http://skit.id.au

Free Antivirus – Avast! 5

For quite some time I have been recommending avast! Antivirus to Friends, Family and Colleagues to protect their personal computers. It’s simple, covers all bases and easy to maintain but most of all it’s free!

I was glad to find out recently that they’ve just released their latest major version of their free Antivirus product version 5. They’ve made it easier to use and it looks so much better.

Changes I’m glad to see:

• Simplfied layout in program window
  The previous layout was far to confusing, I had trouble every time I launched it…
• Easy access to Boot-time Scan under ‘Scan Computer’
  My must suggested fix for viruses on a computer, as it scans your disk for viruses before Windows starts making it possible to delete them.
• Gaming mode
  Supresses notifications when a full screen application is launched
• Easy to see protection status
  Nice big letters and colour right up the top so you know everything is running and up to date

If you’re not running antivirus or your currently paying for virus protection I’d strongly recommend avast! 5. Download it here: http://www.avast.com

Movember 2009 – Mo Grown

Movember is over, was great fun and a great feeling to be an offical Mo Bro this year. A big Thank you! to those who donated, final tally was $30 raised individually and a great effort from the team at work raising $270.50.

I’m a little short of words, so I thought I’d leave it up to the photos to do the talking. Enjoy :)

Vodafone and 3/Hutchison Merger Followup

It was announced back in February of this year that Vodafone and 3 were to merge, in a hope to be more competitive in these troubled financial times. My comments on the proposal was initially bleak, but in light of some more recent news my thoughts on the proposal are coming around. The news in question is the article on Whirlpool “3 set to utilise Vodafone network”

The access to Vodafone’s 2G network is in addition to the announcement back in April that 3 will roam onto Telstra’s NextG network. ie. When your out of the 3’s CBD coverage, you’ll get the advantage of using Telstra’s wide country coverage. However should you use any data on Telstra’s network it will not be included in any caps. At present the additional usage charge is $1.60/mb, under the new Telstra NextG agreement the roaming data charge will be 50c/mb. This is still quite high, but I do like the fact that I can still get coverage in the country areas of Western Australia for Voice and SMS.

So where is the advantage of gaining access to Vodafone’s 2G (or Voice/SMS/Slow Data) network? The original Whirlpool article suggests that data usage on the Vodafone 2G network will be included in 3’s cap. However what will my phone do when it can’t find 3’s 3G network? Will it drop back to Vodafone 2G or Telstra NextG? Whirlpool Forum members are seeing the Vodafone network appear as “3″ in addition to “3 (3G)”. Perhaps the SIM will instruct the phone to choose anything with “3″ in the network name. This also bring’s 3’s coverage to a mix of their own 3G (Voice/SMS/Fast Data) in the CBDs, Telstra’s 2G/NextG and Vodafone’s 2G in the CBD / Country. I also wonder if this will have any affect on the Telstra NextG whilst roaming agreement ?

Enough of me brain dumping for the morning, time to get back to my email and coffee.

RB

Movember – Halfway There!

The three critical stages of the Mo

Stage 1 - Proof facial hair can be grown (Check!)

Stage 2 - A clean canvas (Check :()

Stage 3 - Cultivation (Check!)

Movember 2009 – Let the Growing Begin!

I’m finally using the facial hair for the power of good and growing a Movember moustache for reals this year. Unlike last year’s chopper/trucker mo that turned up after a close shave, this year I started November 1st clean shaven and registered at the Movember website.

What many people don’t appreciate is that close to 3,000 men die of prostate cancer each year in Australia and one in eight men will experience depression in their lifetime – many of whom don’t seek help.

Movember is now in its sixth year and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results by working alongside The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCFA) and beyondblue: the national depression initiative. Check out further details at: http://au.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs.

Mo progress will be logged (with photos!) on my Movember profile page.

To sponsor my young and impressionable Mo, you can either:

• Click this link http://au.movember.com/mospace/223349/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account
• Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation’, referencing my Registration Number 223349 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 292, Prahran, VIC, 3181
• Hunt me down and throw cash at my feet to worship the fuzz that is my Mo

Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.

Offerings of names for the new found fuzzy member of the family will also be accepted. Hope to see lots of Mobrothers and Mosisters out there on the streets of Perth!

RB

Cleanup Windows WA Daylight Savings Mess

For those of you in the East Australian states, you’ve already switched to Daylight Savings for the 08-09 Summer. We over here in the West were due to switch to Daylight Savings on the 25th of October, but as we’re all pertrified of change it was rejected in a referendum in May earlier this year.

One small problem, your Windows based computer is still set to go forward an hour on the 25th. Microsoft were so confident that WA would vote DST in they configured Windows to switch not just for the 3 year trial but for every year.

Not to worry, Microsoft have kindly put together a website to help you undo Daylight Savings for your version of Windows. Head over to the Microsoft Daylight Savings page and follow the instructions. It’s also a good idea to print out your calendars for Home or Work before the 25th, just in case they get screwed up with preprogrammed Daylight Savings changes.

It’s a Left 4 Dead Weekend on Steam

Lots of news this morning relating to one of my most recent favourite games:

First up if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing Left 4 Dead (L4D) yet, today is your lucky day! Today is “Freaky Free Friday” and for the next 24hours you can download and play L4D via Steam. I highly recommend it, lots of fun! My Steam ID is skitau, feel free add me to your Friends list so we can join up for some Zombie killing action!

Secondly if you do decide to purchase L4D or have been waiting for a sale on L4D to snap it up, your in luck! This weekend L4D is on sale at 40% the normaly price bringing it down to US$23.99, awesome!

Last but not least, once you’ve dedicated your entire weekend to zombie smashing you’ll no doubt have high numbers of kills/pounces/snags/booms against your name. Valve have also released an extended stats page for L4D so you can see the numbers in all their glory! Check out my stats page here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/skitau/stats/L4D

“Stole the set of Steak Knifes” Skit

Making a USB Key Bootable

Spent a while today working out the best procedure to create a USB Key boot DOS, without a Floppy Drive. Below are the instructions and files that worked for me, haven’t gone into to much detail, but feel free to ask any questions in the comments section below.

!!Warning!! This procedure will delete all files from the USB key, make sure you backup all data!

1. 1. Download MSDOS Boot Files and the HP Flash Tool, Extract both to your computer
2. 2. Install the HP Flash tool using defaults, then run C:\DriveKey\HPUSBFW.EXE
3. 3. Ensure you have the right USB device selected, and check ‘Create a DOS startup disk’ also putting the location of the contents of msdos.zip in the field below.
4. 4. Click Start and then your done!
   

To test, make sure your Computer supports USB booting, plug in the USB key and reboot. You should end up with a DOS prompt. Enjoy!

How to Spot an ATM Skimmer

The Consumerist have made available a great PDF from the Commonwealth Bank giving some tips on how to spot those nasty ATM skimmers. Be sure to head over and have a read, I might save you from getting caught out and having your money stolen!

The Consumerist – How To ID An ATM Skimmer

My Essential Firefox Extensions Revisit

Back in 2007 I posted My Essential Firefox Extentions, I thought it was about time I revisted this essential list to see what’s changed in two years.

• Better Gmail 2 – Still using it 2 years on. A great collection of userscript modifications to Gmail.  Mainly used for attachment icons and making the labels collaspable like folders.
• Delicious Bookmarks – A new addition to the list, as I’ve started to use delicious a whole lot more . Have been collecting a whole lot of useful tech reference articles, basically a nice clean library of quick fixes.
• Australian English Dictionary – I didn’t have this extension installed until writing this post, how could I have forgotten! Stupid US English…
• Firebug – A great tool for the web developer, great for debugging. Admittedly I don’t do a great deal of web dev and usually have this extension disabled.
• DownThemAll! – Can’t be without this extension, found it back in 2007 and just can’t let go of it. Multi threaded downloads ftw!
• FireGestures – Replaced the extension MouseGestures from 2007. Adds Mouse Gestures to Firefox, allowing speedier control of the browser.
• Greasemonkey – The monkey is still sitting in my status bar. Not often I have a userscript loaded (thanks to extensions like Better Gmail above). Only recently installed the Twitter Fantastico user script and it remains my only one, for now.
• IE Tab – The last keeper from 2007. Basically allows quick launching of sites in IE, keeping it in Firefox as a new tab. Also keeps a list of sites to always display in an IE tab.
• Lazarus: Form Recovery – This extension is a god send. Keeps a backup copy of any form you fill in, allowing you easy right click recovery in case FF crashes or you close a tab by accident. A must have!
• Remember The Milk for Gmail - Started using RTM this year to keep track of personal projects having migrated from Outlook to Google Apps. This extension adds RTM as a sidebar to Gmail, very handy.
• UrlbarExt – Adds shortcuts in the address bar with functions like ‘Make TinyURL’, ‘Search Site’, ‘Go up one folder’, ‘Sequential Navigation’, ‘Surf Annoymously’. Rather handy

Which extensions didn’t make the cut from 2007?

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