I feel certain there will be many more of these as my playing with Windows 7 turns to serious usage.

For my first tip I want to talk about the run box. It’s no longer the run box you love and used daily – well I did. One thing you can’t obviously do anymore is run a command in “administrator mode” – well, yes you can.

As an example type “cmd” (without the quotes) into your Win7 run box but instead of automatically hitting enter resist and instead use Ctrl+Shift+Enter. This will throw up the User Account Control (aka UAC) box – simply accept and you now have a cmd session with administrator privileges.

As Aleksandr, chief meerkat says: “Simples“.

Whilst we’re in the cmd session, how about a command line tool to convert any PNG you have to an icon? then look no further than png2ico.

More anon.

Here’s the latest links to security tweets I found interesting over the last couple of weeks:

• @sophoslabs: RT @gcluley Gizmodo hit by malware adverts http://bit.ly/2Rb4By
• @ulb: RT @AngelWardriver: Time Warner Routers Still Hackable Despite Company Assurance http://bit.ly/1YRgEn #digg #security @wired
• @defvense_alert: #Security #Malware vulnerability detected – yasai.cn. Info http://ow.ly/o77K
• @Iran_Techie: How does text encryption work? Try it out at http://cryptfire.com #iranelection #tips #security
• @safesites: Check out our tutorials to keep safe online http://bit.ly/446imL

That’s it for this week – normal service now resumed so more next.

Another in my mini-interview series.

This time with Brendan Powell Smith the genius (if I may say so) behind “The Brick Testament“. If you don’t know what that is then where have you been? In their own words:

The Brick Testament is the largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible in the world with over 3,600 illustrations that retell more than 400 stories from The Bible.

In my words – it’s stories from the Bible re-told using lego and its characters. Absolutely fantastic stuff. Anyway my thanks to Brendan and on with the interview.

1. What’s on your current / recent reading list and why?
I just ordered the newly published book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man by Earl Doherty.  Since it remains a subject of fascination for me, I try to stay current on the scholarly study of the origins of Ancient Christianity, and I’d found Doherty’s previous book The Jesus Puzzle to present a theory on Christianity’s origins with more explanatory power than any other I’ve come across to date.  But just to provide his theory with some contrast, I also recently read Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by Bart D. Ehrman and reread Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity by my former thesis advisor at Boston University, Paula Fredriksen.

2. List one bit of advice you try to live by?
“If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee.”

3. Half-full, half-empty or static and why?
Half-empty.  I find that having pessimistic expectations leads to more pleasant surprises and less disappointment.

4. What would you say to a child / young person wanting to do what you do?
Concentrate on being very, very lucky

5. Name one thing would you like to do that you haven’t already?
Illustrate the rest of the Bible in LEGO.

I have this question.

What is networking to you?

And when I talk about networking I mean the interaction amongst humans for pleasure or profit. The trouble with that one question is it forces me into lots more. (more…)

Like most software these days there are support forums and firefox is no different. Whilst doing one of my irregular wanders through the firefox support forum I came across this thread which talks about the dangerous extensions one should be aware of as containing spyware or at the very least track users without having pre-advised them of this.

As with most things you get a choice and here it’s to install or not. The list of 93 known bad extensions is something I plan to keep an eye on – for my part I only use 10 or so extensions with only 3 or 4 of those on a daily basis and thankfully none of mine are in the list!

The main point here is to be careful what you install.

Yesterday the family and I went geocaching.

Geocaching.com describes this as:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment. (more…)

I used to joke in my last job, that DNS was the root of all problems in an Active Directory domain. Whilst this was not 100% accurate, 9 out of 10 times I said it, I was right. DNS – most of us have probably heard of it and we may even know what the initials stand for but is it necessary for us all to understand it in some form? (more…)

In my last post I talked about taking offense – this one follows on from that.

Whenever I read a blog, a daily habit, I am always looking to see if I can contribute in some way to the subject matter raised. Even if that something is essentially to disagree with the writer.

Recently I read a post to do with use of software firewalls and whilst I agreed with the author in perhaps 80% of his post there were one or two areas I wanted to pick up on. So instead of starting a huge response which may or may not have been read or even responded to I decided to write a post on my personal blog that at least allowed me to voice my thoughts in full. On the blog itself I then entered a short comment to the effect that I agreed with 80% but disagreed wth certain aspects and mostly to do with their approach to not providing any backup to their assertions or any links to further reading to perhaps explain their thoughts. I also linked back to my blog so that the author could come and discuss as they felt fit. (more…)