www.NewVentures.ca

Well summer is fading and the kids start back to school this week. So it’s time I got off my holiday backside and got back to writing again.

Well I’m running back and forth today fighting fires on several computers at the same time today. My daughters computer (actually the newest of all the ones I’m working on ) is priority one and it is slowly dying. Partially from abuse I suspect (the downside of having it reside in a home with 3 males – two under 6 ) and partially from not being “computer savvy” for lack of a better word!

Some how, even though it had a well known commercial firewall and virus scanner installed, which automatically updated and scanned, it ended up infected with no less that half a dozen Trojan pieces of software and thanks to Ad-Aware ( which I still consider one of the best tools available ) I found the Trojan loader (for some reason the security software missed all this, or was manually over ruled when it found it! )

Trojan software, also known as a Trojan Horse (for the obvious reason ) is software that you install on your computer (either intentionally or otherwise ) expecting to get something of benefit, but which contains a piece of malicious programming designed to make your computer do something else which you probably didn’t want to do. These are extremely dangerous programs and can lead to a lot of grief!

(Continue reading…)

So I just scheduled my two grandsons and myself for a voyage to the moon…

Not personally, and we won’t be landing, but our names will be orbiting the moon on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ( LRO for short ) that NASA is sending out, thanks to the Planetary Society . Unfortunately the cut-off date is today, so by the time you read this, it will probably be too late – but all is not lost!

The Signatures ( what the list of names are called ) on the LRO are part of an ongoing effort that has been going on for a while now – it’s part of the Planetary Society’s “Messages From Earth” project. They have already sent disks or other media to many different locations such as the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Rovers. Signatures along with other material have also traveled with some of our outer reaching satellites like LRO including Stardust and Dawn to name just a few.

(Continue reading…)

So I came across this Bin/Cue video archive recently that generated a very nice little VCD, or Video CD (a video that plays on a CD instead of a DVD ) which is all well and good ( if you like to have one movie per disk. ) But I have decided to try and keep all my converted video’s in AVI format because I can put up to five or six movies on one DVD and I have a DVD player that can play them (look for DIVX compatible DVD players if you are looking to do the same thing. )

Why you ask? Well, picture 6 VHS tapes standing side by side on your shelf, now picture one DVD case replacing them… I don’t know about you, but to me it’s a “no brainer”…

Well, as I was saying… one of the archives that I received for replacing one of my VHS movies came in what is called a BIN ( or more accurately BIN/CUE ) format. All one can do with this file is (if you have Nero disk burning software is ) open the CUE file and it then creates a VCD ( using a CD instead of a DVD ) video disk.

You’ve already read about why I prefer AVI formatted video’s, so my challenge was to find something that would convert the BIN to AVI or failing that some other format that I could then use my current tools on, and convert that file to AVI. It was a tougher challenge than I thought (especially, if you recall my stated preference for freeware – or freely given software. )

(Continue reading…)

So I was catching up on some of my space news today. Being a member of the Planetary Society gives me access to tons and tons of information about what NASA and the other space agencies and astronomers and astrophysicists and… ( well you get the idea ) are up to. The amount of information is almost overwhelming – seriously!

One of the services that I had not yet taken advantage of was their radio broadcast, and coming soon it looks like they will be doing a video broadcast as well! You have probably seen links for these sorts of things on some of the websites you have visited – they are usually referred to as “Podcasts” and were first developed for use with iPods and iTunes .

Well I certainly have nothing against Apple’s amazing products , they deserved huge kudos for just surviving against the juggernaut that Microsoft has become, but I have taken a look at iTunes and while I find it amazing well designed and full of functionality, I didn’t like two things in particular about it. The first was that it was designed ( when I was looking at it a while back, don’t know if it’s still true today ) to be used just for their iPod and more importantly ( or me that is ) it insisted on taking over complete control of all your MP3 recordings on your computer!

(Continue reading…)

So I spent most of Friday struggling with my network printing problem on my Linux/Ubuntu machine (which by the way was not successful, I still can’t use my HP1000 across a network, ) and as a result I don’t have anything “fresh” (as in the last 3 days ) to talk about. So, I thought I would pass on my opinions about a new “toy” that I got for my birthday a little while back. My wonderful wife, knowing that I like techology got me a new gadget that she thought I could use – a Digital Photo Converter from Hammacher Schlemmer .

To be truthful, it is available elsewhere. I did a quick Internet search and found another website, Frontgate, which also sells the exact same piece of equipment, at the same price, but I like Hammacher because they give us a lifetime warranty with anything purchased AND they send us a real cool catalog with all sorts of real neat toys in it. Both places sell the exact same equipment for the same price, $149 US.

Now granted, I do have a scanner that can do the same sort of thing as this gadget, but I have to tell you. It’s no where near as fast. My scanner can also take negatives and create digital photographs from them (and it is faster than scanning one picture at a time ) but how many people still have ALL their negatives to ALL their pictures – I tried but only have about a third of what I should have, PLUS I am into genealogy and have acquired a lot of very old pictures where the negatives disappeared over 70 years ago!

I have to tell you that this little (about 8″x9″x10″ ) 2lb. box does a pretty amazing job, very, very quickly and anyone who wants to convert a lot of old photographs, and newer ones as well, should seriously take a closer look at this  gem.

(Continue reading…)