Important information for all my readers

I’d like to thank all of you who periodically keep up with my musings. As from today, June 19, 2008 I’ve migrated this WordPress blog to its new home over here. So please update your bookmarks and your RSS feeds. This is going to be a new experience for me, since I was pretty restricted as to what I could include in my old WP blog (no advertisements, no editing of themes, etc.) This new place is looking like Disneyland to me, but of course it’ll take some time for my weary brain to catch up too, heh.

See all of you in my new blog site!

Moving house, Part 5

Today, I’ve actually done it. Signed up for a 2-year webhosting account with Lunarpages. Now this is the time where all the work begins. Nevertheless, I’m going to take it one step at a time, setting up my own website, importing my WordPress blog, etc.

I’ll keep you posted.

Sunday bloody Sunday

June 15 was Father’s Day, but what a day it was. Windows Vista on my computer resembled the Titanic-it crashed and sunk. If you’ve been following my Startup woes posts, you’ll know how I was faring. Toward the weekend, Vista was behaving like a very sick OS; fortunately I could still get it to boot up in Safe Mode and backup all my important stuff. It refused to boot up in Normal mode, hanging during the process.

The irony was that on Sunday I tried inserting the Vista DVD and did a Startup repair. After it was done, I started up in Normal mode, and lo and behold, BSODs (Blue Screen of Deaths). It was sink or swim time, and Vista was doing the former. And it also wouldn’t start up in Safe mode any more.

Well, what else can I do? No other choice except for the dreaded format and reinstall. I’d go for this option only when my other choices don’t work. It was time to take the sledgehammer out!

As of now (Monday June 16) I’ve got the OS up and running, together with most of my necessary programs. Grr…hope this new install will last me for a long time. That last install was 10 months ago, but of course I’ve installed and uninstalled so much crud that…well, I can’t blame Vista, can I?

And Doris, don’t get me started on that Programs and Features thing. I don’t know what the hell happened to it.

Spybot 1.6 rocks!

I was a fan of Spybot-Search and Destroy back in the good old days of Windows 98 and 2000. This was a free antispyware program and was very easy to set up and use. Then its definitions database became larger and larger (due to newer threats) and its scanning speed became progressively slower and slower. I recall when the scans would take something like 45 minutes to complete on my system; an eternity for a computer geek.

Recently the 1.6 Beta came out, with news of improved scanning speeds. I had to give Spybot the benefit of the doubt, so I downloaded and installed it. And now, by golly, the scanning is fast. It took only 5 minutes to scan through my whole C: drive, with the latest definitions. Incredible! Magnifico! Wunderbar!

Here’s a tip: turn off the Teatimer feature, which doesn’t seem to help or catch anything at all. Also note that this is Beta software, so there’s a chance that it could upset your system (but it didn’t do that to mine). The interface is still the same old Spybot thingy, but what really matters to me is that the scanning speed has improved by leaps and bounds. Heartily recommended, if you’re looking for a free antispyware program.

Defragmenting your hard disk

My friend and fellow blogger Doris wrote about this in a timely post. I defragment (or defrag, for short) my hard disk religiously, at least once a week. This is akin to doing a full-scale tidying of my teenage son’s bedroom, which looks like a war-zone (perhaps someone someday will write a defragmenting program for untidy bedrooms and what have you) in the virtual world. I use O & O Defrag myself, but there are plenty of freeware defrag programs around, an excellent one is Defraggler.

Doris has explained it with unequalled precision so please read her post for complete information about this. There’s just one thing you have to remember before doing a defrag: get rid of all those pesky junk and unneeded files first. I’ve always found CCleaner to be tops in this. It’s freeware, and you can download it from here. No point of defragmenting junk files, is there?

So defrag your hard drives at least once a week for a smoother and faster computing experience.

Down with a cold

Modesty aside, I rarely catch a cold. This week, however, was bad. I suspect that one of my students passed it to me. I’ve been feeling worn-out, my head feels like 10 times its weight, and I have all the typical cold symptoms: stuffed nose, sneezing, etc.

Stocked up on my Vitamin C and paracetamol tablets. I won’t see a doctor yet because Murphy’s Law dictates that once you see the doc and spend some money, your cold will mysteriously vanish in an instant. I’ll just rest, and continue to treat myself with the above pills, and some coffee.

That’s my past few days for you, condensed into two short paragraphs.

Startup woes, Part 4

OMG, you’re going to laugh at me, but that recent nVidia driver (see this post) has screwed up my system. So I ate humble pie, completely uninstalled it and let the OS choose an earlier driver to install. I also had to use jv16 Power Tools to clean out the remnants of all that nVidia crap. This is particularly important, otherwise the driver that Vista chooses won’t install and operate properly.

So Vista reports that the nVidia version I’m using now is 7.15.11.6369 (September 11, 2007). If you want this driver, don’t bother to look for it at the nVidia website, it’s not listed there anymore. Go to this website which I found in a Google search.

Startup woes, Part 3

Well, I need to apologize to Vista. It wasn’t her fault. The rogue was the latest nVidia driver, GeForce Release version 175.16 (May 16, 2008). Checked out the nVidia Forums and it seems like there have been complaints about this version being buggy (which it is!)

So I downloaded an earlier driver, version 169.25 (December 20, 2007) installed it, and rebooted. Perfect! Hope this will help someone out there having similar problems.

Petrol (Gasoline) prices up again

The price of petrol (gas to my American readers) will be going up tomorrow, from RM1.92 (US$0.60) a liter to RM2.70 (US$0.83) a liter. Not as much or bad compared to other countries, but this will bound to have a domino effect on the prices of goods . Glad I’m just driving a Perodua Viva, which is very fuel-economical and it’s a neat compact. I’m not envious of all those other drivers in their fuel-guzzling SUVs and other big cars. This “little” increase probably won’t bother them!

Startup woes, Part 2

Well, I suppose I was looking for trouble, or taking a big risk. I uninstalled the nVidia graphics drivers that Vista had installed (see my post Startup woes), went to nVidia’s website and downloaded the newest drivers for my GeForce 7200GS graphics card.

Installation went pretty well. I was told to reboot, so I did, and…plain vanilla blue screen. Took me another hour to get Vista to install its own nVidia drivers…damn.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. How true. I’m strolling off, with my tail in between my legs.