This is going in the basics category. Quite often I visit a computer that has a mouse which is just a trial of patience to use. I mean, you have to pick it up and move it, shake it a bit, turn it over and clean out the lint from the “ball” area…. The good news is that mousing does NOT have to be like this. If your computer has a PS2 (small round plug) for your mouse, or a USB (small rectangular plug) for your mouse, it should be VERY easy to replace that old ball style mouse with an optical mouse.
Tag: USB
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Tools of the trade – Compactflash card reader
I’ve probably mentioned before that I like the compactflash format for “digital media”. My camera uses Compactflash, so does the nexia audio player I use and the old used pda I’ve got, uses compactflash, so…. I have a variety of cards around, I’ve got an 8MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 512MB and 1024MB card around somewhere. With all those cards and just three devices…. well, when I started thinking “usb memory stick” to replace floppy discs to move files from one machine to another… I thought, why should I pay for something with the memory built in… so, I found something that did well….
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Check your hard drive’s temperature in Linux
I started using this program after frying a hard drive in 6 months. It was on the server and serving up Audio 24/7 and it was sandwiched between a cdrom drive and another hard drive. There was no air flow around the hard drive and subsequently it had a very short and very rough life. When it started failing at 6 months, I started investigating the possible cause and how to keep another for failing so quickly.
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USB flash drive with electronic paper display
Just saw this over at engadget. It’s a Lexar jumpdrive with “amount filled” indicator. The twist is the “amount filled” is done with electronic paper. What this means is that you can see how full the drive is without plugging it into a pc. The electronic paper doesn’t draw power to hold the display.
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The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 1
I’m writing this from the laptop. Having run Mandriva 2006 without any real significant bumps for a couple weeks I’ve come to a point where I’m ready to take the plunge on the desktop. The desktop is my primary workstation. The laptop get’s occasional light use and is the one I’m more likely to play with when it comes to possibly losing configuration information or scripts (because I’ve got things copied to the desktop and server.)
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Tools of the trade…. USB network adapter
For a long time I really disliked seeing USB network adapters. The main reason is the performance. USB 1 can only do ~ 12Mbps which compared to a 10/100 ethernet controller “significantly limits your ability to do more than 10…” Even USB 2 supports 480 Mbps which should give you the ability to get full throughput of up to 200mbps with full duplexing. However, I still cringed at USB network adapters….
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Zoneminder for a linux based home security DVR system
This is filed under security, but a slightly different angle than the usual computer security articles. I just ran across a link I’ve kept to Zoneminder. Zoneminder is a neat linux application to help you setup your very own DVR (digital video recorder) for a security camera type (CCTV ?) setup. I originally came across the page by way of a livecd that uses the mklivecd tools that I was working with for a couple projects. Typically a CCTV type security camera system can involve some expensive software for the monitoring of cameras.
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Another entry on DBAN (boot disk to securely wipe a hard drive)
This kind of get’s glommed into hardware, software and security categories all…. I’ve mentioned DBAN a couple times already (Darik’s Boot and Nuke). I had a chance to sit down this afternoon to nuke a few disks I’ve collected over the last little while and thought I’d pass along some points on the DBAN for securely wiping the contents of hard drives. First, no matter what you do to a drive, there may be a data recovery center that can get something from it. I’m talking clean rooms, 1000’s of dollars and some good forensic recovery techniques. Why?
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3GB USB bootable Micro Hard drive with Ubuntu Linux
Just found a reference to this product at barrapunto.com. It’s a 3GB microdrive in a “big usb cracker”kind of form factor. (Not solid state, it does have moving parts I understand.) It comes with Ubuntu linux preinstalled with Office suite/web browser, all the trimings. It will boot on PC’s that support booting from USB. Of course any changes are saved to the micro drive itself, and no touches are made to the computer systems internal drive. It’s about 35 grams, the size of a square lighter and is selling for 135 Euros.
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New Featured Books section
I just thought I’d do a quick post to mention that I’ve added a new category called “featured books” and it’s a place where, (more…)