a broken mold

This is rather overdue.

Since I care somewhat about SEO (not an SEOhead, though… I mean, how many SEO blogs can there be?), I looked for a WordPress plugin to handle that sort of stuff for a broken mold. All in One SEO Pack is pretty much the package for WordPress, I guess, but I couldn’t even get it to run. I have no idea why.

I tried another SEO plugin, too, as I remember. HeadSpace, I think. I also tried Platinum SEO Pack and that’s what I ended up using. The author asks that you either review, link, or donate. I was happy to oblige since the plugin worked fine but being lazy I haven’t done it yet. Until now.

This isn’t really like reviewing a piece of art or anything, so I have simply this to say: it works and it works well. I suppose I’m not an expert and it’s probably missing some, but I’ll go ahead and say ‘name a SEO feature and it’s got it’. All sorts of meta stuff. A big long list of check boxes for you to decide on.

One thing I’d like to highlight, even though I don’t use it, is custom meta elements for individual posts. Check it out.

I guess some people would find this handy.

A basic outline of what wireless means in relation to an internet connection.

It could really refer to one of three things:

Mobile broadband – broadband service delivered over a cellular network

Service from a WISP (wireless internet service provider) – the ISP delivers internet usually via some line of sight wireless technology. Somewhat more common in rural, elsewise underserved areas.

A wireless router providing an internet connection to devices – probably all types of broadband can be used via a wireless router. (Well, except gigabit service. There’s no wireless router with enough bandwidth for that.) The router allows devices (laptops, desktops, an iPod Touch, etc.) to connection wirelessly to the LAN and also provides internet if the router is connected. Wireless routers also usually have several wired Ethernet ports.

Some confusion may be had getting service from a WISP and running a wireless router. You have wireless (from the WISP) and wireless (a router running). But remember, you can also run a wireless router with other types of service: DSL, cable, FTTH, etc. In fact, you don’t even need an internet connection to run a wireless router. Once again, it forms a LAN (Local Area Network: a network of local devices, local being ones connected to this router) and provides an internet connection to these devices if there is one.

There are also wired (only) routers that perform much the same function, but may only be connected to with an Ethernet cable. Wireless is probably more common, at least in homes, because of it’s convenience (wiring a house is often much more difficult).

So that’s pretty much what wireless means.

This is the first in a planned series of tech posts directed at laymen, non-geeks, etc. Basically a lot of my friends and family. Subscribe and enjoy.

Illustration built with images from OpenClipArt.

I received in the mail today a ridiculously large box, considering the size of the item it contained, which was a Nite Ize AA Mini Maglite 1 Watt LED Upgrade II from Cyberguys.com! There have been a few different models floating around, but this is the alpha male, so to speak. It’s got a Luxeon LED that puts out 55 lumens, lasts 15 hours, and throws a 50 meter beam. There was an older (now defunct) 1-watt model and a really old model with three generic LEDs (I broke a couple before giving up on them, but these Luxeons are where it’s at.) There’s also a lower-output model with longer battery life at 30 lumens and 25 hours—good for extending battery life, but an IQ Switch would also do the job.

Having weighed the earlier Nite Ize LED modules in the durability balance and found them wanting, I had heretofore purchased an official Mini Maglite LED AA, which also uses a Luxeon. But it flickers, and is longer than my regular Mini Mags, and generally sucks horribly. And flickers. Their LED module must be poorly wired or something. Maybe (hopefully) mine was just defective. One thing I do like about it—due to the longer reflector cone (I think), it is more focusable, as you’ll see in the picture below. This produces a more concentrated beam at greater distances.

But because that was such a fail, I picked up a Streamlight 3N. Pretty rugged piece of gear, it seemed. Used by firefighters and such. Molded polymer case, scratch-resistant lens, up to 30-lumen output, and it even has an “Intrinsic Safety for Hazardous Locations” rating. All this notwithstanding, the contact point on the bottom of the LED module is worthless. Although I’ve bolstered it with solder a few times, it always wears down, makes infrequent contact with the battery, and flickers. It gets worse in cold weather.

Enter the Nite Ize 1 Watt LED Upgrade II. It fit snugly into my old beater Mini Mag, already survived a shoulder-height fall onto tiles without even flickering, and summarily rocks. Here’s a picture I took with all three shining side-by-side at a dark wall. They all had fresh batteries.

Why is the Streamlight so blue?

*Note the Maglite is more focused than the others, since it is actually capable of being focused. That’s why the beam is smaller.

So, technically, I wrote this post last night and right now I’m whizzing along the highway at 55 MPH, but that doesn’t really matter in the scope of the thing.

I don’t have much to say here, but what little there is, I present. DRM is not intrinsically evil but historically it has been harmful to the public. Of course, this is not to say that companies or individuals attempting to protect their intellectual property are wrong, only that DRM as a method of accomplishing this has been maddening (I got burned), often futile, and sometimes scary (i.e. Amazon yanking 1984 from Kindles). It’s tried but not true, if that’s the right turn of phrase. Companies have used it for a couple decades; it hasn’t worked.

Why I’m writing about this is because today is Day against DRM. So I thought I’d let you know some stuff about it. That is all from me; I leave you with the Free Software Foundation’s history of The Decade in DRM (click through to read more).

Since the late 1990s, a handful of media and technology companies has waged war against the public, imposing digital restrictions on the technology we use.. Here is Defective by Design’s look at some of the most significant events in the past 10 years fighting against DRM. If there are important moments missing (which there may be), please send them to us! Despite a number of victories over DRM in specific areas, DRM is far from dead. Whether companies will control and restrict us through our technology remains to be decided, and the battle is now.

I love Adblock Plus. Nearly everywhere I go on the web is stripped of mildly distracting to suicidally obnoxious advertisements because of this fabulous Firefox add-on.

The downside? Ars Technica hit on it in a recent article¹: you (all those adblocking types out there) and I are harming the sites we love.

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue. Because we are a technology site, we have a very large base of ad blockers. Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn’t pay. In a way, that’s what ad blocking is doing to us. Just like a restaurant, we have to pay to staff, we have to pay for resources, and we have to pay when people consume those resources. The difference, of course, is that our visitors don’t pay us directly but indirectly by viewing advertising.

Perhaps you feel guilty now. Fear not; you may easily make redress to these sites, read on. Ken Fisher of Ars continues:

My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We’ve all seen it happen. I am very proud of the fact that we routinely talk to you guys in our feedback forum about the quality of our ads. I have proven over 12 years that we will fight on the behalf of readers whenever we can. Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads. But any of you reading this site for any significant period of time know that these are few and far between. We turn down offers every month for advertising like that out of respect for you guys. We simply ask that you return the favor and not block ads.

If you read a site and care about its well being, then you should not block ads (or you subscribe to sites like Ars that offer ads-free versions of the site). If a site has advertising you don’t agree with, don’t go there. I think it is far better to vote with page views than to show up and consume resources without giving anything in return. I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the careers that go into producing a website. People talk about how annoying advertisments are, but I’ll tell you what: it’s a lot more annoying and frustrating to have to cut staff and cut benefits because a huge portion of readers block ads. Yet I’ve seen that happen at dozens of great sites over the last few years, Ars included.

I agree heartily. This is not something I’ve thought about but it clicked and persuaded me right off the bat. I very much love certain websites, so now Adblock Plus is turned off when visiting these sites. A few ads is a small price to pay for what these sites give freely. Ars also presented this in a very gracious manner, which I think is key. They alerted readers about the issue, politely asked them to consider  unblocking their site and then left it at civilized discussion. They also made clear in the comments their policy with their advertisers not to run any ads with non user-initiated sound, flashing ads, or ones that fly out over the text.

In this issue, I believe reason can easily be shown on the side of both the site and its viewers resulting in mutual benefit. This is the sort of company-viewer relationship I like to see on the internet and it goes to show that big publishers don’t have to be faceless and brazen—the same goes for its customers and consumers.

That being said and done, the rest of the web remains clear and clean for me. The sites I stumble over in my daily browsing do not have my loyalty and so shall not have my ad views.

To wrap it up, Ars Technica posted an article soon after the first on just how to allow adverts for certain sites. Read it, add exceptions for your favorite sites, and continue (or begin) to enjoy a better-looking web while supporting sites you love.

Running DOS games is hardcore. Not, admittedly, as hardcore as text-based games, but up there. Unfortunately, in the last several iterations of the Windows operating system, DOS support has been provided only by emulation, and not at all on 64-bit systems.¹ Your hardware configuration also determines how choppy/way-too-fast your game will render. How then, shall we play DOS games? Enter DOSBox.

You can check it out and get the link from our Recommended Software List. Once you’ve installed it, this is to help you how to customize DOSBox so it doesn’t have an annoying console window running in the background, and set it up for your DOS games folder, so you don’t have to mount it every time.

Simply create a shortcut to the .exe file, and then right-click on the shortcut, select ‘Properties,’ and edit the end of the ‘Target’ entry to include -noconsole -c “mount c ‘c:\DOS Games\’”. Replace C:\DOS Games with whatever directory is your games folder.

Note that you will still need to mount C: first by typing “C:” without quotes and hitting Enter. It should already be in your DOS directory due to our above hack. To install a game, open the zip archive or folder and run setup.exe or any other setup file if there is one. If everything is already extracted and ready to rock, you can simply navigate to that folder from within DOSBox, and run the game executable (e.g. keen4.exe).

To control the game speed, Ctrl+F7/8 lowers and raises the Cpu Cycles, and Ctrl+F11/12 lowers and raises the Frameskip. For more help getting things running and learning commands, type “intro” without quotes into the prompt and hit Enter.

Happy DOS gaming!

Useful Tips

Change XP Start Menu Text

Follow these steps to change your start menu text from the default ‘start’ to whatsoever you may desire. First you’ll need to download and run Resource Hacker.

1. Within Resource Hacker, navigate to C:\Windows\explorer.exe and open it.

2. Expand the String Table folder and you should see a bunch of numbered folders.

3. Expand number 37 (or 38 for Windows Classic theme) and click on 1033 with the little gear next to it. In the right panel, replace the text ‘start’ with anything you want. I changed mine to ‘stop.’

4. Click on the ‘Compile Script’ button.

5. If you want to change the text that appears when you hover over the start button, expand folder 34 and change the default ‘Click here to begin’ to something like ‘Click here to get real!’ Compile changes.

6. You can also change the Windows icon on the start button to something else while you’re at it. First, collapse the String Table folder and expand Bitmaps at the top of the list.

7. Open 143 and click on 1033, where you’ll find the default Windows icon. To replace this you will need a 25×20 image with a .bmp extension.

8. Go to ‘Actions’ in the file menu and click on ‘Replace bitmap,’ then browse to your replacement file. Select it and hit ‘Replace.’

9. You are now ready to save your work. Go to ‘File’ and select ‘Save as’. Save it as something other than explorer.exe, such as hammertime.exe (mine) or explorerhack.exe.

10. Now to modify the Registry so your system uses the hacked file instead of the default explorer.exe. Open the Run dialogue (Win+R) and type ‘regedit’ without quotes. Hit Enter.

11. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, and in the right pane you should see the entry ‘Shell.’ Double click on this and replace the text ‘explorer.exe’ with the name of your hacked file.

12. Close the Registry Editor and log out. Log back in and you should be set! Enjoy.

Here’s my end result:

N.B. from TheElderGeek.com:

A number of users have written to say that when the text on the Start Button is changed, the Search function from the Start Button (right click) context menu ceases to function. That’s true, it does, and if I ever used that particular function I’d have been aware of the problem. I don’t use it, so I wasn’t aware, but now you’ve been warned. As far as I know there are no other caveats associated with the modification.

(Re)Enable Task Manager

If for some reason, virus or otherwise, your Task Manager has been disabled, open ‘regedit’ in the Run dialogue (Win+R). Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableTaskMgr, and make sure it’s set to 0.

Lock Workstation Shortcut

Sometimes you don’t want to have to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and click ‘Lock Computer’ in order to lock your workstation. Sure, you could use Win+L, but maybe those features are disabled on your *cough* school network. At any rate, here’s a cool way to make a shortcut on your desktop that does just that.

1. Right-click on your desktop, select New and Shortcut.

2. In the location field, type “rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation” without quotes.

3. Name it whatever you want (Lock Workstation, for example) , and you can give it a cool lock icon from shell32.dll (see below).

shell32.dll

Speaking of which, shell32.dll may be copied between Windows versions (rename as shell32xp.dll or something to distinguish it), allowing you to use the XP icon resources for Vista, or some other combination. To use one of these icons for a shortcut, just right-click, go to Properties and Shortcut, then Change Icon. Click on Browse and navigate to C:\Windows\system32\shell32.dll, or shell32xp.dll for your new icons.

Fun Pranks

Change Icon to Shutdown

This simple prank changes an icon so it shuts down the computer. This can of course be useful, but is best for changing an icon someone usually uses to surprise them (lol). Right-click on the desktop, select New>Shortcut, and type C:\Windows\system32\shutdown.exe -s -t 60 -c “A deadly virus has taken control of your computer.” The 60 denotes seconds until shutdown, and can be replaced with a different value. The text in quotes is a message that accompanies the shutdown command, and it can also be replaced with something of your choice, like “kthxbai.” Alternatively, you can omit the -c parameter and text and set the -t value to 0 for a clean, instant shutdown. Very effective. Oh yeah, and if you should need to cancel the shutdown, hit Win+R and type “shutdown -a” without quotes.

Remove Shutdown from Start Menu

If someone uses the Shutdown option from the Start Menu to shut down their computer, you can throw them for a loop by removing it with a simple registry edit. Open the Registry editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and double click on the ‘NoClose’ entry in the right pane. If it’s not there, right-click and select New>DWORD Value, naming it NoClose. Set the value to 1 to disable the Shutdown button. It doesn’t actually remove it, but it won’t work – even more frustrating. To re-enable, change the value back to 0.

Print Screen Desktop Prank

The classic old standby.

1. Take a print screen (Prnt Scrn key) of the plain desktop and save it in an image editor such as MS Paint. Then set it as the desktop background.

2. Right-click on the desktop, select ‘Arrange icons by,’ and uncheck ‘Show desktop icons.’

3. Finally, right-click on the Taskbar and uncheck ‘Lock the Taskbar’ (if it’s checked). Click on the top edge and drag the Taskbar down as far as it will go. The desktop now looks normal, but is quite unusable.

Virus.bat

Simply type “start virus.bat” without quotes in a text file. Save it as virus.bat. Opening this will start an endless loop that will bog down and basically crash the computer. You can, however, try to kill the processes in Task Manager or log out to recover your system.