New Construction

A couple of weeks ago I was privledged to participate in an unusual construction project.  I am not even sure what this type of construction is called, but the completed home will be able to withstand 100 MPH winds and 10 feet of snow, at least!  Note how all the beams have tongues that fit inside of grooves and then 8 sided wooden pegs are driven into them to lock them together.

Once the frames are together they are stood upright by a lot of guys lifting them.  Then beams are put in that lock the frames together.  This has got to be the most durable construction design.  I know it has been used to build large barns, but this is the first time I have seen it used in a house.

I have researched it and it is called 'post and beam', 'timber frame' or 'mortise and tenon' construction.

Fat Tax or Skinny Tax?

What do you think about the proposed 'Fat Tax'?


Personally it has me outraged! They are going to tax drinks containing "sugar" and to get the law passed they will drop all taxes on drinks with artifical sweeteners. This will try to force people to drink soda that contains deadly artifical sweeteners. Also consider this fact: Skinny people drink sugary sodas, fat people drink diet sodas. So the tax will actually be a tax on SKINNY PEOPLE! It is not a fat tax at all, unless they also tax toxic diet sodas! And what about all those candy bars that are not only full of sugar but they are also full of fat? What about doughnuts that are also full of fat and sugar??? Could these crazy politicians actually create a "Fat Tax"? Of course not, they just want to make Americans Fatter and Sicker, but that way they can get the backing of the people that are poisoning us.

BTW - I would be all for a "corn syrup" tax!!!

Word Press Cache programs

I have been experimenting with WordPress Caching programs. Over that last few months I have been trying out WordPress caching programs to see what works the best.

We started with 'WP Super Cache'. It delivered pages very fast, unless it was the first time the page had been accessed this hour, and then it was slow. But every once in a while the page load time would get really slow. I recorded an 18 second page load using YSlow under Firefox. It happens about every 100 page views, something goes terribly wrong and some pages may never load at all!

So next we tried DB Cache reloaded. They claim to be really fast, by loading the database into memory so it can be read much faster. The load on the server went way down, but the average page load was 2 seconds, about the same time as it was without any caching program.

So now we are trying 'WP-Cache'. With it installed the average page load time is about 1 second. Of course we need to leave it on line for a while to see how Alexa and Google will respond to it.

This picture shows our page load time over several months.  The sharp changes on the left 2/3 were recorded while using WP Super Cache.  The gradual changes on the right were while using DB Cache.

Straight Talk Cell Phone Problems

Are you thinking about a Straight Talk Cell Phone?

Well I fell for it. They promised a cell phone for only $40 and then either $30 a month for 1000 minutes or $45 a month for unlimited calling! What a deal! When I used a track phone years ago I paid over $100 for 1000 minutes, then used them up in as little as a month or two. This new deal sounds too good to be true, right? Yes, it is too good to be true. Their service simply does not work. The other day I spent over 90 minutes in a 10 minute queue waiting to talk to someone. They charged my credit card for the $33 a week ago and their web site says that I have 1000 minutes, but when I try to make a call it still says “There is not enough money on your account to place this call.” That’s after a frustrating week of trying. Should I give up and take it back to WallyMart?

Here is a decision maker for you. Call them at 1-877-430-2355, if you get a real person in less than an hour consider getting the phone. If after several calls exceeding 2 hours or more and you never get through, guess what? Don't get one of their phones!!!

It sounds to me like it is time for a class action law suit??

Today they called me several times, one call was over 18 minutes long, to no avail.  Turn the phone off, turn it on, dial *22890, try again.  Still it does not work.  Will I have to go through this every time I want to add minutes to the telephone?

Well it has been two weeks and still no phone?  THe good news is that it shows 3000 minutes on my non working phone.  I guess they added minutes to try to get it to work?

Its time to Ban JAVA !!!

I have said time and time again that Java should be banned! Well now Firefox has an available add-on that does exactly that. It is called ‘NoScript’. It has the option of allowing Java on a page if it is needed for that page to work. Look under ‘options’ in the bottom right corner of Firefox once NoScript is added.


To top that, according to Kaspersky, Virus News, April 2010 Malware Statistics, 14 out of 20 exploits on the web all target JAVA! If you are using a computer that does not block Java, get a gun and shoot yourself in the foot, it makes as much sense.

Also you might want to seriously consider replacing Adobe reader with ‘FoxIt reader’. They have added the ability to block things from running inside of your PDF files. Like whom else but a virus writer would want to do that anyway?

We need better weapons for the war on viruses!

We need a real breakthrough in the war on computer viruses. As I have said before that the anti-virus programs only catch about 1/2 of Virus's. Using two anti-virus programs may raise the detection level to 75%, but there is still a huge gap there. I am not talking about the problem where it takes a few hours from the time that the virus starts spreading to when the anti-virus programs are able to detect the virus. That in itself is a huge problem and the anti-virus programs are starting to combat that problem by also having a dictionary of allowed/safe programs. If one that is not listed tries to run it pops up and tells you about it and asks if you want to run the program. I am talking about actual long term infections. I have observed this for a few years now.

My first obvious case was a computer that was downloading porn on its own. When nothing could detect the problem I replaced the hard drive. When I copied their old desktop items to the new hard drive guess what? The porn download virus came with it. The anti-virus program did not detect a thing. Then there was the storm spam virus. I chased it to a computer and replaced the hard drive. The virus infected emails stopped but after 6 months none out of three anti-virus programs could detect the virus on the old hard drive. I offered to mail it to them if they wanted to analyze it. I got no response; I don't think they really care.

The only solution is still to replace the infected hard drive and be very careful as to what you copy off the old hard drive. Copy only their documents and pictures from the old drive. Anything else could be an undetectable virus.

What am I seeing these days? How about a computer that one day insists a file size is 0 bytes when it is really several KB? Or the next day it does not update the date of the file when you make changes to it? How about a computer that does all kinds of strange things on the network on strange ports all day long? In both cases 3 anti-virus programs find nothing at all! It is so frustrating!

We need a super weapon that can go the very core of the hard drive and analyze everything to see if it is a trusted program and flag it if it is not. Yes I know about ‘Hijack This’, I have an 11 page log on one of the problematic computers. It does not help. The virus writers know about HJT and I am sure they have a way around it.

I found a recent article that reflects some of my disappointments;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/13/winxp_anti_malware_tests/

I wonder if part of the problem is what happened during the election several years ago. All of the news Medias reported the wrong results because they were all using the same incorrect sources. Where do the anti-virus people get their viruses to detect? Do they all use the same sources? Do they only use email viruses? Something is really amiss here with so many viruses going totally undetected.

Then there is also the instability problem (Kaspersky IS 2010 crashing/locking up computers - see my other posts). There is also their effectiveness in removing the viruses – for Instance AVG saying the ‘virus vault is full, no more room for viruses’. Sometimes it is just easier to replace the hard drive and start over. Then copy their files off the old hard drive.

Signed – One Very Frustrated Virus Fighter.

Dell X300 hinges

Lately I have been fixing up a lot of Dell X300 laptops to send to Africa.  One of their problems is that the hinges go bad and the screen falls down flat.  As it turns out the fix for that is quick and easy.  Remove the hinges, tap the pin back in with a hammer or on a vice and it works.  The hardest part is getting them out of the laptop to fix them.  Somehow they slowly work their way out then there are no barbs to catch on and they go loose.  They can be fixed while in the laptop but that is dangerous as the wires are in the way.

Fake Office 2003 Cd's on EBay

First of all I have purchased MS Office 2003 on EBay before with no problems.  However recently there has been a big rash of FAKE MS Office 2003 CD's up for sale on EBay.  The CD's do not work, it looks like the coating was too thin as there are some spots near the center that let light through.  If you try to use the CD it will ask for the license number then lock up forever.  If you try to read or copy the CD it will lock up your computer forever, until you eject the CD.  Either way the CD's simply do not work. 

Also look closely at the center hub area, the pattern there is not quite correct for a real MS CD.  IF you angle the CD to a light the entire top surface looks dimpled all over like it did not adhere correctly.  The license numbers are not correct for Microsoft and do not work with a normal MS Office CD.  The license 'genuine' ribbon is obviously fake.

I went to microsoft.com and searched for information on the Fake Office 2003 CD's.  They reported that the fakes were just a sticker on a normal CD.  So I felt for the edge of the sticker and sure enough it is a sticker that makes a CD look like the MS Cd.  The sticker easily peals right off exposing a normal CD underneath.  This does not happen on a real MS CD!

BUYER BEWARE!

Cold Nuclear Fusion Revisited

Many years ago I came up with the idea of crossing ‘gas plasma electrolysis’ with ‘sonoluminesance’. My hope was to get ‘sonoluminesance’ and ‘gas plasma electrolysis’ to both take place in the same jar. Both are hard to start but my hope was that by combining them it would be easy to start. There were several problems to overcome. Like for instance, the frequency of sonoluminesance changes with the temperature of the water. So I was not able to get it to work. Maybe someone out there can get this idea working.

http://sites.google.com/site/bobdavis321/high-efficiency-devices

Think of all the energy we can save if we can easily produce hydrogen from water? We could end our dependence on foreign oil. We can stop tearing up the landscape in Pennsylvania trying to extract the gas from the ground. This idea really could save the world!

Is Linux as safe as they say it is?

Last week I was vacationing on my honeymoon. I was only gone from work for one week. Surely they could survive without me that long? Well maybe not. On Friday I got a call saying that there was no Internet access at work. They still had working email, just no Internet. I told them to switch back to an older Netgear router and then everything started working again.

When I got back from vacation, I checked the now offline IPCop Internet server. It had a screen full of error messages. It was also running URL filter and somehow the update had gone bad and as a result just about every web site was being blocked. I promptly pulled out the IPCop CD and then reinstalled IPCop. Sure enough it worked fine. Then I reinstalled URL filter and again everything worked fine.

The question remains, did something go wrong with the URL filter program, with its updating, or did someone hack the IPCop server? If it was hacking, then that is proof that Linux is hack-able. That’s a scary thought.

Now back to trying to figure out why a 6 month old installation of Windows XP is slower than molasses in January. Perhaps it is infected with something that Kaspersky, and Malware Bytes cannot find?

On the good news side, Firefox has disabled JavaScript! That is something that I said needed to be done a long time ago. In fact I have been running a JavaScript blocking add on program on my computer.

Fake Antivirus: Total XP Security

I had another round of fighting a fake antivirus called 'Total XP Security'. First I used Windows explorer to delete all the temporary files, then I deleted all of the temporary internet files but that did not help at all. Then I used Msconfig to disable all the startup options and then to disable everything, but it was all to no avail.

Next I tried goggling for ‘Total XP Security’. After reading some information on it I decided to use regedit to delete the following two keys:

‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.exe’

‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\secfile’.

That worked! Then I downloaded and installed Malware Bytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) and told it to do a thorough scan. It found and fixed a number of registry entries that had disabled the firewall and disabled the real antivirus software that was running on that computer.  I did this screen capture after I had deleted the entries.

Here is what got me about the latest incarnation of the fake antivirus, the real antivirus running on the computer did not prevent the fake antivirus from being installed, it did not detect the virus while it was running and the real antivirus appeared to be able to do a full system scan and find nothing wrong with the infected computer. How did they do that?

The first giveaway that it was an infection was that I could not install MBAM because the virus had disabled running any 'exe' files via the registry entry listed above that I then deleted. BTW the name of the actual virus file is ‘ave.exe’.

Mobile home repairs part 2

The second project at my 'new' home was to rebuild the master bathroom. The bathtub had a crack in it and the toilet rocked. The tubs problem turned out to be a water leak that had rotted out the floor under it and led to the crack in the tub – there was nothing left under it to properly support it! Before long I had removed almost the entire bathroom floor. The new floor was tricky to get in, I had to remove the door, but the tub was even trickier! The new tub was 5 foot long and the room was 5 feet wide. There was no way to get it into the room without busting a hole in the wall! The toilet rocked because the building had sank (it was not on a slab but just pads) and the toilet was above the sewage connection. The connection was all made with solid PVC, they did not put in a rubber or slip fitting so the toilet had been pushed an inch up into the air!

To fix the master bathroom I removed the tub, then removed the floor.  That left a large hole going down into the 5th dimension somewhere...

Next was to put in some solid insulation to keep the neighborhood cats and other varmits out  Then the studs needed to be 'sistered' so the new floor could be fastened down all the way around.  The seam between the 4 by 8 sheet of plywood and the additional one foot needed would have been in mid air, so I covered that stud with a strip of plywood that would be used to bind the two sheets of plywood together in the next layer.

The next problem was that the new floor was not level enough so I used a bag of floor leveler to make the area under the tub completely level.  Then the tub could not be put into place without knocking a hole in the wall because the room is exactly 5 feet wide.  Then there was the next puzzle to solve.  The drain from the old tub was above the floor but the new one is below the floor.  The drain also doubled as a sewage vent so the plumbing got very trick at this point.  I kept putting all of the pieces together untill I had it right then glued it all in.

The final problem is still not fixed...the hot and cold are backwards!  I went by the length of the pipes and never checked it until it was all done.

Here is what the bathroom looked like before the tub and the floor were replaced;

Here is what it looks like after being renovated;

Mobile Home Repairs

Recently I purchased a 'mobile home'. I have not owned one in over 25 years but I fell in love with this one. It was 20 years old, had a beautiful new kitchen, nice new second bath, and new windows. It needed a new front door, master bath, and roof. There was a missing support post in the car port as well. In fact the one end of the car port had been bolted onto the house and all of the lag bolts had pulled out! I put in the support post first thing to keep if from falling down under the weight of the snow.

Then things started to get strange. Homeowners insurance for a mobile home is hard to get, especially if it is over 20 years old! Imagine if they treated houses like that? The front door is 2 inches shorter than a standard door! STRANGE! Why would they do that?

So I checked into buying a ‘proper’ front door, its $450 for another junky door plus another $400 for installation! So I went to Bargain Outlet and picked up a normal sized steel door with an arching window in it for $150 instead. I figured I could just cut 2 inches off it. After measuring several times I concluded that I should cut 2.5 inches off it and that was correct. The first problem was that my jig saw blade was not long enough to cut through the door. I had to mark it and cut it on both sides. Then the frame had to be cut off too. The frame would not go back together until I also cut the door jam like the piece I cut off so it fit together properly. Then the screen door had the same problem! So I found a solid core screen door and cut 2.5 inches off it as well.

Here is what the old door looked like.  It was coming apart because the glue that held it together was no longer working, the bottom of it fell out alltogether.

Here is what the new door looks like.  To the right are the 2 1/2 inch pieces that were cut off the bottom of the new door and the screen door.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 is causing computers to hang!

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 is causing computers to hang, sometimes for ½ an hour, and sometimes FOREVER! The symptoms are that the icons in the lower right corner of the task bar never come up and when your mouse crosses the taskbar it turns into an hourglass. The three finger salute (Alternate Control Delete) does not work. You have to hold your power button in for 10 seconds or unplug the computer! I can’t get any help from Kaspersky except for a program that you can download to remove Kaspersky, but of course if the computer is hung you cannot run the program. Duh?

The solution is to start the computer is safe mode via pressing F8 during boot up. Then you cannot remove Kaspersky because the removal tool does not work in safe mode! Go to ‘Start’, ‘Run’, and type ‘MSConfig’. In the 'startup' tab uncheck ‘AVP’ (That’s Kaspersky). In the 'services' tab uncheck ‘Kaspersky’. While you are in there you might want to uncheck other programs that you installed years ago but never use….

Restart you computer and go to ‘control panel’ and ‘add/remove programs'. Select 'Kaspersky' and remove all of it except for the license registration (top check box). Then download the latest version of Kaspersky 2010 and reinstall it. So far this has worked almost every time. If it does not work, reinstall windows, you likely have a virus that is preventing Kaspersky from working properly.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a fix or an apology from Kaspersky……

I just checked the Microsoft and Kaspersky blogs this morning and they are reporting problems with Kaspersky 2010 on new computers with a fresh install of Windows.  That eliminates the possibility of the the problems coming from an undetected virus.  So far I have had 3 computers that after uninstalling Kaspersky 2009 and then installing 2010, as much as a month later, the system either stops working with the symptoms listed above, or even worse the mouse stops working claiming that there is a registry problem.  I have tabbed my way there and tried a different mouse driver to no avail. 

The solution remains to reinstall Windows.  Then fight with Microsoft over licensing issues for Windows and Office.  Then we have to call ACT and get additional licenses to get that to work too....  What a pain.....

IPCop with URL Filter

Years ago setting up a Linux firewall was a nightmare. Then after many trials I discovered IPCop. It installs in 10 minutes and it is up and running! Thats almost as easy as using a firewall box that hangs on the wall. There is one catch they do not tell you about. To get it going quickly do not use the network card that is built into the motherboard, and instead use a 3 com network card and an Intel network card. That way you know what card connects to what and you do not have to fight with the drivers to get them to work. The 3 Com card will connect to the internal network via your 24 port switch or hub and the Intel card will connect to the Web via your ISP's router.

Installing IPCop
----------------
Download the ISO file and burn a CD from the ISO Image file.
Boot the 'soon to be' server from the CD you made.
Press "enter" about 5 times.
Select "Skip" to skip floppy configuration.
  (Press 'space bar' to select the item, 'tab' three times, and then 'enter'.)
Select "Probe" to find the first network card. (The 3 Com Card)
Enter an IP address of 192.168.0.1 (The IP of this Firewall)
Select "US" for the keyboard layout.
Select "EST" for Eastern Standard time.
Select "IPCop" for machine name and "workgroup" for a Domain.
  (or your companys domain)
Select "Disable" for the ISDN screen.
For Network Type select "Green and Red".
For Drivers and Cards Select "Probe" and assign the second card to "Red".
For Address Settings Select "Red", and enable "DHCP".
  (Unless you alrady have a DHCP server)
For DHCP Server Configuration - Set the IP Range to 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.100 and "OK"
  (This allows devices with 'fixed' IP address from 1 to 10)
Enter your password about 6 times and press "OK" to restart.

If everything went well you are up and running in 10 minutes or less!
Go to a machine on the network and from FireFox type '192.168.0.1:81'
Enter 'admin' and your password 'xxxxxx'

Some other "Services" you may want to modfy are;
Select "Services", "Intrusion Detection", Enable on Red, Enable on Green, Select "Save"
Select "Services", "Proxy Server", Enable on Green, Transparent on Green, Log Enabled, Select "Save"

URL Filter Installation

-----------------------
Download IpCop-UrlFilter, burn to a CD and put into server.
type 'mount /dev/cdrom'
type 'cd /mnt/cdrom'
type 'cp ipcop [tab] /'
type 'cd /'
type 'tar zxvf ipcop [tab]'
type 'cd ipcop [tab]'
type './install'

It runs without creating any new tabs. Look under 'services', 'urlfilter'. You will want to do a blacklist 'update now' then select 'porn' and enable logging. I won't tell you how to test it, suffice it to say play with it boy, and you should get a 'blocked' screen. The log seems to take a while to start working, but it should log every blocked site.

There are two new things now happening in the virus/spam war.

First of all Kaspersky 2010 is hanging up computers. The symptoms happen when you upgrade from Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 to Kaspersky Internet Security 2010. The next time you start the computer it takes several minutes before you can click on something and anything will happen. The solution is to uninstall Kaspersky and then reinstall Kaspersky Internet Security 2010. That has worked on every computer that has had the problem so far.

Here is an interesting thought, all the computers that have had the problem were 'old installations' that most likely have had a 'fixed' virus on them. In fact one of the installations had Windows (Virus) Vista on it, but had since been upgraded to WIndows XP. So long term the better solution would be Format C: and start over as there may be some sort of a virus/corruption that is causing the problem.

The second thing that has come to my attention is a new method in the virus attacks. When you visit an infected web site they may try over 1,000 ways to infect your computer. So though matter how hard you try to keep your computer up to date it is a hopeless case. But now they have a new attack vector, they are trying the same thing in emails! They send a spam that attacks your anti-virus as well as attacks Microsoft Outlook looking for any of several hundred vulnerabilities. This results in Outlook Restarting untill you unplug your network cable. The solution is to use web mail and delete the garbage. Also update to at least Outlook 2003 with all of the patches and updates installed as well.

Wordpress - rounded tab corners

Firefox and Chrome recently included the ability to create rounded corners in CSS or style sheets.  After some playing around I was finally able to get it to actually work.  Google Chrome also has support for rounded corners under the name 'webkit'.  Note that the paramaters have to be different for Firefox and for Chrome.  The 4px parameter sets the size in pixels of the corners.

Here is the CSS to make it all work;

#nav li {

float: left;

list-style:none;

color:#3f3f3f;

border-top: solid white;

border-left: solid white;

}

#nav a, #nav a:visited {

display: block;

text-decoration: none;
background:#f0f0f0;
padding:5px 12px;
color:#3f3f3f;
border-top: 1px solid gray;
border-right: 1px solid gray;
border-left: 1px solid gray;
-moz-border-radius-topright:4px;
-moz-border-radius-topleft:4px;
-webkit-border-top-right-radius:4px;
-webkit-border-top-left-radius:4px;
}

Here is what the rounded corners look like in tabs.

Ionic Spinner

One of my inventions that I have been working on requires the use of an 'ionic spinner'.  I had seen one of them several years ago made by the son of a friend who lives in southern Texas.  I asked him to put it on YouTube but alas I could not find anything about it anywhere.  So I tried making one for myself but it does not work so far.

Basically the idea is to take some needels and mount them in opposite directions on the ends of a wire that has a loop in the center that goes over the top of a Tesla Coil or similar high voltage device.  Then when the high voltage is turned on and sparks fly off the ends of the needels the spinner starts rotating in circles.  Turn off the lights and you have a very nifty picture.  So I will keep working on it and hopefully post some pictures of it running some day soon......

It is up and running, although it is not working all that well.  There are two videos uploaded on YouTube already.  video1  video2
video3

Another encounter with a fake anti virus

Back in March 2009 I had to replace my hard drive in my laptop and start over once again.  There was some sort of virus on there and nothing could find it.  About 6 months later MalWare Bytes (MBAM) found about 5 infections on the old hard drive and fixed them.  That was my first encounter with the fake anti-virus virus.  Now I see that about once or twice a week.  When I google for something I try to look at the URL and make sure that it is a valid, well known web site before I click on it.

Recently I was looking up my moms address to help my daughters find their way there.  One of the links I clicked on went to mapquest and I went there because I wanted to see if it had her road properly identified.  However when I tried to exit that web site this poped up on my screen.

I did a 'control' then 'print screen' and then exited the fake warning screen.  Neither Kaspersky or MBAM have found anything on my computer so an infection might have been avoided this time, so far the warning message has not come back.

Another new weapon in the virus war is 'auto runs'.  I have used it to fix a Windows Vista machine as well as my computer at work.  You can use 'auto runs' to go in there and shut down all kinds of things.  It is easy to get carried away and shut down too much, but then you can go back and re-enable it. 

I need to use 'auto runs' on my laptop because every time I use it I end up doing an 'alternate', 'control', 'delete' and shutting down a bunch of junk before the computer will behave properly.  No anti-virus has found any virus on that computer.

Network cable testers

Years ago I invented an in-circuit network cable tester.  It has been on my web site for about 10 years, but no one makes anything like it.  So I thought I would re-post it to my blog as the search engines seem to find things here much faster.

The in circuit network cable tester is only made by me and it is found no where else in the world that I know of! The in circuit network cable tester works on the principle that each cable pair is attached to a coil at both the hub and at the computer ends. So with a volt meter you can measure what almost looks like a short between the blue and the blue white wires. I eventually built this tester based on this principle because using a volt meter to test a cable was a pain in the but. This tester can also tell if it is a 10 only or a 10/100 device at the far end of the cable. A 10 only device only lights up the LED's for the orange and the green pairs. A 10/100 device will light up all 4 LED's if it is working properly. This device may fail to detect a short in some rare cases, but over 90% of the time it will tell you if there is a wiring problem.

The scanning tester is also my own design but several other people make very similar devices. It just uses a 555 timer and a 4017 to sweep through all 8 wires to verify that they are connected and that they are in the right order. This is a great device for testing home made network cables or ones that may have been damaged while they were in use. It also tests and detects network crossover cables.

Thyroid Synthroid and medical problems

Well this is a never ending subject.....

My history was that I was sick for over 10 years.  During that time I saw three primary doctors but they all said that I needed to see a shrink because it was "all in my head".  Then a physicians assistant discovered that my TSH was 8.5 and put me on synthroid.  Problem solved...right?  NOT!

This year for Christmas I got an electric blanket.  What a relief, I can finally sleep at night. Going back 20 years I used to sleep in my underpants.  Then I eventually added PJ's then I added some extra blankets, now I am up to about 10 blankets, and finally this year I have added an electric blanket!  I like the solution they used for King David in First Kings chapter 1.  LOL

A while back I blogged on how that when all my symptoms came back after I had been on the synthroid for several years I went to the doctor and was told that it was all in my head once again, because all my tests are fine.  So I added something called 'Thyroid Activator' from the health food store.  Now I have also added Ionine I think those pills are called "Iodide".

2400 Volt Can Crusher

This is an old post that somehow made its way to the top?  It is from the summer of 2009.

I could not leave the idea of vertically crushing a soda can into an hourglass shape, so that is what I am working on next. This power supply will hopefully deliver 2400 volts. The problem is that I do not have a SCR that can handle 2400 volts. So some sort of mechanical contacts will have to be used. They may have to be replaced after each use.
This cabinet was purchased last June at the Rochester Hamfest for $15 I think. The front will have a digital meter, and connectors for power and ground. Note the size of the 470 ohm resistor, it is rated for about 250 watts, no more smoking resistor.  The panel meter is connected to a 1 meg ohm resistor that is in series with a 9 meg resistor, not across a capacitor like it shows in the schematic.

WordPress With Better Meta Tags

Once again I am back with another WordPress fix. Google will report problems with a WordPress based web site unless you fix a few simple problems.

One thing that is needed is to put a description under each and every picture on your web site. Google looks for some text that is near to the picture to identify the picture. Then Google will use that text to place your picture into google image search results. That text can be done by using the caption tag that is available with every picture that you upload into your web site. Just make sure that you fill it in and do not just depend upon the name of the picture to get it listed.

Another problem is the lack of good meta tags in WordPress. There is a fix for this problem in the WordPress codex but it only places the post title into the meta tag. The results of doing this is that Google will then report that the meta tag is too short. The solution is to put your blog title, the categories, and then the post title into the meta tags. This is usually long enough to make Google happy. The code below does that with a "-" in between each of them.

< meta name="Description" content="< ?php if ( is_single() ) {
bloginfo('name'); echo " - "; foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) 
{ echo $category->cat_name . ' - '; } single_post_title('', true); 
} else { bloginfo('name'); echo " - "; bloginfo('description'); }
?> " />

< meta name="Keywords" content="< ?php if ( is_single() ) {
bloginfo('name'); echo " - "; foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) 
{ echo $category->cat_name . ' - '; } single_post_title('', true); 
} else { bloginfo('name'); echo " - "; bloginfo('description'); }
?> " />

Wordpress show make model & price

Wordpress is a great CMS system but it is a little tricky to display any custom Fields. Displayed below is the code needed to be added to the archives list so that it will preview the make model and price of your items. Of course you need to create the custom fields and fill them in for each item in order for this code to work. Another trick is to add a link to the item itself when you click on the tag. To do that you need to add your own 'a href' and then strip the code off the 'get_the_tags' response.

< a href="< ?php the_permalink() 
?>"> <?php echo strip_tags(get_the_tag_list
('Item: ', ', ')); > </a>
< ?php $key="Price"; if 
(get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true)!="") 
echo "Price: ".get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?>
< ?php $key="Make"; if 
(get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true)!="") 
echo " Make: ".get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?> 
< ?php $key="Model"; if 
(get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true)!="") 
echo " Model: ".get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?>  

WordPress Fast thumbnails

I have an idea on how to make fast WordPress thumbnails. There are two methods used inWordPress. One is to use a special custom field that contains the thumbnail name, this requires filling in that field for every item and also uploading the thumbnails for every item.

The second method is to use an add on program like 'TimThumb' that makes thumbnails from the images and then sends the thumbnails to your computer. Your computer then caches them so after the first time they are instantly there. The problem is that it takes time for the web server to shrink the images down so a cache of images is maintained on the server as well.

I have a third solution that works very fast. When pictures are uploaded to WordPress it sets them up with three sizes, large, medium, and small. They are 600x600 pixels, 300x300 pixels, and 150x150 pixels. They are identified by 600x600, 300x300, or 150x150 being added on to the end of the pictures name. You select the size that you want to use for your article.

Now notice that the 150x150 size is 1/16 the total size of the full 600x600 sized image. Why not just select the 150x150 image, send that as the thumbnail and have your browser shrink it to 100x100 or whatever thumbnail size that you want? The images could then be selected totally automatically and sent with very little work by the web page server. All the work would then be done by the user's computer and that would be very little work they would have to do.

The program would find the image reference in the post, then strip off the last 4 characters (usually '.jpg') then add '-150x150' on the end, then put back the last 4 characters. It sounds simple but it is only about 90% successful so far. The problems are that if the image was smaller than 150x150 to begin with then there is no 150x150 image, so it would have to go back to the original image. The next problem is that if you selected the 300x300 image. In that case the last 7 characters would have to be stripped off before the 150x150 was added onto the end.

Sorry the code listing here on BlogSpot is not turning out well. The code goes in the functions as a replacement for get_the_image that uses timthumb. In live testing this code is about 2 times faster using a database of about 500 items. However about 5 % of the thumbnails did not work, so thumbnails had to be manually created and uploaded to fix that problem. One last change fixed problems where the .JPG was capitalized in the uploaded image but was lower case in the thumbnails.

/* For Getting the Image FASTER */
//GET-POST-IMAGE1 quicker than the script by Tim McDaniels

function get_post_image1 ($post_id=0, $width=0, $height=0, $img_script='') {
global $wpdb;
if($post_id > 0) {
$sql = 'SELECT post_content FROM ' . $wpdb->posts . ' WHERE id = ' . $wpdb->escape($post_id);
$row = $wpdb->get_row($sql);
$the_content = $row->post_content;
if(strlen($the_content)) {
preg_match("/< img src\=('|\")(.*)('|\") .*( |)\/> /", $the_content, $matches);
if(!$matches) {
preg_match("/< img class\=\".*\" title\=\".*\" src\=('|\")(.*)('|\") .*( |)\/> /U", $the_content, $matches); }
$the_image_ext = substr($matches[2],-4);
if ($the_image_ext == ".JPG") {  $the_image_ext = ".jpg"; }
$the_image_num = substr($matches[2],-11,-7);
$the_image_src = substr($matches[2],0,-4);
$the_image_150 = $the_image_src . '-150x150' . $the_image_ext;
$the_image_src = substr($matches[2],0,-12);
$the_image_300 = $the_image_src . '-150x150' . $the_image_ext;
if ($the_image_num=="150x" || $the_image_num=="300x" || $the_image_num=="600x" ) {
$the_image = '< img alt="" src="' . $the_image_300 .'" width="' . $width . '" height="' . $height . '" /> ';
} else {
$the_image = '< img alt="" src="' . $the_image_150 . '" width="' . $width . '" height="' . $height . '" /> '; 
}
return $the_image;
}
}
}

I tried posting the code as a gif, but it was too small to read. Thanks to makeblogpopular.blogspot.com I now have readable code!

Digital camera evolution

For many years almost all camcorders used VHS tapes. I remember when they were two devices with a big cable that ran between them. Then they made the small VHS camcorders. In those days I do not think I ever owned a camera myself, but I shot about 6 VHS tapes worth of the kids with cameras that I was working on. Then along came YouTube and I bought my first digital camera to make YouTube videos. It was a Sony TRV-250 that I bought on EBay for $50 because it was dead. I fixed it up and used it for some video's but then I bought a Sony TRV-530 for $100 on EBay because it supported analog as well as digital tapes, it has a microphone jack, and worked at lower light levels. I must have shot 30 or 40 video's using that camera. It is on the left in the picture above.

Next I bought some Sony HDR-HC5's on EBay for $250 each. On one of them the tape door jammed because the white magnetic strip theft deterrent was in the way. Another had a steel anti theft cable attached to it, that was easy to remove. They used the mini-DV tape format, and feature a Full HD 1080i 4 mega pixed image sensor. One of them is in the middle of the picture above.

Now I have made another leap forward in camcorder technology, I have bought a Hard drive based Camcorder. It is a Sony DCR-SR82 that I bought on EBay for just under $250. It is on the right in the picture above. I picked this model out because it has the boot for adding a boom microphone, a 1 mega pixel picture, and forward facing built in microphones. Many of the hard drive based models do not have the boot and the built in microphone faces up!

5 KV Soda Can Crusher

The 5 KV power supply got a big boost when I won a complete power supply on eBay for $100 including a 5 KV transformer, 100 uf Capacitor and a contactor. There were a lot more parts in there but I did not need them. I rebuilt it and almost split a soda can in half on the first test run. The video is on YouTube under bobdavis321 but I cannot get the link to copy right now. Then I tried to use it again but discovered that the power transformer was shorted and the diode was blown to bits. The problem was that there was no resistor to limit the kickback current.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DocVqsdDQG8
So I rebuilt the power supply using the schematic of the other 5 KV supply. This time I used a resistor to limit the charge current and to protect the diodes during discharge. The schematic is shown below.
To test out the rebuilt power supply I used an apple and then a pumpkin. The apple was soft and mushy but it blew to pieces at 5 KV. The pumpkin did not blow up at all. So I filled it with water and tried again. There was a big bang but the pumpkin survived. After several tries it did split wide open as is seen in the picture below. The video is also on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSYTqCBXRmE

Gateway T6836 upgrade from Vista-XP

At work we have some almost brand new Gateway T6836 laptops. People tried in vain to use them but because they had Vista on them they were extremely slow, generally useless and quickly virus-ed to death. They told me they could not convert them to XP but that did not stop me! I managed to upgrade them from Vista to XP.To pull this off you will need a USB floppy drive and driver files from Intel or Gateway. During boot up press F10 for boot selection, select the CD ROM, press enter. Then press enter when is says press any key to boot from the CD. Next press F6 when the option to load SCSI drivers comes up.
Here is a step by step sequence;
1. Download D20258-001-001.exe from Gateway.
2. Extract it to a folder, then copy it to a floppy disk.
3. Attach a USB floppy drive to laptop, put an XP CD into the DVD drive.
4. During the boot process press F10 to select a boot device.
5. Select the DVD drive from the list and press enter.
6. When it says 'press any key to boot from CD' press enter again.
7. Press F6 when Windows XP starts loading to ‘load SCSI drivers'.
8. When the load the drivers screen comes up press ‘S’ Select the SATA drier from the list (may require trying every driver) The actual driver needed for the T-6836 is called ‘82801HEM/HBM'
9. Then proceed to install Windows XP as you normally would.
10. Next you need to find the drivers and put them on a CD or memory sick to install them on the laptop. Below is a picture of my CD with the drivers for the T6836. The first three were not needed. The wireless network and Video driver (The fourth and the seventh files) were from Intel.com. The graphics chip set is 945G. The sound driver was from RealTech I think.

Internet Security

Internet Security - what an oxymoron! I have a favorite quote about the Internet;

Surfing the Internet used to be like going to a library and looking at books, now it is like walking through a minefield.

Something needs to be done about it. If not there will be a backlash as people are scared away from the Internet just as they were scared away from email by all of the garbage that they received.

Here are some of my proposed solutions;

1. Ban Java. Java gives someone the right to download something unto your computer and run it. I do not know how many times have I had to delete all the java files on a computer in order to get someones computer to work again.

2. Close down ISP's that encourage bad sites. Actually they have done this once and hopefully that will slow the pace of all of this garbage.

3. Demand that Microsoft fix its bugs. Putting a computer running Microsoft software on the Internet is asking for it. Servers are totally out of the question. If you must use Microsoft software then at least get a hardware firewall (That is running Linux)! IPCop is a great solution, I wrote about that years ago on my website. Netgear firewall routers are a nice solution too.

Dell X300 Laptop power problems

As you might know I am a fan of Dell laptop computers. In my experience they hold up the best in the long term. Here is another Dell laptop repair explained. The symptoms were that the laptop would shut off on its own and that it would not charge the battery. After some tinkering it was determined that the problem was in the power jack. So it was disassembled and the motherboard was removed. The power jack is in the back right corner in the picture below.

The power jack has 2 arms that extend back behind the jack. As you can see in the picture below they had become unsoldered from the motherboard. They were re soldered on the top and the bottom side of the motherboard. Then the computer was reassembled and sure enough the battery recharged and the laptop did not shut off on its own anymore.

Africa September 2009

I am attempting to post a blog entry from Accra, Ghana, West Africa. We have good Internet here because a year ago Fred and I upgraded their wireless routers BIOS. Ever since then it has worked great.

From Accra we traveled North to Tamale for the first ever graduation of students from the Video Bible School there. The church was packed to standing room only, there were 500 to 600 people there for the graduation service. It started at 9 AM and ended at 3 PM. Somewhere towards the end I shared for about 5 minutes.When the Bible school started in Tomale we bought a used TV for about $120 for them to use. On this trip I brought a Viewsonic Projector for them to use. The projector can be moved around on a motorcycle when a TV cannot be moved on a motorcycle, well it can be and would be but the long term survive ability of TVs on motorcycles is not good.

This makes about 7 video projectors that I have donated to churches in West Africa. When I started doing this the projectors were available on eBay for around $250 to $300, because they were refurbished. Now it is very hard to find any projector for under $500.

Electromagnetic Pulser - Zapper Revisited

My electromagnetic pulser or zapper died recently. To be honest I only use it about once a month to treat some aches and pains. When I opened it up I discovered that the current limiting resistor was disconnected, the push button was disconnected and several of the capacitors were unsoldered. The main problem was that the capacitors were not all glued in place. Movement and vibration led eventually to them becoming unsoldered.

Since I had to work on it anyway I thought that I would upgrade it to meet UL standards. That includes adding a power transformer, a fuse, and some other odds and ends. The primary requirement is that it be 'double insulated'.


One of the first test runs of the rebuilt zapper started in Africa. I accidentally fell into a storm drain. That resulted in a black and blue foot and hip, a scratched up arm and hand. At first I just wrapped the foot, but I still could not walk. So I added a high power magnet into the wrap and within an hour I could walk on the foot. As soon as I got home a week later I used the zapper and it reduced the pain in my foot by about 80% immediately!

Kingdom Bound 2009

Kingdom Bound 2009 is over. I went Monday evening to see Matthew West and then Casting Crowns. When I got there at 6 PM the parking lot was already full. The only parking spots available were on the lawn. Someone announced that they had sold out for the first time at Kingdom Bound! Sorry I did not take any pictures on Monday. Both Matt and Casting Crowns were really great!

Wednesday I went back again to see Natalie Grant and then Newsboys. One parking lot area was almost empty when I arrived at 6PM. We were able to get seats fairly close to the front as there were lots of empty seats at 6PM. Here is a picture of Natalie Grant. She was very good.

When the Newsboys took the stage the audience was on their feet and very excited. They did a combination of Newsboys and DC talk songs. They had a second stage set up out in the audience just a few feet from where I was sitting.

The lighting effects were very impressive. You can see how they overwhelmed the camera. I tried to shoot a video but the sound overloaded my camera as well.

Here is another picture showing some of the lighting effects. Those vertical bars are some sort of LED screen that works together like a big TV screen.

To be honest I do not think Michael Tait is nearly as good of a singer as Peter Furler was. I think that with time they will write songs that better match his vocal style and I am sure things will work out. Peter came on stage for one song and someone whom I will not mention her name, climbed onto her chair and started screaming and dancing. She was hitting me on the shoulder because I had argued with her that Peter was not going to be there.

Dodge Caravan wet floor problems

I have had some problems with the floor on the front passenger side of my van being very wet at times. After it rains I could sometimes even hear water sloshing around. Then on one occasion I saw what looked like a small waterfall coming from somewhere behind the glove box. The passenger side seat was even starting to rust around the base from all of the water.

The problem is that the windshield wiper assembly has a tray under it to collect water. Then a drain hose connects to the bottom of the tray to drain the water out. However that hose can get so clogged that the water cannot get out. Eventually it spills into the passanger side floor. The solution is to pull off the hose (it is dead center in the picture below) and then clean the garbage out of the drain hose.

Some more strange dreams.

The good news is that this is just some more of my strange dreams. In fact I have three dreams to blog about at this time.

In one dream I climbed up to an area where some friends were sleeping. Then I noticed that one of the friends had lots of bruises. So I asked him if the bruises were from the first or from the second major natural disaster. Yipes? The area was devastated by something like a hurricane or an earthquake. It resembled New Orleans after the hurricane, except that I think it was New York City.

The second dream was that a train was rolling to a stop. When it stopped I was told that one of the train cars was for me, when I looked in the car it was full of gold! I scraped off the corner of one of the gold bricks with a knife and it was really solid gold. Then Fred and I started discussing how we could send all of this gold back to the United States.

My thoughts on the second dream is, how can we send the revival we have seen in Africa (and India, and the Philippines) back to the US? That is something to think about. What are the keys to those revivals? How can we bring it back here with us?

The third dream may be an extension of an old one about watering corn that was posted a while back. It might also be an extension of the second dream above. In the beginning of the dream I was watering some plants with an ordinary garden hose. It seemed fruitless as it was never enough water this went on for days. Then I came back one day to find out that someone had connected up a three inch fire hose! Is the answer on how to bring the revival home from Africa to use a bigger hose? I have felt God saying that 'I am going to give you a bigger hose!' What that means or how He will do that I do not yet know. Stay tuned for further developments.

Do you remember the Godzilla Taco Bell commercial? The little dog had a cardboard box that was held up on one end by a stick. He was saying 'Here lizard, here lizard'. Then Godzilla roared a loud roar. The little dog looked a little puzzled, then he says 'I need a bigger box.' I LOVED that commercial. Talk about the power of positive thinking. I just need a bigger hose!

Facts about this economic depression

I am so sick of the economic depression being blamed on former president Bush. First of all congress was being run by democrats ever since the 2006 election so they were already running up the deficit. But the big problem happened in October when the media announced that Obama was going to win the election, look at the stock market index picture below. The stock market plunged when the media announced that Obama would win in October, then it plunged again when he won the election in November, then it plunged when he took office in January. Then it continued down as he had his first three months in office. JUST LOOK! The facts speak for themselves! What is going to happen next? Cap and trade. Take a look and you can see that since Cap and trade started winding its way through congress, the stock market has dropped about 300 points. If Federal health care goes through it will plunge again.

There is precedent for this. The stock market tanked three times during the great depression before the government could figure out the cause and effect. People are not going to invest their hard earned money in companies if they know the government is going to tax the companies to death. Companies are not going to invest, grow in size, and create jobs if they know the government is going to tax them to death. People will not have money to invest if the government taxes them to death.

The solution stop spending and cut taxes! It has worked before and it will work again.