The Life of Matt Campos

So I attended Code Works 2009. Codeworks is mainly a PHP conference but it also dabbles into other subjects as well. I had a great time, met a few people, attended seminars and had an overall great time. The conference was relatively small with around 50 attendees. It was split into two days, the first day was a tutorial session with two sessions, morning and afternoon.

Can’t say I have learned a lot of new things, but I did learn alot of small tricks and interesting tid bits I was not aware of. It was a good show overall.

I use ClamWin as my antivirus, I think its a decent product and it gets the job done. My only Complaint was windows would nag about not being able to find an AV. So I did some searching and came across a great blog post by Quandry on remstate.com on how to integrate ClamWin into WinXP.  He has a VBS script that registers ClamWin with the Security Center and it works on Vista too! So hop on over to his site, grab the script and run it! Remember to run it with administrator rights. I just opened the command prompt as admin and ran it. Enjoy! And if you like it let the Author know!

I was running into an issue where windows was telling me I was missing my nvHotkey.dll, I had recently installed the newest nvidia driver on my laptop, I have a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ750n, and I upgraded my video driver using the latest driver from nvidia.com. When I started receiving the error I went to the nvidia driver folder (usually C:\NVIDIA\driver#) and found the nvhotkey.dl_ compressed file. I then uncompressed it and stuck in my windows\system folder. Viola, problem solved.

Need to know how to uncompress the file? Here are the instructions:

You need to expand a file when you want to copy just one or two files from distribution disks of a software application without having to reinstall the whole thing.  This situation occurs when you have unsuccessfully installed a program which causes one or two of your system files become corrupted.

The compressed files that comes in the distrubution disks of your program are normally compressed. They have their original names with one character replaced with an underscore (”_”), like ole32aut.dl_ for oleaut32.dll
You can expand a compressed file into its original file using the EXPAND command in DOS window as follows:

Well with the business I am in we have alot of data, over 5 TB of data. Thats alot of data to loose if your file servers decide to stop working. I have been looking around for data services that do backup and recovery. I was wanting something local where I could have a tech on site and I came across a few options. Right now I am looking at fastteks.com, their data recovery and backup services have got my interests peaked. Anyone have any comments onthem?

Well I have start looking for some VOIP and Web Conferencing solutions for my job. We are opening a satellite office out in California and we need the communications link between that office and our home office. I have been looking at WiredRed, their offerings for both services look to be very in depth. Their site gives a tremendous volume of information on both services. They layout how and what both services provide to businesses looking for voip and web conferencing. Wiredred gives you a full breakdown of all hardware and software requirements, and also gives you the ability to sign up for a free demo of their solutions. All in all I am impressed with the amount of information they provide on their websites and the details of each service.

HardOCP.com has just release the latest pic of Nvidias new card along with the detailed specs.

GeForce 9800 GX2

1. 1GB Frame Buffer
2. Two PCBs
3. Two 65nm GPUs Total
4. 256 Stream Processors Total
5. Supports Quad SLI

Looks to be an interesting card, too bad I won’t have the money to buy one as I am sure they will cost a hefty sum of money. This card will be replacing the 8800 Ultra and according to Nvidia it will be 30% faster. The proof is in the pudding so to speak, so I guess we will find out in late feb or March as thats the rumored release date.

SOURCE: Pocket Lint

Have to say, this has to be a nifty little device. If its not an arm and a leg, I think I will pick one up. As much as I ravel and use different machines I think this would be great to keep my info secret.

The “Vaccine” USB is described as the world’s first USB equipped with anti virus and malware protection software.

Giving users an extra layer of protection through real-time system monitoring and hardware scans, the Vaccine claims to protect any PC or laptop from the moment it is inserted with its “plug and auto run” function.

Once connected, the USB automatically monitors incoming traffic for viruses and malware with real-time system monitoring.

In addition, users can carry out in-depth hardware scans whenever necessary to verify the presence of infection and perform repairs to cure or delete defected files.

The anti-virus and malware firmware is regularly updated through automatic downloads for the 2-year period users ejoy the licence for free.

Matt black in design with a mirrored front this will be out in capacities ranging from between 512MB and 8GB.

I have been doing some looking around at IT Certification programs, been thinking of getting a few certifications to round out my resume and add to decorate my office a bit. IT Certification Training is a good way to get noticed when you go on an interview or even to get the call to get an interview. So I have been looking around and this site game me some great info and has some of the better programs around. I have tried some of their training modules and they have put the right technology and training methodologies into their product. Right now they are running an offer to try one of their courses for free. So head on over and check it out.

Toshiba is coming out with the first laptop to contain an HD DVD-RW. The laptops will range from $2600 to $3500 USD and look to contain an HD DVD-RW that writes at 2x. Right now it looks like this little computer will only be available in Japan. The laptop is the 17-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200) “Qosmio” with a 2.2GHz T7500 Core 2 Duo, up to 400GB of disk and 4GB of memory, and a pair of terrestrial HDTV tuners with HDMI-out. Now that is some serious hardware.

Source: Impress

I run the IT department for a small e-commerce company, most of our servers are co-located offsite but we do have a small server room with two NAS file servers a web server and a domain server for local internal use. Well I was running into network issues at night when no one is in the office, I was suspecting something was wrong with one of our servers or even our Cisco router. I did many hours of troubleshooting, changing out parts, you name it I tried it. Then I got to thinking about when this was happening, late at night, I suspected the building admin were turning off the air conditioning at night. After talking to them they said they were not, so I needed proof. I found a nice little monitoring tool, Temperature@lert USB Temperature Monitor and plugged it in. And sure enough this awesome little tool gave me the proof to go back and tell them what was going on. Sure enough, later that day I got a call saying the indeed their controls were set wrong and it has been corrected. This little tool is a life saver!