JimVernon.com » Computers

Moving Windows Desktop Gadets without them snapping into place.

jim — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:36:49 +0000

All you have to do is hold the Shift key while moving them. This is great for when you’re trying to line up your gadgets and they snapping/sticking to the side of the screen or to another gadget.

Slow Firefox 3.5 in Vista 64 bit

jim — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:43:16 +0000

I was having some issues with Firefox being terribly slow, particularly on Facebook and Google Reader. I started disabling extensions and it turns out that the Skype phone number highlighter was the culprit. So if you’re having the same problem, there’s one quick thing to check.

Going Microsoft for awhile

jim — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:07:44 +0000

It was an interesting 3 years using Ubuntu. Linux has come such a long way since the first time I tried it back in 1999. It’s a usable, functional OS that has most of the features/programs that people need. It looks good and works well. However, it just has this unfinished feel. It lacks polish and overall consistency. Obviously, this is inherent when you have thousands of people working independently on different pieces of an OS…but it becomes a bit annoying when things don’t work how you expect, or a particular settings doesn’t affect everything that it should. Also, the lack of documentation/tooltips that give you info about what a setting does is highly lacking.

For example, proxy settings in Ubuntu are not used by all applications. It seems rather random as to which apps use those settings and which do not. It’s so tedious to go and change the proxy settings on half a dozen different applications whenever you are using a network that needs a proxy.

The various interface themes have a bulky feel…buttons are too big, there’s too much padding between controls, etc. The dialogue to open a file is simply enormous. Someone with some UI experience needs to come and streamline the look and feel, and give it a modern, professional appearance.

That said…

I’ve been toying with the pre-release version of Windows 7 for about two weeks now, and it’s absolutely amazing. It is what Vista should have been. It’s fast, it’s stable, and it looks great. It has features that increase productivity and usability. The interface is clean and intuitive. They removed UI elements that didn’t need to be there, which greatly reduces visual distraction and increases the intuitiveness of the system.

I’ve installed it on my desktop machine and my laptop (which is old and slow) and gotten excellent performance on both. On both machines, installation was a snap. I installed Windows 7, and once I had booted up, I ran Windows Update and it found all of my hardware drivers automatically. This probably won’t hold true for all machines, but it worked perfectly for me. Overall, I’m just very, very pleased with Windows 7…probably more pleased than I was when I switched from Vista to Ubuntu. I think I’ll post a blog sometime soon about some of the things I like. Check back!

WEP vs WPA

jim — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:57:00 +0000

When securing your wireless router, you are given basically two choices. WEP and WPA. WEP encryption does two things: it encrypts your wireless internet with a hex (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F instead of 0-9) string like “5FE321A” and it sucks. It’s a pain to remember the key and it’s easy for hackers to break. WPA allows you to encrypt your wireless with an easy to remember passphrase like “omgthisismypassphrase” and is tough to break.

So just remember: WEP bad, WPA good. Use WPA.

A few great Firefox Add-ons

jim — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:21:08 +0000

Here are a few Firefox extensions that I’ve used that I really, really like and feel lost when browsing without them. I highly recommend all of these add-ons. (They work in Windows, Linux, and I assume OS X.)

Tree-Style Tabs
This puts all of your tabs on the side of your browser instead of the top. This has two main benefits: it’s much easier to see what your tabs are when you have a lot of them open, and it saves vertical space (good for widescreen laptops and monitors). Lots of options to configure it to suit your needs.

ColorfulTabs
This goes hand-in-hand with Tree Style Tabs. ColorfulTabs makes your tabs all a different color based on the site. Much easier to tell things apart than with just a single color.

Cooliris
I cannot explain how awesome this is. It allows you to view video and photo searches on a scrollable 3D wall. Very smooth rendering. Allows searches from Google Images, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc.

Xmarks
If you have more than one machine that you use regularly, you need this. It syncs bookmarks and passwords with as many machines as you want.

ScribeFire
This allows you to write blog posts by simply clicking the ScribeFire icon. It brings up a rich text editor that offers most of the features that you’d have on your blog, only you don’t have to actually take the time to load up your blog. You can set it up to post to multiple blogs. It supports WordPress, Blogger, etc. Has features for promoting and monetizing your blog posts.

Adblock Plus
It blocks ads, and it does it well.

FlashBlock
This keeps Flash videos/animations from loading and replaces them with a play button. Hit the play button and the video/animation plays. Helps websites load faster, and also prevents annoying movies from automatically playing. Has a whitelist that you can add sites to.

Hide Menubar
Just what it says. It hides the menus like File, Edit, View, etc. This gives you a little more vertical space on those widescreen monitors.

Jumpy laser mouse?

jim — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:21:17 +0000

If your laser mouse is a bit jumpy when you move it across the screen, try flipping it over and blowing out the little hole where the lens is. I futzed around for 15 minutes trying to adjust the settings when I found this blog post with the solution.

Acid3 test results for Opera 10, Firefox 3, and Internet Explorer 8 Beta

jim — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:12:30 +0000

The Acid3 Test tests how well your browser handles various web standards. Or something like that. Anyway, I ran it on the lastest version of Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, and here are the results:

Opera:

Firefox:

Internet Explorer:

(No, I didn’t put the FAIL there. The test did.)

As you can see, Opera 10 tests perfect, which is rather impressive. Firefox comes in with the letter grade equivalent of a C-, which is disappoint performance, but acceptable.

Internet Explorer 8 comes in with an unbelievable 21%. And that’s Microsoft’s latest and greatest. I thought maybe it was due to security settings, so I added the test to my Trusted sites and set it to the lowest possible security settings. It didn’t help. Sad.

Edit:

Here’s the test result for Google’s Chrome browser:

A project of geeky proportions

jim — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:24:21 +0000

Last week I decided that I wanted to set up my own testing network so I could experiment with various networking things in various operating systems. I figure this is the only way that I’m going to learn some things, and heck, it’s just cool anyway.

So I ordered:

5 x Dell Optiplex 240 – 2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD
1 x 8 port KVM switch
1 x 24 port Cisco 100 Mb Ethernet Switch
10 x 7″ Ethernet Cable
1 x PS2 Keyboard and Mouse

The grand total for all this, including shipping, was about $700. Not too bad…that’s about the price of a cheap laptop.

So what I’m going to do is stack these computers in the corner of my UBL (Underground Basement Lair, pronounced “yoo-bull”), plug them into the KVM and the switch, and run a cable from my main computer to the switch so I can manage everything remotely once it’s set up.

Some of the things I want to try include:

Windows Active Directory Domain
MS SQL Server
MS Exchange Server
Clustering/Load Balancing
Creating Firewalls and IP rules
VPNs
Linux Domains
Web servers
OpenVPN
OpenExchange
PostgresSQL Server
Distributed Computing
Anything else I can think of.

I’ll post a picture when I have everything set up, as I think it will look neat. It’s been like Christmas every day this week with all the stuff arriving The only think I’m still waiting for is the computers. I feel sorry for the UPS guy though…the UPS tracking site says that the package weights 145 lbs.

I do not understand.

jim — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:01:40 +0000

I installed the beta version of Flash 10 awhile back to fix some crashing/freezing problems in Firefox on my Ubuntu laptop. Everything worked fine until yesterday, when I began having the same problems, so I removed Flash 10 and reinstalled Flash 9. I haven’t had any problems since.

How is it that a piece of software that does work stops working and the old software that didn’t work starts working? I do not know.

A short review of “Linux Networking Cookbook”

jim — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:25:38 +0000

I checked this book out from the library the other day and started reading it last night. I’ve only read two chapters, but I think this is going to have to be a purchase. The author, Carla Schroder, has a very direct, to-the-point way of writing that makes it very easy to follow along. She doesn’t waste time over-explaining topics, but at the same time, she gives enough information to get you going. She also provides references to additional resources in case you want to know more about a particular topic.

As for organization, the book is organized, well, like a cookbook. This makes it an excellent reference if you are looking for how to do something very specific. Just look in the index for your topic, turn to it, and follow the clearly worded instructions. Not looking for anything in particular? I noticed that the book also can be used as a walkthrough for learning various facets of networking with Linux.

Although I’m just getting started with the book, I can already tell that it’s going to be an excellent resource. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s getting started with Linux and wants to get more acquainted with the operating system from a system/network administrator perspective.