Someone gets a new monitor / video card / ADSL modem, and they also get a confusing (ie more than 2) number of cables.

So, if you don’t know much about computers… what do you do?

Most people will just connect them all.

So I often see modems with both USB and ethernet cables plugged in.

Or a monitor with both the VGA and DVI plugs connected.

But it isn’t needed, and under some circumstances, it can either cause strange problems, or make troubleshooting more difficult.

As far as ADSL modems are concerned, only use an ethernet connection. Avoid using USB (the plug with the “rounded” square end) unless your PC doesn’t have a working ethernet socket (looks like a wide phone socket).

You can also use the USB plug if you want  to connect more than 1 computer (usually 2) to the internet. Any more than 2 computers, and you should probably look at buying a router (which are quite inexpensive nowdays)

When it comes to video, its actually not critical to have both cables plugged in. But if you have the choice, go for the DVI (24+ pins), instead of the VGA (15 pins). But try them both and pick the one that seems to work best.

Related posts:

1. monitor displays “no signal”
2. don’t use two adsl modems on the same phone line
3. Fujitsu LCD monitor with strange stripes

The first point of confusion is domains and hosting, so I’ll try to clarify those 2 points.

The first thing to understand is:

How does your browser display a web page?

In a simplified way, this is what happens:

1. You type (or click on the link to) something like: www.computer-aid.com.au
2. Your browser then talks to a special computer called a DNS server… and it asks: could you please tell me where I can find www.computer-aid.com.au ?
3. The DNS server responds saying: you can find www.computer-aid.com.au at: 74.217.128.185 (ie the numbers are a special internet “address”
4. Your browser then talks to the computer at 74.217.128.185 and asks: have you got any files that I can display?
5. The computer at 74.217.128.185 say: sure! Here is the index page, and here are some pictures that go with that.
6. Your browser then assembles the files and pictures into a page that we all recognise as a web page (with things to click on, information and pictures.

Now, what is a domain name, and why do you need to register a domain name?

• A domain name is a somewhat like a trademark. Its a word like “computer-aid.com.au”
• Buying a domain name gives you ownership of the name, and lets you do whatever you like with it (while you own it).
• Owning the name doesn’t mean you automatically get a website. Its effectively like having the domain name registered on the DNS server from the above example

So why do you need hosting?

• From the above example (about how your browser works), hosting is the computer at 74.217.128.185
• The hosting computer stores all the files and pictures that make up the “look” of your website.

Although this is not strictly true, you can think of your domain registrar (ie the company you paid to register your domain) as the DNS server… and you tell them where your hosting computer is.

ie: you can get your domain registrar to “point” your domain name to whichever hosting company you like.

This raises an important issue:

What if you register your domain name, and have hosting with the same company.

The answer is: its good if everything runs smoothly… but if you have any problems, then changing companies can become very “sticky”.

I usually recommend people use different companies for domain registration and hosting.

Why?

Lets say at some point, your hosting company becomes overloaded, or the quality of their support drops, or you need a more powerful server. You then line up a new hosting company, move all your website files to the new hosting company, then you point your domain to the new hosting company… This can become difficult in the “all in one” case… as the host might not want you to leave… and they can make a bad situation worse.

Your domain registrar (particularly if they don’t host your website) shouldn’t care that you changed hosting… they just change some numbers in their database.

Or: if you don’t like your domain registrar for some reason… then you can find another registrar, and transfer your domain “ownership” to the new company (while still pointing to the same hosting company).

This means you can handle future changes without your website “disappearing” for a long time.

Related posts:

1. Secretive hosting / website design companies
2. Free website hosting (with a twist)
3. blocked websites (ISP or hosting?)

If you don’t want your blog to be popular, and don’t care how tasteless it is, then make it private, and only allow your own select group of fans/family to view it… and then ignore the rest of this post.

Otherwise… if you want your blog to be more popular, then don’t do any of the following:

9) Schizo- Blog has a topic, but you don’t stay on topic. OK, I admit it I’m as guilty as most bloggers with this. My computer blog sometimes has posts that have nothing to do with computers. But those posts are in the minority. And I aim to keep it that way. So should you.

8 ) Copycat- copying someone else’s content: also known as shooting yourself in the foot… and then shooting yourself in the other foot  . You quickly disappear off everyone’s radar, as most search engines will notice and punish appropriately. I only use copyscape to gloat over the poor suckers with too many guns and feet

7) Annoyingggg – music and/or videos that starts spontaneously. If you like the music, then make your blog private. Few people want to listen to your bad taste. I know few people would be interested in my heavy metal music.

6) Ad overload- too many adverts. Imagine you sit down to watch some TV… you find a show, but it splits the screen into 4  sections: 3 sections show bright, animated adverts, while a quarter of the screen actually displays the TV show. Would you watch the show? Probably not (maybe if its the superbowl, or world-cup soccer, or some other favorite).

5) Imitation - Copying the bigger blogs that make more money than you… This is similar to point 6), except you are trying to make money like the big boys. Remember: only the bigger blogs can get away with too many adverts… to some extent. You might find that by cutting down from 20 ads to 10, visitors are twice as likely to click on the 10 ads. People will only put up with ads if they really love the content (ie your blog is popular)

4) Anybody home? – Not updating your blog. Try to update at least once per week.

3) I wish nobody was home – You feel guilty about not updating your blog every week… but you don’t know what to write about… so you update your blog by apologising for not updating your blog. You know what they say: its better to keep your mouth shut, and have people think you’re an idiot… rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt.

2) Who am I? - Your blog doesn’t have a clear topic… you just write whatever comes into your head. You might find this hard to believe, but there are thousands of blogs like this out there, and millions of people trying to avoid them. Pick a hobby… anything! If you don’t have a hobby or anything you really feel strongly about, then please close down your blog (You’ll be doing the internet a favour).

1) Slowww- you have so many ads and trinkets (widgets), that your blog take 60 seconds to load. animations, calendars, large pictures. Cut out the clocks, calendars, world maps, FireFax download icons, and anything else that isn’t relevant. Almost nobody wants to know the weather/time in Upper Kumbukta West! Also try a cache plugin like “wp super cache” it can speed up a website significantly.

Related posts:

1. more money: publish your blog on the Amazon Kindle
2. why do some people get this blog emailed?
3. syncing Google Contacts: surname last

I’ll avoid borrowing money from friends / relatives, so I want to borrow money from a stranger (eg a bank) even less.

But in the last 2 years, I’ve realised that if used correctly, debt can be a good thing. Its taken me 20 years to figure it out, and a radical change in the way I think.

Please note that what I talk about in this post is just a general guide. You need to adjust it to suit your individual circumstances (or better yet, get qualified financial advice… as I’m not a qualified financial advisor) 

Most rich people in the world got there by what is known as “good debt”

As an example, bad debt is borrowing money for a car (or boat, TV, fridge, etc). Lets say you borrow $20,000 for a car. As you pay it off over a few years… due to interest, you end up paying, say, $30,000. During that same time, the value of the car drops to $10,000. Its a lose-lose situation (you pay more than it was worth, and it drops in value).

However, borrowing money for something like shares or an investment property is good in many ways.

Lets look at property (but shares are similar, but need less money up front).

Since most people will have had a mortgage for a few years, chances are that your house is now worth quite a bit more than what you paid for it. eg: you paid $200,000, you took out a loan for, say, $190,000, and you now owe $100,000. In the meantime, the house is now worth $350,000… Thats a win-win situation… you owe less, and what you bought is worth more than what you borrowed, and all the interest you paid, combined.

At that point, most people think: big deal, I can’t get my hand on the $250,000 of equity in my own home without selling it… and then where will I live?

At some point, I read a book by Jamie McIntyre. It was then that I realised (after a lot of thinking!) that I can access the equity in my own home without selling it.

I kept thinking “where’s the catch”… where’s the flaw… it can’t be this easy.

Using the above example, a bank will be prepared to refinance your loan as a “line of credit”. A line of credit is basically like a credit card with a huge credit limit (using your house as collateral).

Lets say you get a “no doc” line of credit (Ie the bank will lend you up to 70% of the house value, and you don’t need to provide proof of income). So, on $350,000, a bank will lend you $245,000. You already owe $100,000, so you can draw $145,000.

The other nice thing about a LOC, is that you can arrange to have the interest payments be drawn out of the LOC itself… you don’t really need to repay your house… sort of.

The catch is that by taking the interest payments out of the LOC, the $145,000 available will gradually decrease as its used to pay the interest on your remaining loan. Once the money runs out, you must pay the interest in full.

This can give you some “breathing room”, but its much better to put this money to good use like this:

From the $145,000, use $105,000 as a 30% deposit on a $350,000 investment property. Make sure you get an interest-only loan (I thought it was a crazy idea, but there is a reason for it).

So, you now “own” $700,000 worth of property (2 X $350K), but you owe the bank $450,000 (scary isn’t it!). the breakdown is: $100K on your own property, $105K from the LOC (as a deposit), and the remaining $245K as an interest-only loan (possibly from another bank).

Now, you need to make sure you can meet the repayments for the next few years (about $40,000 per year), but its not as bad as you might think:

• You still have $40,000 in your LOC. You can use this to meet repayments if you occasionally don’t have the money.
• You have a tenant in a house that will pay about $18,000 per year
• You need to pay the remaining $22,000 annual interest, but via negative gearing, the Aussie government will help you, so that you only need to pay, say, $11,000 per year (exactly how much depends on your income).

Now, as time goes on, things will get easier:

• The rent will increase as house prices increase (so the tenant pays for a bigger part of what you owe.
• Property values increase (I’ll demonstrate the effects in a moment)
• Your wage / salary will increase in line with inflation

Its generally accepted that in any 10 year timeframe, property values will, at least, double.

So, If you can hang out for 10 years, then here is your situation:

• You now “own” $1,400,000 worth of property (2 X $700K), but you (still) owe the bank $450,000 (not so scary now!)
• The tenant pays about $700 per week ($35,000 per year)… so you now need to pay $5,000 per year in interest…
• negative gearing will probably decrease the $5,000 a year even further.

What do you do now?

Repeat the process again: revalue the properties, refinance both properties to obtain 70% of $1,400,000. Then buy another investment property (or 2!).

Some say if you can own 10 average priced properties, then the renal income will be enough for you to retire.

With a bit of effort, you can pick properties whose value increase above average… then the process just happens quicker.

Personally, I’ve only just started going down this path, so it will be a few more years before I start seeing the benefits from borrowing to buy property and shares.

But I’ve got a good feeling about this… I only wish I was savvy enough to do this when I was twenty years old.

Related posts:

1. My recent experience (good and bad) in the property market
2. An infection means someone can steal from your bank account
3. Car woes

Admittedly, I have spent a lot of time studying SEO techniques, and applying them to the website, and I can see that all my efforts are starting to pay off.

As they say, a picture is worth 1024 words, so here are the results to date:

To be honest, I just look at the figures for unique visitors (the orange bars), as its the most indicative of the true popularity.

A figure like “hits” and “page views” can be easily manipulated… I could double the the hits on Computer aid by just placing an extra 15 small pictures on most of my web pages, but it doesn’t change how many people actually look at my website.

Looking over the last 16 months of growth, I can see that there was no single factor that contributed to the 22-fold increase in unique visitors to the website.

There were a few minor hiccups along the way: the most notable of which was an unintentional “duplicate content” problem in the early days, which caused google to drop my ranking for the words “brisbane computer repairs” from 50th to 350th.

Anyone contemplating doing their own SEO to improve their own website ranking should probably consider the following tips:

• Start a blog.
• Update your blog REGULARLY
• Update your blog at LEAST twice per week.
• Make sure the vast majority of your blog posts, discuss topics directly relevant to whatever your website is about (eg a website about nuts and bolts should have a blog that only talks about nuts and bolts (eg sizes, shapes, metals, techniques, etc))
• Pick your wording and titles VERY carefully. A very good grasp of the (English) language is essential. You must consider what a typical “web surfer” would type into a google search, and then use those words in your title and body. This is not as easy as it sounds, yet its very important.
• Don’t post something that has already been talked about by thousands of others (eg the world trade center bombing in NY)
• The flipside of the last point is: Do post something you know, which few other people would know. It makes you appear (to google) as an expert in your field. Don’t be afraid of telling your trade “secrets”… chances are: only others in the same field will read your posts, and they probably already know the “secrets” anyway. The internet is a community that punishes those that keep secrets, and rewards those who share.
• You must think like a marketing executive. Read books about sales and marketing, then apply that knowledge to how you word your overall website. The wording is vital. You must think long and hard about what words and phrases you put on your website (this is not so important for blog posts). You must know what your customers want, and then appeal to them with what you write. Don’t take guesses, you must find out what they want (and sometimes asking the customers won’t give you the answers!)
• Monitor your own website statistics. If your hosting company cannot give you the statistics you need, then consider something like google analytics.
• Optimise your web pages. To see how google views your website, strip out all the images, videos, flash, and html tags. If what you have left looks meaningless, then google will rank you accordingly. Put some quality information in there.
• Check your website navigation. Don’t implement a huge structure of spaghetti links. Ideally, aim for 5 – 10 links per page, and you should be able to get from any page on your site, to any other page, with just 2 mouse clicks.
• Optimise your .htaccess file (learn about 301 redirect), and make sure xyz.com and www.xyz.com both redirect to www.xyz.com. I’ve seen some sites, where xyz.com returns a 404 error!
• Read all you can about SEO (or if you don’t have time, then hire an SEO expert)

For some businesses, correct SE Optimisation can lead to giant leaps in profits.

And remember: some SEO experts are better than others. But to get good optimisation, be prepared to pay more than the original cost of developing the website… any cheaper, and your website probably won’t reach its full potential (or at worst, will drop in popularity).

Related posts:

1. Paid Content in Computer Aid
2. Entrecard and Computer-Aid.com.au traffic
3. online advertising for the computer repair industry

So I’ve decided to try explaining this topic as simply as possible.

I’ll split this tutorial into 3 parts:

1. understanding decimal color codes
2. understanding hexadecimal
3. using hexadecimal in color codes

PART 1:

Its probably useful to start with monochrome TV / computer screens: The screen is made up of lots of dots, in a grid pattern, so that you get hundreds of dots horizontally and vertically. Computer guys call them pixels, but for the non-technical people, I’ll call them dots.

Now, you can choose the brightness of each dot: no brightness = black, full brightness = white, a level in-between = a level of grey.

To make things easy, we can use numbers to indicate how bright to make the dot. 0 = black, 255 = white, 128 = mid-grey, etc.

We could use a number range of 0 – 99, or 1 – 100, but 0 – 255 has a special meaning to computers, so we need to use 0 – 255.

So how does color work?

Well, imagine that instead of a dot, you actually have 3 mini-dots. The 3 mini-dots are colored: Red, Green, Blue (RGB).

Why use these particular colors?

Its like an optical illusion. When these 3 mini-dots are close enough together, and at full brightness, the human eye is fooled into thinking it sees white. Now, by changing the brightness of the 3 mini-dots, you can get virtually every color you need.

So, to represent colors using numbers, we need to use 3 numbers for each dot (ie a number for each mini-dot). The order is important: the first number is for red, the second is green, the third is blue.

So, to represent black, we use: 0,0,0 (ie all mini-dots have no brightness).

255,255,255 = white (each mini dot is at full brightness, and your eye is tricked into seeing white)

128,128,128 = mid grey

255,0,0 = solid red (the red mini-dot is at full brightness, but green and blue have no brightness)

similarly:

0,255,0 = solid green

0,0,255 = solid blue

Other simple colors: 128,0,0 = dull red, 64,0,0 = very dark red (almost black)…

Now, mixing colors gets interesting:

255,255,0 = yellow, 0,255,255 = cyan (light blue), 255,0,255 = Magenta (light purple), 255,128,0 = Orange, 128,128,0 = brown, 128,0,128 = purple, 255,200,255 = pink

Most paint programs (even microsoft paint) will let you experiment with these color triplets. Go have some fun with colors

PART 2:

This is probably the most difficult computer concept to explain. Think back to your very early days at primary school. The teacher would have told you that there are only ten symbols for writing numbers: 0123456789. So while counting, you can only get as far as 9, then you run out of symbols.

But a very bright person, discovered a great way to count beyond this: the tens “column” (as well as the hundreds, thousands, etc columns). So the number in the tens column represents “groups of ten”. Thus the number 423 means: 4 groups of hundred, plus 2 groups of ten, plus 3.

Computers represent numbers very differently to us. They use a system called binary… but we will use hexadecimal, because it is very simple and quick to translate between binary and hex.

Now, we can interact with computers (using numbers) in 2 ways:

• We use decimal, and the computer converts decimal numbers into binary (easy for us, but can slow down the computer)
• We use hex, and the computer converts to binary (difficult for us, but the computer converts hex to binary MUCH faster then decimal to binary)

So what is hex? Well, instead of having only ten symbols to represent numbers, we use sixteen symbols: 0123456789ABCDEF.

Now, we can count from 0 to “F”, and after that we start using the “tens” column (technically, it should probably be called a sixteens column). Thus after F, we have 10, and if we keep counting, we get: 11, 12, 13, … 19, 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, 1F, 20, … 29, 2A, … 2F, 30, …3F, etc.

One question that often comes up is, what happens after 9F? Why A0 of course, followed by: A1, A2, … A9, AA, AB, … AF, B0, B1, … BF, C0, etc. all the way up to FF.

After that, you can go to 100, 101, 102, … 10F, 110, 111, etc.

To get over the initial learning curve, many people use translation tables (or calculators), so that when they see F, they can figure out it actually means fifteen.

So that we don’t get confused between decimal and hex, hex numbers usually have a # symbol in front, so #10 is actually 16 Decimal., and #FF is actually 255.

PART 3:

Now we can combine part 1 and part 2. Colors can be represented using hex values from #00 – #FF (ie 0 – 255).

To represent black, we have: #000000 (ie 00, 00, 00 : we put a zero in the tens column to keep the overall length the same)

#FFFFFF = white (255,255,255)

#808080 = mid grey (#80 = 128 )

#00FF00 = solid green

So thats it. Its a long explanation, but just about anyone should be able to read it and understand it, and you will be on your way to creating colorful web pages.

Related posts:

1. Laptop with no sound
2. strange brisbane ants
3. Linux (Simply Mepis vs pclinuxos 2007) installation on a PC