Archive for category technology
G-Wireless Clients & N-Wireless Routers
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, troubleshooting on March 7, 2009
After renewing our Internet subscription, I went for shopping in Hawali and got a Belkin N Wireless Router. True, our household has no devices with n-wireless cards, I just wanted it for wider coverage. To reach downstairs for the extender to work, which I didn’t try yet!
I configured it and plugged it in. I noticed that my wireless speed is 5.5 Mbps and if it reached the maximum, it’ll be around 11 Mbps. To double check, I dragged and dropped files from my laptop on our network storage and the speeds were lower than 300 KB/sec!
I know, I couldn’t expect the speed to increase over the max. 54 Mbps supported by b/g wireless network, but to improve a little because I can get a stronger signal thus increasing the speed a bit. But the opposite happened, my speed degraded.
I double checked my wireless configuration and driver updates. Then my router configuration and I configured my channel width as 40 MHz, thinking it’ll offer me more throughput, since I thought it’ll allow more data to be carried. Anyhow, this wasn’t the case.
The Channel-bonding trick can provide a 10 to 20 Mbps throughput increase, but usually works best under strong signal conditions. As signal levels drop, using channel bonding becomes much less effective in providing a throughput boost.
I configured the “bandwidth” back to the default 20 MHz and my wireless connection shows at times (48 – 54) Mbps, my file exchange is at 1.17 MB/sec.
See more details about “5 Ways To Fix Slow 802.11n Speed“
Microsoft Log Parser
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, troubleshooting, windows on March 6, 2009
I had to give up my log monitoring server, truth to be told, I had it up and running before I went on vacation and so I haven’t been using it much. Anway, gave up the powerful server for some application.
I needed to go over some audit logs that I enabled over specific folders, tens of thousands of entries, I tried filtering them in excel and it took me as far as it could and decided a small code will do the trick, then today I came across this.
Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. You tell Log Parser what information you need and how you want it processed. The results of your query can be custom-formatted in text based output, or they can be persisted to more specialty targets like SQL, SYSLOG, or a chart. Most software is designed to accomplish a limited number of specific tasks. Log Parser is different… the number of ways it can be used is limited only by the needs and imagination of the user.
You can run queries which are similar to SQL, I run -h with any command or go through the help file, to come up with the right query. You can specify the input files example (csv, textfile, event logs) and the output, as far as I’ve discovered, can be in textfile, csv, charts, etc.
I had problems, figuring out the correct field names, which can be retried by a simple query or added at the top of your csv file and within the query retrieve the header. I got a bit mixed up whether to use (like, not like, =, ==, <>, !=) and if to include (‘, “). Ya3nee, my memory just needed refreshing.
All is left is to produce a report with my logs analysis and I’m done.
Who wants to bet, that the logs report next week won’t be needed 
Download Microsoft Log Parser here
Skype Request
Posted by Bloggylife in technology on February 17, 2009
Opened my email and I had a request from Skype. I’ve set my Skype account back in July (link) and had problems now and then (link), but overall I’m very pleased with it.
I was not aware that people could send email requests to Skype users. When I open my Skype application, the request isn’t displayed anywhere on the application console.
Maybe if you search for Skype users, then you’ll be able to send email requests, my privacy setting is set to only able contacts in my list which is one user, my friend that I call ;P
Zain – SMSthem
Posted by Bloggylife in Kuwait, technology on February 16, 2009
Zain offers SMSthem service, this service provides the ability to reach a group of people by sending one text message to one number only.
I didn’t know about it but my sister showed it to me so I can configure it to my mother.
You can login (link), and register by providing your mobile and a password will be SMSed to you.
Quote from their site “SMSthem is a Group Messaging service for all Zain Post Paid (Contract) subscribers. Registration to the service is FREE, and there are no monthly fees. Subscribers will be charged 10 Fils for every message delivered to a group member, and 20 Fils for the initial message sent to 807. The BIGGER your list the more you SAVE.”
You can have upto five groups, each having 30 contacts. I had to edit 90 numbers for mom, she already had 3 groups. I was either going to have to go through every group and edit all numbers (delete/add) or start over again.
I couldn’t delete the whole group at once, I had to go to each number and delete by selecting the number and then click on delete. Keyboard strokes aren’t considered as inputs. You can’t use the delete key button nor the shift/ctrl for multiple selections!
There is no search feature so I can search for a particular number in a group.
I had to add each number individually.
Number aren’t sorted. They are sorted in some way and it isn’t in the way you entered them or ascending/descending. The first group, they were sorted in an ascending order. The other two groups, I would find some numbers are listed in a way I entered them, but only a sub-group of the group itself!
I ended up entering 85 numbers, so 5 numbers are missing and I don’t know which ones are they so I had to go through it again!!!! crossing numbers I found …
Mom saves about half the amount by using this service for her “jam3eyat el-eslah” contacts.
This is a good feature, that I believe my mother knew about from Zain SMSes to their clients.
VertrigoServ
Posted by Bloggylife in technology on February 14, 2009
About a year ago, I came across this freeware and I fell more in love with open source.
I wanted to add to my Vista operating system, web server functionality.
This magnificent tool installs the two most imporant products I needed, Apache and MySQL. I didn’t have to do it individually, with VertrigoServ, everything is installed under one roof (C:\Program Files\VertrigoServ)
In their official project website (link), they list all components that are part of the installed bundle.
I love how everything is centralized and minimized under a single icon which is displayed next to the time and date.
I know, there maybe other solutions out there, but I like this just fine 
Gmail and Blog
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, troubleshooting on February 6, 2009
After going through Bashar’s post about Gmail, I went through my gmail features and found that I can configure my domain email account (@bloggylife.com) ;P (well upto 5 accounts), kind of centralizing everything into one place ;D
Settings -> Accounts -> Add a mail account you own
It is straight forward, but if you’re not sure, usually you can get the mail setting configuration from your domain help page. The thing I liked, there is an option to automatically label your emails that are retrieved from your domain account to single them out.
In hotmail, which I use for personal and business, because these accounts go way back and all my contacts know them. Though I don’t frequently use messenger, but it’s a tool to stay in touch. I have rules set to sort out my incoming mails into folders based on sender, domain, etc. I haven’t used labels/folders in gmail yet, because there isn’t much to go through. My gmail is just used to stay in touch with the blogsphere .. for now ;D
One question is roaming through my mind and not quite sure of it, is there a possibility that this way, my blog emails are also filtered through gmail spam filters ;D The obvious answer should be no, the emails are just retrieved and whatever filtering that is supposed to happen, should be done at the original account servers. I’ll have to search for a definite answer.
IE8
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, windows on January 4, 2009
I just downloaded IE8 beta version link
It didn’t change much, squared tabs and added icons in drop down menus.
They are adopting what web 3.0 is about, personalizing user experience, but I turned this off!
New features I’m curious about web slices, accelerator and smartscreen filter.
As you open the browser and type in the address bar, it’s segmented into parts, auto complete which you can jump to directly by (shift+enter) kinda like (ctrl+enter) that appends (www&com) before and after what you typed in the address bar –I love shortcuts-, the other parts are history and favorites
Some features I noticed
InPrivate under Safety menu, prevents the browser from storing your browsing experience
There is more to check, but still I only use IE when I have to! We’ll see if IE8 changes that.
More info: link
Centralizing Server Logs
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, windows, work on December 14, 2008
I came across this event management software EventTracker
It’s a solution to centralize all logs which I got from this article
There was another article, talking about utilizing Linux box to do the job
I’m not sure how to go about this, having zero knowledge about Linux. OK, does this OS come with an application that sorts out all the servers logs and events and manage them into a nice interface and reports! I’ll have to discover that
For now, I installed EventTracker on win2003 OS. You can add servers from the domain, it’s installs agents to retrieve the logs, you can configure it as agent-less but of course you won’t have all the features, I guess it’ll go with what SNMP provides which isn’t the whole purpose of my aim! Or maybe another approach, I’m still going through it.
Also, I have to enable more logging on the servers I added, not just user login/logoff events ;P that sort of thing. For example, on the file level, files added/modified/deleted.
You would thing there are many options out there, but I’ve searched a lot and the amount of info I’m collecting is very scarce, how are others centralizing their logs ???
And this product is quiet expensive! Need to explore more … we’ll see about the Linux thing
LOL, I found this in the second article, it’s pretty funny and well true
“But the truth is that admins typically don’t log routers and switches. When a problem occurs, we just reboot them or restart an interface, and then chalk it up to a hardware glitch.”
To be continued …
Google Translate
Posted by Bloggylife in technology on December 10, 2008
I use Google Translate quite a bit, I just noticed they added a new feature (swap) which is great. I always confuse if I’m translating from English to Arabic or the other way around ;P
Also, now I can switch quickly between the two languages, it’s just wonderful.
Google Chrome
Posted by Bloggylife in technology on November 5, 2008
I enjoy this browser very much. It’s slick, neat and light
I like the most visited page, where I get a snapshot of my last website’s visit.
How the downloads are stacked at the bottom even though I can’t view the download rate/speed and it is both a convenience and annoyance that all downloads are saved in the same location –yeah I just saw the option where I can set it to ask where to save the file -
I still have problems viewing and using all the functionalities, like with my blogging some buttons don’t work, when viewing my hotmail, it asks me to upgrade my browser. Recently my hotmail view was upgraded to a new design and using chrome I could not navigate to the body of the email to write! So I opened my hotmail using IE7 yeah I know I could’ve gone with firefox ;P !
Not to mention, managing applications through the web browser. Our McAfee web management is done through IE just to be on the safe side, if I run the web management of the backup, many things go wrong and actions do get processed!
Also, the ‘save image as’ still isn’t fixed, If you try to rename the image when the ‘save as’ box pops open, the ‘.’ Between the name and extension isn’t there!!
But still my main browsing is Chrome-ing ;D
UPDATE
I forgot to mention one thing, why does it take IE settings?? If I want to configure the proxy for example, it takes you to IE network settings!! I still don’t understand this part
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