Someone has posted directions over on Instructables on how to build you own Internet. Check out this bit from The IT Crowd if you’re not already laughing.
Make Your Own Internet
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Monthly Archives: February 2010
How to completely block FarmVille on Facebook
My WiFi has disappeared, what should I do?
A woman calls into The Tech Guy complaining that the WiFi named “linksys” has “disappeared” and wonders what she can do to fix that. (Have you guessed the punch line yet?)
Freaking Huge URL Generator
Windows 2000 End-of-life
Have you still got any computers running Windows 2000? Did you know that after July 13, 2010 there will be no more support or updates? Ok folks, time to upgrade.
What digital natives want from their library
Completely turn off Google Buzz
Before today, if you “turned off” Google Buzz it wasn’t really gone, it was just hidden from your account. If you really want to completely get rid of it, turn it back on (if you previously turned it off), then click the “turn off buzz” link again. You’ll then be taken to the buzz settings screen which will provide you with a new “Disable Google Buzz” option. Be warned, this will also delete your Google profile if you’ve previously created one.
Get a little more oomph out of your Windows 7 box by turning off search
I love Windows 7. One of its best features is the speed of searching the entire content of my more than 2TB of storage on the start menu. However, indexing all this content does take some processor power. But what about your public computers? Users are storing data there so they’re not looking for that file they’re not sure where they saved. Yes, typing “exc[enter]” is a bit faster than finding Excel in the menu system (but maybe not if there’s not an icon on the desktop) but that’s a minor convenience.
So, why not turn off the search box and all that indexing and give the processing power back to running programs? (I would especially recommend this if you’ve upgraded an older computer which not as much power to begin with.) The folks over at How-To Geek have full instructions with screenshots on how to do just this. (The short version is: Control Panel | Programs and Features | Turn Windows features on or off | Uncheck Windows Search | Confirm | Reboot.)
End result: no search box on the start menu or in Windows explorer along with some recovered processor cycles from the lack of indexing.
Don’t reuse passwords!
If you’re a Twitter user you may have noticed that this week you might have been forced to change your password. Why? Because so many people use the same password for multiple sites that Twitter was getting hacked as a result. Turns out that so nefarious people were setting up other sites that required users to create usernames and passwords specifically to collect those passwords and try using them on other sites! Please, please, please, do not use the same password on more than one site!
Use a password generator, store your passwords in some secure software or Web site, create a passphrase that you can modify on a site-by-site basis. I don’t care how you do it, just use a different password on different sites. Still going to be lazy about this? Then at least use a different password on the really important stuff like your bank account.
Cross-posted on the ITART blog, The Travelin’ Librarian, and the NLC blog.
WordPress issues
Overall, the transition has gone smoothly. Looking back at some old posts it looks like any one with an embedded video lost the embed in the transition. Oddly, or luckily, the URL of the embedded video still appears in the post. (Not a live link of course.) I’ve re-embedded some of the more recent videos but I’m not sure I’ll bother to go back and re-embed all of them.
Also, there’s a few completely blank posts. Not sure what’s up with those. I’ll see what I can do about those in the future.