Blast from the past: originally published September 25th 2001.
When I originally conceived of this article, I planned for two classes of server; a budget machine of $1500 and something decent for $3000. After researching the manufacturer’s web sites and comparing packages, it became apparent that an entry model in either price range made too many concessions. Hence the focus of a good all around machine for $3000, with a minimum of two drives, decent RAM and whatever features could be crammed in.
To research the various models and bundles available, I …

Blast from the past: originally published in 2003.

Testing RAID cards is a long and arduous process. The most difficult part was deciding on a standard cluster size for all cards. While the Promise cards can have from 8k to 2048k, Adaptec’s limit is 128k, and 3ware’s is 64k. All cards default to 64k cluster size, so who am I to argue? Just for comparison sake, I ran the Promise FastTrak100 with three cluster sizes to see the difference.

Blast from the past: originally published in 2003.

Cache plays an integral part in RAID types that use parity or error checking and correcting (ECC). How much cache to put on a RAID card to get the best performance is a tricky bit of business: the natural reaction is to max it out. Below is a comparison of benchmarks using three sizes: 64, 128 and 256 MB PC133 SDRAM on a Promise FastTrak SX4000 with IBM DeskStar 75GXP 20 GB drives.

Blast from the past: originally published June 1st 2001.
Being a computer technician and networking professional, I have quite a few computers at home. The problem is what to do with those old Pentium machines that just can’t keep up with today’s games. About the time I was contemplating all this two entertainment phenomena’s hit the big time: DVD movies and MP3’s. I of course wanted both, but didn’t want to shell out the big bucks. Then it hit me: use an old Pentium PC as an “Entertainment” computer to hook …

Blast from the past: originally published February 4th 2002.

So much has been made of Windows XP product activation, with every major PC magazine carrying a feature article and countless online rants, that I felt it was covered to death. The information had been presented to me at the product launch held by Microsoft that covered all there was to be said, but I had encountered a number of variables.

Here and there I had read that product activation was required, but you could upgrade pieces of hardware without reactivating. I was told seven hardware …

Blast from the past: originally published December 31st 2001.

I’m a big fan of Windows Update; one easy place to find all the updates needed for your system. I’ve found it works with Windows 95 up and long as your version of Internet Explorer is 4.0 or greater. With versions 5 and 6, you go to Tools, Windows Update. With version 4, go to Tools, Product Updates. Either way you’re brought to the Windows Update page, with lots of information available.

Products updates is my frequent destination for the latest operating system patches. It’s neatly organized into …

Blast from the past: originally published May 3rd 2002.

Once you have a small business up and running with a handful of computers you have to look at a serious backup strategy. Programs can be reinstalled, updates downloaded again, but the data generated by yourself and those around you is unique and should be protected. The best way to protect that information is to store it centrally and perform regular backups. To accomplish our goal we’ll look at both ends of the process; setting up the server and setting up the clients.

Let’s take a …

Blast from the past: originally published November 15th 2000.
Backup should be a key component of any computer user’s routine. No matter what we do with our computer, there are files you don’t want to lose. The only way to guarantee they’ll always be there is to back them up.

For the day to day user or individual who is concerned with system failure or file loss the best method is RAID 1. This process takes two hard drives and mirrors the contents from one to the other. After the initial setup …

Blast from the past: originally published November 23rd 2001.

What do you do when your ISP goes out of business, or changes it’s name? Both events have occurred in the Hamilton, Ontario area recently where I live, and have affected a large number of people. Everyone know about the demise of @Home, so local cable operators have changed their service to a rogers.ca or cogeco.ca naming. As well Hamilton’s Icom suddenly closed up shop. They’ve been around since 1991 when I set up my first dial up account. Now a slew of people have email addresses …

Blast from the past: originally published April 3rd 2001.

There’s only one way to describe Counter Strike; a PC phenomenon.  For those few who haven’t heard of it, here’s a short history.  Half Life, a first person shooter with an excellent plot and gameplay, was released some two years ago.  With it came the ability to make modifications to the game and make new graphics, sounds and environments, collectively titled “mods” by the gaming community.  The most famous of Half Life’s mods is called Counter Strike, and is a strictly multiplayer …

Blast from the past: originally published August 20th 2001.

Whenever a game comes along with a new spin, you just have to check it out. Just such a title appeared: Tropico from Gathering Of Developers. You are a dictator of a small Caribbean island, and it’s your job to make it what you will. Tropico follows in the vein of “God” games, where you control the infrastructure and watch how it plays out with the inhabitants. The best of this genre has been the Impression’s series, of which Pharaoh was a personal favourite. How does Tropico …

Blast from the past: originally published December 30th 2002.
Christmas is almost upon us, so that means our loved ones have to buy us something. They’re looking for dropped hints, circled catalogue pages and the like. For gaming enthusiasts, this is a frightful situation. These best intentioned people will wonder into a computer shop and say “what game should I buy my son/boyfriend/nephew?” And how the salesman will love to dump some piece of crap, assuring the purchaser how every gamer wants this title. Lucky for us Microsoft has launched a major ad campaign this season …

Blast from the past: originally published October 2000.
A game run that has been near and dear to my heart is the City Building series from Impressions. From Caesar II on I have been an avid fan of building a city, meeting the needs of the citizens and watching everything flourish.  Impressions’ unique concept of having the gamer place the buildings and then watching the people emerge and work the streets has kept me coming back each time. After Caesar 3, Pharaoh and Pharaoh: Cleopatra we see the latest work: Zeus, Master Of …

I have the good fortune to take part in a Brother P-Touch blogging promotion.  I’ll be writing three posts over the next few months chronicling my experience with Brother and its labels.  To start if off they sent this product challenge kit:

It’s an interesting mix of products: a piece of plexiglass with a label affixed, sponge, scrub brush, powdered bleach, nail polish remover, and two extra labels.  If this was designed to test the labels then what’s important in a label?  I’d say two things: it stays on whatever you …

Blast from the past: originally published December 22nd 2000.

Lately there hasn’t been much time for game playing, but during those scant free minutes I managed to finish Rune. In case you haven’t heard of it, Rune is a third person hack ‘n slash about Ragnar, a Viking youth sent against the forces of evil to save the world from Ragnarok.  To aid on the journey All Father Odin appears with long monologues to move through the story.  Now that we have some background let’s get into the meat of the game.

Based …

After updating the theme of the compromised site, removing TimThumb completely and the site I look after still had issues.  I hadn’t noticed but other users were getting warnings in Chrome and being redirected to various affiliate sites.  The worst was that the site seemed to have been removed from Google so the hits dropped rapidly.
I spotted the redirect going to counter-wordpress.com and then did some internet searching, which brought me to a great thread about cleaning it up.  Using Sucuri SiteCheck I was directed to the source of …

Blast from the past: originally published April 18th 2002.

I’ve just finished the single player game of Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault ( MOHAA ) and all I can say is “wow”. Like most I’ve grown tired of the first person shooter single player game and sought out online action in Counter Strike and Day of Defeat. How many times can you move through levels killing everything in your path, meeting so-so AI ( artificial intelligence ) and flicking switches. After playing MOHAA it seems worth doing one more time.

Here’s the background story: it’s …

Blast from the past: originally published October 19th 2001.

I love the expansion pack. Take a game I’ve spent hours enjoying, add more to it and let me enjoy it for a more hours. Not much new to learn, just more of the same good times with more added. I had laboured for countless hours playing Sudden Strike, a RTS ( real time strategy ) title set in World War Two. For a full rundown check out my .
Let’s get right to it: what does Sudden Strike Forever bring to the table? The biggest items are …

As I read through my tech news a few weeks ago I took note of a TimThumb vulnerability that allowed bad people to do bad things to your website.  Recommended solution was to replace TimThumb.php with the latest version available online.  A lot of WordPress themes use TimThumb to auto resize images for front pages and the like.  Shortly thereafter I received an email from Elegant Themes advising to update all their themes to the latest version which now did not employ TimThumb, then make sure TimThumb.php and it’s cache …

Blast from the past: originally published March 9th 2001.

Quite a few games from Europe have caused a stir in North America, but none as much as Sudden Strike.  This real time strategy cleaned up the awards from the European gaming community last year and has finally hit our shores.
Sudden Strike wowed me from the get go for it’s straight forward gameplay and excellent graphics. I say this in the face of quite a few negative reviews I’ve read, all of which seem to miss the point of this title.
This is a …