After my other half told me that she had some trouble rebooting the computer this morning, I did a search on the internet for some of the suspicious looking service EXEs that were running on the machine.
My search took me to Google Groups, and via a couple of conversations there, I saw the mention of a piece of freeware called “AdAware”… a couple of hourse later all the computers in the house had it installed and were busy scanning - chiefly because the main machine that shares it’s internet connection had 170ish “objects” relating to trojan horses, spyware and tracking files.
AdAware did it’s job wonderfully, and I shall no doubt be registering it in the coming days. I would have thought Norton Antivirus and ZoneAlarm would have done their job to stop spyware doing too much, but I’m guessing that some of it must have got in with other applications.
It’s still quite shocking to find that my home computer had so much crap on it. I work as a software developer, so run quite a clean ship with the computer. Okay - I download some unbelievable crap from time to time, but it gets cleared off more often than not.
Changing subject suddenly, I decided this last weekend to write a Genealogy program for Windows. W has been researching the family tree for a couple of years now, and faces continual frustration with the software available on the market… so the only feasible solution was for me to write the software for her - and then of course I realised that everybody doing Genealogy research faces the problem…
So… I made a forum today on PluggedOut to contain discussions relating to the development of the family tree software. It’s still in the early days, but it’s going to be quite quick to develop - it’s a straightforward Windows application after all.
The one thing that did nag at the back of my mind all weekend was the means of recording the information. I needed a database, but didn’t really want to use the Borland Database engine, or ADO/MDAC - both mean hefty downloads for the user. As usual, the answer presented itself via a search on Google Groups, and I discovered a lightweight database engine called “MyDB”. I think it will suit my purposes perfectly.
Anyway - what a boring message for the blog. I guess half the reason for my submersion in IT once more is down to the heat recently in the UK. It’s been too hot to go out so I’ve almost become nocturnal and sat in front of the computer for hours at a time, amusing myself on the web or working on little pet projects.
Enough of this bilge! Time for a very british cup of tea!