What’s Up w/ ME on Technology?
Written on December 29, 2005 – 2:21 am | by orirunaway
Okay. Podcasting may not have that big difference from Audio blogging or Video blogging, it’s just a matter of multimedia blogging and subscribing of multimedia addicts from feeds. So, how do I podcast? (Though I just did one post of podcast - for the sake of trying)
I use Blogger.com as my blogging medium, and Feedburner.com as my feed publisher. The feedburner automatically converts every audio or video (that is being posted on blogger) to a podcast, in able for the feed subscribers easily download the file and play it on their players. Well, I’m not that geeky yet regarding feeds, but at my side I know how it works on different feed aggregators (feed readers). Feedburner uses RSS, while blogger auto-generates XML. Further guides/instructions are presented on Feedburner.com on how to use it with different blog publishers (at the right side of their page). Start it from there ( I just followed the guides).
Note: A special page is generated from feedburner.com that appears on RSS Readers of subscribers.
For recording a speech or sound, I use Audacity. And for hosting my media files, I signed up on Files Villagephotos, though the only downside is its limited bandwidth per day. If it reaches its bandwidth quota, the media can’t be shown on where it is posted (for images) and wouldn’t be available (for audio, video - though I think it can still be downloaded, just can’t stream it live).
I also registered at Mobile Audioblogging (jeez, I’m everywhere on the WEB!) of Blogger.com, but never yet tried using their number to audio blog. It was obviously going to be expensive since the number given to be dialled is a U.S. number. Speaking of mobile… the latest about me… I changed my mobile unit again and downgraded from N3650 to a new N2600 (mahirap buhay ngayon eh) and also changed my mobile network from SMART to TM. I wanted to try the G-Cash and I’m already registered to it. Kulang na lang eh yung cash - na ica-cash-in ko, hehe.
Adding to my mobility, I downloaded Portable Mozilla Thunderbird (a mail client like Outlook Express or Eudora) for my 128MB PQI Flash Drive (di ko kaya ang presyo ng 256, 512 at lalo na ang 1GB eh) and copied my profile folder from my Mozilla Thunderbird on my desktop to sync my existing mail, folders, and settings. It was few months ago when I bought the flash drive from ECBUYPH.COM for price of PhP920.00 (plus PhP50.00 of shipment). But currently, they were selling away the same unit for PhP800.00. That site has an awsome list of electronics, with bulky features and some giveaway prices, I even thought of being a Reseller, but nevermind… my mom doesn’t have money for a capital either. Check it.
I learned about the Portable Mozilla Thunderbird from ComputerWorld magazine. It enables us to check our mail anywhere we go, and saves the downloaded mails that we don’t have to download it again and again. I have to say, that magazine is very informative! Buy it or bettery yet subscribe to it. Haha.
Anyway, my PC have been infected with malwares and spywares (hijackers, data miners, etc.) recently. How did I know? Well, it’s the common symptoms of redirection of my Internet Explorer’s homepage. It is supposed to be on its default home: blank, but instead as I open the IE it redirects to another site. I always changed it to blank again but upon reboot, here we go again.
I scanned my PC with AD-AWARE SE Personal and found some critical objects. I ran the Yahoo Anti-Spy found on Yahoo Toolbar and found another remaining spyware. Upon reboot, the homepage stubbornly changed again. It was my first time to encounter a stubborn spyware. So I seeked help and found the Tech Support Forum, with the subforum of Security Center. From the help of the Spyware experts, I was able to download and run 5 or more Anti-Spyware softwares:
- Ewido Security Suite
- Panda Active Scan (Free online Scan)
- HijackThis (deeper PC scans)
- Killbox
- CleanUp!
- etc… (some online scans)
That resolved my problem, but spywares keep infecting me so I keep some softwares in regular running for maintenance, and switched from IE to Mozilla Firefox for safer surfing (IEs more vulnerable to malwares). Aside from its tabbed browsing, it also has a few internal search engines to choose from depending on where you want to focus searching, which I liked best. Plus the popup blocker of firefox, Zone Alarm Pro also effectively does the blocking of ads for me (even the triple X ads inside the webpages are blocked).
- Yahoo - alternative, and I like its "open on a new window" icon option search
- Creative Commons - for licensed and protected articles search
- Odeo - for podcast searches
- Technorati - for tech blogs searches
- Download.com - for software downloads search; and
- Wikepedia - for definition searches
You can optionally add search engines for your personal needs.
My PC is still striving to live though it is already 3 to 4 years old without hardware upgrades. Haha. Actually, it is starting to show some deteriorating symptoms.
- The system’s clock is unable to update accurately its time - meaning that the CMOS battery (with a minimum lifespan of 3 years) is already low, and needs replacement anytime now.
- The fan of my AGP card had stopped and made my monitor occassionally show green-red-orange block of lines. But good thing I was able to resolved it by putting an oil (baby oil, because any oil would do the trick) and loosen its spin. The fan smoothly spins again.
- At night when the PC is on, the only thing that is noisy is the UPS. Especially the cluttering noise as soon as it is turned on. I calculated the power consumption of each of my components if the 250Watts capacity of UPS is still capable of handling it plus the add on CD ROM. Well, almost 250Watts… means, needs newer and larger capacity, with a minimum of 300Watts.
- Now here’s the one that made me nervous recently. As soon as I turn on or off the monitor, on a black screen appears a solid-green fire-shaped flare that slowly disappears at the center. I thought at first that it was an electric fault of cables, but I checked it and it wasn’t. Then I thought, maybe anytime now if I keep it turned on, it would blow a smoke (well, like the incident in the school last time while on a MPU defense, haha) and would be on fire. Then, I formulate a theory (since I don’t know what was the cause of it and where it did go wrong), I needed to replace the monitor (um, is it on the tube?), and put the system on a cooler part of the house.
The system also needs cleaning! Haha. That’s all for now…
