WB8TYW Projects and Hacks

A year or so ago, I started on my journey to become a Vacuum Robot Overlord. I saw that the iRobot E5 series was on sale, and purchased one. It turns out that it was a good idea to not purchase the more expensive model that will empty itself.  We have dogs and cats that shed a lot.  And the rollers need to be cleaned of the dog hair on every run, more on that later on. Among our pets we have a Chinchilla, and in spite of putting up guards on the cage, somehow still some of the mess gets out each day.  The E5 robot is very good at cleaning that up. The E5 series is a cheaper model, pretty much appears to sort of just wander around the rooms until it eventually covers everything.  This seemingly random movement can be of frustration if you want to do a spot clean up.  Many times if you place the robot near a spill and turn it on, it will immediately turn around and run away. The E5 did a good job, but because it does not do stairs, I ended up getting one for ...

Introduction In the old days of personal computers, you had to install the operating system yourself and configure it.  This meant that you at least had some idea on how to restore it if things went bad. Many things can go wrong with a personal computer, and usually the most problematic is if the hard disk failed.  And there is now malware out there that can destroy your data. And chances are that your system was pre-installed by computer manufacturer. This article is more oriented to Microsoft Windows for example, as those users tend to be less technical than on the other platforms. It is now more a case of when, not if your system will get infected by malware.  Web sites can be taken over by criminals.   A typo in going to a web site can take you to a site run by a criminal.  I had seen a computer infected just by visiting a well known legitimate news site.  I do not know what on the web site triggered the infection. Protecting your system and data S...