Dan White's blog

RunPCRun participated in Crusaid's Walk for Life on Sunday 10th June. We raised a total of £748 ($1,470).

So a big "Well Done and Thank You" to everyone that sponsored us.

If you still have some money burning a hole in your pocket, feel free to donate to our favourite charity - The International Community of Women with HIV/AIDS

We've been receiving a few emails from customers about the spam they've been receiving recently. 

We currently already filter all the email for spam. According to our reports, 9 out of 10 messages we receive are spam and are removed with a 0% false-positive rate.  Unfortunately we cannot "machine-filter" more than this without potentially making mistakes. You can attempt to further filter them yourselves by using the scoring mechanism our anti-spam mechanism uses by reading and using these instructions.

However, whether it would meet with much success these days is a different matter, as the few spam emails that do make it through are doing so by using some clever techniques to make it look (to a machine) similar to legitimate email (at the moment they use normal text unrelated to the spam and an image that contains themessage they are trying to send, usually with imperfections to stop any form of OCR being performed on the image) as well as looking like and acting like a proper email server from the email servers perspective to prevent techniques like greylisting.

Unfortunately the specifications for the email protocol were created in 1982 (even though email was used in various forms before this) and has changed very little since then. Email was originally conceived as a method of sending messages between academics, not as the business medium it has turned into today.

There is a war going on between spam and the anti-spam programs, and just as in nature there is an element of survival of the fittest. A lot of spam will die, but some will always make it due to the sheer volume and the ingenuity of the people that generate it.

So I'm afraid some spam emails will always get through, and you can see this at places like Hotmail and Google mail to see that even with the huge resources that these businesses have to draw on, they cannot solve this problem, and I'm afraid we have no "magic bullet" either.

Quick Fix time...

Well this "Print preview is blank and you cannot print pages from Internet Explorer" problem was evident on a clients machine, however I couldn't actually open the Page Setup page either to resolve it.

The solution I found was this very handy IEFix - General purpose fix for Internet Explorer utility and seems to do what it says on the tin. So nice one Ramesh Srinivasan and thank you!

One of my laptop's batteries had died a little while ago and couldn't figure out why, so I've been reading around the subject to try to find out what can be done about it and what I can do to prevent it in future.

First of all, I've learnt that it is possible (for the more technologically ept of us) to replace the Lithium Ion batteries inside of laptop batteries. However I wouldn't recommend this unless you are an expert at wielding a soldering iron.

To avoid this and an expensive new battery I decided to simply buy one cheaply second hand from Ebay, this was not necessarily the best approach however as laptop batteries (which I will refer to as Li-ion batteries from now on) have a definite shelf life which affects the storage capacity of the battery (and therefore how long it keeps your laptop powered). This shelf-life can be be prolonged by various means.

The best guidelines I found was at the excellent Wikipedia , in an article on Li-ion batteries which I found extremely informative and I am now citing here. 

Guidelines for prolonging Li-ion battery life

• Unlike Ni-Cd batteries, lithium-ion batteries should be charged early and often. However, if they are not used for a longer time, they should be brought to a charge level of around 40%. Lithium-ion batteries should never be "deep-cycled" like Ni-Cd batteries.
• Li-ion batteries should be kept cool. Ideally they are stored in a refrigerator. Aging will take its toll much faster at high temperatures. The high temperatures found in cars cause lithium-ion batteries to degrade rapidly.
• Lithium-ion batteries should never be depleted to empty (0%) and then stored.
• Li-ion batteries should be bought only when needed, because the aging process begins as soon as the battery is manufactured.
• When using a notebook computer running from fixed line power over extended periods, the battery can be removed and stored in a cool place so that it is not affected by the heat produced by the computer.

WalkPCWalk

As mentioned elsewhere, RunPCRun do voluntary work for ICW , promote HIV causes and donate spare equipment when available.

Now RunPCRun are participating in Crusaid's Walk for Life on Sunday 10th June. The entry and walk for life page has been handled by my lovely wife and can be found here.

http://www.walkforlife.co.uk/geeksandtheirchicks

"Crusaid is a leading UK charity dedicated to helping poor and marginalised people affected by HIV and AIDS. Providing support, awareness, education projects and hardship funds, for the last two decades Crusaid has worked to enable individuals and communities to regain their dignity and improve their quality of life.
Charity Registration No 1011718"

So if you have any spare cash or have found the information on this site useful then please dig into your pockets and sponsor us (UK residents get 28% added to their donation) and help make the world a better place.

We rarely have to make our own CAT5 cables, as the amount we use it's cheaper to buy them. However there is the odd occasion, and by then we've forgotten the wiring diagram. So here is a few useful resources for when it has to be done:-

• How to Make a Category 5 / Cat 5E Patch Cable
• Cat5 Presentation Point Wiring Diagram