My Commentary and Technical help

Arduino Based DSO Oscilloscope

2012-01-10T12:59:00.003-05:00

My Arduino Based DSO Oscilloscope project is underway. Years ago I made several printer port projects that were in my book "Digital and Computer Projects". Over the years some of them were updated to work with a serial port using either a 68HC11 or a Basic Stamp. Now I am starting work on redoing them using an Arduino. My first projects were earthquake prediction and LED signs. Next comes a 20 MSPS DSO Oscilloscope. Currently I am reusing the old PCB from the Printer Port Scope project.

I went looking for my old pictures and schematic on the Internet and somewhere around when Geo Cities closed down all of my old schematics were lost. I am now searching my old hard drives to try to find them.

This is the block diagram of the prototype. As you can see it was very complicated. I built it using wirewrap about 15 years ago.

This is the block diagram of the simplified version that was used for the printer port O'scope.

Here is the analog input section. I am in the process of adding a LF351 input buffer IC.

This is the schematic of the memory section. It has the A to D converter and a FIFO.

This is the schematic of the clock, I left out a third 74390 that really should still be there.

Here is the PCB from the last version of the Printer Port Scope that I am reusing with the Arduion.

Targus Universal Charger Repair

2012-01-03T17:19:00.000-05:00

Recently I fixed a Targus Universal Charger. This is the second time I have worked on one of these. If only I could remember what the problem was the last time, I could save myself lots of work. The symptoms are that there is no power at the output jack, and changing the jack does not fix the problem.

First I checked the power cable and it had power on the yellow main conductor to the shield. So it had to be the jack right? As you can see in the picture I tore the jack all to pieces to no avail. The actual problem is that the interchangeable jacks are ALL bad! They have to be broken apart and then re-solder the center connector to the circuit board. You might want to re-solder the grounds too while you are in there.

I swapped the rebuilt jack to the AC adapter end in the picture.

The connection color code from the end with a metal plate is:
Red
White
Yellow-Power
Ground-Sield
Blue

The importance of "Title" tags in SEO

2011-12-28T12:58:00.010-05:00

SEO had changed a lot over the years. At one time you could just say what your key words were and the search engines then used those words. A practice called "key word stuffing" eventually led to the search engines analyzing the text on your web site to find out what your actual key words are. Now it is widely accepted that your key words are also rated higher if they appear in links, headings, or titles. I have also been able to determine that Google places higher emphasis on web pages that have more inbound links. They also search PDF files for key words. If you put these together you can add PDF files to your web pages. People will then link to these PDF's and hence these pages will rate higher as they have lots more key words and inbound links. You can also add titles to your web pages and links within your pages and menu's to further add key words to your web site.

Recently I discovered that some web sites were adding "title" to their links. At first I thought this was strange, perhaps a way of stuffing key words into web pages. The standard procedure of looking for keywords in a web page is to strip all of the HTML code, that is everything between the less than and greater than symbols. Then analyze what is left for the key words. However after reading a SEO paper form Bing/Microsoft, Title tags are also analyzed for key words. I will have to update my Keyword Analyzer Tool (KAT) to add "Found in titles" as a column.

This is an excerpt from Bing WMC FAQ Page 23

Q: How can I apply keywords to linked pages when I use inline linking?

A: Normally the anchor text is your primary description of the linked page. But if you do inline linking within the paragraphs of your body text, you need to maintain the natural, logical flow of the language in the paragraph, which can limit your link text description.As such, you can use the title attribute of the anchor tag to add additional keyword information about the linked page without adversely affecting the readability of the text for the end user. An example might go something like this:

This is an example of < a href="http://www.mysite.com/newpage.htm" 
title="keyword or key phrase describing the linked page" >
inline linking < /a > within a paragraph.

Vtech Vreader and MobiGlo display console

2011-12-19T17:09:00.002-05:00

Someone recently was given a Vtech Vreader and MobiGlo display console and they wanted to know if the individual parts can be removed and used.

To start with I removed the battery back. It had 4 battery boxes of 16 "D" cells each that is a total of 64 "D" cell batteries! Then I unplugged and disconnected the stuff from below the cabinet. The brown wires go to the speakers, the three conductor wires go to the volume control (short the right two wires together for full volume) and the multicolor ribbon cables can be just cut off.

Next was to find really small speakers to fit into the devices. The built in battery holders were not wired up but the external power adapters were wired so I used an AC adapter to test them out. So far everything seems to work but the software might have been modified to prevent really using these devices as they were designed to be used. Next is to find a way to use these with smaller battery packs, perhaps 4 x AA cells?

"Gay Rights" versus "Religious Freedom"

2011-12-10T15:41:00.001-05:00

This week the US government stopped all funding for a program that had been promoting Religious Freedom around the world. On the very same news cast they also announced that, via executive order, federal funding will be cut off from any nation that does not support "Gay Rights".

Then on Saturday I sat down and watched the science channel video called "Biblical Mysteries Explained examines the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah". I knew they had excavated Sodom and had determined the it was in fact destroyed by fire and brimstone. Basically the buildings show burn holes in them from small objects that were at 400 to 500 degrees on impact. The people died in agony as they were set on fire. After watching the TV episode I now also know that they have records of a meteor track that was observed around 3125 BC, and that people digging up ice cores around the world have found evidence of a "nuclear winter" around 3200 BC. What was kind of funny is that while they were proving the Biblical record to be true they were also referring to the story of Sodom as a "tale" and referring to the time as being "BCE".

Here is a link to some of the Archaeological Evidence for Sodom:
http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2011/s11120037.htm
The article is titled "Archaeological Evidence for Sodom: Recent Findings Shed Light on Discoveries of ‘Biblical Proportions’"

Here is the Science channel Video:
http://store.discovery.com/biblical-mysteries-explained-dvd/detail.php?p=98330

Earlier this year New York state passed a "gay marriage" law and joined several other New England states in doing that. Then this summer three major storms/hurricanes passed through these same "gay marriage" states and did record damage to the area. In fact I heard it was the most damage from "acts of God" that the US has ever seen.

Possible Super Volcano at Geysers California

2011-12-08T12:06:00.000-05:00

A few years back there was a lot of talk about the Yellowstone Super Volcano possibly becoming active and causing a really huge disaster. I have been commenting for years now that the Super Volcano at Geysers California is having far more earthquakes than Yellowstone. In fact there have been over 121 earthquakes in Geysers California just this week alone. There have been two earthquakes that exceeded 3.0! IMO the super volcano at Geysers is far more likely to blow in the next few months that Yellowstone is.

I do not know why no one else in the media is even noticing these earthquakes. A Super Volcano in California would be even a bigger disaster than Yellowstone because of its close proximity to highly populated areas like San Francisco! Also a Super Volcano in Geysers California would spread ash and dust all across the USA just like one in Yellowstone would. That would result in cooling the temperatures and destroying crops all across the country!

Combined Aggregate Web Site

2011-12-04T18:03:00.009-05:00

A few years back I developed a Key Word Analyzer (KAT) tool. It is at www.davismission.org/keyword

Now I am working on another feat of web programming that I call a "CAF" web site. Imagine having your Facebook, YouTube, Ebay, Twitter and many more sites all aggregated onto one web site.

I am developing what I call a Combined Aggregate Feed (CAF) Web Site to bring several of my web sites together into one location. What do you think is the best Three Letter Acronym (TLA) for this kind of web site? It is a work in progress and can be found at http://www.davismission.org/bobdavis321/

This was not easy and just doing an < object data="web site" > because that does not work for a lot of web sites. For example for Facebook you have to create a "Badge" then link that badge into your web site.

The code for twitter is a Java script that looks like this:
new TWTR.Widget({
version: 2, type: 'profile', rpp: 4, interval: 30000, width: 'auto', height: 400,
theme: {
    shell: { background: '#333333', color: '#ffffff'
    },
    tweets: { background: '#ffffff', color: '#000000', links: '#880088',
    }
},
features: { scrollbar: false, loop: false, live: false, behavior: 'all'
}
}).render().setUser('bobdavis321').start();

To get the scoop on how I did it all just right click on the web site and select "reveal code" or "reveal page source" in Firefox..

HP DV9700 Repair

2011-11-19T22:01:00.004-05:00

Once again this is another laptop that has cooling fan or clogged heat-sink problems. I wish they would make this problem easier to fix! If it has been run with a clogged fan then the chips in the graphics card might be permanently damaged. If this is the case then you can send the motherboard to someone on EBay who will fix it for $75 to $100.

To fix this laptop you will have to remove over 50 screws to get to the clogged heat-sink. Start with removing 6 screws under the battery and then remove the silver cover that is above the keyboard. Next remove 3 screws and remove the keyboard. Next remove 6 screws (2 are underneath) , then unplug and remove the screen. The three wires to the wireless network card have to be unplugged form the card down below and then routed back out of the laptop. Next remove 2 screws and remove the speaker assembly. Next remove many many screws located both above and below the laptop and then remove the the top bezel. You will need to remove the wireless adapter and both hard drives as there are 4 screws that are located under the hard drives. Then remove the CD ROM drive and its adapter. Remove the PCMCIA card and its adapter. Remove three motherboard screws and the 3 heat-sink/fan screws then you can remove the motherboard. Flip over the motherboard and remove 4 screws to remove the fan and then you can clean the heat-sink.

Warning, the power connector from the power jack to the motherboard can be easily inserted incorrectly. Make note of its orientation before disconnecting it!

Dell Inspiron 1501 repair

2011-11-16T21:33:00.000-05:00

Recently I was given a Dell Latitude 1501 that was "Virus-ed to death". After reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows there were other issues that I needed to fix. The mouse pad did not work because water had been spilled into it and the computer ran "hot". So I opened it up to replace the mouse pad and while inside the computer I discovered why the computer ran so hot. Look at the heat exchanger in the back left corner in the picture below.

A trick in opening it up is that two screws that hold the LCD screen on are hidden behind small round covers on the back of the computer. Other than that it opens up fairly easily.

Asus EEE CMOS Battery Replacement

2011-11-06T17:07:00.002-05:00

Recently I had the fun of replacing the CMOS Battery in an Asus EEE laptop. The old battery was a lot smaller than the new one. I drew a circle around the old CMOS battery so you can locate it.

The new one is bigger than the old one but there is room for it in front of where the old one was located. Totally disassembling of the laptop is not needed. For more instructions here is my old post on the subject: http://bobdavis321.blogspot.com/2010/12/asus-ee-disasembly.html

By the way I purchased the New CMOS battery for $3 on Ebay but now I cannot find one for less than $5?

Something is going to happen this week.

2011-11-06T13:50:00.000-05:00

Think about it, have you ever felt like we were this close to the end? I thought the world would end back in 1975, but as time goes by it seems to be getting closer and closer.

1. The Yu55 meteor is headed our way, it could miss us again, it could hit the moon or it could even hit us, no one really knows.
2. There are reports coming from Alaska and Russia that countries are massively redeploying troops and equipment.
3. Israel is gearing up to attack Iran in another attempt to put an end to their nuclear plans.
4. People are protesting in the streets of cities around the world demanding change.
5. Solar storms are increasing weekly as we approach another solar maximum next year.
6. Earthquakes are happening in many diverse places like the East coast, Oklahoma, etc.
7. Volcanoes are erupting or ready to erupt all over the place, Yellowstone, Canary Islands, Geysers California, etc.
8. The European Union is ready to default on many loans, countries are going bankrupt.
9. There is 600 trillion in debt but only 60 trillion in cash available, what happens when countries cannot pay up?

In Daniel 12:4 it says that "Many will be running to and fro and knowledge will be increased". Doesn't that describe us more and more as each week goes by?

So are you ready for a really bumpy ride? I was listening to a recording by Glenn Beck talking of how the world will change over a period of 14 or 15 days.

So get right with God, go and ask forgiveness from those you have offended, make yourself ready, have food and stuff to last a few weeks in case everything goes crazy. Something drastic is going to happen real soon. I hope we get raptured first but I would not bet on it.

What I have seen in my dreams is smoke rising from many cities, lots of places devastated, a civilian army rising up to try to take control of the mess. I hope it all works out, but it will be rough for a while.

Taking on Goliath

2011-11-01T07:53:00.003-04:00

Taking on Goliath

Introduction

My name is Bob Davis, I worked for Elim Bible Institute for about 19 years. Recently I have been on missionary trips to the Philippines, India, Mexico, and West Africa. West Africa is called the “Missionary grave yard”. Missionaries going there used to take a casket with them because that is usually how they returned home. The company where I work offers life insurance. Their Life Insurance Company refused to cover me because I have been in West Africa. My brother Fred has been a missionary to West Africa for over 10 years.

My encounter with a Demon

Back in February 2009 we were in Ghana West Africa on our way to the town of Tamale. We were stopping along the way for the night and my brother Fred thought it would be a good idea to walk back to the place we were staying at. It was around 9:30 PM and the street we were walking along had street lights lighting it. There were people walking in the other direction on the opposite side of the road. Fred was on my left and two African brothers were walking behind us. Then someone appeared on our side of the road headed rapidly towards us. The first problem with him was that the street lights were above us but he was lit up from behind. This made his face and features impossible to see. You could however clearly see the outline of his body. As he got closer another problem happened, I could now see through him, the road was visible behind him. I figured that if I took one step to the right I could avoid the imminent impact.

Two steps to the right there was an open storm drain. So I was careful not to step too far to the right. However when my feet came down my fight foot was on the far side of the storm drain and my left foot was in the storm drain. Knowing that the storm drain was only 1 foot deep, I figured I would just stand on the bottom. However my foot could not hold the weight so I fell to where my hands were next to stop the fall. However my hands could not hold my weight and they slipped out from under me and I continued to fall until I was flat on my face with the wind knocked out of me.

They chased down a taxi and picked me up and loaded me into it. I could not even stand up on my own. Back at our room I proceeded to wash my bleeding arms and remove the little rocks that had become embedded in them. My brother Fred insisted that I had just tripped and fell. I told him that something had attacked me but he did not believe me. He went somewhere and got a wrap for my ankle that was now turning black and blue.

The next morning I limped down to breakfast. As I was arriving for breakfast I overhead someone saying “Did you see what attacked brother Bob?” After further questioning I was told that they saw someone attack me and then disappear into thin air. My brother never saw anything; I saw it fading out so I could see through it just before impact.

This episode troubled me for quite some time. I even had another encounter with this demon, but I am not sure if the second encounter was ‘real’ or not as there was no witnesses. Then I had a strange dream. In this dream I was David and tomorrow I was to take on Goliath. The king sent a counselor to my room to talk me out of the fight. He was asking me questions like “How are you going to fight Goliath?” and “What makes you think you can win this time?” In this dream the answer to all of his questions was “I have a smooth stone” and I would show him the stone. After what seemed like hours of questioning the counselor said “There is no fear in you!” and he flew out of the window. Could it be that this Demon, called Goliath was attacking me solely to make me afraid?

Premise

2 Timothy 4:7 – I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Did Paul say that he had “won the battle?” Was he beheaded shortly after writing this? Could it be that you do not have to win this battle, or every battle, you just need to “fight the good fight”.

Pick me!

I was the second from the smallest kid in my class in school. Whenever they would pick teams Larry and I were usually left over because they did not want small kids to be on their team. Once when I was left out of a football game I was watching from the sidelines. Both teams were in the huddles, but they had left the football unguarded in the middle of the field. So I saw my chance to run with the ball and I did it! Then I was tackled by both teams! I knew that I could not win but I did get to hold the ball!

Goliath was real

We now know that Goliath was a popular name in Gath. They are excavating the area and have even found a stadium that appears to have been held up by two columns as in the story of Sampson. Goliath might of even had a close relative by the same name.

Goliath ties together many Old Testament stories.

Remember the story about the 12 spies? They said that there were giants in the land and they were so big that the Israelites were like “Grasshoppers in their sight”. They also said that “all the people” were big.

Numbers 13:32-33 "There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight."

Deuteronomy 9:2 "a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?’

These Giants were driven out of the land by Joshua - Joshua 15:13-14 Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak from there: Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak.

Then David appears to be the first to kill one of the giants.

1 Samuel 17:4-11, 40-50 And a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. (Eastons: 10 feet tall)

Why did David pick up 5 stones?

According to 2 Samuel chapter 21, Goliaths had 4 giant relatives

2 Samuel 21:16-22 Then Ishbi–Benob, who was one of the sons of the giant, the weight of whose bronze spear was three hundred shekels, who was bearing a new sword, thought he could kill David.

2 Samuel 21:18 Now it happened afterward that there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gob. Then Sibbechai the Hushathite killed Saph, who was one of the sons of the giant.

2 Samuel 21:19 Again there was war at Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaare–Oregim the Bethlehemite killed the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.

2 Samuel 21:20 Yet again there was war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty–four in number; and he also was born to the giant.

2 Samuel 21:22 These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

Conclusions from David and Goliath

1. Fight the fight – Not guaranteed the victory

2. Size of the weapon does not matter (sling versus spear – Spear thrower 10 bails of hey)

3. Whose side you are on (Example of girl on bridge in lion witch and wardrobe)

There are “Goliaths” in our lives today. What Goliaths are you dealing with?

Fear

Alcohol

Drugs

Porn

Smoking

How to deal with the “Goliaths” in our lives

1. Run away – Nightmares as a child, trying to run away, woke up with missing sheets

2. Play with him – Many “Lines in the sand”

3. Take him on – Face up to him, most of the time he backs down!

Lies of the devil

You lost last time why try again?

You can only go just so far, and will not make it any further.

You cannot win, so why bother to fight?

Ignore the problem and it will go away.

Conclusion

You do not have to win this battle. You just have to fight the good fight. God will win the war.

Challenge - Pick up a stone, and set it somewhere as a reminder to fight the good fight!

Conclusion from Tamale

So we continued on to Tamale. Once in Tamale there was a Video Bible School graduation service. The church was packed to standing room with people watching outside the windows and doors. The churches in Tamale had been very skeptical about us but now there were 36 pastors at the graduation service that wanted a Video Bible School in their church!

Weather.com is toast, trashed maybe even hacked?

2011-10-25T17:12:00.004-04:00

*** UPDATE *** turns out this is a local problem perhaps with our Netgear UTM10 firewall. Computers connected ahead of the firewall have no problem with www.weather.com.

For some reason www.weather.com is not working and no one is reporting on the problem? When you try to go to their web page in Firefox you get a "Toast Notification". In Internet Exploiter it is just plain messed up.

Here is what it looks like in Internet Exploiter:

Brace for the biggest solar storm yet from this solar cycle.

2011-10-24T17:08:00.000-04:00

First look at the Northern Lights prediction note the dark red:

Here is a chart that more clearly shows the incoming solar storm:

All this and more is available at: http://www.electricquakes.com/

Ford Windstar Intermittent starting problem

2011-10-24T12:58:00.005-04:00

My van has been having issues starting for a few weeks. Then it left me sit, fortunately at home, but the battery ran down while I was trying to start it. Even with a battery charger it would still not start. Someone told me to change the gas filter so I did that. When changing the filter I noticed that there was no fuel pressure so someone told me to change the fuel pump relay. That did not fix the problem either.

Then I got out the manuals and started finding out how the van fuel system works. When you turn the key it turns on the fuel pump or 1 to 2 seconds to prime the system. Soon I discovered that if you listen for the fuel pump when you turn the key you can easily hear it running. If the fuel pump is running then the van will start and runs just fine. So next I put a meter on the safety switch that is in the back of the van that is wired up in series with the pump. It is connected just before power goes down to the pump. According to the meter there was no power there so I thought that the problem was not the pump. After another week of fiddling with the van I discovered that connecting a beeper to check for power to the pump was a better solution. Once I installed a beeper I could tell that the fuel pump was always getting power, but it was not always running, so the problem was the fuel pump.

Along the way I redid all of the ground connections in the engine compartment. Here are the left side grounds. The PCM ground is behind the silver part of the AC system. I added star washers to all of the grounds.

Ford Windstar Grounds

Here are the grounds on the right side. The battery ground was hidden under the plastic until I cut it away. It was in bad shape and I thought I had found the problem, but it did not help at all.

Ford Windstar Grounds

How to use SQl to fix all records in Wordpress

2011-10-21T12:58:00.001-04:00

Ever discover that you need to change all records in a Wordpress database. Recently I needed to add a "/" to every record, so I used PHP Admin and a SQL command to make that change.

E-Yama 17JN1 LCD Monitor repair

2011-10-18T17:03:00.000-04:00

The E-Yama 17JN1 monitor is easy to fix. First remove the cover around the power and VGA cables, it has 6 snaps and is a little hard to unsnap. Then remove 4 screws and the base stand is detached. Remove 1 screw and unsnap the back cover, some catches may break.

Once Inside replace the 2 capacitors in the red box in the picture. Test it out and put it back together. It has a nice bright picture

My opinion on Occupy Wall Street Demands

2011-10-12T17:17:00.002-04:00

I have read some stuff on Occupy Wall Street and I do not see a clear goal, or objective.
So Here are some of my suggestions of what needs to be done to fix this country, besides just simply throwing out the current government and replacing it with one that is "of the people by the people and FOR the people".

1. BALANCE THE BUDGET
Stop wanton wasteful government spending. According to the pie chart found on the IRS web site last year 40% of government money came from borrowing! And according to the same chart 40% was spent on "social spending". Balance the stinking budget! Stop the government from "social engineering". CEASE AND DESIST wasting our children's money on totally stupid programs!

2. REPEAL STUPID LAWS
Repeal laws that just make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Most laws coming out of Washington have the exact opposite effect of what they were supposedly written for. They must be repealed and cancelled! For example repeal the HMO law that created HMO's and caused medical insurance to go through the roof!
Here is a s site listing laws that need to be fixed: http://coupmedia.org/occupywallstreet/occupy-wall-street-official-demands-2009

3. NUKE THE TAX CODE
Nuke the IRS and start over. Some sort of flat tax would be ideal. Eliminate tax breaks for mortgages, and other such nonsense. Eliminate non-tax taxes like SS and medicare unless they actually go to where they are supposed to go.. LOL.

After saying that I realize these things will never happen so we should just gather around and watch the USA go down the tubes as a hopeless case.

Video Standards have gone crazy

2011-10-12T12:07:00.001-04:00

Today someone asked me for help on setting up their monitor. I discovered to my dismay that there are now way too many video resolution standards. This chart is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector_Video_Standards2.svg

Now try to navigate your way through that mass? The monitor in question was WSXGA+ compatible, but actually it was1440 by 900. And here I thought they were all supposed to be HD 1080 or 1920 by 1080.

Viewsonic VG700 repair

2011-10-10T12:07:00.002-04:00

The viewsonic VG700 has the usual two capacitors in the inverter problem. However it is tricky to get it apart. First snap out the control panel at the bottom front of the monitor. Remove 2 screws and slide the bezel up then out.

Next you remove the four screws and gently pry the LCD screen forward and out of the RF shield. Be careful of the cables as they are all barely long enough and will not unplug on their own.

The faulty capacitors are in the middle of that circuit board on the right, they are bulging and oozing.

AOL Captcha Hell

2011-10-05T12:04:00.001-04:00

When they make me head of Internet security, I have three changes that I will make:

1. BAN JAVA and thus eliminate over 90% of all web viruses.
2. Require logging in before being allowed to send email.
3. Delete all web sites that have a Captcha on them anywhere.

Come on Internet security people these captcha things are all a total waste of time........

OK so I am upset, I spent several hours in "Captcha Hell" trying to set up an AOL IM account. Sure you say just click on the "Play sound" button? That does not work either. I went to YouTube and the sound for the computer is working just fine. I downloaded the latest 30+ megabytes of Quick Time but there is still no Captcha sound. I thought "Quick Time" had died a miserable death a long time ago and was buried right next to "Real Audio"? Who on earth uses Quick Time and for what reason would anyone want to use such an archaic format?? Back at AOL IM, I must have created a half a dozen accounts that I cannot access because it never accepted my information and it never asked for the alternate email account to "send a password reset" to, so no that feature does not work either. Has anyone at AOL ever tried to create an AOL account? They would quickly discover "AOL Hell" its right next door to "Captcha Hell".

Good thing no one is asking me to be the head of Internet security, I would work on actually making the Internet safe again. As I often say:
"The Internet used to be like going to the library to read a book, now its like walking through a mine field". -Bob Davis

Really Static Versus WP Super Cache Revisited

2011-09-29T12:59:00.002-04:00

We stopped using Really Static after upgrading to WordPress 3. However I have re installed it and it is working with WordPress 3.2

We switched back because Alexa said it was taking 2.3 seconds to load a page and sometimes it would even take longer than that. I could tell that web pages were loading faster immediately! Everything seems much faster with Really Static! I will post some graphs as soon as Google updates their web stats to reflect the change in caching programs.

More WordPress attacks, some sort of CSS attack?

2011-09-21T12:59:00.005-04:00

Notice below that Wordpress is in four of the top 10 Vulnerabilities that are currently under attack!

Note below that there is some sort of CSS attack going on against WordPress sites. I do not know what the CSS vulnerability is that they are trying to exploit. I wonder if going to a plug-in like "Really Static" would be advisable as it hides the Wordpress installation and serves normal HTML files instead?

More webmaster attacks

2011-09-20T13:00:00.003-04:00

Monday morning I was greeted with about 80 emails from webmaster to myself. I was excited to see what I had written to myself! Needless to say it was all spam!

I made a few changes in Cpanel and they have all gone away. I decided to set it so that company email can only come from our companies IP address. So then here is my number 2 change that I will make when I become "web security czar", you should NEVER allow email to be sent without first logging in! Number 1 would be to BAN JAVA!

More Wordpress Attacks going on! Using TimThumb vulnerability

2011-09-14T17:06:00.002-04:00

They are really going after the TimThumb vulnerability. There were over 80 attempts to hack one site using the vulnerability this month! I wrote my own version last year, and this year I discovered that TimThumb was still installed so I deleted it as we are not using it.

Here is another strange "insert strange data" attack going on. It looks like a long string of garbage but I am sure it means something to someone?

Now I am thinking of not using WordPress or using a "static" version of WordPress to avoid all vulnerabilities. The biggest problem with totally static web pages is that the search function would not work, it has to have a dynamic response. You can use Google site search to get about the same results.

GoDaddy versus HostGator as a web hosting company

2011-09-14T12:59:00.002-04:00

Recently I set up a web site on GoDaddy. After using Hostgator and similar cPanel web hosting services, I have to say that GoDaddy is much more difficult to navigate and set up. I can create a web site and email accounts on HostGator in my sleep.

GoDaddy requires that you navigate through many screens to do almost anything, with HostGator you can do almost anything you want right from the Control Panel. This picture is the top 2/3's of the Control panel.

Why are we loosing our Kids?

2011-09-13T12:57:00.003-04:00

Why our kids are leaving the church:

1. We tell them Santa is for real
2. We tell them the Easter Bunny is for real
3. We tell them the Tooth Fairy is for real
4. Then we try to tell them God is for real?

We should tell them:

1. Santa died 1200 years ago and Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ.
The wise men brought the first gifts.
2. Easter is to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.
3. The tooth fairy is to convince them to remove loose teeth.
4. That a bolt of lighting hitting a mud puddle produces life is a Really Big fairy tale.

Another triple inbound Solar Storm!

2011-09-09T12:54:00.002-04:00

There is another triple inbound Solar Storm! Just like last month. Some suspect that this solar storm has something to do with the California power outage. This image below is from the POES satellite as seen at electricquakes.com.

This impact started on Friday September 9, and there are some readings that are very unusual. The picture below is the solar wind over the last seven days.

America's Got Talent TV show Idea

2011-09-07T12:59:00.007-04:00

I have an idea for America's Got Talent. Take several of my devices and fire them all off at once, with some music in the background. Here is what my setup might look like.

The first thing I am going to make is a double headed Tesla coil. I have two 2 foot by 4 inch coil forms for the secondary. My old "big coil" used a three inch pipe. Here is a picture showing the new forms compared to the old ones.

I have made a new top load with 4 inch flexible duct glued to an aluminum pie plate.

Then I will make my washer launcher into a double headed model to launch two washers in rapid sequence. I may add LED's to the washers to make them look like UFO's as they fly through the air. Here is a picture of me making the new flat coil for the launcher.

Next in my vertical can crusher. I have two 15uf at 5KV capacitors to add to it, they will replace the Defibrillator capacitor, they are 4 times the size of the defibrillator capacitor. Its going to be hard to fit them in the case!

Also new is the idea of adding some soda can launchers. They will use some 3 inch PVC pipes to fit the soda cans.

More WordPress Hacking / Attacks going on

2011-09-01T12:58:00.006-04:00

They are at it again, trying to hack Wordpress. Notice that there were over 5,327 log in attempts to 38 successes. We are using LoginLockDown, but its logs show nothing, even when I went into the SQL database. I am not sure why it does not do a better job of tracking the bogus log in attempts?

Here they are trying to guess the theme and then inject a line of code. Note the addition of "/wp-content/themes/theme name/temp/lots of garbage".

More Facebook Fake Freind Requests

2011-08-30T12:57:00.002-04:00

They are back at it again. Lots of spam that are actually a virus. If you did not get the August 2011 or the 2010 Yearly invoice then you likely still got the fake Facebook messages as seen below:

If you take a close look at the picture above you will see that the link was blocked by the firewall.

How to and why disable IPv6

2011-08-26T17:09:00.001-04:00

In July the world quietly turned on IPv6. We quickly started having strange network problems. I have known for quite a while the IPV6 is a hole through your firewall. A VERY BIG hole at that. It is designed that way so that officials can trace you even if you are connecting through your neighbors wireless connection. Well today a news story came out about some of the known the problems with IPv6. It will be years before IPV6 (and windows 7 for that matter) is safe to use. The good news is that if you stay with XP you are safe for now.....

"Experts are reporting a rise in the number of attacks that take advantage of known vulnerabilities of IPv6, a next-generation addressing scheme that is being adopted across the Internet. IPv6 replaces the Internet's main communications protocol, which is known as IPv4." That is from http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/security/scariest-ipv6-attack-scenarios

So you ask how do your turn off IPV6? Just go into the network properties and get the properties of your network card and disable it right? NOPE, not a chance. OK so you Google Microsoft (do not use Bing it never finds what you want) and find how to use regedit to turn it off at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852 Now you can breathe a sigh of relief. Not so quick, according to "The Dude" its still going full blast, its not even slowing down.......

Think about it, if they designed IPV6 to trace every Internet connection through multiple firewalls, are they going to make a way to turn it off? I doubt it. But here is a fudge fix. remember back when you looked up the network properties of your network card and turned off IPV6? There was an IP associated with it. Go to your firewall and block that IP from ever accessing the Internet. I will not guarantee that will work either but I do not know of any other method.

Time to evacuate New York City

2011-08-25T09:44:00.010-04:00

Well, as I have said before "If you do these things the land will vomit you out!" (Leviticus 18) Irene is set to do a direct hit on NYC flooding the subways and destroying thousands of homes on Long Island.

They are already calling this "NYC's Katrina" on some web sites.

Here is a picture from www.wunderground.com showing where Irene is expected to go.

In New York City around 90% (maybe more, I do not know the exact number) of the people do not have cars, they take the subway. The subway is mostly underground and it will fill up with flood waters and take weeks to repair. Their electrical infrastructure in mostly underground as well. Transformers are filled with oil, but the connections to those transformers will be covered in mud. Mud conducts electricity (as well as dirty water) so it will be weeks before the electricity can be turned back on. The eastern 1/2 of Long Island may be wiped clean destroying thousands of homes. This will be the biggest disaster since Katrina.

*** UPDATE ***

NYC escaped the direct impact of Irene, but the rest of western NY got hit with flooding.

Now its Tropical Storm Lee for "back to back" natural disasters. When is enough, enough?

Earthquake Prediction Improved

2011-08-19T17:16:00.005-04:00

I have been working on improving my earthquake prediction device and I am adding a MMA7361 Triple Axis Accelerometer - motion detector too.

The recent changes include changing the UGN3503's to be differential inputs to the op amps. This gives twice the output swing per change in magnetic field. Using a digital VOM it is now .1 volts for a North to South reversal. That translates to about 20 on the Arduino serial data stream.

This change reduces the inputs to the Arduino to N-S, E-W and U-D, or three inputs. The other three inputs will come from the MMA7361. I am still working on getting that working.

Here are pictures of the MMA7361 board being tested on a Arduino Shield. The wiring is very simple to do.

Dealing with Fleas

2011-08-16T17:13:00.003-04:00

Once again I am dealing with fleas.

I have two rules for fleas:
First - Act quickly
Second - Be patient

You must act fast they multiply by thousands every day. Give the pet a flea bath ASAP. There is a "natural" flea soap that works very well. In fact just giving the pet a bath helps. I discovered some flea eggs and put them in the sink. Whenever they came in contact with water they dissolved!

So just giving your pet a bath will help. Keep him as wet as possible for 5 minutes, the eggs dissolve slowly. I remember giving someones pet a flea bath a year a go and the water looked bloody, I thought I had made the poor cat bleed, but it turns out that dissolving the flea eggs turns the water red, so if it turns red you have a major flea problem!

Also a wet vac of the carpet will help kill them critters. IMO do not waste your time on smoke bombs, they are almost worthless against fleas. Besides water, use a carpet flea spray or just rip out the carpet and put in a tile or wood floor.

If you let your pets climb on the furniture then you will need to wet vac, flea spray, or toss the furniture too. After the wet vac and or spray, cover the furniture with something so the eggs falling off your pet will not reinfect the furniture. Wash the furniture cover every few days to kill any new flea eggs.

Then be patient, these critters keep hatching for a month or more!

Here is a quick update, after using a flea collar and still finding a flea or two we switched to the drops that you put down the pets back. We were hoping they would be more effective. After a few days I had to give the dog a bath and found about 10 dead fleas in the water! The drops seem to be less effective than the flea collar! Next I am going to see if there are more effective flea collars out there, and we are going to use lemon juice as a spray under his legs to help get rid of fleas. We are also going to try to give him a little garlic every day to see if that helps too. Its been about a month and we are still fighting the battle!

3LW 8108 or SC8108 Network Cable Tester

2011-08-15T13:00:00.003-04:00

As promised I will tell you about my experiences with the 8108 or SC8108 Network Cable Tester. I bought it on Ebay for around $50, that is a far cry from the price of some cable testers!

The first feature that the seller did not list is that the remote beeps when it is connected to the right cable. Basically you install the remote in the persons office that you want to check the cable. Then you go to the switch, see what light is out, and plug that cable into the tester. The remote will then beep to let you know you have the correct cable. You can then run two tests on the cable. The tests will tell you if the cable is wired correctly and the length of the network cable. I had several cables that were not wired correctly, but two of them, after looking at the map, were wired as crossovers. That used to be the norm when running from switch to switch.

Basically I give the 3LW 8108 or or SC8108network cable tester two thumbs up.

Was there anything I was disappointed with? Yes, for one thing if you leave the computer plugged in at the other end, then the only test that you can run is the network cable length test. That is helpful to let you know how long it is to get a good idea as to who's office it goes to. However, with some network cards, it will come back saying that there is a "short" in the cable, when there is actually nothing wrong with the cable. This problem has something to do with the network card at the far end.

The IRS borrows 40% of its income!

2011-08-12T13:00:00.005-04:00

I got this pie chart from irs.gov:

I was looking to see if the SS taxes were still making up over 40% of government income. It turns out they are down to only 25%! But if you take out the 40% of borrowed income then the SS Taxes still make up over 40% of "actual" government income. That is to prove that almost half of their income is from people making less than $250K. In fact any income over $110K is now exempt from the SS tax! More proof they tax the poor to pay the rich....

But take this a step further, how many years can I borrow half of my income before the interest on that borrowing exceeds my income??? The same thing applies to the IRS. This borrowing without limits is totally insane!! They must immediately balance the budget, and that balancing must not only include paying the interest on the debt, but the debt should be paid down at about 10% per year, 5% per year as a minimum!!

Also note that "Social Programs" and "community development" make up 35% of government spending. This must immediately "Cease and Desist". The law does not allow the feds to spend money on these!

Inbound Solar storm / CME

2011-08-04T17:22:00.000-04:00

There has been three back to back solar storms and they are due to hit earth tomorrow, Friday August 5, 2011. Here is the NASA charts showing the storms starting to impact us:

The Dude network monitor

2011-08-01T13:00:00.002-04:00

Once again "the Dude" has come to my rescue. This program is great at finding network problems. This picture shows a very unstable network. Everything should be green (working fine) or red (turned off). The orange indicates that they are having issues. This is a screen capture of the network status when the cable to the main server was bad, It failed to work at 1 gig and was unreliable at 100 M/s. The solution was to replace the old network cable with a category 5E cable. The old cable was not connected correctly.

Since having that problem I have ordered a network cable tester on EBay that promises to be able to detect if the pairs are connected correctly. I will post more on that once the tester arrives.

New York State is in for trouble

2011-07-21T12:58:00.005-04:00

Well I have kept my mouth shut for a while, but I am outraged about this New York 'gay marriage' thing. Remember what happened in Florida? In New Orleans? In California? Is that kind of disaster headed for NY?

If my dreams amount to anything, I have seen back to back 'natural' disasters. I have seen New York City and Rochester in ruins. I have seen the beginnings of the 'Second Civil War'. Out of the ashes will come a new government not controlled by special interests, not taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, a government that is actually 'of the people' not 'of the elite'!

BTW I have a history of accurate dreams, three times i dreamed of a jet crashing into a building, in 1998 I wrote down that "I saw a plane rocking as if the pilot did not know what he was doing then it turned into a building, debris was falling everywhere and people were running form the debris."

While I am at it here is the solution for the debt crisis:

Just dissolve the USA and then divide it up into three smaller countries. They would be the North, the South and the West. You could call them the Yankee States (YSA) the Confederate States (CFA) and the Western States (WSA). Since the USA would no longer exist there would be no need to pay back the debt, that country is not there anymore! Otherwise at 1% interest, 14 trillion is 140 billion in interest a year. Do you have that kind of money? What if that climbs to 2 or 3%?

Network wiring issues resolved

2011-07-18T17:05:00.001-04:00

Recently I resolved an issue that has been around for years where I work. A year ago when we upgraded the switch in the service department two computers could no longer connect to the network. I chased the problem down to their network cables and we replaced them.

When we moved the shipping computers to building 3, I reused old network cables and they had problems connecting to the network and the entire network had issues (The Netgear firewall called it a ‘UDP Flood’ and tried to shut it down). When I ran new network cables to those offices the problems went away.

When I tried to connect Building 4 to the network once again we had issues and to ‘fix’ it I told the computer to only connect at 10 Megs (Not the normal 100 megs/second) and the problems appeared to go away. The correct solution would have been to run a new network cable to building 4 but that would take too much time, because it is a buried cable! In an attempt to make a quick fix I tried just changing the connectors on the existing cable and that fixed the problem!

After studying the faulty connectors I saw that two wires were not in their correct position within the plugs. I have since looked at other connectors where I work and have confirmed that some of the network connectors have their wires in the wrong positions. I have used the ‘568b’ network standard for years and it supports up to 1 gig networking. The main offices are all connected at 1 gig. In the future any network cable that I see that does not conform to either 568a or 568b will be replaced!

Back when I was first running network wires I was told that “any order will work” as long as both ends of the cable are done the same. That was actually true back then but I insisted on finding out what was the correct standard and on only following that standard. To connect reliably at 100 mps requires the correct order, and 1 gig will not work at all without the correct order of the wires.

This is one of the faulty connectors, the blue pair should be in the center, surrounded by the Green or Orange pair.

Just to be clear here is a picture of a correctly wired network connector. Note the blue pair in the center surrounded by the green pair. The orange pair is on the left and the brown pair is on the right.

QSC 1400 Amplifier repair

2011-07-07T07:58:00.005-04:00

I recently purchased a non working QSC 1400 amplifier. A few seconds after being powered on the clipping light comes on. I downloaded the schematic and started checking voltages. The +15 and -15 volt power in one channel measured at pins 4 and 8 of the op amp was only +9 and -15 volts. I traced out the power and found +9 at one end and 0 volts at the other end of a 3.9 volt zener diode.

This picture shows the location of the zener in the schematic;

here is the location on the circuit board:

How to Dominate Web Searches

2011-06-01T17:05:00.002-04:00

How to Dominate Web Searches and Render Google Worthless as well as prevent any negative reviews from ever being seen.

Lets say you own a web site like '1 click money machine' or 'SEO key word analizer' and you want to be number one (to number 1000) in all google search results. First you purchase a thousand or more web sites with any search phrase someone might use to find out more information about you. For example '1 click money machine review', '1 click money machine scam', '1 click money machine ripoff', '1 click money machine for real', etc. Then you fill all of these web sites with an article about 'Becky' who made a fortune using your system. But to make Google happy you run the article through a word re-arranger/scrambler that substitutes alternate words but keeps the key word phrases the same. Then you upload these rearranged articles to your 1000 web sites and each one of the web sites has a link like 'for more information....' that then links back to your real web site.

There you have it, you have now prevented any negative reviews from ever appearing in the search engines, destroyed any competition, and rendered Google completely worthless. If you automate this process and sell it for $39 a copy you will be filthy rich. Only problem is that it has already been done about a million times over. Somehow, some day Google will fix the problem. Call it "Panda II". All the last fix did was to detect that all of the inbound sites were identical. So to fix that, the web spammers have added programs to re-arrange the articles so they are not identical.

Wordpress and Twenty Ten Bugs

2011-05-31T17:08:00.000-04:00

As Wordpress gains more features it is also gaining more bugs! I am getting annoyed with some of the bugs as they do not make a lot of sense. The most annoying one is that if some text is bold and you change the font color the font color remains black in the editor screen, but it has the correct color in the actual web page.

Here are there bugs I have found so far.

1. The items picture sometimes replaces the header picture. This was meant to be a feature, avoid using large images that may get cropped and used to replace the header image or delete a few lines of code to prevent this from happening.

2. 'Strong' overrides 'Font Color=' in editor (Text appears to be black), but it appears correctly on actual web pages.

3. 'Remove featured image' does not work unless you go into 'media' and delete the image. Otherwise the thumbnail image will be the one you tried to remove.

Wordpress and Twenty Ten Header Image Bug Fixed!

2011-05-26T16:55:00.002-04:00

Houston we have a problem! There is a bug whereby randomly the header image changes to be an image from the item or post that you are currently viewing. What causes it is some code in Twenty Ten that looks for an image that has the same dimensions as your header image. If it finds one it will then make that into the header image.

The solution is to edit the Twenty Ten Header file (header.php) to remove the entire PHP IF, ELSE and ENDIF statement as can be seen in the image below. With this modification the header image will not change from the one that you have set up as your header image.

On the other hand if you want to take advantage of this code you just need to make images the same size as your header and include them in your post. Actually for some reason that sometimes happens because every now and then it crops the image to be the right size. I have not yet determined why that happens.

Silent Radio LED Sign Part 4

2011-05-16T13:00:00.011-04:00

There are at least three solutions for the brightness problem.

One solution lays in the cathode drivers. There are brown resistor arrays consisting of 100 ohm resistors in series with the cathodes of the LED arrays. They can be bypassed with 10 ohm resistors. The arrays go every other pin so the replacement resistors can be jumpered in on the back side of the board from pin 1 to 2 then next resistor goes from pin 3 to pin 4 , etc. You would need to do this like 90 times to fix the brightness problem that way.

Another solution lays in the Anode drivers. If you add a ULN2003, then a PNP driver like the TIP125 you can then deliver much more voltage to the anodes. With the Tip120's there is 5 volts on the collectors, 5 volts to the base but only 4 volts is delivered to the anodes of the LED arrays because of the Base-Emitter voltage drop. Even if you increase the power supply to 8 volts the NPN drives still only send 4 volts on the the LED arrays. I tried using a PNP driver and i tried using FET's to no avail as long as the power supply is still at 5 volts. So you need to change the driver configuration to a ULN2003 to a 1 k resistor to a TIP125 driver. The emitter goes to a 8 or 9 volt at 2 amps power supply and the collector goes to the LED arrays. That also means that the driver transistors cannot be on a common heat sink.

Then I came up with what might be the best solution, a 4017! It runs off 9 volts and can connect to the Arduino for reset and clock. By not using output 1 of the 4017 a reset can be used to blank the display then we clock the 4017 to the row that you want to light up. I have wired it up and am working on the necessary software changes.

Here is the schematic:

Here is a picture of the controller with the 4017 added. So far the maximum operating voltage is 6 volts at 7 volts it stops working for some reason? Problem solved, it was a bad AC adapter, it runs fine on 9 volts at 2 amps. If you try 10 volts the shift registers stop because the clock and data levels are too low.

To get it to fit back into the aluminum cabinet I had to move the Arduino down below the brown circuit board. Otherwise it scrapes the top of the aluminum and shorts out.

Here is a video of it running.

Here is the code to make it work with the 4017. Note that I turned the sign upside down so the greeen arrays are on the left for this version of the code.

//**************************************************************//
// Name    : Silent Radio Driver with 4017                    //
// Author : Bob Davis                                         //
// Date    : 20 June, 2011                                    //
// Version : 1.0                                               //
// Based on work of Hari Wiguna - http://g33k.blogspot.com/    //
//****************************************************************
// Pins for the 4017 Row select
int RowReset = 3;
int RowClock = 2;
// Pins for the Column shift registers
int clockPin = 4;
int dataPin = 5;

// Set the pins to output to the circuit
void setup() {
pinMode(clockPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(dataPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RowReset, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RowClock, OUTPUT);
}

//=== B I T M A P ===
//Bits in this array represents one LED of the matrix
// 8 is # of rows, 7 is # of LED matrix we have
byte bitmap[8][12]; // Change the 12 to however many matrices you want to use.
int numZones = sizeof(bitmap) / 8;
// I will refer to each group of 8 columns (represented by one matrix) as a Zone.
int maxZoneIndex = numZones-1;
int numCols = numZones * 8;

//=== F O N T ===
// Font courtesy of aspro648
// http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1203747843/22
// The @ will display as space character.
byte alphabets[][5] = {
{0,0,0,0,0},
{31, 40, 72, 40, 31},
{127, 73, 73, 73, 54},
{62, 65, 65, 65, 34},
{127, 65, 65, 34, 28},
{127, 73, 73, 65, 65},
{127, 72, 72, 72, 64},
{62, 65, 65, 69, 38},
{127, 8, 8, 8, 127},
{0, 65, 127, 65, 0},
{2, 1, 1, 1, 126},
{127, 8, 20, 34, 65},
{127, 1, 1, 1, 1},
{127, 32, 16, 32, 127},
{127, 48, 24, 12, 127},
{62, 65, 65, 65, 62},
{127, 72, 72, 72, 48},
{62, 65, 69, 66, 61},
{127, 72, 76, 74, 49},
{50, 73, 73, 73, 38},
{64, 64, 127, 64, 64},
{126, 1, 1, 1, 126},
{124, 2, 1, 2, 124},
{126, 1, 6, 1, 126},
{99, 20, 8, 20, 99},
{96, 16, 15, 16, 96},
{67, 69, 73, 81, 97},
};

//=== F U N C T I O N S ===
// This routine takes whats in the array and display it on the matrix
void RefreshDisplay()
{
for (int row = 0; row < 8; row++) {
    //-- turn off the display --
//    if (row==1) {
      digitalWrite (RowReset, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (RowReset, LOW);
//    }
    //-- Shift out to each matrix (zone is 8 columns represented by one matrix)
    for (int zone = maxZoneIndex; zone >= 0; zone--) {
      shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, MSBFIRST, bitmap[row][zone]);
    }
    //-- turn the current row on --
    for (int rowclk = row; rowclk > 0; rowclk--) {
      digitalWrite (RowClock, LOW);
      digitalWrite (RowClock, HIGH);
    }
    //-- Wait a little bit to get more brightness --
    delayMicroseconds(1000);
}
}

// Converts row and colum to actual bitmap bit and turn it off/on
void Plot(int col, int row, bool isOn)
{
int zone = col / 8;
int colBitIndex = col % 8;
byte colBit = 1 << colBitIndex;
if (isOn)
    bitmap[row][zone] = bitmap[row][zone] | colBit;
else
    bitmap[row][zone] = bitmap[row][zone] & (~colBit);
}

// Plot each character of the message one column at a time, updated the display, shift bitmap left.
void AlphabetSoup()
{
char msg[] = " ARDUINO LED SIGN ";
for (int charIndex=0; charIndex < (sizeof(msg)-1); charIndex++)
{
    int alphabetIndex = msg[charIndex] - '@';
    if (alphabetIndex < 0) alphabetIndex=0;
    //-- Draw one character of the message --
    for (int col = 0; col < 6; col++)
    {
      for (int row = 0; row < 8; row++)
      {
        // Set the pixel to the alphabet for columns 0 thru 4
        bool isOn = 0;
        if (col<5) isOn = bitRead( alphabets[alphabetIndex][col], 7-row ) == 1;
        Plot( numCols-1, row, isOn);
      }
      //-- The more times you repeat this loop, the slower we would scroll --
      for (int refreshCount=0; refreshCount < 20; refreshCount++)
        RefreshDisplay();
      //-- Shift the bitmap one column to left --
      for (int row=0; row<8; row++)
      {
        for (int zone=0; zone < numZones; zone++)
        {
          // This right shift would show a left scroll on display.
          bitmap[row][zone] = bitmap[row][zone] >> 1;
          // Roll over lowest bit from the next zone as highest bit of this zone.
          if (zone < maxZoneIndex) bitWrite(bitmap[row][zone], 7, bitRead(bitmap[row][zone+1],0));
        }
      }
    }
}
}
//=== L O O P ===
void loop() {
AlphabetSoup();
}

Silent Radio LED Sign Part 3

2011-05-04T12:07:00.012-04:00

Its up and running! I am cleaning up the code some before posting it here. This is what it looks like with the Arduino all connected up. All it takes is the 7 driver transistors to interface it to the sign.

The biggest problem now is that the display is too dim. The problem relates to the fact that I am using 5 volts at 2.5 amps to power everything. The Positive Row drivers should have about 7 or 8 volts on them. The code was borrowed from http://g33k.blogspot.com/2010/02/arduino-56x8-scrolling-led-matrix.html and heavily modified to work with the silent radio sign. I am awaiting his permission to post it here.

I used the serial out test program that is available on the Arduino web site to make a simple test program to check everything out. With that serial output test program you should see lines top to bottom representing the binary values of 1 to 255, they repeat across the sign each 8 LED's has a binary number that is one lower that the one to its left.

Here is the video of it working on YouTube:

Here is the schematic, I am currently running the TIP120 Transistors on 5 volts because if you use 8 volts they get too hot, but the display gets brighter. Another solution might be to use an IC or FET's instead.

Here is the test code to make it all work:

//************************************************************//
// Name    : Silent Radio Driver                                //
// Author : Bob Davis                                             //
// Date    : 25 April, 2011                                        //
// Version : 1.0                                                 //
// Based on the work of Hari Wiguna - http://g33k.blogspot.com/    //
//*************************************************************
// Pins for the row drivers
int row1Pin = 1;
int row2Pin = 2;
int row3Pin = 3;
int row4Pin = 4;
int row5Pin = 5;
int row6Pin = 6;
int row7Pin = 7;

// Pins for column shift registers
int clockPin = 8;
int dataPin = 9;

// Set the pins to output to the circuit
void setup() {
pinMode(clockPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(dataPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(row1Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(row2Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(row3Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(row4Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(row5Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(row6Pin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(row7Pin, OUTPUT);
}

//=== B I T M A P ===
//Bits in this array represents one LED of the matrix
// 8 is # of rows, 7 is # of LED matrix we have
byte bitmap[8][12]; // Change the 7 to however many matrices you want to use.
int numZones = sizeof(bitmap) / 8;
// I will refer to each group of 8 columns (represented by one matrix) as a Zone.
int maxZoneIndex = numZones-1;
int numCols = numZones * 8;

//=== F O N T ===
// Font courtesy of aspro648
// http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1203747843/22
// First char is @, next is A, B, etc. Only lower case, no symbols.
// The @ will display as space character.
byte alphabets[][5] = {
{0,0,0,0,0},
{31, 36, 68, 36, 31},
{127, 73, 73, 73, 54},
{62, 65, 65, 65, 34},
{127, 65, 65, 34, 28},
{127, 73, 73, 65, 65},
{127, 72, 72, 72, 64},
{62, 65, 65, 69, 38},
{127, 8, 8, 8, 127},
{0, 65, 127, 65, 0},
{2, 1, 1, 1, 126},
{127, 8, 20, 34, 65},
{127, 1, 1, 1, 1},
{127, 32, 16, 32, 127},
{127, 32, 16, 8, 127},
{62, 65, 65, 65, 62},
{127, 72, 72, 72, 48},
{62, 65, 69, 66, 61},
{127, 72, 76, 74, 49},
{50, 73, 73, 73, 38},
{64, 64, 127, 64, 64},
{126, 1, 1, 1, 126},
{124, 2, 1, 2, 124},
{126, 1, 6, 1, 126},
{99, 20, 8, 20, 99},
{96, 16, 15, 16, 96},
{67, 69, 73, 81, 97},
};

//=== F U N C T I O N S ===
// This routine takes whatever we've setup in the bitmap array and display it on the matrix
void RefreshDisplay()
{
for (int row = 0; row < 8; row++) {
    //-- turn off the display --
    digitalWrite(row1Pin, LOW);
    digitalWrite(row2Pin, LOW);
    digitalWrite(row3Pin, LOW);
    digitalWrite(row4Pin, LOW);
    digitalWrite(row5Pin, LOW);
    digitalWrite(row6Pin, LOW);
    digitalWrite(row7Pin, LOW);
    //-- Shift out to each matrix (zone is 8 columns represented by one matrix)
    for (int zone = maxZoneIndex; zone >= 0; zone--) {
      shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, MSBFIRST, bitmap[row][zone]);
    }

    //-- turn the current row on --
    if (row == 1) digitalWrite (row1Pin, HIGH);
    if (row == 2) digitalWrite (row2Pin, HIGH);
    if (row == 3) digitalWrite (row3Pin, HIGH);
    if (row == 4) digitalWrite (row4Pin, HIGH);
    if (row == 5) digitalWrite (row5Pin, HIGH);
    if (row == 6) digitalWrite (row6Pin, HIGH);
    if (row == 7) digitalWrite (row7Pin, HIGH);

    //-- Wait a little bit to let humans see what we've pushed out onto the matrix --
    delayMicroseconds(500);
}
}

// Converts row and colum to actual bitmap bit and turn it off/on
void Plot(int col, int row, bool isOn)
{
int zone = col / 8;
int colBitIndex = col % 8;
byte colBit = 1 << colBitIndex;
if (isOn)
    bitmap[row][zone] = bitmap[row][zone] | colBit;
else
    bitmap[row][zone] = bitmap[row][zone] & (~colBit);
}

// Plot each character of the message one column at a time, updated the display, shift bitmap left.
void AlphabetSoup()
{
char msg[] = "ARDUINO LED SIGN";
//OLD-for (int charIndex=0; charIndex < (sizeof(msg)-1); charIndex++)
for (int charIndex=(sizeof(msg)-1); charIndex >= 0 ; charIndex--)
{
    int alphabetIndex = msg[charIndex] - '@';
    if (alphabetIndex < 0) alphabetIndex=0;
    //-- Draw one character of the message --
    // Each character is only 5 columns wide
//OLD-for (int col = 0; col < 7; col++)
    for (int col = 5; col >= 0; col--)
    {
      for (int row = 0; row < 8; row++)
      {
        // Set the pixel to the alphabet for columns 0 thru 4
        bool isOn = 0;
        if (col<5) isOn = bitRead( alphabets[alphabetIndex][col], 7-row ) == 1;
        Plot( numCols-1, row, isOn);
      }
      //-- The more times you repeat this loop, the slower we would scroll --
      for (int refreshCount=0; refreshCount < 50; refreshCount++)
        RefreshDisplay();

      //-- Shift the bitmap one column to left --
      for (int row=0; row<8; row++)
      {
//OLD-for (int zone=numZones; zone > 0; zone--)
        for (int zone=0; zone < numZones; zone++)
        {
          // This right shift would show a left scroll on display.
          bitmap[row][zone] = bitmap[row][zone] >> 1;

          // Roll over lowest bit from the next zone as highest bit of this zone.
          if (zone < maxZoneIndex) bitWrite(bitmap[row][zone], 7, bitRead(bitmap[row][zone+1],0));
        }
      }
    }
}
}
//=== L O O P ===
void loop() {
AlphabetSoup();
}

Gateway W350 over heating and turning off

2011-05-03T17:13:00.000-04:00

As you may already know I maintain a few gateway W350's. This one was shutting down every few minutes and running very hot.

Underneath the laptop there is a big cover that comes off with just one screw. Under there there is a cooling fan that comes apart by removing 4 tiny screws. Once the fan is dissembled you might see something like this:

Needless to say cleaning out the heat sink fixed the problem.......

Wordpress Drop Down Menu's with NO programming.

2011-04-28T17:05:00.003-04:00

I have been raving over the new features in Wordpress and I need to clarify that I am talking about Wordpress with the "Twenty Ten 1.2" theme. That theme is installed by default and yesterday I blogged about the built in thumbnail support, today its about the drop down menus. There is a new 'appearance' tab called 'menu' from there you need to select the category from the bottom center select box. You check the boxes you want then select 'add to menu'. A simple menu is that simple. Drop downs require that you offset the drop downs to the right of the main category as can be seen on the right side of the menu 'Parts' tab.

Once that is done click on "Save Menu" and then check to see if ti is all working like you wanted it to work.

Wordpress now features thumbnails!

2011-04-27T17:08:00.003-04:00

The default installation of Wordpress now features thumbnails in the search and category listings. You just have to enable them. The first step is to select 'Gallery' in the new 'format' box. then select 'Set featured image' (all the way at the bottom right corner) to add the image that will be the 'thumbnail' (although it is a bit larger).

Then when the pop up comes up you upload the image like you do for other images but there is a new thing at the bottom called 'Use as featured image' that you need to select.

If you do everything right then there should be images in the search results and the category listings. This is all done without any special coding.

Perhaps tomorrow I will show you how to set up pull down menus also without any coding!

Changing a Ford Radio

2011-04-25T12:11:00.000-04:00

Changing the radio in a Ford is supposed to be as easy as buying the special tools, inserting them and removing the radio.

The tools go in about 1 inch then are pushed outward to deactivate the catches.

Now to be honest I had tried a screwdriver and may have messed up the catches. However my solution was to pull out the drink tray remove the 2 screws behind that and then snap out the surround that goes all the way up around the radio. Above the radio there are two screws that have to be carefully extracted by breaking the plastic around them. Then the whole thing pulls out and you can disable the radio catches from the side and remove the radio. If the plastic is broken carefully it will snap back together and hold everything in place. You can add a thick glue if it is needed.

New battery technology - NiZn 1.6 volt rechargable AA's

2011-04-19T13:05:00.004-04:00

*************************UPDATE***********************
These batteries only lasted about 6 months before one shorted out. Now I cannot even get 2 of them to work! Normal rechargeable batteries last about 2 years.
********************************************************

If you are like me you have a camera that eats batteries like crazy! Someone ended my misery by stealing my Sony HC2 camera. However I also use an Olympus battery eater. Then I came across the Power Genix 1.6 volt NiZn technology rechargeable batteries. To say the least the improvement is amazing. I can do a photo shoot without worrying about killing the batteries and the flash is very fast so I do not have to wait so long between pictures.

The problem is that most cameras do not realize the you are using rechargeable batteries so they insist that the batteries are not good when they have lots of power left in them. That is because normal batteries are 1.5 volts and rechargeable batteries are usually 1.2 volts so they look like almost dead batteries. To be honest Fuji makes a camera that has a setting to work with 1.2 volt batteries, but most cameras do not have that ability. So a 1.6 volt rechargeable solves the problem.

Make sure you get a new charger with the NiZn batteries your old 1.2 volt charger will not do the job!

Western Digital WD2500BEVS laptop 250 gig hard drives are dying!

2011-04-19T12:55:00.002-04:00

Western Digital WD2500BEVS laptop 250 Gig hard drives are dying like crazy. I have had to replace 2 of them in the last week. They are mostly found in Gateway W350 Laptops. I have switched to Seagate hard drives my self.

I then decided to warn a Gateway laptop owner of the problem and he advised me that he had to replace his hard drive 3 times! Hopefully it is under warranty because they die when they are exactly three years old.

Speaking of Seagate they just bought out Samsung's hard drives. That with Western Digital's acquisition of Hitachi really narrows down the manufacturers of hard drives. maybe they see the handwriting on the wall. Solid state hard drives are taking over, no moving parts! However solid state hard drives are still too expensive for me!

There is a lot of shaking goin on!

2011-04-15T13:00:00.005-04:00

The earthquake count is above 1000 a week in the US for the first time in 2 years. That last one coincided with a planetary alignment. This time I do not know of any real alignment, there are some strange ones being reported on YouTube? There are also a lot of solar flares going on too!

California is over 500 earthquakes this week. Over 100 of them are around Hawthorne NV including one bigger one. Maybe we are ramping up to the 'Big One'??

Things are continuing to get 'shakier'. The earthquake per week for California has climbed to 672. Several solar flares hit earth a few days ago. Here is the solar wind recording showing that on the 14 th of April.

I have a newer van!

2011-04-14T12:57:00.004-04:00

My old van was at 162,000 miles. It needed work on the breaks, the steering, the belts, the exhaust, the rear hatch, the engine, new tires and a few other things. So it was time to say good bye. BTW I gave it away.

Here is the 'new to me' van. It has only 99,000 miles. There was a short delay while they installed some recalls and now here it is at our home. Next is to install a CD player and modify it so it gets 25 or more miles per gallon like I did my other vans.

You might notice that its a Ford. I guess I will have to change this category to 'van repairs' instead of 'Dodge van repairs'?

Predicting Earthquakes via Magnetic Field Monitors

2011-04-04T12:08:00.020-04:00

This device has been improved upon. See the improved version.

Back in 2000 I wrote an article for Nuts&Volts magazine about predicting earthquakes via a electromagnetic monitor. Back then the EM sensor rotated through 180 degrees taking readings as it went. That was because EM sensors were expensive. Today they are cheap and I am working on a new device that uses 8 sensors in a circle. I am not sure If I should read them or take their difference and read that?

My article: http://gramlich.net/projects/nuts_and_volts/downloaded/apr00toc.htm
This is a picture of the device that was published in April 2000:

Since my article was written several others have written on this concept. According to Wikipedia there is even something called the VAN method of predicting earthquakes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAN_method

My method is superior because it involves using magnetic field sensors and recording them like the seismometers that are currently in use. I will upload pictures shortly. I am using a Arduino as the recording device then via USB it is sent to the computer. This is an earlier picture of my no-moving-parts setup:

Those are UGN3503 Hall Effect sensors arranged in a circle. The op amps are dual versions like the LF 353. Here is the updated photo. Why do I still have that green LED there on the Arduino?

I came up with this idea over 10 years ago because animals behave strangely before earthquakes. They know something is about to happen. I also know animals can navigate magnetically. If you put baby sea turtles in a pool they will swim east to west. If you add a magnet the will arc around it. That why you can take a dog to California and it will find its way back to NY. Then I discovered that there are many magnetic abnormalities around the fault lines. At that point I added the quartz into the equation and came up with this method of predicting earthquakes. How accurate it can be in predicting earthquakes is yet to be determined.

Here is the Arduino code to read the 6 analog ports:

/*

  AnalogReadSerial6

 Reads an analog input on pin 0-5 & prints the result

 

 This example code is in the public domain.

 */



void setup() {

  Serial.begin(9600);

}



void loop() {

  int sensorValue = analogRead(A0);

  int sensorValue1 = analogRead(A1);

  int sensorValue2 = analogRead(A2);

  int sensorValue3 = analogRead(A3);

  int sensorValue4 = analogRead(A4);

  int sensorValue5 = analogRead(A5);

  Serial.print(sensorValue, DEC);

    Serial.print("\t"); 

  Serial.print(sensorValue1, DEC);

    Serial.print("\t"); 

  Serial.print(sensorValue2, DEC);

    Serial.print("\t"); 

  Serial.print(sensorValue3, DEC);

    Serial.print("\t"); 

  Serial.print(sensorValue4, DEC);

    Serial.print("\t"); 

  Serial.println(sensorValue5, DEC);

  delay (100);

}

This is what you should see on your screen. The OP amps are connected with 1K from the sensors to their negative inputs and 100 K to their outputs for a gain of 100. The positive inputs go to a 2.5 volt reference. They were needed to increase the sensitivity. The Arduino's 6 analog input ports are connected to sensors for North, South, East, West, up, and Down.

The video is on YouTube:

Now I am waiting for someone to give me several million to set up sensors all along the major fault lines to monitor the magnetic fields and see if it is possible to predict earthquakes that way.

Here is the schematic diagram. One of three circuits is shown. The OP amps are powered by what is marked as 'Vin' to the Arduino, that should be about 9 VDC. The gain of the op amps is about 100. The 2.5 volt reference can be two 10K resistors in series, but you might want to add a trimmer to adjust it so that the output of the op amps average around 2.5 volts. With this setup the sensitivity is still on the low side of what it should be.

More on the upcoming 'Second Civil War'

2011-03-30T13:09:00.004-04:00

Back before the last presidential election I had a dream about the second civil war. It was so strong and shocking that I goggled it to find out that someone was saying that if Obama did not win the election there would be a 'second civil war'. Since then I have had many more similar dreams. What bothers me most is that when I watch what is happening in Libya and Egypt, I see that same thing happening here in the USA!

Recently I came across an article full of sarcasm, I think, on the subject of the impending second civil war. It was called 'Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution'. That connected several dots. I have talked on how the government is taxing the poor and giving the money to the rich (bailouts). In fact the government is taxing our kids and our grandchildren to feed the rich. They want to tax the skinny and give that to the fat (Supposed 'fat' tax that only taxes skinny people who refuse to eat 'diet' food). What will they tax next? My favorite old question is what will they do when the taxes reach 100%?

Another problem is the squeezing of the middle class and the new graduates. Taxes have gone up, employees are passing the cost of health insurance on to their employees. Real take home incme has gone down dramatically! My 'take home' pay is the lowest it has been in 20 years! At the same time the cost of everything is going up. Gas for the car has tripled. New car prices have tripled. Food prices are up, rent has doubled and a new home is out of this world. The net result is that no one can afford any 'luxuries' like cable TV, internet, a newer car, etc. So sales have fallen and the end result is a 'recession' that seems to last forever.

You ask me what I think about the TEA party? Well they say 'Taxed Enough Already'. I say we are grossly overtaxed. That is why all of these countries are rebelling. The US needs to immediately drop all taxes (and taxes that are not called taxes) on people making less than $50,000 a year. According to the IRS they account for less than 5% of all taxes, so why not!? The last Tea party was over a 3% tax. You say the problem was just taxation without representation? So if they were allowed to send a representative to England then they would have been glad to pay a 50% tax? What kind of a idiot do you take me to be?

Cleaning up after the Palladium Virus & Cohorts

2011-03-16T17:03:00.000-04:00

A computer recently was infected by the Palladium virus twice. The first time Malware bytes anti-malware and Windows Defender claimed to have it fixed. However after checking the log files I looked in C:\documents and settings\networkservice\application data I discovered that there were a lot of left over files that had the infection. It creates random files of its infection so it can reinfect the computer. You need to manually remove these files.

First look for the batch files, they are a 3 or 4 digit number followed by '.bat'. I renamed one as '.txt' so I could safely look at it and sure enough it re installs the virus. Next get the JavaScript files they are random letters followed by '.js'. Again they reinstall the virus. Then there was a '.dat' file also bearing the same creation date. I do not know if it needs to be deleted or not. Also delete any random letters followed by '.exe' files. The anti-virus program should have removed them but there may be some left behind. The big giveaway is the random letters and the creation date all being the date of the computers infection.

In the picture I put a box around the files left over after the infection.

Electromagnetic Coil Devices

2011-03-09T17:09:00.001-05:00

Electromagnetic Coil Devices. We make two models of Pulsed Electromagnetic Coil Devices.

Super Thumper - $250. This device produces a 300 volt pulse of up to 100 Amps into a 3 inch coil of around 50 feet of Enameled 14 gauge wire. It has a power transformer and a voltage multiplier to produce the 300 volts. It takes about 5 seconds to charge the capacitor bank to 300 volts. The capacitor bank is 8 x 390 uF at 400 volts.

Low Power Doug Coil - $250. This is modeled after the Doug Coil setup but it is a lower power version. Basically a frequency generator feeds a Power amplifier that feeds a Capacitor bank that feeds a Coil. The frequency generator can be a professional device or a computer program can makes any computer into a frequency generator. The Power amplifier needs to deliver 100 volts peak to peak or be able to handle about 250 watts and it needs to be able to drive a 2 ohm load. This is very demanding and usually a QSC amplifier is used. The capacitor bank consists of a box having 6 switches and combinations of 400 volt capacitors to give .5, 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 uF. The coil is made from around 500 feet of 14 or 12-gauge wire. It can be enameled or insulated wire. The picture shows a switch box, a 14 gauge enameled coil as well as a 12 gauge insulated coil. Amplifier and signal generator not included.

Totally Free Keyword Analyzer Tool (KAT)

2011-03-04T17:07:00.003-05:00

My "Keyword Analyzer Tool" or KAT has a new home. Its now on a new web site. Who knows maybe soon I bill buy my own site? Anyway here it is: http://www.davismission.org/keyword/

You can enter the name of any web site and get instant results as to what keywords are found on that site. I made it capable of logging 2 letter words that other keyword analyzers throw out because some sites have critical 2 letter words.

It has 4 columns. One for the entire page, one for words in links one for words in Headings, and the last one is for words that are bold or strong.

Keyword Analyzer Tool

Quiz Practice and Quiz Master Machine or Buzzer Lockout

2011-02-28T17:03:00.005-05:00

Davis Computers and Electronics Proudly Presents Our Products

Everything is Hand Made right here in the USA

Quiz Machines. We make two models of quiz machines. My unique design only has one IC the LED's form an 8 input OR gate to trigger the latch. Other designs can be made by request, such as models with the lights in the hand units.

Quiz Practice Machine - $250. Designed for practicing in the car, on the go, or wherever. It features 6 players, 3 foot wires to the hand units and battery operation.

Quiz Master Machine - $250. Designed to be used in a church for a live contest. It features 8 players with 3, 4, 5, and 6 foot wires to the hand units. It can be powered by an AC adapter or by a battery. An interlocking version is available by special request.

Google Fixes Search - They Removed Content Farms

2011-02-25T17:16:00.000-05:00

A while back I talked about link farms or content farms, in fact I even created my own definitions. It was listed under SEO and titled 'how to get rich on the internet part 2"

Now the news is out that Google has fixed its search algorithm problems.When I read that I immediately went out and checked out some common search terms. I tried some phrases that previously found 3 or more pages of junk before you actually found any 'meat'. To my amazement they were all spam free! Go Google!

On the sad front today I got 'Binged'. That terrible virus from the ivory palaces of Microsoft got onto my computer. Every time I try to Open Firefox it brings up that virus. Do they feature an uninstall for it?

I went into 'tools' options' 'manage add ons' and uninstalled the virus from Microsoft. Someone has to put a stop to this. They are trying to take over the world by the most corrupt and immoral methods known by mankind!

Dunlap Clarke Amplifier Rebuild

2011-02-16T12:11:00.007-05:00

I am once again rebuilding this Dunlap Clark amplifier. I rebuilt it around 1990 to a four channel 200 watt per channel amplifier after teh first system fried. Then a few year I got it back with two channels fried and I just fried the last channel in my latest youtube video 'comparing coils'.

The first repair was to modify the power transformer to reduce it to 60 volts center taped from 100 volts center taped. This involved pulling out some windings and adding some jumpers around some of the windings.

This is a picture of the heat sinks witht eh TO-3 output transistors. I will likely use TDA7294 IC's to rebuild it so the old transistors have to go!

Out of all the transistors there were only 11 that were not totally fried. One even had the emitter lead burnt off the transistor!

The TDA7294 circuit board finally arrived. It comes in several configurations. Four 75 watt amplifiers, two 150 watt amplifiers, one 300 watt amplifier and a combination of one 150 watt and two 75 watt amplifiers. they sell for around $30 on Ebay. Now the problem is mounting it in the heat-sink, it will require putting in smaller capacitors and drilling holes to align with the TDA7294's.

YouTube video of amplifier accidentally being fried.

Dell Latitude D610 repair

2011-02-11T12:22:00.001-05:00

I bought a used Dell D610 laptop a year ago and really like it. Since then I have purchased over 6 of them. Recently one of them started overheating and shutting down. Normally these laptops are a lot of work to get apart, but I figured out a quick 5 minute repair for this problem.

First remove the top cover plate by prying up on the right side and rocking it back and forth to disconnect it.

Next remove the 2 screws that hold down the keyboard. To remove the keyboard unhook the catch that is on each side of it then unplug it from the motherboard. The second screw is above the F4 key.

Next locate the screws that hold down the processor heat sink and loosen them. They stay attached to the heat sink.

When you remove the heat sink you should be able to see if it is clogged with dust like this one. Remove the dust and then put everything back together.

Be sure to check to see if the cooling fan runs on start up. It usually shuts off until it gets hot then it turns back on again automatically.

Silent radio Sign Part 2

2011-02-10T12:08:00.002-05:00

The Silent Radio LED sign is proceeding along nicely so far. I have decided on using an Arduino for the processor to run it.

I have tested the power supply and column driver transistors, the are all working so far.

The biggest problem so far is that the driver transistors run really hot. That is because they are half way on with 5 volts on their base and 9 volts on their collector they have to drop the difference of 4 volts at many Ma thus producing a lot of heat. A different driver circuit would cure that by turning the drivers all the way on but that would feed 9 volts to the LED array and that might be a bit too much.

Here is an updated schematic.

The next step is to get the Arduino serial and clock to connect to the signs serial and clock to send actual data to the sign.

Palladium Fake anti-virus

2011-02-09T17:01:00.004-05:00

I just had the 'palladium fake anti-virus' attack a computer. To fix it I first restarted in safe mode and then installed Malware Bytes AntiMalware (MBAM) ran a full system scan and it removed all but 7 files. They were all located at "C:\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\Application Data" and all of them had today's date as their creation date. I manually deleted them, emptied the recycle bin and restarted the computer. I also ran CCleaner and it deleted all of the temporary files.

I also had to reinstall MS Office as MS Outlook was trashed and would not run even in safe mode.

MBAM Log file:
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware 1.50.1.1100

www.malwarebytes.org
Database version: 5721
Windows 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3
Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13
2/9/2011 12:59:34 PM
mbam-log-2011-02-09 (12-59-34).txt
Scan type: Full scan (C:\|D:\|)
Objects scanned: 221304
Time elapsed: 28 minute(s), 0 second(s)

Memory Processes Infected: 0
Memory Modules Infected: 0
Registry Keys Infected: 0
Registry Values Infected: 1
Registry Data Items Infected: 0
Folders Infected: 0
Files Infected: 6

Memory Processes Infected:
(No malicious items detected)
Memory Modules Infected:
(No malicious items detected)
Registry Keys Infected:
(No malicious items detected)
Registry Values Infected:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell (Rogue.Palladium) ->

Value: Shell -> Quarantined and deleted successfully.
Registry Data Items Infected:
(No malicious items detected)
Folders Infected:
(No malicious items detected)

Files Infected:
c:\documents and settings\networkservice\application data\guwr76D.exe (Trojan.Downloader) ->
Quarantined and deleted successfully.
c:\documents and settings\networkservice\application data\r9zgp6ak4.exe (Trojan.Downloader) ->
Quarantined and deleted successfully.
c:\documents and settings\networkservice\local settings\temporary internet files\Content.IE5\683C8M6Q\cbta[1].exe (Trojan.Downloader) ->
Quarantined and deleted successfully.
c:\documents and settings\Sue\application data\palladium.exe (Rogue.Palladium) ->
Quarantined and deleted successfully.
c:\documents and settings\Sue\local settings\Temp\_check32.bat (Malware.Trace) ->
Quarantined and deleted successfully.
c:\WINDOWS\ws386.ini (Malware.Trace) ->
Quarantined and deleted successfully.

Super thumper my latest revisions.

2011-02-07T17:10:00.002-05:00

My super thumper has been redesigned once again. The 24 volt AC adapter took 15 seconds to charge the capacitors so I went back to using a power transformer and reduced the charging time to 5 seconds. Note the use of a plastic lid to cover the coil.

Fitting the power transformer in the smaller cabinet was tricky but here it is all fit nicely in the instrument case.

Its up for sale for $250 and I might list one on Ebay to help sell them.

Wordpress page title tag modification for dynamic titles

2011-02-03T17:11:00.004-05:00

This code will get the web page title and description to automatically change from a page to a category to a post. That way the blue status bar at the top of your browser will more accurately reflect what you are seeing. Also If you roll over the browsers tab the box that appears will reflect what page you are on.

Basically what is says is is this a single post? If so, show the post title. Is it a category? If so, show the category name. Otherwise show the blog description.

< title > 
< ?php if ( is_single() ) 
{ bloginfo('name'); echo " - "; 
single_post_title('', true); }
elseif ( is_category() ) { bloginfo('name'); 
echo " - "; $category = get_the_category();
echo $category[0]->cat_name; }
else { bloginfo('name'); echo " - "; 
bloginfo('description'); }
? > < /title >

< meta name="description" content="
< ?php if ( is_single() ) { 
bloginfo('name'); echo " - "; 
single_post_title('', true); }
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Pro-Lite PL-M2014R Multi Color LED sign

2011-01-28T12:59:00.004-05:00

I recently purchased two Pro-Lite LED signs on Ebay. They were easy to fix, I just needed to replace the capacitors in the power supply. The old ones were 4700 at 16 volts, all I had was 2200 at 25 volts so I used them and they worked fine. They are the blue caps on the left in this picture.

Here is a picture of both of the signs working.

Now to make a 9 pin to telephone jack cable so I can program them from a computer.

Getting the Pro-Lite signs to work.

The instructions say to make a 4 conductor telephone cable to a 9 pin female serial connector. Red and Green go to pin 2 and 3 then the yellow wire goes to pin 5. Well I tried 300 baud, 9600 baud, a sign ID number of 1 to 10 and nothing worked. I reversed pins 2 and 3 to no avail. I got out my voltmeter and checked pins 2 and 3 and they were right to begin with. When they are wired correctly they should both meter about negative 2 to negative 5 volts. I also found out that both the yellow and the black wire are ground and can connect to pin 5 of the 9 pin serial connector.

There were two solutions to my dilemma. In spite of what the notes say both signs were configured to 2400 baud. I figured that out by trial and error. You are supposed to get a remote control and use that to find out what the baud rate and the sign ID is currently set to. However if you select a sign ID of ‘0’ it sends your message to ‘all’ or in this case ‘any’ sign that you have connected. Telling it to display the time is an easy way to test the communications setup. Once that is set you can move on to more advanced programming.

Silent Radio LED Sign

2011-01-26T12:57:00.011-05:00

I have obtained two Silent Radio LED signs on Ebay and I intend on rebuilding them. To get one of them apart I had to reach through a hole in the back and cut the wires to the power transformer. To remove the logic board I had to use pliers on the screw head and pliers on the mounting shaft. In one case the screw broke off rather than come out. Tin sheers or heavy duty wire cutters can be used to remove the connectors between the sign and the logic board.

Once the board is removed the reverse engineering can begin. The pin-out is quite simple;
1. 5 Volts
2. Ground
3. Seven common Anode lines (5 volts to light up)
4. Seven common Anode lines (5 volts to light up)
5. Seven common Anode lines (5 volts to light up)
6. Seven common Anode lines (5 volts to light up)
7. Seven common Anode lines (5 volts to light up)
8. Seven common Anode lines (5 volts to light up)
9. Seven common Anode lines (5 volts to light up)
10. Ground
11. Data
12. Clock
These same 12 lines are available at both ends of the sign. I broke a couple of runs when removing the logic board. Maybe un-soldering it would have been a better idea?

My objective is to make a very simple straingtforward interface to run the sign from a PC. Perhaps use the PC's serial port directly, a 8051, a Basic Stamp or some other simple common controller.

Here is some of my old work on LED array signs;
http://sites.google.com/site/bobdavis321/led-array-projects

Here is a simple column driver adapted from one of my old schematics. The problem with this setup is that you cannot turn off the columns while updating the shift registers. Perhaps another IC would work better?

This is the error message it displayed on arrival:

Look@lan - a good network tool

2011-01-19T17:08:00.000-05:00

Today while looking at the logs I saw that a computer was misbehaving however I could not identify the computer name. I tried Nmap/Zenmap several times and several settings to no avail. Then I tired look@lan and instantly got the answer!

After looking around a while I discovered another feature. If you click on an IP address it gives lots more details about that computer including all the open ports!

IPCop bit the dust again back to Netgear FVX538

2011-01-18T17:16:00.001-05:00

Our IPCop server quit working again. Network traffic slowed to a crawl so I called Time Warner and we determined that the problem was here. I switched in the Netgear firewall instead of the IPCop computer and the network came back up to speed.

When looking at the Netgear firewall logs I saw that flood control was being activated by a computer about every 4 minutes. So the problem may have just been that computer. MBAM found and removed a virus.

The big complaint about Netgear is that the default configuration allows everything. So you have to configure it to block everything then enable what protocols that you want to allow. When you get done it should look something like this:

The 'any' 'block always' and 'log always' at the bottom is so that any attempted violation of the rules will be logged. This is a big help for troubleshooting when something is blocked from working just check the log then add it to the list of allowed protocols.

Stuff to sell

2011-01-17T13:18:00.025-05:00

I am selling a lot of my stuff on Ebay. Look on Ebay under bob_davis321 to find my stuff that is for sale. My email address is bobdavis321(at)gmail.com Make sure yo replace the (at) with @ so it will work.

Besides the stuff on Ebay I am also selling these three things;

1. For $250 My 'Super Thumper', washer launcher or 'Electromagnetic pulse device' based on the Bob Beck design.

2. For $250 My Improved 'Doug Coil' device with the capacitor switch box (QSC Amplifier is NOT included)

3. For $250 My 24 KV Power supply that is used for a Rife Tube driver (Rife tube is NOT included).

All of my devices are improved, cheaper, and simpler than the original designs. For example the Super Thumper runs off an ac adapter making it much safer electrically. The 'Doug Coil' uses 14 Gauge enameled wire making it much more powerful than when you are using one that is made with insulated wire.

Here are pictures of version 3 of the Super Thumper that is up for sale for $250, first a picture of the insides.

Then what it looks like on the outside, note the 24 VAC adapter on the left to power it..

I am looking for a cover for the coil to make it look nicer. A mayonnaise jar lid might work nicely. Here is an updated schematic. The input is 24 to 30 VAC at 1 amp. Sorry that the schematic is so small, you can click on it and then it will get bigger.

Super Thumper Specifications;
Capacitor bank: 8 x 390uF at 400 volts
Power source: 24-30 VAC at 1 amp
Voltage Multiplier: 4 x 4A bride rectifiers and 7 x 220uF Capacitors.
SCR: Minimum 100 Amps at 400 Volts
Coil: approx 50 feet 14 Gauge enameled wire 3" in diameter.
Coil plug: 4 pin Cinch-Jones connector
Wire to Coil: approx 5 feet of 16 gauge stranded wire
Box size: approx. 8 inches by 6 inches by 2.5 inches

The Doug Coil Setup, the Capacitor is in a switch box to select the correct value. I will include the coil and switch-box. You can use a frequency generator program on a computer and the QSC amplifier can be purchased on Ebay. I hope to have pictures soon. It works with as little as a 100 watt amplifier but a 250 watt model is highly recommended. The QSC amplifiers can run into a 2 ohm load so they hold up better when running a coil that is only 1 ohm!

Here is a picture showing a 'normal' green Doug coil (I have 2 of them), my smaller coil (14 gauge enameled wire 9 inches in diameter) that is many times more powerful even with a smaller amplifier) and my switch box. The switch box I am selling is smaller (around 8 inches by 6 inches) and only has 6 switches on it. Normal Doug Coils are made with 12 gauge insulated wire and they are very hard on your amplifier.

My modified Doug coil specifications;
Coil: approx 500 feet 14 gauge wire (enameled or insulated)
Wire to coil: approx 5 feet of 16 gauge stranded to 1/4 inch plug
Switch box: approx 8 inches by 6 inches by 2.5 inches
Switch box jacks: 1/4 inches input and output
Capacitors: Non polarized 1/2/4/8/16 uF at 400 VAC
Switches: 15 amp SPST switches

Capacitor values for several frequencies;
300    32
400    18
500    11.5
600    8
700    6
800    4.5
900    3.5
1000    3
1100    2.5
1200    2
1400    1.5
2000    1

Last of all is my 24KV Power supply. Here it is shown running a Rife tube.

Here is a picture of the guts. The unit for sale is about 1/3 this size. As you can see there is a lot of extra space inside.

How to get rich on the Internet - Part 2 -Link Farms

2011-01-13T13:00:00.003-05:00

Or should I title this 'How a bunch of scum bags are destroying the Internet'.

First of all lets get our 'terminology' correct.

Link Farms - Worthless web sites that are just links to real web sites.

Dead end Link Farms - their links go no where. The oldest I remember is motherboards.??? They just had a list of motherboard models down the middle of the page and lots of adds on both sides of the page. The adds were for adult dating sites or worse. The idea is that you are looking for help with your motherboard and you end up there where they will sell you help with your sex life. Of course the advertisers were paying for referrals to their web sites.

Circulatory Link Farms - Their links go in circles. Like if you misspell Staples you will find one, then you will go in circles that go nowhere.

Live Link Farms - These somehow follow sites like Ebay and create pages of links to live Ebay stuff. How it works is that you are on Ebay and see something that you might like. So you then Google the device name to get more information. However the first ten pages of links all go to sites that in turn link back to the the Ebay ad that you started with!

Real Link Farms - These have real links to pages that you were looking for in the first place. You might call them a 'monkey in the middle' Link Farm. What is the point, if they did not exist you would have gone where you wanted to go in the first place.

PDF Link Farms - these scour the web for PDF files, then they sort them and then they create web pages of links to these PDF files. These mess with Google's ranking by skewing search terms towards the pages with the pdf files because 'linked pages' are rated higher by Google.

All of these link farms have one purpose in mind. To get you to see their advertisements for 'Pay Per View' or 'Pay per Click' so that they can make money off your searching usually without giving you want you wanted.

The other day I came across one that really 'got my goat' I was searching for some SEO help and I noticed that several of the sites all went to the same web site in one way or another. So I was talking with one of their salesman and he said that they own over 1,000 domain names that have only one page and they in turn all point to their 'real' web site.

So there it is, follow these terrible examples and you too can be the next Internet millionaire!

Super Thumper rebuilt again

2011-01-12T12:58:00.002-05:00

I was using my 'thumper' the other day and the diodes shorted out. After looking at the schematic I realized that the diodes were taking the full force of the reverse EMS off the coil. I changed the schematic to fix that bug.

Also I was able to purchase on Ebay about 50 of 390 uF 400 volt capacitors. Thats enough to build five of these devices. Here is what the rebuilt one looks like.

This is what it used to look like before I rebuilt it.

I hope to build another one that will use a 24 VAC AC adapter to power it. This change will make it even more electrically safe that the current setup.

Targus PA248UI laptop cooler repair.

2011-01-11T12:17:00.001-05:00

My daughters Targus PA248UI laptop cooler stopped working. The problem was that the AC adapter jack had become completely unsoldered. Click on the picture and you can see that all three pins are no longer soldered in.

The secret to getting it apart is to remove the 8 screws that are located under the rubber bumpers.

New bathroom to replace cast iron tub.

2011-01-11T12:13:00.000-05:00

My brother decided to replace the cast iron tub in his bathroom. The old tub had to be broken into pieces to be removed. Needless to say the project grew to replacing the floor under the tub and redoing the entire bathroom. Here is the empty bathroom.

The new tub was designed to fit together precisely and not leak.

While he was at it a new sink was a good idea.

Dodge Caravan fan only works on high.

2011-01-03T17:06:00.001-05:00

I have come across this problem a couple of times. On a 2000 dodge the resistor block is to the left of the engine just below the wiper assembly and mounted onto the firewall. It has 2 clips that hold it in place.

On the 2001 or 2002 grand caravans it is located behind the glove box. There are two catch pins at the top sides of the glove box that push in and then the glove box drops down revealing the fan control resistor block. Some fan controls use resistors (That resemble coils) and some have the new solid state version. They are interchangeable. The resistor model may be repairable. I think it is the thermal fuse that goes bad. Just replace it with a new on from Radio Shack. The fan speed control block is dead center in the picture below. Remove two wire plugs and two screws to remove it.

Replacing a mobile home water heater with a normal one.

2010-12-29T17:05:00.004-05:00

How to Replace a mobile home water heater with a 'normal' one.

1. Remove power (or turn off the gas).
2. Turn off water (Likely for the whole home).
3. Drain the old heater (if water is hot run it out first until it is cold).
4. remove the electric power or gas lines to the heater.
5. Cut the water lines to the heater.
6. Remove the old water heater.
7. Level the floor under the heater.
8. Remove the new heater from the box and Install it.
9. Add the cold water shut off valve.
10. Add pipes to go to the top of the heater.
You will need the following;
    10 feet of pipe.
   4 x 90 degree elbows.
   2 x Male 3/4 inch connectors.
   1 x Shut off valve.
      1 x Union.
11. Fill with water and check the fittings - the top fittings leak the most.
Add more Teflon tape and re-do the top fittings.
12. When the tank is full and not leaking run the hot water for SEVERAL minutes.
13. Reconnect electricity or gas lines.
14. Turn on electricity or gas.
15. The water should be hot in about 15 minutes.

Note: The old trailer heater had one 4500 watt heater element, the new standard heater had 2 x 3500 watt heat elements. Trailer heaters have the water connectors on the front, normal heaters have the fittings on the top.

First the old heater. Note that it has been leaking by all the stains on the floor.

Next the new heater. Note the old gray pipe as a shim to level it and the shut off on the cold water coming into the tank. It looks like someday I might need to rotate it a little to access the heater elements?

PHP website attacks

2010-12-21T17:05:00.004-05:00

I looked at our logs recently and was surprised that the normal visitors had jumped from 250 a day to 550 on one day. Then I checked the error log and found this:

It is a new web site attack targeting PHP and Wordpress. The evidence is that the lines all end in "//scripts/setup.php". They attempt to target your PHP version then your WordPress version.

Asus EEE disassembly / teardown / crack open

2010-12-21T12:57:00.005-05:00

How to disassemble the Asus EEE.

To start with remove the battery and find the four catches located under the battery. Unlock them and they should stay that way so you can remove the keyboard. Under the keyboard are about 6 screws. On the bottom of the laptop there are 4 screws. Inside of the memory compartment on the bottom there is one more screw. Two of the catches are shown in the picture below. Unplug the keyboard and remove it.

After you remove the 6 screws that are under the keyboard the top half comes apart by undoing the several catches located around the outer edge. You might need a small flat blade screwdriver to unhook them. Disconnect the touchpad as you lift off the top half.

Once the top is off the screen can be unplugged. Unscrew the wireless adapter. Remove two screws one is hidden under the ribbon cable. Remove three screws and remove the cooling fan. You should now be able to remove the motherboard.

I was taking it apart to fix a broken power jack. However the jack was fine the problem was the AC adapter. The outer braid goes bad about 1/2 an inch short of the plug. You could likely fix it by removing the insulation and wrapping the ground braid in some fine like 22 gauge copper wire.

Internet Security Suite - Fake Anti-virus

2010-12-16T14:06:00.003-05:00

Well I just ran across a new version of the old fake anti-virus software. This one did not even attempt to stop me from installing MalWareBytes Anti-Malware. It installed, updated and nailed this sucker!

This is what the virus would do. It would bring up this screen and gray out the rest of the screen. Alt, control, delete was disabled.

Here it is running right along MBAM. Note that over 800 infections were detected! Wow! Then when I told MBAM to "remove all infections" it shut down the pop up. Then, after a restart of the computer, the computer was working normally once again.

Windows Server 2008 taken down by Windows Updates

2010-12-16T09:28:00.004-05:00

This morning Sage ACT was down when I arrived at work. They had been trying to get the Windows 2008 server to work to no avail. I logged in and answered a question that came up on the screen and everything started working. The server wanted to know what kind of network it was. I told it that it was a company network. Not sure if that was the problem but it was part of the problem. There might have been some sort of change on the network that had confused the server into thinking that it was attached to an different network?

When I checked the error logs I saw that one of the updates had failed to install. Here are some screen shots of the error logs: (Click on them to see them full size)

MP4 player Dissembled

2010-12-13T12:06:00.001-05:00

Last year for Christmas I bought some tiny MP-4 players on Ebay. Unfortunately most of them died after about a month of use. One sat around in my drawer until this weekend when I decided I was going to dissemble it. You should be able to remove the bottom cover with two screws then slide the guts up and out of the top. However I could not get it apart that way, for some reason, so I cut it open with a pair of tin sheers. I could not fix it or get it to work with external batteries, but that is a good thing, because I could not get it back together either!

Here is what they look like inside if you wanted to see their guts:

Another Fake Antivirus - ThinkPoint

2010-12-02T12:50:00.002-05:00

There is a new fake anti-virus out there. It is not as 'tricky' as some of the older ones, as it can be defeated with out doing a lot of work. With the infection you cannot get onto the Internet and Alt/Control/Delete does not work. I could not get any anti-virus program to load to fix it either.

I restarted the computer in 'safe mode' and was expecting that it had disabled safe mode, but it did not. So I loaded Malware Bytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) from a USB drive and scanned the hard drive. It found only one infected file so I thought that it had missed the virus, but that was all there was. The file is named 'hotfix.exe' and that is all there is to the virus infection. Delete 'hotfix.exe' and you are good to go!

Kodak Camera Repair

2010-11-30T12:57:00.001-05:00

Recently I was given a Kodak camera that was a few months old but was not working. It had fallen off a chair and that fall had rendered it DOA. After taking it apart to look inside I discovered that the battery contact fingers were not touching the battery. The fix was easy, just bend the battery contact fingers up. That can be done without taking the camera apart.

Just in case you want a peak inside the camera, here is a picture with the front and back covers removed.

Facebook is infected once again

2010-11-29T13:14:00.000-05:00

There is a new Facebook virus going around. The biggest giveaway is that it uses shortened links. The messages refer to a video of you or other things like that. Don't open the link. If you are infected the only way you will know about it is if one of your friends tells you that you sent them something that you did not send.

Gateway W350a Laptop Conversion from vista to XP

2010-11-17T12:59:00.011-05:00

My dad’s Old laptop was running Windows Vista and true to form doing anything with it was a pain in the butt. So I upgraded it to Windows XP. Once again Gateway does not support XP on that laptop so you have to go out and find the drivers for yourself.

This time to find out what hardware was in the laptop I used a program called SIV or ‘System Information Viewer’. It’s free and it does a fantastic job of identifying your hardware. SIV told me what the motherboard chip set was the AMD ATI 690 and the network interfaces were both from Realtek.

Via Google I also found out that the Gateway W350 is also known as the T1625

Realtek RTL8101E-GR Ethernet:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=6&PFid=6&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

File name - PCI_Install_XP_2K_5719_10202010.zip

RTL 8187B Wireless:

http://218.210.127.131/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=1&PFid=1&Level=6&Conn=5&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true#RTL8187B

File Name - RTL8187B_Auto_Install_Program.zip

Once you can connect to the Internet then you can go after the video and sound drivers;

Graphics drivers:

Go to support.amd.com and look for XP drivers for the ATI 690 chipset.

File Name - 10-2_Legacy_xp32-64_dd_ccc.exe
Its many megabytes in size (I think 75 megs) so have a fast connection and be ready to wait.

Sound – Some say to use the Dell R134875 drivers but they did not work for me. I also tried using the ‘Sigmatel’ drivers on the gateway web site to no avail. I think the hardware is an ATI-791. Some say to use Gateway CAB D00758-001-001

*** NOTE *** The best sound driver is sound_driver_92XXM4.zip

All of the drivers are available at http://www.allquests.com/question/969837/Gateway-T1616-Windows-XP-Pro-upgrade.html

This is a typical SIV "machine" tab screen, click on it to see it actual size.

Interlocking laminate flooring

2010-11-10T17:07:00.004-05:00

I used tiles to do the floor in the master bedroom. The floor tiles have several problems. They require luan to be put down first to be glued to, that takes a lot of time and increases the price quite a bit. They stink, literally they give off a bad odor for months (currently over 6 months), stop and smell a box of floor tiles at the store before buying them! And last of all we moved the bed and there are permanent dents in the tiles where the bed had been.

So for the living room floor I used the Interlocking laminate - wood looking floor tiles. It took 8 hours to do a 200 square foot floor. The first 2 rows are the hardest to do. When you tap in the next row the first one wants to come apart. Then the lip gets into the groove so they do not go back together. The floor is supposed to float, but I was tempted to nail down the first row then take the nails out after the floor was done. Anyway if you can get the first 2 rows done then you can stand on them to do the rest of the floor.

You might want to know that even though they easily snap together one at a time, when you have a row of 18 feet of them they do not go together very well at all. You will need to get the tool kit to gently tap them together or make a tapping tool out of a 2x4 about 8 to 10 inches long by cutting a groove it it to match the groove in the floor tiles. Also you need to keep each row slightly raised up (Put a pry bar under the leading edge to do that) until they are all snapped together lengthwise. That allows some of them to unsnap slightly so they need to be tapped back together. When they are gently tapped together they will then drop down to be level.

Hopefully soon I will have before and after pictures. This one is a before for sure!

And here is an after picture. Note that the room was also painted and the door replaced.

Ban Java!

2010-10-29T17:01:00.003-04:00

Some others are picking up on something I have been saying for years... "Microsoft reports 'unprecedented wave' of Java malware exploits"

Here is their link:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/microsoft-reports-unprecedented-wave-of-java-malware-exploits/7474?tag=content;search-results-river

And here is their chart to back it up.

Massive web site infections or false positives?

2010-10-22T16:22:00.001-04:00

Are there many infected web sites including most twitter shortened links and Alexa.com? Either that or BitDefender is having a lot of false positives?

IPCop with Block Out Traffic - BOT

2010-10-20T15:43:00.002-04:00

Installing BOT on IPCop is not for the 'faint at heart'. It takes some time because by default it blocks all traffic. Secondly there are easier ways to get it up and running than what they show on their web site. You do not need to create 'groups' you can just add the items to the main screen.

Start by downloading and burning BOT onto a CD and take it to your IPCop computer. Then do the following as seen in the screen shot below:

BOT Installation

-----------------------
Download BlockOutTraffic, burn to a CD and put CD into IPcop server.
type 'mount /dev/cdrom'
type 'cd /mnt/cdrom'
type 'cp Block [tab] /'
type 'cd /'
type 'tar zxvf Block [tab]'
type './setup'

When you first go to BOT, it is found under the firewall tab, you need to enter your computers MAC address so that once BOT is running you can override its settings and still access IPcop.

If you have forgotten how to find out what your MAC address here is how to do that, start by right clicking on your network connections;

First you have to create a new rule for each normal service, they are HTTP, HTTPS, POP3, and SMTP. Make sure that you select 'default networks, Green Network' then 'Use Service, Default services', and use the select box to select the service that you are adding, and remember to 'enable' the rule.

once you have your rules enabled then you should see this screen. Now there are some IPcop access rules that need to be added. Mainly they are 'domain' and 'NTP'. It will not work if you add them to the 'Outside' rules as your computers should be getting them from the IPcop server instead of from the outside world.

Last of all you need to add some IPcop rules in the advanced section too. These allow all computers to log into IPcop not just the one that has their MAC address set up in the initial screen.

Act causing a continuous reset

2010-10-20T13:00:00.004-04:00

Sage Act likes to cause computers to continuously reset and restart. There is a simple, quick fix for the problem by using MsConfig in safe mode to disable the "SQl server VSS writer". Now the computer should stop crashing every time it starts.

Then use the ACT uninstall program downloaded from their web site to uninstall ACT. Then you can try reinstalling it again but I make no promises there! I have seen this problem on a fresh clean install of Windows.

UDP Port 8881 Virus - A BitDefender 2011 problem

2010-10-18T13:00:00.009-04:00

UPDATE: This is a BitDefender 2011 problem - Disable P2P file sharing in the Bitdefender 'updates' section to fix it. This is shocking and appalling that Bitdefender would open a hole in the firewall and allow almost anyone access to your computer!

I am still fighting the UDP Port 8881 virus that appears to come from visiting a Twitter account. So far I can tell that IPCop logs about 6000 blocked UDP port requests inbound to the infected computer every day. The infected computer according to WireShark, just goes out to random web pages and downloads pictures. That appears to then trigger the port 8881 responses back towards the infected computer. Reformatting the hard drive does NOT get rid of the virus. I assume that the virus comes back when you copy back 'my documents' but I am not even sure of that. However NO ANTI VIRUS program can detect this virus after a week of fighting it.

Here are some WireShark screen pictures. First is the incoming traffic to the infected computer. This one is kind of funny. It says "go away we're not home". Click on the image to see it full size.

Here is a typical IPCop screen showing the connections opened by the virus;

Rear Projection Setup

2010-10-14T17:09:00.001-04:00

I have seen a church allot 30 feet behind the projection screen for a rear projection setup. this is unnecessary all you need is a mirror. There are two setups that can be used, project from below up to the mirror and from just below the screen at the mirror. The setups are diagrammed below:

Projector located below the mirror.

Projector located just behind the screen.

Now about the screen. As you may know a glass bead screen is by far the best screen. After that a white sheet also works. In forward projection setups you can use reflective white paint or regular white paint as well.

IPCop Revisited once again...

2010-10-14T12:09:00.002-04:00

There are ongoing problems with Snort IDS not updating on IPCop. So I thought I would try out Smoothwall instead. Smoothwall installed much faster and easier than IPcop. There were almost no questions that required a lot of technical knowledge. then menus in Smoothwall are arranged differently and took a little getting used to. Then the problems started. I could not even get IDS to turn on in Smoothwall. I have been watching a virus infected computer trying to ensure that the virus had been completely removed and so having no IDS was simply not an option.

Also when I enable the email virus filter it blocked ALL of my email as containing a virus. This was not
acceptable either, so although Smoothwall is much easier to install it is not as usable as IPCop, and will not be
used by me at this point.

Here is a simple diagram on how IP cop is setup up as an Internet server and a firewall.

I thought I would include some IPCop configuration screens so you can see how they should look. Notice that I do nut use VPN, I do not like to put a hole through my firewall unless the boss absolutely demands it!

Most of the time you will want DNS to be set up and running. Sometimes you have a file server that does the DNS thing instead.

Then there is the Web proxy server. This is needed in order to log who is accessing what. It also speeds up the Internet a little by serving some pages from its cache.

Next is enabling the time server. This helps to keep all of your computers synchronized to the same time.

Some say that enabling IDS on Red is just a waste of time because it only tells you that you are under attack, but that is a given being connected to the Internet. However it has been telling me that someone out there is trying to access the formerly infected computer, so IMO it is very useful!

I do not know if configuring a static DNS is necessary, and if so what one do you use?

New Virus Infection

2010-10-13T14:51:00.006-04:00

There are a lot of fake, virus infected, Linkedin emails going around. Supposedly this virus might have come from just viewing a profile on the web site or possibly on Twitter? The first symptom was that McAfee was popping up every 10 seconds with a message saying that it had blocked a virus. Then McAfee went down all together and the virus took over. Alt+Control+Delete did not work. I could download Malwarebytes but it would not run.

I now know that Symantec has a Trojan.Vundo removal tool that likely would have fixed this problem. Instead I used Start, Run, and MsConfig to shut down almost all of the Startup items. Then I downloaded Malwarebytes and ran it again. This time it ran but would not update. There is an alternate program killing program called Rkill.com that would have solved that problem. However Malwarebytes did remove some infections and after the computer was restarted it was able to successfully update and remove the rest of the infections.

The infection got through by using a Java Script. If the user had been running FireFox with NoScript they would have never had the problem. I will not digress to ranting about how Java should be banned as over 80% of virus are using java to trash millions of computers........

This virus keeps coming back, even after reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows from CD's. It could be when email is imported or when my documents are copied? The symptoms are repeated IPCop firewall reports of "ICMP Destination Unreachable Communication Administratively Prohibited" when someone tries to directly access the computer from the outside world and lots of traffic on port 8881. Every now and then the computer tries to open 20 or 30 UDP connections to port 8881 and some other other ports like 1889, 1814, 1850, 1855, and 1877 among others.

Malwarebytes has removed a dozen virus' and BitDefender keeps finding some too. But it keeps coming back! I hate that when reformatting the hard drive does not get rid of it. There will be more information coming as soon as I can figure it out. The UDP on Port 8881 has to be a key to the problem?

Free Instant Keyword Analyzer Tool

2010-10-11T12:07:00.006-04:00

Google no longer pays any attention to the 'keywords' meta tag on your web site. Instead they do an analysis of your web site to find out what are the actual keywords that are really used. So I tried to find out what were our actual keywords on our web site. It turns out that there are web sites that will do that for you but they require that you enter your phone number and an email address so they can annoy you with salesmen calling and emailing you.

I thought that I could easily write a program to do the job so I have started developing 'KAT' or "Keyword Analyzer Tool". It is totally FREE and gives the results in seconds! It will strip the HTML code from your web site, feed that into an array and then count the number of times each word is used. I hope to add the ability to also count those words in links, headings, and in strong soon.

Keyword Analyzer Tool

Hawking WIFI Antenna

2010-10-05T13:01:00.005-04:00

I recently purchased a Hawking Antenna. It was really cheap because it rattled. That was because the antenna mount was slightly broken and it was easily fixed with some glue.

Anyway the antenna is actually an ordinary antenna with a metal reflector. I will give the measurements shortly. Basically you can easily make it yourself. If you carefully pull the top end off you can then see how it works. Hopefully I will be able to do some comparison tests too.

The metal shield/Reflector is about 1.25 inches from the center of the antenna. In my tests this antenna combined with an EDUP USB wireless card detected twice as many wireless networks in our area compared to the built in wireless adapter in my notebook computer.

EDUP USB wireless adapter drivers

2010-10-01T11:49:00.004-04:00

I recently purchased one of these tiny EDUP wireless adapters on EBay. First of all they advertise them as 'high power' but they are really not 'high power' if you were expecting 500 MW or 1000 MW like the real high power USB adapters can put out. If you really want high power add 500, 1000, or even 2000 MW to your search in EBay. On the other hand the external antenna may double your range compared to the antenna that is built into most laptops.

Anyway I lost the driver disk and could not find it. I Googled it but no one seemed to know where to find the driver! When you plug it in the computer says something about a RTL 8188 driver and that is the secret. Just go to www.Realtek.com and search for the 8188SU driver.

Here is a link but you may have to cut and paste it into your browser:
http://www.realtek.com/search/default.aspx?keyword=rtl8188su