PC Maintenance Class 2 Term 7

Last week we examined how routers are setup and configured.

This can be a complicated topic, but to keep it within the level we are comfortable within the group, I centred on the following aspects.

• SSID
• Channel Frequencies
• Encryption Protocols
• Secure Passwords

If all you remember about routers is the above information, you'll do well.  To no understand, could potentially allow security to be compromised and also possibly allow others unauthorised access to A) your Internet Connection, and B) worst case scenario, access to your files!


The Basics: What is a Router?


A router is a device that forwards data packets between computer networks, creating an overlay internetwork. A router is connected to two or more data lines from different networks. When a data packet comes in one of the lines, the router reads the address information in the packet to determine its ultimate destination. Then, using information in its routing table or routing policy, it directs the packet to the next network on its journey. Routers perform the "traffic directing" functions on the Internet. A data packet is typically forwarded from one router to another through the networks that constitute the internetwork until it reaches its destination node.

Pictured above is a Virgin Media 'Super Hub' Router. Fibre Optic cable provides the most effective way of connecting to the Internet, and in this picture it is the white cable. It is likely that a computer is plugged directly into the router via the yellow CAT5 cable.

Here we have a picture of a BT Home Hub - which is there router for the home. It is combined in this instance with a telephone base unit.

The most familiar type of routers are home and small office routers that simply pass data, such as web pages, email, IM, and videos between the home computers and the Internet. An example of a router would be the owner's cable or DSL modem, which connects to the Internet through an ISP. More sophisticated routers, such as enterprise routers, connect large business or ISP networks up to the powerful core routers that forward data at high speed along the optical fiber lines of the Internet backbone. Though routers are typically dedicated hardware devices, use of software-based routers has grown increasingly common.

What is an SSID? What does it stand for?

The SSID (or Service Set IDentifier) names and identifies a wireless network, It is something that access points broadcast to client devices to announce the presence of the access point. The SSID denotes the name of a network on a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), and could be any name up to thirty-two (32) characters in length. 

For security reasons, broadcasting of this SSID is commonly turned off on some routers. All access points and all devices using a specific wireless network must use the same SSID.

Channel Frequencies: Changing them for Improved Performance

When talking about wireless networking, a channel is simply another term for the frequency at which your wireless router broadcasts its signal.

The Channels you can set your Router to. (Click the image to enlarge)

Click this weblink to read more about Changing Channels


What are Encryption Protocols

You're gonna love this.....great bedtime reading!!!  It’s critically important to secure your wireless networks, but security can be complex, particularly when it comes to configuring each network component appropriately.  Routers allow you to encrypt data as it travels in and out of your network, making it much more difficult to be read or altered by hackers trying to steal confidential information. Most small business routers let you choose which data encryption protocol you want to use, but in order to make the best choice for your network, you need to understand the differences between encryption protocols.


For wireless networks, the data encryption protocol is WPA, or Wi-Fi Protected Access. WPA was introduced in 1999 after significant flaws were discovered in the original wireless encryption protocol, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy); even though many routers still include WEP, it’s too insecure to rely on to protect your business. Instead, opt for one of the protocols in the WPA family.

Since the introduction of WPA, one more encryption protocol has been added to the family, along with two different modes: WPA2 and the WPA2-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) and WPA2-ENT (Enterprise) modes. Using WPA2 has become the general default, but the mode you choose depends on your business needs and IT environment.

Launched in 2004, WPA2 is even more secure than WPA. It is the full implementation of the 802.11i standard for securing wireless networks, while WPA was a subset of the standard and intended only as a stop-gap solution until WPA2 was completed. WPA2 uses the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), which provides government-grade encryption capabilities that are stronger than the TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) used by WPA. In fact, AES is thought to be uncrackable by even the most skilled hacker.

The two other WPA protocols are designed for different types of networks. WPA2-PSK is intended for home and very small office networks. Each wireless device is authenticated by the same 256-bit key. With this mode, you set an encryption passphrase that must be entered by each user when connecting to the network. This passphrase can be stored on each computer, but it must be entered—or changed—individually for each device. All users share a locally stored passphrase, which can be found and copied from a computer by anyone. This makes WPA2-PSK less secure than the WPA2-ENT mode.

WPA2-ENT is made for the enterprise network, but it’s a smart choice for any business network. It provides security against more attacks than WPA2-PSK and separates users from the router’s passphrase to the network. WPA2-ENT creates new encryption keys each time users log on to the network with their unique passwords, and the passphrase to the network is not stored locally. It also allows for centralised control over users’ access to the wireless network, which makes management easier than with the WPA2-PSK mode. In a nutshell we don't have to worry about WPA2-ENT ;)

No matter which mode you choose, you must set all of your wireless networking devices to the same one for them to communicate properly.



Secure Passwords, and Why we Should Use Them.


Password strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting guessing and brute-force attacks. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability.
Using strong passwords lowers overall risk of a security breach.

When it comes to setting a password on your router, the more complicated the better. As suggested if it's too easy, and simple, it could be easy to guess. 


Click this link for some additional information on Strong Passwords.

Five Week Camera Class 2

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a raster image editing product. Targeted at hobbyists and consumers, it is sold at a fraction (roughly ¹⁄₆) of the cost of its professional sibling, Adobe Photoshop CS. It contains most of the features of the professional version but with fewer and simpler options. The program allows users to create, edit, organise and share images, all from the same product.

We started off tonights session by exploring some of the mainly used tools in Photoshop Elements. Palmerston Centre is using version 8, but the latest version is version 11.  All of the tools are the same in the versions, they simply add additional functionality into the products.

Tonight's session was aimed at giving the students the freedom to simply play around with the product, get a feel for what it can do. They downloaded some images from the Internet, using a Google Image search, and pasted them into Photoshop Elements.

Some useful links:

http://www.photokaboom.com/photography/learn/Photoshop_Elements/clone_stamp_tool/1_clone_stamp_tool_basics.htm

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/cloning-elements-with-the-clone-stamp-tool-in-phot.html

Here are some video tutorials you may like to watch:

http://tv.adobe.com/show/learn-photoshop-elements-8/

Next week I will be setting the class some specific exercises to alter - I'll post some of the good examples afterwards!  We'll also be taking some pictures in class of some 'still life' arrangements, if people remember to bring something in.

Digital Camera Class 7

Tonight's session started off by looking at the remaining pictures from last week, where we had ran out of time.

The main topic tonight was using the Saturation Tool in Paint Shop Pro, with the aim of creating some arty 'IKEA' shots, as I called them, just like the example below.

Strip away all but one colour, and with the right photo, the results can be striking!

The way this is done, is by choosing the Saturation tool, and to paint out the areas of colour on the photo. The left click boosted the colour strength, and the right click stripped the colour away to leave black and white.

So what technically what is this all about? Once someone dives into the science of photography they begin to hear a lot of words, such as saturation, that can sound quite confusing. When used in the context of light, saturation doesn’t mean the same thing it normally does.

Most people are used to thinking of saturation as the result of absorbing liquid. A paper towel can quickly get saturated with water or a cotton with ether and so on. So when we normally think of something as being highly saturated we think of it as being very wet, or having absorbed a lot of something else.

In terms of color and light things work differently. A beam of white light contains every color. Therefore, in terms of light, every color combined equals white. When an object appears to be white, it is because the object is reflecting every single color towards us. When an object appears to be the color red is actually absorbing every color except for the red, which it reflects. At the other extreme is an object that is black. This is absorbing all of the colours in the white light and reflecting none.

The term saturation comes into play when measuring the amount of color being reflected. If an object absorbs every color except blue, for instance, then that blue is considered to be highly saturated. If, however, the object absorbs some of the blue along with everything else, then the blue is less saturated.

When all of this is brought back to the context of photography it can be a little trickier; still, the same basic idea is applied. A photo with very dull colors is considered to have low saturation. Further, the more blacks and greys that appear in the photo, the less saturated it is.

Photographers who deal with film choose their film based partially on its level of saturation. Some film will have a high saturation while others a low. A photographer may choose to shoot a portrait with a low saturation so as to bring out the details in the subjects face. A landscape photographer may want a heavily saturated film because it punches up the colors and the finer details that get lost aren’t as important.

With digital cameras there tends to be a standard of setting a low saturation as a default. Most cameras will let you adjust that before you take the picture. People are more likely to play with the saturation of their digital pictures after the shot has been taken though. Doing so is easy with almost any photo editing software out there.

To get a better idea of what saturation levels actually do to a picture then open up your editing software and play with some of your shots. If you have a picture that has very bland coloring then increase the saturation and you may be surprised at the result. Have fun, but pay attention to what you’re doing. That way you’ll better understand what you’re doing.

Five Week Camera Class 1

A new class for after half-term, a five week Digital Camera Class.

Tonights class, an introductory session to the kinds of things we will be looking at during the course.

A copy of the presentation shown in class can be downloaded with the link below. Please not you will need to have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view the file.

http://www.christopherjthomas.com/downloads/classes/photography/Digital%20Photography%20January%202013.pdf

Visit www.adobe.com if you need to download a copy of Acrobat Reader.

This course is an Agored Accredited class, and you need to keep a student file. You will find the templates for your file here at the below link:

http://www.christopherjthomas.com/downloads/classes/photography/

For further information on the Kodak Top Ten tips, visit the following website:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/corp/top10tips/index.jhtml

Digital Camera Class 6

Last week's class - voting on what photographs we liked!!!

Not quite like Britain's Got Talent, but nevertheless the opportunity for the class to show off their project work they did. I gave the class a list of catogories to choose from, and to take 6 pictures from 3 of the groupings.

The purpose of the session was mainly, to discuss and critique the work that each of the students did. I explained that it was to be an open session where we say exactly what we think of the images, not meaning to be nasty, but to offer constructive critisicim such as '..it could have been better if the image was taken from another angle' and that sort of thing.

The session went very well, and was very positive indeed.  Time caught up with us though, and we had two more students to review. We'll look at them first thing next week.

Digital Camera Class 5

Can you believe it's half-term next week? Time flies when you are having fun! That being said, if you turn up next week for class you'll be disappointed, because the doors will be locked!

Not wanting to disappoint, I have set the class a project for the next two weeks, 

From the following topics, choose three, and take 6 pictures from each category. By all means take more pictures whilst you are doing so, but put the best ones in your student folder. So that’s 18 photographs in total.

Your choices are:

1.   “The Weather”

2.   “Things that make me smile!”

3.   “An Afternoon Walk”

4.   “Colourful Things”

5.   “Past, Present & Future.”

6.   “Enjoying Food.”

7.   “Planes, Trains or Automobiles.”

8.   “My Town.”

Students in the class will print out there pictures to go in their student files, and bring in the images so that we can see them on the whiteboard, and have a constructive criticism session, which has proved very useful based on classes gone by.

Anyway, putting that aside for now, onto tonights class....

We had a brief look at the Student folders and saw how they should be set out, and what you need to achieve, based on the criteria set out in the documentation. Everyone seems happy about this.  If you have any questions about this, please do not panic,  either have a chat with me in class, or email me at chrisjthomas@gmail.com

Ploughing on, we continued with the same theme as last week, but taking it a step further. I provided the group with a set of 14 images, which ranged in complexity. The reasoning behind giving 14 images was to ensure that there were plenty of exercises for everyone to do, no matter their level.  I jokingly said that if they finished all 14 they could go home early.

I had uploaded the images onto the Internet, so the first task was to download some of the images and save them into their own folders. The task was to make some relatively modern images look old fashioned. This was to be achieved by removing any forms of modernisation from the images with the Clone Brush and Scratch Remover, and then to apply a Sepia toning, and finally to blur the image several times to make it look dated and old.

I must say the results around the room from everyone in attendance was incredible - well done to everyone!!

Click this hyperlink to download detailed instructions on how to do these exercises.

Click this link to open up the webpage with the sample pictures on.  If you do not have a copy of Paint Shop Pro, then you can download a trial from www.corel.co.uk and then you can have a go at some of the exercise pictures at home!

Enjoy the half-term and I'll see you in a fortnight!!