Dave's Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

In many office environments today it is common for mid and upper level employees to have their own corporate laptop that they carry with them everywhere they go and attach it to a dock station either at their desk at work or at home, which allows quick connection of the laptop to a traditional keyboard, mouse and monitor.  With the advances in CPU technology as of late and predictions of many new smart phones this year being equiped with quad-core processors, it has gotten some who use such laptops in office environments wondering if they still need to carry big old clunky laptops around just for the sake of processing power.  Well if you are such a person you’ll be in for a treat this year as the smart phone as we know it today is about to make many laptops obsolete.

Canonical has just announced their intentions of releasing Ubuntu for mobile smart phones this year, targeting business as well as consumer markets and allowing many current Android phone users the ability to install Ubuntu on their phone as an alternative in the coming months for free.  Quad-core processing power in smart phones seen this year will  approach the kind of processing speed you normally see on entry to moderate level PCs today (think Intel i3), which is more than necessary for a lot that people do on their desktop or on their phone for that matter.  The mobile version of the Ubuntu OS will be available for many Android users for free in the coming months and for those with the latest and greatest phones to hit market they’ll be able to use the phone as a complete desktop replacement via a dock much in the same way many laptops currently do.  It’s very exciting news!  I’m not going to ramble on here about how or why this is going to happen as head of Canonical Mark Shuttleworth has already done so in this proposal video where he speaks about the immediate goals for Ubuntu.

For those of you who don’t know, Steam is an online game store and distribution platform that is a product of a gaming developer called Valve.  Valve has been know for creating several very popular gaming franchises such as the Half Life series, Left 4 Dead, Portal and Team Fortress among a couple of others.  Steam is their online store/software client that gives consumers ability to purchase and install over 1,500 games from other developers alongside their own games.  The key features of Steam are ease of use and the ability to keep games you’ve purchased linked with your user account, so games you’ve bought are yours forever and will carry along with your User ID for years and years without any need to keep track of installation CDs or key codes to install the game, not to mention automatically download and install updates for every game you have automatically and cloud sync save-game data between different computers (if supported by the game itself, and many games do). Oh, and they have a tendency to throw incredible sales campaigns from time to time that will net you some of the most popular games on the market for next to nothing.

Recently, Valve made an announcement that it will be porting Steam to Linux (with official support for Ubuntu Linux in particular) and is entering the Beta Testing phase as I write this.  This has a lot of buzz going on in the Linux community of course and there is a lot of speculation about why Valve is deciding to do this.  After all, there are a lot of software development companies out there right now with major product lines (games and productivity software) that could have ported their products over to Linux (or even Mac for that matter) but very often decide against doing so because in most cases it wouldn’t be worth the effort.  Linux is the third most popular operating system in the world and it’s a far distant third at that.  Putting money towards developing native ports of their complex programs probably wouldn’t pay off because the user base (and the number of paying customers in those markets) is small, introducing risk with doing something like deciding to invest in Linux as an officially supported platform.

In a likeness to the way Steam works, Microsoft’s Windows 8 is going to have its own integrated “app store” built into the OS, just like an app store is on any smart phone or iMac (or Ubuntu, for that matter).  However, I don’t think it will necessarily prove to be something that will lure  current Steam users away. In the future there might be a group of new users who associate such an app store as being the best place to shop for things like games and other software and come to believe that competing app-stores (if they’re even aware of them) are inferior, but I don’t think that is Valve’s primary concern.  Sure, it will be great to see Ubuntu (and other Linux distributions) having Steam running naively and for its games to outperform Windows-based systems (which has already been demonstrated by Valve in benchmark tests when comparing the two OSs), but I don’t think Valve is looking to diversify Steam on to Linux simply because they think more people are going to outright switch over to Ubuntu on their PCs because they’re looking for an alternative to Windows 8 or because users are looking for a small boost in performance.  There are a lot of benefits to using Linux instead of Windows, like not having to worry about getting a virus on your system or a majority of the software being completely free (because it’s open source).  While all of that is attractive I have another theory that goes beyond users simply adopting Linux, one that has very little to do with Linux on the surface.

It’s only a rumor at this point (one that’s been floating around since March this year) but I believe Valve’s ultimate goal is to use Ubuntu as the basis for a new console system, similar to the Xbox, Nintendo Wii and Playstation, one that uses Linux as a transparent foundation where most people aren’t even aware of it’s presence.  Right now the beta testing is to simply get things up and running stable on PC hardware and demonstrate a proof-of-concept to prospective developers who might consider following their footsteps and start developing future titles with Linux in mind.  Once their flagship games have been ported over they may soon after decide to release their very own “Steambox” console, a multimedia systems that will dominate the living room entertainment center as we know it.  It will basically take all the best things about the PlayStation 3 and improve upon it, becoming a console system that isn’t just for gaming but a comprehensive entertainment system with features like access to on-demand video (Hulu, Netflix, etc.), the ability to DVR live television, the ability to browse the web with browsers like Firefox, run thousands of applications for word processing,  video editing, sync with your phone and really anything else the user might want to do; anything that Linux is already capable of or will be capable of in the near future (and it’s already got QUITE a lot to offer right out of the box, all completely for free).

I own a PS3 and a Nintendo Wii.  I barely use the Wii at all (it is, granted, dated hardware) but I have been very pleased and frankly surprised by how relevant my PS3 has remained, considering that the first model hit store shelves 6 years ago and it’s still a thriving platform.  You can watch Netflix on it in HD with surround sound, play Blu-Ray, play videos from your computer over the network, insert USB sticks and access the media on that, browse the web (sorta; the browser is atrocious) and you can purchase some games from their own PlayStation Store online and download them to the system from the comfort of your couch.  The only thing you can’t really do with it is… well, just about anything else.  You couldn’t install, say, Microsoft Word or Open Office, you can’t install Skype, you can’t install a LOT of things, primarily because the operating system that the PS3 runs is closed source and developers would have to spend money and time to create custom ports of their software for it.  The same goes for the Wii.  The next Xbox, however, is very likely going to have Windows 8 on it and will support Windows-based programs being installed on it (probably), but it’s yet to be seen if Windows 8 itself is going to catch on and whether or not people will enjoy using it in the first place; it’s interface borders on being “completely alien” to most users new and old and it has an uncomfortable learning curve.  Then again, it’s yet to be seen what kind of interface might be seen on a Steambox (it certainly wouldn’t have to be the default Unity interface that Ubuntu uses by default, but there’s no reasons it couldn’t be if you wanted it to be and that’s just one of the great things about the idea of a Linux-powered console).

Best of all, Linux is an open-source platform, which doesn’t usually mean much to the average consumer but does mean quite a lot to software developers/programmers.  At this point it feels similar to the speculation that was around with the Android Linux operating system was first released by Google for smartphones a few years back.  Nobody was sure if it was really going to be able to catch up to the innovative iPhone back then.  Yet here we are now, just a few short years later, and the iPhone is now actually being out-sold by Android phones and all the while perhaps 95% of Android users didn’t even know their phone is actually running Linux.

Above is a photo of the latest addition of MIDI controllers I use to write music.  This one in particular is designed specifically for a program called Ableton Live, which I really haven’t used before; I’ve never made anything with it, but I have played with it just a little.  You ever wonder what people like Skrillex or Phutureprimitive are doing on stage at a concert?  On the surface what a controller like this basically boils down to is a sound board.  Sound boards are basically buttons with clips of audio loaded into them that play when you press their button, however the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper then that.

The purpose of a controller (and Ableton for that matter, as it’s the brains behind this operation) is to facilitate a DJ the ability to play multi-tracked music live and allow them to change how all the parts fit together on-the-fly.  So, he’s not the kind of DJ that just has two vinyl record playing with a cross-fader between (aka, “the guy on stage with nothing but a couple of iPods”) but a DJ who has two separate A/B groups of dozens of record players dedicated to individual parts that play when triggered, with their own effects inserted that are also controllable.  Well… I’ve decided to join the party.  Ableton is actually a pretty cool piece of software that I’ve never given a fair shake, primarily because it’s strength requires a proper controller to exploit and I’ve not had one till now.  So far I’ve primarily been using Propellerhead Reason (and I still love the hell out of it).

So sometime soon I’m planning on putting on my own live shows!  Songs old, new and yet to be written will be diced up and rejuvenated with surprise and magic!  But in the mean time, there’s always my soundcloud feed.  Hope to see you soon!

Above is a photo of part of the motherboard of a laptop a client of mine brought to me a few days ago, an ASUS X54C laptop.  It’s not to be confused with a small netbook or anything made by Acer.  In fact this laptop comes standard with a 15.6 inch display, USB 3x ports, Blu-Ray player, and either an Intel Core 2 Duo or an i3 processor.  So in other-words this isn’t supposed to be some light weight, disposable toy judging by the hardware specs.

Now to the problem at hand, the first of its kind that I’ve encountered in the wild.  Now, I’m certainly not THE first person to encounter this in the wild but I’m nowhere near the last.  The 4 black chips you see in the photo above are 4 Gigabytes worth of RAM that were built into the motherboard itself and cannot be removed.  Tragically, the RAM in this particular laptop was defective and unfortunately can’t be simply replaced.  It’s like a car with the spark plugs welded into the engine block on a car.  They go bad, you can’t just buy new spark plugs; you’ve got to buy a whole new f***ing  engine!

Traditionally laptops are built with expansion slots for RAM to be seated in and will come with one or both slots occupied by sticks of RAM that look like this:

Often these sticks are very easy to access and replace with upgrades by removing a hatch door on the bottom of the laptop.  RAM itself is relatively inexpensive so had the RAM on this laptop not been built into the motherboard it would have been a simple matter of replacing the bad RAM with good RAM and about 5 minutes of actual labor performing the replacement; a relatively cheap repair that would have been worth the time and money.

What ASUS has done here is effectively designed a laptop that was not only built with defective RAM but you could also argue that they built a defective motherboard, too.  After all, the only way to replace the faulty RAM is to replace the motherboard and if the laptop is no longer covered by a warranty it would border on being cheaper to just go buy a whole new laptop, especially when you discover just how difficult it is to find parts for ASUS products anywhere online, including from ASUS themselves.  They don’t sell parts for their products online AT ALL.

Now in a attempt to defend ASUS, they probably did this to save money; those greedy bastards.  By building a laptop that didn’t require an assembly line worker to stand in front of a conveyor slotting memory sticks in all day, they’ve saved themselves perhaps 25 cents per laptop, and that can add up if you’re moving 100,000 units.  However, I would have to say that while saving a few cents on thousands of units might look good on paper it doesn’t necessarily make it a smart idea.  I don’t have a problem with hardware being integrated together in a smaller form factor, like an iPad or a smart phone but c’mon ASUS, this is a 15″ laptop.  You have the space to spare and, trust me, the owner would have been more than willing to spend a tiny amount more in the price tag to pay for you to have made this thing like a proper laptop.

Other brands such as Dell and HP have been known to do this with some of their products, but typically only smaller devices such as a 10″ inch netbook which are priced to be disposable, unlike Apples’ next  ~$2,200 Macbook Air which has been dubbed by iFixit.com as “the least repairable laptop [ever]“ for having not just non-removable RAM but also batteries that are glued to the inside of the case, proprietary hard drives that can’t be upgraded, a display panel that is inside a completely fused assembly so if you crack the screen you’ll have to replace the bezel and display.  Also,  if you ever were to find a reason to open one up you’ll need a proprietary screwdriver to do it.  I still can’t believe people are willing to pay more money to get a computer that will be more vulnerable to obsolescence than any other laptop out there, including this damned ASUS I started on about above.

The moral of the story is that you should avoid buying a laptop made by anybody that was built with on-board, non-removable RAM on the motherboard because that just multiplies the points of failure and the amount of money and energy you might have to spend down the road to fix it if something goes wrong.

I’ve been hearing more and more stories from clients I have worked for and from other techs who do what I do for a living.  People are getting phone calls from a call center filled with employees that only have East Indian accents (for now) claiming to work for Microsoft/your ISP/some company you’ve never heard of/etc. telling you that your computer is infected with a virus and that they would like to help you remove it… for $130 or so, or whatever they charge your card if you actually give it up to them.

However, it is often a scam that is based upon social engineering.  Social Engineering is a term used to describe the act of manipulating a person into believing you’re not a con-artist, or something like that.  Someone calls you out of the blue telling you that your computer is infected, that they’ve been receiving “signals” or whatever  from your computer that indicate you are infected with a virus.  They tell you they work for someone like Microsoft and their tone of voice is rather urgent and often outright rude.  They’ll tell you to do things to your computer that you likely never do on a regular basis, like press the Windows button + R (which brings up the run menu) and type some command into your computer, all of this in the hopes of convincing you that they are who they claim to be.  I’ve never called a psychic on the phone before… but if they were to call me out of the blue and use their “cold reading” skills to try to trick me into thinking I had a virus on my computer, talked me into putting a virus on my computer and/or simply insist that give them my credit card number to see me through some false peril… well that’s what you’ve got here.

If you get a phone call from anybody claiming to be from “tech support” or Microsoft or any handful of other places/companies, be on your guard.  It’s right along the lines of getting an email “from your bank” asking you to reply with your social security number, account number and passcodes to confirm your identity or something fishy like that.  Better yet, if you are already certain your computer is just fine and have a little experience with the computer, flat out waste their time for your own entertainment (if you have the time to spare).  You don’t even have to be at your computer.  Tell them to “hang on” and put the phone down for a few minutes; make some coffee or a sandwich.  When they’re talking interrupt and say you didn’t understand them, then put the phone down again.  Maybe you have a Macintosh or run Linux; would’t that be ironic.  Use your imagination, or just hang up.  In any case, be aware that there are scam artists out there calling random number trying to find someone who will fall for their manipulations.

Since the days of being a young toddler music has played a big role in my life.  I grew up with a piano in the house, tried and hated taking lessons, very occasionally would mess around with audio editing software and record little things with a cheap radio shack microphone but I didn’t really sit down and start to take recording music seriously until about the later half of 2009 when I was living in Iraq as a civilian contractor.  The isolation and limited Internet access made it easier to concentrate on other hobbies.  So I started messing around with Propellerhead Reason with the determination to learn how to use it.  I bought and shipped myself an Axiom 25 keyboard and began work on songs that would later become Highway of Heroes and Magic Show.  I’ve done what I can to keep the ball rolling, slowly but surely.

It didn’t take very long to get the hang of how things worked and for all of 2010 I continued to study tutorial videos, books, watched interviews with experienced engineers who talked about tricks they pull in the studio and I’ve come to feel pretty comfortable with understanding the fundamentals.  The basics involve common types of sound equipment and tools used in studio production; stuff like controlling dynamics with compression (as well as knowing when and how to use side-chain or parallel compression), EQ, building complex effects from scratch, tweaking synth presets to reshape the sound to something specific, use of things like arps, CV splitters, sequencers and so on.  Reason and the official tutorial videos on YouTube served as a great platform for learning.  A year after returning home and working on all this stuff something happened that I did not expect.

Early in 2011 a favorite band of mine (Younger Brother) decided to release a new album of theirs on a site called PledgeMusic.  The way it usually works is a band will create a fund drive to raise a certain amount of money to pay for the production of their next release (a portion of which goes to a charity) by selling things like limited edition lyric sheets, signed copies of the album, VIP passes to any show you could make it to, extremely limited lithograph prints signed by the photographer (in this case Storm Thorgerson, best known for his Pink Floyd cover art) and, not lastly, a few seats to participate in a studio workshop with the primary members of the band, Simon Posford and Benji Vaughan who may be better known for their own solo projects Shpongle and Prometheus, respectively.

The workshops were set to take place in London at an unspecified time in the future, and given the number of seats originally made available, the sessions were meant to occur over a string of days (which ended up being scattered widely over the next year).  Apparently they overbooked themselves and with a lot of touring coming for Simon and Benji, some sessions had to be postponed indefinably.  I slightly regretted telling them “the later the better” when asked when I’d be available to go on such a trip.  A whole year went by until they checked back with me and asked if I would be available in early March this year.  You bet I was. 

I left on a Thursday afternoon at about 2 p.m., arriving in Detroit and departing at about 7:40 p.m..  When I arrived in London it was about 8:15 a.m. local time and I snapped this picture just before we landed in some very thick fog:

Unfortunately I barely managed to get more than 20 or 30 minutes of cumulative sleep on the way.  By the time I transited the subway station from Heathrow to Blackhorse Road station and then walked about 8 blocks to the house I was staying in it was about 11 a.m. local time, and I was starting to feel some severe jet lag.  Every time I took a step it felt like the ground was bouncing under me.  I couldn’t remain awake any longer.

I stayed in a spare room provided by a couple named Jess and Luke, who among many others offer their rooms for rent at a website called airbnb.com.  Anybody can use the site to offer up (or find) a place to stay for tourists and it was perfect for me; far far better than the idea of staying in a hostle with a bunch of strangers sharing a dorm filled with bunk beds and one shower or something.

I woke up that evening at about 8 p.m. and really didn’t have much choice when it came to doing any site seeing because it was already dark.  After getting some frozen pizzas at a grocery store that seemed to be less than a block away as well as some Jim Beam whiskey for good measure, I sat down trying to decide if I wanted to go out late anyway just to try and see something, anything.  After a lot of indecision I decided to try and trek my way back south west and see if I could make it to the Westminister station and see Big Ben at night, before the tube stations closed.  I barely made it in time to snap a few pictures and turn right back around to head back to where I came from.

While standing there I ironically used my watch to check the time…

When I got back to the station I started at, the train I got off of just happened to arrive at the same time the last one was departing.  That was a close one.

With my sleep schedule royally messed up I couldn’t get back to bed, no matter how much Jim Beam or pizza I consumed.  I slept in until noon the next day.  I learned that the primary subway line I was planning to use that weekend was going to be shut down for maintenance the entire time.  The TFL website suggested I take a bus from the shut down station about half a mile to another train station, but that was because I searched for a route starting there, instead of where I was staying at.  Had I put in the actual address I would have discovered there was a train station not more than 3 minutes walk from where I was… A big waste of time to kick the day off but I eventually made it to the famous Portobello market, had breakfast at about 4:30 in the afternoon (a sirloin steak, which was unremarkable by this Kansas boys’ standards) picked up a few souveniors, and then made it to the London Eye.

And from up on top of this thing, I managed to snap some very cool pictures, like this one of the Waterloo train station…

I took several others but there really isn’t any room in here for them.  The end of the night involved me going to the wrong address trying to find a night club called The Fabric.  The city guide app I was using on my phone to get around had the wrong address cached, so I had to ask directions at a small pub.  In retrospect I wish I had just stayed at the pub.  Long story short, there was a fair number of very creepy people wandering the streets surrounding that club and by the time I found the place it was almost time to start trying to find my way back home for the night.  The subway route I attempted to take to get home  was partially down for construction and I had go back to where I started to take a very long way around to find my way back home.  Again, I wish I had known about the train stations that aren’t on the standard tube maps.  If you ever go to London, use this map.

The next day I woke up extra early because I had a bad dream that I had actually managed to sleep in until 3 PM, which would have meant I had completely missed the studio workshop.  I got up, had a traditional english breakfast with Luke and Jill where they made me some toast with marmite on it (which I thought was great) a boiled egg and some cereal, juice and coffee.  By 10:30 I was ready to start making my way from the quiet Walthamstow residence and into Ladbroke Grove, giving a beggar some spare change along the way before finally arriving at the Saga Centre and met by Benji Vaughan.

He showed us up to a room on the second floor which was quite small but equipped with all the necessities, including a sound proof booth with a mic inside.  We (another gentleman from Norway had, like me, purchased a seat and it was the two of us attending the session today) were given a quick overview of all the outboard equipment Benji had his iMac attached to.

Simon appeared a few minutes later and by that time we had already decided that what we were going to spend our time that day remixing a Younger Brother song (Crystalline) for a yet to be released album.  It was either that or try to write a song from scratch and according to Benji the last sessions that opted to go that route kinda went south, so it was nice to know that what we were going to be working on was something that actually needed to be made.

We started off by muting a lot of the original tracks to make space for some new ones.  The first thing Benji did was come up with a new drum beat using his new Maschine, which was kind of difficult to do without making it sound exactly the same as the original beat that we had muted.  To give it some variety a kind of hollow reverb was applied to the snare and the tone of the reverb itself would slide upward and reset every two measures; just one of many subtle touches that give an electronic atmosphere to the track.

Simon decided to pull out a bass guitar, which proved to be a bit of a crap instrument.  If you had your open string tuned correctly but then played the same string on the 12th fret or something it would become slightly flat.  But that was fixed later by using the Grammy winning software plugin Melodyne, which was one of the most incredible tools I’d ever seen.  We recalled first seeing a video for it years ago; I told them that when  I first saw it I thought it looked like a concept pitch to potential investors.  Turns out that today it’s quite real and quite awesome!

While recording the bass guitar the sound card crashed partially and recorded the bass as more like a robotic, extremely distorted mess.  We decided to KEEP this awful sound and try to turn it into something cool with Melodyne.  Then we sent that tuned, slightly cleaned up noise through some effects, and they had a LOT to choose from.  I couldn’t remember every one we played with but I did remember using Effectrix, Buffer Override, Buffeater, Automaton and an assortment of effects by Universial Audio.  A lesson learned while messing around with all this stuff was that it’s important to just mess around for the fuck of it.  We never knew entirely what to expect when playing around with these kinds of effects and it just went on to demonstrate how you can have happy accidents if you just stop thinking about the song itself and just have a go at it.

A lot of the sounds that end up in any given track of theirs start off outside the computer, such as from an analog synth like the classic OSCar in the lower right.  Benji played a little melody into Logic which would push MIDI data back out to the synth which then allowed him to go to the mixer and start a feedback loop between the console and his Eventide Harmonizer, which was set up to create a reverb or ping pong echo or something.  (Speaking of Eventide, the fellow from Norway reminded us that there’s a shot of an Eventide Harmonizer in the movie Contact and Simon went on to point out that Eventide gets a lot of their dollars by selling specialized sound processors to the US military; quite a weird company).  It’s a simple effect Simon demonstrates in this video.  You can get a lot of weird stuff to come out a setup like that by very carefully feeding sound back onto itself while looping through an effects processor of some kind.  One of a few ways in Reason that this can be achieved using the new Echo rack device and using a high percentage of feedback while playing with the frequency and resonance knobs (you can hear me do this to a bit of flute in the my track Chill Grill).

Simon often helped break dull moments by sharing videos he recorded on his iPhone.  What does Simon Posford like to record with his phone you ask?  Well in this case, his television screen when he was watching the original Batman and Robin series the previous night at home, which if you’ve not seen Batman in a good thirty years or more you don’t know what you’re missing.  That show is over the top hilarious from time to time.  He liked it so much he decided to hook his phone up to the mixer and sample an audio clip from the show into the remix.  Hard to say what will stay in the final mix but I wouldn’t be surprised if Robin exclaiming “Holy Hi-Fi!” manages to stay in.  They joked about telling Ruu Campbell (the vocalist, who wasn’t present) that the remix wouldn’t contain any of his original vocals and that instead the song was now Batman based, saying he would be shocked if told that.

I also got to sneak peak a few very cool things, such as a new unreleased Shpongle track (it was quite good), what the “Shpongletron 2.0″ stage is going to look like, and the Younger Brother Vaccine sketchbook which fans have been waiting on for a long, long time.  It is very beautifully laid out and features information about all the audio equipment used in the making of the album, the making of the cover art (which involved throwing tennis balls at Ru to get him to flinch and cover his face), photos from the recording sessions, a picture from Simons backyard in the middle of winter, a picture of Benji and a gypsy working in the studio; it all looked great!  Benji is going to try and get an interactive digital version of the book published online for download.  They also told me what little they knew about Twisted Records newly signed artist In:terlaken, which was almost next to nothing at all.  They’ve never met him.  All they know is he’s a perky young buck from Switzerland whose father would of preferred seeing him grow up to become a watch maker.

Day turned into night and the light rain never ceased.  What was originally supposed to be a session that was to last 5 hours went on for 7 and a half hours.  Most of the time was spent experimenting with plugins, recording different sounds, composting, eating a sandwich Simon shared with me, smoking hand rolled cigarettes and otherwise trying our best to come up with ideas for stuff to put into the remix.  Coming at this with a background in Propellerhead Reason most of the hardware we were using weren’t particularly interesting to me, save for the synths themselves; they have a uniquely beautiful quality in their sound and it was nice to have something like that you could just reach over to and grab a knob and start tweaking.  But I think the thing I most appreciated seeing were the VST plugins.  Being a Reason user, I’d never touched or really had the ability to use VSTs before, but since my return I figured out how to do it with the help of Ableton Live and Rewire and look forward to experimenting with them more while actually using this as an opportunity to become more familiar with Ableton.

Like I said before, I think the best thing I got from the session besides exposure to a lot of cool VST plugins was the message that it’s best to walk into a studio with nothing in particular in mind and just start banging on stuff randomly and accept the fact that you’ll probably produce a lot of rubbish, because rubbish is still a lot better than nothing at all.  Also, it’s best to not to over think things or try to plan out a concept for a track in advance or else you’ll likely set yourself up for failure.  This coming from a couple dudes who insist they have no idea what they’re doing.  Cheers!

Imagine you had a computer small enough to fit in your pocket but had the ability to plug it into a computer monitor or HDTV?  Very soon you’ll be able to do just that.  Check this video out to see what I’m talking about.  All he does is take his phone which is running Ubuntu Linux and places it in a dock that’s connected to a LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse.  And like that, he’s got a fully functioning “desktop” PC running right from his phone.  Very cool.

Heads up Norton users!  A headline hit the news last night about the confirmed leak of source code for the popular Norton Antivirus software by Symantec.  You can read the articles for yourself here and here.

For those who aren’t tech savvy, the word “source code” refers to the so-to-speak “recipe” for the development/creation of a program.  It is literally the instructions that are more or less written by computer programmers.  This kind of information is proprietary and is often a trade secret, much like the coveted ingredients list for Coca Cola or my moms apple pie.  If one were able to obtain such information, say a competator or the creators of compuer viruses, one might use this information to one-up the software or, more importantly, exploit design flaws to circumvent the software.  In short this means it is quite likely there will be a new breed of viruses on the horizon that will be capable of outsmarting Norton, rendering it useless and crippled.

Symantec has been trying to downplay the severity of this breach by stressing the age of the code, stating that the origin is a version of their software that dates back to 2006, or so we’ve been told thus far.  This is an attempt to defuse the concern by implying that their latest software is far different at its core and that there won’t be very much that is useful to virus writers because they still don’t have their hands on the latest blueprints.  But the reality of the situation is far less peachy than they would like to paint it.  In the world of computer programming software and even entire operating systems will retain a fair chunk of old code from previous versions simply because, well, it’s already been written and if it “works” then there’s little need to rewrite it from scratch.  I’m not saying source code is never rewritten, revised or updated from time to time, but when it comes to large programs such as Norton Antivirus that’s made up of tens of thousands of lines of code it could easily be argued that there is likely a good percentage of old code that has been retained for years without ever being modified.  It would be like having a castle or fortress that is under continuous construction and maintenance.  You can’t afford to tear the whole thing down every year and rebuild it from scratch, so instead what you do is build around and upon the existing structure and make repairs to the parts that need repairing the most.  This means that likely most of the fundamental structure is retained and knowledge of the construction of such a structure could be used by an enemy to find a previously unnoticed vulnerability.

In the interest of full disclosure I will have to admit that Norton hasn’t been on my list of recommended software since the late 90s when it was practically the only anti-virus software available.  It’s early bird status was followed by years of successful marketing and advertising, which lead to its continuous wide spread recognition of the software/brand name, giving the impression to novice computer users that Norton really is the best thing out there.  ”How could it not be good when its so popular?” they might ask themselves.

I am here to tell you that the number one problem I fix for people in this line of work is virus removal and far too often I see systems that are running Norton that have become utterly trashed by multiple viruses while Norton gives inaccurate scan results, claiming the system is clean and virus free.  This is particularly irksome to me because when you consider the wide spread saturation of their software along with the monetary cost to the users for the renewal every year you would have to expect the company to use their position and resources to everyones benefit.  Despite its wide spread usage and price tag it fails to survey new viruses and develop new definitions for capturing and stopping them in an effective manner and so many users never seem to get their moneys worth.  I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and accept the fact that there is no such thing as a “perfect” antivirus software, but you should expect to be given better treatment and results if you’re paying upwards of $70 a year for protection, especially when there are free alternatives out there that have been statistically shown to do a comparatively better job.  And to think these kinds of problems existed before some of their source code leaked.  Now that some source code has leaked and the potential for new viruses to be developed to exploit Norton itself are likely right around the corner I feel obligated to suggest that people avoid using it all together.  No amount of marketing or PR can change the consensus of most IT professionals who can see past all the BS and to me this incident is more than just one more nail in the coffin.

So what do I recommend instead of Norton?  I mentioned that there is “no such thing as a perfect antivirus” but there are alternatives that hold a higher reputation than Norton that cost a fraction of what Norton costs or even nothing at all.  In past blog entries I’ve mentioned Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes and Combofix and still recommend them, so here’s a little information about them.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free antivirus solution that Microsoft itself actually produces and it’s quite popular in the IT community right now for a couple of reasons.  I already mentioned that its free but it is also effective and not as resource intensive as other software.  There’s also a new stand-alone bootable version of it that’s going through public beta testing right now which is handy to have for particularly difficult viruses.  You can read more about it here.  Be aware that there has, in the past, been a rogue malware impostor simply called “Security Essentials 2010/2011/2012″ which people have confused with the real deal, falling victim to a trap.  You can download the real deal from here.

Along side MSE I also recommend users purchase the full copy of Malwarebytes for the one time payment of $25.  Some of the handy features it has is an active connection monitor which will automatically block your computer from attempting to connect to known malicious web servers.  It also features an active process monitor like a traditional antivirus and will help prevent a good number of rogue malware type software from infecting your system.  There is a free version of this available but its active monitoring features are disabled. I’ve been using it in the field for over 2 years now and it has worked incredibly well for helping clean systems that had already become infected.  You can read more about it here and download/purchase it from here.

Finally a tool I use quite often to help clean systems that have already become infected is a program called Combofix, which is free.  This isn’t so much a traditional antivirus that runs in the background as it is a stand-alone utility for scanning a system after it has become infected.  It is regularly updated so it’s best to not bother downloading and using it until you actually have to.  You can read more about it here and download it from here.

In conclusion I strongly advise my clients to not use Norton Antivirus because it’s one of the most over-hyped, over-priced products out there right now and with the news of parts of its source code being leaked it only stands to become an even less effective product that will do less to protect you than other cheaper alternatives out there.

Speaking of alternatives, there is always the option of picking an alternative operating system such as Linux.

Linux is a free open-source OS that comes in many flavors.  We are already seeing Android being adopted by smartphone and tablet users like crazy and it is just one example of a Linux based OS that is taking the world by storm.  But for desktop and laptop users there remains a need for a full fledged desktop OS and there are many out there to choose from.  My personal favorite is Ubuntu Linux which you can check out at ubuntu.com.  It’s not for everyone but I can easily say that it is a very ideal choice for the average user.  Keep an eye out for future posts; I intend to record a new introductory video for Ubuntu 12.04 when it is released this coming April.

As I mention in the post below, I haven’t made updates to this page in quite some time and I just noticed that the last song I posted an update about is not the last song I’ve posted most recently.  In fact a lot has happened since then.  To keep things tidy, here is a SoundCloud player with all my currently published tracks in it:

A few notes about the most recent additions:

• Sleepy Daemons:  Added just before the new year, this track started as a non-percussive ambient, creepy thing.  Out of the blue I decided to add a lot of fast drums to it and things just popped to life.  Not sure where it will go next but I’m waiting for auditions for vocals to come in.
• Untitled Doodle/Ringtone:  I did everything in it but wouldn’t consider it finished just yet.  It features my first guitar performance recording and some cool effects processing.
• The Hare:  Again, 100% self-produced.  This one primarily features a new filter effects found in Reason 6 called The Alligator, an effect that’s more formally referred to as a “trance gate”.
• Delirium:  This started as a simple piano melody, which I put through the Alligator.  I then added a somewhat hiphop drum loop which I played with using a roll-echo effect to ramp the echo on and off.  This was eventually replaced with live drums, performed by r00m237.  Vocals came in by complete surprise thanks to a lady in California who goes by the name Deanna (thank you!).
• Document 22:  This features flute by Matt Unger and some guitars by Matt Christensen.

All my music is available for free under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.  You are free to download, share, remix and use this music for non-commercial purposes.

Update, March 18 2012:  I wanted to add the names of two more utilities I’ve found to work very well for some specific rootkits.  The names of the two programs are:

• Kaspersky TDSSKiller
• Avast Anti-Rootkit

I don’t write blogs much these days but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing blogs the golden rule is to make them useful and valuable to people.  As a sort of philanthropic gesture I am now going to reveal a few tricks I use in the field when repairing systems that have already become infected with viruses or malware.  Perhaps these tips will save you some money during these dark economic times.  I can’t promise that these tips will work for you but for the DIY user who’s not afraid to get their hands dirty, it might prove to be very useful.  So lets get right to it:

Phase 1:  Safe Mode (with networking?)

Almost every version of Windows out there (from Windows 95 all the way up to the most recent Windows 7) have a hidden menu you can access at boot that gives you access to a diagnostic profile called Safe Mode.  Safe Mode is a sort of back door mode into Windows that loads the absolute (or nearly) bare minimum of device drivers and background services.  It’s sort of a bare bones environment that is suitable to start your repair from primarily because most viruses aren’t auto-started by the system in this mode, but it’s not perfect.  More on that in a moment.

To access Safe Mode you need to press the F8 key on your keyboard at a VERY specific time.  Typically when you turn your computer on you’ll see a screen that either has the logo of the manufacture of the PC or perhaps some generic startup relating to your BIOS.  At some point that all goes away, your screen will be black for about 3 seconds, and then Windows will proceed to boot with the little scroll bar loading away.  It’s during (or just before) that 3 second window of blackness that you need to start tapping the F8 key.  If done correctly, you’ll be presented with a menu that looks like this:

You’ll use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the highlighting selector bar.  Typically I will select Safe Mode With Networking, as this allows me to access the Internet and download utilities as well as give these utilities access to definition updates for itself later.

After you select Safe Mode With Networking and press Enter your screen will be bombarded with a slathering of strange and mysterious words…

Don’t worry, this is normal.  (Note: If instead of this screen above you get another menu asking what version of Windows you want to boot, just press Enter again).

Eventually you will get to the familiar blue colored user login screen and you might see an account called Administrator shown there that you’ve never seen before.  If you do, go ahead and select it to log in as “Administrator”.  Otherwise, select your own user name.

Once you’re logged in you have a few options you can take.  The safest way to get started is to actually bring a copy of your utility software with you on a thumb drive or CD to install it from, instead of downloading via a web browser.  The reason it’s not a good idea to try and download via a web browser is because a lot of viruses tend to wrap themselves around a browser’s EXE file so that when the browser starts, so does the virus.  This could potentially happen with a lot of other software so it’s best to try and resist the temptation to run any programs except for the cleaning utilities we’re about to install.

Phase 2:  Cleaning

There are only three pieces of software I typically use with great success in the field for removing viruses and malware.  They are:

• Malwarebytes
• Combofix
• Microsoft Security Essentials

All of the above are free with the exception of Malwarebytes, which functions with all its features on a 30 day trial when you first install it (note that you will see an error message appear when you tell it to start the trial while in Safe Mode; this is normal and you can ignore the error by clicking the OK button when it appears).  To keep the full version running you have to buy it for the low one-time payment of $25 and I strongly recommend it.  Apart from these three the only other tool I use is Google, which I’ll use to lookup exact phrases found within suspicious malware to see if I can find other people talking about that particular virus somewhere online and hopeful discover what unique thing they did to remove it.  Fair warning:  Your mileage may vary.

I typically start by installing Malwarebytes first (however I have had one experience where I wasn’t able to do this until after I ran Combofix so you might need to flip the order of these two tasks), applying the most recent update for it and then running a full scan, removing all infected objects it finds.  A typical scan can take around a half hour to do.  When it’s finished, you just need to click the “Show Results” button and then make sure the results listed all have check marks next to them and then click “Remove Selected” in the bottom left.  If an object doesn’t have a check mark when you first view the results it means Malwarebytes thinks it could be a false-positive result.  Use your best judgment and google to determine if either the file is malicious and/or if the file is a necessary part that can be removed without grief.  A reboot will likely be required when it is finished.  Be ready to hit F8 again when you do this so you can come back into Safe Mode and continue your work.

One thing I’ll often do while I’m waiting for a Malwarebytes scan to complete is take a look at the MS Config utility and see what items are enabled to auto-start when you boot into the system.  To access this, click Start, then click Run (or just click into the search box if you’re using Windows 7) and type in “msconfig” without the quotes into the box and click OK.  Then click the Startup tab at the top.

In this startup list are programs that are told to run right away when you first log into your system.  Almost all of these items are non-essential and to be on the safest side you could probably get away with unchecking all of these items, but that’s usually overkill and might rob you of some convenient feature you’d like to have.  Look carefully down the list for items that have empty path names, or very bizarre characters in their name… I have to admit that at this point experience with this stuff comes in to play.  If you don’t know what something is you could look it up by name with google on a separate computer before deciding to uncheck it  Alternatively, you could use the uncheck-all-the-things strategy and then go back later to add check marks back into the few items you know you need enabled.  You can also check out the Services tab which is to the left of the Startup tab, check the box that says “Hide all Microsoft items” and then use the same judgment to decide if there are third-party services running in the background that don’t need to be.  Google is your friend here for helping to determine if a service is useful or not.

Another thing I’ll do while waiting for a scan to complete is open the Add/Remove Program (Programs & Features) applet from the Control Panel to view all the software that’s been installed on the system.  I target toolbars of any kind first, next by software that is unfamiliar to the user.  Again, google is a useful reference here because you don’t want to remove something that’s known to not be malicious.

The next step is to run Combofix which you can find a tutorial about by clicking here.  It is pretty strait forward:  double-click on the combofix.exe file that you downloaded and follow the on screen instructions.  It’s own scan will also take about 30 minutes or so but it is very sensitive so once you kick it off, don’t touch the computer until its finished.   There is almost no interaction required with the software and it will automatically remove anything malicious it finds, producing a log with a lot of interesting jargon at the end that you can forward on to an expert for further analysis if you’d like.

After all this I’ll typically reboot the system and let it boot normally and then install Microsoft Security Essentials, running a full scan with it right after and checking to make sure the trial mode has been enabled on Malwarebytes.

If all of the above didn’t work, something I’ll try next is to reboot back into safe mode and use the control panel to create a new user account, then log off and log back in under that new account and repeat all the same steps above.  The reason this might help is because viruses tend to damage registry entries for accounts that existed when it found and infected the system.  Because we’re creating a new account in an environment that hopefully didn’t auto-launch the virus, we can then create a fresh account with it’s own default settings and preferences that hopefully won’t be manipulated by the virus.  This kind of problem could also be reversed using the System Restore utility but I’ve found that a lot of times (not always) I try to use this utility none of the restore points are any good.  I wouldn’t be surprised if previous restore points are destroyed by certain viruses making it even more difficult to undo the damage done.  In situations like that I’ve occasionally just created a new user account and migrated all the important user data (documents, etc.) from the old account to the new account, deleting the old one in the end because it’s irreversibly broken.

One last tip I’ve run across in a training video for a competitor of mine who will remain unnamed is to shut the system off by force instead of doing a soft reboot during this cleaning process.  In other words, hold the power button down for 5 seconds and then turn the computer back on after 20 seconds.  The reasoning behind this is that there are a few viruses out there that alter the shutdown script of events that take place during an ordinary shutdown and one of the events it injects into the script is to reinstall the virus during shutdown from a rogue location, as a Plan B so even if the live version of the virus is caught and removed it might be able to recreate the file from an encrypted copy of itself elsewhere.  If you decide to do this my only advice would be to backup the entire hard drive before doing so.  It’s technically dangerous… but probably not THAT dangerous… it’s best to remain on the safe side and not use shortcuts.

Finally a word about a couple of common viruses in particular I’ve run into in the last year:

A few of these viruses going around exhibit the symptom of making all your files and shortcut icons on the desktop vanish.  This is often done with a combination of changing the file attributes to enable the hidden flag, or by moving the files to a hidden location.  It is sometimes also conjoined with malware that tries to frighten you into thinking your hard drive is on the verge of failure, or at the least, claims to be antivirus software itself.  The goal of all such attempts is to get you to give up your credit card number.  Please don’t.

I’ve had great success removing the virus that causes these files to go missing but after it’s been removed it’s not always so easy to reverse the damage and restore the missing icons.  Fortunately there is one program out there that, for the most part, has been able to do this for me very simply and it’s simply called “Unhide”.  Use this program after going through all the above steps to be sure you’ve removed traces of the virus and hopefully it will get all of your stuff back for you.  You can download Unhide from here.

One other common symptom I’ve seen certain viruses exhibit is hijacking certain registry entries to alter file associations, specifically one which makes your computer forget what to run EXE files with, asking instead what program you’d like to open another program with.  I have found that in Windows 7 one trick of working around this is to right-click on a program shortcut and then click Run as Administrator.  This uses a separate registry association which hopefully has not been affected by the virus.  Using this Right-Click>Run as Administrator trick you should be able to run your scanning utilities like Malwarebytes and Combofix from within Safe Mode.

Phase 3: Prevention

Now that we know how much of a pain these kinds of viruses can cause we should talk a little about where they come from and the different ways they can end up on your computer.  I wrote a much longer blog about this topic which you can read here.  Basically it boils down to this:

• Make sure you install all available software updates for Windows itself as well as 3rd party software and plugins like Adobe Flash, Acrobat and Java (among others).  Updates are your friend and help to patch recently discovered security vulnerabilities.
• Pay attention to links people send you in emails.  It’s quite possible their email account has had its password stolen and is being used by a robot to send spam email with links to malicious websites out to everyone in their address book.  Warn your friends if you suspect their account has been compromised and suggest they change their email accounts password before following the steps above to attempt to remove a potential infection.
• Use good anti-virus software.  As recommended above, I prefer MSE and Malwarebytes.  Combofix is only to be used as an emergency utility; it doesn’t have a real-time monitoring feature.
• Consider using a software firewall to block unwanted inbound traffic and unexpected outbound traffic.  Zone Alarm Free is an excellent choice for this.
• Use an ad-blocking plugin to further reduce the chances of a virus sneaking in through a flash-based advertisement.  Ad-Block for Firefox is a great option.  You can also get it for Google Chrome from here.
• Along with these plugins, consider using a better browser.  Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have both become superior to Internet Explorer, especially in terms of security.
• Avoid installing “toolbars” for your browser.  If you install one by accident, disable it in your browser or better yet uninstall it via your control panel.
• Avoid using P2P file-sharing software like Frostwire or MP3Rocket.  These methods of file sharing do not have any form of user moderation and anybody can wrap a virus inside a file then name it something innocent/sensational looking to trick people into downloading it and installing a virus.
• Consider adding a parental filter to your computer; you don’t need kids for this.  Having a web filter like K9 Web Protection can be helpful to block your computer from accidentally trying to connect with a known malicious server.
• Lastly, though this is too extreme for most people:  Consider switching to Linux on your desktop.  Linux is free, open-source and is even more secure than MacOS.  Seriously.

I hope this advice has been helpful.  Please leave comments or suggestions about other tips and tricks you use to help remove malicious software in the comments section below!