Digital Payag

Don’t you know that Firefox has a hidden quote which I think is pretty cool and maybe inspiring?

Here’s how to find it

Open your browser and type “about:mozilla” w/o quotes.

The browser will then display a page saying…

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

So what is this quote all about?
Read more…

This is a follow-up post to my first post about how to secure your mIRC client. Securing your IRC connection is important in order for you to stay anonymous.

One way of securing your IRC connection is by encryption using SSL.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), its successor, are cryptographic protocols which provide secure communications on the Internet for such things as e-mail, Internet faxing, and other data transfers. There are slight differences between SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0, but the protocol remains substantially the same. The term “SSL” as used here applies to both protocols unless clarified by context. Read more…

I stumbled upon this article from indymedia.org that shows you step-by-step set of instructions on how to easily secure your irc connection.

* Downloading the software (Windows) *

Go to http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html

Download two files:
the latest stunnel file (will have a red asterisk beside it probably)
scroll down to the bottom of the page and download the file openssl.zip
Make a new directory (folder), maybe call it “working” or something
Copy the “stunnel-4.05.exe” into the “working” folder. The file may be called something a little different, like “stunnel-4.06.exe” if there have been updates since this was written.
Copy the openssl.zip file into the “working” folder
Unzip the openssl.zip file in the “working” folder. If you get a folder as a result, maybe called “openssl”, copy the files inside it back out into the “working” folder and delete the empty “openssl” folder. Read more…

Just an addition, not all IRC servers supports SSL. Ask a server admin or a channel operator if you can use SSL.

People tend to avoid the integrated relay chat (IRC) as a means of communication primarily because of two things. Most of the irc clients are not user friendly and they lack strong security against known security issues. It is a fact that IRC clients are susceptible to the wide spread of worms, viruses & trojans since the early days of the internet. However, things didn’t change since then, more and more computers had been victimized due to poor irc precautions being made. The least we can do to stay out of harms way is by properly configuring our irc client to withstand those destructive codes from infecting our computers.

For this guide i’m going to use the popular mIRC client.

Open miRC then go to Tools. Select Options... or press the shortcut key Alt+O.

Enable Flood Protection
Tick the Enable flood protection. The default settings should work on most users. (see the screenshot)

Disable DCC
I strong advise users to disable DCC if they intend to use mIRC for chatting purposes only.

On Send request:
Tick Ignore all

On Chat request:
Tick Ignore all

However, if you’d like to use the DCC feature, you should do the ff precautions.

1. You MUST not set the On Send request and On Chat request to Auto-get.

2. Set if file exists to Ask or if you can’t avoid to use the Auto-get file. However, you should at least assign nicknames of trusted chatters using the Trusted button.

3. Change the default DCC get folders (download folder) from the default path which is C:\Program Files\mIRC\download to C:\Documents and Settings\YourUsername\Desktop. This way you can easiy monitor what files you are receiving.

4. Make sure you set the following file types to ignore. You can delete the specific file type if you are expecting a legit file from a friend or from someone you trust.

*.bat *.com *.dll *.exe *.htm *.html *.ini *.js *.lnk *.mrc *.pif *.pl *.scr *.shs *.vbs *.wmf

Set Lock for strong security:

1. Disable Send and Get
2. Disable all commands - Com, Decode, Dll, Run (You won’t be needing this if you are not running any mIRC scripts.)

Hereafter we can say that your mIRC is more secured. Enjoy chatting!

There are users both in the rural and urban areas who still rely on Dial-up connections to surf the internet. Many of their settings are poorly configured for maximum performance which degrade not only their web experience but their work as well.

Maximizing performance so to speak includes a number of things we should consider.

Things like:

1. Increasing connection speed
2. Saving more time
3. Saving extra resources
4. Improving security

There is a myth that there’s little you can do with a dial-up modem. I guess, many of you will prove that myth wrong once you read on.

Let’s begin,

PART 1: Tweaking your dial-up modem

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Open Phone and Modem Options
3. Click the Modems tab
4. Select your modem
5. Click the properties button
6. Go to Modem tab
7. Under Maximum Port Speed change it to the highest value which is 115200

8. Go to Power Management then uncheck Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby. (This will save you extra CPU cycles)

9. Click OK to apply the changes

PART 2: Tweaking your dial-up connection

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Open Network Connections
3. Open your default dial-up connection
4. Click the properties button
5. Under the General tab, click the Configure… button
6. Change the Maximize speed (bps) value to 921600.

7. Go to options tab. Under the Redialing options, change the Redial attempts to
999999999 (This setting will save you from clicking the redial button when dialing fails.)

8. Change the value of Time between redial attempts to 3 seconds. (This will cut the long wait between redial attempts.)

9. Always check Redial if line is dropped.

10. Go to Networking tab

Uninstall other services like Qos Packet Scheduler, File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks,
Client for Microsoft Networks and other services except Interent Protocol (TCP/IP).

11. Select Interent Protocol (TCP/IP)
12. Click the Properties button
13. Under the General tab, click the Advance button
14. Go to WINS tab
15. Select Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP (Disabling the NetBIOS adds extra security against intrusions)

16. Click OK to apply the changes

I suggest you read this related post for further tweaking. CLICK HERE

Did you know that you can use CCleaner to monitor and remove unnecessary startup programs and spywares that could slow your PC boot timeout?

The built-in Msconfig alone cannot remove this startup entries making CCleaner a good alternative.

Try to compare the screenshots below.

Msconfig

Ccleaner

As part of cleaning up my mp3 collection, I am going to perform two simple tasks which I never thought could be done so easily if not with the help of a freeware called The GodFather.

Description of The GodFather from the publisher’s website:

Do you own mp3 files ? How about ogg, mpc, ape, flac, aac, apl, wv, mp4, ofr, or spx files ? Do you have a lot of them ?
If yes, then you probably already know that it is easier to create a chaotic budge of files with strange names and in wrong locations than to have a clean and nice collection where every file is where it is supposed to be, with a perfect name and Tag information.
Sounds like the truth… don’t worry The GodFather is here to put order to chaos and put you in control.No more strange file names and endless search for “that song”!.Rename,update Tags,restructure files on hard disk, create/merge play lists,encode-decode with LAME/Ogg Vorbis/MpcEnc, export/import to/from file, play, use freedb.org & allmusic.com, catalog them in a library… with ease of use and perfect results every time.

As you have notice The GodFather has many advance features which you can tinker to your liking, but what i’m going to teach you is the most basic way to do it and which I think works well for most users.

1. I’m going to search for mp3 files with file names that I think untrimmed and needs to be renamed.
2. I’m going to remove duplicate mp3 files to save extra disk space.

PART 1: Renaming Files

1. Click the main tab

2. Select [All supported formats]

3. Go to folder

4. Check Sub Folders and Autoscan

5. Click the Rename tab

6. Click Scan and wait until it finds file names that are to be renamed. Scan time depends on the number of mp3 files you have in a directory.

7. Click Rename

Your mp3 file names should be clean by now.

PART 2: Removing Duplicates

1. Click the main tab
2. Select [All supported formats]
3. Go to folder
4. Check Sub Folders and Autoscan
5. Click the Organize tab

6. Click find duplicates

7. Click Scan and wait until it finds duplicate files that are to be deleted. Scan time depends on the number of mp3 files you have in a directory.

9. Select the mp3 files which you want to remove and click the remove button.

Result sample screenshot

File formats are colored separately and deleted files will be automatically moved to the recycle bin.

I’m so happy because I freed 171 mb of disk space from 57 duplicate files. You can try this at home and let me know if it worked.

If you are a student, a teacher or just someone who loves to read ebooks in PDF format, I’m sure there were times you want to keep those keywords or phrases that you think may come in handy for your work or whatever you are doing. This is what this how-to guide is exactly all about.

For this guide, I’m going to use a free PDF Reader called Foxit Reader because it is light and it loads PDF files in a flash.

Steps:

1. Go get yourself a pdf file. Any pdf file will do.
2. Open the file
3. In the menu go to Tools and select Snapshot or use the keyboard shortcut Alt+7

4. Hold the left-click mouse button and drag to the portion of the document that you want to copy. ( A notice will prompt you that the selected area has already been copied to the clipboard. Press OK to continue.)

5. Open Microsoft Paint
6. On your keyboard Press Ctrl+V to paste the image stored in the clipboard.
7. Save the image.

There are number of things you can do with your image file. You can print it on the fly, send it through email or store it inside your USB drive. The best part here is it is so easy and quick that you have more time left to finish reading the ebook.

My home town which is Butuan City has just finished building a local web portal. This gave me an idea of listing government websites particularly those that represents a city. My goal is to make a unified list wherein we can exchange links for Filipinos to easily locate and browse websites of their probinsiya and in this way we can expand thoroughly our knowledge about the different places in our country. If you have links to share email me at cecortez at gmail.com.

What I have here are links that im going to update from time to time. Here’s a hint, most of the city websites in the Philippines can be access in this manner.

name of the city + the word city + gov + ph

or

name of the city + gov + ph
example: butuancity.gov.ph

The Links

http://www.google.com.ph/search?q=city+gov+ph

http://www.google.com.ph/search?hl=tl&q=gov.ph+cities

E-Communities

LGU Web Presence prior to this post

Calling the attention of Butuanon bloggers. The people at Globe Innove is planning a massive meet-up with bloggers from Visayas and Mindanao particularly in Davao City and Cagayan de Oro City. This future gathering is an opportunity for us to make new friends and learn more about the science of blogging from everyone’s respective insights.

For more information and updates visit the ff links from yugatech.com

Link Building Strategy (Globe Innove Blogger Meetup)

Looking for active bloggers down south!

Blogger Meetup, Davao Leg

OK, let me present to you our very own Filipino made social networking website which primarily has a vivid and fun mission for its members. This site is like a marriage of Friendster and Youtube and I think it even has other promising features like the ability of every member to customize his/her own profile page to his/her own liking using html and CSS. Isn’t that geat?!

Wait till you hear more from them.

Text from the website:

Sheero is a free service that gives you the option to collect your media and store your video codes in one location. Not only that, it also allows you to share with friends, add other video codes to your favorite and lots more.
It is an easy 1-2-3 step, simply sign up, post your video codes and start sharing. You can use this to save your favorite video codes, add lyrics, description, download link and customize your profile.

Create your own webpage, send a private message to a friend or another member or search for your favorite, add a friend to your list, add a song/tutorial/video to your favorites, post your own, the possibilities are endless so join now and experience the new wave of netmedia.

Join the fun at www.sheero.com