Spyware: Ad-aware is free and removes it very effectively

Removing Spyware

Spyware is software that invades your computer while you're browsing the web. It attempts to find out more about you, so that advertisements may be matched to your preferences. It can become a problem when your computer contains huge quantities of it. Most people prefer to remove all of it. Ad-aware is very good at spotting spyware and removing it. We recommend that you let it remove everything it finds (there's an automatic backup of everything removed).

Instructions

1. Download and install ad-aware SE
2. Download latest reference file
   • click on Check for updates now on the Ad-aware SE Status page
3. Run ad-aware
   • If spyware entries are found select each one of them and click continue to remove them

Maintenance

You can run it as often as you like but once a week is probably enough. Check for a new reference file from time to time. If you subscribe to the Culverden XML Newsfeed we'll let you know when it's worth installing the latest version.

Shields Up! is free and tests your computer for internet security problems

Test Internet Security

Shields Up! is a free web application that checks that your computer is safe from unwanted access by remote computers (e.g. hackers) over your internet connection.

If you have an ADSL always on connection we recommend that you run it once and, if it identifies any problems, get them solved (which can be the tricky bit).

Instructions

Open web page Shields Up! and run the test:-

1. Common Ports

Maintenance

You probably only need to run this once. If you think something might have changed the security settings on your computer then running Shields Up! again will be worthwhile.

Install Free AVG for your home PC virus protection

Install Free AVG

Free AVG is free (for home computers only) and is very effective.

Instructions

Remove you previous virus checker first.

1. Download and install the free virus checker Free AVG
2. Open web link http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/
3. Navigate down to the AVG Free Edition installation files table at the bottom of the page
4. Click the link under the File column header
5. Click on save to download the file
6. Install the downloaded file

Maintenance

You can set up Free AVG to download daily updates automatically every day.

Install VoptXP

Install VoptXP

You can try VoptXP free (for 30 days) and it will tidy your computer. It is very fast and totally reliable. Well worth buying

Instructions

1. Download and install the evaluation version of VoptXP
2. Open web link VoptXP
3. Click the Try it Free Link

Maintenance

You can run this every day. Even on large disks it is very quick compared with other disk defragmenters.

It also has some privacy, cleanup and optimization tools, including a tool to optimize your swap file.

Translatum Greece Decimal to Hex Colour Calculators / Converters / Choosers

A simple and effective online HEX Color Code Converter / Chooser

If you like to customize the web page colours many packages, like Paint, define custom colours in R,G,B decimal numbers (0..255, 0..255, 0..255).

http://www.translatum.gr/converter/hexadecimal.htm does the conversion to HEX.

Outlook 2002 - View in plain text

To read all nonsecure mail in plain text in Outlook 2002:

• Select Run... from the Start menu.
• Type regedit.
• Hit Enter.
• Go to:
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER
  • Software
    • Microsoft
      • Office
        • 10.0
          • Outlook
            • Options
              • Mail
• Select Edit | New | DWord from the menu.
• Type ReadAsPlain.
• Hit Enter.
• Double-click the newly created ReadAsPlain value.
• Enter 1.
• Click OK.
• Close registry editor

Installing OKI C5400n Printer (XP) on an IP port

This assumes you've already downloaded the drivers from http://www.okidata.com/mkt/html/nf/Drivers.html and you've already added an IP Port for the printer (in this example it is on 192.168.0.231).

1. Click on Start, Control Panel
2. Double-click on Printers and Faxes
3. Click on Add a printer

   This opens the Welcome to the Add Printer Wizard box

   1. Click on Next
4. Choose option Local printer attached to this computer without automatically detecting your plug and play printer
5. Choose option Use the following port and select IP_192.168.0.231 (Standard TCP/IP Port) then Click on Next

   This opens the Install Printer Software box

   1. Click on Have Disk...
   2. Click on Browse...

      Navigate to file (if you used the standard OKIDATA folder arrangement) C:\OKIDATA\C5400nSC\English\Win2k_Xp\PCL\Ok725.inf and click on Open

6. Click on OK
7. Click on Next

   This opens the Name your Printer box

   Give the printer a name and click Next

8. Choose option Do not share this printer and click on Next
9. Choose your test page option and click on Next

This opens the Completing the Add Printer Wizard box

1. Click on Finish

Changing Broadband Provider

Force9 has been a bit eratic and their limit on downloads has caused problems. Decided to change to Be* Unlimited Which is faster (24MB/2MB) and cheaper (£18/£21.99 per month).

Be

Google Desktop Search is flawed

I use Google Desktop Search (GDS) and find it invaluable. The "Browse Timeline" option is really useful but I find that I have to organize my work to suit GDS because it's missing some really basic configuration options.

I only want GDS to index data files, so I have set up a drive just for data and I exclude all other drives from the GDS search crawler. GDS can't recognize some of my data files yet they are still indexed and they'll never be found in any search except by filename - an option to exclude specific file extensions would solve this.

The other problem is email. I have to have Microsoft Outlook switched off when I'm not using it. If I leave it on I get spam (which spambayes takes care of) then GDS indexes the spam. So, to suit GDS, I stop GDS indexing, check my emails, delete the spam, then start GDS indexing. If I'm unlucky I'll get some spam delivered while I've left Outlook on with GDS running (so it can index the email) - an option to exclude specific email folders would solve this.

Because GDS is so valuable to me I change the way I work to suit the software. I imagine that the two (fixes?) enhancements I require wouldn't be too much trouble to implement. How do you get software improved when it's free?

Rails on EEEPC

sudo apt-get remove xandros-scim
sudo apt-get remove scim

sudo kwrite /etc/apt/sources.list
add these five lines:
deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-free
deb http://dccamirror.xandros.com/dccri/ dccri-3.0 main
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ p701 main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main non-free contrib
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/ xandros4 main


goto http://code.google.com/p/pimpmyeee/ and download pimpmyeee-1.0.2.sh
chmod +x pimpmyeee-1.0.2.sh; chmod +x unpimpmyeee-1.0.2.sh
./pimpmyeee-version.sh

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp
sudo apt-get install inkscape
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install mysql-client
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get install ruby ri rdoc libmysql-ruby
sudo wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29548/rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
tar -xvzf rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
cd rubygems-1.0.1
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

Yacht Magrathea Site Updated

Loaded the updated website for yacht Magrathea.

http://yacht-magrathea.com

St Andrews Apartments to Amazon S3

Moved the updated website for St Andrews Apartments to Amazon S3 Bucket.

http://st.andrews-apartments.com/

Community Badge

Dave Winer asks us for a Community Badge

1. I used "news-stream" filtered by "icons" in a Google Advanced Image Search
2. Found this
   • 
3. Led me to Chris Schnyder's One Stream to Bind Them All blog entry.
4. Led me to Chris's Slideshare presentation including (from slide 94) Activity Streams

conclusion

Chris Schnyder's work is interesting to our community and maybe his badge could be our badge.

Excel VBA Version Control with GIT

You might have tried using Microsoft's Excel XML in zip container (.xlsx and .xslm) for version control and found the vba was stored in vbaProject.bin (which is useless for version control).

The solution is simple.

1. Open the excel file with LibreOffice Calc
2. In LibreOffice Calc
   1. File
   2. Save as
   3. Save as type: ODF Spreadsheet (.ods)
3. Close LibreOffice Calc
4. rename the new file's file extension from .ods to .zip
5. create a folder for the spreadsheet in a GIT maintained area
6. extract the zip into it's GIT folder
7. commit to GIT

When you repeat this with the next version of the spreadsheet you'll have to make sure you make the folder's files exactly match those in the zip container (and don't leave any deleted files behind).