Application of the day: TED Notepad

Wordpad is nice, but even Wordpad has some annoyances and sometimes you just want a basic text editor that opens fast and has a small memory model .

Good old Windows Notepad is a good option, but actually leaves a few needed text functions out of the mix.

Looking on sourceforge.net, my favorite place to find little, efficient, free Windows widgets, one finds quite a number of text editors, some modeled after ancient command-line editors such as EMACs and pine, which were popular before and during the MS-DOS days. These offer some nostalgic value for some folks, but have a very arcane command structure and are generally not graphic-based (commands are typed into a command line with key combinations for shortcuts). That's a little too stripped down for me!

The notepad replacement of choice for me is called the TED Notepad, version 5.0.2. It offers the same look and feel as the Windows Notepad, plus adds these features:

• Does not modify the registry, and hence is "portable," meaning it can be run from a USB drive
• Nine permanent clipboards
• Provides hotkey for almost every function
• Supports Unicode
• Has an option while installing to actually replace "notepad.exe" (Note: if you do this, windows or your anti-viral software, or both, will complain!)
• Quick exit by hitting ESC
• Better search capabilities
• Autocompletion as an option
• More features than I can name here

Select the link above and take a look at TED - a worthy replacement for good 'ole notepad!

Mike

COLD!

It's cold and very windy today. The doors on the outside of the food court were all roped shut, as I guess they flap in such a breeze. They had the rotating doors open though, to the delight of the fire department.

We had a nice lunch with a great salad and chicken with some kind of pineapple chutney on top, with rice. Yummy. All thanks to the folks at PandaSoft

This talk reinforced what was said this morning about the crafty nature of malware, and it scared me again. I resolved to purchase a beefier firewall than what I'm using now.

One of the reasons I worry is because I really test a lot of software. That CD we distribute each January has hundreds of programs on it, and I really don't want to give away any bad stuff to our members! For each application or game that ends up on that disk, there are two or three that don't and they all are, at one time or another, installed on my computer. I probably should think about setting up a separate computer for all of that testing. I don't remember what software caused it, but I did get one of those really difficult trojans on my machine a few months back. It took about two weeks to assure myself it was really gone, but I learned a lot in the process.

Mike

Bob Coppedge

Bob Coppedge gave an excellent and entertaining treatise on the value of developing Professional Special Interest Groups within our organization.

We've talked about SIGs before, and why we don't have any, but some of what he was saying made a lot of sense.

The commonly held view is we don't have any SIGs because of a lack of committed constituency within our organization, and this is probably true. To have a Microsoft Word SIG, or an Adobe Photoshop SIG composed of BGAMUG members, we would have to identify members that both had these interests and had the time to put on meetings and training sessions. This presupposes a lot, as committing even one night a month to the club is something that many of our members can't do on a regular basis.

If we look at the SIG more externally, and realize that even just two people (or one person with an interest and the drive to recruit just one more person), then the SIG becomes a recruiting tool. One of the reasons why very technical people do not attend meetings, and sometimes have a passing interest in the group for one or two meetings, but never show up again, is because we do not offer the detailed, focused, and intense look at the software they use.

I am proposing that there are already SIGs out there in our community, but they don't know what BGAMUG can offer them (discounted software, meeting space, tax-free opportunities, funding opportunities), and may not even know that the ability to hitch on to BGAMUG is a realistic possibility. In short, they meet regularly, perhaps even at work, but are not affiliated with a club because they don't understand what's in that relationship for them.

So, if we look to the John Walkers of the world, and a couple of other guys I know that are out there talking about computers every day, we can, with proper marketing, bring them into the club along with their sub-group. We cannot reasonably expect officers to form SIGs, because many of us are overcommitted to this and other obligations already, but I want to look at this external approach to SIGs and get these parties to realize that they can be a part of BGAMUG without necessarily committing to the meetings or anything, other than turning in something that looks like minutes and recruiting their own membership.

Most of our users are newbies. Many can't or won't organize meetings. But if we can find outsiders that are already meeting, and find a way to associate them with BGAMUG, we can have SIGs.

As a result, I am going to propose one SIG that we already have, but are just not calling it a SIG: The NonProfit SIG. John, myself, and Dick Schultz have been meeting off and on at Big Brother Big Sister of Warren County for most of a year now, helping that establishment form a security policy around their computer network. That, my friends, is a SIG. The work we have done there can help other non-profits, I am certain of it.

What about you all? Do you know of anyone that buys their very bread and butter based on computer education? Someone that does training in computers at local businesses? Here's something I didn't know: Association with a non-profit computer user group is something they can use. It enriches their resume. Probably should be worth at least the cost of a membership.

Mike Moore

Grisoft breakfast

Grisoft and the AVG folks were on the breakfast agenda, providing coffee, juice and a continental breakfast, along with an excellent discussion of the current trends in antiviral protection. The latest direction for this software is taking us away from the classic file-by-file search for viral code, which many security specialists in the field believe is old-school.

The payload for dangerous software we can pick up on the 'net is now an even better moniker, as the current ilk of evil programmers are focused on PAY. In the 90's these guys earned bragging rights for picking up trophies behind corporate firewalls, and for the most part, that is all they were interested in (that and trashing your computer). Today's malware expert on the dark side is part of large, organized and very bad networks that are interested in money, and lots of it. Viruses and spyware are passe, largely because they are easily detected.

So by and large, a typical infection on a home personal computer is most valuable if it does not announce itself, either to you or to your anti-viral software.

Bad software (malware, spyware, crimeware) can be inadvertently downloaded in JPG images, in active-X controls (which are also used by "good" software!), and by Java-enabled sites. Most often, you still need to click on a link or visit a bad site to get the infection, but some of this code is truly low-level and cannot be discovered by ordinary software.

Root Kits, software that masquerades as low-level operating system files, are but one example.

Polymorphic code
is another example of how the bad guys are tricking scanners into not noticing when something is amiss, because it changes regularly, sometimes under control of the program itself, and so anti-viral scanners cannot readily match its profile against their files of known malware signatures.

Fortunately, the AVG family of products is well suited to locate and screen for this type of information, and depending on the safety level you need, you should probably install a commercial or free firewall in addition to the Windows XP firewall service.

Anyone who trades in securities, does online banking, or keeps any personal information (Social Security numbers, for example) on their computer, or has information of a sensitive business nature on their PCs really ought to invest in a self-updating professional online internet safety package such as that provided by Grisoft in their AVG Internet Security package and take additional steps as well, such as limiting browsing to sites that are known to be safe, vigorously questioning and reporting E-mails that may be faked, and in general, adopting very cautious browsing habits. Read fine print. Don't do business with online companies that don't have security certificates and privacy policies that you can live with.

I fall into this category, and I am going to commit to armoring my PC when I get back home. Today's symposia, frankly, scared me to death.

On the other hand, if I only used my PC for playing freecell and doing e-mail, I might be okay with the standard free installation of AVG, provided I was okay with the off chance that my computer might be co-opted and used in a bot net!

Mike Moore

Hike to Havana

Partly out of curiosity, and partly to offset flapjack calories, I took an extended stroll today, ended up down by the Sands Convention Center which is just south of the Wynn. Took and nice pic of the Wynn too, but damned if I still haven't picked up a usb cable for my camera. It's always something. Maybe they'll have one at the business office I can use for $45.

I went to the welcome tonight, counted roughly 110 in attendance. But then some of the newbies may not have been there because they had a separate orientation. Tonight there is an ice cream social at the Top of the Riv. Unfortunately I blew my ice cream budget on the A&W this afternoon. It's okay to spoil your appetite when you're on vacation.

On the way to the Sands, I happened upon one of the two cigar bars in Las Vegas. Rapidly becoming an oddity, the cigar bar is somewhat of a haven for folks like me, who exhausted his gambling budget and therefore can't effectively light up downstairs other than outside. I can smoke in my room if I don't mind being a hermit! Anyway, had a couple of glasses of a fine Chianti Classico called Via Firenze. It was delightful. The in-house rolled 'gars were an order of magnitude better than Don Pablo's across from the Stardust, and still moderately priced. The Havana Club had a real nice selection of California and French wines in stock too. The little mall this was in is just south of Sands Ave on Paradise Rd., and it had a number of great internationally themed little bistros around in the area.

I'm sitting here listening to the LVPD on my scanner, and have been counting the crimes they are pursuing that don't occur in Bowling Green. Up to seven so far. The last one was "Jaywalking for the purpose of prostitution." That's a new one on me anyway.

Time to go to the Riv, later!


Mike

The Peppermill

dining in las Vegas, nerdisms, APCUG, gun shows

APCUGers, here's a winning tip: Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner the neighboring Peppermill restaurant is a hit. Well, the menu looks nice for lunch, but I've never actually been there for lunch. Broad selection, and I'm not talking about the waitresses although they are not difficult to look at. They even have chorizo, Mexican sausage. Ask for the chorizo with huevos so it doesn't come out "Chorizo and legs....er, I mean eggs!"

Everyone is efficient and not apparently on break, the coffee's wonderful and the pancakes are, sadly, thick and spongy. Not bad if you like that sort of thing though, at least they used buttermilk. And they had whipped butter, a plus.

The Peppermill is directly across Las Vegas Boulevard from the now-shuttered Stardust Hotel and Casino. True to its name, on each table sets a finely crafted pepper mill stocked with a deliciously fresh pepper.

It's registration day today, a blind man could see the signs. Overheard: "Yeah, but air mice make your arms tired, ya know." And inexplicably, this fragment, which is still bothering me: "...if it isn't posting, you gotta MacGyver it, you know.."

Nerds are almost exclusively male, and this is no slight to the fairer gender who are here to rumble with APCUG. For those of you spouses and significant others that are just here for the ride, I pause for a moment to thank you for your endurance and charm under the osmotic pressure of us social maladroits.

There is something poignant about sharing our convention space with the Antique Arms show.
Perhaps we could confederate with these guys. Yes, I think it could be done with the proper bus configuration.

"Rambus memory features a leading edge trigger component that supersedes known competitors"

"Yup. I remember that trigger. Smooth hoss, it was. Half-pound pull, wa'n it? What's a rambus, some kinda musket loader?"

"Actually about half a nanosecond. Rambus is memory. You slot it in like DDR, but most of them have cool heat sinks"

"Eisenhower? Yeah, he had some guns I guess. Yeah, the barrel's countersunk and heat tempered through and through. I dunno if you could call it cool firing though."

"No, DDR, not DDE. Never mind. So how do you boot this thing?"

"Easy, pardner. You just slip it into your boot, like this..."

--------------------------

I did find this item on guns and computers. It is an alarm clock controlled by a gun, on my favorite DIY site, Makezine. Great for killing time.


Moore

Hotel room observations

1. The maximum rate that can be charged on my room, according to the placard on the bathroom door, is $2000 per diem. One wonders under what cataclysmic situation such a rate would be charged. Some group set this rate, as a preposterous hedge against some unthinkably big convention in town, perhaps. Or maybe as a contingency for when California goes a-sliding off the shelf in a pile of lawyers and Chardonnay. Because then Vegas would be the Asilomar of the West.
2. The faucets in the bath both turn clockwise which even so is counterintuitive. It mixes me up every time. To make matters worse, they also turn counterclockwise, but when one affects this rotation, nothing comes out, which for all the world seems like there is no water. Perhaps they wash too many towels in the counterclockwise faucet world.

3. Why is it always so dark in hotel rooms? All the lights are on, and I swear one could illuminate the room better with two candles.

Tonight I really wanted the chef's special in the steakhouse, which starts with a K but which suffix escapes my ken at the moment. However it was $27, and the glass of water was extra, so I went for the congealment au poivre (the buffet, so called as it besets my stomach so). It was no better than yesterday, though costlier. In fact some of the food was surely on that table yesterday, re-steamed, as it were.

However if you must, wait on the noodle chef and tip him a dollar. In a trice, he made up a fantastic shrimp Alfredo with garlic, worth the price of admission, and the water is free. It was actually hot and not a gelid mass. Gelid rhymes a bit, in an allegorical world, with squalid, yes? I forewent the free margarita, only because I've had the best, and the swaggering elan needed to even acquire the ingredients, much less immisciate them in heavenly juxtaposition, is just not in this zip code. You get your choice of that green slushy and a free beer, see? But what is a single draft beer but a taunt for more? For that matter, what is a single free substandard Margarita, but a sadly velveteen-painted Elvis on the tattered history of the Strip?

The buffeting coffee was nefarious. Worse: multifarious. It darkened my very axons, even privy to the diluent cream provided for free. However, the coffee bar in the casino near the check-in robots is very good, particularly the espresso. Do not ask for a double espresso though - it pays to know the local idiom. I asked for a double espresso, and was asked in return, in complete innocence, "what size?" This happened in Italy as well, but I figured it was because there my barista and I were speaking two different languages. I will excuse him this one blooper, however, as he was probably agog and contemplative from talking to two young hoochies, in line before me but not for coffee, who could not possibly have been over the age of sixteen.

M

Were we bloggin about wireless setups?

How many times has this happened to you?

You are at work, or at home, or at a convention, or a buddy's house, and you need to access YET ANOTHER ssid on a wireless net, and you end up having to change your browser settings, your SSID, your wireless channel number, your home page, your printer settings, again and again and again.

By default, Windows does not make it easy to keep multiple profiles of multiple wireless setups. And often, it requires you to reboot in order to make the new settings active.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a utility that keeps these profiles for you and forces Windows to behave and not ask for reboots when they are not strictly necessary?

For years I've used a product called NetSwitcher for this purpose. The software is now out of beta and it works. It also costs $20 or so. But if you want a product that has a proven track record, buy it. I was on the beta testing team and I can tell you it's fully fleshed out and works great for this purpose. I routinely visit 18 drugstores, each with a different access point IP, each with different printers on the network, etc. So I have at least 18 profiles set up in NetSwitcher.

Another issue came up this weekend on my wife's computer. They have, naturally, a very secure network where she works and she really didn't want me changing any of those settings. NetSwitcher would have been an appropriate product to adopt the wireless environment at our house without messing with the settings she needs at work. Go to the website and look at the screen shots. Pretty nifty.

Now comes something called NetSetMan, a new application from the collection at Portable Freeware which is one of my favorite sites for new Open Source programming.

Here's a screen shot:

This free utility appears to allow up to six network setup configurations. Let the testing begin!

Application of the day

Firefox, Mozilla, browser

For those of you who like to use the Mozilla Firefox browser under Windows: Have you ever noticed how it takes Firefox a lot longer to load than, say, Internet Explorer(IE). Apparently there are large portions of IE that load during the booting of Windows (this seems especially true for IE version 7), and that's one reason IE loads faster.

Firefox users now have the ability to pre-load critical parts of the Firefox browser by utilizing the Firefox Preloader

Size of the installer is approx 870 Kb, so it won't take all night to download.

This free, open-source windows application loads as a Windows Service (in the tray) and effectively halves the initial load time for the Firefox browser and provides a near-instantaneous load for subsequent sessions. On my 2 mHtz P4 laptop, about 4 years old, the initial load time is about 6 seconds, which is barely tolerable. After installing the preloader, it was 2 or 3 seconds. There is no configuration for the loader and it does not appear to draw on your memory or processor cycle resources, so I tolerate it well sitting in the Windows tray.

This little nifty has been around since February 2005, I can't believe I missed it! Note that there are other solutions for firefox loading slowing, and some involve the compression of the run time code. I've used them as well, but this seems to work even better.

Mike

Checklist

Arrived 1/2/07 about 3:30 local time, actually a bit early.

Time zone adjusted, check.

You check in using a kiosk, like the airlines do it now. It was easy and quick, but I got my choice of tower and didn't know which one to pick.

Room checked out. Gorgeous view (a wall). South tower kinda sucks, but the room's big. HVAC works, everything works. Except there aren't enough plugs. There's never enough power outlets. Help Save our Bottom Line placard was up in the bathroom. The one that suggests our planet will exhaust its water supply if I demand that towels be washed daily. Does anyone really think this is about the environment? In Las Vegas? It's about 1) forestalling complaints and 2) net profits. If that, incidentally, ends up helping the fresh water supply, well that's great. Actually about 99% of all in-room communication to the hotel "guest" is about why they need to go with the flow and quit bitching.

Powered up: Dell jukebox, cell & bluetooth ear nub, camera battery, Pro-96 trunking scanner with the LVPD file loaded (got new batteries), laptop, cruzer drives, we're good to go. The wireless internet is fast and easy, and it's $9.95 a day, billed in 24 hour increments. Come to think of it, it may be getting ready to cut off. I'd better publish this and check the account.

I swallowed a late lunch at the Riviera's buffet. It was a bit congealed, which is not unexpected when you eat late. Checked in with the wife unit, all was well.

Finished Crichton's novel/essay on gene splicing travesties, "Next." A good read, but the novel-with-an-agenda is not my first pick. Also, it was too short and there were too many plotlines. But it suggested that our courts & congress are behind the times. Duh.

This morning, Wednesday the 3rd, I resolved to find some actual non-buffet breakfast, and found it at the Venetian, the Grand Lux cafe, a short 2.5 mile hike from the Riviera. Crab omlettes and really good hotcakes. You know, most flapjacks are cooked to fry too thick - i.e., the batter is too thick, and they put too many eggs in it. The whole pancake experience is more about the texture of the product, as opposed to the actual flavor. Too thick and the cake falls apart and gets oversaturated with syrup. And you have to have buttermilk or sour cream in there. That goes to the texture too. Ah well. The search continues. Tomorrow, maybe IHOP or this other pancake house on north aways from here.

The slot machines are not kind to me, but I did win $80 to balance out the $50 or so I'd slotted in from yesterday. I barely managed to cash out before feeding the ticket to the hungry $1 machines. It is not an easy escape from the Venetian.

I found a Davidoff's cigar establishment in with the shops at the Venetian. Davidoff is really an over-hyped brand. Everything in there was too expensive. But in particular, I find the Davidoff brand to be bland and way overpriced, even when I got a few at the duty-free store on the way back from Italy.

The gondoliers were authentically dressed but decidedly not Italian. More like American with glazed back hair trying to speak with an Italian accent and it coming out like Rocky Balboa. I wonder how much you would need to pay them to sing an aria while not on the job. We do what we have to do, and I would guess the tips are nice.

There is something about that faux-sky in the Venetian shoppes that is disorienting to me. I look up just a little, and it's like my eyes are trying to focus on the sky as a ceiling, but the mind half believes it's an actual sky. It's instant agoraphobia and I have to look down or I get all dizzy. Weird.

I bought some shoes since I left my walking shoes at home. So far that's the only thing I forgot to pack. They are nice Nike walking shoes with the gel insoles. Very comfy.

Later!

Mike