Typer Tappers

TrueCrypt is one of the best encryption programs around in my opinion, the program is very easy to use and very secure it has many different encryption options and the best part is you can have 3 encryption types encryption on encryption on encryption its amazing at how this works, you can make it look like for example a .pdf file or a .mp3 file allowing you to hide it even further but my favourite part is, hidden volumes this will use a already made truecrypt encryption and put a hidden folder inside it so for an example say you’ve made a truecrypt volume of 15mb’s but you want a hidden one well you can make one and say you make the volume 2mb’s the original file will then show as 13m’s.

You access this hidden volume by using a different password for the original volume it really is brilliant to hide things from hackers give it a go!

I really don’t like this date today I’ve noticed how many things I’ve been tricked into thinking for example Free Broadband by google the free broadband captured my eye so i started reading it finding that you have to flush something down the toilet now that got me thinking not about the fact its April the 1st but how cool it would be to have a internet connection from your bog.

So I went to a forum posted it then someone pointed the date out too me and it hit me the TV program must of been a April fools then still typing about this google free broadband in a forum still hasn’t hit me 5 mins later after posting i realise internet from a bog, you have to be kidding me, rushes back to forum and I try to make it look like I’m tricking them to same my self any embarrassment so if you’ve been tricked go with it .

Well Kian Ann tagged me on what I want to be when I grow up, and it’s the perfect time to be asked that I’ve been trying to think of a career for months while still being in college I have many options and not sure in what direction I want to choose

Website Designer.
This has been my biggest hobby in my life and this is something I know most about I have already started a website advertising my service and hoping I can get started in the web designing community, but the main reason is so I can get some experience in the area as I would like to know whether to take a course to get some qualifications for it.

Computer Maintenance.
This is something I know a lot about and for me is very simple and boring which to me isn’t something I would like to choose a career for its nice to be able to fix friends computers or build your own fixing problems on it the whole lot without calling someone to help me out and end up spending £10 over the phone.

Their just a few options I have the main choice being Website Design as I’m so passionate about it and have dedicated 5 years of my life learning all the languages.

Well today I’m dedicating this day to fix some of my old posts, trying to link them together and get a little more traffic to my site by adding meta tag descriptions and keywords.

But the reason I’ve decided to do this is because when I made my new theme I didn’t put in my meta tags, which was a slight change in my traffic it went down. So I need to start getting my meta tags back, their has been many previous posts so after adding the meta tags give it maybe a month or so and I’m hoping to have some more traffic coming from the search engines.

Do you thing meta tags are worth the trouble?

I’m new to downloading sites straight onto my computer but it really does look popular, now I can see this being used for many purposes, maybe your internet connection goes down and you want to access your resource websites but can’t so you use WinHTTrack to download the sites next time you will be ready. Or my favourite is save your bandwidth because you will download the site straight to your computer you wont need to access the internet to view it any more you can just view it from your computer, which is a brilliant idea and the main reason I am using it.

Its a really good program you don’t need to have any knowledge of how websites work etc, as it will allow you to set up category’s so for example I have a Web Development category and in this it has n2kdesign.co.uk and w3schools.co.uk.
It will take all the pages from n2kdesign.co.uk which (if configured) will also download zip files or things like that allowing me to have everything they have except the obvious PHP files etc.

After you’ve downloaded the site you will be given a nice page with your category’s on and in the category’s you will have the sites you downloaded, the sites are exactly the same as when you visited them it just wont get updated until you tell it to update.

I should also warn you if downloading a forum site it will take a very very long time and a lot of space :p.

You will find WinHTTrack at this address http://www.httrack.com/

Today I’m starting a new part in this blog called POTW (Program Of The Week), to start it off I will tell you about my favourite textfile encryption Locknote if you like to store sensitive data in small text files this is for you, it will allow you to password protect the files with a 256bit encryption, as you can see its free which is always a plus side.

Features

Now this is my favourite part of the program it is very hard too loose you can use any file you encrypted to encrypt again because you can drag it onto the file and it will ask you for a password to encrypt the file then on that new encrypted file you can use that to drag and drop another file onto it to encrypt another one, it really is a brilliant feature.

This is the most simple encryption tool I have ever seen so give it a go, and spread the word of LockNote.

LockNote is made by Steganos.

Who doesn’t have any security on their PC’s?

If you don’t you have to be mad or you just want as much spyware as possible, but what security do you use me on one hand now use open source/freeware software for security as its all free . But I don’t think I need any more stuff, I used to be overloaded with security software until I started exploring the world of viruses and spyware now I haven’t had a virus, malware or anything like that in a couple of years now, why? Because I know how it works.

All I run now is Avast! Home Edition, Zone Alarm (which I think is crap) and anything that accesses the internet is put in a sandbox I rarely let any program actually access the internet if I look in my program control settings their is a lot of red crosses.

Why do I run Avast! Home Edition?

The on access scanner is brilliant it scans all your web pages that you load, P2P programs, emails, network and instant messengers it really is a good program and I don’t know what I would do without it now, I choose it over any other anti virus program but I still use AVG for a second scan on downloaded files just in case but it doesn’t run all the time like Avast, I really would recommend Avast! Home Edition its the best program I’ve seen in a long time.

Why Zone Alarm?

Well its not all bad, I can see what programs I’ve allowed and everything else but it also pops up saying if something is trying to access the internet so overall its a good program for free, only thing is i would choose Norton over it any day if i had the money, please if you know of another that is better tell me I would love to check some new ones out hopefully to replace it .

What is sandboxing?

Well this is the best thing I’ve ever heard of it uses the runas.exe file ( on windows) and allows you to run your programs in another user ie a Guest account which has much more restrictions than if your logged into a Administration account which most people are (which you shouldn’t) for more information on this check out the post on Darksats IT Security Forum.

I’m hopefully going to release some more security related posts helping you stay in touch with your computer and not have a zombie on our hands.

Before upgrading you need to know what uses you will be using the computer for.

If you want it for just office work you won’t need a high powered computer you could get a very basic computer for a very small price, you could use onboard audio, video and network connector’s this will take more RAM space but because you will not be using so much of it for your gaming its okay.

But if you are looking for a computer to handle high quality games you will be spending a lot more money for high powered hardware and more than likely you will need nearly all new stuff, such as the main part your motherboard as if you are running a older computer it is very likely that you will not be able to run a better CPU which you would need to run high quality games then if your motherboard doesn’t accept certain parts which you used on the old motherboard you would also need to get more components, for example if you used to use SDRAM you might only be able to use DDR.

Recommending certain hardware components it is possible to run into compatibility problems such as if you recommended a AGP graphics card not all computers will have a AGP slot only a PCI-E slot which means you won’t be able to use the graphics card you will have to buy a new PCI-E graphics card.

Maybe you are installing a new motherboard and want a old hard disk drive that already has Microsoft Windows XP installed on it they will not let you use it for piracy issues meaning you would not be able to use your old programs, or access your files unless you have something that allows you to read what’s on the hard disk. The best way around this it to reinstall windows XP or repair it as it will reconfigure all your settings for the motherboard. This may not apply for Linux or Windows versions below XP.

So when installing any new components you need to check what you can use such as the RAM common types are SDRAM and DDR with DDR there is all different types measuring in MHZ to find the correct type you will need to check the manual for the motherboard or the computer, if you don’t have the manual you can check your BIOS it will tell you what RAM you are currently using and the aim of that would be to try and match what you have.

By installing new hardware you will be expecting a faster computer (if you got the correct components allowing you to play games at a higher quality or just browse the internet faster because if you have installed a new graphics card for example it will not use as much RAM from your main computer as it has ‘RAM’ on the graphics card, the same can go for soundcards.

Today my red 4″ cathod lights turned up, I brought these to replace my white 12″ ones as I thought they where too bright.

So I switched them over so I now have some really nice red lights on my desk allowing me to see the keys I press really easily and the best thing about it is when you want to read a book its brilliant if you have a white light and want to see what its light just buy some thin red paper a cheap way to check it out I really couldn’t go back to my white lights after this but another plus side is having desk lights allows you to save a lot of power my room lights are 4 x 50w now these under the desk are just running of my computers molex connectors.

So what happened to my 12″ ones?

simple answer is i put them in my case, I do a lot of work inside my case as I’m studying something to do with fixing computers, so this has been a massive help as the brightness allows me to see anything inside the case , but only when its on which isn’t a problem very low voltage goes through the computer.

Don’t you think this is a good idea to save some money on your energy bill as you wont be using your room lights as much too see the keyboard so check out your local shops these cost me around £2-4 from ebuyer.com

Jason Bradbury.com – tells us how we can make our own portable WiFi for anyone to use, using a 3G simcard brilliant idea allows anyone to use it and a good idea for advertising your site.

Essential Keystrokes.com - Char tells us about a really good tool for web designing, called color schemer brilliant idea their is alot around but it is a very usefull tool and brilliant to use.

Blog Republic – Darren tells us the good ways to maintain your blog by keeping up your posting what you should post on and the best part if your stuck go on a cruise .

I don’t follow blogs much but these are my favourite posts for this week check them out.