m personally subscribed to it. You yourself might like to join too?

“The Woork Handbook is a free eBook [by Antonio Lupetti, of woork.blogspot.com .] about CSS, HTML, AJAX, web programming, Moo Tools, Scriptaculous, and other topics about web design…”

That’s got to be good. I haven’t even looked at it yet; I’ve only just discovered it. Since it’s free, however, I reckon it’s worth a Digg, maybe subscribing to the RSS feed, even a contribution if you’re feeling generous why not? I simply have to blog it.

Please remember that the guy who wrote it doesn’t have English as his first language; so it may be a little confusing in places. : But it’s FREE – Who’s complaining?

This guy may not necessarily be a cunning linguist, but he seems to have a good amount of tech prowess; which can only be beneficial to take notice of. It would appear to be a good idea to bookmark his website.

You can download your free copy HERE.

It’s strange to note that this chap; having all that knowledge and experience, uses Google’s blogger rather than his own self-hosted blog. Maybe he has many other blogs; hosted and self-hosted? I have a blog on Posterous, as well as one on Windows Live: Both of which I hardly ever use these days.

Carrying on with that point: When I was working in the double-glazing industry, a lot of my colleagues had the worst windows I’d ever seen, in an unbelievably bad state, on their own homes; yet they were selling brand new double-glazed uPVC windows and doors etc to other homeowners. -  Have you ever noticed that with trades people? I know a builder whose house is a wreck. I know an electrician whose home wiring hasn’t been attended to for about 50 years… It’s quite uncanny in a way.

Anyway enough of this rabbit: Go forth and download your free copy; then do something nice like donating, bookmarking, adding to social media, etc.

If you like you could tell me what YOU think of the book. Please remember when you do that I’m not a programmer as such, I’m still a novice when it comes to php, css, and almost everything else too in that line, other than 1970’s Commodore BASIC. Also to a lesser extent; DOS, and HTML. Having said that you get the chance to go well beyond my understanding here. – So if you’d like to take the opportunity to ‘beat the author’ ; please feel free to indulge.

  – No I didn’t mean that kind of beating.

I’ve written a few articles over time about AMD’s (so-far-unsuccessful) struggles to stay up to Intel’s market position as the number one processor-builder: But that’s been mainly from a commercial perspective. In this article I’d like to look at the current quality of product and how it would affect you as a desktop-computer-builder.

The type of computer you’re building makes all the difference:

Intel have overflowing coffers, are in cahoots with Microsoft, and, in the case of most people, one of the first things they think of when the word “computer” is mentioned is “Intel”. Some people conclude that, since Intel have the reputation, the position, and the money, then they must be the best and their processors are far better than AMDs.

In some ways you’d be right there; but only in a limited context. Four years ago (2005) it was AMD who were at the forefront of technology; while Intel were lagging well behind with their single-core Pentium 4.

Things have come a long way since then, and at a surprisingly quick pace too: We now have quad-core processors from both Intel and AMD, and 12-core chips loom not far away on the horizon.

Today, however, the situation is that many tech people are recommending Intel chips for everything: “Windows was originally designed to run on Intel processors.” That may be the case; but it may have escaped the attention of some that we’re no longer using the original version of Windows; neither is everyone using Windows. (OK; Macs will probably always use Intel chips from this point forward, granted. I don’t build Macs. I leave that to Psystar.)

The truth of the matter, in a nutshell, is at this point in time, that if you’re looking to build a performance PC than you should always use an Intel processor. For anything else; why waste money on a more-expensive Intel CPU and motherboard when a cheaper AMD setup will fare just as well for everyday general computing purposes?

OK there have been a few exceptions to this rule lately, granted: the early AMD Phenoms (Quad-core.) sucked badly, and produced enough heat to cook your dinner with. The current series of Phenoms, the latest release, are competitive with most of Intel’s offerings though. In the dual-core market the AMD and the Intel ranges of late have been much the same performance-wise other than in the realms of overclocking potential, at least as far as general-usage-computing  is concerned.

So if you’re an ultra-geek and you want to always stay up to date with technology’s leading performance with a highly-overclocked top-spec gaming machine capable of playing all the latest and near-future releases from the games industry, always use an Intel CPU. If you’re a general geek who just likes messing around with anything and everything technical then sure; build the odd box with whatever takes your fancy if you can afford it. If you’re building a machine for just general household or office usage then in my view it really isn’t’ worth going to the added expense of using Intel: use AMD. the processor and also the motherboard will be cheaper and yet will do the job just as well.

I currently run 2 boxes; both have an AMD Athlon 64 x 2 processor running at 2.2 GHz stock speed. I have 2GB of DDR2 RAM in each, and a 250MB graphics card in one, a 500MB card in the other. (The one I’m writing this on.) I have a Gigabyte motherboard in this one + a Hitachi hard-drive, the other uses an Asus motherboard with a Hitachi and a Seagate hard-drive. I have thus far had no major problems with either machine, and have been able to do everything I wanted with either. I don’t overclock or play the latest games, (In fact I hardly ever play any games.) and the machines are just right for me.

I’m thinking of building a third machine to run Windows 7  beta on. If i do then that’ll most likely use the latest AMD Phenom quad-core CPU, or I might just stay with an Athlon 64 x 2 dual-core chip. i don’t want to performance-test Windows 7, just see if and how well it works for general computing on a new machine. – So I don’t need a powerful top-spec overclocked machine to do it on. – I’ll use an AMD processor and save money. What’s your opinion; AMD or Intel? For what and why?

Above: a PCI USB card.

I realise that many run-of-the-mill or experienced computer users will know the content of this article already. There are some, however, – maybe newbies or non-computer-savvy users – who won’t  know it; and this article is for those people:

No matter how many USB ports there are on your computer, (Usually anything between 2 and 12, depending upon your motherboard and the builder of your computer, be it a well-known-brand, or a custom-build.) there may come a time when you simply run out of ports. Maybe one or more just stop working suddenly due to a hardware fault, or perhaps you have so many devices attached via USB that there are no USB ports left to connect to.

There’s no need to rush out and buy an additional or a replacement computer though: There are at least two much cheaper ways to deal with the problem.

The first is to buy yourself a USB hub:

 This method can on rare occasions have drawbacks as far as power consumption is concerned: A standard USB 2.0-enabled socket will deliver 5 Volts (+/- 0.5 V) at 0.5 Amps = 2.5 Watts approx. If the equipment connected to said USB port via the USB hub(s) tries to draw more than 2.5 watts of power then things start happening: The USB port physically can’t and won’t supply any more power; therefore something has to go without. – And consequently something won’t work as it should.

Overcoming this problem; should it arise, involves opening the case and installing a PCI USB card. This is a device which plugs into one of the PCI sockets on the motherboard, and, once installed, is accessible from the back of your computer.

“I’m not going inside the box! – Oh no way: I’m a technophobe and will just end up breaking something in a panic!”

Relax! It’s a very simple operation. Compose yourself. If it’s your first time inside a computer you may like to be supervised by a local geek you know; just to give you a bit more confidence and reassurance, so that if you feel you can’t go on – help is at hand.

I do suggest that you earth yourself before even opening a computer and/or handling any microelectronic device. If the computer remains connected to the AC Mains with the main power-switch turned off, then the case remains connected to your home’s electrical earth. You can connect a piece of wire to the case and connect the other end to a piece of metal jewellery if you like; or you can buy yourself an anti-static wristband which connects in a similar manner.

Forget everything you see as soon as you remove the side-panel of the case: I know it looks confusing and complicated. You’re right: It is. – But we don’t need to worry about that right now. There’s no microelectronic surgery or precision soldering involved in this operation.

Your PCI USB card should still be in the box and sealed inside the anti-static bag at this point.

Now identify a PCI socket on the motherboard; there should be at least 2. (Don’t get PCI and PCIe confused: they are different technologies and not in any way interchangeable. You’re looking for a PCI socket.) Either ask your friendly geek or find your motherboard’s manual and identify it using that.

Looking horizontally towards the back of the computer from your chosen PCI socket you’ll probably see a blanking-plate, (Usually metal) corresponding to where the USB sockets on the card you’re about to install will be positioned. Reach inside the case. – Try not to touch any of the other electronics purposefully. If you do so accidentally it should be all right so long as you remain earthed (See above.). – Push the blanking-plate outwards, applying pressure until it partly collapses towards the outside back of the computer case. Go round the back of the computer case and remove it completely by breaking any of the weak points remaining that are keeping it attached.

While remaining earthed via the wire or the wristband, remove the PCI USB card, sealed inside the anti-static bag, from its box, Carefully remove the anti-static bag, avoiding touching any of the card’s electronics wherever possible. Hold the card by the metal end where its USB ports are.

Move the card gently into the computer’s case so that the contacts on its side match exactly with the PCI socket on the motherboard. You’ll see a metal lug which is a tiny extension of the card’s metal plate. Keep this as close to the case as possible and you’ll find that it inserts between the edge of the motherboard and the back-end of the computer;s case, so that the card’s USB ports are flush with the outside of the back of the case. Ensure that the card’s row of contacts are flush with the PCI socket on the motherboard and gently press down until they all evenly slide into the PCI socket.

‘Nearly finished: You’ll now see a screw-hole on the tag at right-angles to the metal-plate on the back-end of the card. Match this up with the corresponding screw-hole on the case and insert and tighten a screw to secure the card in place.

Before you close the case; switch on and boot up the computer. The computer should see the new hardware t6hat you’ve just installed, and should automatically install drivers for it.

If it fails to do so then either the card is not inserted properly into the PCI socket or it is faulty. Shut down and switch off the computer at the back. Check that the card is firmly pushed down into the PCI socket and that all the connectors are making contact with the socket correctly. If you are sure that everything is as it should be; power on and boot up again. If the computer still fails to see the card and install drivers, do this check again, and if still nothing remove the card and replace with a different card of the same type.

Once your computer has seen, identified and installed drivers for the card, you can use it normally. Remove the earth connection between the case and yourself, check that you haven’t left anything loose inside the computer, such as tools, a screw, jewellery, etc, and replace and secure the case panel.

You have just fitted a USB extension card; and you’ll see a number of new USB ports at the back if your computer:use these normally as you would use any other USB port.

That wasn’t too hard was it? If you’re not happy with the above instructions then take a look at another site: This tutorial shows you how to install a PCI TV card – the same one that I use in my computer would you believe. Although you’ll be installing a different type of card, as in a PCI USB card; you’ll nevertheless be installing it to a PCI slot just as with this card, so the principle is the same.

Either you’ve plugged in a USB hub, or you’ve installed a PCI USB card. You now have more USB ports to play with either way.

Happy computing.

“Untouchable” Apple are becoming security-conscious it appears:

Despite the “I’m a Mac” guy sneezing the word Vista at the “I’m a PC” guy in their adverts; Apple have found it not below their demeanour to publish the following page on their website: –

Does the great Jobsweh suddenly feel that his invulnerability is threatened – or is it just the paranoid manifestation of the symptoms of hormone imbalance? Whatever the case, it appears that Apple have woken up to the fact that just because a rival operating system is more targeted, it doesn’t make theirs immune to attack.

It’s in every Mac user’s interests to ensure that your Mac doesn’t become infected with something called “malware”: That’s the nasty malefic mini-programs that only a few months ago the Apple advertising campaigns were insinuating only affect PCs. You might like to click upon this link to be taken from here to a place created by your own kind from whence you might gain the protection that you’ve hitherto been told you don’t need.

The Mac-attack is coming: Prevention is better than cure. Immunity is a myth.

Read This. Don’t end up with a rotten Apple.

There’s an RSS feed to the Apple Networking and Security Downloads page by which you can get notified when new tools are put on the list.

Question: Are Steve Jobs’ kids known as “applets”?

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK has upheld mobile companies rights to rip off the British public and con them with false advertising claims. The ASA as good as gave the mobile companies permission to use the word "unlimited" with regard to restricted data limits. This follows in the wake of a national press advert by a company called e2save who promised "unlimited data" on a contract for the BlackBerry 9000 Bold. A member of the public complained to the ASA that the advert was misleading after noticing a footnote at the bottom of the ad stating the data was limited to 250MB per month. Despite the obvious dishonesty on the part of e2save, the ASA has failed to uphold the complaint.

In response to the complaint, e2save cited data from network provider, Orange, that showed the "250MB monthly usage limit was far in excess of the amount of data that an average customer would use". The company claimed 1MB of mobile data would cover "160 WAP pages, 100 short emails, four video clips or three music tracks".

Those figures are utter garbage, yet despite that fact they were enough to satisfy the ASA, who agreed "that the vast majority of customers were unaffected by the data limit, and we therefore concluded that the fair usage policy did not contradict the claim ‘includes unlimited data’"

Allowing broadband companies to advertise "unlimited" deals that have set limits appears to be an ongoing thing with the ASA. Possibly they get secret funding from UK mobile companies? Nothing would surprise me in rip-off Britain.

A survey by uSwitch, conducted in October 2008, found that 86% of people who had signed up for an "unlimited" deal didn’t realise that fair-usage policies and limits applied to their contract.

They seem to think the British public are stupid. – In many cases they could well be right , although it’s rather embarrassing to say so as a British citizen. Nevertheless such blatant dishonesty should be stamped upon straight away.

Analogue amplification stages incorporating just a single active device, such as a transistor or op-amp, – as in a DC amplifier -  usually allow amplification of either the negative-going or the positive-going part of an AC waveform alone; basically cutting out half of the cycle and therefore causing immense distortion. There are two ways of overcoming this: Those being amplifying both halves of the waveform separately and recombining them at the output; perhaps at a decoupling transformer, (Too much copper wire, inductance, and consequential weight for my liking.) or by using two interconnected active devices to amplify both halves of the waveform at once, before passing the full AC waveform on to the next stage.

The latter method can be achieved with a push-pull amplifier.

Pictured below is a circuit diagram of a very basic push-pull amplification stage. (Please excuse the freehand drawing.)

The input signal; an alternating waveform, is fed via capacitors 1 & 2 to the bases of Q1 and Q2. The functions of C1 & 2 individually and collectively are two-fold: The first is that they individually shield the base connections of their respective transistors from any stray DC voltages from a previous stage, also they separate any DC potentials present at the base junctions of Q1 & 2; therefore preventing unintentional and accidental biasing of one another.

Resistors 3 & 4 act as a potential divider biasing the base of Q1 to 0V7. Resistors 1 & 2 have the a similar effect effect on the base of Q2: However since Q2 is a PNP transistor, the values of resistor used in the case of the R3,4 pair are reversed; therefore giving the base of Q2 a negative bias with respect to that of Q1.

Preset potentiometers PR1 & 2 set the potential of the transistor-pair with respect to the supply rails; and consequently the swing-maximum of the output-waveform. Resistors R5 & 6 are a precaution to avoid the peak output level colliding with the supply voltage and therefore causing distortion.

Capacitor C3 provides AC decoupling for the transistor pair.

Note that the emitters of the transistors are connected together and the output taken from that connection. This allows the inclusion of the traditional collector load resistance in both cases.

A waveform appearing at the input flows through both C1 and C2 to the base of the individual transistors. If the waveform is on the positive-going half of the cycle it lowers the conduction of Q2 and raises the conduction of Q1. If the waveform is on the negative-going half of the cycle the reverse occurs: Hence the output polarity mirrors the input polarity to whatever degree of amplification is involved.

A Little Background Information:

Prior to the advent of digital electronics, this type of circuit configuration was widely used in analogue receiving and amplification devices throughout the 1950s, 60s, and to some extent even the 70s. Back in the 1950s before the transistor became widely used in electronic circuitry, they would use a pair of triode or pentode  thermionic valves in the place of the transistor pair. As technology developed the manufacturers developed smaller valves with two triode or pentode sections for the purpose, screened from one another by a metal electrode.

(Example: ECC82 (European Nomenclature), or equivalent 12AU7 (American nomenclature.) AF double-triode with a 6.3 Volt heater supply. The European equivalent with a higher heater voltage was the UCC82 which required a 32 Volt heater supply.)

Valves were also manufactured with a pre-amplification or oscillator stage included, usually a triode; along with a main amplification device, usually a pentode. (Example ECL85 (6.3V heater supply), UCL85(32 V heater supply), and PCL85 (17.5 Volt heater supply, commonly used in the audio output stages of televisions. – Right up until around 1973.))

During the late 1960s/early 70s, valves began to be excluded from the designs of electronic devices, in preference for the transistor; which was lighter, lasted a lot longer, required less voltage to function, and didn’t require an internal heater powered from an external source to make it work.

(There was a period at the very end of the 1960s which lasted a little way into the 70s where equipment manufacturers would produce valve/transistor hybrids, especially in the case of televisions. These exhibited a few benefits over valve-only technology; such as they took less time to warm up before they started working, and the amount of mains-hum distortion was reduced to a large extent.)

There: A free history-lesson along with the main subject. There’s value-for-money; even though there was no charge in the first place.

Personally Speaking:

Just in case you’re wondering, I do just about remember those old days mentioned; especially the latter valve/transistor technology. I was just getting into electronics in those days. – And yes I was rather young to be messing about inside televisions et al. I practiced hobby electronics until fairly recently, when I got qualifications in the subject after a crash-refresher course at college. I became interested in computers in the late 1970s, around the time the Commodore Pet was released to market. Upon leaving school I followed the arts for a while, at the same time as running a small hobby-enterprise in analogue electronics, until I got back into both computers and digital electronics in the late 1990s.

(Oh yes. – Just in case you were wondering; I do remember the large B9D-base line-output pentode valve used in some televisions right into the 1980s; although I can’t remember the alphanumeric designation offhand. It started with a “P”, but that’s pretty obvious. – Most television valves did, other than maybe the HF triode-pentodes in the UHF/VHF tuners of some 1960s models. – Apart from some of the B8A valves of the early 1960s with the metallic base. – Now that is going back a bit too far.)

Ah I just remembered: PL504.  

. . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I was just proof-reading after writing this lot and I remembered; I need to hyperlink. There is so much I should hyperlink. If this article takes longer than expected to produce then that’s part of the reason why.

Oh wow; this’ll be fun!

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Microsoft have recently done their best to become resurgent to some degree; and one of the new innovations as it were is an update to Windows Live Writer. This new version is installed by a new version of Windows Live Installer, which also offers a new and updated version of Windows Live Messenger as well as Windows Live Sign in Assistant.

Although I’d heard reports that the beta versions “sucked”; I tried a download to one of my comps when I noticed that a final retail version of the new WL Messenger was advertised in my Hotmail account. On clicking the link I wasn’t surprised to see that a new WL Installer loaded.

When this was activated I noticed that the softies had added Parental Controls to the choice of programs. I myself didn’t need any parental controls as my computers are never used by non-adults, so I didn’t bother with them and therefore have no idea how good or otherwise they are.

I did install the new WL messenger, Sign-in Assistant, and Writer though. I haven’t actually properly used the new messenger, although I have had a look at it and I am impressed by the sleeker look and the curviness of it: It appears more feminine as far as style is concerned. It also has a much gentler notification sound: Something softer and noticeable, rather than a harsh “DING!” that makes me jump out of my skin if I’m not expecting it. 

One thing I did notice, on the flipside of that, is that after installation it returns to the default blue. – Which is a lighter blue than before. I didn’t try it out for long; but during the 10 minutes or so I was messing about with it, I didn’t find anything that allowed me to change the colour back to pink, as I usually have it.

Hopefully it’s not operational on the Rubik’s-Cube principle: The longer you play with it, the harder it gets. ( – Yes I am aware of exactly what some of you are thinking about at this juncture. )

Anyway; rather than mess with Messenger at that point, I decided I’d rather write with Writer: -

Once again a nice curvaceously styled GUI; which actually this time did retain its previous pink tone. In fact it enhanced it somewhat. On this module I immediately noticed the colour-settings icon, not that I needed it in this case. The GUI is much the same as the old GUI but with a much sleeker appearance, It also uses the term “blog” rather than “weblog”, which is something that used to annoy me: Like OK it’s called a BLOG. I know that it’s an abbreviated version of the word “weblog”; but please don’t try to sound clever…Plus you’re just confusing people who aren’t aware of that.

What else has changed? Ooh lots; more than I have room or time to tell you all about here. One more main point though; and something quite important, a bug-fix from the previous version: - __________________ <——– I snagged this pic from cybernews.com . I thought it was rather creative to be frank. I don’t know whether it’s a Microsoft original or a creation by the aforementioned. Credit to the creator whichever.

When using the last version I’d alternate views between Web View and Text a lot. – Because I write and edit my articles partly in web-preview and partly in html. That was fine, but with the last version I’d have to ensure everything was finished totally and ready to be posted to blog before I inserted a Google Adwords advertisment in html. The reason for that was that if I inserted a Google Adwords ad in html and then switched back to Web View from Text it appeared initially that nothing was wrong. However if I then uploaded it to blog or returned to Text view the Adwords ad had multiplied. Every time I switched between Text and Web View it multiplied again!

This bug has now been fixed; and I can now change between “Edit” as it is now labelled, (Microsoft love to be as confusing as possible.) and “Source” as it is now known. (Ditto.) Everything else seems to work as before. It’s retained the add-ons from the previous version, and, after a single session getting used to the new look, I must say that I prefer it to the old one.

‘Would love to tell you more, but don’t have all day and night to write. I thought I’d just squeeze this post of a few notes into my blog-writing session, before I get on with other things.

Do try out the new Windows Live apps for yourself. Yesterday (10th January 2009) the latest WL apps weren’t exactly easy to find on Google: Everything led back to the older WL Installer with its previous versions. – But it’s there somewhere.

Do leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Foreword

In this article I’m going to use UK mains-supply electrical characteristics to determine the loads used by examples of mains-powered lighting using Ohm’s Law. For the purposes of calculation using Ohm’s Law, the principles used herein can equally be applied to the USA by substituting the electrical characteristics for those used in the US; such as 120 volts in place of 240 volts, etc.

I’m unsure whether the suppliers use the same method of consumption measurement in the US; i.e, a “unit” or “units”. I am assuming that they do, and that a unit of electricity is calculated in the same way as it is in the UK. Perhaps someone would like to comment on this?

I’m also using UK currency to calculate the costs.

Measuring Consumption

In the UK the suppliers measure consumption of electricity in units, and bill accordingly for the number of units used over a period of time.

But exactly what is a unit?

A unit is calculated as a single ampere of current drawn over the period of an hour at the AC mains voltage.

That helps one heck of a lot. – Thanks. So how much electricity does, say, my ceiling light use for instance, and how much does it cost to run it?

To answer that we’ll first need to know how much current your ceiling light is drawing from the mains supply. What is the wattage rating of the light bulb that you’re using in it? In this example we’ll use a 100 Watt incandescent tungsten-filament light-bulb.

(That’s the old-type bulb that’s been in use for years until low-energy lamps were invented.)

This light-bulb is running on a UK mains voltage of 240Volts AC.

(There are variations in the exact UK mains voltage depending upon time of day and area: It can vary between around 212 and 256 Volts. (For instance, the current mains voltage here at time of writing is 243 Volts, according to my UPS’s software.) However it’s commonly around 230 to 250 Volts at most times and in most areas. For this example we’ll use 240 Volts.)

We now turn to Ohm’s Law and use the equation I = P/V; where P = power in Watts, I = current in Amperes, and V = voltage in Volts.

Therefore, in this example: -

I = 100 Watts/240 Volts

I = 0.4762 Amperes (Amps)

Over an hour, then, this bulb will burn 0.4762 of a unit in electricity. Over 2 hours it’ll burn 0.9524 of a unit.

If the price of electricity were 10 pence per unit then this bulb costs 0.4762 X 10 = 4.762 pence per hour to run.

To cut your costs of this ceiling light you might install an energy-saving lamp in it instead. A 35 Watt energy-saving light using fluorescent-based technology will produce the same amount of light as the 100 Watt incandescent light-bulb. let’s calculate the savings on electricity used: -

I = 35 watts / 240 Volts = 0.1458 Amps, Over an hour that’ll burn 0.1458 of a unit of electricity.

Savings

If the price of electricity were 10 pence per unit then this bulb costs 1.458 pence per hour to run: A saving of 3.304 pence per hour.

The cost of the energy-saving lamp will be somewhere in the region of 5 times that of the incandescent bulb. The incandescent bulb costs about 45 pence. The energy-saving lamp costs about £2.25p.

The energy-saving lamp lasts around at least 6 times as long as the incandescent bulb; therefore the extra cost is mitigated by this; saving around 7.5 pence on the replacement cost of the product every 1000 hours (The expected life of an incandescent bulb.) approx. Total replacement saving = 48 pence per energy-saving lamp used.

During the 6000 hours of the energy-saving lamp’s life, at a saving of 3.304 pence per hour, you’ll save a total of £198.24p in electricity. Add to that the replacement saving of 48p gives a grand total saved out of your budget of £198.72.

This saving could be over a period of between 250 days (Just over 8 months of constant usage.) and around 25,000 days (66.665 years); depending upon the amount of usage. Whatever the time period; you are saving around two-thirds of the electricity you’d have otherwise have used, as well as the cost of a weekend holiday at today’s prices.

If you were to use energy-saving lamps all over the house, rather than the old incandescent light-bulbs, – think of the savings you could make in terms of power-efficiency as well as money!

Rip-Off Britain

I’ve been using the cost of 10 pence per unit in the above calculations as the cost of electricity. The current cost of electricity in the UK (Rip-off Britain) is currently more than this; although electricity suppliers have no excuse (Other than the indefensible reasons they use.) at this point in time for not reducing their charges: -

“Oh we’ll reduce the costs when the savings trickle down to us.” is utter faeces! They’re making a fortune off the British consumers, who stupidly-grin-and-bear-it in true British stiff-upper-lip fashion. Wake up UK: You’re being conned, as usual. We’ll soon develop a worldwide reputation as a nation of mugs; just before we join the Third-World.

Mugabe’s type are already running the UK; just a lot more subtly. Didn’t you notice?

Anyway that aside; with things as they are it’s even more important to save on electricity consumption; even if only to stop the thieving electricity suppliers from making such a massive profit.

It’s worth doing what I did a couple or three years ago: Take a note of every light in the house. Is an energy-saving lamp fitted? If no; what is the wattage of the existing bulb?

If 40 watt; replace with an 18 Watt energy-saving lamp.

If 60 watt; replace with an 25 Watt energy-saving lamp.

If 100 watt; replace with an 35 Watt energy-saving lamp.

The only problem may be those lights that have a dimmer-switch: In many cases it is not possible to run an energy-saving lamp via a dimmer-switch. I have 1 such light; but I rarely use it anyway. – Somewhere in the region of 4 hours a week if that.

Having assessed the lighting situation thus; go out and buy the corresponding energy-saving lamps and install them. Keep the old incandescent bulbs for emergencies. You’ll notice the savings after a year or so.

If you’re a computer-user; and you probably are if you’re reading this on a computer, then ‘chances are that you’ve stored valuable and/or important data on your hard-drive.

It’s a well-known fact that hard-drives don’t last forever: Their usual lifespan is 3 to 5 years. Some can fail early, others in rare cases can seem to go on forever until one day the inevitable happens, or the computer has a massive failure of some other component and it’s just not worth repairing due to age and/or cost.

Some other errors or breakdowns can damage or destroy the hard-drive also; such as in some cases a power-supply fault, or even something as simple as a sudden power-failure or unexpected shutdown. – Leading to data loss or corruption.

The simple fact is that, apart from a number of cases where you’re running a RAID-array, your computer only writes data to a single location. If that location becomes damaged or the data at that location becomes corrupt, you lose that data forever unless it’s backed up.

Even running a RAID-array isn’t definite protection against this happening. Neither is using an SSD, (Solid-State Device.) as even they wear out over time and are prone to data errors.

The only way that you can ensure the survival of your data to a much greater extent is to make backups. (Yes I said backupS, as in ‘more than one’ backup.)

How to back it up:

Probably the most common method of backing up data is using an external hard-drive. It’s a fairly good way to start; but it does nevertheless have drawbacks. We’ll label this method “Method 1a”.

I mentioned drawbacks; and I’ll explain: Your external hard-drive will probably be situated near or along with your system; most likely in the same room. If your computer’s hard-drive malfunctions then you have a convenient backup close at hand: That’s the positive aspect. Here’s the negative side of the coin: If you have a fire in your house which destroys your system then it’ll probably destroy your internal hard-drive too. If you get burglarized it’s unlikely that the thief will consider leaving your external hard-drive behind so that you have a backup of the data that they’ve stolen along with the equipment: Burglars tend to be rather inconsiderate people.

What you need is an offsite location for a backup. Cue “Method 2”: This method isn’t free or pay-one-time-only as the last method was. Nevertheless it’s well worth doing for the reasons already stated. – The method is online backup.

There are a number of companies, 2 of which I have experience with, that will provide online backup for your data. The 2 I recommend from experience are Carbonite and Backblaze. Personally I find the Carbonite GUI more user-friendly, in addition to the cost being easier on the pocket. Your personal experience may vary. Backup won’t be instant in either case. In fact it could be months before all your data is backed up; depending on how much of it there is. Once your initial backup is completed, however, subsequent incremental real-time backups will be much easier and far less time-consuming. The sooner you start the sooner all your data is backed up online.

OK so that’s two methods of backing up your data, and that’s a fairly infallible system if you use both methods. There is a third method, though, which I’ll label “Method 1b”: This method only applies if you run 2 computers.

Quite simply the method comprises backing up all the data on the one machine to the hard-drive of the other, in both cases. This third backup ensures that your data will almost certainly be retrievable from at least one source in the case of a disk-failure in a single machine.

You may not have a second computer though. You may have a home server or NAS box though. It would be an idea to keep a backup on that too. Quite honestly, although this might seem a bit like overkill; the more backups you have the better. You must remember to keep all your backups up-to-date though. Not doing this rather defeats the object of the exercise.

Backups For Bloggers

If you’re a blogger, we come to another dimension in backups: That being backing up your blog.

Now I’ve done a lot of searching with regard to this; but rather than detail all of my findings I’ll just say that it can be extremely tricky to back up anything other than a self-hosted WordPress blog. In the case of the latter it’s not that hard at all, and that’s what I’ll be talking about here as that’s the type of blog I own and you’re reading now.

When I talk about a “self-hosted” blog, you can take that to mean in 49 out of 50 cases that the blog owner rents space on a web-hosting company’s servers. You’ll appreciate that web-hosting companies can and do, at times, unexpectedly go out of business overnight. Also neither their servers nor their backups are infallible.

In addition to the above, the owner themselves may cause an error on the server which makes the blog un-viewable. (I’ve done this before with my bad php skills, such that they are.) In such cases I’ve retrieved the original file from the backup I made earlier and uploaded it to the server after deleting the file I messed up: Problem solved.

There are two aspects of backing up a self-hosted WordPress blog: The first of those being the content, the second being the SQL database. Here’s how I do it: -

Every time I change anything on the blog; i.e. add or edit a post, page, or file, I make a backup of the entire blog. I have three backups of this blog; those being the last backup, the one before last, and the one before that. Every time I make a new backup I delete the oldest backup and replace it with the newest.

I download the contents of the root-directory to the relevant backup folder via ftp. For the purpose of backing up the database I have a plugin installed that automatically backs-up the database to a folder in the root-directory daily. Therefore when I back up the blog I am also downloading a fairly recent backup of the database also.

This requires the act of going into that folder on the server every now and again and deleting some of the old database backups; otherwise the data would take ages to download due to a massive folder stuffed full of ancient worthless database backups.

I back up the contents of each of my computers daily, including the blog and blog database backups, to external hard-drive as well as to the other computer. In addition to this I have online backups being made in real time for the data on both computers.

Is it infallible? No; but it’s a fair bit of extra work which makes it as near as I can get to infallible. Call me paranoid; but once bitten twice shy. I’ll not be guilty of having no backup again.

Do you regularly back everything up? Even just at least ONE backup? If not I’d start soon if I were you: You’re living on borrowed time every second that your computer is working if you don’t have a backup source.

Further Reading – This and Other Blogs

From this author: -

1    2    3    4

Until now; AMD’s farcical Phenom chip has been far outshone by pretty much anything and everything produced by Intel; The first Phenoms consumed power like a fish takes in water, as well as being affected by a Translation Lookaside Buffer bug. Although I’m an AMD advocate; the Phenom story so far has been a bit of a joke.

This is AMD’s third attempt at the Phenom; and it looks like third time lucky, as the new Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition looks like something at least half-decent: It’s had a large revamp in the architectural department; notably as regards the 45nm transistors and an extra 4 MB of level 3 cache; bringing the total up to 6MB.

Using smaller transistors has greatly reduced the heat output of the new chips; with the result that they can work at a higher frequency than their predecessors. Now running at stock speeds of 3GHz, the new processors still use less power.

Another bonus is that the Phenom II is pin-compatible with the original Phenom, works with DDR2 RAM, and will directly replace its ancestor in a socket AM2+ motherboard capable of running a 125W CPU. – A BIOS update may well be required nevertheless.

This may be where the Phenom has the edge over Intel’s offerings. Upgrading to the Intel Core i7 CPU range entails buying and fitting not just a new processor; but also a new motherboard, cooler, and new, more expensive DDR3 memory too.

AMD are  launching the 3GHz 940 Black Edition along with the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920.

Maybe AMD are at last catching up with Intel? What’s your take on it?

There is just so much coverage of this; and it’s being updated so much, that this blog is unable to stay up to date with events. What I’m going to do, therefore, is link to other sites that have commentaries along with regular updates on the state of play: -

Some sources are suggesting that distribution by BitTorrent would have been an effective solution to the problem. Whatever might have been; with a vast number of "server too busy" messages; Microsoft have failed again due to their under-performance and lack of foresight.

Judging by some of the comments I see; it appears that the Softies have just shot themselves in the foot again.

Pictured: The UK internet in its uphill battle for improvement.

This particular feather in the cap marries technology and politics: It’s no great discovery and it’s hardly rocket-science: In fact it’s glaringly obvious. However, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The British internet infrastructure is a fiasco. This time I have the backing of Ofcom; the UK telecoms regulator:-

A survey carried out for Ofcom indicated that the average UK customer typically gets only around 45% of the broadband speed advertised by their ISP that they’re paying for: Rip-off Britain in action. What do the ISP’s intend to do about it? As usual as little as possible: As long as the cash is coming in they’ll do their utmost to provide the minimum which they can get away with: i.e. Faster than dialup … Because they can’t possibly get away with anything less.

Researchers did 10 million tests in 1,500 homes in the UK over a period of 30 days. They found, not only that broadband speeds in rural areas were up to 15% less than those in urban environments, but also that the typical internet speed was an average of 3.6 Mb/s (Megabits per second.), despite the fact that the usual broadband speed currently advertised in the UK is 8Mb/s or more.

BT advertise 8Mb/s over their copper-wire telephone network, and Virgin Media advertise 20Mb/s over their fibre-optic network.

I’m a BT customer who lives within a few minutes walk of the BT exchange. A few years ago I was told that my internet speed was being increased from 2Mb/s to 8Mb/s for no extra charge. The 2Mb/s speed barely reached 1.5 Mb/s normally; and proportionally speaking the 8Mb/s service hardly ever gets above 6Mb/s. It’s normally at around 3 Mb/s. In fact, over the Christmas period last year (2008) it dropped to just below 1Mb/s.

That’s rip-off Britain for you: ‘Take all your wealth from you and give you shit in return.

It’s quite abysmal also that Virgin Media’s fibre-optic service; advertised at 20Mb/s, rarely gets up to a paltry 10Mb/s in most areas.

Having said that; when the faster service was first switched on; I clocked speeds of up to 7.3 Mb/s. This was short-lived, though. In addition to that my existing modem provided by BT was unable to cope with the faster internet and kept disconnecting until it eventually no longer worked at all. BT’s partially-English speaking Indian call-centre weren’t having any of it, and the person I had the displeasure of talking with gave me such grief that I ended up testing every bit of cable from my BT socket as well as the socket itself, through to my modem, then the patch lead from my modem to the computer. I then replaced the ADSL filter and still no internet. The Indian fascist on the other end of the phone told me that my computer was faulty and that I’d have to return it to the manufacturer. I informed him that I was the manufacturer, and that the line and modem didn’t work on any of my other computers either. I also informed him that he was a scare-mongering ignorant tele-thug who had no place in a call centre. I demanded to speak to his supervisor, who, it turned out, couldn’t understand a word of English. Eventually, after I managed to get to speak to someone who was a little more fluent, they agreed to send me a modem that was capable of handling the increased speed.

As I said in the past; BT is a rather reliable ISP; but when things do go wrong they’re hell to deal with.

As is the case with myself, millions of other internet customers are getting less than half the broadband speed they are paying for, restricting their ability to download music, film and games. It’s the stupid British people’s fault just as much as the ISP’s: They just grin and bear it; not daring to complain. I’ve complained about it before; but just got myself branded as a trouble-maker by BT and was ignored.

Here’s something: the download speed meter which is part of the BT Online Help software which they give you with their service, along with free Norton Security Centre (An outdated version.) and other useless bloatware, all of which I wouldn’t use even if they offered to pay me to use it, has a few lines of unchanging text underneath it, which says something to the effect of: -

"This speed is judged to be acceptable by BT for your connection, bearing in mind the time of day and the distance of your property from the BT exchange. Although BT do advertise a certain download speed, we are unable to maintain this at all times. Factors that can affect the speed of your connection include the distance of your computer from the telephone socket, the distance of your place of residence from the exchange, as well as the number of users currently using our services."

…And my age, the position of the sun relative to the galactic core, in addition to the effect of Jupiter’s gravitational pull on the Earth no doubt.

This message appears no matter what the download speed: I’d still get exactly the same message if it was 1 byte a year. It’s just another cop-out from BT.

There is something to do with the speeds pertaining to the time of day though: In the tests that were run; speeds were lowest between 5pm and 6pm on Sundays, when internet usage is at its peak. – Can’t you just hear the infrastructure creaking under the weight put upon it? Don’t you smell the stench of melting insulation as the copper wires heat up?!

…And still the politicians are talking about doing something about it in a future tense. UK businesses such as BT are holding back on doing anything about it until they can be sure that they’ll make instant vast profits.

David Cameron, leader of the Opposition, says "Elect the Tories at the next election and we’ll do something about it."

Meanwhile Gordon Brown is still thinking about doing something about it. Perhaps he’ll say: -

"No; elect the Labour Party at the next election and we’ll do even more about it."

…And then have a round of meetings to discuss it for another four years if he gets elected?

Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat culture, media and sport spokesman, said:

“This is yet more evidence that broadband providers are ripping off British consumers.”

– Quite obviously not much gets past him!

Jeremy Hunt, – which rhymes with "front", and "runt", – the Shadow Culture Secretary, is expected to voice his criticism today. In a speech to be delivered at Microsoft’s London offices, he will say:-

“The UK has some of the slowest broadband speeds in the developed world, coming 21st out of 30 countries in a survey by the US-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.” 

- To which Microsoft will probably quite rightly reply "If you can’t maintain your own country that you’re supposed to be looking after; we’re not going to do it for you. Sod off!"

The song lyrics "A little less conversation – A little more action" spring to mind.

One thing is that if we keep talking about it long enough we’ll eventually no doubt be welcomed warmly into the third-world; where we can learn to communicate by means of bongo-drums instead.

"That’s almost up to 30 kilobytes a second so far!"

This was so ironic that I simply had to blog it:-

After Steve Ballmer’s speech at the CES in Vegas I was beginning to think that there was hope for Microsoft. Since Ballmer had announced a new partnership with Facebook I thought I’d go find the Facebook app that would make it possible for me to have Windows Live Spaces automatically configured as another outpost; another piece of cyberspace to call my own as it were.

Having started a search earlier and found the Mirror Blog app, following which I installed it into my Facebook profile and wrote my analysis of it; I began the search again. This time I wasn’t distracted and very soon found it. Full of enthusiasm I installed it to my Facebook profile and started attempting to use.

I managed to sign in without problems; but initially found  the app’s UI a bit confusing. I discovered a few messages from Windows Live Spaces from between June and December 2008; most of which I’d read. The last of which was concerning an outage I’d experienced in December when attempting to sign up to a friend’s Windows Live profile; at which I’d concluded that Windows Live was an [expletive]. I clicked another of the mysteriously-labelled links in the app and was treated to the following: -

(Please forgive the bad-quality screen grab. (Again.))

Marvelous! Nothing’s changed I note.

Maybe I was right all along: Windows Live is an [expletive]? Enough said.

Addendum: I clicked the “About” button on the app and found this:

Windows Live Spaces (Facebook Application)

This app lets you manage your Windows Live Spaces account from inside Facebook, making it easy to run both profiles, or change everything over from Spaces to Facebook!

This application is created by Sean Fagan Systems.

Website: http://www.seanfagansystems.com

Windows Live Spaces © 2008 Sean Fagan Systems. All Rights Reserved.

It appears to possibly be an Irish web-hosting company with a number of extra departments.

The home page looks fairly professional. However when I clicked on the link for “Fagan Way Investments” I got a white screen and this message:-

“HACKED XUGURX BYEE”

This is the company who wrote the Facebook app for Windows Live Spaces. Are Microsoft making dramatic investment cutbacks or something?

While I was looking for an app on Facebook that allowed the integration with Windows Live, as described by Steve Ballmer in his keynote speech at the CES in Las Vegas on 07/01/09, I found an app called "Mirror Blog". This app does exactly what it says on the tin: It mirrors your blog onto Facebook. – That’s right: All the recent articles that are featured in your blog’s RSS feed appear on Facebook in chronological order.

Seemingly a number of bloggers appear to have problems with with the app reading XML RPC and/or resolving their RSS feed’s source; but generally there appears to be no really serious problems with the app so far.

You’ll notice a "Keep" button as well as a "Remove" button; both of which appear on your own computer in the app’s GUI on your home page: This is a good and sensible precaution, for reasons that we’ll go into later. All you do is highlight the post that you want to remove and click the appropriate button.

Whilst Mirror Blog’s reproduction is good; it’s far from perfect: -

That screen-grab isn’t as good as I’d hoped. I’ll tell you that one thing Mirror Blog doesn’t do is copy the line-alignment accurately from the original blog to the Facebook copy: Everything in the copy is left-aligned.

This text is originally centre-aligned.

…And this text is originally right-aligned.

In addition to the above there’s something else of greater importance that it doesn’t copy at all: That being the output from your widgets and plugins. In a nutshell, then, it copies your blog posts only; not including anything else, with around 98% accuracy.

Now; providing that you only want to get the message "out there", and can live with the incorrect line-alignment, it’s a rather unique and amazing tool which can increase your overall readership somewhat.

- But; and here’s a major drawback, your advertising materials will only be read by the readers who actually visit your blog itself: For instance; if you use Google Adsense, none of your Adsense adverts will show. In fact the only way to show an advertisment after translation and mirroring by Mirror Blog is to hard-code it into your post without relying on any other online source. Even then there’s still a problem: Some hyperlinks included in your original post appear as plain text in the Mirror Blog version. Not everything that was originally clickable is clickable any longer;  some of it appears as dead text.

If you’re running a personal blog on a service such as Google’s Blogger, for instance, this may not be too much of a problem. However if, like myself, you’re running a monetised self-hosted WordPress blog, then this could lead to a loss in advertising revenue, among other losses.

In short the resultant post on Facebook is a poor copy of your original WordPress blog article with the functionality of WordPress removed. – Yet even this has its advantages would you believe? :

You see; I’m writing this article about Mirror Blog, and I want it to appear on Facebook so that other bloggers know what they’ll be letting themselves in for. As such; Mirror Blog is a perfect tool for the job: This article is almost devoid of hyperlinks except for the tag-links generated by WordPress; and although I intend to place a Google Adsense advertisment at the bottom – Which I trust all original blog readers will click on and make a purchase , I can live without it appearing on Facebook this time around.

This is where the "Remove" button we saw earlier comes into its own: Copy everything from your blog by updating Mirror Blog; then just remove those posts that you only want to see appearing on your blog alone. OK it’s slightly time-consuming perhaps, particularly if you post small and often as some bloggers do, but all in all it could be a very useful tool to have available in your online arsenal.

Have you used Mirror Blog? Are you considering doing so? Have you something to add to the above? Please do comment; it would be nice to hear from you.

22 March 2009 – Addendum:

Something else I noticed today is that, if you have posts queued for publication in WordPress; Mirror Blog publishes them before WordPress is scheduled to do so. That’s not good; bearing in mind that none of the related adverts etc appear on Facebook. – It’s out of order.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the public beta of Windows 7 would be released on Friday January 9th.

Ballmer sees the future as being the total integration of the computer, television, and telephone through the Windows operating system on the PC. Interacting with the cloud he envisions a fully user-friendly integrated computing environment in the near future. He indicates that Windows 7 is a step towards that future,

Watch Ballmer’s entire keynote speech:

Click here.

(Opens Windows Media Player.)

There’s some rather hot stuff coming up in the Windows scene, as you may well have seen:

As well as some pretty innovative hardware, there’ll be partnerships between Microsoft and Facebook, now giving the ability to connect Facebook with Windows Live. A partnership with Dell, who will pre-install Windows Live essentials on all of their PCs worldwide. Plus a partnership with the Verizon network in the United States to bring Windows Live Search to cellphones running Windows Mobile.

I for one am looking forwards to Friday 9th with eager anticipation.

As I often do on this blog; I’m going to once again give my readers something for free. This is a bit of a double-edged sword in fact; as the advice comes from me. This part is free. That will hopefully lead you onto part 2, which will involve you shelling out a few dollars to someone else for the purpose of hopefully ensuring that you are recession-proofed.

"Recession-proofed? What on earth is she on about?" You ask.

In answer to that I’ll share with you an email which I received today from David Risley. I’ve added some commentary to intersperse the text for further explanation so that you can follow the drift of what he’s saying: -

"News From Dave

As we move into 2009, we all think about our New Year’s resolutions…What are your resolutions for 2009?

This … newsletter was written in advance because, as you get this, I’m on a cruise. My wife and I finally took a vacation – our first since our honeymoon. We went straight into parenthood after we tied the knot, and kids have this funny habit of anchoring you to home when they’re young."

[Maybe it would have been an idea to tie a knot in... 'Never mind. - Moving on: - ]

"I’ve also been working very hard, and 2009 is going to be even more fast-faced. While I am pursuing other projects, too, the PCMech Premium membership program is certainly a top priority…"

[The PCMech Premium membership is something I need to explain to you:-

PCMech, if you haven't heard of it, is David Risley's internet brainchild. It's a blog that was started a number of years ago as a hobby; but over the last few years has become not only one of the web's top-rated technology information and online-career-building sites; but also David's source of income for him and his immediate family, from which he lives comfortably.

He continues: - ]

"You guys [and girls] saw me do several videos last week about our membership program. This week, while I’m gone, I have all channels open to make sure that people know that they can sign up for our premium program at the old, 2008 rates. See, once I get back into town, I’m turning off registration to our program. During that time, I’ll be re-working some things in order to execute my 2009 enhancements to the program. When I reopen the doors, the price will be higher to reflect the increased value to our program."

[I hear brains ticking over: Some thinking "I like the sound of this. - It must cost a fair bit!"

That's not actually the case with this. - Not yet anyway. How much it does actually cost depends on when you sign up for it: Like David said earlier, - and I can vouch that this is quite genuine: "The price will be higher to reflect the increased value to our program."

When will the price be higher? Looking at the countdown; 4 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes, and 2 seconds ...At time of writing. 'Less now.]

"2009 is a recession year. It is time to put the pedal to the metal, to learn new skills, and to take action. If you learn the right skills and follow the right strategies, you can come out the other end of 2009 doing very well. This time next year, we can all be taking cruises!

…You’ve gotta DO it. And this year, I plan to work closely with PCMech Premium members to do exactly that.

‘You onboard?"

"Yeah, right. – All to make you some money eh?"

I realise that the first thing you’ll think is that I get paid for introducing people; therefore I’m not giving you "free" advice exactly. Honestly this is really totally free advice: Due to circumstances beyond my control, the corresponding affiliate program that I signed up to last year was deactivated, – The program itself, that is; not just my membership. – in anticipation of reactivation in a better format prior to this date. It didn’t happen as planned, and I was informed, so i haven’t been cheated in any way. However this opportunity that I’m telling you about is permanently advertised only on pcmech.com . There are various tweets about it on Twitter, which find their way onto FriendFeed, and onto David’s profile on Facebook. -But if you don’t use Twitter or FriendFeed, aren’t David’s friend on Facebook, and have never visited pcmech.com; you’ll be left completely in the dark, will never hear about it, and will miss the chance of taking advantage of this opportunity. – And time is ticking away as you’re reading this.

- That’s why I’m advertising this to you. I’d have liked to have made money from telling people about it; but it wasn’t to be. Nevertheless I choose to advertise it regardless. I want to bring my readers value. I’m doing so now by telling you about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

‘More from David: – ]

"PCMech Premium is like no other membership program on the Internet. We combine insider tools and tactics in the world of computers and technology with powerful information on using the Internet to make money and improve your life. You will not find this mix of information anywhere else. It reflects MY approach to the world of technology. I make my entire living on the Internet as a professional blogger. I am a geek, a computer enthusiast, but I am also an online entrepreneur. Together we can live the ultimate, high-tech lifestyle. Learn More About PCMech Premium.

David Risley

Click here to to learn more about the premium program for 2009. "

Because I’m not getting paid for this, – David Risley had no idea that I was going to write this article either. Neither did I until a couple of hours ago – I can honestly say in a totally unbiased and from-the-heart manner that the only person who’ll be missing out is you yourself if you don’t take advantage of this offer. If you don’t believe me then don’t sign up through any links in this article: Go directly to http://www.pcmech.com by typing that URL into your browser-bar and sign up there if you distrust me that much. It makes no difference to me any way you do it or don’t do it.

Why am I advertising this for free? I want my blog to be known as a blog that provides real value to my readers, as I already said. This value is in the form of an amazing offer from someone else: if you hadn’t read this article you possibly wouldn’t be any the wiser. – I want my blog to have that reputation so that my traffic increases: That’s my ‘selfish’ motive. Also I feel that this is an opportunity that nobody should miss out on the chance of taking at an incredibly-low price.

  Hmm…Convince me some more.

"Incredibly-low price eh?" You ask in a suspicious manner. "Exactly what is this "incredibly-low price"? – $400, $300, $250?"

I’ve been a member of PCMech Premium, in its previous incarnation if you like, for 6 months so far. I can quite honestly value the program as it was then at somewhere around those figures; put very loosely. However you’d be mightily surprised to learn that a year’s membership is currently less than $100 (£69) - Considerably less in fact.

‘Not convinced? Go see for yourself: http://www.pcmech.com . Near the top of the page you’ll see a countdown sequence, ticking away: That’s how long you’ve got left in real time.

If you missed it I’m afraid to tell you that the countdown has ended and all PCMech Premium registrations are currently closed. You can, however, set up a free, restricted, account and go on a waiting list in anticipation of registration reopening. (Target date 30th January 2009.)

Here’s what David Risley himself wrote: -

“I invite you to sign up for our waiting list. If you raise your hand and tell me you’re interested (by signing up for the mailing list), I will provide you first crack at registration when I relaunch the program. I might even throw you a little bonus (hint hint)!”

To get onto the waiting list and show willing, click here

I have a feeling you might be lucky and get in at 2008 prices IF you join this waiting list; but please don’t hold me to that.

33 Twitter users including Barack Obama (Yes; President – Elect Barack Obama.), Britney Spears, Rick Sanchez, Huffington Post, Facebook, and Fox News, have recently has their accounts hacked. Reports say that the hacker who did it compromised some of the Twitter tools; although no other information is currently forthcoming.

"Help! – I’ve been hacked!"

 There are also the phishing attacks going around Twitter, – Which I hope the Twitterite community are all aware of by now. – to try and steal your Twitter details: An email arrives containing a link to a web page. When you click the link it takes you to a phoney Twitter login page that asks for and subsequently harvests your details.

Be wary of these emails and don’t disclose details; as it looks like the phishers will use your account to send out other links which might lead to botnets, spam sites, and the like.

Yes they’re everywhere; even now infiltrating Twitter. Is there any surefire way, other than safe computing practices, of stopping them? Someone, somewhere, is illegitimately making a small fortune from this racket: if they weren’t they would try something else.

They can be tracked down eventually, shut down and prosecuted: I’t not always a successful exercise, but it has at least some effectiveness overall. Also we, as computer users, can help to thwart them by not falling into their trap and not being fooled by their tactics. Neither method is completely watertight though. Is there any way to snuff them out altogether? – Legally that is?

Your ideas please: -?

Yesterday I opened the post "Dwindling Economy Hits US Trade Shows" with the words:- "Steve Jobs has not had a heart-attack; indeed Steve Jobs [aka "Jobsweh"] is not in poor health, nor is he dying."

My timing was impeccable considering the announcement today by Jobs himself. My information sources may not be quite right though:

According to Scientific American website:

"Apple co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs posted an open letter to customers on his company’s Web site today in which he says that he’s being treated for an unspecified "hormone imbalance" that has caused severe weight loss and kept him out of the public eye."  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=apples-jobs-hormone-imbalance 

‘Maybe not quite as much  weight loss as suggested in the illustration left; but it is nevertheless apparent that Jobs is suffering from a bit too much lean-ness.

INTERLUDE

At this point during writing this article the power went out. Fortunately I have 2 UPS’s looking after my entire system; so I was able to finish the line I was on and shut down everything without data loss or damage of any kind to my systems. For further reading see http://www.pcmech.com/article/avert-disasters-with-a-ups/ .

Is that the way to lose weight without trying? Hormone imbalance? If so then perhaps I should find hormones to start taking at random? I’ll just have to be careful I don’t start speaking in a gruff voice, or grow wings, or something. – Not that I’m particularly overweight; but I could do with a little weight-loss nevertheless.

Perhaps the hormone imbalance explains Jobs’ overly aggressive marketing, combined with his control-freak style? Whatever the case; I didn’t get it quite right:

I stated the information that I’d heard from Robert Scoble on Twitter. – This was largely accurate; but not 100% so.

Anyway that’s cleared up the misunderstanding; so now onwards and upwards: I have another article which I’m intending to get written and published; hopefully today.

Do please comment on this article.

Steve Jobs has not had a heart-attack; indeed Steve Jobs is not in poor health, nor is he dying: In fact, according to @Scobleizer on the microblogging service Twitter last week, after visiting a shop frequented by Jobs, Scoble says that staff there report that Jobs is in the best of health.

Filling the role of Jobs at this year’s Macworld will be Senior Vice President Phil Schiller. Although Apple are continuing to be on a roll, despite the current conditions, tech analysts expect there to be less in the way of stirring innovations from them this year.

*See also this BBC report.

- But it’s not Macworld alone that’s been hit: This week’s CES in Vegas is showing a decline in exhibitors this year, with figures down by 10% on last year: Some exhibitors even pulling out at the last minute, while others are making cutbacks in their showing.

Personally I take the David Risley line on this, and I think that, if anything, companies should be increasing their advertising budgets rather than cutting them in an economic downturn. – Each to their own though: Some will survive, some will fall by the wayside regardless.

Some companies, such as Cisco, are taking meeting room suites rather than exhibiting, in an effort to cut costs.

Analysts are now questioning the viability of trade-shows in the light of today’s climate: On the other side of the coin; Jason Oxman, senior vice president at the Consumer Electronics Association, disagrees:

"Trade shows take on renewed importance in a down economy. Every major consumer electronics manufacturer, buyer, installer and retailer is there. It’s the most efficient travel saver imaginable."

Will this type of opinion retain validity in the light of experience though? Could we see a considerable cutting-back of trade shows? Will we see many going the way of Macworld in the light of experience and reality? It’s certainly a possibility. Time will tell.

Last year, about this time of year approximately, during a lull in business, I was experimenting with designing screensavers. I was just venting some artistic talent possibly? Whatever the case I zipped them into self-extracting .exe files and stored them on disk.

A year later I’ve still got them, and the ones that I don’t install on customer’s computers when I build them; i.e. the arty-farty ones as opposed to the advertising ones that is, are wasted.

With that in mind; having just found the files whilst searching through my disk contents, I thought ‘Why not let my readers have one?’. – So here you are if you want it; a free 3D screensaver which I designed originally as a piece of art:

It’s supposed to be an artistic representation of a quad-core processor. I designed many variations on the theme, but this is one of my favourites.

I’ve just tested the file a few minutes ago. It was on the other computer; so I networked the file over to to this one and , after scanning to ensure it hadn’t picked up anything during storage, I installed it on this machine for the first time ever and without any problem. After checking everything was OK I FTP’ d it up to kustomkomputa.co.uk so you can download it.

As I say; it’s in a .exe file, which when you click it will install the .scr file straight to your C: drive. Quad Core.scr gives you a choice of 3 options, which you can see by right-clicking on the file: Test, configure, and install. Clicking "Test" will allow you to preview it only. Clicking "Configure" will give you an advertisment for the Xara software that I created it with, and clicking "Install" will install it fully as one of your screensaver options; configured as default.

If you don’t want it to be your default screensaver; just right-click a blank area of the desktop, click "Properties" in the dialogue box that appears, click the Screensaver tab, and configure something else as default.

I’ve been making some changes to the header and background of the posts and pages on this blog; which is one reason I didn’t get a chance to post anything within the last 24-hours. To make amends I thought, having rediscovered the screensaver folder, that I’d share one with you.

I apologise for the size of the download; nearly 7 megabytes. (It might as well come with its own service pack at that size.) It is animated and it is a 3D design. I hope you’ll enjoy it if you download it. It’s nothing fantastic; but it’s free anyway.

I’m declaring this screensaver as “open-source” (Even though I don’t have any source-code.); no copyright. – If you want to do anything at all with it then feel free. The download link is http://www.kustomkomputa.co.uk/Quad_Core.exe . Enjoy.

Before we go into the fairly easy process of fitting a graphics card; Let’s look at why you’d want to do so in the first place:

Most if not all motherboards are equipped with onboard graphics: The Northbridge of the chipset gives them a limited graphics capability.

"Limited" is the operative word here; especially on lower-end motherboards: The low-end AMD motherboards that I tend to use more-than-not, (Customers who request a cheap computer for no more than office-type work get what they ask for. In fact; despite the motherboards in question being allegedly "low-end", they’re fairly versatile.) usually have a paltry 64MB of graphics capability; in addition to which they ‘steal’ the 64MB of memory for their operation from system RAM. – Yes they eat into the memory-sticks that you fit into the RAM – slots and gain priority to their full potential, whether or not they’re using it. Most other motherboards operate on a similar principle, to a varying extent. The top-end motherboards tend to be suitable for use with less attachments; However these motherboards are commonly used by gamer/overclocker-types; who add the latest of everything at the cutting-edge of technology anyway. – Just so that they can be proud geeks, until the following week when technological advancement moves on another notch.

How much difference, exactly, does this RAM-robbing by the onboard-graphics actually make? : In reality not one heck of a lot; especially if you fit a minimum of 2GB RAM to every computer like I do. RAM’s now fairly inexpensive; particularly if you’re using DDR2, which is dirt-cheap these days. Why the big fuss then? Well it’s not just the fact that the onboard graphics make 2GB – Nice round figure. – RAM, look like 1.94GB; it’s also that the graphics are really lousy with that tiny amount of memory. As we’ll go on to discuss; 64MB graphics blows at the best of times:

Any figure below 128MB of graphics RAM, (That is RAM or memory allocated exclusively for use with the graphics module.) will cause your graphics to suck big-time on a decent modern desktop or laptop. Oh you’ll without doubt get a great picture; a great still-picture that is. Anything moving at speed = fail. Try scrolling up or down fast: It’ll take the raster a fraction of a second to catch up with itself.

(It reminds me of those Looney Tunes cartoons; where characters run off at speed and their front-half almost disappears before their back-half starts moving. Imagine the inverse of that happening on your screen when you stop scrolling and you’ll have some idea of what I’m on about.)

…And if you mean to play any games…Well the Microsoft free games which have shipped with every M$ operating system since or before NT will probably run OK; but 2fps, if you’re lucky, won’t get you very far with Crysis or Doom. (Maybe a blue-screen?)

- So unless you’re intent on using Office and IM only; it’s always a good idea to upgrade the graphics capability with a graphics-card.

Most decent usable graphics-cards can cost anything from around £17 / $24 upwards. Unless you’re gaming with the latest games; a little above this price-range should suffice for low to middle-end systems. The exact card you choose will depend upon the operating system you’re running. – For instance, XP can’t run anything in Direct X 10; so it’s pointless having a Direct X 10-capable graphics card on an XP system: Unless you intend to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 that is. (Check for hardware compatibility first.)

Most graphics-cards these days are PCIe cards.  (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express.); which is an active connection method that channels multiple serial-data-streams from the motherboard to the graphics-card; as opposed to its earlier counterparts, PCI, PCI-X, and AGP, which stream data in a parallel format as a single-channel.

There are all different types and sizes: Big ones, small ones, some as big as your…I’m not going into the particular types and sizes here as that is, really, beyond the scope of this article: For the purpose of which we’ll just keep it nice and simple; without referring to SLI…Oops!

I’m not going to write about VGA, DVI, RGB, etc, plugs/sockets either. Google is your friend; as are the links.

Screw that.

That’s the complicated part out of the way; in as simple terms as I am able to muster. Now the easy bit; fitting it: -

Everything you need to know is covered in the following article at this link.

Yes I am cheating. Yes it’s out of character for me. Yes I am behind schedule and almost out of time. It’s a good site anyway: It saves me taking pics or finding and snagging pics. It saves me writing loads more… OK I admit it’s probably better than I’m able to produce in the remaining time that I have scheduled. So go there to find out how to fit one. It’s certainly not rocket-science:

You’ll need a screwdriver, a screw that can be screwed in by the screwdriver and that fits the corresponding hole, (There’s my female technical terminology making its appearance again.) a PCIe graphics card, a computer with a PCIe x 16 socket to fit the card in, and about 5 minutes.

Go read it; and comment on this one before you do so. (Comment box is below.) (Why don’t they put a down-arrow key on keyboards? – Perhaps they could also put a f…  – File it! key on them also.)

Can you tell things aren’t quite going to plan?

Today, multi-core processors are quite the norm. In fact you’ll not see any new desktop computers, and very few laptops, on sale that have only single-core processors any longer. Why? Well multi-cored processors have just so many performance advantages over their single-cored counterparts that it would take far too much space to list them all here.

There are still quite a few computers out there, however, that are still running a single-core processor. If you own one of them you may have considered upgrading; but are a little unsure or hesitant about it.

Unless you’re fairly experienced and know what’s what you’re right to be such. In most cases there’ll be more work involved than simply removing the old processor and fitting a new one.

I’m not intending to do a "where is the processor located" paragraph. If you don’t know where your processor is located then I advise you to allow someone who knows what they’re doing to do the upgrade for you. I won’t be held responsible for someone pretending to know what they’re doing messing it up either: Get someone that you know is experienced with computer construction to help. Joe Bloggs from down the road may say they’re experienced with computers simply because they talk to their friends on Instant Messenger; but in reality they don’t have any more idea of what they’re doing than a seamstress has of rocket science. I’ll include some of the basics as a reminder, though.

There are a number of things you’ll need to do in preparation. The main thing is to find out all about your existing hardware first. The reason for that will become clear further on.

If you have an older computer with a single-core processor then you’ll probably need to upgrade the motherboard as well as the CPU to go multi-core. If it’s a particularly old computer then I’d suggest simply buying a new one with a multi-cored processor fitted from the word go.

What about upgrading your existing processor on your existing motherboard? It’s a possibility; but you’d have to take into account things such as motherboard’s capability, as well as its processor socket:

For instance; an AMD socket AM2 CPU will fit into a socket AM2+ motherboard; but not vice-versa: Therefore if your existing processor is, for example, a socket AM2 Athlon 64 single-cored device, which you want to upgrade; then, providing that your motherboard is capable of running a dual-cored CPU, (CPU=processor.) you’ll have no problems in replacing your existing CPU with a socket AM2 Athlon 64×2 dual-cored processor, providing that the motherboard’s chipset is capable of supporting the operating frequency of the new component. You’ll probably need to run a maintenance-reinstall of your operating system though; as a system configured for a single-cored processor probably won’t instantly recognize that the new processor has 2 cores, and will only run 1 of the cores unless it’s reconfigured.

Further to the above; if you want to upgrade from a single-core Athlon 64 to a quad-core Phenom, which is socket AM2+, you’ll need to upgrade the motherboard as well as the CPU, as a socket AM2+ CPU simply won’t fit into an AM2 socket. Also the motherboard with an AM2 socket probably won’t be capable of supporting more than a dual-core CPU.

That’s just one example. There will be many more similar situations cropping up, not only with AMD processors, where you’ll need to do some planning and forward thinking before even embarking upon your project.

Like I said; there’s a lot to consider; in addition to simply swapping the processor. If in doubt I suggest a motherboard and processor upgrade would be the best option, and do remember that certain motherboards go with certain processors: You can’t run an Intel socket 774 CPU on an AMD socket AM2 motherboard, for instance. (Also, don’t forget to install, and upgrade after getting the thing running, if possible, the new motherboard’s drivers.)

In my opinion, the best thing to do would be a total-rebuild (Strip everything out of the case and renew it with new and compatible parts, or ditch your old machine and build a new one.); after which you can install any really important files that you want to keep to your new hard-drive from a backup you took of your old system.

I can’t tell you exactly how to do it in every situation without writing a large and detailed e-book on the subject: That’s not something I intend doing at this moment in time. This guide simply informs you of some of the pitfalls and of some of the things you should consider first, before embarking on the project.

For your further convenience I’ll make a checklist of a number of the things you should take into account before attempting to upgrade a processor on an existing motherboard:

———————————————————————————————

CHECKLIST

Should you Upgrade the Processor on your Existing Motherboard?

If your motherboard is 5 years old or more then no.

If your motherboard was manufactured in the last 3 years than maybe; depending upon the following:

Is your motherboard’s processor socket the same as the socket designation of the processor that you want to replace your existing one with?

OR, in some rare circumstances:

Will the new part fit into and be fully accommodated by the existing motherboard’s processor socket?

If NO to both of the above you’ll need to replace the motherboard.

IF YES to either of the above:

Is your existing motherboard capable of running a multi-cored processor with the number of cores which the intended replacement has?

If NO to the above you’ll need to replace the motherboard.

If YES:

Is your existing motherboard capable of handling any increased power consumption due to the upgrade?

If NO to the above you’ll need to replace the motherboard.

If YES:

Are you aware that you’ll probably need to run a maintenance reinstall of the operating system? Are you able and clued up with doing this? Do you realise that there may be further problems associated with this operation that require a detailed knowledge of computer hardware, operation, and techniques?

If NO; I suggest seeking further expert advice before anything else.

IF YES, and you are satisfied that you’d be able to handle any ensuing situation, or are willing to take that risk, then proceed.

End of Checklist.

———————————————————————————————

*If you’re a geek then rebuilding a computer, even if it’s your first time, will be a great learning curve for you. Try not to mess it up. (I have ruined a computer before whilst learning, years ago,; so it does happen.)

If you do upgrade your processor from a single to a multi-core component, if it’s possible, you’ll notice a marked performance improvement. I suggest adding some more memory at the same time to make that improvement even greater.

Maybe you’ve already upgraded your processor from a single-core to a multi-cored component? What’s your experience of this? Don’t be afraid to comment. I know comments appear to be a bit sparse at present; but it would be good to break the mould.

If you’re Pagan; especially if you’re a techno-Pagan, interested in Paganism, or even just browsing, then please do visit this site. I very much doubt you’ll regret doing so.

What I am going to say is that I stumbled across it today; not for the first time, and had time to have a better look at it. I was quite amazed to be honest: So much so that I’m giving it a page of it’s own at no profit to myself whatsoever. – In fact I haven’t even notified the owner; who I have known online for a while, that I am doing so.

Why am I doing so? Because I like it: It’s a very good site in my opinion. I appreciate that you might not all be as enthralled with it as I was; but it’s well worth a visit.

This year I’ll be recommending a number of sites: Pagan, technology-oriented, individual; anything that really stands out to me. Some I’ll do for no profit: Some I’ll charge to recommend.

Feel free to submit your URL for consideration if you like. If I decide to review I’ll let you know along with my price, should I decide to charge. Drop me a line at urlsubmit at kustomkomputa dot co dot uk. if you want to submit your blog or a blog.

Have you ever wondered what route your internet activities are taking?

You’ve just visited kkomp.com from wherever you’re logging onto your computer or handheld device; but your download of the page you requested didn’t come straight from the server to you: Instead it went through a number of other servers, acting as relays, to get to you. You may be surprised how many of these it passed through en-route.

You can find out the identities of these servers with the Windows command "tracert". ("traceroute" on a Mac.)

- For instance; if I wanted to see which servers my communication passes through to kkomp.com’s server; I first open a command prompt in XP. (Start>Run, and type "cmd" in the dialogue-box. ¬) I get a DOS window with the following in it: -

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>_

The _ is the command-prompt. At the command-prompt I type "tracert kkomp.com"; thus: -

C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>tracert kkomp.com

The computer responds by pinging all the servers en-route and asking them to identify themselves: -

Tracing route to kkomp.com [213.171.218.145]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

The first stop is my BT Home Hub router: -

  1    19 ms   100 ms    99 ms  BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254]

Then the separate BT internet network switches. (Because I use BT internet in the UK, and BT have their own mini-web which connects to the real internet at various nodes. You’ll probably get something different, unless you’re a BT customer in the UK.):-

  2    25 ms    25 ms    24 ms  217.47.206.250
  3    23 ms    23 ms   104 ms  217.47.206.161
  4   197 ms   103 ms    31 ms  213.123.109.6
  5    25 ms    26 ms   192 ms  217.41.169.17
  6   144 ms    64 ms    24 ms  217.41.169.66
  7   109 ms   193 ms    97 ms  217.41.169.126
  8   217 ms    69 ms   103 ms  217.41.169.38
  9   158 ms    24 ms    94 ms  217.47.144.50
10   229 ms    25 ms    26 ms  core2-pos12-1.reading.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.0.213]

It’s made it to the big switch at Reading…

11   161 ms   102 ms    27 ms  core2-pos0-0-0-13.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201.201]

Which passed it on to another big BT switch at Ilford… 

12   127 ms   123 ms   179 ms  core2-pos9-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.118]

Which sent it to the real internet…

13   125 ms   245 ms    40 ms  linx.bb-c.the.lon.gb.oneandone.net [195.66.224.98]
14   116 ms   248 ms   144 ms  88.208.255.61

It’s just about to hit Fasthosts’ main server…

15   222 ms    82 ms    64 ms  pc2.prt0.fhdis.fasthosts.net.uk [88.208.255.1]

Followed by one of their internal web-servers…

16    53 ms    32 ms    32 ms  213.171.217.3

…And to the individual hosting server.

17   176 ms   158 ms    61 ms  server213-171-218-145.livedns.org.uk [213.171.218.145]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>

Target neutralised.

Here’s the actual window’s content without my comments: -

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>tracert kkomp.com

Tracing route to kkomp.com [213.171.218.145]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    19 ms   100 ms    99 ms  BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254]
  2    25 ms    25 ms    24 ms  217.47.206.250
  3    23 ms    23 ms   104 ms  217.47.206.161
  4   197 ms   103 ms    31 ms  213.123.109.6
  5    25 ms    26 ms   192 ms  217.41.169.17
  6   144 ms    64 ms    24 ms  217.41.169.66
  7   109 ms   193 ms    97 ms  217.41.169.126
  8   217 ms    69 ms   103 ms  217.41.169.38
  9   158 ms    24 ms    94 ms  217.47.144.50
10   229 ms    25 ms    26 ms  core2-pos12-1.reading.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.0.21
3]
11   161 ms   102 ms    27 ms  core2-pos0-0-0-13.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201
.201]
12   127 ms   123 ms   179 ms  core2-pos9-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.
118]
13   125 ms   245 ms    40 ms  linx.bb-c.the.lon.gb.oneandone.net [195.66.224.9
8]
14   116 ms   248 ms   144 ms  88.208.255.61
15   222 ms    82 ms    64 ms  pc2.prt0.fhdis.fasthosts.net.uk [88.208.255.1]
16    53 ms    32 ms    32 ms  213.171.217.3
17   176 ms   158 ms    61 ms  server213-171-218-145.livedns.org.uk [213.171.21
8.145]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\Sharron>

Try it for yourself: You can use any domain or IP address in place of kkomp.com .

Here you learn something new every day; even New Year’s Day. Happy New Year. May 2009 bring you much enlightenment.