Any Video Converter malware

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Invited by Any Video Converter to update to the newest version, I downloaded the relevant installer file.... and it summarily closed my browser without any warning. And placed an Internet Search icon on my task bar. 

Recognising these rather unsubtle signs of computer interference, I cut the power to my machine and set about tidying up any damage Any Video Converter or its bedfellows were seeking to do.

In "safe mode" and after a look at msconfig, I ran Malwarebytes, which reported three intrustions - all OpenCandy, an installer system with whom Any Video Converter is closely associated, and whose reputation (or lack of it) can easily be ascertained in a Yahoo or Google search.

Fifteen minutes wasted already. Next, I had a quick whirl on the powerful Hijack This utility and removed several unwanted items.

The search icon sends traffic to linkeyproject, a site that is highly praised on one website - linkeyproject.com - and seems universally condemned everywhere else! Any Video Converter are making strange friends, these days, aren't they?

Restarting my computer, my antivirus then immediately reported a "suspicious attempt" at changing my system registry. Ah, right. Thanks, Any Video Converter. 

Finally opening my browser, I found the Firefox extensions list had been infiltrated, various settings changed, and my preferred homepage altered. So, more tidying up was required.

By now, I'd wasted THIRTY MINUTES cleaning up after AVC's activities.

It's interesting to note that if one types "Any Video Converter malware" into Yahoo or Google search, the autocomplete offers the full phrase in advance of completion. Presumably other people have had to look this up before! 

I wonder if that Linkey Search thing would also reveal this??

Earthworms live in weird places

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I don't see why even upwardly-mobile worms choose to live under bags of rubbish.

I shifted a bag today and saw eight worms underneath. Do they discontentedly burrow around in flowerbeds and pop up every night for a look-around, and then one day think: "Aha, that's where I'd rather be... lying on a hard surface, squashed under a smelly bag of trash."

It seems a bit odd, to me.

Cakewalk default folder and registry edits

One problem about Cakewalk Guitar Tracks Pro is, version 2 won't launch properly if the drive that used to hold the raw data suddenly no longer exists.

(They may have fixed the problem on CW3, for all I know, but I regard that version with contempt and never ever use it.)

The reason that CW2 couldn't "see" the drive it expected to see was, I'd disconnected it, as I no longer trust that drive.  I'm in the middle of salvaging my data off of it right now. Thing is, CW2 should spin up properly and then allow the "pointers" to be changed - but in actaul fact that appears not to be the case.

I researched the problem and saw a load of hysteria about registry edits, and I wondered what all the fuss was about. To me, the Windows Registry is just a glorified *.ini file - an initiation file that establishes basic parameters. Yet the talk on the forum was about hacking and stuff.

It seems some people regard their own registry editing as "hacking" yet I regard it as routine taking-charge-of-your-own-computer stuff.  To me, hacking is where you break into somewhere where you're not meant to be. You know... like, you access the USA's military computers and then send the stuff to Wikileaks.

I can see where the doubt might be, thouigh. Suppose your house electrics go wrong one day, and you randomly mess around with your fuse board, and swap a few wires around. And then you switch on again. Are you then really surprised if there's a brilliant blue flash, and your house burns down?

I think registry edits are like mains electricity. Totally safe, if you know what you're doing and take all appropriate precautions.

Just stand on a rubber mat before running regedit, eh.

Is Ubuntu / Linux for geeks only? (Part 2: partitions)

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Part two of my journey in search of lands beyond MS Windows.

Within a couple more minutes, the installer looked at my hard drives, and reported on what was available. Unfortunately, it reported the partition sizes in decimal gigabytes, rather than binary gigabytes, and I didn't recognise any of the numbers.

(This is the same effect as when Windows users buy a 500 GB drive and only see 465 GB reported in 'My Computer'. Both values are correct, they just have slightly differing units.)

Seized with doubt about which partition to nominate for installation, and suspecting (but not knowing for sure) that SDA1 equates to Disk 0, First partition, I aborted the installation and restarted Windows, to write down a few vital statistics from 'My Computer'.

Armed with this info, I restarted and spun the Ubuntu install disk up again. I wanted to install on my Drive G, which meant nominating SDA2 in the setup program. And I was told that "No root file system is defined".  

What?

I was invited to correct this from "the partitioning menu". Well, the drive's already partitioned. Into four chunks.

I don't want to repartition it, and screw up my existing Windows OS, do I?  So I didn't even look for any obscure partitioning menu, I just aborted the install, restarted the computer, and fired up Windows once again.

Researching, I got the impression that Ubuntu can't be installed in an NTFS partition. OK, Ubuntu can 'see' NTFS partitions, and access files from them, but it seemingly needs a different environment for its own little nest.

Groan. Why wasn't I told about this beforehand?  Again, a simple "things that Windows users need to know" guide would do the trick.

I get the distinct impression that the Ubuntu people aren't really that interested in helping Windows users explore alternatives.  Maybe they're geeks, maybe not. But useful info on their website is damned hard to find.

Anyway, that's as far as I'm going, right now. I'm shelving the whole thing til another week.

Is Ubuntu / Linux for geeks only? (Part 1: WWBMU)

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Desiring to try out an operating system that isn't Windows, I downloaded the Linux Ubuntu installer yesterday, and burned it to disk, to create an installer disk.

It's not the fault of Ubuntu that the Windows file icons can mislead people into performing an 'extract' on the initial 'ISO' file.

And it's not Ubuntu's fault if people then create a data disk instead of an image disk; then encounter a DOS prompt; and then, choosing to run the one and only executable - WWBMU - end up reading pages of German text.

These are known pitfalls: I did a brief search on the internet and found that others had strayed down this dead end. No, it's not Ubuntu's fault - however, a "Guide for Windows Users" or a strategically-placed README could certainly be offered by Ubuntu.

Anyway, having belatedly created a proper disk image, I spun it up, with the aim of installing Ubuntu on a spare partition. And then encountered more problems!

(To be continued.)

BBC withhold important election results data

The day after the PCC Elections, the BBC posted various pages that purported to give the results.

 Yet all of them have the same recurring phrase: Turnout does not include spoilt ballots.

Here's a copy of my complaint to the BBC about withholding Spoilt Paper numbers

Type of complaint:

BBC News (TV Radio Online)

What is your complaint about:

General News

Complaint category:

Bias

Contacted us before:

No

 

Complaint title:

 

Incomplete info on election results

 

Complaint description:

 

Your reporting of the PCC Election results did not include the Spoilt Paper numbers. Why not? I spoiled my paper, and I want to know how well we did. This business of spoiling of papers was a recurring topic in media coverage the day after the election, and the BBC deliberately denied us basic information on how many spoiled papers there were..

And the results of the police commissioner elections are...

...nothing'll change!  ( Except for the worse, of course.)

 

Yes, sometimes there's nothing to be done except spoil one's paper. The police will continue to abuse every power that's granted them, and go for the easy options like arresting people who comment on Facebook or Twitter, while homes are being burgled left, right and centre.

 

The spy in your pocket - the KitKat that "phones home" when you eat it!

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After seeing the news that the candy snack "KitKat" have made some of their product able to "phone home" and notify the makers, Nestlé, that you've started unwrapping their product....

I thought I'd have a playaround with Photoshop....

This was a rough Photoshop job, I'm not going to waste any more time on it! And yes, I know the plug isn't properly aligned with the socket.

The Nestlé scheme is, only some of their bars have a GPS tracker in the wrapper, and apparently a team follow the signal and pounce on you and give you a reward. But what if you're somewhere you want to keep secret?

- like visiting a prostitute? Or off work with flu but you'really at a rock concert? 

zonealarm vsmon doesn't like bittorrent?

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Today I was getting so fed up with vsmon (a part of Zone Alarm) maxing out my CPU and slowing my bit torrent download that, at around half past two, I switched ZA off, thus killing the vsmon.exe process.

And this was the result:

This is a screenshot of µTorrent's display of its download speeds.  What a difference it makes, killing that vsmon thing!

The mean (average) download speed had been a pitiful 6 or so kB/s, whereas after I shut zonealarm down, the speed was then averaging around 50 or 60 kB/s. OK, that's still a fairly rubbish download rate, but it's ten times better than before.

So why does vsmon stick its nose into arriving bittorrent packets? And why doesn't zonealarm let me 'wave my bit torrent client through' so to speak? This issue's been raised on the ZA help forum (here) but that was in July 2011.

Incidently, you can see from my above graph that my download speed is up and down like a tart's knickers, but I think that's a separate issue relating to using a wireless connection. When I can find that yellow network cable of mine, I'll try directly linking my PC to my router and see what happens.

Oh, yes, and I suppose I ought to say that switching one's firewall off is not a very good idea, even if it seems beneficial in one localised way. So there you go.

Avira popup issue - Avira found a rapid fix

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I and other people were pestered last night and this morning by an Avira antivirus popup that was very badly-behaved.

This survey popup wouldn't go away when told to.

People found that clicking in reply would leave a "this link is broken" message, and the shape of the box would stay on top of everything else. Killing ipmgui.exe in Task Manager would solve the problem... until the popup returned around 90 minutes later!

However, just as I complained on their forum, Avira posted their solution to the problem:

http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=148015

Avira ignore complaints or feedback quite often, but on this occasion they responded pretty swiftly.

Bird-spotting on Google Image Search

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The difficulties of getting computers to see the world the way humans can is illustrated by the current state of Google's image search.

One can drag  a photo from a computer folder into the image search box, and then the comparison software gets to work and scours the internet for similar images.


I took a photo of a garden bird the other day, and wondered what sort of bird it was.

Trying the Google image search, the results were fairly surprising.

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The search results, in order, are:

Stirring coconut into condensed milk
Moslem cuisine
Washington Airport
A woman at a workbench
Oysters
The interior of an apartment
A jeweller at a workbench
A Greek museum display
Some horses
A bunch of cages
A possible member of the Indonesian government
A bobcat

Evidently, it's early days for the devlopment of this software. As superficially amusing as the results might be, they're obviously looking at colour and texture, and many of the photos do have something in common with the bird's colour scheme, or the texture of the gravel in the background.

Merely getting a computer to distinguish an object of interest from the background clutter is a serious challenge.

It might be interesting if I try the search again, in the future. Say, at one year intervals, just to see how the computer guys are progressing in their software development. It's only a matter of time before they get there.

TOA MR-8T multi-track cassette recorder

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I've just been testing an 8-track recording unit, an old one that uses cassette tapes.

It's the TOA MR-8T, and I've made the discovery that, although it has a pitch control for playback (ie, a tape speed control) it won't play conventional recordings properly. You can play them fast, or you can increase the speed (pitch) and play them very fast - but you can't play them at the "proper" speed.

In other words, this unit is incompatible with just about every other cassette deck in the known universe.

As if this weren't enough, it seems like it can only play Type II cassettes - the high bias ones with an extra notch next to the customary erase-protect notch.

So it's also incompatible with around - what - 90% of the cassette tapes in the known universe? Something like that, anyway.

I'm rather tempted to review this unit on youtube - with the assistance of a bloody great axe! That would make an entertaining video.

"When investigating problems, it's alway important to disconnect the mains before opening the casing..." - crash!! Yes, I'd rather like to do that.
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Anti-Virus program wants me to junk my Firewall

Avira have brought out an updated antivirus program, the 2012 version.

I uninstalled the old program, and then set about installing the new one.... and got the message shown here, saying ZoneAlarm firewall needs to be manually removed.



Why would a virus protection program want anyone's computer to be left without a firewall? The Avira product doesn't replace the firewall functions, does it?

It all seems a bit odd, to me. Suspicious, even.

I can understand an AV program being incompatible with something relatively obscure, such as Spybot Tea Timer, but surely Zone Alarm is sufficiently widely used and respectable for someone at Avira to have taken it into account, when designing their new product?

One possible explanation has crossed my mind, but the implications are rather grave, and I'd have carefully to think about how I expressed it, before committing myself to print. These days, one can't be too careful!

My current solution is to regard Avira with deep suspicion, but let it do its thing, alongside ZoneAlarm. I'll see how they shake down together.
'

Hoaxwind - a Hawkwind tribute band

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A review of my first Hoaxwind gig

Looking in the past...

I don't go to as many Hawkwind shows as I could do – in 2010, I attended four and I regarded that as sufficient, given their current style. They're pretty good, and I enjoyed the shows, but I didn't bother with a few other possibles. Four was sufficient, as I still wish they'd do a bit more blanga... and being a 70's Dave Brock fan doesn't help, as grungy power-riffing on a rhythm guitar just hasn't happened in the last 20 years or so.

This century, I've tended to use some of my gig-going budget in exploring the Hawkwind alternatives.

Nik Turner's "Space Ritual"

Nik Turner's bands are an obvious option, but I've seen his Space Ritual band twice now, and found it fairly shapeless and it didn't really connect. Some people have said that Nik is the spirit of Hawkwind, and Dave Brock is the backbone. If I have to choose between the two then I prefer backbone every time. Brock's band is disciplined, solid and structured (albeit a shadow of its former self), whereas Turner's bands strive for those cosmic peaks but get lost in the foothills.

Assassins of Silence

In 2008, I went on a 300-mile round trip to see a tribute band called the Assassins of Silence. That's quite a journey to see an obscure bunch you've only seen before on the internet - and I would have regretted the trek, had it not been for the support band, Tribe of Cro.

Little did I know then that the Cro guitarist (Nial Hone) would one day join Hawkwind!

AoS have now ceased operation, but I wouldn't have gone to see them again anyway.

...and that brings us pretty well up to date.

This is Hoaxwind, do not panic...

Hawkwind were playing at the Forum in London, 2010, and Hoaxwind had the bright idea of playing the same night in a pub just down the road – not competing with Hawkwind, but playing either side of them. So, fans could have their pre-gig drinks while watching a tribute band; then go up the road and see "the real thing," and then return for Hoaxwind's second set. It's a bold decision, a trib playing in a pub where fans are getting ready to see their heroes in action!

It worked. Hoaxwind were in a side room, so plenty of people stayed at the bar, as the place was packed... but I'd previously heard some of Hoaxwind's stuff on YouTube and fancied checking them out.

After the totally non-typical gig intro of squawking synths, that I felt didn't remotely resemble anything that Hawkwind have ever done, they suddenly settled down and their style thereafter was solidly modelled on the vinyl releases of 1976-77 - or the second Bob Calvert era, or the Charisma Records era, depending on how you like to categorise your space rock.

In some ways, this choice (1976/77) is a bit limited, really - it would be nice if they did a few tracks in the style of the "Mind Journey" shows ('75) and the rock energy of "Live '79" – and perhaps a prog instrumental from the first album and some blanga from the "Space Ritual" era. Now, that would be some show! As it was, though, they chose to paint on a pretty narrow canvas – just the '76 and '77 vinyl – but, yes, they did it well.

A chap called Julian dares to step into Bob's shoes, and he handles it with a nice mixture of panache and nervous energy. Voice is good... which is half the battle, but what about the visual performance? It would be easy to fall into the trap of over-egging the pudding, when taking on a job like this – but Julian went for understatement instead, and was all the more convincing as a result.

He'd sometimes step up to the microphone and clutch it, eager to deliver a vocal – and then think again and step back, or fretfully fiddle with the sweat towel that's draped over his shoulder. And I didn't feel that was mimicry, because Bob Calvert didn't do that – but Bob could appear similarly twitchy, from what I remember of those days. So, yes, as an emulation or re-interpretation of the Main Man, he does an excellent job.

The rhythm section sounds solid and authentic, and the sax honking by Eugene similarly rings true. I gather he's played with Nik Turner's band, so that would be a definite stamp of approval for him. Next step, play with Hawkwind?

Synth and keyboards... well, this is an area of Hoaxwind that I think could do with beefing up. If the band want to make their mark by being a retro-Hawkwind, then they might as well go for the jugular, and put the 'space' firmly back into 'space-rock'. The gig intro sounded promising (albeit damned peculiar, as I've already commented) but then those guys seemed to back off, and stay in second gear much of the time. Or perhaps it was just the mix.

And the guitarist who has the temerity to assume Brock's role? Phil's contribution was in line with the chosen era, ie solid background that seldom kicked ass or sought to drive the band or demand attention. That was authentic, within the '76/'77 remit... but maybe disappointing for those hoping for a Greasy Truckers type sonic freakout.

Verdict: If Hoaxwind covered a wider range of Hawkwind gig styles, I'd be prepared to travel quite a long way to see them in the future.

When they decided to embed one of my videos of the gig on their Hoaxwind MySpace page, I did feel rather proud and pleased, though!



Hoaxwind's next gig is 5 March, in Darkest Essex.

Hawkwind tribute on UK daytime tv

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If a 'big act' like Muse or Paul McCartney is playing London then there well may be a reference to the upcoming show on daytime tv. However, the old space-rock bunch, Hawkwind, don't really register on the public or the tv industry radars.

I was in the capital recently, to see Hawkwind, and was pretty surprised to see this on Channel Five.




The Great British Barbershop Boys, doing a brief rendition of an old Bob Calvert song!

Matthew Wright's show is called The Wright Stuff, and so he probably had no problems persuading his producer to allow a snatch of The Right Stuff. Had he wanted Brainstorm, or Sonic Attack, I daresay it would've been a different story! Anyway, Matthew's a big fan of Hawkwind - he even sang on a single they released in 2005 - so it was fun to see him get away with it!

Hawkwind fans were given a heads-up that something Hawk-related would be happening on the show, which is why I tuned in. I usually completely avoid daytime tv.
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My science fiction movie competition! [solved]

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No prizes, but can anyone figure what science fiction film this photo refers to?


The photo is carefully arranged to specifically reference one particular film.

Oh, and it's not an obscure one, not some weird B-movie.

Emprex ME1 evaluation diary: Day Three

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There's an Emprex help forum but it seems there's no company engineers involved; it's merely a bunch of people who possess the item and who seek to help fellow-sufferers by sharing experiences and advice. A bit like a victim support group, for people who have been beaten up in the street!

Shoddy product?

Reading the forum pleas for assistance make me wonder whether the product is poorly designed and well built, or excellently designed and badly built. Of course, it might be badly designed and badly built, for all I know. I certainly won't buy an Emprex product again, for as long as I live.

Clearly, a good tip before buying a product is to look on the Internet and see what level of support there is. Search for Emprex complaints, or something. Had I done my homework before paying out good money, I wouldn't have gone ahead.

Still no word from Emprex themselves, so I'm now reformatting the hard drive. It's a bit drastic, but sometimes a completely fresh start is the best solution.

Emprex ME1 evaluation diary: Day One

The Emprex ME1 is a digital media player / recorder; in effect, a kind of digital video recorder that "tapes" TV and audio to hard drive.

Got mine today, and plugged it in.

First recording was a 2-minute portion of BBC News 24, via my Sky box. Hit pause, and the unit promptly gave me an I/O Error - that is, an input/output error, and then said loading....

Five minutes later, it was still "loading" (loading what?) and the power button wouldn't let me do a reset, so I pulled the plug for a cold restart. OK, first impression is, reminds me of Windows 95!

Second recording (a 3-min clip of news) went OK, and I then saved it to the FAT32 area of the hard drive. And found I could watch it back on my computer, so that was fine: that's exactly what I wanted.

Third recording lost all colour after a minute. Was the Emprex recording in black-and-white or was this merely a display issue? It turns out the colour loss had actually happened at the time - as playback of the offending item showed the moment it had happened.

I've found the colour loss issue can be reversed by pulling the power lead out, just like the old days of a Windows 95 freeze-up. But naturally, I'd like to avoid this absurdity happening in the future.

Two more tests, and the same thing happened: the display jumps to monochrome (black-and-white).

Consulted Emprex FAQs and the support site, and could find nothing on this problem, so messaged Emprex support through their site. And thus Day One of the trial concludes.

To be continued..........

Plaster Cast Experiment concludes after 20 weeks

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When things around you start crumbling... the plaster cast evaluation experiment of 2010...

At the start of March, a week before Jon and Corinna went to Texas, we decided to check the ability of some builder's plaster to form a cast of impressions in mud, in case Jon wanted to immortalise any tracks while in Texas.

I wetted some sand and then, for testing purposes, pressed a skull into it. Then withdrew it, and poured plaster in.

We weren't very impressed to find that, on the day that Jon and Corinna left the UK, it still wasn't dry. Easter came and went, and then the MayDay holiday... and it was still soggy.

I just left the tray to do its own thing, just to see how long the stuff really did require to dry. In June, it reluctantly summoned up some rigidity, and a couple of days ago I plucked the firmly-set plaster cast from the tray of sand and left it on a nearby bin, to let the July rains wash the sand off.

The next day, I found a crumbly pile of soggy gunk, that looked like a heap of guano.

So, a long-running evaluation of this potential CFZ resource finally came to an end after 20 weeks, and my official verdict on it was not very polite, when I told Jon about it.

Interestingly, Jon suggested we keep the rest of that bag of cement "in case it comes in useful, one day."

Perhaps we can run a CFZ competition one day, and find out the Top Ten best uses for the stuff. In the meantime, it's up in the workshop, if anyone wants to put in a bid for it!

Computers - staying in control

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Staying in control, when running an unfamiliar operating system on an unfamiliar machine, can be a bit difficult sometimes.

Recently, I found myself getting increasingly exasperated by Windows 7 on my first laptop, where the touchpad would keep dragging things where I didn't want them to be dragged, or closing a viewing folder when I merely wanted to finger-tip-move to an adjacent folder.

It was like the system was second-guessing me, or making decisions on my behalf. Turned out that, all I needed to do was

disable tap-to-click on laptop touch pad

Now, when I googled the problem, I'd never even heard of tap-to-click, so I googled for "mousepad second-guesses me," or "touchpad anticipates my clicks," or something like that, and found many pages about this damned "tap-to-click" thing.

All that's needed to cure it is START > Control Panel > Mouse > Device Settings > Settings > Tapping > disable tapping.

So it wasn't the laptop being rebellious, or Windows 7 being a pile of rubbish. It was just a default setting that didn't suit me.

It made me wonder, though:

I wonder how many people buy a computer from a shop and then struggle along with a problem, not realising that their life needn't be like that, and that computers are supposed to obey our every whim. We shouldn't have to accomodate ourselves to the computer's whims.