Saturday, December 30, 2006

End of 2006

Every year the blogosphere has a bunch of interesting articles and end of year collections. Since I'm not going to be home tomorrow, I figured I would post a little early and list some of them.

To start off, Google has their annual end of year Zeitgeist data up, showing social trends through searches, as well as a bit on how the data was compiled.

Wired has a bunch of interesting articles, like their annual Vaporware roundup and their "Foot-in-Mouth" awards, also very funny.

BBC has a "100 things we didn't know last year" with many things I didn't know this year.

Bad Astronomy has a Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2006 with some very nice images (thanks /.)

Reuters has a news year in review section with most read articles, best pictures, etc.

JibJab has one of their excellent flash clips reviewing 2006 (politically).

A new version of Knoppix (the excellent Linux LiveCD/DVD) has just been released. Among other improvements, it now contains beryl a nifty 3D compositing window manager. Fun to play with for those of you with decent 3D accelerators (just about everyone now). Torrents available on the Knoppix Tracker.

Mashable has a social networking awards (ie myspace, etc) (via Qwerky)

Digital Photography School has updated their How To Photography Fireworks article in preparation for any New Year's festivities

The Google Earth blog has a round up of 10 GE animations for those of you with a recent GE4 beta. They also have a listing of GE Games (see their next post for more on "Mars Sucks")

If anything exciting happens in the next couple days I'll try to add it, but for now Happy Surfing (oh, and Happy New Year ;-)

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Merry Christmas

So maybe I'm jumping the gun a little here, but I figure people might be interested in how the internet is celebrating.

For example, both NORAD and Google have their Santa trackers going. (NORAD Google)

Digital Photography School has some tips on taking good pictures at any festivities you may be having, though the best pictures I took at my families little get together today were of some feathered friends enjoying my grandparent's bird feeder.

You may also be interested in this guide to photographing the lights that seem to be lighting up many towns these days. It looks like the trick is to take the pictures before it's completely dark.

Don't forget to check out Google's annual Holiday cartoon, if you haven't already noticed it (click the Google logo). Some of the old ones are still available too, just change the number in the end of the above link (ie: doodle12.html becomes doodle10.html)

Enjoy Your Holidays (if you are looking for an alternative)

A couple of my Holiday photos (NY weather is odd this year...)

Blue jay
Woodpecker

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Zudeo

I saw on Slashdot today that BBC will be releasing some of their old shows on the Azureus network. Maybe I've had my head in the sand lately (I have been busy with other things) but I thought Azureus was a Java based bittorrent client. Turns out that Zuedo is a website hosting torrents of various videos. They show a screenshot of a "Zuedo" client on the homepage, but it is just a copy of Azureus 2.5 (despite the fact that the site is "powered by Azureus 3.0", which I don't think is out yet). This could be because I'm using Linux though, maybe you get something different on a Windows machine. Anyway, they have a bunch of video available right now, mostly trailers and open source films but it looks like there should be more soon. It does work pretty well, the torrents are automatically loaded into Azureus using javascript (On my machine Azureus has to be running when I click the link). You might as well give it a try, and hopefully we will see more content soon. I guess if this one got past me, it probably got past everyone else as well.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Digitizing old Music

Since I don't have time to write much of my own these days, I thought you might be interested in Lifehacker's short guide to digitizing cassette tapes. This basic method also works for records, though you may need some extra hardware and an amplifier. I found that with my nforce2 motherboard's integrated sound I can wire an unamplified record player directly into line in and just up the volume with software while maintaining reasonable quality. It would be better to use an amplifier (even better, one that can take out all the noise associated with records so you don't have to do it with software). You should be able to get everything you need at your local RadioShack or equivalent. Audacity, which Lifehacker suggests is a great app, but if your using Linux, I suggest you also look at Rezound which has some nice filters to try and reduce the noise a bit. You may also be able to get mplayer/mencoder to clean up your audio for you, but I haven't tried it (look at mplayer -af help)

At any rate, this is a good rainy day project (seems like it never snows anymore). Anyone have any other suggestions for fairly automated filtering software to cleanup audio from older sources?

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Santa in Google Earth

It looks like Google is outdoing last year. As announced awhile ago, they are including a 12 day scavenger hunt as well as the usual Santa tracking. Even if your not into the whole Christmas thing (do people forget that there are non Christians around?) it is always fun to explore the earth. All you have to do is install Google Earth (if you don't already have it) and download the kml found on this page. If you happen to have trouble finding today's "present" try zooming out a bit. If you type the location in the search box it zooms in to the point were the 3d model is off screen.

Have fun!

VLC

Looking for a new media player?

A new version of VLC was released yesterday, which makes this a great time to bring it up. If you haven't already heard about it, VLC is a media player that can also stream video. In other words, if you have a fairly fast computer, you can play a DVD in one computer using VLC and watch it on another, also using VLC. VLC also has the advantage of being able to play most audio and video formats. Go check it out here, and if you want to try out the streaming feature look here.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

XFire Plugin for Gaim2-beta5

If you are a user of the XFire plugin for gaim that I mentioned back in October, you might be interested to know that there is now a pre-release build for the latest gaim beta (5). Get it here.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Open Source Cookbook

One of the great things about the internet is that you can find information about anything with it, for example how to make food. It came to my attention that my family didn't know about the Open Source Cookbook, so I thought I might as well mention it here. Having some dietary restrictions I haven't actually tried any of the recipes, but the introductory info seems sound. There are two versions available right now. The newer one is much shorter, so I would look at both. I'm not sure if the "preview" version is only some of the content, or is just shorter due to formatting changes (it seems like everything is there).

If you would prefer something written even more for the "Geek" crowd, I would suggest you look at Cooking For Engineers

Flickr "Camera Finder"

There are a lot of things to consider when shopping for a digital camera. Once you decide what type you want go to a store and try some different models then read reviews on the ones you like. If you still need some more help, you can look to the world at large and see which cameras seem to be most popular. This is were the Flickr Camera Finder can help. It shows the popularity of all the cameras used by Flickr users (which should cover just about any model made recently I would think). You can see the most popular from each class of camera (phone, point&shoot, DSLR) as well as the most popular brand. You can also search for a specific model and see some pictures taken with that camera. This is very useful, since it allows you to get an idea of real world image quality. If every picture taken with a certain camera is blurry or discolored, it might be a good one to avoid. Unfortunately Flickr doesn't allow you to zoom the pictures to see the fine details, but its better than nothing.
It does seem to me like the Flickr is a bit biased toward DSLRs (maybe because they produce better images, overall) Even so the Camera Finder is at least an interesting and possibly useful tool. Try it here.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Editors for Web Programming

When doing web development (or any development without an IDE) you need a good text editor. Many people might think of MS Word when I say text editor, but that is a word processor. While it can serve as an adequate WYSIWYG editor for creating websites it isn't intended to be used to do real programming (most html tags are "misspelled"). With more interest in web development in my family lately I have gone though my Gnome applications list and have some editors to suggest...

For WYSIWYG editors, Word actually does an ok job, as does OpenOffice but something specifically intended for web development might be better. If you have some money to spend there are plenty of great alternatives, but if not you might want to look at NVU. Unfortunately NVU's development has been slower lately, but has all the features you need to do basic (or even more complex) web development. Something it doesn't do is close tags in the source editor, but you can't have everything. There is an unofficial bugfix/fork of NVU called KompoZer available too, but I haven't tried it yet. Another choice, is the integrated editor in the Mozilla suite (now called SeaMonkey). It is very similar to NVU but with some features missing. You can open the Mozilla composer by clicking this button:












While any of these also offer a source editing mode, a dedicated source editing package might be better for those that know some of the web development languages and html. The best (free) editor of this type that I have found in my short quest is Bluefish. Bluefish supports a variety of languages for syntax highlighting and will automatically complete html tags (as well as a few other types). For some reason these features aren't on by default and need to be enabled on a per document basis from the Document menu. The big disadvantage of Bluefish is it's sketchy Windows support. There is a Windows port available here, but I'm not sure if its any good.

If you want a more generic text editor you can't go wrong with vim (VI Improved for anyone familiar with vi). Unfortunately it does have a fairly steep learning curve (hint press i to insert/append text, escape + :w + enter to save, escape + :hardcopy to print, escape + d + arrowkey to delete a character, etc). vim will do color syntax highlighting on just about any language (including the web ones). You can get a copy here, along with a nice GUI. Windows users may prefer a copy of Programmer's notepad, which is a bit easier to learn and has some of the same features.

Of course, this is no where near a complete list, though it should get you started. Anyone have a favorite editor not listed? Unix people may also like things such as nano, pico, joe, etc but this is for a more general audience. Once you get an editor you like, check out webmonkey and start learning to build websites.


Well back to my homework, believe it or not this was a quick post (if not short) so feel free to complain if something doesn't make sense ;-)

Friday, November 24, 2006

Bad Year for Sony

As noted by Y! and Slashdot, it might be a good idea to keep track of your Sony digital camera since they are having trouble with some model's LCDs. No news on which models are affected though. If you do have problems, I guess your best bet would be to contact Sony Support. Also be sure to make sure any laptop batteries you may have are ok (check with your laptop manufacturer) .

Read All About it.

If you ask me most Sony cameras don't have much going for them anyway, with their proprietary and expensive memory cards. They do make some cool DSLRs though, their self cleaning sensors are nice.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Happy Turkey Day!

More posts after the pie, hopefully

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Timezone Change

For some reason earlier this year the powers at be decided to change how daylight savings time is done here in the US. This of course causes problems for any computer that tries to deal with daylight savings by its self. According to Microsoft patches for Windows XP and 2003 should be out for the December round of patches, anyone using something older is out of luck ;-(. I expect Linux users will also get patches as you normally do (depends on your distro, I think Gentoo has had a patch for quite awhile, not sure about the others).

If you run a Windows CE or Pocket PC (Windows Mobile) device things are a little more exciting. You need to patch the registry. Microsoft has an inf which you can compress into a .cab and install or you can use this one (WARNING: Only works with Windows Mobile, look here for CE) that someone was kind enough to post (thanks PocketPCThoughts).

It will be awhile before this is a problem, but I thought I'd mention it while I was thinking about it from the PPCThoughts article. Vista will ship with the new settings.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Geography Quiz in Google Earth

As seen on the Google blog, Google and National Geographic have an African geography quiz for Google Earth, as well as some other interesting information about Africa. So, if you looking for something to do, install Google Earth 4 beta and try out the quiz. They also added some neat old maps under "feature content" the other day. Note that these require the very latest version of Google Earth.























Edit: I thought maybe a screenshot would be good here.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Combat SPAM in Gmail

Here is an interesting tip brought to my attention by my latest Maximum PC magazine. It is well documented that Gmail ignores any extra "." s added to the username portion of an email address (example: me@gmail.com is the same as m.e@gmail.com). These extra dots are, however kept when the mail is delivered and can be used as criteria for a filter. In this way if you give a company your email address with some pattern of extra .'s you can find out if they are the ones putting you on a SPAM list or simply filter for their email.

Handy!

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Black Friday

Black Friday (the busiest shopping day of the year, the Friday after thanksgiving) is approaching, and ad scans are already being posted. If you plan to try to get a deal on Black Friday you may want to check out this year's Black Friday site as well as shopping forums like fatwallet.com

Some of the scans are pretty bad, so you may want to download them and open them in a real image editor. A good unsharp mask in Photoshop or GIMP can help a lot.

Just be prepared to get up early. Sometimes you can order online and have your purchase reserved in store, getting the discount without having to be the first one to the store.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Old Movies

Quick post tonight (haven't been many lately, sorry),
Anyway,

If you have a lot more time than I do you and a fast Internet connection you might want to look into watching some old movies. Very old movies have run out of copyright, and are now freely available on the net (like the Project Gutenberg books). One way is to get them from the Public Domain Movie torrents site. This site has a number of old movies available using bittorrent (to save the server bandwidth). You can also find a huge amount of old video on Archive.org (Check out their whole moving pictures section or skip right to the Prelinger Archives for the old stuff).

Perfect for long trips if you have a Pocket PC or recent Palm.

Comment SPAM ;-(

Well, It looks like this blog has been getting hit with comment spam lately (mostly on older posts for some reason). I turned on comment moderation, so your comments may not show up as quickly, sorry. That said, feel free to comment away, just no more ads for skincare products please ;-)

I'll try for a real post later today, I have been busy lately (as usual)

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Firefox 2.0, Options

As many probably already know, Firefox 2 came out the other day. It has some improvements, but takes a step back in some ways too. Luckily for us, it is very configurable. To change settings beyond the most basic, navigate to about:config. To search for a specific key type the first part of its name in the filter box on the top of the page. To get you started, you can look at this Lifehacker article, but there may be some other changes you want to make as well. For example, there have been some privacy concerns recently about the phishing filter, which you can disable by making browser.safebrowsing.enabled false.
If you are curious about what an option does, you can look it up in the MozillaZine knowledge base (or usually just google it)

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Googlebombing

As many are probably already aware it is possible to manipulate google's search index to promote a particular site. Their algorithm counts the number of other sites linking a site to try to determine its importance, the more links the higher it is in the search results. Apparently, this trick is becoming political. Now that it has been brought up, I thought I'd point out that this isn't new; all we need is another miserable failure in the government. Of course, us Americans can't be given all the credit for bad politics, looks like the UK gets the liars. To be fair, I guess you can be both a miserable failure and a great president. Want to pick on your own countries leader? Check out this Wikipedia article (near the bottom) for some more fun searches ;-)

Monday, October 23, 2006

Flash 9 Beta For Linux! (and others)

It has been too long since Adobe/Macromedia has released an update to Flash for Linux. Many sites require version 8, but only seven existed, until very recently. It turns out that Adobe has a publicly available beta of Flash 9 for Linux available here. I can't think of any sites that specifically require >=flash 8 off the top of my head, but the new version does seem to work quite well with google video and the like.

Not a Linux user? Still want to try out the latest and greatest? There are also versions for Windows and Mac at the same site.

Friday, October 20, 2006

DRM

DRM or Digital Rights Management has gotten a bad reputation lately, and rightfully so. Music/Movie/Game companies putting unreasonable restrictions on their products such that they become unusable to the rightful purchaser. Technology such as FairPlay which serves only to annoy legitimate purchasers, but doesn't actually stop determined people from copying music (see PlayFair, now QTFairUse) .

Anyway, the real point of this post is to point out a particularly creative approach to DRM, education. Weird Al's "Don't Download This Song".



Of course, If you haven't already, some of his other songs are good too.

Happy Watching /Listening, and Remember: No Stealing Music!

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Beagles!

No, I'm not talking about one of these.

As seen on Slashdot, Charles Darwin's works have been scanned and put on the web (if only I had the time to read them). Anyway, if you are interested, you can find them here, both the scans and the (easier to read) text. You can also check out the Slashdot page for some "discussion" of Darwin's theories.

(If you're wondering about the title, Darwin's ship was called the HMS Beagle, when he went exploring to learn about some finches and other animals, see the wikipedia article)

IE7

If anyone is keeping track of Microsoft, it is worth noting that they released the final (if it can be called that) version of IE7 to the public. I have only used the version incorporated into Vista, but it is a vast improvement over IE6 (came out during the Win98 era after all). IE7 does most of the things Mozilla and Opera have been doing for years; the most significant? tabbed browsing. It also handles RSS and keeps track of some phishing sites. So, if you must use IE, I would go get IE7 here. If not, check out Firefox or Opera, or SeaMonkey, or any of the many other good browsers, and ditch IE6.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Blogger Beta

I've been seeing traffic from beta.blogger.com lately and I got curious (I usually post by email) so I logged into blogger and found out a little about the new program. The big feature they added is the ability to label or categorize your posts, which I am going to try to start doing, though I'm not sure if I will be able to do it over email or not yet. If you want to upgrade to the beta version (assuming you have a blogger blog) you will need or need to get a google account (you have one if you use gmail, or can get on during the conversion process). Then you log into blogger and there should be a banner on the right side of the page to do the conversion and tie your blogger account to your google account. After that you post from beta.blogger.com, not much too it. The new beta version seems to work very well so far, so I would go for it (I particularly like the new spell checker).

Eudora

If you use Microsoft Outlook for email, you should probably look into some of the alternatives. Because most people use Outlook, it is quite often attacked and has a reputation for security flaws. Other clients also have some more/better features. One popular client is Eudora, which currently is free with either limited features or advertisements but is going open source.  Hopefully  the new open source version will continue to support the old mailbox files, since it is apparently a complete rewrite based on the Thunderbird codebase. Thunderbird its self is a good client with a number of available plugins and good built in spam filtering.

If you are a current Eudora user, Wired has some further commentary and Qualcomm has an official announcement on their site.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Online Board Games

I may have posted about this before, but its cool so I'll do it again.

Hasbro (the UK branch) has an online version of the board game Monopoly using taxi drivers in London as the game pieces. They also (as of recently) have a version of Clue, which I haven't tried, but may also be interesting.  Well, if you have the time, give both a try (Monopoly  Clue), I thought the Monopoly idea was a good one, though not the most exciting game to play. Someone else will have to comment about Clue, since I have other things I have to do.

Enjoy your afternoon (just thought I'd mention this since they emailed me about the new game)

Friday, October 06, 2006

XFire

Xfire is (besides being a name for the technology ATI uses for Multi-GPU setups) another instant messenger which has the interesting feature of keeping track of many common games. It allows you to see what games and what servers your friends are playing on in addition to providing normal IM and VoIP services. It also tracks game patches and does a few other nifty things. That being said, if you, like me, happen to be a Linux user with friends that seem to use Xfire almost exclusively for instant messaging you may be interested to know that there is a gaim plugin. The plugin, called Gfire can be found here, and integrates Xfire's instant messaging into gaim and displays what your friend is playing and on what server if you hover your mouse over their name. If you just don't like the Xfire client, there is also a build for the Windows version of gaim.

Just what the world needs, another IM protocol, but the gaim plugin is handy if you need it. Get it here.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Distributed Computing

As seen around the web over the last couple hours, Folding@home has released a client to model proteins using your ATI graphics processor (X1900). Unfortunately, it seems like its only a very early release, requiring a specific driver version and sub-version of directx 9.0c. This is a great idea though, whatever the implementation problems, since the GPU is a very powerful math processor that sits largely unused unless you are playing games.  AnandTech has a good summary of the Folding@home project and the new GPU project if you want to read more, but basically the idea is that the more complex proteins (very long chains of peptides) bunch up or "fold" into very complex shapes due to the interaction of the atoms ( hydrogen bonds, etc). If you put the protein under an environmental stress (change its temperature, ph, etc) the interaction of these forces will change and the protein will "unfold". Depending on the protein, it may or may not "fold" again when its environment returns to normal (some may also require interaction with other molecules to fold). Since many (most?) of the human body's functions require on proteins (particularly enzymes) the hope is that with some study and modeling scientists will be able to figure out exactly how some common proteins work and prevent or cure problems.

Anyway, enough bio,  if you want to help out and have an ATI X9100 take a look at the ATI FAQ here.If you don't have an ATI video board (NVidia has better Linux support), you can get a client for your CPU here (be sure to run two copies if you have a dual core processor). Once running, you shouldn't really notice the client since it runs at a low processor priority.

If you don't like Folding@home, there are plenty of other options if you are looking to put your CPU to work, among the more well known ones:

SETI@home (find aliens)
ChessBrain
Electric Sheep (Screensaver Generator)
GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search)
University of Oxford "Screensaver Lifesaver"

Some more can be found on this list

Happy Computing,

(and feel free to correct me if I've forgotten too much Bio already)

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Dosbox

Do you have some old dos software you wish you could still use, but no computer with dos (the Windows XP command prompt doesn't count)? I find that some of the old dos games are still some of the best (as far as play goes, maybe not graphics). To solve this problem, and use your old software you can use a handy emulator called dosbox. Dosbox comes with many Linux distributions, but for people who don't already have it installed, you can get it here.The Windows version puts a icon on the start menu, people using other OSes can run "dosbox" from the command line. Once you get it running, you will need to mount a drive to place your files on. Make a directory and within dosbox run "mount c /path/to/dir" or (for windows users) "mount c drive:\path" (substitute with the actual path). Then you can change directory to your newly mounted drive (cd c:) and start installing software. You may want to unzip and place setup files in the directory you are using for dosbox from your main OS to make things easier.

Once you get your software installed, if it behaves slowly try pressing control+F12 to increase the amount of cpu given to dosbox or control+f8 to decrease it. When you find the optimal settings for your system you can setup a config file with the z:\config.com utility within dosbox and then run dosbox with the -conf flag (see the readme). Note that you will need a reasonably fast computer to even get the speed of a 486 in dosbox, since it emulates the entire system. It also supports CD drive emulation and some other things, so you might want to check out the readme.

I find that dosbox runs the old (great) Apogee/3DRealms games very well. There is also a list of other games on the dosbox site.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

NASA World Wind

While I'm all for Google Earth (if you don't have it, go get it!), NASA, in a case of Your Tax Dollars at work, (yes, the organization that seems to keep messing up on a huge scale) has an interesting alternative called World Wind. World Wind is free to download, but only for Windows (point GEarth). The initial setup file is about 60M but since you basically need broadband to use it anyway, this shouldn't be a big deal. One huge advantage World Wind has over GEarth in this respect is that if you want to you can download Data Packs so you don't have to stream from the net. These files are huge, but would be great if you have a friend with a fast Internet connection but don't have one yourself. You can download World Wind data here (Scroll down past the archive.org ads). As if it weren't enough to have great imagery of the Earth, World Wind also comes with a Mars version and a Moon version in addition to the normal Earth version and a "Sky Survey" program. You can also view a number of other planets from the File menu (Jupiter, Venus) Google Earth has more high-res pictures (in the areas I checked) and has wider support for 3D models and roads, but that is where it's advantages end. World Wind has a lot of options, including those to turn on or off Lat/Long lines, the compass and various markers. It can also import .kml files from Google Earth. World Wind displays the current Cloud Cover (also possible with GEarth beta4 with a .kml). The feature that I think really sets World Wind apart from the alternatives is the wide variety of maps available. You can view imagery from a variety of different cameras simply by clicking their buttons (to turn them on and off, data can be layered), including various cameras on the LandSat7. One option I really like is the option to replace the images with USGS topographic maps. These maps are good scans and look very good. They can be zoomed to some extent (as you zoom different resolution maps are displayed) and look very good though they take some time to load. If you want them, there are also a number of Scientific options that I haven't had a chance to play with yet.

At any rate, I recommend you try both Google Earth and World Wind. Both work very well and are great for a variety of uses, though each has some distinctive advantages. If you want some KML files to play with check out the Google Earth Community site and the Google Earth blog.

On a side note, I have been noticing that NBC has been using Google Earth from time to time while reporting, so it must be good ;-)

Enjoy your evening and Happy Mapping

Monday, September 25, 2006

Free Education (Online)

Just a quick link tonight, browsing before going to bed I noticed that Lifehacker has a collection of free courses available on college websites and around the web. Worth looking into further when/if I have some spare time. If your bored, take a look here and comment if you find anything interesting.  I know there at least used to be some lectures from various colleges on Google Video as well.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Wikimapia

I stumbled on the Wikimapia website today, while looking for a map of a local map, and thought it an interesting idea. The basic idea is a cross between Google Maps and a Wiki. The page is a simple fullscreen interface to Google Map data which allows you to simply label interesting places, either on the satellite imagery or on the road map. There are some buttons on the top right hand corner of the page, which I found slightly hard to find at first to label places. Labels show up as boxes which provide information when you click them.

This could be very handy if your looking for someplace to go in a specific area, and is definitely another interesting page to show your friends

Thursday, September 14, 2006

ScanR

ScanR is an interesting new service. They have a couple email addresses which you can send images to, either from a cell phone or a digital camera (computer). They then send you an activation code (the first time you use the service). You enter that activation code on their website and set an address to send the results too. They then convert your image into a pdf and do some sort of OCR, making text serachable. The pdf is sent to the email you specify when enter your activation code on the website. The service requires a 1 megapixel phone/camera to work. With my quick test, it seems to work fairly well.

Neat!

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Windows Slowdowns

Almost all windows programs place data in places that cause an OS slowdown. Many also run all the time, or have "quicklaunchers" that load part of the program in ram, so that it starts faster, but slows the system down. Lifehacker has linked an interesting article testing the effects of a number of different, popular programs, so if your computer is slow and you know spyware isn't a problem (a difficult assumption to make) take a look at this article.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

RAM Testing

As with most things, when buying RAM (memory) you sometimes get some that turns out to be defective. If the problem is fairly minor, this can cause general system instability and crashes. To help diagnose memory problems, there are a few tools available. The two most poplar are Memtest86+ and the Windows Memory Diagnostic. Both are free downloads which can be burned to cd or (if you still have one) a floppy. You then boot them and allow them to run awhile. If any problems are found they will be displayed and you can visit the company who made your memory's website and have it replaced (though you should check your that your bios is set correctly first).

Download:

Memtest86+
Windows Memory Diagnostic

Ultimate Boot CD (contains all these tools and many more)

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Last.fm

It has been awhile since my last post, again. My summer job just ended, so hopefully I will have a little more time to post (and ideas for topics).
Anyway, This should be a good one for any music lovers looking for something new to listen to.

Last.fm is a music recommendation service. You download their client or use a supported music player. It then keeps track of what you listen to, like and dislike and comes up with a "recommendation radio" station. The client then streams music it thinks you will like to your computer. You can also get a stream based on a tag or set of tags you give the client. In addition, there is a social aspect, but not being very social I haven't tried it out, and the service works fine even if you don't register any friends.
 You can sign up at last.fm (not sure when the .fm top level domain came to be, but it does seem to work) if you want to give it a try. The service is free, though  if you send them money you can get some extra features.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Google Joins Gutenburg

If you are in search of free Ebooks, now Google has joined the likes of Project Gutenberg, so you have no excuse to go without your out of print classics. Or if you prefer, you could always get them as audiobooks.


Edit: Spelling Error Fixed, Thanks Ferenc
(Time to change the batteries in the keyboard again)

Sunday, August 27, 2006

"Terrorism" in the WoW Forums

This is a bit pathetic, but funny. (Ipod == bomb, who knew?).

Anyway, Enjoy, and Hopefully I will have something a little more directly computer related in a bit.

WoW Fourms
The Ottawa Citizen
Slashdot

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Bryce 5

I have posted about several free 3D Modeling/animation Packages (specifically Blender and Sketchup) before. Well, If you don't like one of those, I saw on techbargains that you can get a copy of Bryce 5 for free from Download.com for a couple weeks. Check it out Here.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Google Checkout -> Discounts!

If you have been waiting for an excuse to try out Google Checkout, they have some coupon codes for $10 off 30 on back to school purchases from several stores, as officially posted by Google here. Get the codes here.

Happy shopping (if shopping can be happy)

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Portable Apps

If you have a flash drive or some other type of rewritable, removable storage that you don't know what to do with, you might want to check out PortableApps.com. PortableApps started out with Portable Firefox, a distribution of Mozilla Firefox that could be run off a flash drive and left almost no residue on the host computer, allowing you to bring your browser and browser settings with you. That project has since been expanded to include some of the other popular open source projects like The Gimp and OpenOffice. Very handy if you want to use one of these packages without installing, or keep the same settings across multiple (Windows) computers.

Click Here for more info...

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

AllPeers

I can't remember if I have posted about this before or not, but its been awhile since I have posted (been busy) so I'll do it anyway.


At any rate, AllPeers is an interesting new Firefox extension that allows you to easily share files with friends through your browser. I just got an activation code, though I last looked at it months ago. If it sounds like something you're interested in, you can try to get an invite here. I'll try to remember to post some more info when I have some friends invited to really try it out.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Curve Fitting

For those of you mathematical people, I found an interesting site at work the other day. ZunZun.com allows you to enter data as a space delimited matrix and can fit it to a 2 or 3 dimensional curve. The sever even crunches the numbers (very handy if you have a slower computer). Depending on your data and settings, it may take a few minutes to do the math, but it seems to do a good job. Next time you want to fit a curve to some data give it a try.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Windows Live

As I'm sure any regular readers have noticed, I am fond of Google Earth, but Microsoft's answer has some unique features making it worth a mention. Windows Live Local is completely web based, so you don't have to download anything, but the interface isn't as quick/nice. The big feature that sets it apart from Google's offering is the "Bird's Eye View" which gives you amazingly good, high resolution images, like you might take from a low flying plane.

If you haven't already, give both services a try!

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Speech "Recognition"

Getting a computer to communicate and understand vocally has long been a goal of programmers. Microsoft has had software built into  Windows and Office to achieve this for quite awhile, but you had to be pretty lucky to get it to work. I guess they must have thought they had it worked out for their upcoming OS, Vista but that's not what their demo showed.

Watch and learn the meaning of "beta"...

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Google Spreadsheets/Writely Invites

I don't know how this works, but this site is claiming to be giving out free invites to these two online office services. Give it a try or try some invite free alternatives here.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

PuTTY

Next time you are in need or a Telnet or SSH client, give PuTTY a try. If you want to access a computer remotely with the command line, then SSH is the way to go, and PuTTY is a great client. It even handles some of the more advanced (and useful) SSH features like tunneling. Of course, for the majority of people who don't have a SSH server they want to connect to, PuTTY is still handy for connecting to clear text Telnet servers (like MUDs or Multi-User Dungeons for you non-gamers). 
 
You can get a copy of PuTTY here, as well as some other useful SSH/Telnet/Rlogin utilities. 
 
Just one more free utility everyone should know about ;-)

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

10 Kodak Photo Tips

If you are better with computers than with cameras, but you still want some good pictures, Kodak has a bunch of basic tips to get you started, complete with flash based "cameras" so you can try them out on some canned pictures. Check it out here.

If you are above Kodak's site, give the Digital Photography School a try.

The better the source picture, the more you can do with image manipulation software when you get back to your computer...

Monday, July 31, 2006

"Encarta Instant Answers"

I came across this the other day, visiting some of the Microsoft Vista sites, so I don't know if you need a beta version of Messenger or not, but if you use MSN messenger you should be able to add " encarta@botmetro.net" to your buddy list. If you send this bot a message, you will be able to search and get basic encyclopedia information over messenger. If you ask it something with any depth it will try to launch Encarta on your machine though (works well with gaim on linux, not). Might be handy, so give it a try.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Free WinRAR

As seen on Techbargains, WinRAR is giving away free keys today. The site is pretty swamped, so it might take some luck to get one, but its worth a look, not that you see RARs too often these days.

Get a key here.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

WGA

Windows Genuine Advantage has been in the (tech) news a lot lately, for being less than advantageous. There have been rumors that Microsoft can shutdown your computer and is spying on you with the WGA patches, which probably is mostly not true (though WGA does call home from time to time). That said, it has come to my attention that there are some advantages to running WGA...

Microsoft has a whole bunch of software for free here, if you verify that you have a legal copy of windows (with the WGA patches). Check it out, maybe there is something that you will find useful (they won't let me, apparently Linux isn't genuine ;-) )

While we are on the topic of free Microsoft software, MSN has recently put in a test "sandbox" of prerelease web stuff for you to play with, though there is very little that Google and Yahoo don't already have.

Repeat after me... Control, Alt, Delete!   (enjoy your Microsoft Software)

Sunday, July 16, 2006

World Firefox Day

Well, I don't know how I missed it, but it it looks like yesterday was "World Firefox Day".

Apparently, they are asking people to refer a friend to Firefox (its a great web browser if you didn't already know). If the friend downloads Firefox, then both of you get your names on the "Firefox friends wall". Go here for more information. (more about Firefox here). Of course, if you want the full kit, you could go with regular old Mozilla, or its replacement, SeaMonkey.

Or if you want something else, Opera is another good browser, and Great on Pocket PCs.

And speaking of Pocket PCs, while it still has some bugs (and is a resource hog) Mozilla Minimo is also worth a look if you have a web compatible PocketPC (don't forget ftxpbroswer either)

Or if you want to try something a little more light weight, look at dillo (UNIX only), links and lynx.

I'll bet you didn't know there were that many quality browsers (actually, there are many more, like Konqueror, Epiphany and Galeon)

Happy Browsing, and try something new!

Friday, July 14, 2006

PodCasting Awards

I have been seeing ads for PodCast awards around the net lately, the site seems to be here if you want to check it out. If you aren't already aware, a pod cast is a sort of radio show over the computer, distributed through RSS and the other XML based protocols usually. The intent is that you download the podcast and put it on your (i)pod to listen. NPR (National Public Radio) has some good ones, but other than that I am fairly new to podcasting. I would be interested in hearing what people like (particularly in science/technology topics) so go check out the contest and/or comment below (I listen to NPR's "Science Friday" sometimes, but that's about it).

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Online Reference

Many people use the Internet (particularly the World Wide Web) to find information on a specific subject. Usually a quick search will get you what you want, but there are some handy reference sites that may help you find it faster. For example, I find dictionary.com very helpful. As I'm sure you can guess, dictionary.com is an online dictionary, but it also has a thesaurus and a relatively new encyclopedia function (which only seems to search wikipedia). Dictionary.com searches a few online dictionaries, and usually gives you a variety of possible definitions. If you don't like Dictionary.com, you could also use Merriam-Webster's site (m-w.com) which includes a dictionary and thesaurus that will pronounce words for you.

As far as encyclopedias go, many people like Wikipedia, although you run the risk of inaccurate data/vandalism because it is written by the community (though with a conventional encyclopedia, you don't know if the editor/writer knows what he/she is talking about either). If you prefer a more closed encyclopedia, you might want to try MSN Encarta, though it does cost some money to get full articles sometimes.


These are some good/popular resources to get you started, but what do you like? feel free to comment ;-)

Monday, July 10, 2006

Flash Based Whiteboard

GE has a nifty whiteboard written in flash that works quite well. Beside simple drawing, you can invite people to share your whiteboard with you through email or IM (looks like AIM only right now) and use a variety of pens/stamps/shapes, etc. [via lifehacker]

Reminds me of some of the functionality of Microsoft NetMeeting (when it actually worked). If you want to experiment with NetMeeting and it's whiteboard function as well, try going to Start -> Run and entering "conf.exe" (w/o the "s) on WinXP (not sure if its just pro or not, give it a try and post in the comments, I don't have a windows install handy right now). You can also fiddle with NetMeeting's eventual replacement, Portrait, (download it here) but I find that it doesn't work much better.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Flash!

I got back yesterday (very tired), but I have a few links for you.

Occasionally you hear about animation, usually done in flash, that is good enough to catch the attention of enough people to be of interest to the mainstream media. Most recently, JibJab did this with their mocking of US politics. While JibJab has a few great clips, they aren't the only producers of amusing animations. Another (relatively) well known clip is the Viking Kittens song (getting to be a bit old at this point, actually). The people who produced the Viking Kittens clip have also have some more (increasingly odd) animations on rathergood.com. Be sure to check out some of the older  ones. You may also be familiar with the Badger song, produced by someone going by the name of weebl. Weebl's website also had a bunch of good (also odd) clips, that you may enjoy next time you are bored. Of course, No survey of flash animation sites can be complete without mentioning AlbinoBlackSheep which is a blog/website collecting animations from a variety of animators. Be sure to check out their most popular and classics sections (at the bottom of this page).One of the animators that is occasionally seen on AlbinoBlackSheep currently goes by "Lemon Demon" and has some particularly good/popular songs. His site is here.

As with everything on the Internet, there are a bunch of other animators and indexing sites, but the above covers most of the bigger/better ones.

Happy Watching!


( and Google IS a verb!)

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Happy 4Th of July!

I'm going to be away from computers (surprising, I know) for a few days, so I (obviously) won't be posting. Meantime, enjoy the 4th of July celebrations (in the US anyway) and check out Wired's "Geek Fireworks Guide". The various photo suggestions worked very well for me (see below).

Firework
(Taken with my Nikon D50, 3sec@F16)

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Online (Tech) TV

If you remember TechTV, before it became G4, and wish for some of the old, decent shows, you might be able to find something on the web. Some of the old TechTV personalities have online (IPTV) shows. DigitalLifeTV, for example, is a good tech news show, freely downloadable from dl.tv. Kevin Rose, one of the later hosts of The Screensavers has also been involved with several shows and podcasts lately. Currently he does an occasional show for "systm" and several podcasts on revision3. He also did a short series called thebroken on the "shady" side of computers.

All worth checking out, next time you have time and bandwidth to spare.

Friday, June 30, 2006

Server Testing

If you happen to run some sort of server on your computer (running your own FTP server or SSH server is a very handy way of transferring files) you probably already know how hard it can be to tell if everything is working, without someone helping you. Routers and port forwarding further complicate things, making it almost impossible to know if you have a working setup or not. hq42.net has some tools to help you test the most common servers (web, ssh, ftp, mail, dns,etc). All you have to do is pick the appropriate tester, and enter your server's address. Depending on the protocol, you will get some of the homepage or a welcome message of some sort (dependant on your server's setup) if all goes well. If you are ever setting up a server, go here and click "Networking Tools"

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Ultimate Boot CD

I have been meaning to try it out for some time, and Ultimate Boot CD has so far held up to its name. If you haven't already heard of it, Ultimate Boot CD is a free boot cd that includes a collection of many other boot cds and floppies. It includes the utilities that come with most hard drives, several boot loaders, all the major memory test programs, a small linux distro, a NT password editor, some virus scanners, and some other useful odds and ends, in under 200M. If you ever fix computers or have problems with your own, this might be a  good disc to have laying around. If it doesn't include something you want it to, there is also an option to add more images. You can get a copy of Ultimate Boot CD (just unzip and burn the .iso image) here.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

RSS Owl

If you are looking for a good RSS reader, or a way to collect up content from all the many websites you check daily (or if your just curious about RSS/Atom/XML feeds) then RSS Owl is a good program to check out. RSS Owl is a fairly powerful, yet usable RSS newsreader for most operating systems (java based). Typically, all you have to do is go to the tools menu and "Discover Newsfeeds on a website" and enter the URL of the website in question (assuming it has a discoverable RSS feed). RSS Owl also has a nice tutorial to get you started. When you get all your sites entered in, you end up with a nice list of posts from each site, usually in a cleaned up form (no backgrounds/ads/flash/junk), similar to reading email. This can save a lot of time if you check a lot of sites. If you own a PocketPC or other mobile device, you may want to look into a RSS reader for it as well (simply export from your desktop to an opml file) so you can read your feeds on the go. If you aren't already using RSS, you should really give it a try, especially since many sites are providing feeds at this point.

If anyone else has a favorite RSS reader, I would be interested to hear about it, feel free to post in the comments. I normally use Liferea, but it is Linux only, so I have also used RSS Owl and usually recommend it to friends.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Find Airplanes in Google Earth

As many of you already know, Google Earth is a very cool program with satellite images of the world.  Some people in the Google Earth Community  have started a database of planes, caught in flight by Google's imagery.  Chances are you can just click here, to have the planes marked for you, but if not (depends on your OS and configuration) you can import it by going to Add => Network Link from Google Earth. For more information about the planes, and another link to a pair of planes doing an in-flight refuel, take a look at this post on the Google Earth Blog.

Neat Stuff!

Windows Activation

Microsoft is irritating about activations. One of my friends had to reinstall Windows XP today and call Microsoft to reactivate, so I thought I would share this tip. If you backup C:\windows\system32\wpa.dbl and c:\windows\system32\wpa.bak you can copy these backups back after a reinstall, from "minimal" safemode, and windows will be reactivated without the fuss.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Commercial Videos on Google Video for Free

Google is testing  a new advertising model on their video site today (and hopefully for awhile), offering some of their commercial clips (shows) for free, with ads. They have an ok selection today, if you want to check it out click here.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Blogs, Vacations

Its been a couple days since my last post, sorry about that. On that note, if there are any other bloggers reading this, I saw an interesting article linked by LifeHacker about time away from your blog. I'm not sure how many of the tips can be carried out on a blogger blog, but it is worth a quick look. Hopefully I will get a chance to post for real tomorrow, though I have a LAN Party to go to, and some other things to do.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Links

I am currently working on a list of some of my favorite/the best/most useful websites, if anyone wants to check it out. Still a work in progress, but maybe worth a look.

Gmail and SSL

This was news to me, when I heard about it, but it's probably documented someplace (sorry if you already knew).

Anyway, if you use Gmail you can get the web based interface with SSL encryption. Just use https://mail.google.com instead of the usual http://.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, SSL encrypts data between your computer and the server. This helps to keep people out of your account, but it doesn't make your emails any more private, since email is sent as plain text (unless, you use PGP or something similar). Still, it can't hurt to secure one more part of the process (unless you have a very, very slow CPU).

Friday, June 16, 2006

Soccer World Cup, in ASCII?

If you are a soccer fan, and a computer geek this just might be for you. I saw this post while idly sorting through my rss feeds this afternoon, and found it interesting, if a bit weird. It looks like you can watch the world cup, live, in ASCII over telnet from ascii-wm.net if you are so inclined. Right now, there is simply a message saying that the feed starts 10 minutes before a game (whenever that is). If you aren't familiar with ASCII, take a look at the Wikipedia Page, but basically its a simple standard for representing letters.  If you are new to telnet, you can just type "telnet ascii-wm.net 2006" at a command prompt on most operating systems. If you use Windows, PuTTY might give you a better experience (enter ascii-wm.net as the host, 2006 as the port and select telnet as the protocol).

If you are looking for some more fun with ASCII art, check out

StarWars
ASCII Art Generators, such as this one
Wikipedia

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Webby Awards

I'm catching up on old news a bit here (from May). Anyway, If you are looking for some new websites, every year the best websites are nominated and voted on by webbyawards.com and a list is published. The 2006  list came out back in mid May. There are a whole bunch of categories this year, so there should be something for everyone. If you haven't already, you can take a look here.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Google Earth, For Linux!

It's about time! It looks like Google has finally released Google Earth for Linux, ( and some other updates for other operating systems). I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but the Google Earth thread on the Gentoo fourms has some limited discussion.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

NeroVision and Quicktime

I have been busy with (among other things) a video project this weekend. I have a collection of quicktime movies off a digital camera, and have been putting together a little slideshow/video clip collection using Windows Movie Maker and NeroVision. It has taken an unreasonable amount of struggle to get everything to cooperate, so I figured I might as well share my experience. It turns out that NeroVision (6 and 7 demo), while it will import quicktime (.mov) without complaint, quicktime causes it to become seriously unstable. Nero was locking on me every couple minutes, so I ended up converting all my quicktime files to DV files, and everything has been going smoothly since.
I have read that another common cause is bad video drivers, if you are also having this problem.
 
The moral of this story, don't use .MOV with NeroVision even though it is a "supported" format ;-)
 
Anyway, tomorrow is the last full day of school for the summer so I should have more time to post, and less ideas, so feel free to email me if you have something you want me to mention (no promises, but I'll see what I can do)

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Looking for Something?

Usually the top three search engines (MSN, Google and Yahoo, last time I checked) are good enough, and you can find what you need right off the bat.  Sometimes something different is useful though. For example, if you are looking for info on something a bit less known, that you don't get very many results for on your favorite engine you might want to try ProFusion. ProFusion searches most of the major engines, and some lesser known ones, and compiles results (though it can take a few minutes to do it).  On the other hand, if you are getting too many results, you might want to try out an engine like Clusty, which groups results into clusters (categories). You might also find a socially driven search engine, like Seekum useful. Seekum allows users to vote on whether or not a website is related to a certain keyword ("tag"). If you are a heavy shopper at Amazon, you might want to check out A9. If you log into A9, and use it frequently, Amazon will give you a 1.5% discount. A9 also has some specialized search functions, a bookmarking function and a "diary". If you are looking for something on a specific type of website (forums, blog, etc) you might want to check out Whonu. Whonu lets you search for specific categories of things, on specific types of websites.  If you are a bit of a "geek", enjoy command line interfaces, and are looking for a more interesting search engine, check out YubNub. YubNub can do a huge number of things based on what command you type in the box (search, etc), even including a couple basic games. You can look at some of the commands here and here or just type "ls" in the search box (just like UNIX).

On a side note (news), If you use the Google Toolbar for Firefox, they released an update today, as well as another extension to sync your Firefox settings between computers (announcement).
If anyone is interested, Microsoft also released a public beta of Vista (the next version of Windows) today (actually, lateish last night), you can get it here but the server is having trouble keeping up with demand right now. This beta times out next June.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Qwerky

It's been a few days, sorry about that. I'm busy with testing, and other things, so I only have a quick link for you tonight. Qwerky, is a blog that talks about the reasons behind the naming of some of the new "Web 2.0" sites (I mean, flickr? or how about the completely useless beggr). The naming aspect really isn't the interesting part though. If you go through Qwerky's archives, you can find posts about many different, useful sites. Next time your bored it is a good way to find new sites to visit (or you could just go waste time at Pogo or Popcap).

Anyway, Qwerky is one of those sites to check out, then add to an rss reader, and keep track of until they mention some site that interests you.

Hopefully more posts from me soon ;-)

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Mazda contest

If you are looking for something to do, Mazda has a scavenger hunt on Google Earth (giving away a car and some other things). All you have to do is install Google Earth, and go to this page. Then you will be given a hint in Google Earth, you are looking for a small yellowish X under 5000'. If you need more hints, you can look here. The first 3 are fairly easy, but they get hard after that. It may help to take screenshots during the videos (alt+printscrn, then paste into something in Windows).
 
Good luck.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Update Mozilla

It has been a couple days, I have been busy preparing for the end of school/ more tests. Anyway, quick post today.
 
If you haven't already, you should update Firefox and Thunderbird if you use them. For most systems this should happen automatically, but if not (or if you still haven't tried Firefox) you can get the updates from the Mozilla.com (new site I guess)
 
Off topic, but if you are looking for something to read, check out this article on Wired. It's sad, but paranoia really is hindering education significantly.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Wifi Dangerous?

I saw this on MobilitySite today, and thought it was interesting. Apparently, people are becoming concerned that Wifi (wireless networking) is causing people health problems. It is somewhat hard to test, because access points seem to be popping up everywhere (entire cities are covered). This reminds me of the concern over brain damage by cell phones, though that seems to have died down recently. Of course, microwave ovens run on a similar frequency (a lot more power though), makes you wonder if we are cooking ourselves ;-)

Anyway, check out the article, and see what you think.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Picasa

A couple days ago, Google announced a port of their photo viewer, Picasa for Linux. The interesting part about this particular port is that it isn't a native port, but the Windows version working under a patched version of Wine. For those of you fellow Linux users, Picasa for Linux works amazingly well (especially when compared to other programs under Wine). Since it ships with its own copy of wine, the download is a bit big (~26M w/ an installer). The installer version installs to a users home directory or /usr/bin if its run as root, or you can opt to use an rpm or deb if your distribution prefers. The installer works like most others, you make it executable with chmod a+x picasa*.bin and run it. The installer managed to put links in my Gnome menus which surprised me. The program its self is almost identical to the Windows version, though some desktop integration features are controlled by scripts in whatever directory it installed to. I pointed it at my picture folder and over the course of about 20 minutes it seems to have found all my pictures (~18G of jpegs and NEFs). The dates aren't correct on all of them though. I was particularly pleased that picasa can handle my Nikon RAW files (.nef) as well as many other RAW formats. I have been wanting a tool that can generate thumbnails of RAWs for quite awhile. The only downside that I have found is that picasa is a bit hard on the system (100% cpu usage if you are doing much of anything).

Google was even nice enough to give its patches back to the Wine project, so hopefully we will see some improvements in Wine soon as well.

If you use Linux and a camera, I would give picasa a try (good for Windows users too), though it is still an early release it is very useful.

Other people's comments:
Google Blog
Slashdot
LinuxToday

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Remote Access

Here's a quick tip for you:

If you want to be able to access your computer over the Internet from another machine (think PCAnywhere or GoToMyPC) you don't have to spend money. There are three good free options. The easiest being VNC.
There are a number of different versions of VNC available, though the protocols are mostly the same. I like TightVNC because of its "tight" compression, which makes things much more responsive than regular, vanilla VNC. VNC is easy to setup, particularly if you are running Windows. TightVNC comes with a handy installer (download it, run it, and click next a few times). Once it's installed you can start up the server, and open up the settings dialog from the icon that is put in the systemtray. Set a password and any options. If you are behind a router, be sure to forward the necessary ports to your computer (assuming your server is listed as [something]:0 these should be 5800 and 5900, tcp. more on this in the FAQ). On the client you should download vnc viewer (although it is possible to use a web browser also) and enter your server's ip address in vncviewer. You may want to play with the connection settings, depending on how much upload bandwidth your server has. Note that VNC doesn't use any encryption at all, so everything you do is sent clear-text, not that this matters much usually (don't enter credit card numbers over VNC).

Another alternative is NX, by NoMachine. NX is encrypted, and much faster than VNC but it can be pricey and is mostly targeted at Linux users. There is a Windows Client, but the server software is Linux/Solaris only right now. There is a free version of the Server called FreeNX, but it can be challenging to install unless your distribution has a package for it. Look at the NX and FreeNX websites for more info.

If you run Windows XP Pro (or Windows Server), you can always use Remote Desktop, though it requires some major port forwarding if you are behind a router (search the Microsoft Knowledge Base for more info). Other than the port forwarding this is easy to setup, just set a password on your account, right click my computer and go to the remote access tab. Simply check the boxes. The client is built in to Windows XP (under accessories=> communications).

If you use any of these, you may want to consider getting your computer a memorable host name, unless you have a static IP which you can memorize. DynDns will give you one for free.

If you are looking for something like this, I would definitely give TightVNC a try, but you can give the others a look too. Both are faster than VNC but have their own configuration issues. When you get VNC setup, try pointing a web browser at http://server:5800 (assuming the server is running in "slot" 0)

Edit: Minor spelling error fixed (you have to be careful with spell checkers)

Monday, May 22, 2006

Hit Counters

I have been meaning to write about hit counters for awhile. I have used a couple in the past, and have recently switched this site and my other one to use Google Analytics. You may also have noticed the feedburner counter on the right side of the index page. That keeps track of the number of current readers on the rss feed.

The hit counters I have experimented with are CQCounter, Sitemeter and Google Analytics. Each service gives you a bit of code to add to the bottom of each of your pages. CQCounter and Sitemeter both put a small logo on your page, though Google Analytics doesn't. Once that is done, Google Analytics checks to see if the code is entered properly, the others just assume it is. From here, the differences between the services are mostly features, though sometimes I think CQCounter and Sitemeter slow down a site's load time. I like CQCounter's interface, in that it gives you options to look at the last 20 visitors (about as many as I get in the average day) in detail or some basic stats. CQCounter does have some irritating popups that can get around FireFox's popup blocker. I don't like SiteMeter very much, though It does work and gives you the option to make your stats public which the other two don't. Google Analytics has the most features by far, offering every stat you could ever want, and maps of were your users are and are coming from. The only thing I don't like about Google Analytics is you can look at the settings of a specific user, just a pie graph of common settings (like video resolution and operating system). All three services have a limit to the number of daily hits they will allow, so if you get several hits per day, you might have to pay. For a small site like this one, any of the services will work, though I prefer CQCounter and Google Analytics. Google Analytics, unfortunately takes several months to get into, so I would give CQcounter a try if you have a blog or website of your own. (if you have a blog, paste the code you are given into the template, Sitemeter can do this for you).

Remember that a hit counter gives you only the most basic idea of how popular your site is.

Back to homework, enjoy your evening.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Beware what your "buddies" offer you...

If you use Yahoo Messenger, or others watch out for this and similar attacks!

Only click links in IM windows that have been thoroughly explained, from real people, with content that you want.

End Warning of the Day! ;-)


Also seen on Slashdot.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Comments

I appreciate feedback greatly, but there is no need to post similar or identical comments on every recent post. Since many of the comments posted recently are nearly identical, I am guessing it may have been done automatically, and have turned on the semi-irritating picture verification to prevent this. Sorry if this inconveniences anyone.

Thanks for the positive feedback, but please keep it to a dull roar ;-)

(50 some comments, only about 10 visitors last night)

I will try to post something more interesting in a  little while

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Windows Vista

If you are a follower of Microsoft, you may be interested to know that Microsoft has released an "Upgrade Advisor" for Vista, to make sure your machine is "ready". Of course, they must not want to sell me a copy, since the website doesn't even load in Firefox on Linux (not converting me anytime soon I guess). At this point, this has made Slashdot (they are also linking a CNET article), but I don't know how many of my readers also track Slashdot (if you don't, you really should).

For your enjoyment, Microsoft's Vista site under Linux on the latest version of Firefox:

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Google Video: New Web Uploader

I have some friends who experiment with Blender animation in their spare time and like to post their results on Google Video for the world to see. One of them is on dial-up and has had some trouble getting the upload tool to work on his slow connection. I saw today that Google has a new web based upload page, so hopefully that will work better. For those of you with problems with the uploader (like a different OS in my case or slow connection in my friend's) you can find the new upload page here.

If you aren't familiar with Google Video, you should really give it a look. If you are looking for something to start you off, you can find some government archives here, or check out GVOD

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Citations

I'm guessing most of the people this applies to already know about the Citation Machine, but for those who don't it is a useful enough tool to be worth a mention. Citation Machine is a website that takes in citation information and gives you a proper citation without trying to understand the picky syntax required by academic organizations. If you are writing some sort of paper, its defiantly worth a look. The Citation Machine can do MLA and APA style citations.

Back to my paper ;-)

Monday, May 15, 2006

Free Calls to POTS Phones from Skype

Two posts in one night!

Catching up on my email for a minute, I noticed that Skype had sent me a note saying that they were offering free calling to POTS (land line) and cell phones until the end of the year.

If you aren't familiar with Skype, it is a free VoIP service, offering free calls between computers and calls to normal phones for a fee. They also offer you the option of registering an incoming number for a fee as well. I did a round up of VoIP services quite awhile ago, which you can view here.

Skype is very simple to use, just install it (they have installers for most common operating systems/platforms) and you will be prompted to create an account. From there you can dial the echo tester (echo123), or during this promotion any other phone number (you will need a microphone/speakers or a headset). Skype is P2P based, and usually works very well. If you use the Windows version you can try out a large 100 person voice chat, similar to someplace between a conference call and live radio. Some versions also support webcams and file transfers, check out the Skype website for more info.

Give Skype a try, but I would encourage you to check out some of the other options if you are looking for VoIP, I like FreeWorldDialup, but its hard to setup. GizmoProject is another good option, and is easier to work with. Unlike Skype, both are based on the open SIP protocol, allowing you to use your own client if you want to.

Edit: More info about the promotion from a blog on Skype.com here.

Ibiblio

I don't have time for a big post right now, so I thought I should point out a lesser known source of information on the web.

You may know ibiblio.org as a Sourceforge mirror, but it also hosts a variety of other projects, as well as some books and informational websites. To get an idea what is available, visit the homepage or look at the index. Of particular interest to readers of this site, is the computer section with tutorials for many open source programs as well as some books on programming. If you are looking for something else, I found the Open Source Cookbook (pdf here) interesting (before I was on a restricted diet, I read the .4 version, but I see there is a new one out now).

If you are looking for even more (research oriented) content written by the community, everyone should know about Wikipedia, a huge web encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

For now, enjoy your evening!


Friday, May 12, 2006

Windows XP Startup Screen

A friend of mine was asking about changing your Windows boot splash screen (the black one that says WindowsXP when you first turn on your computer). I was going to write a howto of my own, but a quick google turned up this site, which has a fine one. Note that if you use the resource hacker method, and are clever you can change many of the other logos too, just explore!. You may find that you can make interesting changes in other executables too, or at least change their icons, just be sure to have a backup first.

Enjoy your afternoon, and give it a try ;-)

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Google Analytics, Instructables

I thought you might be interested to know that I am transitioning this site to Google Analytics from CqCounter now that Google has sent me an activation code. I am going to try to write a review type thing on both services tomorrow, but I'm busy dealing with the end of the school year and helping a friend setup a new computer at the moment.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for something to do, check out Instructables. Instructables is a community driven (basically a wiki) for DIY engineering/electronics projects. For example, check out these instructions on how to control an R/C car with a computer (using an Atmel micro controller and a max232) that Make linked this afternoon. Along the same lines, HackADay and DIYLive track some of the more interesting projects that people post on the web.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Google SketchUp

I mentioned Google SketchUp when it was released the other day, but I only just got a chance to try it. For those with a short memory (I haven't been posting much lately), SketchUp is a very easy to use 3D modeling program for Windows (Mac version coming?, hopefully Linux eventually?). I find that it isn't nearly as powerful as some other tools I have used (Blender, Alibre Design), but it is great if you want to draw something quickly. SketchUp comes with some tutorials, which seem to cover the basics very nicely, though it took me a minute to figure out what tabs they were talking about (look just below the top tool bar). I also found that the animations in the tutorial were a little choppy, even on my fairly fast computer, but maybe its my older video card's fault (feel free to comment). Once you get it figured out, they have a "warehouse" where you can exchange models. I also noticed that you can import from a couple different CAD formats, but there are very few export options. An interesting feature is the option to import and export to/from Google Earth, though I can't seem to get it to work.
If you have greater needs, you can also buy a "pro" version that supports animations and some more file formats, but I would look into Blender and Alibre (as well as some of the bigger CAD packages, depending on what you are looking for) first.
At any rate, Google SketchUp is an interesting program to play with, and great if you want to draw something in 3D quickly. Worth a look!

Friday, May 05, 2006

Lack of posts (again)

Just to let everyone know, this is the week for AP (advanced placement) exams so I am fairly busy with review classes, etc. I should be back posting more regularly in a couple days. Wouldn't want anyone to think I had died or something and stop reading the site for no reason ;-)

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Gaming, Intelligence

BBC News has an article on Nintendo games that are intended to up your smarts ( found via Lifehacker). This is not a new idea, and beyond so called educational games, many games have at least some benefit. From time to time, you hear about the First Person Shooters improving people's observation skills and reaction times. The once popular text (ASCII) adventure games have been shown to greatly improve reading and vocabulary. This doesn't mean computer gaming doesn't have its drawbacks, but if you do some research many games are very beneficial.

Enjoy your evening, and go try a text adventure or MUD

Monday, May 01, 2006

SketchUp

Awhile ago, Google bought a company called SketchUp, which sold a 3D drawing program. They have now released a free version. I have yet to try it out (only 1.5 more weeks of AP test prep), but I'm guessing a few of my readers might be interested.

Get it here or Check out the Official Announcement.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Errors in Reporting

If you read the paper or watch the news, and know something about the topic of a segment, you will often find lots of obvious errors. The Chicago Tribune has an article that is a good example of this, relating to the spread of computers in India. Did you know that its dangerous to "take out the power cord" from a computer or that you can disassemble a hard drive, put it back together and expect it to work without a clean room?

Enjoy the article, and feel free to laugh.

Look for similar errors in other articles, you will find that it is dangerous to trust the media too much.

Thanks to Dad for pointing this out (I'm not a big newspaper person)