HijinksInc – Secunia PSI The security tool every Windows user should be running.

Originially published at Hijinks Inc on September 1, 2010
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Lets be honest, Windows security is not the easiest thing to manage. On top of the Microsoft products, there exist the 3rd party programs that tend to be forgotten about. Microsoft has made great progress with the security of Windows in its most recent releases of Windows 7 and Office 2010, but that’s only part of the solution. The Microsoft update website and built in Microsoft update utility in Windows Vista and Windows 7 have helped a great deal with keeping Microsoft products up to date, but these are far from all of the programs that most people run. Persons crafting malicious code such as viruses, malware, etc know this and are targeting other programs too. These 3rd party programs do not have a common updater and each must be updated on its own, for example, programs like Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat, Java, and Firefox, just to name a few. It is a lot for the average user to do, especially considering there is no general update policy (IE, Patch Tuesday) with most vendors, and announcements about updates are quiet.

Enter Secunia PSI. This is a free (for personal use) program put out by the Secunia company. They specialize in finding exploits and providing monitoring software. PSI (Personal Security Inspector) is a tool that scans the programs on your hard drive and then does version checks against its vast list of known exploits. It then notifies you of older versions and tells you where you need to go to fix them. The program is great for finding those programs you rarely use and forget about when updating.

The program is smart. For Microsoft websites it knows to open them in Internet Explorer so the download tools will work. It also allows you to rescan specific programs after you update them instead of spending time to rescan your entire drive. It also offers the ability to ignore a specific program if for instance you need the older version for a custom tool to work. It will run in the background and notify you when new updates are available or new known exploits exist. It also offers an advanced mode which offers more features and details. In advanced mode PSI will tell you about products you have installed that are no longer supported by their vendors and any known exploits that exist in them.

Secunia also offers a product called OSI (Online Security Inspector) which is a great tool as well. It is similar to PSI but does not require you to install anything. However, it does require Java to run in the browser. While not as thorough as PSI, it’s similar in operation and usage.

In conclusion, this is a great tool that is very thorough and easy enough to use that every user should have this in their tool box and run it as part of a biweekly security audit. It really helps to inform users of out of date software that could leave their computer vulnerable. While PSI is targeted for personal use, they offer a corporate version that is a paid version. Its functionality is similar but it also offers many more features.

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Update #1

Since this article was originally posted Secunia has come out with a new version of its PSI security tool that is currently in beta. It is called Secunia PSI 2.0. You can grab a copy for free here. The big feature that this adds is the ability to install updates silently and automatically if you choose. I think this could be a great feature especially for people who don’t want to deal with always having to update their computers.

Lincoln Zombie Walk 2010

The Lincoln Zombie walk was this past weekend on 8-28-2010. This year was bigger than ever as over 1200 Zombies participated in taking over downtown Lincoln. The event was moved to be earlier in the month this year and it was a great success. The weather was fantastic with highs in the mid 80’s compared to last year when I remember wearing my winter coat and gloves. The time was also moved to a little earlier which made photography much more enjoyable. The zombies were suppose to do the Thriller dance at the Union but at the last minute decided not to for an unknown reason. In the end everyone gathered outside of Pershing Center for a street dance. I met several Lincoln Flickr and Twitter people for a Flickr Walk and Tweetup. It was great fun. See the photos below.

See more photos on Flickr Page http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157624728841511/detail/

Manual Lens Portrates on a Canon DSLR

I have gotten very interested (With the help of an influential friend) in some of the older classic manual lenses, so I now have a SMC Pentax 55mm F2 Type K in Pentax mount and a Jupiter 9 85mm F1.8 M42 that I have been mounting on my 7D and I wanted to try them out so I went out with a friend and had some fun around town. The 85mm is hard to focus because it has such a small DOF and its goes through 2 converters to mount on my camera so its no perfectly tight. The lens is also a bit stiff, but optically its good. I need more practice. The Pentax is a great lens & I am getting the fever for more. Its very sharp and extremely mechanical. Great little lens. Thanks to my model Megan for the great job, I could not have done it without you.


Pentax 55mm

Pentax 55mm

Pentax 55mm

Pentax 55mm

Sigma 10-20mm

Jupiter 9 85mm

Jupiter 9 85mm

Jupiter 9 85mm

Canon 50mm F1.8

Canon 50mm F1.8

To see the full gallery Click http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/Megan1/

Hijinksinc – Nothing to See Here: Starcraft 2 is NOT killing graphics cards

I recently started to blog for Hijinks Inc a local technology & gadget blog. I am excited to start doing this and have several ideas of stuff to write on focusing on photograph & computer security. I hope this gives me a good reason to produce new content as well. I will be reposting articles with the permission of Hijinks Inc. Be sure to follow them on Twitter at @HijinksInc

Originially published on August 4, 2010 at Hijinks Inc

With the launch of Starcraft 2 on July 27th, 2010 people were excited to get their hands on this long awaited game. Development of the game started in 2003 and had been delayed or postponed several times due to other games Blizzard was producing at the time.
Since the launch minor issues have been growing, and today Blizzard Confirms an overheating issue. However, this story has been spun by the technology community even to the point where Slashdot picked up on it. It has been given menacing sounding titles such as “Is Starcraft II bad for your graphics card?” by ZDnet and “Is Starcraft II Killing Graphics Cards” by Slashdot. A much more appropriate title to the actual problem is one given by OverClockersClub “Starcraft 2 causing some GPU’s to Overheat”

The problem is that during some of the in-between mission screens, cut screens and menu screens are not frame capped like the actual game play is. This causes the GPU to render these screens as fast as possible. Since these screens are simple and, for the most part, static, the computer has an easy time and is able to render these very quickly causing the GPU to heat up. This increased heat and power consumption exposes flaws in Starcraft II players’ computers, causing crashes, reboots, and even some claimed GPU failures.

Now, is this Blizzard’s fault? No, it’s really not. Gamers should expect games to tax their computers; this means heat. Blizzard and other game/program publishers should expect their customers’ computers are free of dust and have adequate cooling. This supposed bug in Starcraft II only exposes existing issues with the hardware of gamers computers. The same overheating issues would be exposed with any other game or program that stresses the system, and especially the GPU. A GPU with proper cooling should be able to handle 100% load for extended periods of time with no problems. Blizzard’s fix (below) is a setting users add to a configuration file to limit the frame rate in the areas of the game where there currently isn’t one. Since Starcraft II development period was so long and the public beta was so large, I would have expected this issue to have been found and fixed in the beta. This setting should have been enabled as a global setting in the game by default. For this I hold Blizzard accountable. There is no good reason that a gamer would disable vsync unless they are running benchmarks.

Blizzard support team has issued instructions for a temporary fix and says a more permanent fix is in the works.

A temporary workaround is to go to your Documents\StarCraft II Beta\variables.txt file and add these lines:
frameratecapglue=30
frameratecap=60
You may replace these numbers if you want to.

Other good practices to fix this problem and to avoid this issue in the future are the following:

Update your graphics drivers. Graphics manufactures are constantly improving their drivers, fixing issues with new games and improving performance. ATI for example has issued a beta version of drivers 10.7 that fixes a few specific issues with StarCraft II.
Make sure your computer’s insides are clean and have adequate airflow. For a desktop PC I recommend opening up the side of the case and using compressed air to blow out all the dust. Do this at least twice a year, if not more often. Take the computer outside to do this because it creates a mess and it gets rid of the dust so the computer does not suck it up again. Doing this can easily make your computer run several degrees cooler.
If you are overclocking or are running a very high end graphics card make sure you have more than adequate cooling. During these hot summer months the ambient temperature of many homes is at its highest, causing more stress to be placed on your computer hardware. Run temperature monitoring software if you continue to have problems or want to monitor your hardware before damage occurs.
I have seen no mention of a fix on the mac platform so right now we can assume this is a PC related problem.

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Lincoln, NE 4th of July Fireworks 2010

Better late than never right? The city of Lincoln’s annual firework display was postponed one day due to the large amount of rain on the morning of the 4th of July. The evening of the 5th was perfect weather wise. I met up with some of the #LNK tweeps out at Oak Lake Park to watch the display. It was a nice time and I got a few good photos that I will post here. This was my first time watching the fireworks at Oak Lake Park and it had its pros and cons. The space is better for the amount of people that come, parking was fairly easy and emptied pretty quickly. However the background they shoot the fireworks against has too many lights, and is pretty industrial. In that regard Homes Lake was better, and much closer to my home. Hopefully someday they will decide to move it back to Homes Lake.


For more photos see the gallery http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/LNKFireworks2010/

Nebraska Furniture Mart replaces fridge because of leaky ice maker

Since becoming a new homeowner I have experienced a few joys of home ownership such as a faulty toilet valve and now a leaky ice maker. At the beginning of May I purchased a new GE fridge with an optional ice maker. This was a dealer installed option. I received my fridge on May 26th and it has been working great. This weekend June 12-13 I noticed that I was getting some ice under the ice maker/bin. I found this odd and removed it to monitor the progress. 24 hours later the ice is back. Time for a warranty call.

I called Nebraska Furniture Mart customer service and told the nice lady about my problem. After verifying my account she said that there were no technicians that could come service my ice maker so the only option they had was to replace the entire fridge. I was shocked that they would do this, it seems overly expensive and inefficient but its great, who can argue about an entirely new refrigerator? Ya its an inconvenience but the replacement will be an entirely new unit with a new ice maker. This also seems overly complicated for a unit that is not even a year old. Since they have to order me a fridge I have to wait a week for delivery. I will update the blog when I get the new unit after a few weeks of use. Overall I am impressed with the customer service of NFM and will buy again from them.

Lincoln’s breath taking sunset 5/30/2010

I have a soft spot for sunsets of all types. I am not sure what it is, maybe the intense colors or cool clouds that often occur. Lincoln has a great sunset every once and a while, especially when storms are rolling in. Sunday May 30 2010 this exact thing was happening and I just happened to catch it out the corner of my eye. I grabbed the camera and went out on the deck and snapped a couple of photos. I then decided to drive to Holmes Lake. Unfortunately the lovely pink had disappeared from the sky and the clouds had rolled in more. I still got a couple of nice photos though.

More photos of the trip will be posted over the coming weeks. I am going to make a real effort to keep this blog updated. We will see how that goes.

Granada – Al Alhambra

Wednesday we went to visit Al Alhambra. Al Alhambra is a Moorish military post that includes an impressive palace and grounds. We visited the gardens first and they were very impressive. The entire complex has water features all over it which are feed from the melting snow up on the mountain top and brought down to the palace and grounds by an aqueduct system built by the Moors. Water in the Arabic culture was one of the most important things to the existence of life. Al Alhambra and the gardens feature a great deal of water, many fountains, basins, gutters, to harness the power of water. That evening we went back to tour the main palace. Inside was very detailed and amazing carvings and decorations and many of the rooms had fountains in them.

Health Update: The guys are on the mend but still feeling it a little bit of the bug, the girls on the other hand are feeling the worst of it, and are staying back at the apartment while the guys go out and explore Sevillia. We hope tonight to take in a Flemenco show in Sevillia.