For no reason

Comment spam in Wordpress

…other than a try-out and also the current anti-spam plugins miss the odd bit of comment spam, I’ve now switched off TanTanNoodles’ Spam filter and am giving WP-SpamFree another try plus another plugin, AVH.  I’ve left Akismet running regardless.

WP-SpamFree

This now promises a lot, so it’s worth another shot.  Two years ago when I tried it, it had interactions with various other plugins, so I dropped it.  Since that time, the whole WordPress code has improved tremendously, as anyone who now uses it will know.  Visit plugin site

AVH First Defense Against Spam

Mailwasher Pro

This is a new one for me.  It uses the external databases of known spammers and their IP addresses as a blocking filter.  This is similar to anti-spam email programs like Mailwasher Pro that I use, so it seems to be “a good thing”.  This feature is optional, but it’s the most attractive part, IMHO.

It uses either or both of these two services for which an API key is needed. The key is free in each case.

• Stop Forum Spam. http://www.stopforumspam.com
• Project Honey Pot. http://www.projecthoneypot.org

Now it’s a case of “wait and see”.   Visit plugin site

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Firstly, Do Not Dance with the Devil!

I made the mistake (again!) of trying dynamic disks with my new Windows 7 installation.  I must have been asleep – the use of this system is seriously frowned upon for most users.  It has several pitfalls not least that it’s high-end Windows specific (i.e not home, basic etc), and it’s impossible to clone partitions for backup or moves, say.

But mainly, it’s supposed to be un-do-able!

To convert from basic to dynamic is frighteningly easy (see screen shot).  The reversing option disappears once it’s done and in virtually all Disk Partition Software,  any ‘partitions’, now called volumes, just show as one big monolithic slab of pale yellow disk that has any possible action greyed out!  This was really bad as it was on the system drive…

You’ll see in the screen-shot that there are 3 disks.

Disk 0 & disk 1 were an effort at user-data mirroring originally until I realised what I pile of poo I’d just landed in.  All the initial  recommendations were negative and the prognosis didn’t look good.  See:

• http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-1482847.php
• http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;217226&Product=win20 – Cannot Revert Boot Drive from Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755238.aspx – Change a Dynamic Disk Back to a Basic Disk

Solution

However, this post gave me a pointer which eventually led to here and the HxD disc editing tool, here.   The Dynamic Disk Converter is a paid for solution and would have worked.  But I tried the Hex Editor approach after a bit more reading around the subject….

The trick, as in Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is 42!

Specifically, all 42’s must be converted to 07.

The highlighted area contains the bit to edit and the numbers to edit in this area are those in column 02 that are 42.  So change all the 42’s to 07’s in column 02 in the four highlighted lines.  (n.b. The screendump was taken after I’d fixed the disc, so all the 42s are now 07 and some partitions have been deleted.)

That’s all.

Do NOT twiddle anything else.

Caveat

This post in the thread says to just alter one line – this is wrong!  (There’s a confusing addition at the bottom.  This relates directly to my experience, so yes, all real primary partitions are numbered 07)

And this post says to do them all – this is right.  It shows 3.

In my original pre-editted state, I had 4!  Handily, this shows the reason (I think), why you can only have 4 primary partitions on a drive.

Finale and Actual Actions Summary

Now you’ll see I have only two 07’s in the column (in the screenshot above).  These map to the two partitions showing in my Disk Management full screen-shot here.  For some reason, it had ‘remembered’ other volumes I’d made on the disk – that’s why I had 4 to do.

I was quite prepared to buy the paid-for software.  It looked good and worth the cash.  Instead:

1. I very tediously moved ‘volumes’ into ‘partitions’ onto a third disk I entered into the system.
   1. This later disk needed it’s partitions resizing first to make room.
   2. It was hot-plugged using it’s SATA into the wire from the DVD as I didn’t have any spare SATA wires!  Doh!
2. The moved data was from disk 0 & disk 1, all relevant stuff going to disk 2.
3. Deleted all the volumes from Disk 1
4. I could then set Disk 1 to basic using Windows as per Microsoft instructions.
5. Moved all user data back to C-Drive volume (I had been in the process of separating data from programs).
6. Backed up C-Drive volume and system state using Windows 7 Backup tool to new partition ‘BACKUP’ using all of Disk 1
   1. This was in case the following hex stuff failed.  It would allow an easy restore by:
      1. Install windows from DVD onto Disk 0
      2. Use Windows backup to reset system state and all the files & programs on the C-Drive on Disk 0
7. Now used the Hex editor to edit the disk sector information as described above.
8. REBOOT (fingers crossed!)
9. WAHAY! It worked.
10. Removed pseudo partition remaining on Disk 0 to leave unallocated space  – I think this was due to the invisible 1Mb database that exists on dynamic disks.

Plans

I’ve now got two new hard drives in the post.  When these have arrived and are installed, I’ll use standard tools to move partitions and get user data onto a RAID mirror assembly.  This will increase data integrity and give me a better backup.  You’d think that outboard backups would be fine, wouldn’t you?  Well I bought a Western Digital 1TB Studio Edition which worked okay for a while….

But it ran so hot the eSATA/USB circuitry failed!  I dismantled it and found the drive to be okay – this is the third disk, Disk 2 in the screen-shots!

Now, I have a new system with a better,  heavy-duty power supply, adequate (and quiet cooling), with the whole thing protected behind an APC UPS which I’ve had for a year.  Sticking to basic disks should make backups simpler and the whole thing should be more reliable – certainly more so than the WD Studio thing which is a pile of hot plastic pants.

Stick to basic Disks – you know it makes sense!

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Firefox Add-ons: What is an Add-on?

First things first.  It’s now well known among the more savvy internet users, that the Firefox web browser is a fine piece of kit; secure, innovative and with a burgeoning user base that has seen Microsoft rise from it’s slumbers and put some serious damage control development into it’s venerable Internet Explorer.

But part of the reason for the rise of Firefox, is it’s ease of installing small lumps of code by the user – called Add-ons.  These can do many things – weather, stocks, pictures, FTP clients…..  there are thousands now.  Visit the add-ons page and they are grouped into various categories.

Add-ons are made by a host of mainly unpaid software designers.  The code is generally open source so that anyone can modify it for their own needs.  The reality for me is that I use something if it works, and ditch it if it doesn’t!  I haven’t the spare time for code work…

So What to Choose?

Now there’s the rub!  The best thing is to install some that fall into your area of interest, have a play, remove them and try some more!  You’ll soon find out which have the features you want, are fast, and don’t crash your browser!

To install, just click on the add-on link, wait a couple of seconds for the countdown timer and then install.  Usually that’s all there is to it.

For myself, I’m not that interested in the many ‘consumer’ type add-ons (like music listings and Facebook notifiers etc) , but I’m interested in things that improve my coding and browsing life, or help me produce articles like this one!

My Recommendations

British English Dictionary – link

Firefox Dictionary Check

Used when blogging or commenting to correct spelling!  That’s a screen-dump above of it working.

Words can also be added – and it’s all on the right-click!

Screengrab – link

Screengrab Menu

The best ‘printscreen’ utility I’ve come across.  Use it to get screen captures of dodgy websites before they are closed down!

I have it set for an icon in the lower right corner of a window, then the two menus shoot out sideways.

As with the dictionary, the menus are on the right-click as well.

SearchStatus – link

SearchStatus menu

I have the info strung out at the bottom right of my window again.  The maker’s description says most of it,(copied verbatim below),  but it doesn’t say how useful and fast some of these features are!

Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more

In essence, for me, it’s a neat, quick and configurable WHOIS lookup for any domain you’re visiting plus a wodge of bells and whistles.

TinEye Reverse Image Search – link

TinEye Menu

Another right-click menu system!  The add-on looks for images that have been found in it’s web trawling that match the image you right-click selected.

7 results - TinEye

This works even when the image has been edited, cut, cropped, renamed or resized!

This is the menu applied to a picture from the Crawling Chaos ‘The Gas Chair’ page.  After a few seconds, the TinEye website fires up in a new tab with a list of pages that include the picture.  It’s catalogue isn’t complete but it’s getting bigger all the time…

Web Developer – link

Web Developer Menu

The enormity of the menu systems and the features it includes mean that there’s no way I could do justice to it in this small piece.  As a small example, let’s see it show all the web colours on the same Crawling Chaos page  above….

Color Information - crawling chaos etc

Again, all features are available as a right-click,but also as a tool-bar menu if desired.

If I now check the ‘View Color Information’ entry, after a second or so, another tab fires up in Firefox and displays all the web-page colours defined in code using the colour code RGB hash style.

You can get all sorts of information about a web page and it’s images.

One neat thing I use all the time is the “Resize” feature which means I can set the browser to various pixel dimensions to see how web pages look at these different sizes!

But really, check out the menus for yourself.  there’s just TOO much to list!

#6 Add-on: Firebug – link

Not quite top 5 for me, but Firebug offers a wealth of coding opportunities and allows you to see the code that generates the various on-screen elements, and also allows real-time editing to see what changes would do to a page – but without opening the page up in an editor locally, or otherwise. It’s all on-the-fly.  I don’t always have it installed as sometimes their codebase doesn’t work properly when Firefox upgrades….

IE8 has similar inbuilt feature now – perhaps Microsoft are trying hard with the developer community and can see that this is a good way to regain the initiative?

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