PSA: Protect Yourself!

Last week I had this problem with spyware on my laptop. Even with my excessively cautious internet surfing habits I still get infected. Thankfully, there's free, legit stuff you can find on net that will make being online a lot safer.

My PC at home has no such problems with spyware and that is because I have an excellent free spyware scanning utility at home.


I use the excellent PC Tools Spyware Doctor, courtesy of GooglePack. It's legit and totally free if you get it from Google. Unlike some other anti spyware tools, this one includes the all important real time protection that will intercept known malware as it tries to attack your PC. I installed it on the laptop and now the spyware infection is gone.

So do yourself a favour and download GooglePack today. Not only does GooglePack allow you to have a good, free antispyware suite, it also provides other cool stuff such as StarOffice, Skype and Picasa. Always free and always legit. Get it now!

Another bit of free software related good news concerns AVG. AVG8.0 Free is now available. It's been updated from version 7.5 (which I use and highly recommend) and now includes antispyware and linkscanner components. I'm testing it now on the laptop and it looks ok. I'm not sure how good the antispyware part of it is though and I must say that I prefer the interface from 7.5. But that's probably because I'm not used to the new look yet.

Having an antivirus is absolutely required these days and you won't go wrong with AVG Free. Again, it's free and legit and gets updated everyday.

For those people who want other alternatives for their PC protection needs, I know of some other free stuff as well.

For antispyware, there is Spyblaster. It's free and it works quite well, according to what I've read. For antivirus software, Avast! is also quite good. I have that one installed in my dad's PC. Also free and legit and also has antispyware and antirootkit built in.

While I'm at it I might as well plug other freeware that I use.

Like Irfanview. It's an image viewer and has some simple but highly useful editing functions. Very small download and very light on resources. Highly recommended.

For video/audio playback, make sure you get yourself the KLite Codec pack. Having this installed in your PC will ensure that you will be able to watch and listen to almost every video and sound file. Also comes with Media Player Classic.

And finally Flashget. The best download manager I've ever used. Very, very good. And free. Perfect for the serial downloader. Works with Rapidshare and Megaupload premium accounts.

In other news, my 250Gb Maxtor hard disk is definitely getting full. I suppose I could just housekeep my PC and burn stuff on DVDs. Unfortunately, even after that there won't be much free space still due to all the games and apps I like to keep installed.

I'm waiting for some money available (which is soon actually) so that I can get me a 320Gb or 500Gb hard disk. We'll see how that works out.

I'm also still deciding whether to clone my old hard disk over or do a fresh Windows XP installation.

I'm off tomorrow and looking forward to watching Ironman over the weekend.

Panadol Kills Cats!

Firstly, a public service announcement.

If you have a cat and he/she falls ill, do not under any circumstances give him/her paracetamol (Panadol, Uphamol etc):-

Paracetamol is extremely toxic to cats, and should not be given to them under any circumstances. Cats lack the necessary glucuronyl transferase enzymes to safely break paracetamol down and tiny fractions of a normal tablet for humans may prove fatal.
- Wikipedia, Paracetamol entry

It's very good to know these things. Please spread the word and let people know. I can't even begin to contemplate how awful it would be if I accidentally killed my cat by giving her "medicine".

In other news, early this morning (around 2.45am) there was a power failure at my house. It was very bad. And very boring.

It also reminds me of how much modern man needs electricity. I think 97% of all our activities will involve some kind of electrical power usage. The power outage lasted until around 4.00am. All the while I couldn't sleep because my room would become quite stuffy without something to move the air around (like a fan). I'm suddenly wondering how much a ceiling fan would cost. I'm quite sure it would cost less than air conditioning.

I was reading and I found that there WAS something wrong with my DSL connection after all. According to this post at Screenshots, the Streamyx problem with connection difficulties and crap speeds have been going on for a while too. Something to do with messed up hardware upgrading schedules. The post is quite technical but is very useful.

When Telekom does complete all the maintenance work I most certainly hope my previously very good DSL connection comes back to normal. Then I can play World of Warcraft again without lagging like crazy. I also hope the p2p blocking rumours are just mere rumours.

Anyway, relatively speaking my connection is still quite usable, provided I don't try to download anything. I know of other people who can't even get on and when they do get on, get worse throughput than dial-up.

In yet more news, I was supposed to do a Soundtrack of my Life kind of meme on Thursday. That was when I noticed that my music library hasn't been reorganized yet. I use Windows Media Player 10 to manage my music collection and on my previous PC. All the music I had were properly tagged with the correct relevant info like artist, album, cover art, songwriters etc.

When I got my new machine, I accidentally screwed up my OS hard disk which also contained the database for all my music.

I'm doing the whole thing all over again now. Should take about a week and a half if I take it slow.

All in all, I've had a decent enough week. My Hari Raya overtime just came it and is immediately going out again on account of my car hire/purchase and the PC upgrade credit card bill.

I still don't have enough cash (and motivation) to go out and buy clothes. I really should because it's a good time to go shopping. Things are beginning to feel Chrismas-sy. The end of the year of course, is my favourite time of the year.

Also happening in December is PIKOM's PC fair which will come back to Kuching on the 8-10th December. I'm very likely going to buy a SATA hard disk at the fair. And maybe some RAM. Can't go wrong with more RAM now can ya?

And that is everything for this week.