I recently blogged about reasons why you might want to hide your IP address and a comment by Larry Westfall asking how this can be done.

So here I present to you an introduction to how you can hide your IP.

But before I start I will say that one of these methods will require you to be comfortable with adjusting your computer settings with the other just requiring you to install a piece of software.

Just before we dive in though a quick walk through on IP’s. An IP address is akin to your post or zip code and applies to one single machine at a time. When we surf the internet we utilise two IP Addresses – a public and a private one. It is the public address we are talking about hiding in this case. (more…)

Mashable have written a nice article on the “Top 10 Ways to tweak Your WordPress Theme”.

The nice part is that even if you don’t understand they take you through the why you might want too and then show you how. Here are the 10 points

1. Edit Your Theme’s CSS
2. Display Post Excerpts or Full Content
3. Create a Custom Page Template
4. Crafting The Loop: Excluding/Including a Category
5. Crafting Your Page Navigation the Easy Way
6. Enabling Menu Management in WordPress 3.0
7. Create a Simple Conditional Statement
8. Add Post Thumbnails
9. Add Something (Anything) to the End of Every Blog Post
10. Add Google Analytics Tracking Code

To see the rest of the content you’ll need to head on over here.

Wireless LAN or wi-fi kit is getting everywhere these days.

And you’ll likely find that like most folks, your wireless surfing has slowed of recent especially if you’ve had it running a while.

The likelihood is that if you live in a densely populated area or you’ve made internal changes to your living space then either or both these (and more) could impact on your wireless surfing speed.

So what can you do?

• First off you can try changing your wi-fi channel. Most modern routers allow you to do this. It could simply be that your selected channel is now over-lapping or even on the same channel as a nearby neighbour. You could go for the trial and error approach or you could download Netstumbler (a free Windows tool) and allow it to show you all WLANs within reach, their SSIDs, channels and other information. Simply pick the least populated channel of the strongest ones near you.
• Secondly you could try moving the router. Sometimes we add new kit or other equipment degrades and leaks signals that can interfere or we even re-model our living spaces and that can cause problems with signal degradation.
• Another option would be to buy an add-on aerial – these range from simple rubber stick like items to omni or mono-dirctional to homemade “cantennas“. Whatever option you pick will boost the distance / receptivity of your wlan.
• A more involved option would be to install a wireless bridge. This is effectively a second router that can be added in an appropriate location to extend your wlan.

Two other less obvious options you could employ but could well be valid in your situation are:

• Ensure all your wifi kit is using the same standard. Most wifi routers will happily adapt to the lowest common denominator buy why restrict your 802.11n network to the speeds of an 802.11b? It’s akin to buying a Bugatti Veyron and putting a Mini’s engine in it.
• Lastly why not change your passphrase / password whilst you’re in the router control panel. If you use a simplistic one there’s no telling who might have ‘cracked’ it and be using you bandwidth for whatever.

So there you have it.

Six ways you could potentially boost your wireless surfing speed.

• Have I missed any options?
• Is this something you’ve experienced and tried to remedy?

So the church hosting account got hacked.

I don’t really know when but the first I was aware was a very terse email from our hoster:

Hello,

We regret to inform you that your account has been suspended for the following reason:

compromised account, spamming

Please contact us as soon as possible to discuss your options for reinstatement.

Sincerely,

Well ok that’s fair but surely they could have given us a clue as to what caused them to be aware of this so we are better able to fix it, prevent it happening again and discuss it.

Turns out the rather simple password that was used for the cpanel account was just that – too simple and consequently the hacker placed a few ‘iffy’ PHP files that were (so I’m told) sending out spam.

I’ve passed the file onto my eldest – he does PHP – and asked him to look it over.

The lesson today … use strong passwords.

Don’t know how or worried about remembering them? Then read this about various password utilities. Need to create a strong password and don’t have one of the listed tools in my link then try this online password generator. My advice, at the very minimum use the defaults but preferably up the character count to 16 or more.

Want to know what makes a strong / secure password? Then have a read of this article.

• Do you use strong / secure passwords?
• Do you have a different one for each site you access?
• Do you use any tools to help you?

Shocking isn’t it.

But let me step back a second and explain.

According to the many terms and conditions (T&Cs) I’ve agreed to down the year I, and most likely you, are indulging in alleged criminal behaviour. Let me give you an example or two.

- Have you ever bought a CD and then copied t to tape or even your MP3 player? Yes. Then you’re a criminal.

- What about your iPhone / iTouch. Have you jailbroken it? Then yes, you’ve just broken the law again.

- Ever bought a DVD? Then ripped it to place on your media player? Guess what? … You’re a criminal.

But in reality, occasions like this are highly unlikely to get you arrested, let alone face a judge or fine. These are some of the many absurd ‘restrictions’ that companies place in their T&Cs.

But, I digress.

My main reason for this is to reveal that I ‘jailbroke’ my iPhone. There are any number of reasons I’ve done it but to obtain “pay for apps” for free is not one of them.

And here’s one of those reasons: WiCarrier.

Simply put, it displays the name of the WiFi network your iPhone / iTouch is connected too. Why is this so necessary when I can drop into settings and see the same name there? It isn’t but it does make life that one step easier and adds to my security at a glance that I am actually connected to the local coffee house’s network and not some hacker hotspot.

If you want this tweak then fire up your Cydia app and search it out – install and job done.

What about you?

Are you a criminal too?

I promise I won’t hold it against you.

I love free and I like ScriptLogics stuff – however most of their stuff is not free so I tend not to visit too often.

Today though I’ve taken some time to see what their latest products are and guess what, they’ve released it as free. The latest (?) tool in their armoury is “Privilege Authority” which is sub-headed as ‘Users Need Rights Too‘ and I agree.

Privilege Authority is designed let the Windows network admin establish what aspects of Windows “users can manage without making them local admins. By defining elevation rules within Privilege Authority, user privileges are automatically elevated for specific actions that currently require administrator access”.

Sounds good to me and I can think of at least two uses for it already.

In the days of old when the O/S of choice for most day to day stuff was XP the only real challenge (for me at least) was twofold.  How to reduce the initial install size and how to automate as much of the mundane tasks as possible.

Then nlite appeared on the market and this allowed for taking an original XP install CD and integrating service packs, security patches, tweaks, etc and effectively automated the process of (re)installing XP. And as most know, this was a semi-regular event in the owner of a windows based PC.

Whilst nlite went on to release vlite for Vista this tool doesn’t work flawlessly with Windows 7 and there are only vague rumours of a proper Win7, it still leaves a gap in the market. That gap has now been, ably so it would appear, taken up by RTSe7enLite.

In their words:

You can add wallpapers, Icons, themes, integrate updates, drivers, remove components, unattended installation settings, tweaks, bootable ISO creator, etc.

I can see a usage – maybe you can too?

Not sure how long this has been around, but Nmap (the free and open source utility for network exploration or security auditing) has now gained a graphical frontend.

Zenmap may not look like much, but it does make life easier for those afraid of the command line. It allows for interactive creation of Nmap command lines and saving of scans historically for comparison, etc. The main benefit here is that zenmap now makes Nmap more accessible by both beginners and advanced users alike.