bachelor pad

The Mind Awareness Campaign

2005-11-14T11:08:00.000-08:00

Ignorance is not bliss.

Are you yourself or do you know someone affected (or is it effected?) by mental health issues? Do you still think schizophrenia is split-personality? Do you wish to educate your employee's, students, or yourself on mental health?

The Mind Awareness Campaign aims to battle against ignorance to mental illness, and the mental effects of physical illness. We will be going into schools, work-places and organisations, helping the public to know what the truth is.

For more information, please visit This Website. Please do join the forums too!

Podcast

2005-11-10T03:45:00.000-08:00

Heya'll!

Just letting you know I will be starting a podcast with some friends soon, so you all get to hear my lovely "posh" English voice!

More details to follow... plus, a secret campaign that I have begun spreading ;) Website nearly finished! Will be launching this week. Details to come!

Thanks,
Matt

Flock - Short Review

2005-10-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

I have just tried out the "new browser on the block" called Flock. It's based on Mozilla Firefox, but incorporates "community" features. Oh, and I'm posting through Flock's inbuilt blog tool. Cool!

The interface to me is very nice and stylish. There is a nice, easy to access button to add the current page to your "favourites" and I believe these favourites and fully searchable.

Instead of the Google search bar, there is a YAHOOOOO! search bar. Maybe adding a newly released search engine such as InquisitorX (shown first, I believe, at Web 2.0) would also be a nice touch, as the browser is "new" too (quotes because firefox is not new!).

It's here to stay on my XP laptop. I normally use Opera, and will probably continue to do so for a while, but this new tool seems quite a promising gift.

Take care all...

P.S. I have been busy setting up a new campaign to raise awareness of mental health. Visit the forums at http://forums.losingmymind.co.uk to be the first to know when it launches. There will also be an email alert facility for when it goes live.

2005-10-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know..

Just to "keep you all in the loop" so to speak, I have been extremely busy with other commitments to update this blog. I shall be doing some more reviews and will post a round-up of my views on something computing-wise very shortly.

Thanks..

Arovax Shield - Review

2005-09-05T04:26:00.000-07:00

As usual, by no means a complete review, just my experiences and thoughts.

Introduction

Arovax Shield claims to protect against:

- Spyware & Adware
- Keystroke Loggers
- Trojan Horses
- Administration Application
- others

The way it works is by protecting the following parts of the system:

- Active X
- Cookies
- Startup Programs
- Hosts file
- "Executable File Extensions"

I will be emailing the Arovax team to clarify what the last one is supposed to mean.

Experiences

I don't currently have a test box for testing if it protects IE from malware intrusions, but I could test for Startup programs and host files. So, this review will take that into account.

I don't know if the Startup module of the program is monitoring the registry and the Startup folder, but there were a few instances where StartupMonitor caught things while Arovax didn't. I will be retracing my steps and submit info to Arovax.

Hosts file protection works great. I tried to edit the hosts file and up comes a pretty box telling me the hosts file is being changed.

All in all, a nice bit of kit. I think I shall be keeping it on for the near future and will report back on clarification of "Executable File Extensions".

8/10.

Filseclab - Another Go

2005-09-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

I felt bad at "slagging off" Filseclab to some degree. So I gave it another shot.

This time, I was pleasantly suprised. I installed on a fresh install of XP Pro on a Dell Inspiron 5160 laptop.

No more mysterious trojan probe alerts. I can assure you though, before hand, I certainly did not have 20+ trojan horses on my system. So I'm not quite sure what exactly happened there, but I'm pleased that the problem has disappeared.

It's certainly lightweight, currently, minimised and running full power, it's eating only 8mb of RAM. Superb.

One slight pet-peave was having to look around on how to activate outbound NetBIOS on my LAN. Finally found it, and all is well.

I have totally changed my mind on this product. It is freeware. It is lightweight, and if used in conjunction with other products could be a useful little PF.

I change my score to at least 7 and a half / 10, probably nearer to 8/10.

Next review of a new product will be posted shortly!

Filseclab Personal Firewall - Review

2005-08-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

This will be by no means a complete review, it's just my opinions on the product for the amount of time I've used it. OK, so let's begin!

Interface

The first thing you see in an application. Not a bad interface, it's colourful to say the least. Easy enough to use, could be complicated to configure (if needed) for someone new to Personal Firewalls.

Minor Annoyance #1

Every minute or so, I am told that a specific trojan port is being probed. I am behind a NAT router with SPI and no ports forwarded. Go figure.

Minor Annoyance #2

The program freezes slightly after confirming the Accept/Deny alert window. Slight annoyance.

Protection

It passed the GRC Outbound leak test (DIFFERENT to grc.com's Port Scanner). And failed TooLeaky. Half and Half, really. Doesn't give me TOO much faith in the product, but testing with two tools is far from an extensive test.

Memory

This is a plus point, memory footprint is the lowest of any PF I have used, apart from LookNStop.

Overall

Not really up-to-scratch for me. The constant popping up of "This trojan is trying to get you" etc.. is quite a bad point for me. It can be turned off, but I have to draw the conclusion that these are either very bad False Positives or a shoddy way to say "Hey, I'm working!". As mentioned previously, NAT, SPI, No Forwarded Ports. I would like an explanation, from the coders, or the public, on how this is possible.

The only things going for it IMO are memory and interface. Although the interface may not be to everybody's taste.

My Score: 5/10.

Moved to Blogger

2005-08-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

For the moment I have moved to blogger. No real reason, just thought I would jump on the bandwagon.

Just going to post Filseclab Personal Firewall review on here! Bare with me :)