| |
| Crawling around the net with Mike Graham, NE1V |
|
| |
|
| Crawling around the net with Mike Graham, NE1V |
Hi there all you WEB phreaques, This series of hopefully short articles (Ed Note: Yeah, right) is designed to acquaint those of you who “surf” the Internet with some of the web Sites and their features which would be of interest to the membership. Of course as always, if backed into a corner, I shall disavow any knowledge of this column or of the sites and place the blame on Jim, WW1Y.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology Web Site features a spiffy little downloadable program which you can put into your utilities sub-directory or any directory of your choice which, when you are connected to the Internet and the program is executed, will query the NIST Atomic Clock and automatically update your computer’s time. The accuracy of your computer clock will be about 1 second off, due to time delays in transmission of the time data to the computer. There are some other spiffy features on the software which permit you to query on a periodic basis while connected. I played with it and it sure works FB, at least on this computer. Check out the Home Page, and you will find a Link to download the software. The size of the ZIP file is only about 113KB and takes only seconds to download if you have a high- speed modem. You must use the PKUNZIP program to then extract the files. There are two of these…..one for computers running Windows 16-bit mode (NISTIMEW.EXE - 123KB) and one for Windows ’95 running true 32-bit mode (NISTIM32.EXE - 194KB). Merely copy these files into the directory of your choice (UTIL on my machine) and execute. If you run Windows ’95, create a SHORTCUT by dragging the file onto your Desktop. Then, while connected to the Internet, click on the Desktop shortcut or launch the program, select the server of choice from the FILE toolbar, choose QUERY SERVER from the toolbar, and select NOW. In about two seconds you will receive a notice that the time data has been received and a message that your clock disagrees by a certain amount. If small enough, the program will advise you that you don’t need to update. If you do, it will ask you if you wish to apply the time. If you choose “YES”, your system clock is automatically updated. VOILA…..as simple as that! Slick and simple….painless too. The Web address for NIST is: http://www.boulder.nist.gov/
If you wish, I’ll E-mail you the program. NE1V@WORLDNET.ATT.NET
Next Issue: A.R.R.L.