I’ve been reading a lot recently and even had an email or two as well as an uncle requesting my personal services with regards to data recovery. So it has caused me to think, can I add my own recipe for data recovery?

The caveats that apply here are:

• This is all my opinion
• This is what has worked for me
• I am not a data recovery expert but have always been successful during the last 25yrs or so.
• Your mileage may vary.

That said, I have had a reasonable amount of experience including my own to work on.

The first rule of any data recovery is:

Don’t Panic

(more…)

Adam (aka @wvpv) recently commented on my Personal Firewalls post.

He said:

Personal firewalls are too confusing for non-technical people, in my experience. It’s the whole pop-up thing, I think. I don’t recommend them.

I recommend:
- OpenDNS set up on a DD-WRT router (for categorically blocking sites)
- Firefox as the primary browser and the Adblock Plus add-on (you can’t click on an evil ad if it isn’t there)
- NOD32 Anti-virus (running the Symantec complete uninstaller is one of my favorite things)
- Automatic Windows Updates turned on.

And by and large I do agree with him. What I failed to make clear, I guess, was my target market for personal firewalls (PF). In short, I believe those that are best served by PF are the un-skilled; the non-technical; or simply don’t of can’t learn about yet another thing market. (more…)

In a recent post I talked about not controlling what my children click on.

Well this is only partially true. I don’t monitor or log their keystrokes or any other form of intrusive monitoring but I do use a URL filter. I also discuss and hopefully educate them on the process. This last bit being something I will continue to re-visit as they age.

In keeping with wanting to use the best and, if possible free (personally I donate money to folks that do this), then I utilise K9 from Bluecoat Systems. Bluecoat offer corporate filtering appliances that cost many hundreds if not thousands of pounds to purchase and maintain (and I troubleshoot these things as part of my day to day job). On the back of this, they also offer a free product for individual use called K9 – this is a Web-based service in that you install a local client that talks to Bluecoat’s backend systems. I think it is excellent and for a free product does what it says on its tin. It does have drawbacks and the one that bugs me is not being able to set individual filter preferences for each user on my PC – but that is small and, I am told, in the pipeline of development. (more…)

Long term readers of this blog will know that I am keen on personal security from the computer perspective and also that I am keen on windows users installing personal firewalls. My friends will tell you how often my eyes roll when they ask me to fix their unprotected machines.

First I guess, a definition of personal is required here.  By this I simply mean it is a software based firewall that sits on the same machine it is intending to protect. So I’m not talking standalone stuff like Smoothwall or Firestarter (both *nix based and free) and neither am I talking about the big boys of Corporate security such as Checkpoint, Cisco PIXes,  Cyberguards, well the list does go on. (more…)

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

~ Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie

Tomorrow we say goodbye to our teenager.

He’s off back to his 2nd year of University and can’t wait to be there – he has effectively left home and his mum and I have had to come to the realisation that our baby has left home.

(more…)