My web hosting just recovered from a serious hard disk failure. All the data, my websites are all gone! I only had back up for just my blog. I had a horrendous weekend! I think it is time to change to a new web host.

I have to rebuild back all of my website thanks to not making back ups and thanks to my web host who was in hurry of upgrading their hard disk and corrupted all the data. I feel so miserable right now. Later..

I was trying to log into my blog control panel and all of sudden this screen showed up:

At first I thought my office IP address was being blocked. So I thought, maybe I’ll try and access it from home and see if my home IP address can get through. Then I said to myself, “How come I am using my new found proxy server technique but still I can’t access my own blog?”, “There must be something wrong here!”. So, using my new HTTP-Tunnelling proxy technique accessing through another web-based proxy called Guardster, I still cannot get into my blog control panel. Now this is ridiculous!

I suspect that there might be something wrong with my plugin, so I immediately went to Bad Behavior plugin blog. There it is, a download solution to my login problem. Now comes the most challenging part, replacing the plugin with the new updated one. My FTP was not working because there is a connection problem where the directory can’t be retrieved. I had to do it using my web hosting control panel file manager and replace the files manually one by one. It took me longer than I thought because the download files were not being in the order as the previous plugin.

Luckily, I still managed to log into my blog eventually. Frustrated, I decided to disable the Bad Behavior plugin once and for all. It’s a shame though because this plugin is good to prevent blogging spam. Without this plugin, I predict my Akismet spam plugin could easily reach thousands with the amount of traffic I received nowadays. I should have hacked into my WordPress database and disable this plugin but I don’t want to mess around with it since I haven’t done my back up yet.

I can’t imagine someone who doesn’t have the necessary skill of repairing a WordPress blog enduring this problem. Being blocked out from your own blog can drive you NUTS! I hope that this incident won’t happen again in the future.

It has been a very busy week lately. However, that doesn’t stop me from being idle. When you work for a company, you can’t really work throughout the whole 8 mandatory hours, it is advisable to take a short break. What normally what happen is that break becomes a long break where for most PC workers would wander around in Cyberspace. That’s when it affects the productivity of a company. I am guilty of doing that as well but eventhough it is unethical, I kind of redeem myself by not claiming for overtime hours when I come home late so that it is fair for both myself and the company. I think everybody do this type of thing, I even saw my superior got caught by me in the act.

Because of that reason, unlike home network where all the network ports are accessible directly to the internet. The IT department in my company deploys a proxy server and a dedicated network port for accessing the internet. To make it more comprehensible, here’s a diagram taken from “Punching Holes into Firewall“.

The reason of this deployment is because:

1. To prohibit the idling staff to surf time wasting websites such as blogger.com, friendster.com, youtube.com that can eat up a lot of your office time thus reducing your productivity
2. Instant Messenging is blocked because it is also considered time wasting as well. Think about it, which one do you spend more time on, chatting on Yahoo Messenger or calling people up on the phone?
3. These kind of social networking activities can consume a lot of bandwitdh and bandwitdh is expensive (except if you have chosen an unlimited plan). For critical moment, these activities can clogged the router’s performance (if proxy server is not installed) and affects your internet connectivity
4. To prevent intruders/hackers from entering the network from outside of the domain beside protecting the network from any harmful viruses, malware or network attack
5. Why are you doing personal stuff on the internet during office hours? You are breaking the agreement you have signed when you were employed, right?

All those reason are so valid. I must say that I can even get fired almost everyday if I get caught of doing personal stuff during working hours but then again, as human we are not robots. We need some loosen up a little so that we can cope with the busy hectic environment or the quiet idling moment.

Luckily, Google Search website is not being restricted. This is where creativity take place. Using a combination of the right keywords, I found, “How to Bypass Most Firewall Restrictions and Access the Internet Privately aka The Surf At Work Page“. I find the page to be quite technical and time consuming for me to understand how the method is. I saw an advertisement on the page and soon downloaded a software called HTTP Tunnel. Now this is what I am looking for all along, a simple Windows-based software that I can install and easily configure.

I wasn’t happy about the restriction especially being blocked from Youtube. Using this software, I can now watch Youtube eventhough the corporate network has blocked the website. At first, I used the free server to connect but it was painfully slow. I wanted to pay the High Bandwitdh Subscription using my Public Bank Visa Electron but accidentally paid it using my Paypal credit. Oh well, it’s only USD4.99 a month. Doesn’t burn a hole in my pocket though.

Voila..I can now watch my favourite Youtube videos and my company wouldn’t know what my online activities are. Although it says high bandwitdh, it is still limited to the internet connection my company subscribed from the ISP which in this case, TM Net Streamyx. I can now access Meebo, Friendster, Youtube and Blogger without fear of being blocked. The only problem right now is my Yahoo Messenger client program wouldn’t work even after using this service. I then learned that the port for Yahoo Messenger is being blocked so I can only access the web-based Instant Messenging service such as Meebo. Oh well, that’s not so bad.

It is good to know that there is no boundary what you can do over the internet. You just need to be a little creative and a little work to find the solution that you need. Happy proxyless surfing everyone!

I just love the concept of virtualization. It’s like doing something dangerous but in a contained and controlled environment where it is basically safe. Before this, I’ve seen how a big corporate IT department utilizes VM Ware for their server virtualization, tried Virtual PC on my own computer and the latest, Virtual Private Server. If you’ve seen movies such as The Matrix or the 13th Floor or you’ve played Second Life, you might understand the concept of it. If might provoke some radical idea of how you live your life but I think it is natural of a human being to fantasize about something that they don’t have.

I found this free application a couple of weeks ago. It’s called SafeSpace. So, how does this virtual application works? Well, a picture describes a thousand words:

If you can’t understand the figure above, let me just brief you a little bit. See that red box surrounding the registry, file system and application. SafeSpace actually creates some kind of layer on top of what your windows system have. Basically it’s like a protective layer that protects you from getting something harmful. If that layer gets an infection, you just tossed away that layer and you’ll have a new one. Sounds like a condom to me. Anyway, based on my experience, my Internet Explorer version 6 has been hijacked by numerous toolbars that suddenly appears out of nowhere. There was one time, my Internet Explorer 6 just went unusable because it got corrupted by these malware stuff. In fact, even before I installed SafeSpace on my system, there was a pop up box that keeps on appearing whenever I launch IE6. I tried cleaning up my registry and boot up applications but it was still showing up. Luckily, after I’ve installed SafeSpace, that pop up kind of dissapear. My problem was solved.

There is however one issue that was quite significant. The installation of SafeSpace caused my boot up to become longer. I had to wait almost 5 minutes before I can launch any other of my other application. Then there is this annoying coloured box surrounding the application which I don’t like. Since I’m using Firefox for my browser and normally Firefox doesn’t get hijack like IE6, I removed Firefox from the default setting of SafeSpace where it includes every Instant Messenger and browser that you have. From what I heard, this application is still buggy so it’s not really recommended if you are the kind of person who just use a computer for basic need. Oh, there is one more issue concerning SafeSpace. When I tried to insert attachments in my e-mails, the files just went corrupted. Most probably because of the layer filtering the files you are trying to put in.

The plus point of SafeSpace is that it prevents your internet browser from being hijacked and most of all it’s FREE (for personal use of course). Some screenshots of SafeSpace in use:

Visit SafeSpace from Artificial Dynamics for more information.