Computing
What I’ve learnt after 100 blog posts
Today marks a significant milestone for this blog. After two and a half years I have reached my 100th post! I thought this would be a good moment to look back at what I’ve learnt from writing a hobby blog. Why I created this blog I’ve been a hobbyist website builder for about 13 years now. I’ve created a mixture of technical and [...]
How many photos will fit on my memory card?
When taking photos with a digital camera it is useful to know how many photos will fit on your memory card (SD, Memory Stick Duo, USB, etc), and know how large the JPEG images are. There are a lot of tables out there showing this kind of information. I don’t trust other people’s numbers so I decided to calculate them myself and produce some [...]
Setup Trusteer Rapport to protect other websites
Trusteer Rapport helps to stop key loggers from stealing your passwords, and stops viruses or spyware from seeing what you are doing in your web browser. Many banks are now offering it for free download. You can for example download it from NatWest’s website here – even if you aren’t a NatWest customer. It is preconfigured to protect a [...]
Finding the best WiFi channel with Vistumbler
If you are having trouble with your WiFi connection you may have heard that it is a good idea to connect to your WiFi router on a quiet WiFi channel to avoid interference from other WiFi devices. WiFi myths It is in fact quite unlikely that other WiFi devices are causing your problem. The WiFi protocol is designed to cope with many other [...]
Trusteer Rapport password leakage problem
If you bank online then there is a good chance you will have been prompted to install a software product called Trusteer Rapport. It is recommended by NatWest, HSBC, First Direct and a whole list of others. Trusteer Rapport helps increase the security of your Windows operating system by attempting to block keystroke logging attempts, screen [...]
ADSL signal to noise ratio and line attenuation chart
Whilst trying to diagnose my broadband connection problems I found many articles telling me to look at my modems values for signal to noise ratio and line attenuation values. The articles would then give big and complicated descriptions talking about distance to exchanges, DSLAMS, frequencies and all kinds of other things which I’d classify as [...]
Converting file extensions to lower case
Recently I needed to convert a large number of photo file extensions to lower case. Doing this manually would take ages and wouldn’t be a fun job. I wrote a quick batch file to look through all the sub-directories from the one it is executed from and change selected file extensions to lower case. To use this script place the below code in [...]
Upgrading Samsung N140 RAM to 2GB
The Samsung N140 netbook – as reviewed here, is a great machine – but it is much better if you upgrade the 1GB RAM that it ships with to 2GB. Here’s a quick guide, with photos, of how I upgraded the memory of mine. First you’ll need to buy a 2GB RAM module – they aren’t expensive and you can buy them from computer shops or online. [...]
Samsung N140 netbook real world review
I bought the Samsung N140 netbook from Amazon very soon after it was released and have been working with it regularly for a few months now. I’m going to review it based my real world experiences of using it. The Samsung N140 comes in a fairly compact box. If you are used to buying standard sized laptops then you’ll notice the difference [...]
How to recover accidentally deleted files
It is something that has happened to most of us. We are writing an essay or doing some other piece of work on the computer and it accidentally gets deleted or corrupted. At this point you are probably upset or maybe even distraught – depending on how much you have lost. You probably remember being told something about keeping backups and [...]
