Miscellaneous Knowledge

A while ago, I picked up a ST4120P, a Fujitsu Tablet PC.  It’s quite dated, having a blazing fast 933Mhz Pentium 3 Mobile Processor, a maximum of 512MB RAM, integrated 802.11b wireless and so on. However, it’s still a tablet and works fine for writing notes in programs such as OneNote (or Paint, for those that can’t afford office!).

I upgraded the drive to a 120GB Segate drive, which is quieter, uses less power and has 6x the capacity of the previous one. In other words, this tablet is all ready to go.

Or not. I encountered a small problem where the screen would work perfectly in landscape mode, but if you switched to portrait, the pen would be 90 degrees out of sync. This is odd, having installed all the drivers correctly. Google wasn’t much help – one other user reported this problem and solved it by installing from SP0, and removing certain parts of the SP2 install – not something I was prepared to do. I went back to Fujitsu’s driver site and found one driver I had overlooked, the “Pen User Mode” components. I downloaded and installed these and portrait now worked perfectly. Excellent, this tablet, which cost me around£150 total after upgrades, is now ready to go. Perhaps the best bit of it is the battery life – an amazing 6hr 30min even though it’s 5 years old – this is a real world test with the tablet idle, but screen on full brightness. The only downside is that a full charge takes 24hr, but otherwise a perfect, affordable tablet.

As things tend to disappear from Fujitsu’s site, you can download the Fujitsu Stylistic ST4120P Pen User Mode Components from us. Use at your own risk of course, works for me, unlikely to break your system but in this cover-your-ass world I have to have some disclaimer just in case something goes awry and I get the blame…

Around mid december, I noticed that traffic for my Left 4 Dead Servers page dropped sharply – from 100 unique visitors a day to 5, at most.

Traffic Graph for www.l4dservers.net

Most of my traffic comes from search engine referrals, so to have a drop off like this must have something to do it Google.

Cue Google’s Webmaster Tools, a handly place for you to view all statistics about your site. On their diagnostics section I was getting a lot of “Network Unreachable” errors on the robots.txt. Basically, Google couldn’t access my site to read the robots.txt – nothing wrong with the actual robots.txt at all, it was a web server problem. After having a look around, I came across some information on diagnosing the issue, no help from Google itself on this matter of course. The information listed here indicated that certain software was blocking google for making too many requests the to the server, in a DoS attack fashion. This site is hosted on reseller hosting, however it shares the machine with a lot of other websites. In which case, Google has been accessing many sites on this server generating a high number of requests. Therefore, the software on the machine automatically blocked Google falsely beleiving that it was attacking sites on the machine.

This blog was also hosted on this reseller account, and traffic figures showed a similar decline. I’ve recently bought a dedicated cPanel server to replace the reseller and moved the blog onto there – bingo! This blog now appears back in search engine listings. If we look at Google’s Webmaster Tools, we can see the amount of pages crawled by it.

Google Crawl Statistics for Miscellaneous Knowledge

Right after moving it off the reseller hosting and onto the server, loads of pages are instantly and successfully crawled. The blog is back in the Google index.

www.l4dservers.net is still pending move to the new hosting, but I expect to see similar results once I have completed the move, just waiting on the DNS to be updated for it.

So what can you do if you experience this issue? First, read this excellent article and make sure that your lack of Google listing isn’t your fault. If you are not at fault, contact your hosting provider and point them to the article, ask them if they have any firewalls that block multiple requests such as the Googlebot. I would also highly suggest signing up to Google’s Webmaster Tools to help diagnose any problems Google has accessing your site. While they where not particually helpful in this incident, it did help to get me started on the diagnosis. Not only this, but it allows you to submit sitemaps which vastly improve your ranking and help make sure that every page is in Google’s index. Sitemaps are checked very often and any new URLs are quickly crawled helping you get any content into Google quickly.

From the more technical side, this article might be of interest. It details how ConfigServer Firewall might be a culprit in this.

I thought it was time to upgrade my Core 2 Duo E6300, which has a default clock of 1.86Ghz but has been running at a steady 2.8Ghz for the past few years. So, I put down £220 on a new Q9550, a Core 2 Quad 2.83Ghz 12MB Cache monster, based on the new 45nm process. My motherboard is a GA 965p DQ6, which has a LGA775 socket. This is electrically compatible with all LGA775 processors.

However, I foolishly assumed that a LGA775 motherboard will take all LGA775 processors. Wrong! The BIOS must also support them. I only found this out when placing the processor in the motherboard, reattaching the heatsink and trying to boot. One weakness of the GA 965P DQ6 motherboard is that it gets stuck into a reboot loop if something is wrong without any helpful error beeps at all. It’s only when I checked the CPU compatibility list that I found my error.

So, i’ve got a new motherboard on the way, Asus’s PQ5 SE. Lets hope it all goes to plan and recgonises my Intel RAID0 hard drive array.

I recently formatted and reinstalled my computer. My Steam folder was over 100GB, a lot of games. Rather than making a backup copy of the Steam folder I decided to use the inbuilt steam backup. Big mistake.

The backup operation took a couple of hours, when making a simple zip wouldn’t have taken nearly as long. Once this was complete, I copied it to an external hard drive and did my format/reinstall. I installed steam and then began the backup operation. It took 18 hours to “complete”, or not. It seems it didn’t restore anything, simply recreating the Game Cache Files with no content. Excellent.

I re-ran it again with just a single game and it worked. It looks like i’m going to have to restore them one by one, not a short operation. Add to the fact there is no “uncheck all” option, and each time I uncheck one it takes ages to actually uncheck it while it recalcuates totals. Even so, some crash.

So i’ve given up, i’ve now got the prospect of downloading it all again on my pitiful 2meg connection. At least I have a 330GB offpeak allowance from my ISP…

I reccomend against using the Steam Backup option. Just ZIP or RAR your entire steam folder. Much quicker, much simpler and it WORKS.

Days are always long, you can’t fit 86400 into a short.

If you don’t get the joke, don’t worry – you’re not missing much.

During the last week, it seems the AC adapter for my Vostro 1500 Laptop that I purchased 7 months ago has developed a fault meaning that the AC adapter is not detected by the laptop. It still charges and powers the laptop fine however on every boot it makes a very loud beep and requires you to strike F1 to ignore the warning. In addition, the performance of the laptop is reduced to a minimun.

After looking around, it seems the AC adaptor contains a proprietary 1-wire device that transmits a serial number to the laptop. This is meant to prevent you from using 3rd Party adapters, only using Dell’s own adapters. However, the chip and communications are very prone to breakage, which is what seems to have happened in my case. This is not an isolated incident.

Thankfully, it’s still in warranty. A replacement is arriving tomorrow. Congratulations to dell on getting a replacement to me quickly, but I am disappointed that they have made the laptops only compatible with their own power adapters by use of the proprietary 1-wire device inside the power adapter.

Interleaving is part of ADSL, a protocol used to connect to the internet over phone lines. This can also be called DSL for those of you in the US.

Interleaving is a technology that increases the stability of the line, at the expensive of latency. Simply put, while it is activated your line will not disconnect as often but will have a slightly higher ping. For most people this is fine, however Gamers and users of a VOIP service or anything where latency is crucial want their ping as low as possible.

Most ISPs turn on interleaving by default, if your line is relatively stable then you can request them to turn it off. Some ISPs will not comply, but most will happily do so. My new ISP ADSL24 (who are a reseller for Entanet) allow you to control interleaving on the line. I requested that it was turned off, and my ping decreased by 10ms. Game on!

Not only this, but my line is just as stable. If you are a gamer or VOIP user, ask your ISP to turn off Interleaving to improve your latency.

Todays graphics cards (from ATI or nVidia) often have confusing model numbers, is a 3600 better than a 2800? It’s a tough choice. So here’s a quick guide.

Graphics card model numbers commonly consist of 4 digits then a series of letters afterwards.

The first digit is the generation

The second digit is the performance indicator

The third digit is a refined performance indicator

The forth digit is often just 0

So, a 4800 would be 4th-generation, 800 series. That means it’s better than a 4600.

The performance indicator (digits 2-4) can be translated into

1: Intergrated graphics product, very low performance

2: Low performance

4-3: Low-Mid performance

5-6: Midrange performance

7-8: High performance

9: Ultra High performance

So, whats the difference between a 3800 and 4800? Each generation is generally a bump up the table, so a 3800 is roughly equivalent to a 4600 in terms of performance. This is a very rough indicator however and it does vary hugely. If you have a choice, always get the latest generation card.

The lettering after the number is a further refinement. This can be GT, XT, XTX, GTX and so on.  The letter performance tends not to vary too much on the same card.

Some Graphics Cards are now dual-core, on AMD/ATI cards this is represented by X2. Note the difference between a dual-core graphics card and a dual-running graphics card. A dual-core graphics card has two graphics processors on one chip, while a dual-running graphics card can run in paralell with a similar graphics card. It’s best to get a dual-core card rather than two dual-running cards as the dual-card setups (ATI Crossfire and nVidia SLI) don’t always work too well.

I recently got mobile broadband from Voadafone UK (3GB/mo for £15/mo). Now, while they advertise “upto” 7.2mbit/sec, I appreciate that you will never recieve it – the same with Wireless Networks, you never receive 54mbit/sec, even right by the WiFi point you will probably get just 30mbit/sec at most.

Anyway, you should expect to get around 2mbit/sec from your mobile broadband if your modem for it supports 3.6mbit rate or higher. However, I have heard complaints from some that they are getting extremely slow internet.

If your Mobile Broadband Access Program (e.g Vodafone Mobile Connect) is showing GPRS connection, then you are on the 2G standard of mobile internet access, giving you a speed similar to that of a dial up modem. GPRS is the “fallback connection”, when there is not enough signal for a relibable 3G or better connection.

Therefore, to get a faster speed, you need to get a better signal. The best way to do this is to relocate your modem. Many MBB modems now are based off USB, so you can buy an inexpensive USB Extension cable to move your modem to a better location. If indoors, try moving the modem to a windowsil. Do not put it outside at all, no matter what you wrap it in!

You can also look (in the UK) at SiteFinder, the UK’s database of Mobile Phone towers. You can then see where your local tower is and position the modem best.

Hopefully these steps will help you to get a faster speed – enjoy!

Recently, I needed to turn on magic quotes for a customer on our web hosting. Now, our web hosting is not actually hosted by me, rather I purchase a reseller package. This allows me to offer cPanel access without having to spend an absolute fortune on it. However, it means I don’t have access to the php.ini and hence can’t turn on magic quotes.

Now, I wouldn’t want it on anyway (and it’s quite bad apparently) so how could I enable it just for this customer?

The answer? .htaccess . I have always thought .htaccess as just a file that controls access, not an entire config. Adding the following line

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc on

Turns Magic Quotes on for that user. Awesome.

There is a lot more that can also be configured via the .htaccess too, such as extension handling and more. Have a look into it if you’re intested.

It rocks.

I’ll write more when i’ve got some spare time in which i’m not playing it…

Edit: Yeah, it’s down again and has been for some months. Perhaps some day i’ll get it back up again. However, feel free to put your own one up – it’s an awesome game mode.

After months of neglect, i’ve updated and started the Garry’s Mod Prop Hunt server again. It’s still at 4 players as before, but if it’s popular i’ll raise that limit.

In Prop Hunt, there are two teams, Hunters and Props. The job of the Props is to become a prop (by pressing E while looking at it) then blend in somewhere. Hunters have to find these false imposter props and kill them. However, they loose 5HP for every real prop they shoot, so make sure you know what you’re shooting. The latest update allowed props to say a series of taunts to tease those (sometimes dumb) hunters!

The map is still just cs_office as I think this has the best number of props and is small enough so that you can actually find the props (sometime).

So, if you’ve got Garrys Mod, come join the fun at 193.200.158.235:27028. If you’ve got any suggestions relating to the server, let me know.

I run my own home mailserver for two reasons, because I enjoy setting up systems and because I can. However, having just 1 mailserver introduces some problems. While according to the RFCs, sending servers are to keep sending failed mail for some time, they often dont. Consequently, if my server goes offline, loss of internet, reboot etc, I often loose a lot of email.

The solution to this is to have a Secondary MX (Mail Exchanger). This is another email server that will also accept email for your domain and keep trying to forward it to your Primary MX, forever. So, when my server comes back up, the email gets sent and not lost.

For a while, i’ve been using DNS Made Easy for my Secondary DNS and MX (don’t forget a secondary DNS, otherwise they can’t find out about your Secondary MX if your Primary DNS is down!). It worked, but not very well and recently i’ve noticed that i’ve been loosing email. DNS Made Easy have no information about their service status either, you have to trust that it’s working.

So, after searching for a while, I came across RollerNet. They provide many serivces, Primary/Secondary DNS/MX etc. I got a free account with them and was amazed at their quality of service. Most importantly, they give detailed logs of your MX status, such as mail received, mail in queue and the option to force-initiate a transfer of mail to your Primary MX. On top of that, they have all the usual spam filtering using the major blacklists, so no false-positives. Unfortunately, their free account has a limit of 50 messages a day (and many spammers target the Secondary MXes) so i’m now exceeding my message limit. No harm done though, i’m really impressed by their quality of service and going to take out a proper subscription. Good job RollerNet!

Update: I’m no longer recommending Google Checkout after they raised their fees to be equal to that of PayPal. Google’s only real advantage was their low transaction rates, now that it’s at parity it does not make sense to continue using them. See here for more information. I leave the article below for referrence on what was once a great service.

Customers of my game server business may have recently noticed that we’ve added a new payment method, Google Checkout. There have been many reasons driving this, both ones that benefit customers and me.

First of all, from the customer side, Google Checkout is much simpler to use and offers a lot more control over payment history. We’ve had a few customers who have had a bad experience with PayPal and refused to use it. However, unlike PayPal, Google Checkout can only accept a Credit/Debit card as a funding source, so you can’t pay using existing funds or a bank account. However, we found that most people used a Credit or Debit card anyway.

On our side however, it’s even better. While we have to hand-process each order (charging the card etc) the way is done is very good. Plus, we also get a lot more control over the order and like it is for the user side, the history is excellent. There is also the added benefit of having the Google Checkout badge on your AdSense results, which helps make your ad stand out.

One major factor that many might consider is fees. PayPal’s base rate is 0.25p + 4%. This can quickly mount up, with a £24 payment having over £1 in fees, and if you have micropayments it gets even worse. Google Checkout however has 0.15p + 1.5%, faw lower. It doesn’t stop there however, if you advertise using their AdWords service you get £10 worth of sales processed for free for every £1 in advertising you spend. So say you spend £10 on AdWords a month, that gives you £100 of sales processed for free (note: not £100 worth of fees). So the savings are even greater! (More lower prices I can pass on to users)

Perhaps the most interesting bit for us however is that payments are initated to our bank account daily. Unlike PayPal, where you have to get £50 first before you can withdraw. That’s upto £50 that you are not earning interest on and is completely under PayPal’s control.

I will however keep offering PayPal, while Google Checkout is far better when you compare it it has the disadvantage of being unfamiliar to users and not supporting Bank Account funding, so as not to alienate parts of my userbase i’m running both but recommending Google Checkout.

Update: Got an email the other day from Google saying that I didn’t qualify to have the Google Checkout badge on my AdWords adverts. Apparently, they couldn’t find the badge, so they must just quickly check through. I emailed them back and they checked again and found it (you have to fill out an order form). While the AdWords badge isn’t particually important, it helps you stand out from competitors.

One thing i’ve come across while hosting games is the number of people that don’t know how to use FTP, or use a very bad method (i.e web based 3rd party FTP sites). So, i’m going to show you how to use FTP properly.

This tutorial is aimed at Windows users, those that use other operating systems will probably be able to follow these instructions with a bit of alteration.

First thing is to select your FTP client, which enables you to connect to the FTP server. While most operating systems have one, it’s quite lacking – it works but you’re going to have fun getting it to do that. Therefore, I recommend FileZilla, a free FTP client that works on most operating systems (Windows / Mac / Linux). I use FileZilla and hence it’s going to be the basis of this tutorial. Download it here. I’m going to assume you know how to use an installer.

Once installed, simply run FileZilla. On Windows, you will find it in Start > All Programs > FileZilla FTP Client > FileZilla. You should then be presented with the following screen;

Lets go over the basic functionality of this screen. The boxes at the top that read “Host”, “Username”, “Password” and “Port” are where you enter the details of the FTP server you want to connect to, then click QuickConnect to connect to it.

The currently empty box under this will show you the status of the FTP, the messages it shows might not be understandable by you, but if you’re having problems with your FTP, the host will need to see this to help with your problem.

The box on the left shows your local files, on your computer. When connected, the box on the right will show the contents of the remote server.

Finally, the box at the bottom will show you the progress of your transfers, if you have any.

So, enter in the FTP information that your host gave you and click quickconnect. You can leave the port box blank unless your host has told you to use a port other than 21.

So, you’ve now connected, the box on the right is now filled with the contents of the remote server, if you’ve just got FTP access there might not be anything there – hence you have to upload files. The screenshot above shows me connecting to the FTP site for this blog, hence all the blog files are seen on the right side.

Now, I want to upload a picture, so I simply browse to the location of the picture on my computer on the left and drag the file I want to transfer over to the remote site on the right. Now at the bottom you can see that there is a progress bar showing how the transfer is going, along with an estimated time. If you transfer multiple files, then you will see multiple file transfers reported.

It is that simple, and the process can work in reverse too, you can copy files from remote to local. FileZilla has many other features too, such as detecting when a local file is changed and prompts you to upload it. No matter what your needs, FileZilla can probably fufill them, plus it’s free!

I highly recommend FileZilla over any other solution, while others might have better features such as Synchronisation, they are not exactly free. If you’re currently using your operating system’s inbuilt FTP or another client which isn’t working for you, get FileZilla now.