John P.

One Man’s Blog

Specialization is for Insects.

windows-386-promo-videoLook, any time you’ve got a character in an advertisement named T-Bone it’s an indicator of things to come. But after the first 7 minutes of brutally bad acting and terrible story line the good news is that you are treated to a horrible rap song about Windows 386!

Seriously. If you can sit through this entire 12 minute promotional video without your head exploding I’ll be very impressed. It’s just sooo bad. I only finished it myself as an experiment to make sure I wouldn’t kill any of you by actually exposing you to this crap.
Read the rest of this entry »

Virtual Machines on a WorkstationHave you ever had a computer for a long time and then wanted or needed to move all your data to a new one? Or, have you ever had to reinstall Windows just because you’ve loaded so many programs that it’s caused your computer to crash so often that you’re willing to start over? Well, what would you say if I told you it is possible to take a “snapshot” of your entire computer and move or copy the data to another machine in minutes so you can continue right where you left off.

Well you can, and it’s not something that is “coming soon”, it’s here today and has been here for at least a couple of years. The technology is called Virtualization, and there are several software vendors who provide the capability to allow you to do this on any operating system - Mac, Linux, or PC.

Before you ask me “why would I want to virtualize my computer”, let me share a few reasons:

  • Portable workspaces - virtualization allows you to move your entire digital workspace from one physical machine to another. You can even use an iPod or USB memory sticks to host a virtual machine!
  • Testing and training - rather than loading all kinds of unknown software into your normal computing environment, you can have a virtual machine just for testing. Heck, you could have one for games, one for personal computing, and one for work!
  • Disaster recovery - if you always keep a recent backup of your virtual machine, say… on a portable USB hard drive, even if your computer dies you’ll be able to pick back up exactly where you left off without having to reinstall everything.
  • Consolidation - Virtual machines are used to consolidate many physical servers into fewer servers, which in turn host virtual machines. Each physical server is reflected as a virtual machine “guest” residing on a virtual machine host system. This is also known as Physical-to-Virtual or ‘P2V’ transformation.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Threat of Free Public WiFi

Folks, I was at the airport and I popped open my laptop to hop on the net and upon doing so I encountered a seriously sneaky bastard. Do you see anything wrong with the image below?

Free Public WiFi Threat

Well, hopefully you notice the little icon of a laptop beside the network entitled “Free Public WiFi”. This is NOT a free wireless access point, but instead a laptop computer that someone has configured to capture your personal data and rob you blind.
Read the rest of this entry »

Sprint PPC-6700 - The Ultimate Phone

Sprint PPC-6700There aren’t that many phones that inspire such a loyal following that an entire discussion forum gets dedicated to them. But the PPC-6700 is one such phone. The PPC6700 Users Forum is overflowing with information on hacking, using and generally getting the most out of this all-in-one Phone / PDA.

I’ve had a string of combo devices including the Treo 600 & 650, but nothing has ever come close to the usefulness of the PPC6700. Here are a few examples of how I use my phone on a day to day basis:
Read the rest of this entry »


I use the "No Adverts for Friends" plugin by Donncha O Caoimh