Os Collection – Part 3 – MS-DOS 6

I figured I’d make less of a review and more of a guide this time around, MS-DOS is really only necessary to use when you are installing Windows on top, or if you need to use a boot disk.

This guide is very image heavy, so click below to open it, it may not be dialup friendly.

Continue reading Os Collection – Part 3 – MS-DOS 6

D-Link DIR-655 Router and SharePoint/SharePort

Update 16th January 2010: 1.33b01NA has been released.

Update 2nd November 2009: All users having issues with SharePort, check out this post for the latest information.

Update: Make sure you read the comments below to find out anything new about this feature, many bugs has been fixed since the original release, as of August 2009 Firmware 1.32NA FINAL is the latest firmware, read about it and download it here.

I have owned a D-Link DIR-655 router for the past year and it is by far the best router that I have ever used, although I did pay $150 more than what I have paid for a router before, so I’ve gotten what I have paid for.

Starting with the version 1.21 Beta 04 of the DIR-655 firmware there is now SharePoint functionality available. SharePoint as the media and other sites partially call it or SharePort as it is called everywhere else including the software itself is a way for D-Link products to share a USB device over the LAN, i’m going to try to not confuse you any further so I will refer to it only as SharePort from now on.

SharePort is an interesting feature that I actually wanted to be able to do a few years ago, by sharing USB devices from a computer so they can be used on another PC as if the device was actually plugged into your PC. D-Link have finally brought this technology to life in a limited fashion with SharePort.

Continue reading D-Link DIR-655 Router and SharePoint/SharePort

First WordPress Theme

I decided that I would give a go at writing an ambitious WordPress theme that hopefully will be much different from most WordPress themes, the general layout is familiar, but with little twists so I hope to bring something different to the WordPress community.

I have hit many snags along the way but so far it is W3C compliant and works in IE 7 and 8, FF and Safari/Chrome, however it looks shocking in IE6 using IE NetRenderer

I started writing this post 3 days ago and forgot what else to write about.

The site design is a bit over the place still, it’ll be cleaned up over the next few days after it has been finished.

New Windows 7 Screenshots at ThinkNext

Looks like ThinkNext have their hands on a copy of the 6780 (M3) build of Windows 7 and have show much more of Windows 7 than we have been able to see recently. You can view them here. The screenshots have now been taken down by Microsoft: http://www.thinknext.net/archives/2281.

Going by looks, not much has changed since Vista yet, however it seems a bit glassier, apart from the changes I have mentioned previously Calculator has had a face lift in what I can only say is a good move.

It looks as though the Control Panel items have undergone a change again, though in most cases they are still fundamentally the same.

Internet Explorer 8 is included, not much of a surprise there, it should be fairly complete by the time Windows 7 is out of Beta.

Most importantly UAC appears to have been toned down extensively in Windows 7, hopefully that doesn’t compromise on the security that was originally intended.

Not much info yet, however they intend on releasing a video soon.

Ribbon UI in Windows 7 M3

It appears going by the 2 images that have so far been released showing Paint and WordPad that Microsoft have decided to extend the Ribbon UI used in the Microsoft Office Suite to the included applications in Windows 7.

It’s a small change, but it shows that with Windows 7 Microsoft are willing to try new things. The Ribbon is a fairly handy part of the Office UI, in the case of WordPad it will allow people who are familiar with Word use WordPad much quicker.

I don’t believe the use of Paint will be more productive necessarily, as previously in Paint there was only 1 layer to most of the functionality, however the upside is that this allows Paint to increase in features if necessary without having to have yet another UI change.

Overall I believe it’s a nice addition to the Windows UI, even if it only affects a few applications, I look forward to seeing more of Windows 7 Milestone 3

Changing Domains

Tuesday night I set about purchasing a new domain name for the blog, firstly it was tough simply finding one that could serve the purpose. .com domains that actually mean anything are starting to be in very short supply and even though many interesting companies have come up with words that at the time didn’t mean anything, a blog is suited to words that make sense from day 1.

After choosing my domain and delegating the name servers (surprisingly fast nowadays) I was able to start the difficult task of moving an establishing blog to a new domain while the previous one was still running.

To move a WordPress blog, you must have the contents of the site’s folder (ie public_html) and saved sql file, once you’ve done that, upload the wordpress files to the new site, upload the sql files to the new database and change the details in wp-config.php file, once you’ve done that you must change the domain listed in the sql table wp_options from your old one to your new one. Then run this sql command:

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE (guid, 'http://exampleoldsiteurl.com', 'http://examplenewsiteurl.com');

This is assuming you have the default names for wp_posts and guid, change the first url to your old domain, change the second url to your new domain.

This was fairly straight forward, however it seems that every link in every post and page’s links are hard coded with the url of the old domain, so I went through using a similar command to the previous one to change every instance in every post to the new address

There were also some references to the absolute address for the site, which changed completely, they didn’t seem to be causing problems, but I changed them just to be sure.

Once I had done that the site was active, I just needed to change a few minor things and it was almost ready.

Firstly I redirected beejay.perthmatrix.com/* to www.techgremlin.com/*, this is to ensure that anywhere that I haven’t updated my address and anywhere that has a link to beejay.perthmatrix.com is still able to access the area requested as the server automatically redirects, for example if you go to http://beejay.perthmatrix.com/2008/09/17/the-digital-downloads-delusion/ you’ll find that you have just arrived at https://www.techgremlin.com/2008/09/17/the-digital-downloads-delusion/ without having to update the link, it also works for image links.

If you are running cpanel this is quite easy, on the redirection page add your old address to the first field and add your new domain to the field underneath titled ‘redirect to’ and check the box labelled wild card redirect, then click add.

This also helps me as my site works well for it’s SEO abilities and considering I don’t know what I’m doing in that area half the time. Allowing the old domain to stay open, while redirecting people who have found the old site through a search engine allows the new domain time to be indexed by the same search engines.

WordPress.com accounts are tricky, it seems that if you create a username for use with the WordPress Stats Plugin for a site, it is linked to it forever, further more you can’t add any more, so I instead created a new account for this domain.

Getting the most out of your internet connection

In the age of broadband connections of varying types and speeds there are many that are not running to their full potential, time after time there are users that have not experienced true broadband speeds because something is not functioning correctly or optimised properly. This guide will guide anybody through the correct and incorrect ways to make sure your broadband connection is working at it’s peak. It is focused on Australian ADSL/2+ connections but can be used elsewhere in most cases.

Continue reading Getting the most out of your internet connection

Google Chrome Beta Review

When Google Chrome came out I instantly downloaded and installed it to see what the big deal was. Here is an optimistic look at Google Chrome, past the possible security issues with the browser and the general distrust of Google around the internet at the moment.

Performance
The performance of Google Chrome is amazing. I didn’t think there would be much improvement in day to day browsing, but the speed increase from using Internet Explorer and Firefox is quite noticable. The other noticable speed increase from these browsers is in the speed that Google Chrome can open and close, on my PC the browser window opens instantly and is able to be used in a few seconds, Firefox depending on what plugins you have install, what theme you are using, at the quickest you normally can’t get it under 3-5 seconds unless you are doing some major tweaking. Google Gears integration also helps on websites that are compatible with it, such as the WordPress Admin section.

Stability
There were many reports of Google Chrome crashing when It was first released, I never experienced anything like that, in fact I have only ever experienced 1 crash and it appeared to be caused by a specific website that I had never been to before and had no interest in going to again. However, I do experience problems with Google Chrome suddenly losing the ability to produce sound, it happens with YouTube the most often and usually occurs when I have many tabs open.

Compatibility
This is not quite a strong side of this browser yet, flash is supported and works great, however Java support is flaky to say the least. Java 1.6 Update 7, the latest stable version of the Java Runtime Environment is not compatible with Google Chrome yet, however Java 1.6 Update 10, currently in Beta is apparently compatible, however I have had no luck with it on my PC, it stops Java applets running in any browser when it is installed, this may be due to a previous (working) installation of Update 10 being removed a few months ago, however I have had no success with the version that worked previously. Other users of Update 10 have also experienced a wide range of problems specific to Google Chrome, so although the latest Beta of the runtime environment is listed as compatible the chances of getting it to run correctly aren’t too good yet.

Obviously your favourite FireFox plug-ins are not compatible with Google Chrome Chrome Plugins seems promising in the future and has some good information so far. Theme support appears to be built into Google Chrome but not much has been done in that area yet.

As far is website compatibility goes Google Chrome has no major issues, I have rarely come across a website that cannot display properly in this browser.

Features
Google Chrome has many features that interest me, the One Unified Box (Address Bar) is very handy, normally I’d have to choose which box was active before I started typing, this was annoying when I started typing somewhere and had to move it to the right area, the lack of recently typed URLs is annoying, but that can be accessed from the New tab page, this lists the most common websites that you have visited and is used to access the history list, the list is set out well and the readability is great.

I have not yet used the application shortcuts, but they seem fairly simple to use. The dynamic tabs are fun to use, they allow you to drag a tab out of the window to create a new window with the current tab’s contents. A common feature starting to come out in browsers now is the ability to hide your history, cookies etc for a session, Chrome’s Incognito Mode is very similar to other types of this feature.

Google Chrome also warns about malware and phishing websites, I haven’t ran across this yet. The downloads bar is a little annoying and it took a bit of a look through the settings to get it to not forget the folder I last downloaded to.  The settings importer was automatic at the end of the installation, but can also be invoked from the menu as well, it worked flawlessly for me, cookies and favourites were imported exactly as they were in FireFox.

Look & Feel
Google Chrome looks and feels very polished, in Vista the glass border is familiar to those that use Internet Explorer, the tabs are in an interesting place, apart from having to remember that they are not in the standard spot I really didn’t notice anything good or bad about them being at the top. The bookmarks are fairly hidden when you first start using Chrome and I had to add the Bookmarks bar so that I remembered how to get to my imported Bookmarks, they are listed under Other Bookmarks and don’t appear to be accessible unless you always show the bookmarks bar.

As I stated in the compatability section I have not had many issues with page rendering, also I have not experienced any rendering issues with the browser itself, the UI is smooth and gets familiar fast.

Conclusion
As I touched on at the start, this is probably not the browser for you if you are paranoid or have any distrust of Google, also If you don’t have a good virus scanner installed and/or you blindly allow executables to run you may be put off by the possible security flaw regarding launching executables.

Google Chrome is a polished browser that is fast and works great, it has no plugins that I am aware of yet and that stops most adopting it as their default browser, but if you’re not worried about that the speed and features certainly helps productivity while browsing. I use Google Chrome for most of my browsing, however if I feel like doing some stumbling or need to use Java I will run FireFox.