This came in via the newsfeeds, and it looks to be quite serious (I’m basing that on the fact I’ve never seen such an alert before).
The Dridex malware is apparently able to harvest bank details from your computer and already UK losses are stated to be around £20 million. Dridex is spread through attachments in emails, but it can only do so if the attachment is opened.
A typical infected email might come through as an order confirmation (for something you have never ordered) with an invoice attached. Come to think of it, I’ve had quite a few of these in the past – not necessarily Dridex – but I never open them if I haven’t ordered anything that tallies with the email details.
Advice is to install good antivirus software and – if you’re infected – contact your bank and credit card company immediately. You’re also urged to report the problem to Action Fraud using the details in the link I gave above.
Apparently, only computers running Windows are at risk.
I’m still making the most of the clear weather, which is forecast to come to an end this weekend. The moon is almost at its third quarter and the angle of the sun is showing just how uneven the earth-facing side really is.
I bought a new tripod, and this one is much more solid and easy to adjust than the super-cheap one I was using.
I should point out that I’m only doing this because I was surprised at how much detail I could get when I when I did that test photo last week (before the eclipse). So I thought I’d experiment.
The picture below shows the same area of the moon (two craters, in particular) as they appeared at full moon last Sunday and subsequently up until tonight.
At full moon, the two craters I have outlined are barely discernible as the sun’s light falls directly on to them. As the sun’s position changes, the craters become progressively more visible as shadows are cast by their walls. The edge of what I think is the Mare Imbrium is also more sharply defined, and craters which weren’t even visible to begin with suddenly appear.
Having seen the effect of the sun casting shadows across the face of the moon I took the opportunity to catch the latest phase tonight. The moon rises later each night, and it is quite low on the horizon – which led to this lucky shot.
Anyway, after moving away from the Silver Birch tree, this is the detail visible tonight.
I was brought up to believe that although there were craters on the moon, much of it – and certainly the front – was like a big dusty desert. Apollo mission photos did a lot to create this impression.
When I was a child I used to have a telescope, but it wasn’t very powerful – as I’ve discovered the last week or so, much less powerful than the telephoto lens on my camera. With my telescope, you could just make out mountain ranges at the edge of the sun’s coverage, but little else. How times change.
The areas on the moon you think of as being quite featureless show up as being pocked by craters.
Even the edges of the “seas” (or maria) are seen to cast shadows, suggestive of steep sides.
It’s a clear night and I couldn’t resist getting a few more snaps of the moon now that it is waning. It’s amazing how much extra detail you get when the sun starts casting shadows instead of just hitting square on, as it does when the moon is full.
This one shows the top corner.
This is the top middle corner.
Here’s the lower middle.
And finally, the bottom.
At this rate, I’ll need to grow a beard and buy some horn-rimmed glasses.
I stayed up late last night to watch the eclipse. Here are some of the photos I took. First of all, the moon at around 10.30pm Sunday (before anything had started):
Now, the moon at about 1.20-am Monday morning. There was a hint of something in the top left, though it isn’t easily seen in the photo:
This next one is at around 1.40am. Definitely something happening now but still not easily discernible on the photo:
Now, the appearance at about 2.10am Monday. Absolutely no mistaking it now:
This one is from around 2.30am:
This is at 2.55am. I’d left it a bit long and it had progressed further than I expected:
I noticed that although the reddish tinge was visible to the naked eye, I was focusing on the lit part of the moon so was getting quite a fast exposure – meaning that the red part wasn’t showing up. This next image is from the same time (2.55am), but with my focus on the darker part. The lit part is over-exposed slightly as a result:
By now, it had almost reached totality and over-exposure wasn’t as much of a problem. This is from around 3.15am.
Here’s another from the same time, with the focus shifted slightly:
And finally around 3.40am. I couldn’t stay up any longer as I had to go to work in the morning (note that exposure time was so long you can even see a couple of stars just to the right):
And another different exposure from the same time:
If I ever do anything like this again, I’ll check to make sure forecast times are in BST and not GMT – everything was an hour later than I’d expected!
Anyone who is interested in this sort of thing will already know that Sunday night/Monday morning there will be a total lunar eclipse which coincides with a “supermoon” (where the moon is as close to the Earth as it gets, therefore at its largest). It’s quite a rare event, and another one isn’t due until 2033. The UK is also being dominated by high pressure at the moment, which promises clear skies.
I’m planning to take some pictures of it, and if we DO get a clear sky then they should look like the one above. I took this tonight using a tripod and remote control shutter release with my Panasonic Lumix FZ200. You get an idea of how good this camera is for the price when you zoom in on the image a little.
If all goes to plan, I should be able to get a good set of images covering the eclipse.
Windows 10 tried to update yesterday for a known Adobe Flash Player vulnerability. However, the update repeatedly failed (a further three times today) with an error 0x80004005.
Until Microsoft fixes it, the workaround is to install the update manually. Download either the 32-bit or 64-bit installer (use the link that is relevant to your system) and run it. Then run Windows Update again just to make sure the KB3087040 install is confirmed – it should now report that your machine is up to date and checking your update history will show a successful install.
Apparently, the update installs on Windows 7 and 8 system with no trouble. It’s just Windows 10 where there’s a problem – and even then, not with every Windows 10 machine if reports are true.
I have no idea what caused it – though I suspect Microsoft’s recent update may have been involved – but all of a sudden, clicking any links in Outlook emails gave the message:
Your organization’s policies are preventing us from completing this action.
I had two lengthy sessions with Microsoft support, but that didn’t get me anywhere. In the end, I downloaded an automatic fix and that sorted it. If you try it yourself and you’re using Windows 10, use the download link for Windows 8.1.
I still don’t know what the problem was. I’d tried resetting Internet Explorer and changing program defaults as suggested in that link. Support also tried it, plus we tried uninstalling an app that might – and I mean “might” – have been involved, but all to no avail. The automatic fix appears to do exactly what we’d tried manually.
I’ve been using Windows 10 for almost a month now and I’m very impressed with it. I’ve not had a single crash, and every piece of software I have works on it.
Something I want to start making more use of is speech recognition and speech-to-text (for dictation purposes). I looked around for a decent headset (headphones + microphone), but I couldn’t find one I liked. To be honest, their appearance put me off more than anything, with the boom microphones just looking like flat strips of plastic. I was really after something like my Sennheiser HD 205 phones, but with a mike fitted. And then I thought: why not fit a separate mike to my Sennheisers?
After some searching I came across the AntLion ModMic. I checked out the reviews and decided this was the way to go, and a little more searching revealed that it is distributed by several companies in the UK. I chose LimeXB because they had the lowest price).
Once I’d fitted it – and it fits well – I started testing it. The first thing I noticed was that the sound level from the mike was very low. Windows could pick it up, but it was advising that I either speak up (which could have resulted in my lungs being expelled from my body, since I was already shouting), or move the mouthpiece nearer my mouth (which at that point in my testing would probably have meant inside it).
I’ve been through all this before with Windows. It’s not an actual fault with either hardware or software. It’s a settings issue. And I discovered that Windows 10 has a setting I’ve never seen before which fixed the problem immediately. Here’s what to do.
Click Search and type “sound”, then press enter. This opens up the Hardware & Sound app. Alternatively, open the Control Panel and select the app from there, then click on Sound. This dialog box (or similar – you may see different devices listed) appears:
Click the Recording tab and you see this (again, you might have different devices listed):
Double-click the Microphone device and this dialog appears:
Now click the Levels tab and you will see this:
You’ll probably find first of all that the Microphone level is set to less than 100% (mine had defaulted to 80%). Set this to maximum. The interesting one is that Microphone Boost slider – I’m sure I never saw that in Windows 7 or earlier versions, though I’ve not really bothered with using a mike much in the past. Set this to maximum, too. Then click OK to close all the dialog boxes.
You should now find that your microphone is ultra-sensitive. You may even have to adjust the boost to a lower setting as it might be too sensitive, but you can do that as needed.
I’m just getting to grips with Windows 10’s speech recognition. Even without any training (the computer needs to learn how you speak) I can open, close, and manipulate various apps. And dictation (which IS going to need some training) looks like it could be great fun.
How do you pin microphone levels to the task bar?
I’m not sure exactly what you mean, but they’re already pretty much there. If you look at the end of the task bar, you’ll see the speaker icon. Right-click it and you’ll get a menu like this (note that I have my task bar on the side of my screen):
Task bar speaker icon
If you select Recording devices it takes you straight to the dialog box with the Recording tab I discussed above.
I mentioned recently how I had bought a GPS tracker/logger so that I know where my car is when it is out on test.
I had a pupil fail (for the third time) recently. He’s a good driver, but he does something different (and dumb) each time, and ends up with only two or three faults… plus a serious. His serious fault on his last test was for speeding.
He was on a 30mph dual carriageway approaching a speed camera. He’d missed the speed limit sign (as it happens, one of Nottingham City Council’s recent and irritating changes) and decided that it must be 40mph because everyone else was going faster than him!
The graph above, edited out of the speed data I logged, shows the exact moment he failed. You can see how he is accelerating sharply above 30mph, with no sign of easing off as he approaches 40mph. The examiner knew the camera was there and had to use the dual controls – his speed suddenly drops to just below 30mph as she did so.
For something not much bigger than a matchbox, this logger is proving to be very useful.
