The Home of Tom & Morven

I have a computer at home which I don’t connect to the internet. I use it to do a lot of stuff. I’ve always wondered how I could use the time I spend on it to boost my WhatPulse statistics as well as our Prime95 rankings.

• How to run Prime95 on a computer without internet via USB
• How to run Prime95 on a computer without internet via USB

How to run Prime95 on a computer without internet via USB

1. Using the computer with the available internet connection, Download Prime95 as a ZIP file and extract it to a folder on your removable USB drive.
2. Put the USB into the computer without internet, and load Prime95 for the first time. Set it up with your details etc, and specific settings. You will get communication errors because it’s trying to contact the internet. Ignore this.
3. Under Advanced, select Password. Enter the Password 9876 to enable the Advanced menu items you can’t currently access.
4. Under Advanced, select Manual Communication. Select the option so that it won’t try to automatically contact the PrimeNet server (deselect all options).
5. Take the USB to the computer with the internet, load it, and let it contact the PrimeNet server to retrieve jobs. It may be a good idea to retrieve a large number of days work at a time, so that you don’t need to update PrimeNet too often by taking it back to the computer with the internet connection. Unfortuantely it will update your CPU settings when you load Prime95 on the computer with the internet, but all this will affect is the statistics, it’s not too critical.
6. Close Prime95 and take it back to your computer without internet. Load it again, and run Prime95!
7. Whenever you would like to update the statistics, simply repeat steps 5 and 6.

How to run WhatPulse on a computer without internet via USB

1. Using the computer with the available internet connection, Download WhatPulse version 1.5 Beta 1 or later.
2. Exit any currently running instances of WhatPulse.
3. Install it to a folder on your USB drive, and setup WhatPulse like you normally would.
4. Exit WhatPulse, and reload any potential instances of WhatPulse that normally run on the computer with the available internet connection (undoing step 2).
5. Take the USB to the computer without internet, load WhatPulse, and collect your keystrokes.
6. When you want to Pulse, simply close WhatPulse, take the USB back to the computer with internet, and repeat steps 2 to 5.

Lately I’ve been a little frustrated. I think it was since I upgraded Wordpress to 2.0.5 that it broke my dBeautifier plugin v3.4 for PHP5. Awesome plugin, bummer that Joseph Newing decided to stop supporting it. Lots of people are using it, and will shortly run into this problem. C’mon Joseph, hows about another release update!

Here is a workaround I developed. I have modified the currently only available copy on the internet from Jeroen Onstenk (thanks buddy!) to include the changes required for the plugin to work with Wordpress 2.0.5 and 2.0.6. If you have any problems at all with this plugin you are welcome to ask me by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post.

;/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/dBeautifier_3.4-PHP5.zip;dBeautifier 3.4 for PHP5 and Wordpress 2.0.5 and 2.0.6;

Summary of Changes

1. Moved the icons directory from the /wp-content/plugins/dBeautifier/icons/ directory to the /wp-content/icons/ directory. This allows Wordpress 2.0.5 and 2.0.6 to be able to actually display images from the plugins directory.
2. In order for the above to work, lines 57 to 59 of dBeautifier_Filter.php were modified to the below:

   $img = get_option('siteurl') . "/wp-content/icons/$icon";
           } else {
   $img = get_option('siteurl') . "/wp-content/icons/downloads.png";

   This allows the icons to actually display.

3. Now about the CSS. For some reason the plugin wasn’t loading the CSS from the dBeautifier.css file included with the plugin, so I added it to my /wp-content/themes/mytheme/style.css file. In fact, I also added a little extra CSS, because the theme I use adds a black border around images. This looks really nice with images in posts, but kind of stuffs up dBeautifier icons. So, the total CSS I added to my /wp-content/themes/mytheme/style.css file is:

   /* CSS I added to get rid of borders on the icons */
   img.icon {
       border: none;
       background: none;
   }
   
   /* CSS by Joseph Newing required for dBeautifier to work nicely */
    .download-link {
       height: 50px;
       background: #f6f6f6;
       border: 1px solid #cccccc;
       margin: 0 0 5px 0;
       padding-left: 15px;
       }
   
    .download-link h4 {
       margin: 0;
       padding: 10px 0 0 5px;
       }
   
    .download-link p {
       margin: 0;
       padding: 0 0 0 30px;
       }
   
    .download-link img {
       float: left;
       margin: 5px 5px 0 5px;
       border: none;
       padding-top: 4px;
       }

4. Then, in order for my extra little piece of CSS to be implemented by the plugin, I had to change the class on line 93 of dBeautifier_Filter.php to become the icon class:

5. Finally, I accidentally overwrote the original icons that Joseph Newing included with the plugin. I obviously prefer myn so I’ll just leave them there for now. You can use whichever ones you want, please yourself.

Installation Instructions

1. Download the file from above, and unzip it to your wordpress root folder. This download already includes all the modifications except where I moved the plugins CSS into the themes CSS, you will have to do this manually.
2. Add the following to your /wp-content/themes/mytheme/style.css file:

   /* CSS I added to get rid of borders on the icons */
   img.icon {
       border: none;
       background: none;
   }
   
   /* CSS by Joseph Newing required for dBeautifier to work nicely */
    .download-link {
       height: 50px;
       background: #f6f6f6;
       border: 1px solid #cccccc;
       margin: 0 0 5px 0;
       padding-left: 15px;
       }
   
    .download-link h4 {
       margin: 0;
       padding: 10px 0 0 5px;
       }
   
    .download-link p {
       margin: 0;
       padding: 0 0 0 30px;
       }
   
    .download-link img {
       float: left;
       margin: 5px 5px 0 5px;
       border: none;
       padding-top: 4px;
       }

3. Activate the plugin, and go to the dBeautifier tab in Options Panel to set your Wordpress directory.
4. You may like to add the XLS and PDF icons that I accidentally included with this package whilst you’re in the Options Panel. I will likely expand on the icons and file extensions that I use and create another download. If I get around to doing this in the next few weeks I’ll make sure I provide a link from this post.

Thank to Arie for this, I consider it the best email I’ve had all year. There’s 1 to 11 Office Skills Tips from Ricky Gervais, click below to see the rest of them!

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For years I’ve been having issues trying to keep track of my passwords. Everything we do these days involves passwords. Technology is evolving quicker than the human mind is evolving with its capacity to be able to memorise all these passwords.

Solution? Keep all your passwords in a centrally managed database.

This creates a problem - what happens when someone discovers your little diary, or that piece of paper stuck under the desk, with all your passwords on. Assuming the diary that you keep in your purse or European carry-all isn’t SSL encrypted, you are totally exposing yourself to the potential of identity fraud.

Solution? KeePass Password Safe.

KeePass Password Safe is the ultimate tool for storing passwords. It’s intuitive and easy to integrate for copying and pasting stuff into forms, and highly secure. I use a floppy disk to store the key file to open up my passwords database, which I can hide around the house. I make it so you also need to know my master password, just in case the disk falls into the wrong hands! Mind you they’d need to use my computer as well, which being password protected with my “other” master password would make life incredibly difficult for any intruder… unless they just want to sell my computer for parts. That’d succ!

You can sort passwords into categories, sub-categories, and sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub categories if you are that way inclined. You can store all sorts of details with each password, such as other account information or whatever. If you make yourself a key-disk I highly recommend creating a backup copy and stashing that at a friends house, away from where you keep your backed up data (which I’m hoping you store at a different friends house ).