AVG antivirus software - V7 to V8 (updated)

Recently, I've noticed popups from AVG Antivirus appearing on my desktop whenever I login to Windows (which is rarely these days, to be honest).

It warns you that support for AVG V7.5 will be withdrawn and offers a link. Now this is a psychological mind-game in an effort to get you to buy the full version. Don't worry, because JB has found out that there IS indeed a free version to download as always. You can't blame them really since AVG is such a popular antivirus program, but I do think it is a tad misleading!

Go via the 'official' route to download the file and visit the AVG website here:

http://free.avg.com/ww.download?prd=afe#tba2

After you have downloaded the file (hopefully to somewhere sensible like your desktop) you can then install the program according to the following instructions.

After much searching around on the internet, I have discovered that two options are enabled by default which could slow down your computer and/or make web-browsing slower due to new functions called SafeSurf and SafeSearch. I've tried with both and would thoroughly recommend you perform a custom install and deselect these options or alternatively - run the following command by clicking on the Start button, then click on Run and copy this into the box that appears on screen:

"C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Desktop\avg_free_stf_en_8_100a1295.exe" /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch

Ensure that you copy the complete text above including quotes in to the Run box and then click OK. Wait for a few seconds for the program to initialise and AVG will then perform a custom installation.

N.B. If you simply double click on the file on your desktop, then it will perform a standard installation - which is inadvisable due to the problems mentioned above!

Note that if you have the excellent Radmin application installed, AVG may pick it up as a threat. You will need to 'Add to Exceptions'. Other than that, it should be a very straightforward installation. Some things obviously look slightly different but overall it's still similar to the old version, right down to what I call the Battenburg cake icon.

P.S. If you want to disable the 'pop-under' box notification that appears at the bottom of the main AVG window, simply delete the file at the following location:

C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\avgmwdef_us.mht

Next time you start AVG, the pop-under box will have disappeared.

AUTOMATIC UPDATE OF AVG FAILS?

Updating automatically seems to fail with wireless connections I've noticed. Go to Tools | Advanced settings, and then look at the options under Schedules. Open that section and select 'Run on computer start-up if task has been missed' and also put a tick in the box for 'Run the update again as soon as the internet connection is available'.

UPDATE !!

Looks like updates will now remain available for AVG V7.5 until the end of this year, which is good news for those of you who haven't yet updated to V8:

[QUOTE]DEADLINE FOR AVG 7.5 FREE UPDATES 31/12/2008
Posted by: michaelhd - AVG Team
Date: May 5, 2008 10:00AM

DEADLINE FOR AVG 7.5 FREE UPDATES 31/12/2008

This is the official date that support and updates for AVg 7.5 Free will end.

If the date changes we will give you good forward notice.[/QUOTE]


Cheers

JG

Many thanks on the original AVG7 to AVG8 upgrade niggles go to Claus Valca and all posters on this thread at: http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2008/04/taming-avg-free-version-8.html

Latency issues again (updated)

Whilst on the subject of my internet connection, I am experiencing packet loss running at 8% and severe lag (admittedly during gaming on the PS3). So much so, I tend to end up on the losing side in games which is particularly annoying.

I don't hold out much hope of ANTEL upgrading their infrastructure upon receipt of my somewhat terse email but a reply would be nice. This is the third time of contacting them.

They certainly DON'T earn their 35 UK pounds a month that I pay them for a paltry 1.5Mb connection.

UPDATE - Monday evening, 20th May 2008
--------------------------------------

Amazingly, I was actually able to enjoy playing Call of Duty 4 online last night. Whatever ANTEL have done to fix their problems, please leave it alone from now on !!
Still no reply to my three emails though, it's like talking to the proverbial brick wall.

General pikeyness

and Third World motors - click the link below which is a redirect to my Facebook picture site.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32939&l=cd892&id=696786909

Enjoy and tell me what you think. Will keep it updated as I'm always taking pictures with my trusty Sony Ericsson K800i.

Call of Duty 4 - new maps!

The Sony Playstation Store finally released the add-on Variety map pack for the PS3. Call of Duty 4 is a great game and I was interested to see what the new maps offered.

Four maps are included and they are:

Broadcast - Middle Eastern TV station. Good for big teams.
Chinatown - small city at night. Great for any mode of gameplay.
Killhouse - Speedball style warehouse interior. Good for small teams.
Creek - Outdoor Russian environment, could be good for snipers.

Personally, my favourite right now is probably the Creek map but I will probably get to know and love Chinatown in due course.

And a big plus this weekend only, you earn double XP!!

JB

Fog in Montevideo

Left Buenos Aires last night after a lovely 3 day break. It all seemed to be going so well, as the flight from Argentina to Uruguay is only a 30 minute hop. When the plane started to adopt a stacking pattern, I knew something was brewing and sure enough, the pilot told us that there was fog at Carrasco airport and we would be circling whilst waiting for it to clear. After 30 minutes of burning up the world's vital resources we were refused permission to land and had to fly to Punta del Este!

When we touched down, there were 3 fire engines in attendance with their lights flashing. Probably a good move since the American pilot seemed to rip the wheels off on landing.

El Jaguel is Punta's only airport and the terminal is tiny. It was a strange scene, with only a few airport personnel available. No-one from Pluna was there, which was inexcusable.

We had to take a coach for the trip back to Montevideo (again, in foggy conditions). This interminably long trip was made all the worse as Captain Slow was driving and we eventually made it back to Carrasco airport. I'd like to say thanks to the chica that spoke to me in English to tell me what was happening, so thanks - whoever you are!

Skanked by a cab driver who spoke no English and drove like a mad man, and went to bed after 2am, not great considering I left Buenos Aires at 9pm.

Pluna customer services will be on the receiving end of a sharp email from me in the next few minutes, I can assure you.

Not happy.

Thunderbird email client

I am recently a convert to the world of Ubuntu 64 on my laptop, and my email client of choice is Thunderbird.

However, after replying to some emails I noticed that Thunderbird's default behaviour when replying to an email is to place your reply at the bottom of the email.

This confused a few friends so I did a brief Google search and found the solution to setting the reply position on e-mails to the top instead of the bottom.

# In Thunderbird: Go to “Account Settings”
# Select “Composition & Addressing” for the account in question
# Check the checkbox in the Composition group that says “Automatically quote the original message when replying”.
# Once the combo box below is enabled select the option “Start my reply above the quote”

That did the trick. Thanks to this entry on Google: http://tinyurl.com/3kkqde

Very useful tip

Tribeca apartments, Buenos Aires

Click on the link to view:

http://www.rakesta.myby.co.uk/uploaded_images/Tribeca-apartments-752845-753365.jpg


A lovely place to stay if you're in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Tango in Buenos Aires

We finally arrived in Buenos Aires, under the strange light of semi-darkness due to the clouds of smoke pervading the air. Our home for the night was a delightful loft-style apartment called the Tribeca - a great choice made by Ale, my girlfriend.

The ceiling in the apartment was very high, possibly over 14 ft tall and all the apartments looked out upon an open-air courtyard which was pleasant. We went out with a friend of Ale's from Montevideo who had moved to BS AS. Ceci's choice was a small funky restaurant in downtown St Elmo. After a great night's sleep and a quality breakfast, we headed off to our next stop which was the Abasto Plaza Hotel, from where I am writing.

We've spent most of the day doing the sad old tourist thing but I actually quite enjoyed it all to be honest. Buenos Aires has a certain buzz (something like London, but not the same) and it is a lot more modern compared to Montevideo.

After much 'Johnnie Walking', I successfully managed to evade the proposed 'Learn to Tango' session in the hotel so I'm quite thankful for that. Ale's hunger for shopping failed to disappear so she's now off trawling the boutiques in the local area. It feels quite safe here which surprised me.

Everywhere seems to offer free wifi on the go but not this hotel. And the cheek of it all is that the wireless access is non-existent. Oh, and did I mention the best bit? You have to pay for it as well...

I will be returning to Montevideo on Tuesday, with Ale returning on Thursday when her Human resources course finishes.

That's all for now.

JB

Stuck in the airport - great

Due to the talented Argentinian farmers who've started to burn all their fields, we're stuck at Montevideo Airport in Carrasco. The reason being, the plane can't fly to Buenos Aires due to all the smoke. How this happens in the year 2008 is simply anyone's guess...

We're due to stay in Buenos Aires for 4-5 days. I'll try not to mention the Falklands hehe ;-)

JB

Hardy Heron release - UBUNTU

I managed to 'successfully' upgrade to Hardy Heron release of Ubuntu over the weekend. I say successfully in quotes since although the upgrade itself said it completed successfully, I've lost the ability to connect to wireless networks - which is a royal pain. So I'm composing this on my new glass table in the office, courtesy of Magui y Nacho.

It seems to be a battle between Network manager and WICD, which was already resident on my system. I've already spent 2-3 hours trying to get it working and if I don't succeed, I will revert back to Gutsy Gibbon (v7.10). Let's hope this all gets sorted prior to the LIVE release. It's still in beta so you have to accept these things happening.

One other thing I've noticed is that my browser doesn't initiate when I click on a link in an email on Thunderbird. I hasten to add that I'm running Firefox 3 beta 5. Links worked before so I can only assume it's something to do with the patchy (in parts) upgrade success.

Big lip and streaming internet radio...

I awoke this morning to discover that my bottom lip was distended. I was bitten I think by a mosquito who seem to love the 'sweet blood' I have from the UK. It caused me a lot of pain, so I texted my Spanish teacher to say I wasn't attending school today ;-)

Whilst bimbling at home, I set about trying to link up two very useful open source programs - namely StreamTuner and StreamRipper. StreamTuner is an internet radio application that I have grown to love since leaving England. Most music here in Montevideo is Latino so I miss all the different genres. However, StreamRadio (similar to Winamp when using ShoutCast) gives me the ability to listen to a drum and bass station in the UK or for that matter, a folk channel from Finland of all things!

On to StreamRipper - a shell prompt app that is able to listen to the streamed data, save it to an MP3 file and also relays it to localhost:8000 so you can listen as you rip. This is important since if you don't set up the relay locally, you can in fact double the bandwidth you consume. Plus the overhead on the server at the other end. My solution cuts down on that by only taking a single stream and forwarding the data to my XMMS player.

StreamTuner was very useful the other night. We had some friends round from Ale's work and it was beautiful not having to faff around trying to play music from my CD-ripped MP3 collection.

Previous page function in Firefox

I've just found out how to change the default behaviour of my beloved browser Firefox in Ubuntu. I installed the Ubuntu 64 'Gutsy Gibbon' release a couple of weeks ago. For those that don't know, Ubuntu is an alternative operating system which runs on Linux.

Anyway - back to the story. Pressing the backspace key on the Firefox browser in Windows simply returned you to the previous page that you were viewing. Not so in Ubuntu! It does a 'Page Up' by scrolling up the screen, which to be honest is quite irritating.

Judging by the amount of forum posts I've seen on the subject, it seems to have annoyed quite a few people and this default behaviour won't be changing any time soon.

But help is at hand. If you want to change this setting, open up the config pane by entering the following in the address bar:

about:config

You'll then see a page of options in techno-speak. Search for one titled 'browser.backspace_action', and the value will be set to 1. Modify the value accordingly by setting it to 0.

You will then be returned to the world of normal backspace action on Firefox.

ViaAqua and freelance IT work

ViaAqua is the name of a health club here in Montevideo. Since Alessandra (my girlfriend) is already a member, I was able to join as an invited guest. The only problem is that it is for 3 consecutive days! My arms have already started hurting with phantom pain.

My attempts at using the pool for swimming (what a novel concept) were thwarted by an army of rather enthusiastic people doing what appeared to be exercises in the water. I was soon joined by Ale, but after 20 minutes I became bored swimming on my own and decided to join in. It was actually quite good fun although slightly effeminate. That didn't seem to bother the Montevidean men though, which worries me slightly ;-)

Returned home to gather my stuff, then on to Nacho's where we discussed the possibility of freelance IT work via the internet. I hadn't given it much thought before but it's certainly worth further investigation.

JG

A cacophony of noise

Noisy bleeders.

That's all I can say when summarising the population of Montevideo. Every weekend, we seem to attract scores of young delinquents drinking alcohol and sitting right opposite our flat on a low wall. Since it's normally quiet round here, their vocal chorus of pisshead songs at 4am doesn't go down too well with Alessandra. Nor me for that matter.

Apparently the police are as useful as trying to wipe your bum on a car bonnet so it's almost anarchy. I've hatched a plan for next Saturday when I intend to mix some honey with chilli powder, plaster it all over the wall - and then sit back and enjoy the results. I probably won't though since the plan is still in my head but hey ho - always nice to think what you'd like to do eh?

Another Spanglish lesson today with reflexive verbs and pronouns. What joy!

Plus a visit to la dentista to sort my gnashers out.

JG

Job possibility

Looks like there's a requirement for a Linux server administrator somewhere in MontyVid. AND they require someone with fluid English although whether or not I fit the bill remains to be seen. Not sure what the money is like compared to the UK, plus my strengths lie elsewhere in the UNIX world.

We'll be meeting up with Maria-Jose Naya later who is a close friend of Ale to get all the details.

I'll probably catch up with Luis her brother as well, to go through syncing his mobile with his PC. All pretty straightforward stuff I think.

Sunday bimbling...

Finally I received my long-awaited packages from the UK containing several useful bits of PC kit. Namely USB IDE/SATA cables and the USB connection for my iRiver HDD MP3 player.

Woke up early after having shall we say a discussion with our cloven-hoofed neighbours last night, who live above us on the fifth floor. Let's just say they seemed to understand my rather terse comment.

I managed to arrange for a card to be given to my niece Esmé today via Mum, as it was her birthday. Seems strange not being able to celebrate these things as I always used to be able to do when in the UK.

Started watching "The Italian Job" (the proper version and not the pale imitation) after finally sorting out the TVersity server on my laptop. This awfully clever software allows a PC/laptop to be able to stream stuff wirelessly to my PlayStation3. The people that created it have been rewarded for their efforts. It also streams MP3 audio plus lets you view digital camera photos on the big screen. I can't rate it highly enough.

Going to check out a 40" LCD later down at Montevideo Shopping. It's incredible how much money they want for electronic goods in Uruguay and it will roughly cost me double the amount I'd be paying in the UK. Sadly, my quality LG 37" was sold before my departure to Kate, a longtime friend. She seems to be very happy with it - no wonder ;-)

JG

Birthday for Nacho Garino

It was Nacho's birthday yesterday so we spent the evening celebrating at their house.

Nacho is married to Magela, who is Ale's sister.

Missed out as usual on watching Match of the Day live, which only recently went live on the BBC Sport website. With the wonders of modern internet technology, and of course a rather helpful proxy set up in London by my good friend Jodie - we are now able to watch feeds previously blocked by the BBC based on my IP address.

Respect to you Jodie my man!

Casamiento

Just returned from a Uruguyan wedding, held at the Yacht Club in Montevideo. Very pleasant it was too, although my Spanglish was called into question on more than one occasion ;-)

PC support

Hello everyone. I've eventually got round to doing something with my domain at johnnyboy.cc since I've moved to Montevideo in Uruguay. I arrived just over a month ago and things are settling down now.

Having worked in the IT field since 1988, I have over 20 years experience with computers, PCs, servers and mainframes.

I'm able to provide PC support, either remotely to UK clients or locally in Uruguay.

So whatever your problem, then send me an email to the following address: pcsupport@johnnyboy.cc and I'll deal with your enquiry on receipt.