Archive for May, 2009
The Ethernet Port – A Newbie’s Guide
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The object of this article is to inform those who are new to computers of the basics of the ethernet connection. Every computer has an ethernet port, except some of the older models with a Pentium 1 processor, or before, and it’s currently the fastest connection on your computer, capable of speeds between 10 megabits per second, (10 million 1s and zeros/second.) and, in some cases, up to 1 gigabit per second. (1 billion 1s and zeros/second.) – That’s quite speedy data transfer: In reality that means it’s capable of transferring over 10 megabytes of data per second. Internet speeds, such as those in the UK, don’t allow anything like that much data to be transferred over the internet via an ethernet-connected modem. A home network, (Also known as a Local Area Network, or LAN.) on the other hand, can benefit from such fast data transfer speeds; transferring data between computers rather quickly. How to Recognise an Ethernet Port An ethernet port is pictured below. The yellow arrow points to it: -
You’ll usually find it on the back of a computer, along with a number of USB ports, sound jacks, and various other connections. The plug that plugs into an ethernet port looks like this: -
Please excuse the bad focus. The plug is officially designated as an RJ45 plug. With this connection you can create a high-speed data connection between computers; usually via a router, which also interfaces your home network with the internet.
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Beyond – The Newsletter: 29th May 2009.
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I found a “geek-quiz” on Facebook. ‘About time they did one. Despite getting a good score, I was disappointed that the quiz mainly tests the subject’s recollection of the past in terms of computer technology, rather than their current real computer literacy as its title suggests.
I was rather disillusioned by that, and unimpressed by the standard of the questions. Beggars can’t be choosers though; so it was at least nice to see a technology-related quiz on the social-network. I also beat the Chess Titans program in Windows Seven with a checkmate the other day; so I see fit to boast about it here too: -
Something else that’s getting my goat is that I appear to be attracting attention lately in ways that I’m not fond of: It appears that every time I go out in the nice weather some male imbecile hollers something unintelligible out of a car window at me. I’m aware that it’s pertaining to the way I dress, coupled with the fact that I’m not small and tend to be noticed. On top of that I have my sun-sign placed in the first house on my birth-chart. Those with such a placement tend to stand out more and have a stronger physical presence than others. But I like to look nice, and in the hot weather when the sun’s out I like to wear something cool and nice-looking. I don’t wear anything particularly revealing, just pretty and pastel-coloured or white normally. Unfortunately the intellect of the average young (Teens to mid 20’s) UK male appears to be plummeting in recent years, and they’re becoming very uncouth. I really don’t mind being noticed at all, but when some slobbering half-cut thug with their eyes on stalks shouts something barely intelligible in a strong west-country accent from a passing car, I usually just ignore it. There’s no chance to ask the idiot to repeat it; not that I’d be particularly interested anyway, and unless I scream it loudly and make a spectacle of myself, there’s no chance to tell them that I don’t speak dosser-ese either. If I want to be adored by apes then I’ll go to the zoo. What tit-bits (Did I just say that?) of information have I produced since the last newsletter for your edification? Only a couple in all honesty. I’ve been working on the site itself. You may notice that I’ve created more pages, listing articles in unofficial categories for the reader’s easy reference. These lists are created manually for the time being; but I’ll eventually write a php script to automatically display the content in the relevant lists. The recent articles, in reverse order, are: -
A most valuable piece of software for free that allows you to view the target of a hyperlink without actually clicking on it. I also wrote a short article on the easiest way to make yourself an SP3 disk for Windows XP: -
… And that’s all this time round. I’m going to start to produce a bit less free content from now onwards, as I feel that I now have a good enough base to build upon. – However new articles of free content, as well as paid-for content no doubt, will still continue to be produced on a regular basis. Enjoy the weekend.
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Preview Links With CoolPreviews ((FireFox & IE6) Add-on)(Free Software)
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CoolPreviews is an extremely useful add-on to the FireFox (& IE6) web-browser that allows you to preview a hyperlinked page’s content without actually clicking on the hyperlink. This can be particularly useful when browsing a site with many hyperlinks as it allows you to view hyperlinks without actually clicking on them and opening the page in FireFox. Firefox 2.0-3.5b4+ required. Having installed CoolPreviews, you’ll see a little blue magnifying-glass icon after a hyperlink when you mouse-over it. Clicking that icon will cause CoolPreviews to present its own sub-window within your FireFox or IE6 browser, in which a preview will be displayed. This preview can be locked so that it doesn’t vanish when you remove the mouse-pointer from the CoolPreviews window. I’ve tested this FireFoxadd-on in Windows XP Professional (32-bit) and also in Windows Seven RC (64-bit). It will also work in Windows Vista, Mac osX, and Linux. There is also a version for use with Internet Explorer 6: This version doesn’t work with IE 7 or IE 8; however I have noticed that the majority of my readers who use Internet Explorer as their preferred browser actually have IE 6 installed; therefore I thought this worth a mention. (Incidentally; also worth a mention is that IE6 is getting rather dated. Although it’s not as sucky as IE7 to my mind, it’s probably worth upgrading to IE8 if you want to stay with IE, unless you have a very old computer that’s short on resources. Also, once again unless you have a very old computer with depleted resources – Particularly with regard to RAM – it would be worth your while to install FireFox in addition to IE in my humble opinion, even if you continue to use IE as your default browser.) - And the best thing of all is, of course, that this add-on is absolutely free of charge. – So why not download it? If you don’t have FireFox and don’t use IE6 then why not download FireFox as well? (‘Awaiting brownie points from Mozilla.) Here are the links again: – |
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How To Create An XP Service Pack 3 Disc
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If you’re like me (Computer builder.) and install XP a lot, then a useful thing to have in your arsenal is your own XP SP3 CD, to save you all that time downloading it from the internet. There is another option available, which is to slipstream SP3 with Windows XP SP2, but for the time being I’ll concentrate on making a separate disc. To make things easier, Microsoft have released an official Windows XP SP3 ISO image. << Click the linked text to download it. It’s a free download. – This can be written to a CD as you would with any ISO image. The entire file is 549MB in size; so it might take a while to download. The best no-brainer ISO burner software I’ve found is ImgBurn : It makes creating a CD from an ISO so easy it’s incredible. – So much so in fact that there’s no need to give any instructions other than those already given on the website. Do you install XP regularly; perhaps on computers that you build? Do you install SP3 too, or do you leave it for the customer to do? Are you going to start installing Windows Seven as soon as you can in preference to XP? Have you already started installing the Windows Seven RC build 7100 at the customer’s request? Do feel free to comment.
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Beyond – The Newsletter: 23rd May 2009.
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Um… Ah yes…The newsletter. OMG I almost forgot. – That’ll teach me not to play chess on a Friday night. Yes; I’ve been concentrating very hard during a game of chess with my 64-bit box: 3 cores and 8GB RAM wasn’t enough to beat me though. (I hardly ever play chess normally; but after drawing with the machine previously I wanted a rematch.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkomp/3554835219/ <<gloat.>> - As a result of that my schedule’s gone to pot, (If only…) and I neglected the usual newsletter. Most girls are out on a Friday night having fun / socialising / going wild / whatever. Me: I prefer to stay in and have fun: It’s easier on the purse, there’s no chance of bumping into fuckwits, and it develops my mind. – Just because I missed Mensa by a whisker doesn’t mean that I’m giving up. – No by Jove: This geek-girl is doing it large with non-narcotic mind-expansion. OK let’s have a ganders at what’s been going down shall we? On Monday, despite my blog nearly vanishing from the face of cyberspace due to a brief foray into draconian mentality by my hosting company combined with the annexed incognito state of a certain backroom scripting-server that they decided to transfer my data to; I nevertheless managed, by some miracle, to publish an article which might have the result of saving some of you some desk-space:
On Tuesday the blog all but vanished completely amidst a problem with Fasthost’s data-pipe or some such similar fiasco. Being still on a scripting server deep within the bowels of their equivalent of cyber-Hades, this blog went to the lowest priority possible and wouldn’t even connect at times. I hit the roof and went ballistic, not helped by the fact that I had to spend what seemed like an eternity listening to crappy music at 10 pence a minute before “Slowhosts” as I came to call them, answered the phone. I ended up getting nowhere as expected, and fired off a quick email to the tune of ‘Get your finger out. I don’t pay you to have problems; I pay you to host my blog so that people can connect to it and read it.’ Eventually I got so hacked off that I went to go-daddy.com and put in for a transfer to them from Slowhosts:
I published the above article on this blog the following day as a rewrite of the post I published on shazzalive.co.uk / shazzalive.com just after I blew my top over the whole farcical situation. Well I got all the “paperwork” on Monday from go-daddy.com, but I’ve heard nothing whatsoever from them since, so I have no idea whether the transfer’s going ahead or not currently. Wednesday, and during the day, to the credit of my elation, the blog reappeared. – Therefore I posted:
- Having gathered a number of snippets of information and come to almost the same conclusion as a number of other blogger(s). – Well 1 is a number; so what’s the problem with that? Thursday: I took a bite at the 32 / 64-bit theme and found while I was writing that I might have bitten off more than I was able to successfully masticate. Nevertheless I handled the subject to my best intent without too much great gusto; only to have it reviewed by means of a personal attack by the KGB or some other Russian fuckwit who considered himself “God’s gift”; yet had failed to even notice my gender before launching into a facade of egotistical over-inflation of a tiny phallic organ; seemingly doubling as a store for his intelligence, or what there was of it.
As you may note; that got my goat, (I’m a poet but I don’t know it.) and I went straight into verbal counterattack mode with a number of put-downs; despite my brain not having fully booted-up by that time. Having said MS-dos-vidanya to the latest halfwit to pose as someone with a functioning brain-cell; I did my best to put him in touch with Syphilis Syndrone, my internet stalker, and moved on in the hope that the two of them might be able to converge their respective cranial messes… I mean masses, and cannibalise them into something approaching the shape and size of a miniaturised brain, should they ever meet. The clickety-click-click of key-presses went on well into the small hours, as Windows Seven took far too long to make a backup which eventually turned out to be a fuck-up. Another article was produced, which I gave a final edit on Friday and published. – After nearly wrecking something during a graphics card and RAM upgrade on Thursday.
I must say that I’m highly impressed with the overall job that the softies have done with their new creation; Windows Seven; despite the apparent inability of the Release Candidate to complete a backup successfully on at least one out of two occasions. Finally as an afterthought; notwithstanding that I almost totally forgot about this regular newsletter, I published the following info about another useful freebie:
… And now having completed this newsletter to a point that at least triggers some level of satisfaction within my exasperated cranium; I conclude for the rest of the weekend as I remove the matchsticks that candidly prop my eyelids open and dream of the slumber that awaits ‘tween sheets of satin on pillows of silken weave…OMG if I start waxing lyrical I’ll have to put this post in the poetry category. That’s it. End of… I need to get kipped before it’s time to awake. So do enjoy your weekend. Blessed Be.
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Back Up & Synchronise Bookmarks & Passwords With Xmarks (Free Software)
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Xmarks (Formerly Foxmarks.) is probably one of the most useful pieces of free software that I’ve featured on this blog to this day. It’s a browser plugin. It currently works with Internet Explorer (Including IE8), FireFox, and Safari. – So whether you use Windows, Linux, or Mac osX, it can work for you. (Although it’s not from Google, it’s marked as a beta, and probably always will be; just like most of Google’s software is. – Think of it as a work constantly in progress. (Perhaps I should rename this blog to “Beyond (beta)” in that case?) Xmarks allows synchronisation of your added bookmarks and stored passwords with a secure online server. – Therefore if you ever have to reinstall your browser you can simply upload all of them from the server. Also, if you have more than one computer, no matter how far away they are from each other, providing that they’re both on planet Earth, you can synchronise your bookmarks and passwords between the two via the secure server. From the Xmarks page on Mozilla Corp’s website: “It takes only a moment to get up and running with Xmarks. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync. Also from the same website: Users of this service include technology nerd and problogger David Risley, as well as myself. Xmarks can prove to be an invaluable tool to keep your browsers synchronised. Download links follow: -
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The Windows 7 System Repair Disk
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Today I had a rather strange experience with Windows Seven: - Before I ever powered up my Windows 7 64-bit machine today I remembered that I’d bought a new graphics card and another 4GB DDR2 RAM for it yesterday, so I thought I’d install it all today and get that out of the way. I’ve set up a temporary guest computer; my old main computer, built on a barebones box, that I had a lot of problems with earlier in the year. – Which prompted me to build my Windows 7 box in April and substitute it for the troublesome box. I was going to give the old box away, or scrap it, but since I found a new PSU that I didn’t think I had, I fitted it to the box of trouble and it’s now working fine. That left me with 3 computers; and I only really need 2 normally, so I decided that I’d set it up in my bedroom so that I could work on it if I was ever so ill I found it almost impossible to sit at this desk and work again, as I have been once already this year for a single day when I had the mega-cold earlier. Just before I did so my friend used it from the test-bench one day when she dropped round. I found this rather handy, as I didn’t have to stop what I was doing, give up my swivel-chair, and lose my train of thought, while she worked on one of the comps on my desk. (Yes I have a rather large desk. It has a work-space amidst 2 computers, a VHS video recorder, digi-box, small filing unit, Fergusson stereo tuner unit from the 1970s, my old TV that died last year due to age (I use it as a shelf.), 2 monitors (1 CRT and 1 TFT.), 7 speakers, 2 telephones, a router…) Rather she just switched it on and used it without disturbing me at all. – So it’s still set up on the test bench; but It’ll have to be moved into the bedroom soon as it’s taking up space that I could do otherwise with. - The point of telling you all this is, before I go totally off track and lose the thread, is that my guest computer needed a graphics card. It had been running the 64MB onboard graphics dealt with by the chipset, and was a bit lame on some applications picture-wise. The plan was to use the existing graphics card from the Windows 7 setup in the guest-box, as it was keeping my base score down to 3.0. It had been used in more machines than I care to remember, and was like the “I need a graphics card…I know; I’ll use…” card. – Which was exactly what happened when I built the Windows 7 box. There was nothing wrong with it, and it would have stayed in the Windows 7 box had it not pulled the overall performance-score down: When I’m scoring 6.3 with an AMD Phenom processor, 7.1 with the RAM, and 5.7 with the primary hard-drive, it’s a let-down when the nVidia GeForce 6200LE graphics card scores 3.1 for graphics and 3.1 for gaming graphics. I’d bought a new card with 256 MB dedicated DDR2 onboard, rather than it having to pinch it from system RAM like the old one did. It wasn’t a particularly expensive card, a GeForce 7200GS, and like the old one it had VGA, DVI, and TV outputs. The reason why I chose that card specifically was because it was cheap but better than what I had, and it bore the Gigabyte trademark, as did the motherboard. I thought that was fitting. To cut a long story short, or should I say to cut an even longer story short, it bumped my base score up to 3.5 after I’d fitted it and got the machine back in action: Scoring 3.5 for gaming graphics and 4.0 for graphics. – It’s not brilliant but it’ll do. The only games I’ve ever played on that box are chess and solitaire anyway since I built it; so no worries. I fitted the RAM; using up the 2 remaining RAM slots by installing 2 x 2GB DDR2 800MHz. I was a bit peeved that it wasn’t exactly the same manufacturer as the first two sticks I’d installed; but the specs were identical anyway, and it worked well alongside the existing fitted RAM too. – Eventually. ‘Reams of text and not even a single mention of the Windows 7 system recovery disk. Don’t worry; I’m coming to that: - First, a short commercial break:
I can’t fully explain why or how this happened; but when I powered up I got the message “NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.” I did, and same message. How could NTLDR vanish from my primary hard-drive while the power was turned off? It beats me; but nevertheless it did, and as a result Windows wouldn’t boot. So now the question at hand, and the circumstance that led me to start writing this article: - What do you do if your installation of Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) and/or Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) won’t start? Answer: You use a system repair disc. Where do I get hold of one of those? Answer: You make one. Here’s how: - Load a blank writable CD into your DVD-ROM drive. Click Start>Control Panel>Backup and Restore. In the sidebar on the left you’ll see “Create a system repair disk”. Click on it. Select the drive with the blank writable CD in it and click “Create disk”. Windows 7 writes the disk; it took just over a minute on my system, and tells you how to label it. – That’s all there is to it. Keep this disk safe and undamaged, as it could be very useful later on. If you don’t have one and your Windows 7 system crashes and/or won’t boot then you could have a few nasty problems. Fortunately I had made one earlier in good girl-guides/Blue Peter fashion; and it saved my system from a reinstall etc: - Insert the system repair disc into the optical drive on power up and before the BIOS screen appears, select the boot order to boot from CD-ROM. (This can be done by pressing F12 as soon as possible and then selecting CD-ROM in the boot menu that appears with most not-too-ancient motherboards.) You may have to press any key to boot from CD after you select F12 and press enter. Windows takes a while to load files and to boot into repair mode. Select language, (Default is English (United States) and keyboard input method. (I use United Kingdom for obvious reasons.) System Recovery scans for Windows 7 installations that are already installed. You then have the option to “Use recovery tools that help fix problems starting Windows, or to “Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier.” (Using the backup feature.) I haven’t yet tried the second option; but if you select the first option, you’ll be presented with several system recovery options: -
1) Startup Repair. Automatically fix problems that are preventing Windows from starting. – I ran this twice, and suddenly NTLDR was back and the system booted without a problem. This is simply amazing. I don’t know exactly what it does; I only know that it works. – Like a miracle-startup-pill. 2) System Restore. Restore Windows to an earlier point in time. Good thinking Microsoft! System Restore is now available pre-boot. 3) System Image Recovery. Restore your computer using a system image you created earlier. (From backup- again) More good thinking Microsoft! 4) Windows Memory Diagnostic. Check your computer for memory hardware errors. Brilliant idea! 5) Command Prompt. Open a command prompt window.
Now why couldn’t they have made the system repair process this user-friendly in the first place? ‘Better late than never. – And this is quite awesome compared to how it used to be. The only drawback I see is having another disk. What if your system repair disc gets lost or damaged? It won’t hurt to make two I suppose. I wonder if it’s possible to store the data on a USB device and boot from that? Maybe someone will eventually come up with a hack. - It’s still not perfect, but it’s vastly more user-friendly than it was with XP. Finally then: If you’re running Windows 7 and haven’t made a system repair disc; now is the time to do so. If you have any more information on this matter, or anything you’d like to add, then please do so by commenting. We’re all Windows 7 newbies to some extent right now (May 2009), so the more information at hand the better.
(Remember to use safe computing practices at all times; and if you can, get the 64-bit version of Windows 7 when it RTMs. Let’s lead the world into the 64-bit age. See my previous post.) |
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It’s Time for The 64-Bit Revolution
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In 2003; AMD introduced the first 64-bit processor targeted at the average consumer, the single-cored Athlon 64, onto the market. Six years later, and now virtually all processors produced at the present moment are 64-bit capable. Also most processors used these days have 2 or more cores, enabling approximately 1.7 times or more of the functionality of a single-cored CPU.
Meanwhile, leaving the minority operating systems, such as Linux, and Mac osX – which only runs well on an Apple computer anyway, aside; between 2001 and almost up to the present day the market leader of operating systems, namely Microsoft Windows, has in reality been fairly stagnant. Despite the release of Windows Vista in January 2007, which in many ways went down like a lead balloon from the offing, most people have been using Windows XP since 2001. (Myself included.(Well, since January 2002 to be exact. – I stayed with Windows 98SE until I managed to afford a new computer. – Things were a bit tighter then.) Back in the days when XP was launched, everyone was using a single-cored processor that was only 32-bit capable. In those days 250 megabytes of RAM was considered a vast amount, a 60GB hard-drive had a massive amount of space on it, the Intel Pentium 4 was the latest cutting-edge CPU, (The new machine I bought in 2002 had a first-generation P4 2.8GHz processor installed.) 32MB graphics were considered the norm, and 64MB were considered leading-edge… Nobody but the extreme-geeks wanted 64-bit operating systems; and therefore most of the XP CDs sold were 32-bit. 32-bit became the norm, became known. It was taught that computers went from 4-bits in the 1960s and 70s, (Commodore Pet) to 8-bits (16-colours!) in the 1980s, to 16-bits (DOS) and then to 32-bits (Windows 95 et al.) in the 1990s. – And from there a general feeling amongst the less-computer-literate that this was the ultimate destiny, that technology had no need to progress further than that. Windows 98SE became replaced by the excuse for an operating system known as Windows ME, and shortly afterwards by Windows 2000, which combined the advances made in ME with the lessons learned from ME: The limited and insecure FAT32 file-system which Microsoft had previously hailed as the way ahead, was falling out of favour, and customers had the choice now of using either FAT32 or the far superior NTFS disk-formats. Not far down the road came XP; which built on the lessons learned from 2000, and XP and 2000 were the in-thing. Many people stuck to using 98SE and ME, in addition to those using 2000 and XP. Support for 98SE and ME was eventually discontinued; but to this day some die-hards still use those operating systems, despite their now being a massive security-risk both in terms of the user and of the rest of the internet-community as a whole. XP became the principle operating system, even holding out extremely well against the newer Windows Vista, which flopped from launch. – This caused consternation among many of the Microsoft faithful; many of whom switched to Linux and Apple’s Mac in protest. Despite all this; the remaining Microsoft community – which only shrank in size by a few percent due to defectors to Linux and Mac – stayed in the 32-bit frame of mind. A few took up 64-bit computing with Vista after SP1. Even fewer took up 64-bit computing with XP after SP2 and 3. Meanwhile; Apples Mac community; its numbers swelled with Vista detractors, was already completely 64-bit. Linux distros appeared utilising the 64-bit potential of modern machines also. Microsoft people either didn’t appear to know or care about 64-bit computing: 32-bit computing appeared good enough so why change? There was and still remains a danger of getting stuck in a rut. What’s the big deal about 64-bit computing then? Why should I want to use a 64-bit operating system as opposed to a 32-bit operating system? Let me ask you this: (I know a question in answer to a question may be considered lame; but bear with me here.) Why would you want to use a 32-bit operating system as opposed to a 16-bit operating system? Because 32-bit has more capabilities, right? – Like 32 million colours as opposed to 256 colours… No I’m not saying that there’s several trillion colours in 64-bit…. Well there may in fact be so; but it’s a bit pointless to use that as a reason to upgrade, as the human eye only sees just over 24 million different colours. The main thing about 64-bit operating systems is that they enable your computer to work with more memory. (RAM) – Vastly more in fact: These days applications are demanding more and more RAM and other system resources to be in use on your computer in order to run them. – But there’s a limit to how much RAM you can use per system. If you’re running a 32-bit operating system you can use up to around 3.5 gigabytes of RAM. In 2001 that must have seemed like a colossal amount of memory. These days 2 gigabytes is standard. – On a computer with a 32-bit operating system that is. I’m typing this on a computer that I built in December 2008. This computer has 2 GB RAM, an AMD Athlon 64 x 2 dual-core 64-bit capable processor… Yet as with most such computers belonging to most people, it’s currently running a 32-bit XP Professional operating system. The computer next to it, which I built in April 2009, has 4GB RAM – and today I bought another 4 GB RAM which I intend to fit soon. It has an AMD Phenom triple-cored 64-bit-enabled processor and is currently running Windows 7 RC 64-bit. My point is that this year a new Windows operating system is going to be launched. – But this is no Vista: This one’s Windows 7. It works almost flawlessly and neither I nor several of my online acquaintances can find anything to complain about with regard to it. – And this is before it’s even been fully released! – OK ‘straight to the point: Which is that 32-bit is so 1990s and 2000s. Next year we’ll be entering the 2010s and, as usual, technology will be moving on at its standard fast-pace. Windows 7 will be available in both 32 and 64-bit versions. If you have a 64-bit capable computer and buy and/or load 32-bit Windows 7 you won’t be doing yourself any favours. When Windows 95 was released it was possible to run a 16-bit operating system on a 32-bit computer designed to run Windows 95. – Try running one of today’s apps in a 16-bit environment though. It wouldn’t run. Even if it did run; the machines that were around when 16-bit was the in-thing would hardly be capable of running a single app that’s used today. (I tried running XP Home on a computer powered by a Pentium 1 processor. (1996/7 IIRC.) It was 32-bit capable so it ran: Badly and tediously slowly. It took 1/2 hour to boot…) In a few years your 32-bit operating system won’t be capable of running the applications of the time properly and in multiples, because they’ll need more memory than is able to be utilised by a 32-bit operating system. Remember; a 32-bit operating system can only see about 3.5 gigabytes at one time. A 64-bit operating system can see and use over 16 million terabytes of RAM though. That should be all you need for a few years yet. Do yourself a favour: When you move up to Windows 7; get a 64-bit version of the operating system (Provided that your system is 64-bit capable.(Most systems built in the last 2 years are 64-bit capable. If unsure ask your retailer or an experienced geek.)) It’s time everyone snapped out of this 32-bit mentality; it’s so yesterday. – It’s like choosing to drive a Reliant Robin in favour of a Porsche.
Let’s all break the mould and go 64-bit. I intend to do so; and it’s in everyone’s best interests to do likewise. Do you agree? |
When Can We Expect Windows 7 To Be Released?
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Microsoft have already said that Windows 7 will ship in 2009. – But when in 2009? In May 2009, at Microsoft’s annual TechEd USA conference, Microsoft officials confirmed that Windows 7 will be shipped in time for it to be preloaded on PCs by the Christmas holiday season. Bearing in mind that there is usually a delay of up to three months between the RTM date and the time when the operating system is available preloaded on new machines, we’d be looking at sometime in August or September 2009 for an RTM date. It would be nice for Microsoft if they could accomplish this as a back-to-school release; at least so that the mini-geeks can rush out to buy it so that they can boast to their nerdy school friends that they too are running Windows 7 on their computers. There are rumours circulating that users buying new PCs with Windows Vista preloaded from July 1st 2009 onwards will be able to get a Windows 7 upgrade for free when it becomes available. As I said; this date is only a rumour and hasn’t been officially confirmed as far as I know: So if you do go out and buy a new PC on 1st July 2009; don’t blame me if you end up not getting 7 for free further down the line. I don’t think Microsoft will be able to make any targets as far as a back-to-school release goes though, if the truth be known: The timeframe is just too tight. I do, however, consider it a possibility that 7 will be RTM’d in August, or September. I predict that we’re looking at an official launch date of mid-to-late November, or even early December perhaps: Very soon after which Windows 7 will be available preloaded as standard on new machines; well in time for the Holidays. This is by no means the official word; but I’d wager a gamble on this being fairly accurate.
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kkomp.com Will Be Transferring Hosting to go-daddy.com
At last I do beleive this blog’s back in business!I am fed up to the back teeth with the gross incompetence and awful standards of service from fasthosts.co.uk . Fasthosts have cost me my blog audience that it’s taken me 10 months to build up! Honestly; I’ve had less then 10 hits today so far. The last time the figure was that low was June 2008 when this blog was in its first fortnight of operation. Even I myself haven’t been able to connect to this blog more than four times after a long wait since Monday 11th May 2009. The company penalised me at the end of March 2009 after I installed the Apture plugin. This plugin demanded more server resources than fasthosts.co.uk were prepared to let me have for the money (Just over 200kb: That’s not a lot of resources to me. On a 64-bit server, as they boast that all their servers are, it should hardly dent the resources.). Rather than advising me of the situation they instantly and punitively claimed to have transferred my main blog at kkomp.com from the shared-platform server to a backroom scripting server. I don’t think that they actually executed this move until May 11th; long after I’d rectified the matter. – It took them that long to act on their word. Anyway; I phoned their technical help department back in March, having uninstalled the Apture plugin, and the guy there said that there was no longer a resource issue, and to leave it to him and he’d sort everything out. There was no further problem until Monday May 11th, when kkomp.com suddenly became virtually impossible to connect properly to. I rang Fasthosts and asked what was going on? They informed me that I was still on a scripting server. (In other words they’d just put me back on a scripting server.) So I put up with it for 3 days in the hope that they’d sort it out: They did absolutely nothing about it. They totally ignored my request and sat on their fat arses taking my money for nothing in return. They lose: I have already begun transferring kkomp.com. Nobody but the stupid gormless British could cock up to such an extent by demanding a trail of unnecessary red tape to be in perfect order and lose a customer in doing so. Not only is it ridiculous, it’s also wasting the money that this company are taking from their customers in hunting and maintaining red tape in an unproductive fiasco. I’m meant to be proud to be British. – In reality, though, at times I’m embarrassed to be even associated with the British! At last it appears that this blog’s now back on a normal shared platform server after 3 days: 3 days in which my audience has all but given up trying to connect to a blog that they made all but unconnectable.That’s the upshot of all this polava. Had I been depending upon this site solely for my income then I’d be pretty poor this week thanks to fasthosts.co.uk. In short I’m not going to allow Fasthosts to do this again. It appears that, being seemingly mainly staffed by backward British half-geeks on a power-trip because they still have a job in a recession, they fail to recognise that the world has moved on to web 2.0, and that people rely on their websites for a livelihood. It’s like renting a shop in the middle of town and building up a clientele; only to find one day when you turn up for work that your landlord has dismantled your shop and rebuilt it on a deserted backstreet, yet is still asking the same rent from you. To prevent this from happening again, at least as far as it happening by the mean hand of Fasthosts is concerned, I’m forced to transfer the hosting. Go-Daddy has been recommended to me in the past; and therefore Go-Daddy – who aren’t British – Shall have hosting for this blog. Hopefully there won’t be any teething troubles. I don’t forsee any. I’ve set up an account and requested the transfer yesterday. – So it should happen soon. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to do so; one which I jumped at without doing any homework; more out of necessity than anything else. Hopefully I won’t be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. I’ll write more on the subject when I know more. Until then I hope Fasthosts won’t be pulling any more unsavoury surprises out of the hat. Do you have any opinion you’d like to express? have you ever felt the wrath of halfwits in the same or similar manner? Please feel free to comment. P.S. I did initiate transfer to go-daddy; but after careful consideration I decided to stay where I am. A move would only mean that I had to reset all the ftp configurations etc on my various setups, and that’s just a start. – ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. They have 1 more chance: I really don’t want the extra hassle right at the moment. |
How A KVM Switch Can Save You Some Physical Space
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If you have two or more computers at home, a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch can save you a fair bit of space: The amount of space that one or more keyboard(s), monitor(s), and mouse (mice) would take up that is. In short, a KVM switch combines the keyboard, video, and mouse, of two or more computers, and allows them to be controlled by a single mouse, keyboard, and monitor, individually rather than all at once. Control of the computers is determined by the position of a switch on the KVM unit, and this determines which of the computers concerned your peripherals will control. (See diagram below.)
Some KVM switches aren’t that good: It’s always a good idea to check the quality of the unit before you buy; otherwise you could end up with a poor picture, mouse pointer flying all over the place, and even keys that you didn’t press appearing to have been pressed. For more detail on KVM, and a review of one such unit – Which on the face of it seems quite a nice product. – click this link. – Here you’ll get a bit more depth on the subject also. Personally I don’t use a KVM switch, which may seem a bit silly of me as space can be of a premium at times. However I’m constantly shifting computers around, building and rebuilding them, and to be honest I never know whether I’ll be using the same computer from one day to the next: (I hope I will be using the same one, as chopping and changing from time to time can be a major pain in the ass, but I can never be sure.) I might have a system failure, have a system out for maintenance and have to use backup, or even get fed up with a machine; which would mean I’d build a new one, clean and sell the old one, install an OS, add files from backup, and use the new one. I have enough problems with keeping a wired network set up, without the extra connecting/reconnecting and cabling of a KVM switch. – So it’s not for me at the moment. (I know I could use wireless; but I find a cabled network much more convenient.) If you’re a normal home user and have more than one computer, or are using a home server, or similar, then a KVM switch might be just the thing for you. They’re not usually that pricey either. – But I suggest that you avoid the cheapest ones. Why have more than 1 keyboard, monitor, and mouse? ( – Unless you’re in a similar situation to me.) They take up too much space as it is. Save yourself some space why not? |
Beyond – The Newsletter: 15th May 2009
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Back at the end of March my hosting company, Fasthosts.co.uk, penalised me for accidentally using too many resources on the server, by moving this blog to a restricted scripting server. I thought this was a bit draconian, and I posted to that effect soon afterwards: This happened just after I had installed the Apture plugin. I removed the Apture plugin the following day, and I understood, from their response during a subsequent phone call, that they had put this blog back on the normal shared-platform server. Today I find that I’m having problems resolving this blog’s IP, as are all other computers and servers. (This is today only in this case; every other day I’ve had no problem with access.) – So I phone the hosting company, who, after a 45-minute phone-call at 10p (About 13 cents or more US.) a minute, informed me that it seems that I was never taken off the restricted scripting server after all. No wonder my visitor count has been fairly static recently, despite site improvements and traffic-generating tweaks etc. I can only apologise profusely to you if you’ve had problems resolving this site: If the hosting people are telling the truth that is. – I’m wondering why every day other than this one it only takes seconds to resolve this IP and with a 99/100 success-rate; whereas today it takes up to 10 minutes with a 1/3 success rate. In all honesty it seems that this hosting company I’m with don’t appear to know their arse from their elbow. I’m seriously considering changing the hosting company for this blog as it is. If they piss me off much more I will do just that. Since the last newsletter I’ve posted a few articles. – I wish I could remember which ones. – Since I can’t call up the contents page without an up-to-10-minute wait; if it resolves at all, I will have to now do that, rather than relying on memory and guesswork. (Honestly if this problem is still the same this time tomorrow I am changing hosting on this blog: I’ve come to the conclusion that British web-hosting is utter crap.) I’ll have a bite to eat while I try to find the contents page, and write the rest of this afterwards, considering it’s a quarter past one PM now. (Just before I go; I think that this is all something to do with the British love of red-tape and bureaucracy: You see the chap on the phone earlier today told me that he was unable to find an official email from me requesting return of this site to the normal server; so here’s what I think happened: - I got the email telling me that I’d been penalised for using a few too many bytes on their precious stiff-upper-lipped British what-ho-chaps servers. – Wot-wot. I phoned them and made some hoo-hah about it; (If you’re having trouble making sense of these Brit expressions then just read on regardless.) – so the person I spoke to was reasonable, checked the resources that my site was using after I claimed to have resolved the issue, and popped it back on the normal shared-platform server. During an audit today, some weeks later; it came to the attention of a “jobsworth” technician that this blog was back on the normal server, had been authorised to be replaced, but a formal request from me by email for it to be so replaced was missing. Therefore; in true British/fascist fashion, since mine papers were not in order; the technician reported to the Server-Houser Obersturnbahnfuhrer in the scripting bunker, who in turn requested permission from the red-tape Gestapo Commandant to replace this blog on the scripting server pending further contact and official email request from myself, my having finally noticed that something was wrong, without any notification. – All this because the trail of red-tape had a tiny piece missing. (Honestly; we Brits can be such mundane tossers at times!) - That’s what I think happened, being a renowned cynic. If it actually did happen that way then I will go utterly apeshit! – Though possibly to no avail: Watch this space.) After 1/2 hour I managed to get an awful Blog Contents page. This is foxing ridiculous! – It’s ten times worse than it’s ever been before. Please forgive this dreadful service: I’m ringing the hosting people straight away: This is a joke. I just spent another £3.00 phoning them, and all they’d say was to all but confirm what I suspected above, and to tell me that they had no idea what the problem was, when or if the problem would be resolved as they didn’t communicate between departments, and that they didn’t care what sort of service I was getting as I was on a scripting server – Which was my own fault as I didn’t reply to the email and join up the trail of red tape. – ‘Mad: I’m firkin furious! Enough! I’m going to check for loose ends and if there are any then I’ll tie them up; after which I’ll be moving hosting for this blog to another hosting company over the following fortnight. Fasthosts have shot themselves in the foot when they messed with me. – Now they can stick their weapon up their own ass and pull the trigger repeatedly for all I care. -In the meantime I managed to retrieve the last 5 post-titles: - (I hope I’m able to post this article having written it. The standards of service of fasthosts.co uk leaves masses to be desired. I’ll do my best. They should change it to slowhosts or uselesshosts.co.uk if you ask me. They’ve made an almighty balls-up somewhere by the feel of it; and I’m certain there’s a lot that they’re not telling me. They’re being extremely and noticeably evasive; even for a bureaucratic British business. In the meantime I’ll carry on typing:)
- Was the last thing I posted to this blog. – Yesterday I may add; when everything was working well. – Watch out for scam-mongers posing as “friends” on Twitter. Just like Fasthosts all they want is your money. They don’t care about anything else.
Twitter again: This one’s about the massive growth in Twitter’s traffic over the last 2 months. – Something I missed out on as far as this blog is concerned because of incompetent hosting. If you’re not using a UPS to protect your system from sudden power outages then now is a good time to start doing so. If you’re not Fasthosts then you might benefit from a few safety tips contained in the UK HASAW legislation. If you are Fasthosts then you can pull the power lead out, shove it where the sun don’t shine, and switch the power on for all I care. What exactly is a resistor and how is it constructed? Find out inside this article. If you haven’t read any of these articles then please do so; (If you can get the page to display properly on your computer.) they’re educational. – Meanwhile I’m going to metaphorically kick some asses by remote I hope. Wish me luck. |
Beware: Twitter Scammers are Active
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I just read an article on another blog concerning the matter that Twitter scammers are getting people to play what appears to be an innocent game in which they inadvertently divulge security information so that the scammers can just walk right in and steal their identity. I thought this matter to be of concern enough to write an article on it. The scam is the porno name game. It entails getting users to make up a unique name, which is their so-called “porno-name”, by joining together the name of your first pet and add the name of the street you grew up on, or your mother’s maiden name. This then becomes your porno name. – So, for instance, if your first pet was called Trixie, and your mother’s maiden name is Smith; then your porno-name is Trixie Smith. – It’s that simple. Many Twitter users are disclosing their porno-names to one another. They don’t realise that they’ve just compromised their security in a big way. – Especially those who add the hash tag to it, then even people who don’t follow them can see their answers by running a Twitter search. Why is this such a big security risk? Well think for a minute: When you sign up for an account somewhere, (Such as a bank or a website, even Twitter itself.) you have to enter a security question which is used to prove who you are, should you lose access to your own account for reasons such as identity theft. Typical questions include “What is the name of your first pet?” and “What is your mother’s maiden name?” – It’s good that you’ve disclosed the answers on Twitter; just in case you should forget them. – NOT. The scammers then become your “friends” and provide you with links to bogus Twitter-look-alike websites which record your login information. – It’s now a race to try to change your password before they change it for you. It’s still a den of rogues out there; and probably always will be to some extent. Be alert: Your country needs lerts. Be wise, be careful.
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The Twitter Bloom Booms Ever Onward
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Microblogging service Twitter has yet again surpassed all traffic expectations. Below are the traffic statistics from Compete. Quantcast says the figures are even higher than that.
This is good news for Twitter in a way. – Although having said that, they have missed and continue to miss out on the incredible revenue-generation opportunities that come with having that much traffic. I personally don’t have a master plan for Twitter to put such into place; and it’s not my responsibility to come up with one either. I have to admit that it’s difficult to know exactly what would be the best option for revenue generation with regard to Twitter. It seems that the Twitter staff are having the same dilemma. Whatever the case with Twitter itself; there are potentials for personal income generation by using the service. I won’t list them here; but perhaps you would be good enough to suggest some ideas in the comment box below? Maybe you can come up with suggestion(s) with regard to this? Maybe you take the old-school view and think Twitter is just a waste-of-time used by sad people? Maybe you understand the enormous potential of the service and are utilising it for your interests right now? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts. Further reading: This article from readwriteweb.com, also see this article.
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The Importance of a UPS
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Due to the way that it’s built, Windows tends to keep data in RAM while it’s working, which it would otherwise write to disk. When Windows is shut down properly it flushes any such data in the RAM and writes it to the hard drive. If the power suddenly goes out unexpectedly before Windows has had any chance to shut down properly, then any data residing in RAM is lost forever. Windows is constantly swapping data between RAM and the hard disk; hence the appropriately-named “Swap-file”. If the power goes out while windows is writing data from the hard-drive to RAM or vice-versa, then whatever’s either been written to or not yet removed from the disk stays on disk. – Any data stored in RAM, be it half a file that was being removed from disk to be processed, whatever, is lost. End of story. The consequences of this could be anything between unnoticeable and tragic: meaning that it might be that your computer won’t even boot any more. Even if you get a result that’s seemingly unnoticeable, there’s a very large chance that something somewhere has become corrupted. There have been cases where not only data but also hardware has been damaged by a power outage; such as cheap USB flash drives. Hardware damage is quite rare though. All the same; who wants corrupt data? Not anyone I know. This is where a UPS comes into its own: What is a UPS? UPS stands for Uninterruptible Power Source; and it’s just what it says on the tin: If your household and/or office electricity supply gets interrupted in any way at all, be it a voltage-spike, brownout, fraction-of-a-second-outage, or a total power cut; the UPS’s output will remain constant until, in the case of a total prolonged outage, its battery runs out: During that period of time, (Usually 10 minutes or more.) you have the option to shut the computer down properly. I currently have a setup running 2 computers: (Showtime: I can tell you all about my latest setup.)
One is a machine running a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Socket AM2 (2.2GHz) Energy Efficient CPU, 2 GB DDR2 667MHz RAM, 512 MB Asus nVidia graphics card, on a Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2 GeForce 6100 Socket AM2 motherboard, Hitachi 250GB Hard Drive SATA II 7200RPM 8MB Cache HDD. (500 GB external HDD extra.), 350W PSU. Also includes a Samsung SH-S183A SATA DVD-RW drive, universal card reader, customary floppy-drive, and 3 extra front USB ports. I built this machine in December 2008. It’s currently running XP Professional 32-bit as an operating system. Machine number 2 is running an AMD Phenom X3 Triple Core 8650 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ CPU on a Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 AMD nVidia 720D Socket AM2+ 7.1 channel audio ATX Motherboard with 4 GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 RAM fitted, 250MB Asus nVidia graphics card.. There are 2 x 250 GB SATA2 HDDs fitted (Not RAID.), (One is another Hitachi.) 400W PSU. Samsung SH-S182D IDE DVD-RW drive, Fire Wire on mobo, and 2 extra front USB ports. I built this machine in April 2009. It’s currently running Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7100 RC 64-bit. I have 2 (Different) UPS’s. The wiring configuration is somewhat non-standard due to the small load-bearing of one of them: The smaller UPS controls the power to the 17” TFT monitor for the XP computer, both sets of speakers, the BT Home Hub router, and the desk light. The larger UPS keeps watch on the power to the 17” CRT monitor, (Yes; I still have a CRT monitor, and am still loving the extra colour response of it.) both computers, and the test-bench supply. I run almost my entire system from them so that I can carry on working should there be a short power outage. So far the UPS’s have saved everything from possible damage and/or data loss from at least 3 voltage-spikes, a brown-out, and 2 full-outages, in the last 2 years. (That includes the 3 previous computers I’ve had while I’ve had those UPS’s installed.) UPS’s are relatively inexpensive; anything from £25 up to about £750 for the most expensive available, and last for around 3-4 years before they might need replacing. I intend to run lighting, a TV, radio, etc, from the existing UPS’s when they are replaced next year, after they’ve passed their prime: So there’s always a use for even the retired units. A UPS is extra expense; but it will possibly save you a lot of time and hassle down the line, and is well worth investing in. Don’t leave it until it’s too late: Get at least one for your computer as soon as you can if you don’t already have one. Do you have a UPS? If so, has it saved your system’s data once or more times? Please do comment below. *Note: Laptops & netbooks already have a battery backup in a sense of the term, and so don’t need to necessarily be connected via a UPS. Having said that; connecting them to the main supply via a surge-protector would be an idea; just to be on the safe side.
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Safety in The Computer Room
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Many people don’t think a lot about safety in the home when it comes to computing. There are no specific regulations [As far as UK laws are concerned.] as such concerning a home-office and/or computer lab that exists within your own home in which only one person; namely yourself, works, and which only you yourself have access to. Nevertheless HASAW (Health And Safety At Work.) applies just as much to such a situation as it does to an official workplace used by multiple staff. In fact probably more so. “In space; nobody can hear you scream!” – In the same way, when you’re alone in the computer lab and receive a serious injury, there may well be nobody to hear your calls for help. It’s much more sensible to avoid any accidents in the first place. If you’re self-employed then this is particularly true; as time lost through injury or incapacity can be disastrous for the self-employed. What can you do to make the computer room safer? In the UK there are government directives concerning the mandatory safety standards in a place of public employment. These are contained in The Health & Safety at Work etc Act 1974. If you abide by these rules where applicable, even in a home-office, then it’s very unlikely that you’ll have any safety issues in your private workspace. There may well be equivalents of these regulations in the country in which you live, if you don’t live in the UK. You might consider such guidelines a bit much to stick to in a home environment; but safety now is always better than sorrow later.
Accidents can damage computer equipment, which can damage the data they contain. Lost or damaged (Corrupt) data is as good as no data. Accidents can damage you too, and may prove to be fatal in certain circumstances: Dead geeks are no good to anyone; especially to themselves. Stay safe, stay alive, stay well.
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Electrical Resistors
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An electrical resistor is an electronic component that offers resistance to electrical current. Electrical resistance is measured in ohms, symbolised by the Greek letter omega, and named after physicist Georg Simon Ohm who discovered electrical resistance hundreds of years ago. There is metric terminology involved with the term’s usage, such as 1000 ohms = 1 kilohm, 1000,000 ohms = 1 megohm, and also 1/1000th of an ohm = 1 milliohm, et al. The measurement of a single ohm was devised such that it is the amount of resistance that drops a single volt at a single amp. (See the first part of Basic Ohms’ Law/Electronic Circuit Design – Crash Course to make things a bit clearer.) In recent times the resistor has been miniaturised down to a tiny component that is even hard to pick up with tweezers. (The amount of electrical current that the resistor can handle as a result has also been vastly reduced; although in applications and gadgetry where such tiny resistors are used, the wattages flowing through them are indeed very tiny, sometimes amounting to only a fraction of a milliwatt. (1/1000th of a watt.) You may have seen resistors on your motherboard even and not known they were there because they’re so tiny. There are usually quite a lot of resistors on a motherboard. The “standard” sized resistors, built to handle 1/16th, 1/8th, 1/4, 1/2, and 1 watt, which are more clearly recognisable to the untrained eye of someone that is familiar with the sight of resistors, are all still available. You might see 1 or 3 of these on your motherboard also. There are definitely a number of them inside your power-supply unit, as well as probably a few higher rated resistors capable of handling up to 10 watts perhaps. *Note: If you go and examine your motherboard after reading this; make sure you do so while the computer’s shut down and the power is off. Also I advise you to look but don’t touch; even if you do wear an electrically-earthed anti-static wristband. (See Protect Your Parts and Static is Your Enemy.) So what exactly is a resistor? How is it made? What’s it made of? In a word; carbon. – Carbon is the principle ingredient. Carbon, in its raw state, is a rather poor electrical conductor. The more it’s compressed the better it conducts electricity. Industry has managed to compress carbon to a point where it has virtually zero electrical resistance. – Then they powder it. The carbon that has almost no electrical resistance is powdered into an extremely fine powder of highly pure carbon, with virtually no impurities of any kind in it. Impurities, in the form of a fine clay powder, are then added to it (Clay is non-conductive.) in pre-determined amounts in order to give it electrical resistance. The final electrical resistance in ohms of a given quantity of the carbon/clay mix will depend upon two factors. Those being: - 1) The ratio of carbon to clay in the “powder” mix. (The amount of impurities present.) 2) The amount of compression applied to the “powder” mix.
With the right combination of these two factors, precision resistors of any resistance from a fraction of an ohm right up to around 10 megohms can be made. In recent times, different chemicals have been used which increase the tolerance, (i.e. the variation of the component’s actual resistance with the heat generated by itself and surrounding components, as well as drift by changing chemical composition with time, et al.) considerably right down to a factor of a tiny fraction of a percentage point. Nevertheless the basic idea that I have outlined to you is still in essence the method used to this day. The process happens on a level where much smaller components are manufactured on an extremely miniature level; thus using up far less resources but being of a highly precision and exact nature using the latest machinery to mass-produce millions of tiny resistors only 4mm long in some cases. Then we come to the subject of microelectronics; including building resistors into chips: At the microelectronic level a different method of producing electrical resistance is used, which involves incorporating highly-doped MOSFETs connected as an always-open-circuit device at the point in the circuit where the resistance is required. The extra doping of the semiconductor material provides the required electrical resistance, rather than the “doping” of carbon powder. Going back to the resistor as a discrete component: Once the desired resistance has been achieved, the resistive chemicals are sealed inside a container of some kind, (Usually roughly cylindrical.) or on a tiny non-conductive slab of material, with an electrical connection fitted at each end of the device. The resistance value is then marked on the component’s outer casing, or a thin non-conductive protective layer sprayed on to it and the relevant markings applied to that, usually by means of a resistor colour-code, standard to the electronics industry. After final testing the resistors are shipped to industry and retailers in their millions.
The Resistor Colour Code
You’ll learn something new every day here; that’s why it’s always a good idea to read this blog often. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and mailing list, and be notified by RSS and email when new content is produced? Something you’ll be aware of if you follow Star Trek is that the Borg say that resistance is futile. Clearly on the evidence of the above it’s quite the opposite! I look forward to your comments.
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Beyond – The Newsletter – 8th May 2009
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Well I unexpectedly made it to 5 posts between this and the last newsletter – which is actually the weekly target – so the content wasn’t quite as sparse as I’d assumed that it might be during this last week, again. – What with all that extra hassle I mentioned in the last newsletter, combined with this week and what I think of as a big event; namely the release of Windows 7 RC, I’m wearing out. I’m sure the bit of grey I had has become greyer, and I don’t remember when I got any decent sleep last. I know it wasn’t last night; because I was tinkering with Windows 7 (64-bit) all night. It gets light quite early in the UK at this time of year; and when the clock struck 5AM it was daylight and I simply didn’t feel at all tired. – Rather than getting 3 – 4 hours, just to keep away the necessity for propping my eyelids open with matchsticks, I had no shuteye at all. – And it’s starting to catch up with me as I type. The show must go on, however; – and let’s start by reviewing the 5 posts I made during the week that was. Starting at the beginning, I went back to basics and wrote an article for the extremely new geeks on: - - You may mock; but everyone must begin somewhere.
Having heard of this particular plugin, that being the topic of this post, I installed it on this blog and checked it out. – Yes it is as good as they say. Check it out for yourself if you use WordPress.
I made a great deal of hype about this, but over a very small timeframe; maybe so tiny that nobody noticed. My eBook; named as the title of the advertising article, that being “Improve Your Existing Box”, is a guide to doing just that. – Rather than going out and spending money that could well be in short supply these days on a brand new box. Please do buy a copy: It’s inexpensive, it’s informative, and you never know when you might need it yourself. – In the light of which I suggest you get your copy so that you have it to hand when considering some type of rebuild.
Next; ah yes: Wednesday appeared and tried to run out before I managed to not go another day without any visible input into this blog. As you probably appreciate; Windows 7 RC had been released on Tuesday, and I wanted to get as legally close to decompiling it to find out the wiring on the board as was reasonably possible. First I had to install it, and that alone took much longer than it should have done thanks to a single faulty SATA lead… Long story: Fairly boring anyway, so I’ll give it a miss. True to my blogarithms I wrote with regard to my initial impressions of fascination and tremendous excitement through bleary eyes in this tickle of art, or art – tickle, voila: –
Lastly I had a moan about the fact that Windows 7 was minus at least one file that I found to be almost essential in Windows XP. There’s a file called sndrec32.exe in the system32 folder of XP… I won’t labour to explain it here: read the article: –
For now that’s it: I am shattered, behind schedule by about an hour, and need to wind down from ASAP onwards into tonight; though doubtless I’ll stay at least semi-active in some way. I promised myself that I’d make start on Tara Hunt (@missrogue) ‘s new book, called “The Wuffie Factor”. (Pronounced “woofie”) – I won’t go into long explanations right now: Goole is your friend. – I received the book a week or so ago; yet what with one thing and another I’ve so far only managed to transport it from the front room to the bedroom; ready to be read, if I can ever get more than 5 seconds between getting in bed and falling asleep.
Bylas gomego. Commence e’ pas a la trego. - Which means something like “Dance with me. Don’t stop the rhythm” in Portuguese. – Which is fairly pointless as I don’t actually speak Portuguese, can’t dance to save my life, and will possibly end up on a charge if my brain-dead neighbour plays loud music tonight. – As occasionally happens; usually at the worst time possible. I’m a heavy sleeper when I get to sleep on rare occasions. – But for whatever reason I need darkness and almost dead-quiet, precious tranquillity, to get off to sleep in the first place. A thumping beat, even if not that loud plus maybe somewhat distant-sounding, is guaranteed to keep me from dropping off. – And I’m feeling wrecked enough to stick his speakers where the sun don’t shine in order to baffle the noise so that I can get the sleep I need tonight. _ ——————- _ - And so with such jolly and wondrous thoughts resounding between my two still-functioning brain-cells, I shall bid thee au revoir, a la Francais; in order that I can fill your happy world with some more technical what-nots another time. Peace. Namaste’.
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Microsoft – Please Include A Sound Recorder in Windows 7
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This is another article on Windows 7: It’s Windows 7 week this week; and since I’ve installed the RC (Release Candidate) of Windows 7 (64-bit) this week, the fact that it is is rather appropriate. – Not forgetting, of course, that Microsoft have officially released the RC to the public this week also. Below is a listing of all the .msc files in the RC. What are .msc files? According to fileinfo.com, this: -
File Type Category Common? File Description
You’ll notice from the date affixed to the listing that these .msc files were also present in the various beta builds; from build 7000 upwards. .msc files in Windows are generally useful, as they have a function similar to .com and .exe files: For instance; devmgmt.msc is the device manager, and eventvwr.msc is the event viewer. These files reside in the System 32 subfolder of the Windows folder. The same thing is true of Vista and XP to a certain extent; other than a few of the files might have a slightly different nomenclature in some regards, depending upon the operating system in question. (Please excuse DS Clock for getting in the shot.)
What I noticed was new in the RC version, and that wasn’t included in the original beta, was the .com (Command) files listed below. As you will note from the listing below; .com files are MS-DOS application files: The 16-bit equivalent of a 32 or 64-bit .exe file. Despite whatever counter-claims may arise; Microsoft are still using DOS in at least part of their operating systems. This may not be a bad thing. – And then again it might? – But no biggie. These files are a throwback to before the days of Windows 95; (Probably revised somewhat since then.) but are still useful to this day. I don’t intend to teach you DOS at this point. Either you know it or you don’t. If you know DOS then so much the better: You’ll instantly understand what these files are for and what they do. If you don’t know DOS then there’s little point learning it anyway these days. – But if you want to learn it anyway, then there are many online tutorials available. Google is your friend.
However; more than this, Microsoft have added a shedload of .exe files, as well as a gargantuan collection of .dll’s. It’s the .exe files that particularly interest me, and I have to admit that I haven’t even screen-captured all the listings, let alone browsed through them all identifying and comparing them to those of previous operating systems. (If you’re expecting me to do so and report the results in the next article then I’ll inform you here that it took me many months to do that with XP, during which Vista appeared, and was looked at and ignored by me – along with most of the corporate world including Intel. – In other words I most likely won’t so you’re out of luck. – But no doubt someone will: The internet’s a big place, and with somewhere around 1/4 billion blogs out there it’s unlikely that it won’t happen.) The first screen of them, and there are many, is pictured below.: -
- And if you think that’s a vast amount, having looked for yourself; wait until you see the number of .dll’s they’ve added. – That’s well beyond the scope of this article.
What drew my attention to these files in the first place was that I transferred some files and settings over from my 32-bit XP setup on the networked computer next door.(As in; the next computer in that row of computers.) Having transferred all of my personal profile over from XP to 7, I noticed that the thing that stuck out like a sore thumb, and that was missing, was the sound recorder icon that I created in XP. I looked in 64-bit 7’s System 32 folder for a similar file or icon to the sndrec32.exe found in 32-bit XP, and discovered that there isn’t one. There’s an equivalent to sndvol32.exe, the volume controls, named SndVol.exe, but there’s no SndRec.exe, nor is there any equivalent file as far as I can tell.
This is going to cause problems for me if Microsoft don’t include it in the RTM version: I use the sndrec32.exe function in 32-bit XP via a desktop shortcut to call up the sound recorder, on which I record voice tracks, then use software to mix with music tracks, combine and clean them up, convert to mp3 format, and use the finished product. In fact the intro music for this blog was produced in just that manner. Without the presence of the sound recorder I am a bit stuffed, as are other bloggers who also record in this way. I don’t know if it’s included in the 32-bit version? I strongly suspect not. …And I’ve just found out, via Twitter, from Rich Menga of PC Mech.com that I suspected right: It isn’t. Here’s my last-minute appeal. I do know that Microsoft’s Windows 7 Team read this blog from time to time; especially if I write something on Windows 7. (Logically.) – So I ask those geeks in that team to please include an equivalent to sndrec32.exe in the RTM build. If it isn’t included I’m sure I’ll get by. – But I see no reason why it can’t be so included. (Having said that; I’m not on the development team, so what do I know?) If it isn’t included it’ll be a big pain in the ass at first. – Like the absence of the Address Bar was when I first installed Service Pack 3 to my Win XP Pro 32-bit installations. – But I carried on regardless, and eventually scrubbed round it and almost forgot about the Address Bar in the end. - But; dear Microsoft, I appeal to you and beseech thee not to cause me any further pain, and to please include a sound recorder file in the System32 folder of the RTM of Windows 7. (It’s like a bloody prayer this. (“Oh great God of the Sacred Redmond, it is with humility and sworn devotion that we come before thee…”) I just hope it has better results than prayer.) I also speak for those others who cannot live without the sound recorder and would like it reinstated. - In the name of Bill Gates who gave up his position for us so that Microsoft could move ever onward. Amen.
“Blasphemer…!”
“Oh rock of ages; don’t you crumble or be leaning still. Ah, magic moonshine now: A little people magick if you will.” - Queen 1972.
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Initial Impressions of Windows 7 RC
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Yes, it’s Wednesday; and there hasn’t been anything added to this blog since Sunday. I was very busy with other things on Monday. On Tuesday (Yesterday) I was messing with Windows 7 RC well into the night. Downloading is a very simple process. Although it took me 2 hours to download the 64-bit version it was well worth the wait. If you’ve run the beta you’ll note that the RC isn’t dissimilar. I’m not going to describe the OS in graphic detail, nor am I going to get into the technicalities of it in this article: I’ll leave that for you to find out for yourself. If you want to download and run your own copy then click here for 32 and/or 64 bit versions. - Another thing is that we are dealing with Microsoft here; so don’t be surprised if you need to download updates straight away.
I can vouch for the fact that so far I’ve found Windows 7 RC to be a very stable and user-friendly OS. I’m still putting it through its paces, and probably will continue to do so for a while yet. (At least a few weeks.) The published minimum requirements to run Windows 7 are.
It has been said by some that 3 GB of RAM for the 32 bit and 4GB for the 64 bit is needed for good performance, plus a dual core processor. I agree as regards the dual-core (Or more) processor. I’ve only run the 64-bit version on a triple-core processor; and it seems apparent that a single-core processor would struggle badly. Bear in mind that I have a number of programs such as Panda Antivirus Beta 2009 (See video below.), Carbonite, Diskeeper 2009, and a number of others. – Some working hard in the background. I have 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM installed on the Win 7 box; and as yet haven’t seen it use more than 2 of the 4 GBs; although I have yet to install and run Google Earth; which at times maxes out the RAM on my XP Professional 32-bit system, running a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 x 2, 2.2 GHz chip, with 2GB DDR2 667MHz RAM installed.
I should mention that although Microsoft no longer suggest Panda’s beta as an antivirus for Windows 7 RC, it works well with it nevertheless, and is free, which is a lot cheaper than the pricey Kaspersky, Norton, and AVG anti-malware systems that they recommend. I’ve installed Office XP x86 on the 64-bit system, and it runs without issues as far as I can tell. I intend to keep using it and adding programs to it. I could well be back here with a further report on it soon.
What about you? Have you run Windows 7? Was that the beta or the RC? How did you find it? Please let us know in a comment below.
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Clean Your WordPress Database With WP-Optimize. (Free Software) (WordPress Plugin)
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If you run a WordPress blog you’ll find that over time your database gets rather fat. You may be surprised to know that a lot of that is crap that’s just wasting space on the server: – In addition to comments in the spam queue, your database also keeps record of post revisions, unapproved comments, and comments listed for removal as spam. Every time you revise a post, an entry is made in the database. Typically you only want the latest revision; the previous entries are old hat which is just wasting bytes. If someone comments but you don’t approve the comment for publication, it gets an entry in the database, even though you’ll probably never refer to it again. Although storage is comparatively cheap these days; there’s still no point in wasting it. WP-optimize does the cleaning for you. It also allows you to rename the default allotted username “admin”; which might pose a security risk. This plugin is extremely useful for bloggers who have large blogs; and it also has its uses for all other blogs too. Why not check it out for yourself?
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How To Create a .html File
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First; what is html? From Wikipedia: - “HTML, an acronym for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of "tags" that are surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code (such as JavaScript) that can affect the behaviour of Web browsers and other HTML processors.” It would therefore be logical to assume that an .html file is a file that contains hypertext markup language; and so it is. (Some html files use the filename extension (suffix) “.htm”. It is a throwback to the days before Windows NT and VFAT, when the FAT file system of the time could only handle files with an 8-character filename followed by a 3-character file-extension after the dot. – Therefore .html wouldn’t have been understood, and it was shortened to .htm. Windows-based computers to this day still read the .htm file extension as if it were .html.) So how do you create an html or htm file? The method for doing so is simply typing the html content into a text file, and then renaming the file with a .html or .htm suffix. For example: I want to create an html file containing the hypertext content of this web page that I’ve written so far. To do so I open up a text editor such as WordPad and type the html content I wish to use into the file and save it, thus:
Then I rename the file from test.txt to test.htm: -
The icon changes automatically to that of the browser you’re using as default browser at the time; in this case Firefox. - And that’s all there is to it. You can now open your newly created html file in your browser simply by clicking on it: -
‘Piece of cake.
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Beyond – The Newsletter. 1st May 2009
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Due to circumstances beyond my control the amount of fresh articles produced for this blog this week has been rather minimal. Yesterday I was in London for a medical appointment; following which I was in Bristol for a meeting with a man about a dog. Of course the weather started the day rather abysmally, with dark cloudy Wiltshire skies and outbreaks of rain. It was a bit better in London though, with dark broken clouds and occasional sunshine. I took a taxi initially, and the traffic was pretty minimal compared to its usual pandemonium; (In fact the Capital seemed like a ghost-town.) but found it rather expensive going after a while; so £30 in taxi-fares later I decided to use Public Transport: London Underground hasn’t improved much if at all. It still has appallingly lax facilities, lack of customer interaction, and maintains its world-renowned dinginess. Having negotiated seemingly more miles of tunnels than the trains I travelled on, up and down escalators plus painfully ancient, dirty, and unkempt flights of stairs, along walkways galore, I finally arrived at Waterloo Station, managed to find a train, and got on my way. If you live overseas and are thinking of visiting London to see the London Underground – please take note: It’s not an experience for the faint-hearted. Travelling to Bristol the sun made frequent appearances, but vanished when I alighted from the train, and the skies threatened further rain. Eventually I returned to a sunny Wiltshire, totally worn out and still suffering from bad laryngitis after that bad cold I had recently, which made my voice sound like a cross between Bonny Tyler and Arnold Schwarzenegger on helium. My home-improvements were installed on Monday; during which I was at the height of my cold, and added to which it was cold weather and rained all day, Just to make the day worth complaining about there was a very chilly breeze which blew straight through the window apertures as they were being replaced. If nothing else it certainly changed the air in my abode and blew out some dust and cobwebs; seemingly most of it straight up my nose which led to intense sneezing fits, although my altered body-temperature countered the cold. That day was the only day I can recall since I’ve lived here when I could see my breath indoors. This month I’m having my bathroom redesigned and the entire shower rebuilt; thus I’m expecting more, if minor, disruption. Let’s have a look at what’s new this week. ‘Since the last newsletter only 2 articles: - To round off the month of April I did a piece on
- Which is basically no different to fitting a socket AM2 processor. Early this morning I rattled off an article on stubborn malware, and the right way to manually remove it so that it doesn’t seem to keep coming back: - And that’s all so far. Have a good week and enjoy the coming weekend. Hopefully next week will be drier and warmer than the picture below (BBC Television weather forecast – from earlier this year.) would have you believe.
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Malware Keeps Coming Back
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Sometimes you might pick up a piece of malware that neither your antivirus or any other anti-malware program you’re running tells you you’re infected with. Despite this you know you’re infected because your computer just doesn’t behave properly. - So you look in the Windows Task Manager, or download and run Process Explorer, or some suchlike action, and you find a very suspicious process running, and you kill its running process. Suddenly your computer starts working as it should, and you’re a happy bunny. – Until you reboot and it’s there again; slowing your computer to a crawl and causing erratic behaviour. OK this time it’s a dead piece of malware: You type the process’s name into regedit and find and delete its keys. You go into Process Explorer and kill the process for the last time. Hooray! – But next time you reboot it’s back again! How do you get rid of it? Doing what you did above is on the right tracks; but you made a flaw in its execution: Some malware has a loop in its process which checks the registry key. If it finds that its registry key has been altered or deleted, the running process executes a process that rewrites it to the registry: Hence when you deleted its key without first killing the process, the process simply rewrote the registry key right back to where you’d deleted it from. You then killed the process, and thought you’d exterminated it once and for all. You didn’t realise that the process that you left running while you deleted the registry key had rewritten said registry key; so that on reboot the key pointing to the malware executable simply reinstated the process once again. Kill the process first; so that when you delete the registry key there’s nothing running that will rewrite it again as soon as you exit regedit. *Please remember that editing the registry can be extremely risky, and a mistake anywhere along the line could mean anything from something so minor that it’s unnoticeable , to ruining your entire operating system’s setup and making it completely non-recoverable. If in doubt leave it out. Unless you’re 100% certain that you know what you’re doing I advise you to leave editing the registry to someone else who is.
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