• |

    Backing Up Data

    Computer

    Backing up data (or the lack there of) seems to be a pretty big problem among college students, or just PC users in general. My most recent computer, the Gateway, tanked on me a few weeks ago. After some tinkering, I diagnosed it as a hard drive problem, and prayed I didn’t lose my data. Luckily, it was recoverable. However, not all that much was on the line because of my back ups.

    Admittedly, I do not back up as often as a should. However, I do back up more than most. And I get a lot of, “What should I do to back up my stuff?” Honestly, backing up is just copying your documents somewhere else. Having a second copy of them. There are procedures you can do; but a simply copy and paste somewhere, like a CD or flash drive, will do the trick for the important stuff. I use an external hard drive.

    With an external, you can theoretically copy your entire hard drive. The way I have things set up (or should anyway), when I first got the hard drive I manually copied all of my documents to it. I also set up Norton Ghost to copy my hard drive exactly to the external. I scheduled my PC to do this weekly. Right now, I am also looking for a program that will sync files between the two drives. That way I don’t have to worry about over writing documents or losing any data.

    Setting that up will seem like a lot of work at first, but if you’re like me, it is well worth it. Later!

  • | |

    ABC does TV right

    The Nine

    Last week The Nine, a show about nine people involved in a traumatic bank robbery, premiered on ABC. I don’t really watch too many prime time shows, but I liked the premise and checked it out. This week however, I was at a meeting for the second episode (the show airs Wednesdays at 10pm) and missed it. Luckily, ABC keeps a video archive of their more popular shows online.

    Over at ABC.com you can view the current season’s past episodes on The Nine, LOST, and Grey’s Anatomy, among others. It seems other TV Stations offer this too, but I am very impressed with how clean and sleek ABC’s player is. It loads the videos in portions at a time, separated by three 30 second commercial breaks. Then you can resume. You can view this videos at any time after they are added, and it looks like that can be anywhere from 4-24 hours after they air.

    So if you miss one of you ABC shows, be sure to go on over to ABC.com and check it out there, assuming of course you have a broadband connection and flash. Later!

  • | | |

    Debunking New Facebook

    Facebook

    A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on the new Facebook stuff. Well it seems they added lots more, and there is outrage. I personally don’t find it too bad, and here is why.

    What exactly ‘new’ Facebook is offering is news feeds on when your friends update their profiles in any way. This includes adding a new friend, wall messages, new groups, pictures, etc. People don’t like that because it makes Facebook more “stalkerish,” to use a term coined by most of the Student Activities Office. But really, why would people post these things on Facebook? So others will see them. Facebook is an outlet for people to brag or wear their heart on their sleeve. More importantly, however, to share their information with friends. And the feeds are in accordance to your Privacy settings on Facebook.

    One detail I think most people are over looking too, is the ability to “Hide” a story. Since your profile has your own mini feed on it, you can click on the X on any of your stories to hide that story. Then, it won’t show up there, or on your friends’ main news feed. Also, unless people can see your profile, they cannot see, for example, what a person wrote on your wall. Facebook is really not all that different. It is just easier to get information you are privy too. There will, no doubt, soon be a way to turn off the feeds too.

    The main reason I like the new features, however, is because the people at Facebook are very smart, and from a programmer’s stand point, this is really a complex work of art. Without diving too much into the details I can tell they spent a good amount of time adding these features, and making it so it meshes nice with the now ‘old’ Facebook. I say give it a chance. If they take it away, you will probably miss it. Later!

    PS- I overlooked another new feature- the ability to support candidates in the upcoming mid-term elections. Go to “edit” next to “My Profile” and click “Election”

    UPDATE: This morning, there is an Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg apologizing for the feeds, and announcing new privacy settings.

  • E-Mail Virus

    I just got an email from a friend that I am 99% sure is a virus. It has the subject “Birthday Please” and says this in the body:

    Hi

    Click on the link below and please enter your birthday for me. I am creating a birthday list of all my friends and family.

    http://www.birthd…(link removed)

    Many thanks
    [person]

    So, I wouldn’t click on that link. Watch out. Later.

  • |

    Now I have seen everthing

    Mac Boot Camp

    I think Disney put it best when they said I saw a peanut stand, Heard a rubber band, I saw a needle that winked its eye. But I think I will have seen everything When I see an elephant fly. Well ladies and gentlemen, the elephant has taken flight. Intel Macs are booting Windows, officially. Get the software off of their site here. I knew a couple of weeks ago of a hacker who managed to boot XP on an Intel Mac, but hackers do all kinds of crazy stuff that mess with the powers that be. This is different.

    This is monumental. Mainly because now I have no good reason to hate Mac computers. Some of my readers know I am not a big fan of macs because of how proprietary they are were. But now, Intels, and WinXP legally booted onto a mac. What is the point of buying a dell or gateway now? I mean, there are the IBMs, which are untouchable in my eyes. But now you can have the multimedia aspect of a Mac, with the familiarity of WinXP. I got to say, I don’t really know what to think. Even though I just kind of told what I think. Will I buy a Mac now?? Probably. Will I enjoy it? Not at first. But it will probably be like sleeping in a new bed. Kind of ehh at first, but you get use to it. Let me know what you think! Later!

  • New AIM virus!

    Hey all, I most literally just got this IM from a friend:

    should i put these pictures of us on myspace or facebook? http://photobucket.com/NewPictures/picture40.jpg

    After checking the actual URL (which I won’t post here for obvious reasons) I saw it was a fake and there is a new AIM virus. Now I don’t know when it surfaced or if there is a fix for it yet, but for the time being (and usually) ASK FRIENDS ABOUT LINKS BEFORE CLICKING. I will update as I find out more info.. Later!

    UPDATE: It seems Jay Loaden’s AIMFix was last updated on Monday. That seems close enough to be the fix for this virus. If you get it, there is your site.

  • |

    Nyxem Worm to overwrite files.

    Last week PC World wrote about the Nyxem Worm, a worm that spreads via e-mail and has the potential to be very harmful. Lying dormant until this Friday, Feb. 2nd, the virus will truncate, or cut off parts of files, making them unable to open. You can get the low down on the virus here/

    The email, as stated by PC World, may have the subject “Miss Lebanon 2006” or “School girl fantasies gone bad”. To try and prevent this virus from severely damaging your computer, I would suggest updating your virus definitions and scanning every day until Friday. It also wouldn’t hurt to do a TrendMicro Scan with Housecall. Finally, and most importantly, BACK UP YOUR IMPORTANT DATA. This is something that people should do all along, but really, most people do not. The best was to back up is probably a CD for all your important documents and such. I second hard drive is ideal, but not to many people have those hanging around. If you are on a network, put them up on the network and have someone put them on their computer for you. There are lots of ways to do a back up.

    If you have any questions, feel free to comment. I usually answer promptly, and that way everyone can see the discussion. Fun for the whole class! Later!

  • Video Uploading

    This semester I took a video editing class, and just recently I have been working on my final project. I want to put it on the web for people to view and give me feedback on, but the video is 1.37GB. Right now I am using Google Video to upload it, but it is taking a very long time. I understand that a video > 1 GB will take a long time, but does anyone know of a free video uploading site that might take less time, or of a way to compress my 7 min .AVI to something smaller? (I tried zipping/raring it, but it is still 1+ GB). Later!

  • Adventures in WiFi

    LinkSys Router

    So, the wireless router in our house died Sunday night. Fine, fine. That’s what I get for buying a $30 Netgear router. After wasting 30 mins of my life on tech support (I never ever learn) I just hung up, realized this guy didn’t know shit, and came to the conclusion that I now have a nice looking paper weight. So we replace the router with an $80 Linksys WiFi router with Speedboost. I have set up linksys routers before, I’ll have it going in 10 mins.

    Number One rule of Computing: Nothing is EVER as easy as it’s suppose to be. I set up the network with WPA, everything seemed fine and dandy, but one computer didn’t support WPA, so I took it off. Settled, right? NOPE. The network goes down. I reset it a lot, and to spare the gory details, 2 hours later, every one is actually connected accept me, but I can still get on the internet. I don’t know why. Some kind of gateway I guess where I was still connecting to the internet through the router, but not the network itself. Anyway, it keeps disconnecting me. I’m to tired to deal with it and I go to bed. This morning, I wake up, surprise, I’m disconnected. I say whatever, and take a shower. I come back, and magically, as if Jesus came down and fixed it, I am not only online, but actually connected to my network. I did nothing from the time I got into the shower to the time I came back.

    Now, I pride myself on knowing most things computer/network related, but I have NO IDEA why the router/network was behaving the way it did. If anyone can explain, that would be great. Thanks….Later!

  • |

    Google Print

    Google Print

    Google has a new service out called Google Print. Well apparently, Google is being sued over it for copyright infringement. After reading a letter Kottke posted on his site, I’m going to have to agree with the writer and most of the people on the internet.

    When you go to the library to take out a book, you are reading it for free. When you go to Amazon.com and look inside the book, you are reading it for free. When you go to Borders, Barnes and Noble, or any other book store, and read the book, you are reading it for free. If the book is interesting enough, you will purchase the book. Google Print is simply saving us the trip to the book store by allowing us to read the book online, and if we like it, buy the book online. My last trip to Borders resulted in me going back home and buying a book I read there at Amazon.Com. To take it one step further, the author who wrote Kottke asked her publisher to put her book on Google Print so people would read it.

    In my experience, people like to know what they are buying before they buy it. And if anyone is like me, they like to display the books they read. It makes me feel smarter, and it impresses people. If I have the chance to read a book before I buy it, and I like it enough, I will most definitely buy the book. Later.