PC Mag has some advice about ransomware. The most important bit of advice is to have a secondary machine that you can use to go get help.
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DROP DATABASE wordpress;
This week, I doubled back down in earnest to get my webserver running on the hardware I bought a year ago.
After getting Apache, PHP and MySQL installed on the box and playing together nice, I installed WordPress and got it running. Then I tried backing up and restoring files from my existing server, and the server didn’t like that one bit.
New Raspberry Pi this week
The Raspberry Pi Model A (the cheaper, stripped-down version) was just released for $25.
How is this news? Well, I thought the Model A was already available.
It has half the memory of a Model B, and no Ethernet, and only a single USB port.
If you’d like to be able to mess around with microcontrollers but prefer a self-contained environment, a Model A has potential, and the price isn’t all that high. I’d still probably develop on the $35 Model B so I can connect to it remotely, then swap the SD card into the Model A and put the Model A into use. But in a pinch, just plug the Model B in to a USB keyboard and the nearest LCD TV.
OCZ is in trouble
You know it’s bad when a story about a company ends with the words, “OCZ’s survival is still possible.”
Survival is supposed to be a given.
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Beware of unexpected links in e-mail messages
Hackers are stealing Yahoo accounts by sending messages containing malicious web page links.
The message looks like a link to a web page on MSNBC. But if an unsuspecting user clicks on it, it redirects to another page that steals the e-mail account, allowing the hacker to use the account to send spam, or grab the account’s contact list.
HP Elitebook won’t turn on? Fix it in a minute flat
If your HP Elitebook or other HP laptop won’t turn on, I have an easy fix. We used them at a previous job and I taught this trick to all of my coworkers who had difficulty getting their laptops to power up in the morning. It’s easy, and takes less time than calling the helpdesk, and less time than going direct to desktop support too.
The Debt Tsunami is a gimmick, but it probably doesn’t matter
I saw some people passionately advocating both for and against a new method of paying off debt: The “Debt Tsumani,” which focuses on paying off debt in the order of its emotional impact on you.
As someone who paid off more than $150,000 worth of debt over the course of about four years in the last decade, maybe what I have to say about that matters to you. Read more
Tag your imported WordPress content with Simple Tags
Unlike many bloggers, I blogged for a decade before moving to WordPress. That meant I had a pile of old posts with no tags on them. One of the nice things about WordPress is that you can use the tags in conjunction with a plugin like Similar Posts to display links to related content at the end of each post. And trust me, when you blog for a decade, a lot of your stuff is related.
It’s also sad how much of that old content becomes obsolete, but the 2% that stands the test of time and continues to get readers year over year is satisfying, too.
Here’s how to tag your old content–wherever it came from–quickly and easily.
Go-Bots vs Transformers: My small-town perspective
Internet pal Rob O’Hara posted a photo of a whatzit antique mall find earlier this week. I knew I’d seen it before, and I knew some of my friends had it, but its identity escaped me. The answer got me thinking about Go-Bots vs Transformers.
A commenter identified it as a Go-Bots command center. I seem to recall it doubled as a carrying case as well. Go-Bots, if you missed that particular month of the 1980s, were transforming toys, like Transformers, that transformed from robots to vehicles. I was in third or fourth grade when they arrived in the small town where I was living, an hour south of St. Louis. They were made by Tonka, a mighty toy company, but they were a flash in the pan.
My phone’s micro SD card made Windows Disk Manager hang, but I fixed it
The micro SD card in my Android phone (a Samsung Galaxy S 4G, if that helps) quit working suddenly, and I finally got around to investigating it on Friday. I ended up having to solve two problems to do it, though.
Let’s start with Windows 7’s Disk Manager hanging at the message that says “Connecting to Virtual Disk Service.”