Last week or so I did some rearranging on my site. For example, I converted some pages into actual blog postings, moved things around so I could choose a more streamlined page layout. After converting my pages (How to unstick a stuck pixel page) to posts, I noticed that the amount of traffic started a steady decline. At this rate, I may be the only viewer to my website
However, that is not stopping the spam bots. I seem to get around 20-30 spam comments a day which is confusing. Either they are posting directly via link or the Google Analytics is failing me, we shall see.
Edit: As it turns out, the plugin I was using to do tracking inserts gave my tracking ID of UA-000000-0 therefor my traffic was not getting logged at all. Started checking into after looking at the traffic logs on my server and seeing traffic.
Well, last hour or so has been interesting. I was going to my website I was working on http://gadsdenwifi.org and my antivirus popped up a notice saying it deleted a temporary internet file. I shrugged it off (as I had other tabs open and thought it was one of others. After a bit I noticed that my computer was starting to run slow and sluggish. Thats when I noticed acrobat.exe using 800 megs of ram and slowly climbing. Also thats when I noticed sysguard.exe in my process list. No surprise to me some anti spyware program popped up and started running on my computer (spyware protect 2009). Running combo fix took care of that problem. So after fixing the spyware issue, I started playing around with the newly uploaded database information. I then decided to change the test site around just a bit. I uploaded index.php and got a message saying that the file on the server was newer than the last uploaded one, so I went to check it out. Thats when I found this nice little bugger:
Some reason, every index.php file on my webserver had this code enbedded around a few php eco statements, which caused my antivirus to pop up warning me that there was a trojan trying to infest my computer. All infected files have been removed and everything should be normal (I hope).
I was caught in a hail storm at the officemax parking lot (pulled over due to the rain falling so hard that I couldnt see) in Gadsden, AL. I happened to have my camera so I recoreded it.
I went to Dragon*Con this year and it was an interesting and entertaining experience. If you do not know what dragon con is, it is the largest multi-media pop culture convention in Atlanta, GA. It mainly focuses on sci-fi, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and films in the United States. It is usually held every labor day weekend. You can visit the Dragon*Con website here.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn near turner field and took their free shuttle service to the convention which was being held in 4 hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, and Sheraton). Here is a hint: Do NOT book the hotel 2 weeks before convention… If you do, good luck finding a hotel thats cheap.
Friday mainly consisted of driving up to Atlanta, getting into the hotel, going to convention and getting registered. Once we got registered we visited the hotels to get used to the layout as the weekend, we probably wouldn’t have a chance with all of the people. We went back to the Marriott and took some pictures before we went to some of the Panels (DMCA and Game Hacking) Friday night.
Saturday the Dragon*Con parade was at 10 AM, got their around 9:30 to find a good place to take pictures… that did not happen, it was already packed with more people coming in. After the parade was over we went to Sheraton to the Stargate Worlds Beta panel, since it was still in NDA that was a big waste of time. We also went to the Warhammer Online Beta panel shortly after. This panel was in a room that had a capacity of about 300 people and they were turning about another 100 people away since the room was full. We decided to go back to the hotel to dump pictures from our cameras and waited on the Holiday Inn Free Shuttle service to pick us up… That didn’t happen, we called and they were on the way. However, each time they came to pick us up, the shuttle was already full and had to drive past us. The guy I was with deleted some of his pictures since he took pictures of the parade in burst mode. After that we took more pictures in the Marriott until we went to Hacking 101 panel. Some very interesting stories were told here. One mentioned playing video games on a side of a hotel which turned into playing adult themed movies on a 3 story wall… next to an airport.
Sunday was an easy going day. Wasn’t much going on that I wanted to see so I got to sleep in. We mostly went to the dealer halls where they sell board games, weaponry, clothing and all sorts of fantasy stuff. That night we went to the Dawn look-a-like contest then after that the Cruxshadows concert.
Monday we packed up and came home.
As I said, it was a interesting and entertaining experience to go down there.
Striga’s Dragon*Con 2008 Pictures. These are not my pictures, as I am still working on a gallery to show my pictures (I am using this link with permission of my friend I went to Dragon*Con with). Jinan’s Dragon*Con 2008 Pictures – These are my pictures I have taken with my Canon Power Shot camera. Chilling Effects was talked about during the DMCA panel. It mainly shows what Take down and Put back notices are. The Daily WTF website was mentioned in the Hacking 101 panel. A website that shows coding mistakes. Like bash.org for programming.
1…. Manufacturer over clocked video cards:
2…. Underpowered Video Cards
1 – Manufacture over clocked video cards:
Some companies like BFGTech, eVGA, XFX over clock their video cards from the default core and sell them for tens of dollars more. Which for everyday general use is no problem, but if you throw a graphic intensive game at it (Oblivion, EverQuest2) the over clocked card will start to have problems.
Some of the problems that can occur are instant crashing of the game to the desktop, blue screen of death, textures that seem to disappear, or stretch across the screen.
This happened quite frequently with my XFX GeForce 7900 GT Extreme (The GPU Clock frequency is 50 mhz higher than a non Extreme edition). This was getting a little frustrating so I went searching on the ol’ Google and typed in 7900 GT issues. This came back with 200,000 or so results. After doing some research found out that the fault of the card was it being over clocked by default. So I downloaded coolbits and decided to under clock the video card to see if that worked, and it did. I under clocked the card by 15 MHz GPU and 15 MHz Memory and haven’t had any problems sense then.
Alternatively you can re-flash your video card with a lower clock firmware, which is not covered here. If you would like more information, please go here http://www.mvktech.net
Below you can view how to under clock the nVidia video cards. First you will need coolbits which you can download using the link below.
When you download it, you will see a registry file. Double click on coolbits.reg and it will install a registry key and it will allow you to access the “Clock Frequency Settings” in the nvidia control panel.
To access the nVidia control panel in Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista:
1. Click on start then goto control panel.
2. Under the control panel click the icon that says Display or Apperance and Themes then display at the bottom.
3. On the display window click in the settings tab then click advanced at the bottom.
4. Another window will come up that will have the nVidia logo and your video card name, click on that and a side window will appear.
5. On the side window you should see a “Clock Frequency Settings” select it and you should see three options on the window. No Overclock (manufacturer default), Auto Overclock (Overclocks when needed but will underclock when video card gets hot) and Manual Overclock (set the timings manually).
6. Select the third options, then lower the sliders on the CPU and Memory by about 5 – 25 MHz, then click test settings and when it is finished click the option to load settings on start up at the bottom then click apply and OK.
7. Repeat step #6 if you are still having problems. Also if you update the nvidia drivers you will need to redownload coolbits.
To access the nVidia control panel in Windows 98/ME:
1. Click on start then goto settings and control panel.
2. Under the control panel click the icon that says Display.
3. On the display window click in the settings tab then click advanced at the bottom.
4. Another window will come up that will have the nVidia logo and your video card name, click on that and a side window will appear.
5. On the side window you should see a “Clock Frequency Settings” select it and you should see three options on the window. No Overclock (manufacturer default), Auto Overclock (Overclocks when needed but will underclock when video card gets hot) and Manual Overclock (set the timings manually).
6. Select the third options, then lower the sliders on the CPU and Memory by about 5 – 25 MHz, then click test settings and when it is finished click the option to load settings on start up at the bottom then click apply and OK.
7. Repeat step #6 if you are still having problems. Also if you update the nvidia drivers you will need to redownload coolbits
2 – Underpowered Video Cards
If you are experiencing the above problems as in the over clocked video cards crashing and your video card is not over clocked. It could be due to the video card not receiving enough power. If you notice when the card gets warmed up and textures start misbehaving it may be due to the power supply.
