Test Your Connection Speed

You may have noticed that you Internet Service Provider has promised you the world as far as connection speed but somehow you feel as though they have failed to deliver.  You may have even called to complain or gently inquire about the matter.  The usual response is probably first to unhook from your router and connect directly to whatever modem you may use with them (dsl or cable).  They will then lecture you about how they cannot guarantee their advertised speed unless your computer is directly connected to said modem and isn't connected via a router or wireless.

They will then probably do two things.  They will do a "signal test" on your modem.  While useful this isn't the holy grail of whether your speed is where it should be.  They will also probably have you go to their proprietary speed test as well such as this http://speedtest.nyc.rr.com/  Here again useful but this isn't necessarily a real world indication of where your true connections speed it.

What I would recommend doing is going to a couple of speed test sites that are pretty consistent and can give you a gauge of where you stand during the "good times" as well as the slow times.  This way when you feel your speed is lagging you have a pretty good idea of where you speed should be when times are good  as well as bad.  And if your speed has never been what your ISP says it should be you will have more information at your disposal.

The first site is http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/  This is a great site because it is very easy plus it gives several geographic locations that should be close to anybody in the continental United States.  I would test the two closest locations to yourself and compare.

The next site is http://speedtest.net/ This one is much more comprehensive and will automatically detect your geographic location.  What I like about speedtest.net is that it gives quite a bit of analytic information about your speedtest.  Below you will find a photo of the speedtest.net result.

Hopefully this helps you on your way.  Good luck.  :)

How To Build Your Own URL Shortening Service

Wouldn't it be nice to have your own URL Shortening service like bit.ly or tiny.url?  It may be more than nice, it may be critical.  If you are using URL shortening services for tracking clicks on a link for your business or you want your links to remain shortened "forever" having your own URL shortener can be a very inexpensive solution.

One of the best OpenSource (free) scripts I have seen for doing this is Yourls.   You can download the code at google code.  The current version is 1.4.3.  It is a PHP script that requires at least PHP 4.3 and at least MYSQL 4.1.  If you want to mess around with the API (yes it does have an API) it is recommended that you have Curl extension.  It comes with a Wordpress plugin so that your Wordpress posts can be automatically Tweeted using your own URL Shortener (sweet).

Your first step is to get a really small URL.  Be creative.  Use top level domains like .me .ws .it .in .co or if you plan on using your own URL use a subdomain like s.mydomain.com (don't use www).  You might try using Domai.nr to help you find good domain names. 

As far as installation is concerned it is pretty straight forward.  The instructions are located here.  Probably the most important thing is to set up the database and the config file. 

When you set up your MySQL Database remember to write down or remember the database name  database user and database user password.  You will need these value for the config file.  When you create the database you do not need to worry about creating tables.  The script will do this for you. 

When setting up the config.php file (located in the includes file please note these important settings that you will need to set in red text.

MySQL settings

• YOURLS_DB_USER
  your MySQL username
  Example: 'joe'
• YOURLS_DB_PASS
  your MySQL password
  Example: 'MySeCreTPaSsW0rd'
• YOURLS_DB_NAME: The database name
  Example: 'yourls'
• YOURLS_DB_HOST
  The database host
  Example: 'localhost'
• YOURLS_DB_PREFIX
  The name prefix for all the tables YOURLS will need *DON'T CHANGE THIS VALUE
  Example: 'yourls_'

Site options

• YOURLS_SITE
  Your (short) domain URL, no trailing slash
  Example: 'http://whatever.com'
• YOURLS_HOURS_OFFSET
  Timezone GMT offset
  Example: '-5'
• YOURLS_PRIVATE
  Private means protected with login/pass as defined below. Set to false for public usage (on an intranet for instance)
  Example: 'true'
• YOURLS_UNIQUE_URLS
  Allow multiple short URLs for a same long URL
  Set to true to allow only one pair of shortURL/longURL (default YOURLS behavior), or to false to allow creation of multiple short URLs pointing to the same long URL (as bit.ly does)
  Example: 'true'
• YOURLS_COOKIEKEY
  A random secret hash used to encrypt cookies. You don't have to remember it, make it long and complicated. Hint: generate a unique one at http://yourls.org/cookie
  Example: 'qQ4KhL_pu|s@Zm7n#%:b^{A[vhm'
• yourls_user_passwords
  A list of username(s) and password(s) allowed to access the site if private
  Example: 'joe' => 'mypassword'

URL Shortening settings

• YOURLS_URL_CONVERT
  URL shortening method: base 36 or 62.
• yourls_reserved_URL
• A list of reserved keywords that won't be used as short URLs. Define here negative, unwanted or potentially misleading keywords
• Optional settings
• YOURLS_PRIVATE_INFOS
  If YOURLS_PRIVATE is set to true, you can still easily make your individual stat pages public. To do so, override the global private setting with:
  define('YOURLS_PRIVATE_INFOS', false);
• YOURLS_PRIVATE_API
  If YOURLS_PRIVATE is set to true, you can still easily make your API public. To do so, override the global private setting with:
  define('YOURLS_PRIVATE_API', false);
• YOURLS_NOSTATS
  If YOURLS_NOSTATS is set to true, redirects won't be logged and there will be not stats available.

Here are some cool examples of sites running Yourls:

• http://hmm.ph/
  Funny domain name, nicely styled
• http://qte.me/
  Another YOURLS setup with a cute quote look
• http://mrte.ch/
  Mr Tech's public YOURLS setup, listing top links and some stats
• http://s4c.in/
  Shorten 4 Charity, a public YOURLS setup with shortened links displayed within a frame containing ads for charities
• http://girv.in/
  John Girvin's YOURLS setup with all links in a sortable display
• http://www.iyeman.net/
  Example of portal for your online self with links to your places (blog, Twitter) and your URL shortener
• http://li.nkto.me/
  A nice domain name hack :)
• http://vb.ly/
  Public YOURLS setup run by famous sex writer Violet Blue as "the internet's first and only sex-positive url shortener"
• http://chort.in/
  A neat take on the word shorten. An interesting little site.

How To Complete Erase Your Hard Drive

Please read disclaimer at end of post before trying these steps.***

This following script has been available from Dell since the 90s and it is as good today as it was then.  It was completely delete all partitions on a hard drive and therefore delete all data.  I don't think I have to say it but I will...if you do this you mst have bootable media to reinstall your new operating sytem and once you do this your data is gone FOREVER!!!!

Okay, first thing you will need is a Windows 95 or above startup disk.  Back in the day you had these on floopy disks but now all you have to do is grab an .iso and put it on a CDR.  Windows 98 works just fine.  You can download it at:

http://www.bootdisks.us/windows-98/13/windows-98-bootable-cd-images.html

Pick any of the four iso images, it really doesn't matter.  Burn one to a CDR and once it is burned reboot your PC with this CDR in.  (This will be a good opportuinity to see if you have the CD in the proper boot order because if it is it will boot to the Windows 98 Startup Menu, if not you need to change your boot order in the Bios).  You should see the below image:

Select either 1 or 2.  It doesn't matter.

From the A:\> prompt, type the following commands, and then press <Enter> after each command:

Note:  Type the bolded text only, if you type in the wrong command you will get an error, that is okay just type in the correct command and continue

A:\> debug
-F 200 L1000 0
-A CS:100
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80
xxxx:010C INT 13
xxxx:010E INT 20
xxxx:0110 (Leave this line blank. Press <Enter> to continue.)
-G

When the Program terminated normally, you have officially deleted all your partitions and all of your data.  Power off or contol-alt-delete to restart. 

(please note that if you have more than one hard drive complete the same steps as above but replace MOV DX,80 with MOV DX,81 for the second hard drive and 82 for next hard drive and so on)

You have a fresh new unpartioned data-less hard drive to do what you want with it.

If you wish to read further on this please view the Dell support page where this came from.  See how they still have the Windows 95 Boot disk.  :)  Like I said this works the same today as it did over 10 years ago.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/document?c=us&l=en&s=gen&docid=07302457082C47EDA1A8F9619885F51F

***Disclaimer...Following the steps on this blog post will completely eleminate all of your data to the point where it will be unrecoverable.  You must at the very least have bootable media to reinstall your operating system and it is recommended that you have you data backed up.  This tutorial is for advanced users and The Tech Guy is not responsible for any problems that may arise by not following there steps correctly.

The Dreaded Virus

Sorry I haven't been around for awhile but I got a virus on my desktop last Monday.  Being as though I am in school full time I couldn't attack the situation full time until this weekend.  More specifically a Trojan Horse.  I haven't gotten a virus in over five years but it happens to the best of us.  My virus protection suite, Microsoft Security Essentials, did a fair enough job of finding the Trojan Horse and claimed to have cleaned it but after I did a full scan it still kept popping up.  The final straw is when I went to youtube in Internet Explorer and the page was in Korean.  Now I consider myself pretty proficient with hardware and software but when it comes to viruses, trojan horses, etc I'm not going to try and fix the situation, I'm going to nuke my hard drive and start over. 

Fortunately my style of computing has lent itself to emergency data recovery.  I keep almost all of my documents as .txt files which are non executables.  100% safe.  I keep all of my .txt files in a single folder called Text Files.  Very small.  Email yourself a copy (to gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) of these files every week or so.  Important data backed up. 

If you have to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint docs once you are done with them save them to Google Docs or to Microsoft Skydrive once finished.  Skydrive is a little more impressive in that you get 25 GB in storage. It may take a while to move all your docs over but once you do all you have to do is move them one-by-one once you create you create or receive docs.

You can use these options for othere files as well.  Say you backup your Quicken or Quickbooks often.  Just zip it up either email it to yourself or send it to your Skydrive.  If you are doing to do some serious backup I would use the SkyDrive option.  You will start filling up your email box pretty quickly if you fill it up with a lot of data.  Keep these data limits in mind:

• SkyDrive: 25GB Storage, 50MB File Size Limit
• Gmail: Currently 7+ GB Storage, 25 MB File Size Limit
• Yahoo Mail:  Unlimited Storage, 25 MG File Size Limit
• Hotmail: (Also Known As MSN or Live) EveryGrowingStorage*, 25 GB File Size Limit

The great thing about these above options is when you upload and download your files from them you can guarantee your files are virus free.  (You have to use one of the big three email services Yahoo, MSN, Gmail).

For photos why not use Flickr?  It's what I use.  I don't have a whole bunch of photo's but I can keep them forever there. 

Me personally, I don't care too much about music and video.  I like to listen to my music with Rhapsody which is a streaming service so I don't have to save large files and I use Netflix so I can stream my movies.  By that is it may, you may want to acquire an external hard drive for you media files.  But this isn't something you already don't know.  :)

I do hope the tips I showed above about backing up your data was useful. 

Next step I will show you the foolproof OLD SCHOOL method for removing a virus.

How To Add HTML Code Or HTML To Your Blogger Blog

Sometimes it might be necessary or easier to add HTML or Java Script to your blogger blog by hand rather than relying on some widget.  While this may sound intimidating, nothing could be easier.  Just watch this youtube video I created and you should be well on your way. 

How To Post HD (Widescreen) Youtube Videos To Blogger

The problem when you post HD youtube videos to blogger i.e. blogspot is that they do not fit the alloted space for your posts. The videos are too wide and over extend into into your your right side bar. Not good. There is a really simple solution.  See below:

When you grab the embed code for a HD video (widescreen) video it will look something like this:

<object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZEPZeLpdIU?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US">
</param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true">
</param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always">
</param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZEPZeLpdIU?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

I've highlighted the problem areas in red.  The dimensions are incorrect to fit into blogger.  The is easy to fix.  All you have to do is change the above values to 416 wide x 337 high. See new code below with the changed code in red:

<object height="337" width="416"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZEPZeLpdIU?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US">
</param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true">
</param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always">
</param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZEPZeLpdIU?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="416" height="337"></embed></object>

Alternate FTP Methods

There may be times when you are not able to use your preferred method of FTP.  This is no longer a problem with AnyClient.Com.  It is a clever java web based client that allows you to FTP anywhere you have access to a web browser and an internet connection.  The only restriction is that your web browser has java enabled (which the jast majority of browsers do).

Please check out the below YouTube video produced by me for a more detailed demonstration.  And as always check it out in full screen 720p HD.