Skin Of Stars

Just a quick and easy one this time! At least once a week I get called up to fix a computer and it's almost always the same thing; spyware. So here is the usual rundown on how I approach a fix.

First thing I (almost) always say: No, there is no need to wipe your computer, we can just clean it up.

Question; So, do you have an up to date Anti-Virus program? Usual answer; I have McAfee/Norton, but the subscription has run out. Solution? If you have cash to burn get rid of McAfee/Norton and get either http://www.kaspersky.com/ or http://www.eset.com/ or check this list. If you are cheap then get Avast (or maybe AVG, though they have had some really bad press).

Thats the easy one out the way, adware/malware/spyware is a little trickier. I am yet to find a single program that can deal with all occurrences. I normally go with the classic Ad-Aware free edition by Lavasoft, but it certainly isn't the be all and end all. The trick is often to run a search using the name that comes up. For example, a recent problem computer I came across had adware titled 'AntiVirus 2008' which pointed out every couple of minutes that the computer may be infected (really?!?!) and suggested downloading the program. This was effectively removed using http://www.superantispyware.com/ where Ad-Aware failed. I also strongly recommend that you use Microsoft's Windows Defender regardless of whether you are already experiencing problems or not. There is a short list in this section of wikipedia to illustrate what is out there, but as I said, a search is normally the order of the day. Bonus tip here, free anti-adware programs need to be re-run manually, just do it every couple of weeks.

After you have dealt with all that it's time to really get your machine back to it's former glory. This is normally very simple. Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs. Clear out all that old junk that you never use. Now look to your system tray (bottom right corner), see all those icons which are taking up most the bottom of your screen? Do they all need to be there? You may not want to uninstall them (MSN Messenger being a great example here), but you probably don't need all those programs right now. Go to each one in turn, open them up, find the preferences and disable any option which says something like 'open on Windows Start-up'. Once you've done that click Start>Programs and look for Start-up Programs, then delete the shortcuts from there of the programs you may not need when you first boot.

I'm a little tense about saying this, but I'd hate to feel I was holding back... on XP: Start>Run>type msconfig and hit enter. You can then look across the tabs to Services. You can untick the background processes you don't need, but please do so with extreme caution. If you're not sure then either search it or leave it (latter probably being the case).

If this is the first time you've done a clean then this process will probably take you about twenty minutes (though first boot scans from anti-virus can take some time, maybe go do some weeding). By the end though you will have a slick machine that makes you grin all over.

Maybe this doesn't solve your problem though. Maybe your computer has died a painful death and you can't even boot it! This will more likely than not happen some day. Fear not, you can still recover your files by keeping a copy of Knoppix around on a CD. It has saved my skin and the hard work of many of my fellow students many a time (when they thought to come to me that is :P). It's a graphical desktop on a disk and is the saviour of many a sysadmin.

Note, there are almost certainly better ways, and I would always recommend doing your own research by reading some more reputable blogs and columns.

Today is the start of a new academic year at Oxford Brookes. As we would say here "Week 1". I get to start this new year with no lectures today, which frankly is quite lucky as I still have many things to sort out. Still, I decided to get up early, well, early for me, 9:30am. A habit I'm going to have to get into as I've been tending to sleep till noon through the summer. There always seems to be something I need to do at 2am.

Last week was freshers week (Week 0?!) so I tried to go out and party a little. Since moving into my new house and taking some time gardening I've found that I wasn't really going out, so I decided to make a bit of an effort. We were convinced that Saturday would be a big party at a student union club, Blitz. It had always been one of the best nights of the week, which left us convinced that it would be so this time with many old friends around. Guess we were the only ones who thought so. There were a few friends there, but to be honest it was only the ones we'd invited personally. Still, a fun night regardless.

Recovery from a Saturday night is easy when the sun is out. We are lucky in our new house in having a small gate from our back garden straight onto one of the largest parks in Oxford. South Park has one of the best views over the city so we had little to do than lay back, drink tea and soak in the view. An absolute treat considering the horrid weather we've been having of late.

And now to work.

What am I driving at with a revamp of a blog that I once killed? Well... I always wanted an area of the net I can call my own. I'd registered skinofstars.com some time ago but I'd never really got round to sorting it out. In the end I just annoyed myself, this is my bit so I really should have a little 'me time'. So here we have it, a revamped skinofstars.com. As I'm sure you can tell, the blog is now the front page and I intend to update regularly. When I say regularly, I mean every Monday by noon. What I'll be saying I'm not sure, but I think some consistency is very important right now so I'm going to stick with that regardless. If you want to follow without the need for a visit then subscribe to this page's RSS using http://www.skinofstars.com/rss.xml

See you next Monday

I've just added some more sections to the site.

Social - covers various social networking sites.
Net Work - this section is like a portfolio of my work on the internet (job please!).
Geekness - a section where I can while away time on my more general interests in computing, expect lots of open source zealotism.
Further - bit like a misc section, but I feel a little funny about filing the rest of my life under miscellaneous, so I called it Further

This was a framework that I came up with a month or two back and I think best sums up the point of having a site dedicated to myself (bar ego, of course). It should make it easy for me to add to the site with notes and information I have written for myself and others. I hope this is now to be the encompassing personal site I'd always wanted.

**UPDATE** Blog has now been imported to this site - now found here, on the front page!

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New site as the old one bothered me for being so bad. The (currently inactive) blog can still be found at /blog but will be integrated in time. Updates will probably be coming thick and fast, as is my want with new projects.

I was shocked to see a recent article by the Daily Mail which they claim finds that councils are abusing anti-terrorist powers to check up on average citizens emails and phone calls. It's like 1984 all over. At the end of the summer I plan to move all my email correspondence to encrypted formats. I'll post between now and then with advice for all others who would like to keep a little bit of privacy in their lives before we are all routinely monitored.

I write this through blurry vision having just had an injection into my eyeball. It seems I've been unlucky enough to be one of the few young people to have developed Macular Degeneration in my left eye. Seeing as I'm still reasonably young at 28 I decided to go for one of the fancy new unlicenced injections, my drug of choice in this instance is called Lutein. I'm happy to say that the eye hospital in Oxford is excellent and the doctor treating me is one of the best in the country.

Found a very interesting video called Semantic Web For Noobs

I saw this comment on slashdot by http://slashdot.org/~Sancho and it made me chuckle. Please bear in mind that this is a *very* geeky joke.

Linux is ok on the desktop, but for servers, I really prefer FreeBSD.

Sometimes I get tired of that, and use NetBSD for a while. A short stint with NetBSD, Apache, Postgresql, and PHP usually refreshes me long enough so that I can FreeBSD, Apache, Postgresql, and PHP again.

Just thought I'd mention the small feeling of sorrow that I have for the loss of Arthur C Clarke, a childhood hero of mine. I'll append an image from xkcd which I think shows this feeling a little.