(Sunday 23rd October 2005)Some months ago, a group called the Consumers Union produced a web cartoon to highlight the problems in the prescription drug marketplace. It turned out to be an extremely successful way to get the message across, as well over 100 blogs linked to the site, which had more than half a million visitors in the space of a week, proving that while there are people who would read serious articles on the need for reform within the pharmaceutical industry, many more will be interested in the hearing the message if it's done in a way that's entertaining and funny. The Drugs I Need can be watched by clicking this link.
(Wednesday 19th October 2005)Many thanks to Ovy for redesigning the gif at the bottom of the page and making me a new signature for Maxed PCs.
Shetland was fantastic! When I get a chance, I'll put some photos on the site and do a write up.
(Wednesday 5th October 2005)It's gratifying to see that even stupid people learn in the end. In the case of forums, the only successful way to deal with flame wars and offensive posts is to delete trouble before it has a chance to take root. One particular forum didn't do this and soon found they were the laughing stock of everyone who visited ..... finally they got rid of two embarrassing, 8 page, irrelevant threads, and if their weak and ineffectual moderators/admins had done this at the beginning, it would have saved an awful lot of grief.
Seems the Sims is OK after resetting the graphics card to x4 from x8 in the BIOS. The motherboard is well capable of supporting x8 but I doubt Emily will notice a drop in speed. The network is less satsifactory - having run out of time setting up WPA encryption and Emily/Ryan not managing to sort it out, they're now using a totally unsecured wireless connection (or connecting Ryan's laptop through the cat5 cable). I'll have to tackle it again when I next get the opportunity. Off to the Shetlands at the weekend, which should be a fantastic holiday.
(Friday 23rd September 2005)More research into the problem of Emily's pesky graphics card doesn't sound very positive. She's getting the message:
and the first document google turned up told me:
Excellent! I'm only going to get one shot at sorting this, so as a last resort will have to take across the graphics card from one of the PCs here and leave her with (hopefully) a computer that doesn't crash when she plays The Sims. In any case, the same helpful guide urges you not to:
like switching to Nvidia!
Still, swapping graphics cards will be the penultimate resort (the last resort being to install another fan), I'm hoping I can make the present card work. In addition I have their wired and wireless network to set up once NTL is installed, and a plane to catch back in the evening.
(Tuesday 20th September 2005)For an account of our weekend in Belfast click here.
(Saturday 18th September 2005)Belfast was great! Emily is lucky to have such a nice flat which is in a different league to the place Louise spent 6 months in, when she was in her last year at Oxford, and no more expensive. However, it looks like I'm going to have to go back out there - something is wrong with her graphics card when she plays the Sims and there's quite a bit more stuff to take across. Fortunately flying there and back on Easyjet is cheap and quick.
MAXED PC'S is coming along well. Hosted by Krusty (like this site), it no longer runs out of bandwidth on a daily basis and is free from annoying adverts. Krusty will never have to worry about the site content (unlike the ISP's of certain other forums) and at least the moderators/admins work together and present a united front (whatever their private differences). In fact, it's like most forums everywhere. These lads are only around 16, but at least the basic ethos of treating people with courtesy and respect hasn't flown out of the window in the name of "free speech".
I used to think PCA forums were bad, and indeed when I was a member, they did consist of a clique of regulars who more or less ran the show, plus one moderator (and an admin who couldn't run a child's tea party, never mind a forum). I have no idea real what they're like now, except for the odd gem I mentioned below, but they never really came close to what is rapidly becoming a joke in the world of online forums. Like PCA, this particular place is run by inexperienced admins and from the moderating front, is one contol freak's empire. Although they like to promote a reputation for being laid back and friendly, in fact the reverse is achieved when abusive threads are allowed to run and run unchecked, and the people who could do something about it are too weak to act, prefering to sit on the fence rather than lose popularity. It's a strange environment where spamming to get sign ups for "free" ipods is frowned upon, yet posting links to blatantly illegal sites and private passwords for online pr0n material are acceptable. The whole place just reinforces the stereotype of its members, a significant proportion of whom also need to learn how to behave.
(Saturday 10th September 2005)Guess I should really get to bed as I have a plane to catch in a few hours - taking Emily to uni in Belfast. Her packing has to be seen to be believed.
However, I just can't resist commenting on PCA and their gobsmacking mistakes! Like this recent forum thread. Today I received their regular newsletter and one paragraph had me laughing at how their knowledge of PCs in general is only matched by their (lack of) knowedge of SFF systems in particular:
Quote: "In issue 150, PCAnswers ran a PC group test, reviewing four PCs including the Stealth XS, from 3D Computer Systems. We incorrectly stated that the machine had 512MB of memory and no anti-virus. The PC has 1GB of memory, and does come with anti-virus, which is a Bullguard 30-day trial. The contact URL should have been www.3dreview.co.uk"
Can they get anything right ? If they can't even post the correct URL, would you trust their advice on your PC problems?
(Monday 5th September 2005)Many thanks to Olly who spent a very patient day helping to get Samba configured and the Windows partition on the same hard drive mounted so I could access it after booting into Suse. I had no problems viewing the Windows network from Suse, but without Samba installed and set up correctly, I couldn't see the linux files from my Windows PCs. Now it's all working perfectly! I've ditched Zone Alarm on here as it was causing too many disconnections, and again thanks to Olly, have installed what has so far been a very good free firewall, Sygate. It initially caused problems viewing the LAN but is now working perfectly.
Start a new job tomorrow, so as it's heading for 4 am, it might be an idea to get to bed!
(Thursday 1st September 2005)Spent an enjoyable day revisiting my old golf club for invitation day. I was delighted when one of the members I used to play with there asked if I would like to come along today, it was good to see everyone again. It's also good to have had Louise back here briefly on her way back down to Oxford. Soon she'll be moving on and the Oxford years will be just a memory. However, there's one more chance to visit when we go down for her graduation. It will be good to get one more chance to be part of the whole Oxford experience. Best of luck Louise for the next year!
(Tuesday 30th August 2005)Back from a weekend spent walking in the cheviots and lounging around at the bungalow. Emily's PC is almost ready, it just needs the new memory putting in. Spent a couple of frustrating days last week trying to get a firewall organised after deciding windows firewall and the router's protection were not enough - I needed something to filter outbound traffic. AOL membership gives me the opportunity to download and use McAfee firewall so I decided to give this a go. I quickly came to the conclusion that if firewall manufacturers want people to use their products they're going to have to do better than this! Originally I had Zone Alarm on each of the PCs, however on Emily's if the computer was idle for any length of time the internet connection used to "time out". Killing ZA restored everything, so what used to happen was Zone Alarm would get disabled and not started again. Since there wasn't much point in a firewall everyone was just going to turn off, I gave up on it. McAfee looked like it was going to cause equally frustrating problems. Although it worked perfectly on computer B, computer A (mine) couldn't see the local network at all, even though ping commands worked, and computer C could see half the network, ie one PC but not the other. I uninstalled McAfee from here, and a reinstall on computer C managed to get it working properly there, so that was two PCs sorted. I remembered computer A had a firewall built into the nvidia chipset and briefly gave this a go. Not for long! I disconnected and reconnected to the internet like a yoyo. Eventually I reinstalled Zone Alarm back on here and (touch wood) everything is fine.
Security Forums seem unwilling to believe theres anything wrong with PGP 8.0. However, since the forum is moderated by someone who has supposedly spent 10 years as a security professional and still insists a simple keylogger could capture a PGP password, I'm clearly talking to people who don't understand the first thing about the program.
(Monday 22nd August 2005)Thanks Martin! Just spent a fair while generating and distributing a new PGP key, which can be downloaded here. Also changing a few passwords etc, after Zone-MR's demonstration of how easy is it to crack a lengthy, complex password protecting access to my private key. As if that wasn't bad enough (I trust you Martin) he then pasted it in #adsl. What a mockery it makes of how supposedly safe PGP is! Yet PGP Corp. don't seem all that bothered about the flaw they've been notified of.
Norway was great, a nicer cabin this time, on the down side much more crowded since this is the school holidays. Overall, we both just came back wanting to go again as soon as possible and might book another mini cruise in November/December.
(Monday 15th August 2005)Well, just back from a few days at Embleton, and soon (tomorrow) another mini cruise to Norway to look forward to. Been learning (the hard way) about e-gold and the stubborn persistence needed to make headway with the Londongoldexchange. Why does a simple transaction have to be so hideously complicated and involve jumping through quite so many hoops? If this comes off I'll be utterly amazed ....
(Sunday 7th August 2005)Finally - pictures from the Golden Wedding Anniversary celebration here.
(Friday 5th August 2005)Coming soon! A page of Golden Wedding photos!
Spent a happy evening Wednesday night/Thursday evening playing around with the PCs here. Michael came across to help assess a future PC upgrade and take a look at an install of Vista on DVD, as well as bringing some CDs, as my DVD RW refused to recognise the particular discs I had left, although these work perfectly well elsewhere. Since Michael currently has no DVD writer, I was also makimg some dvds to pass on and burning some for myself. We booted up the PC which has come back from Rosie's flat, mainly to install the ton of updates it needed, not having been connected to the net at her flat. We had a few issues with the network and IP conflicts, as the previously set up system had undergone some changes when I'd been desperately trying to configure the laptop networking card for Suse. Then we decided it would be a good idea (until nearer the time Emily would need a complete system and a new hard drive) to partition the existing 20 gig drive and put Vista on one partition, just to play around with it for a few weeks.
Of course that PC just had a CD RW, and the OS was on DVD. So my SFF had to be cannibalised and the DVD RW "borrowed" by the other computer while Vista installed. We took the opportunity to swap the graphics card in Rosie's PC for the one in mine, adding a marginally better card here - and a new one is planned for Rosie's PC anyway, before Emily takes it to uni. The install was surprisingly painless, far easier than XP unless you create your own disc which does an unattended install. You more or less set it off and that was that. The background colour is nicer, and when the OS was finally installed, I was pleasantly surprised to find no conflicts, nothing refusing to install and work. Printer, scanner, sound - all seemed fine. Until I put a better graphics card in, I'm not going to get the fancy features available in Vista, and some of the functions don't yet work anyway, but all in all I was quite impressed. For a first beta, it's not at all bad, though I certainly wouldn't run it as my main OS. Below is some of the surrounding chaos! Just click on a thumbnail to enlarge. It just shows what sturdy things computers are :) the machine installing Vista is on its side, case off, with the borrowed DVD RW attached to a spare IDE cable, hanging out of the PC!
(Wednesday 3rd August 2005)Couldn't help but laugh at this. I will refrain from actually posting the "hack" such as it is. However, it's not necessary, there's a much easier way to get round the M$ new product key validation when you try to download manual updates. Simply go to the update site (remember IE is needed) and while on the site, to to Tools > Manage Add-Ons > and from the drop down box choose Add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer, scroll down to Windows Genuine Advantage and disable this add on program. You won't have any more issues! Thanks for the tip Phych0!
(Tuesday 2nd August 2005)Well, finally archived another page. Such a lot I could mention this week, the Tall Ships (where I was helping on the Learndirect Stand in the evening), Rosie moving back in on Sunday, an incredible trip to Simonside on Saturday and the channel bot, channel bot, channel bot!! which has taken so much of my time up here it's ridiculous!
I also have the golden wedding photos to organise onto an html file for uploading. So, plenty to do yet!
The latest Sophos newsletter gave an interesting link to the EICAR test virus. Basically just make a text file containing the following: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H* and try to save it. If your AV protection is worth its salt it should pck it up as a threat (I want to clearly say that it is not)! It's a simple program with the ability to run it from the command line, in which case it should return the message ""EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!"
(Monday 25th July 2005)Tonight I'm going to make it a priority to archive this page and also publish a tribute to what was a perfect day yesterday, in every respect. The occasion was my parents Golden Wedding party and truly, there wasn't anything that could have been improved on at all. I've got some wonderful photos where quite uniquely, the whole family is together, and once these are processed (mainly to reduce them in pixel size for the benefit of users without fast broadband) then I'll make a second photo page with a few words about the occasion.
Edit Well actually this is Saturday we're talking about. And instead of archiving a page, I ended up taking the entire site offline just about, trying to correct a broken link from work! The only way I could access krusty's server was using ftp from the command prompt (a combination of being firewalled to hell and not having enough access to install programs). Anyway, this proved OK to get and edit the index page, but the problems started when I tried to send ..... damned stupid something or other at work wouldn't allow it and there was f*** all I could do about it till I got home. Meanwhile I was left with an index page of 0 bytes and a flurry of alarms from SEVENtwentyfour.com. Now it's got to 11pm I don't know if I can be bothered if I'm going swimming tomorrow morning.
My time has been largely taken up with getting Isis settled on a new host shell. Many people offered useful tips, but in particular I must thank Lostbuffer for his generosity in agreeing to host the bot, and his patience when my seeming ineptitude must have had him at just about breaking point! And in all this, he displayed the patience of a saint. Secondly, phycho deserves a special thanks for his willingness to help set Isis up, even though he had originally hosted it. Not only was he very happy that I'd found someone else to host the bot, but he bent over backwards to help me configure it. Two great people!
To read more archive weblogs, click here which will take you to the previous archive, which in turn contains a link to the one before that.
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