Free Internet Security

Internet security, who doesn’t need it? Trick question… we all do. But do we all have to pay for it? The answer is no. There are numerous companies that offer free: anti-virus, firewall, and anti-spyware software. The hard thing is to figure out which combination of the freebies will do good enough of a job protecting your system. Lucky for you I recently needed “free internet security”, so I just went through the process of installing, uninstalling, and testing all available antiviruses, firewalls, and antispyware I could find off the net. And the winners are:

Antivirus: Avast! Home Edition
Firewall: ZoneAlarm Firewall
Spyware: Microsoft Defender

Download and install all three if you want your internet security to be “complete”.

Javascript: Month + Year

I recently needed to use javascript to write out the current month and year. Here, HTH…

<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!–
var currentMonthYear = new Date()
var monthNumber = currentMonthYear.getMonth() + 1
var year = currentMonthYear.getFullYear()
if (monthNumber==1) monthName=(‘January’);
else if (monthNumber==2) monthName=(‘February’);
else if (monthNumber==3) monthName=(‘March’);
else if (monthNumber==4) monthName=(‘April’);
else if (monthNumber==5) monthName=(‘May’);
else if (monthNumber==6) monthName=(‘June’);
else if (monthNumber==7) monthName=(‘July’);
else if (monthNumber==8) monthName=(‘August’);
else if (monthNumber==9) monthName=(‘September’);
else if (monthNumber==10) monthName=(‘October’);
else if (monthNumber===11) monthName=(‘November’);
else monthName=(‘December’);
document.write(monthName + ” ” + year)
//–>
</script>

Standard osCommerce Buttons

Standard osCommerce Buttons

While setting up an osCommerce installation, I decided that I needed “regular, plain, standard, whatever you want to call them” buttons for it’s frontend. I searched the osCommerce contributions/addons site and found nothing “standard”. So, I opened up my image editor of choice (Fireworks), then did a little magic and ended up with a contribution, here.

Final Thoughts: Standard is not so standard anymore!? Grrr…

How to check your cPanel based email

Using your web browser,

1) Go to http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail
2) Log in using your username and password.
3) Click on Horde or SquirrelMail

It’s that simple.

*Optional: if you have Outlook, after logging in using your web browser, click on “Configure Mail Client”, then choose “Auto-Configure Microsoft Outlook 2000® for POP3 Access” to automatically have cPanel configure Outlook for you. This involves downloading a registry file and installing it. If you would rather not do this or the auto configuration doesn’t work, then follow the manual configuration instructions.

Final Thoughts: I suggest using Outlook if you have it.

HP BT450 Bluetooth XP Driver

Yesterday, I spent a good 10+ minutes looking for a driver, the HT BT450 Bluetooth Adapter driver. I Google’ed, then I Yahoo!’ed, then I went straight to HP’s support website… always using the keywords: hp bt450 bluetooth xp driver. I either got nowhere or found the Vista version, here. That was until I found this page… and the direct link to the driver, here. I hope this helps someone else, because 10+ minutes of “searching” is way too long especially for a driver! -Thuan

The Subtract Join

Subtract Join

I needed a way of selecting all primary key(s) from a certain table (Table_1) that was not used as a foreign key in a sub-table (Table_2). So I went at it with my SQL know-how to no end. It was obvious that I needed to do a little catching up. 🙂

I googled the following:

• all instances of unique id not found in sub-table
• primary key not found as foreign key in sub-table
• select all rows if not exist in sub-table
• sql tutorial
• sql join
• sql reference
• sql relational databases

…and found nothing useful. However, my research did lead me to one conclusion… what I needed was the opposite of a join. I googled for it, it as in “opposite of a join”. What I found was a very useful MS KB, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/136699.

The described “Subtract Join” was exactly what I was looking for and it works! What’s odd is of all the SQL tutorials I ran into, none of them mentioned the SUBTRACT JOIN. That makes me think there might be a better way of doing this query. Is there a better way? Am I simply not using the right keywords when I search? Anyways, if there is I couldn’t find it…

Batch BOL/EOL Editing

I needed a way of adding periods to the end of every line in text documents. The text documents in question had 100+ lines, so going through each document and pressing ( END > . > ENTER ) repetitively was not ideal. I needed a program, but after some brief googling I gave up and decided that I needed to write this program. I started my project by getting some advice and direction, here, and I am glad I did or else I would have went with my original plan of working with “regex” 🙁 …

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Dim oFile As System.IO.File
Dim oWrite As System.IO.StreamWriter
Dim Needy As String = tbx_main.Text
Dim Added As String = Regex.Replace(Needy, “(\p{P})(?=\Z|\r\n)”, “.”)
oWrite.Write(Added)
oWrite.Close()
oWrite = oFile.CreateText(“C:\Text_to_Speech.txt”)
End Sub

The end result is a little program that adds any desired character(s) to the beginning or end of all lines pasted into its textbox. The code is as follows…

Try
‘Make sure big tbx is not empty
If tbx_main.Text = “” Then
tbx_main.Text = “Please enter text!”
ElseIf tbx_main.Text = “Please enter text!” Then
tbx_main.Text = “Please enter text!”
Else
‘Make sure small tbx is not empty
If tbx_desired.Text = “” Then
tbx_desired.Text = “Char?”
ElseIf tbx_desired.Text = “Char?” Then
tbx_desired.Text = “Char?”
Else
‘Declare: file, stream and savefiledialog
Dim oFile As File
Dim oMyStream As Stream
Dim saveFileDialog1 As New SaveFileDialog
‘Set savefiledialog defaults
saveFileDialog1.Filter = “txt files (*.txt)|*.txt”
saveFileDialog1.FilterIndex = 2
saveFileDialog1.RestoreDirectory = True
‘Run nested code if user presses OK button in dialog
If saveFileDialog1.ShowDialog() = DialogResult.OK Then
oMyStream = saveFileDialog1.OpenFile()
Dim oWrite As New StreamWriter(oMyStream)
For Each LineInput As String In tbx_main.Lines
‘Core Code, add periods to beginning or end
If rbtn_begin.Checked = True Then
‘Beginning
oWrite.WriteLine(tbx_desired.Text + LineInput)
ElseIf rbtn_end.Checked = True Then
‘End
oWrite.WriteLine(LineInput + tbx_desired.Text)
End If
Next
oWrite.Close()
End If
‘Periods added, display success msgbx, close form
MessageBox.Show(“Success: file was created!”)
Me.Dispose()
Me.Close()
End If
End If
Catch exc As Exception
‘Catch Errors, display messagebox
MessageBox.Show(“Error: file was not created!”)
End Try

Sounds useful? If you want to download the program and use it at your own risk, click here.

MS MP Visualization Removal

Today I downloaded and installed a couple Microsoft Media Player Visualizations. They didn’t turn out as expected, so I tried to follow their un-install instructions:

To uninstall the Visualizations
1. In Windows Media Player full mode, click Tools, and then click Options.
2. On the Visualizations tab, click the visualization you want to remove.
3. Click Remove, and then click Yes when prompted.

Well in MS MP 11, this is actually:

To uninstall the Visualizations
1. In Windows Media Player full mode, click File, click Tools, and then click Options.
2. On the Plug-ins tab and within the Visualizations category, click the visualization you want to remove.
3. Click Remove, and then click Yes when prompted.

But my “Remove” button was grayed out, so I had to do this:

1. Using my standard Windows Explorer, I navigated to C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Visualizations
2. Deleted the visualizations I didn’t want
3. Then went to edit my registry: clicked on “Start“, opened “Run“, typed in “regedit“, clicked on “Ok
4. Then I navigated to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Objects\Effects
5. Then deleted the keys attached to the visualizations previously deleted.

Final Thoughts: It would’ve helped a lot if the Remove button actually worked…

Different Fantastico Versions?

There seems to be different Fantastico versions out there because my Fantastico on Lunarpages is limited on what it offers. What out any suprise, what they lack I really need.

For example: phpBB, Drupal, and Gallery are all missing from the list of scripts. I looked up other host like Hostgator, Bluehost, and Siteground to see what they offered and it seems that only Lunarpages has this version.

So I called Lunarpages and asked about it and after some time and transferring of calls… I got this answer, “Our support team removed all those programs for security reasons.” For some reason I don’t think that is a very accurate answer or a bunch of crock. If those scripts are such a threat then why are all the other host still offering them?

Anyways, I am stuck with them for another 1.75 year, lol. If I had known that they didn’t offered those scripts before signing the contract… I would probably with another host.

So if you are looking for a good host and are considering, be warned that Lunarpages’ version of Fantastico is “incomplete.”

Plugin Blues

If no one has found any problems with downloading/installing/using WordPress plugins, let me be the first to say, “I have!” and I hate it of course. The plugins I spent hours if not days carefully selecting were very useful… until I updated my WordPress version. The minute I did that many of the plugins simple stop working or didn’t work right.

After I realized it was because I upgraded my WordPress, I went to the “plugins” section in WordPress and found that over half the plugins needed to be updated. Unfortunately, the majority of them came from different providers. That means I needed to go to each providers site to download and reinstall each of them.

The thought of such a task was just too daunting so I deleted almost all of them and kept the ones I deemed necessary. With that said… there needs to be an easier way to “auto update” our lovely plugins. Hopefully, our superb WordPress programmers will think of something soon.