Finished XBox 360 Controller Mods

We've finally reassembled Pia's controller. It was a bit more complicated than mine, since the painted trigger buttons didn't fit as perfectly as the stock ones. But it did fit, and it still works perfectly. Here's a picture of both controllers:

If you're wondering about the lights around the home button, the gradient you see in the picture is just due to the angle. When you look at it from the front, the color is uniform.

PS: If you haven't already, check out the two videos I made while modding the controllers:

• Painting the Controller (final steps)
• LED Mod Tutorial

XBox 360 Controller LED Mod Tutorial

To complete the gamepad mod I talked about last week, I've also changed the color of the LED ring around the "home" button. This time, I prepared the camera beforehand and made a short tutorial on how to do it:

Painting my Gamepad

Pia and I recently bought a couple of gamepads to play casual games on the PC. Painting them seemed like a fun weekend project. I didn't get all of it, but at least I got the final steps on video. I hope you like it:

Public Computers, USB-Sticks and Viruses

A few days ago, I went to a copy-shop to print some files I had. They had computers with MS Windows XP, where you could put your USB-Stick in and print your files. And so I did.
When I came home, I found a rather unpleasant surprise inside the memstick. A folder called "Autostart" with a .exe file inside had appeared, along with an "autostart.ini"-file on the root of the memstick. Furthermore, there was a newly created "recycler" directory with two subfolders, each with an executable file inside.
Of course, when I ran a virus-scan on the three files three DIFFERENT Win32 viruses were found (with the infamous "Conficker" among them).

Viruses are a well-know issue today. There are very good free anti-virus programs out there. Is it really so hard to take 10 minutes and install one?

Another feature that should be installed on public computers is a backup system. By createing an image of the system and loading it every morning, you can easily avoid the spreading of viruses. There are even PCI-Cards that do this for you.

By the way, in case you find a suspicious file on your system, there is a very good online virus-scanner called Jotty (http://virusscan.jotti.org/) you can use to check if a certain file is infected. It uses several virus-scanners simultaneously, and prints the output of every one of them, which is great to avoid false results.

Furthermore, if you think your system might be infected, you can create a bootable Linux image (such as Slax), load some free anti-virus programs into it (of course, their Linux versions), put it on a memory stick or a CD, boot your system with it and scan your system's partition. By doing this you can prevent the viruses from running and eventually hiding from your anti-virus.

About...

First of all, I want to explain a bit what this blog should be about ("should" as in "it will most probably change").
As the subtitle suggests, I define myself as a geek, mainly a computer geek. I've been programming my whole life, and participate regularly in algorithm-programming contests. By the way, that's where the name of this blog comes from. When I started competing, I used to try to solve every problem using so-called "greedy" algorithms. Of course, this turned into a disaster almost every time...
Another hobby of mine is electronics. Although I don't have as much experience in this field as in programming, I love building gadgets and, basically, playing around with electronics.

Thus, this blog's topic will mainly be technology, but it'll eventually contain some other stuff.
Next month, for example, I'll post as much as I can about the one-month trip to Japan my girlfriend and I will go on.