More tools, More Joy

Check these tools out,

http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/2006/PL2006SYSTEMUTILITIES.php

if you ever have to recover a Window$ XP machine after spyware or virus activity these tools are great. Also the startup monitors are cool for trimming down the 300 icons in the windows system tray.

The tools from sysinternals are absolute tiny and full of great features, Filemon, Regmon, Process Explorer and Autoruns are recommended above, copy on to your usb / stick memory. Regmon is ideal for spotting hijacks as it displays registry activity in real time.

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities.html

Ideal for friends and family support

great tool

Just a quck blog entry, check out this great tool for XP from sysinternals, AUTORUNS, download and evaluate it for yourself, i only started using this a couple of days ago after a contact of mine put its url my way. The tool provides information and methods of altering the behaviour of startup programs in XP.

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/autoruns.html

Autostart locations displayed by Autoruns include logon entries, Explorer add-ons, Internet Explorer add-ons including Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), Appinit DLLs, image hijacks, boot execute images, Winlogon notification DLLs, Windows Services and Winsock Layered Service Providers. The interface is structured so you can switch tabs to view autostarts from different categories. Very nice utility for friends and family support after xmas :-)

Xmas desktop environments

After a very nice xmas gift (thanks gookster) of a brand new Apple 12" powerbook G4 i spent most of Christmas playing with my new toys IE Itunes,iphoto etc etc. In fact it leaves me in a nice position to compare the differing user experiences of the following environments i now have to hand at home.

1. OSX Tiger via the new powerbook
2. SuSE 10.0 (KDE 3.4) OSS version on my normal desktop PC
3. SuSE 9.2 (Gnome) on the 64bit AMD development PC
4. Windows XP SP2 on my old fujitsu-siemens lap (top, this dual boots with SuSE 9.2.
5. Solaris 10 for X86, (when my Dell poweredge servers DVD drive is replaced after xmas)

On other matters, I will after the xmas holidays start to publish my thoughts on RubyonRails, as that is the latest platform i am taking a look at.

New Poker Date

Due clashes of diaries for this Friday (21/10/05) i am suggesting that we move the Poker Night to the following Friday 28/10/05. The main reason being diary clash but also i have not been able to confirm the next host, Mr Adams, as he is in Las Vegas with Mr Hall.....lucky boys.

After the success of the upminster poker tournament and the blog updates, i am suggesting another poker night.

1. New suggested date - Friday 21st of October Starting @8pm, same rules.

We can either run the night at my flat once more or we need someone else to host, we seem to have all the kit we need apart from the host needing a 8 person table.

2. Texas Hold'em Software - If anyone in the group wants to play each other over the internet via the computer, Check out www.ddpoker.com the $30 software allows person-2-person play from any 'java enabled' computer (windows/mac/linux) you need broadband/adsl internet at home for it to work properly when playing each other. The software also allows you to practice texas hold'em against computer controlled opponents. We could using this play any night......might be a laugh.

3. if you want to play for money over the net you can join one of the poker rooms online, Richard i know uses littlewoods poker online http://www.littlewoodspoker.com, i have never played online but there is a review of the online rooms here;

http://www.pokerlistings.com/online-poker-rooms

Poker Evening Event Report

The initial poker night was a roaring success, the 3 games played were all competitive and more importantly fun, i think the noise levels were boosted by laughing rather than the drunken roar associated with our normal gatherings.

A late rush of entrants (and blowouts - Mr taylor) meant that 7 players sat down at the table;

Tony Cossey, Peter Kempster, Dale Bennett, Richard Thomas, Steve Watts, Chris Adams, Stuart McClemments (and Girlfriend Izzy). My Dad Ernie kindly took on the marathon job of designated dealer.

game one: The final pair were Richard and Steve, Richard overcoming a massive chip debt to nail the £175 prize (7 x £25 buy in). Both finalists once through the initial stages played the percentages, the cards falling very well for Richard in his winning run.

game two: The final pair ended up being myself and Dale, this time Dale skillfully playing the short stack position to beat me in a tight finish (boo hoo). Again the prize fund Dale collected was £175. I thought i had cracked this game until i misread strong position from dale as a bluff, however both of us played aggresively when down to the final shootout, Dale, i think, playing with more skill generally, all of which added to the excitement.

game three: It was decided to have a game at the end of the evening with a £10 x 8 prize fund. This being boosted by the late addition of Denis Sheriden who visited the game after his football competition had finished. The final pair were again Steve and Richard, the longest final pair duel of the match took place with Richard edging Steve out again after a run of strong pre flop cards.

The whole evening finished at 03:15am which showed i feel how much everyone enjoyed the event and the challenge, it was agreed the event would be a monthly social gathering until we got sick and tired of Texas hold'em poker.

Special thanks to Ernie who looked like he had run the marathon by the time the event closed, not bad for an old age pensioner...WELL DONE ERN!

Gooky Chips in

many thanks to Chris 'gooky' Adams who tonight let me borrow his very flash 500 chip poker set from the original home of gambling, Las Vegas, it weighs a tonne but the chips are full casino grade 11.5g.

Demon Dealer

Another poker update; We now have a designated dealer, my dad Ernie, cross him at your peril :-)

Upminster Poker Evening

Quick Update on the final list of players for Friday the 23rd @ 8pm;

Final List of players and form guide

Tony Cossey - Newbie and unfortunately stupid.
Richard Thomas - Online poker player thus porn expert as well as poker expert
Dale Bennett - All round card sharp, 'the jock beater'
Mo Bennett - Older all round card sharp, 'the silvertown kid'
Stuart McClemments - Long standing card player but not a poker regular (but a jock)
Peter Kempster - Plank
John Taylor - Dark horse, however early 90's clubbing icon.
Steve Watts - To my knowledge a 3 card brag expert in the late 80's

Donated kit;
Peter = 1 x pack of original las vegas casino playing cards
Rich = 1 x world series poker electric card shuffler
Tony = 2 x playing tables (forming 1 big table), 4 x new chairs, 400 poker chips + baize

Suggested Changes to Rules;
In addition to the rules i distrubuted, i am now suggestting we now operate an 'Ante' for each hand from all players replacing 'big and small blinds', as players drop out after losing their chips, the 'ante' increases to add difficulty as players are eliminated.

Poker Update

Hers is the latest Update for Friday 23rd's Texas Hold'em Game @my flat. The poker chips, cards and caddy were purchased today, we have 400 chips, if we have 9 players we will need 100 more chips so please confirm to me ASAP. The chips feel like cheap plastic but i am sure that won't bother anyone, the 400 chips and cards cost £20 which was the cheapest i could find. The supplier who came to the rescue were Debenhams on Ashley's advice, NICE ONE ASH.

Players Confirmed
Tony Cossey
Richard Thomas
Dale Bennett
Mo Bennett
Stuart McClemments
Peter Kempster
John Taylor
Steve Watts

Players who Cant make it
Ashley Bennett - Unavailable
Andy Hall - Unavailable
Steve 'Yon' Thomson - Unavailable
Mitchell Dawson - Unavailble

Others
Gordon Cull - Unconfirmed
Chris 'gooky' Adams - Unconfirmed
Mark Reynolds - Unconfirmed
Dave Balding - Unconfirmed
Denis 'Baby' Sheriden - Unconfirmed

Texas hold'em

Myself and some friends have decided to start our own texas hold'em poker evening, there is some great stuff on the net which gives us a guide to making the event fun and competitive, the players range from experienced players, online players and newbies, like myself. The current uk TV coverage sponsored by partypoker hasramped up the interest (and my recent visits to vegas)

Current players invited are listed here for our first evening on 23rd of september 2005;

Tony Cossey - Confirmed
Richard Thomas - Confirmed
Dale Bennett
Ashley Bennett - Confirmed
Mo Bennett
Steve 'yon' Thomson
Gordon Cull
Peter Kempster
Chris 'gooky' Adams
Stuart McClemments
Andy Hall
Mark Reynolds
Dave Balding
Denis 'Baby' Sheriden
Mitchel Dawson

I am currently purchasing the 'kit' needed and have been surprised by the variation in poker chip sets, without research i could have easily spent £100 on a 500 chip set when better quality products can be found on ebay for a saving of over 60%.

Useful links
http://ontilt.co.uk
http://www.homepoker.com
http://www.casino-shop.co.uk
search for poker chips on www.ebay.co.uk

Election

Well i suppose in life its never good to be termed a 'floater' for various differing reasons, but for the 2005 election i really feel that no party is grabbing my attention and thus i am still not swayed where to put my 'X' on the big day. In the local elections i voted 'green' for the first time ever, driven by the fact that the larger the 'green' vote becomes, the more influenced the major parties are to pushing 'green' policies thru parliment, good for everyone in general i think ,given the climate changes in the last 10 years. I will just have to email Jeremy Paxton and ask him what the lowdoan is on the best party, he seems a unbiased person on newsnight, he slates everyone from all parties :-) ! Perhaps he should swap for the evening with Mr Dimbleby on BBC's 'question time' that would sharpen up the debate.....

Back to the blog

After a long break i decided to update the blog today, the combination of being very a busy boy at work and a rather hectic social schedule based on an upcoming friends wedding in the USA has put blogging on the backburner. I have been again fixing problems with friends and families PC's over the last few weeks, one PC had over 6000 instances of spyware which dragged performance down to a crawl. The latest Microsoft Anti Spyware beta software seems to be a good bet as a 'free' solution, i have used it on the XP installs that i encounter with spyware with great success, however i still use the 'always accurate' Spybot search and destroy to confirm that all spyware is removed. The micosoft resident spyware agents seem to add to the security of a XP install so take a look at the microsoft web site.

Tips for Home WiFi Networking

Home Network
Originally uploaded by tcossey.

Another hot topic at the moment is wireless networking, with so may wireless products on the market at such low prices, home users are plunging into this type of networking without realising the risks of exposing your computers to unauthorised access from 'hackers' or just the 'curious' techie who lives next door..

All wireless networks (WiFi) depend on radio signals instead of copper wires to transmit information between endpoints of a connection, this means anyone with a WiFi card in their laptop / desktop computer can try and connect to your WiFi network. The wireless standard 802.11b/g has inbuilt features which try and make life on wireless as 'private' as possible but here are a few tips on those features.

1. OUTSIDE Firewall - Where possible place your WIRED network on the inside of a firewall with the WIRELESS network on the outside to prevent your wired network from being part of the WiFi coverage. At home i have a Linux floppy based firewall siting between my wired and WiFi networks at home. See the diagram with this post.

This topology allows the wired network users have a wired gateway IP (192.168.1.1/24) to access the upstream internet connection AND the WiFi users (2 x laptops) have a gateway (192.168.0.1/24) to access the internet. However laptop WiFi users cant access the wired network facilities due to the firewall traffic restrictions.

2. WEP or WPA - Enable this feature in your WiFi access point (AP), this allows Wired Equivilent Privacy encryption to be applied to each WiFi connection passing across the AP. Its a pretty weak protocol and can be broken by determined hacker, however use 128Bit encryption if available. If possible, you should use WPA encryption (most older equipment can be upgraded to be WPA compatible). WPA fixes the security flaws in WEP (but it is still subject to DOS (denial-of-service) attacks.)

3. AP Admin - On your access point there will be an admin facility accessable by a web browser or application, please DO change the admin password from the default and use something obscure.

4. MAC Lmits - On some AP's you can limit access to the WiFi network via MAC addresses that you define. MAC addresses are the unique number assigned in hardware to every WiFi card. Most WiFi cards have these printed on the card itself or the packaging.

5. VPN - For ultimate security wrap all your WiFi traffic in VPN encryption. This is too much to explain here and a little complex for non tech home users.

6. Patch and Protect Your PC: As per a previous post you should have personal firewall software such as Zone Alarm Pro and anti-virus software installed on your computer. As important as installing the anti-virus software, you must keep it up to date. For Microsoft operating systems you can use Windows Update to try and help keep you current with patches.

Hope this helps with WiFi at home!

Solid Advice for Microsoft Users

I get a LOT of phonecalls and email from friends, family and other poor souls who are having problems with internet connected personal computers running Microsoft Operating systems.

I thought i would publish the advise that i give for home users who operate their computers in a non commercial environment while connected to the internet via broadband technology such as ADSL or CABLE;

My advise to computers users in a corporate envionment is to speak to your local system administrator and dont follow these steps, the local administrator will know your computing environment inside out, following the advise here could ruin the administrators hard work.

"My computer keeps getting slower & slower!" is the normal form of complaint that i get from Windows XP/98/ME/2000 users, here are some steps and 'free' software to help matters.

1. DEFRAG -Defragment your hard disk drive, Microsoft operating systems don't write data to the hard drive in a sequential fashion, this leads to partial elements of single files being on many differing physical areas of the disk. Thus when reading and writing, the disk heads have to move greater distances thus reducing the hard disks performance. Microsoft have built into their systems a special program to solve this problem, which is documented in the link below for XP.

See this article on microsoft.com regarding XP defrag

If your hard disk refuses to to defrag, go to step 2 and check for virus activity then retry this step.

2. ANTI VIRUS - Install a free anti virus protection program if you do not use a anti virus program currently. An anti virus program or suite of programs ensure your computer is protected from computer viruses by detecting their presence on hard drive during a 'scan' or as you access files on hard drive. Please Note you can only use AVG and AntiVir without charge if you computer is used for non commercial purposes.

AVG anti Virus - www.grisoft.com
AntiVir - www.free-av.com

Download the software from the sites above (this may require online registration of your personal details), install the software, scan your hard disk drive for viruses, clean off any virus programs that are found, make sure you enable 'on access' scanning within the anti virus configurations. Each software suite above has instructions as you install and is pretty easy to use.

3. Spyware - Spyware is a family of computer software which sits on your computer and reports back all sorts of data to the programs author. Most spyware is to be found via webpages and downloaded without your knowledge to the computer you are using. As more and more spyware is installed on your PC the slower it will get as the spyware consumes system resources. Use the two free editions of the software below to detect and remove almost 100% of known spyware, also both software suites are free of spyware themselves. You can again only use these free programs if your computer is used for non commercial purposes. again on screen instructions are provided as you install the software.

Spybot
Adaware
4. Install a firewall - Windows XP includes a firewall, other Micosoft OS's do not, well windows 2000 has a facility that could be used but its not easy to use (learn more here). In simple terms a firewall stops other users on the internet connecting to services on your computer. Without a firewall in place your computer may offer services such as file and print services via TCP port numbers, i wont go into detail on TCP/UDP ports here but use this link to learn more - LEARN MORE HERE.

To enable the Internet Connection Firewall in Windows XP look at this microsoft article - Enable my XP Firewall

If you are using Windows 2000/98/95/ME then a free firewall can be installed, a good software firewall is the free edition of the zonealarm firewall, find it here at the zonealarm website, the company are owned by checkpoint a very well respected security company.

Also if you have a broadband connection check the microsoft update web page at least once a week and check the SECURITY SECTION OF THE MICROSOFT WEBSITE FOR ADVISE

This page has links to update the microsoft operating system you are using and gives you good advise on how to keep your computer protected.

5. Web Browser - Although Microsoft internet explorer web browser technology is very good, i would plump for using FIREFOX the free netscape browser variant, it has some great features and i consider the browser to be more secure than the microsoft product in terms of anti spyware features - Get the software here

Please note the above step is optional.......

5. Conclusion - If you are running a Microsoft powered computer you can operate safely on the internet and not suffer slowdown with very little damage to your bank account, if you follow the steps above. Another crucial step is to keep your computer software updated with the latest security software fixes, latest anti virus signatures, latest spyware signatures by updating the software (spybot/avg/antivir/adaware) you use AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK. You should scan for spyware and virus programs at least once every couple of days. Of course keep yourself updated to what is going on in the IT industry - a good source of daily information is to be had a this site - www.theregister.co.uk.

I stopped using microsoft operating systems for desktop use some time ago and swapped to Linux, my choice of Linux OS distro is SUSE, now owned by the big Novell corporation. I find the 'personal' desktop versions of their software very easy to install and maintain and i use the 'professional' versions heavily in my workplace and at home - check it out here

First BLOG Entry

Well i thought long and hard about this but i decided to create my own personal BLOG. I was inspired by the blog in use by Alacra's Steve Goldstein which i have to say is a good resource for those in the financial worlds content industry. At the moment i am working in the City of London for GTCi Brokers which has been an exciting project which has involved a lot of project management, microsoft windows RDP thin client technology and SUSE Linux.

I think my first post must be to try and convince people that Europe must be software patent free, see this link for more details ;

http://petition.eurolinux.org

I dont think the proposed software patents will enhance the IT industry as a whole and possibly throw development and innovation into chaos. I am an IT consultant and use Unix / Linux / Microsoft products on a daily basis and i am not just jumping on the open source bandwagon here, i feel that this whole situation will lead to a loophole matrix of laws throughout Europe and even create a whole new legal industry.......