August 18th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I have 1.5GB of ram and I use 900mb at the most on a regular basis. The rest of it I never use. So I found this program called Eboostr that takes your most recently requested files from your hard disk and loads them onto your RAM. And since your RAM is faster than your hard disk, you will see a huge difference in how fast your programs and other system files load up.
I dedicated 512mb over to it and I can definitely see a large difference in speed. It also supports flash drives along with your RAM, but you must have a fast one in order for it to work properly. Another advantage to having this program - up to 4 cache devices, 4gb a piece.
(Click Image for Larger)
Unfortunately the program is not free, but I will tell you that it is worth your $40. You don’t have to pay if you participated in the beta. But if you do have $40 laying around, you should buy this program for your computer. As a matter of fact, you can try it out, so go do that after you get done reading this.
August 18th, 2008 / 3 Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
It’s time for a cut down in costs, which means we need to do something about it a little bit at a time. Yes, there is a way to do this. In America, prices on oil are very high and so are the prices of many other common items.
We need to cut the demand for things to make the supply cost go down. The world is using lots of resources and that is increasing quickly.
So first of all, let’s make our computers green. A way to do this is to adjust your system settings to use less power when you are away from your computer. Edison (http://www.verdiem.com/edison/) is a great program that will adjust your settings according to your work setting and what you are doing. I recently installed this on my computers to cut down on some costs here at home. It will even estimate how much money you are saving annually on that computer.
Second, shut of the lights when you aren’t in the room. It’s not like there’s anyone in the room, so when you are going out, just remember to flip the light switch. Its simple and it could save you some money. You should also do this on any other device you aren’t using, including your T.V., your stereo, or your DVD player. Its just simple.
Third, lets use less gasoline in our cars. On a green light after a stop, don’t accelerate too fast…. It burns up a lot of gasoline that you don’t need to lose… unless you are street racing (and I’m not talking about the wannabees). If your car gets less than 15 miles to the gallon, you should probably buy a different car with better gas mileage. Your car will pay for itself after a few months of use after you buy a new one because of the high gas prices.
Fourth, turn up the temperature in your house and keep your A/C off. Open the windows and get some air in your house, but keep your A/C off, or at least keep it a little warmer than normal to keep your A/C off. You aren’t going to die because your house is 10 degrees warmer than usual. This will dramatically cut costs.
This stuff is so very simple and can do quite a bit of good for you and the rest of the world. So let’s go green… for real.
August 18th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
Its been a while since I’ve made a blog post… I haven’t had a lot of time because I’ve been busy with non-computer related things.
We (mostly Jimmy and Colum) are working on a new feature for Zotag called Zotag Uptime that will monitor your DNS, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, HTTP, and HTTPS servers and will give you reports on when they go down and when they go online. It will even send custom reports directly to your cell phone if requested. It is sort of like Service Uptime; actually it pretty much is that. You can also receive data output from Zotag Uptime in many different formats, including CVS and Excel spreadsheats, as well as charts and graphs informing you of your server’s uptime.
The backend will consist of multiple computers checking your servers, which in the future might be custom software I will create in C#. It is always reliable, and will have great customer service. When you talk to customer service, you will be speaking directly to one of the administrators instead of a lower level person for better help.
Not only do you get reports to the administrator of your server, you can also enable public stats to show others how long your server has been online and when it has gone down or offline. Image outputs are also available, giving a percentage of how long your site has been online.
Free? Duh! Most of the features Zotag provides and will provide in the future will be completely free. Paid services in Zotag Uptime include a more frequent server check and will allow you to check more servers than the given free account. The free account still lets you add many servers, but the paid is for a more business type plan.
But we need your help - you guys need to help get this started and tell your friends about this site. It has a great future and is easily expandable on the front and back ends. You can also help us by putting our banner’s on your site to tell people that you are using Zotag Uptime.
The site is online currently, but as of 8/18/08, registration is disabled due to construction of the site. If you would like to see it in it’s alpha stages, you can look here: Zotaguptime.com
July 10th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
Feel like pulling a prank to someone else’s computer just for fun? Well I’ve made guide of a few computer pranks for Windows users.
1. Take a screenshot and set it as their background
This will make everything on their screen *unclickable*. They will think their computer is frozen and they will freak out.
First press the “Prnt Scrn” button on your keyboard, then paste the screenshot into Paint, save it, then set it as their desktop background by clicking File > Set As Background (Centered) in Paint.
Second, right click on a freespace on taskbar next to the Start button, then click Properties. Next select “Auto-hide the taskbar” and press okay.
If the user is smart enough they will move their mouse to the bottom of the screen and reveal their real task bar and will be able to undo it.
2. Make their computer shutdown on startup
Now this one is pretty mean and it takes an advanced user to fix this one, but is reversable like all the other pranks. This will make the users computer restart, shutdown, or logoff (I’ll show you how to do each) as soon as they login to their computer.
First open up Notepad, then choose from one of the following codes below and paste it into your text file:
Shutdown code: shutdown -s
Restart code: shutdown -r
Logoff code: shutdown -l
Next, save the file as “prank.bat” or any file name you want with the extension of “.bat” on the desktop. Now go to “C:\Documents and Settings\(the persons username here)\Start Menu\Programs\Startup” or go to Start > All Programs, then right click on “Startup” and click “explore”. Now drag the batch file you created into that folder.
The next time that person logs in, their computer will perform that task.
The way to fix this problem is to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete right after you login, go to the “Processes” tab and delete “cmd.exe” right when it executes itself by pressing Delete > Enter really fast. Then you will have to go into the startup folder and remove the program we stuck in there. Another way to fix it is to shutdown the computer and put in a Linux live cd and remove that program from the folder by browsing through the hard disk.
June 22nd, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I was bored the other night and decided to write some math functions in PHP that might be helpful for your school’s science class. I wrote 4 functions, so if you need a quick way of finding the answers, stick these PHP snippets on a PHP web server and run the scripts with the needed variables edited for your needs.
This script calculates the effects of gravity on an object and how long it will take for it to fall in PHP.
<?//Calculates effect of gravity on objects from height in centimeters (defined in the variable H)$H=1000;$multiplication=2*$H;$division=$multiplication/980;print("Seconds taken to fall from $H centimeter(s): ");echo(sqrt($division)."<br />");?>
This script calculates potential energy in an object in PHP.
<?//Calculates Potential Energy (M defines mass in KG, G defines gravity, H defines height in meters)$M=58.9670;$G=9.8;$H=50;$multiplication=$M*$G*$H;print("Potential Energy in object $M kg with $G gravity from $H meters high: ");echo(($multiplication)." Joules<br />");?>
This script calculates the momentum of an object in PHP.
<?//Calculates Momentum (M defines mass in KG and V defines velocity)$M=58.9670;$V=25;$multiplication=$M*$V;print("Momentum of an object with a mass of $M and a velocity of $V : ");echo(($multiplication)." Newtons<br />");?>
This script calculates the kinetic energy in an object in PHP.
<?//Calculates Kinetic Energy (M defines mass in KG and V defines velocity)$M=58.9670;$V=25;$velocitysquared=$V*$V;$division=$M/1/2;$finalmultiply=$velocitysquared*$division;print("Kinetic Energy in $M kg with a velocity of $V meters per second squared: ");echo(($finalmultiply)." Joules<br />");?>
Don’t run all this code in the same file because it will result in a PHP error.
June 6th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
Zotag is getting ready to go through a major update in which more features will be added, the server speed will be increased (actually the site will be on a different server), the search algorithm will better (which means better search results), and the design will be more user friendly and cool. A few more features will be added and are listed on James Hartig’s blog (another Zotag Search developer) here: Introduction To Zotag Search. James Hartig is responsible for the major part of the backend of Zotag Search including Zspider (our web spider program), SQL Management, and a few more things. He likes to “collaborate” with people (lol inside joke; thats his nerdy side coming through, but he’s not a nerd in real life). The spider program is a very advanced program and looks pretty cool too. Here’s Jimmy’s latest alpha development of the new spider: Zspider New Program.
If you have ever searched with Zotag, you would know that the searches aren’t too fast huh? Well, we know. And hopefully in this update we can resolve that issue. With our new advanced caching systems, we will be able to serve you the pages you want right when you need them the most.
The search algorithm will be even better than before because you will actually be able to find what you are looking for. Top domain names and more popular sites will come before minor search results. Also users will have the ability to rate sites (optional), increasing the rank of that web page to make it easier for someone else to find it.
For webmasters, we will have a webmaster tools section on the site where you can submit your site and/or sitemap for submission in Zotag Search.
If you would like to help out somehow, feel free to contact me on sidebar to the right.
June 4th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I’ve been working on a project in C# recently for a program that will remotely execute programs through a web interface on the computer the program is running on. Its called “ZwebAdmin” and is based off the ZwebServer source code, but compiled smaller.
Anyways, you go to the web interface (at whatever host and port it is) and you can control the execution of certain programs by clicking on the different links and the program will execute the program specified in the source code.
For this example, I have only set the program to launch Firefox. You can download the Alpha Release here: http://www.mediafire.com/?xlvnnz4zd4y In this release, launch Internet Explorer and browse to the admin interface you specified on the ZwebAdmin control panel. Make sure Firefox is closed. Then click “Launch Firefox” and firefox.exe should launch (if you have it installed).
Here’s some screenshots of the admin control and web interface:
The official release will have more programs to execute remotely.
June 4th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I was reading some articles on Nginx today and a few other sites who didn’t research it much made me a little frustrated. Some other blogs say Wordpress uses Nginx and has done away with Litespeed. I have confirmed it that Wordpress.com is still using Litespeed, but with Nginx as a front end proxy (what Zotag is doing now).
First of all, the server headers on Wordpress.com read as “nginx”. So you other bloggers out there who made up stories why they switched to Nginx are wrong…. I actually found it really amusing some of the detailed stories that were made up about why they switched. Anyways, I set a bad request to the server and got an error from the Litespeed server. Here’s what I sent to the server: http://wordpress.com/index.php%00.txt
June 4th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Travis Cunningham
I found a program the other day called Joost, which is actually pretty cool. It is a peer to peer internet TV that provides a lot of different shows, including a lot of stuff from MTV. I was really entertained by what all it could do and how cool the interface looked. You’ll need somewhat fast of an internet connection though, because it is totally frustrating on slower connections.
Here’s some screenshots I took of the program:
Unfortunately it is not live broadcasts, but you do get to see an entire show instead of half of it because you started watching it when it was half over. You can also fast forward, rewind, pause, or even go on to another episode of what you were watching.
The installer was a little over 11mb, so its not that big. And better yet, while your watching your favorite shows, you can chat with your friends from within the program.
My name is Travis Cunningham, I'm 14 years old, and I like web design and I am experienced in a few different programming languages (You can see here: About Me). I also enjoy photography, sports, music, and hanging out with friends.
