So I know that if I have a deadline I’ll do better as a writer. To this end I have decided to post to this blog 3 times a week (more if I feel plucky). Monday will be helpful household software. Wednesday will be office software review (this will also be the day I post security and virus type stuff.) Friday will be free game day. I’ll be posting Reviews and links to free games on a variety of different platforms.
Family, religion, and other stuff like that will go on my other blog.
New blog Schedule
Sep 5
I have removed thousands upon thousands of viruses from pc’s. Some antivirus vendors did a fair job (if you count the number of viruses they let slip by) and some did a terrible job. So which ones work and which ones don’t? Well time for the brutally honest truth.
You are the worst thing that happened to your computer and your antivirus can’t protect you.
Ok personal rant over. What I mean by that is that none of the programs I have ever reviewed or cleaned up behind prevented a virus infection completely. The reason for that is that virus writers got smart. They realized that ,to a point, anti-virus companies had gotten slightly ahead of the curve and had started down a road that would stop them (with heuristics).
That’s when they targeted you.
Now they have targeted code that does a couple of things. The first thing they do with their new code is use a nifty little feature in windows management console to shutdown your real time antivirus (and sometimes the scheduler). Then they pick on your networking method of choice. If they spread via IM they attack your contacts in your messaging program, if it’s a social website then your profile starts sending out messages to people.
There are a few good anti viruses out there and people have sworn by this one or that one. I won’t go into great detail about which one is better because that will change by version and even sometimes by definition number. Currently the top preventative anti-virus is Pand Cloud, but that is very likely to change even before this writing is finished.
So how do you keep them off your machine for free?
Learn where they are attacking from. Your browser is their target. IE (Internet Explorer) is probably the worst offender when it comes to infections. It is still the market leader and while it has gotten a lot better with version 8. People’s behavior kills any plugs that Micro Soft tries to put in place. Almost every “free” program out there wants to install a toolbar or browser add-on and I’ve seen people with 10 -15 toolbars on their browser. It looks crazy when their web content is only like 3 inches tall because of toolbars.
Mozilla Firefox is the second biggest target. But Firefox is also the shining star when it comes to security. Through one addon (Noscript) you can completely block ALL these new nasty viruses. Including anything new that comes out. As long as you play by the rules.
Chrome and Safari are third on the list of targets due to familiarity and market share. I don’t like them because they don’t allow much user control over security and they don’t have any extensions that can be added (which can be a plus).
So there you have it the best and the worst. There even more options out there like Flock and Opera, but I’ll go into them next time.
OO released a beta (test version) of Open Office 3.3. It promises a bunch of new features you can find out which ones by clicking here to go to their website. One of the biggest complaints that I hear about Open Office is that it doesn’t come with any wizards.. it’s got more of a blank slate feel to it. You can always download there templates at their website, but it would be neat if a bunch of them were included.. or if someone would package them in a easy to use installer. The Goodwill website actually offers free training on Open Office which comes standard on all of their computers they sell. You can get access to those free classes here.
Unless I missed it I do not see a notice of Open Office being able to use the new office format files yet. As soon as it comes out of Beta I plan on checking to see if it can open the new MS Office files. Sometimes they slip in things like this and don’t list it in the feature set.
Be patient I’ll post a review as soon as the new Open Office comes out.
I’ve been playing Godfinger on my iPod touch for awhile. It’s a pretty neat game with lot’s of avenues for time waisting. One of my favorites is flinging villagers about.
In this game you play as a god and you control little villagers. When your bored you can pick them and give them a good toss. You can even get ranked depending on how far you toss them. So here are some of my tips for getting good distance.
1. zoom out a little bit. When you can move the planet easily side to side is just about enough.
2. Fling at an angle. Try to aim for a 45 degree angle.
3. Clean your screen. This probably should have been first but a dirty screen keeps you from getting good distance.
4. Constant contact. Keep your finger in good contact all the way to the edge of the screen.
5. Take off your case. It stinks but the cases limit how far your fingers can get up into the corners.
That’s about all I have for now. If you have more tips please feel free to leave any tips in the comments below. When I first started playing I could lap my planet now my planet’s so big I can’t make it all the way around. Anyone have any tips on getting some super distance?
Score just updated my Blog
Aug 29
I was using an outdated WordPress back end but now I’m all up to date! No major scary stuff happened.
CentOS 5
Aug 29
So I just made a new webserver for testing website designs. I have been using Mandriva but a really weird bug has been causing my mysql php scripts to slow down really bad. Anyways I did some research grabbed an old junker computer I had laying around and slapped a centos 5 installation on it. My early testing confirms it is very nice. So far I have found it very fast and very easy to use. I added a couple of users, installed my Sql server, and added proftp. I like to use webmin over a CLI interface cause it’s really easy to make changes ( I think, anyways). I like that it’s free. It comes pretty tough on security by default but has options to make it even tougher with a few clicks. It uses the Red Hat Yum package manager. The only thing I don’t “get” yet is the CLI commands for starting up the configuration programs. All in all a solid OS distribution that runs well on an old Dell GX150.
Aaron
Thanksgiving of 2009 I bought a samsung clx-3175fn printer for me and another person. It was really inexpensive, the toner was cheap, and everything seemed like a great deal at the time. Then trouble started. My friend’s printer stopped scanning. It would still print and you could fax from your pc but scanning resulted in a solid black page. He contacted Samsung. They started giving him the run around. I did some research and came up with this bit of info here. Apparently Samsung’s warranty service is so bad they have been sued because of it. The State of New Jersey took out a class action suit against them as well. You can read about it here. I don’t like bashing people or products but Samsung is not standing behind their products.
Anyways that brings me to today’s frustration. Customer brings me a Samsung clp-600n printer with a left side fan error message. Samsung told him he would have to replace the fan since it’s out of warranty. I replaced said fan and it didn’t work. I did some reading and found another possible solution here. Which didn’t work for my client. So now he’s got a printer that is good for nothing but a very heavy boat anchor.
As a consumer I would caution people about Samsung products. The product may be great, good luck getting help if you need it.
I have recently learned of IBM’s new Office Suite Lotus Symphony. And I’ve got to say so far my first impressions are pretty good. It can do all the things Open Office can do but it has some neat features built right into the GUI. First off is the Home tab where you begin. Here’s a picture of it.
At the bottom is a link that takes you straight to a collection of clip art (it reminds of me some very easy to use software from a while back).
You can see that right off the bat you can click a button and start making documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. As of this writing I’ve yet to see how to create a database type structure but I do see where you can import data once you do have one. Let’s move on to the text documents. Clicking on the document button brings you here.
As you can see from the picture the formatting is very easy to use and all everything you need is right there in easy reach. I hope to write more about this as I use it.
Anyways onto the presentations.
Pretty standard presentation stuff. I don’t make lot’s of presentation files but this pretty similar to MS Office’s old style of Power Point.
Now onto the spreadsheets.
I really like the interface for spreadsheets. Just like the documents all the formatting, charting, and data tools are within a single click. It’s simple. I miss simple. Simple is refreshing. Simple means I can get a lot done very quickly. Lotus Symphony nails the spreadsheet app. Here’s the pic of their interface here.
Symphony has lot’s of plugins available for download often available without leaving the program. They have lot’s of templates (a weakness of OpenOffice) and read Open Office files and Ms Office files (though not the 07 & 10 files yet). All in all it’s a solid office app and I’m looking forward to putting it through it’s paces and testing the updates.
Off the top of my head I know that in Linux there are several that I can download and install from my repository. But he doesn’t use Linux and won’t be able to for quite some time (Vendor specific software lock-in). Sooo I did some digging and found some real gems.
The first thing I want to point out is that Wikipedia has some awesome listings for software. Some people have really spent some time researching the various pieces of software that can be had for a fee and for free. With out further ado here is their list for time tracking as a good example.
I dug into a couple of their free samplings and came out with 2 really nice programs.
The first is Kimai. It’s open source and has loads of really cool features. Here is what they say about themselves. Kimai is a free open source timetracker. It tracks work time and prints out a summary of your activities on demand. Yearly, monthly, daily, by customer, by project, by action …
It’s simplicity is its strength. Due to Kimai’s web browser based interface it runs cross-platform. Likewise you can install it as a web service or as a single-user program on your local workstation.
For someone like me it wouldn’t be any trouble setting up. The biggest problem with Kimai is that is a web app. As such it needs to be run on a webserver. While this is very doable with projects like XAMP mentioning this to basic users is like asking them to perform calculus. If you ever installed xamp I know that it’s easy and I know that copying Kimai into a folder on your hard drive is also easy but there are so many variables that can go wrong and most customers want a drop in fix.
So enter Grindstone or Griindstone 2 to be more exact. Here is what Grindstone says about itself. Grindstone greatly simplifies everything about staying on top of your time, from automatically recording it to producing useful reports based on it. Just tell Grindstone what you’re working on and it will keep tabs on your time in the background while you work. Incorporating automatic away detection, advanced task and time management functions, and customizable billing calculation, Grindstone is the most powerful personal time tracking solution, period.
It runs on Windows using .Net components so if you haven’t previously installed .Net it will ask you to do so. It looks like a great piece of software and it is something I have no problem recommending.
I found about Zulilly awhile back and have been watching their sales. Many of my friends have kids and could really benefit from some of their items. You can see their website and join for free by clicking here.
They also have a coupon for $5.00 off any $50 purchase that you can use by clicking here.
Check em out!