Fig.1. RAM Card, 2GB DDR2 800MHz. You should avoid touching the gold connectors.

RAM that is faulty will occasionally cause your system to reboot. To correct this problem the RAM must be replaced.

Now, if you’ve got this far then you you know that my system occasionally reboots without warning. You know that I have established that malware is not to blame. No known driver issues and I’ve even made peace with the fact that my RAM failed me.

In Fig.1 at right is a top and bottom view of the replacement RAM card, 2GB DDR2 rated at 800MHz. You should take care not to touch the gold connectors, and rather handle the card by it’s short edges. For the replacement RAM I went to a local supplier here in Hermanus. You can find them online here.

Juan-Pierre of Matrix Wharehouse says: “It’s a 2GB DDR2 PC6400 RAM module that runs at an effective speed of 800Mhz. The actual speed of the memory is 400Mhz, but because it is DDR RAM, it is doubled as the transfer rate is doubled as well. Also, you will get a higher transfer rate if you connect two of the same memory modules, therefore giving you dual channel transfer speeds.”

Continue reading ‘RAM How To Boot Test Diagnose and Replace It — Part-2’ »

Fig.1 Dual boot Windows / Ubuntu + Memtest 86

Random and without warning are four words that you do not want to hear used with computing terms like “shutdown” and particularly and ironically not together with the words “Random Access Memory” or RAM.

Just recently my computer has started occasionally rebooting spontaneously without perceivable cause. My motivation for fixing this problem is based on Van Haelen’s 3rd proposition, which, as you are no doubt aware, is based on premise that this reboot will happen right before you have saved your work and right after you have entered some critically important data, which will now be gone. The well known rider to this proposition is that the random reboot will never happen when you are playing Spider Solitaire or similar. Here’s my experience with diagnosing the problem and replacing the faulty RAM. Continue reading ‘RAM How To Boot Test Diagnose and Replace It’ »

Make SEO magic with this great plugin

As a relative newbie to the blogosphere my skills level is moderate at best. So imagine my delight at coming across Copy Compass. With the help of this truly excellent WordPress plugin, my skills at SEO or Search Engine Optimisation are elevated to expert level, literally all at the click of a button. If this sounds too good to be true, read on!

Anyone that’s serious about blogging will know that SEO is absolutely critical to the success of any blog. Making your content “search engine friendly” is an important step to getting those page rankings up and increasing the traffic to your site. Trouble is, SEO is pretty complicated stuff. It requires a steep learning curve to master the finer points of Meta data, keyword density and reading-ease-of-content, just three of the dozen or so aspects that you need to have a handle on. Enter Copy Compass, a Content Analysis tool for WordPress that will do the SEO heavy lifting for you at the click of a button.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I thought it might be useful to summarise my  experience with this tool for you. That will help you to evaluate Continue reading ‘Make SEO Magic With Copy Compass WordPress Plugin’ »

Dancho Danchev has disappeared in Bulgaria

Last September a well known independant Cyber Security Researcher, Dancho Danchev, disappeared while working on an assignment in his home country, Bulgaria. According to this report yesterday, by ZNet’s Ryan Naraine, they have been trying to reach him since August last year without success, and they now fear for his safety.

In another report yesterday, Kim Zetter of Wired.com’s Threat Level, says that Danchev may have fallen foul of the East European cyber-criminal  groups that he has been bent on exposing. Danchev has been missing since  at least September. It was around this time that he apparently sent a letter “as insurance” to a friend to the effect that  his apartment was being bugged by Bulgarian agents. The letter included photos of what he thought was a bugging device that he found in his apartment. Says Kim:

“His last blog entry was a compilation of his research into the cyberjihad activity of terrorist groups. He was also particularly focused on monitoring the group believed to be behind the Koobface worm, which targets users of Facebook and other social networking sites.”

Continue reading ‘Dancho Danchev Top Cyber Security Researcher Disappears’ »