JB's Blog

Lately I’ve had quite a few Windows laptop machines become infected with nasty spyware ( lots of variations of the infamous MS Antivirus ).

I do a lot of my work remote, so when the system is this crapped up you really need to mount the infected harddisk outside of the infected operating system to have a chance cleaning it up.

SystemRescueCD is a popular tool I have lying around.  If the infected person is remote I have them burn and pop a copy of this CD into their machine so I can remotely ssh into it.

Clamscan can usually pick up the nasties and remove them, but it is incredibly slow.  A little trick I use to speed up the rescue process is limit the scanning to .exe files only…

clamscan -ri –remove –include=’.[eE][xX][eE]‘

This way you’ll speed up the scanning significantly to get the machine to a usable level.

Fixing the damage of the malware in Windows is another process entirely altogether, but by removing the executable malware you have at least a fighting chance.  If not it’s rebuild time!

One of the gamers in the LanSmash forums posted a question about these new fan-dangled Gunnar Computer Glasses so I thought I’d have a look up and give my internet opinion.



By reading the marketing blurb it makes me think that these glasses will give me super powars!




Let’s go through the features…
—– i-FI lens coatings
They say: Our proprietary nano-filters help capture all of the good light coming from the computer screen while diffusing the bad reflective light and glare…

JB says: We tried to come up with something other then Polarized glasses and failed, so we started playing connect the dots.

I think you’d be better of by reducing the glare in your work environment by say closing blinds, moving monitors and tables, and having anti-glare non-reflective screens.

If all else fails just wear a set of Polarized glasses or move to an underground bunker.

—- fRACTYL lens geometry
They say: Aiding the natural focusing power of the cornea, our lens geometry eases eyestrain caused by near distance computer viewing.

JB says: We thought it would be cool to magnify the lenses so you wouldn’t have to sit so close to the screen; but then our marketing department figured out a way to make it sound like these glasses will make you focus so hard your eyes will become superman style laser beams.

—- iONik lens tints
They say: iONik lens tints take harsh artificial light and precisely tune it to match the anatomy of the eye. Our custom organic dye compounds condition and shift transmitted light into the preferred color spectrum, increasing visual contrast, detail and resolution…

JB says: We coloured our glasses amber to make your computer terminal look like it’s from the 70′s.




It is true though, Amber coloured glasses do help you with high contrast. Gun nuts have been using amber glasses for decades.




That all said, if you’re struggling with contrast with your computer you should probably change the settings on it to a high contrast settings.




Your desktop will look like shit however.

—- diAMIX lens material
No existing lens material had all the properties we needed. So we gave our lab techs the task of developing the lightest, most optically pure lens material possible

JB says: We sprinkle dust over our glasses and make sure no less then three unicorn’s pissed on the lenses.