April 27th, 2008 Jeremy
I recently got Ubuntu 8 to dual boot with Vista and soon realized it was a pain to have two places to store my music, documents, images, etc. I thought about using an extra harddrive as a shared harddrive where I could keep files for both. But I’m highly organized on the computer (which is funny, since I’m not all that organized off the computer) and didn’t want to deal with creating sixty billion folders and I also liked keeping files in Vista’s Documents, Music, etc. folders. In addition to that (yes, I’m trying to prove to you that I’m not just lazy), I didn’t want to fill up the harddrive with all my files. I’d rather keep them all spanned out across three or four harddrives. The only way to do that was with syncing software. So I tried Vista’s syncing software, but apparently that only works with media devices. You’ve failed me again Microsoft!
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Posted in Internet, Linux, Technology, Windows | No Comments »
April 18th, 2008 Jeremy
note: This has only been confirmed to work with Windows XP
Want to piss someone off? Next time you’re at their house, open up notepad on their computer and type the following:
text1=msgbox(”Click yes to undo”,52,”!”)
text1=msgbox(”Are you sure you don’t want to undo?”,52,”!”)
text1=msgbox(”Well whatever. It’s your computer.”,52,”!”)
Now hit Ctrl+S (save) and change the Save As Type from .txt to All Files. Now name the file popup.vbs and hit save. Feel free to open the file to test it out. All it does is pop up a warning box (to edit the text that displays, change the text in the code. The ‘!’ part is the title, not some weird bit of code).
Now click/drag or cut/past the vbs file into some directory your friend won’t stumble onto. Try the Program Files folder or something. Now right click on the icon and click Send to… -> Desktop (Create Shortcut).
Now click the start button and under All Programs should be a folder called startup. Open it up and put the shortcut to your vbs file into it. Whenever you friend turns on their computer, the warning box(es) will pop up.
Posted in Funny, How To, Windows | 3 Comments »
April 16th, 2008 Jeremy
For the writing of this article I used Windows XP Professional SP2.
I recently got sick of using an FTP program every time I wanted to upload files to my site. So I searched around for solutions (thinking I could ftp via some hidden Windows program) until I found out that you can FTP via Windows Explorer. Not Internet Explorer, but Windows Explorer.
Connecting
To start your connection, open up My Documents (or any folder on Windows you want). In the address bar, type in the ftp address to your site (Example- ftp.sitename.net). After a few seconds, a box will pop up telling you that you cannot connect. Close the box and right click inside of the folder you were just trying to connect through. Select “Login As” and type in your log in information. Click connect and -poof- you’re connected to your site via ftp via windows explorer.
Make Future Connecting Easy
Close out that window (or keep it open if you’d like) and open up your start menu. On the right side of the menu, under My Computer should be My Network Places; click that. On the left, click “Add a Network Place” . Go through the wizard until you can choose between MSN Communities and Choose Another Network Connection. Select the latter and click next. Now type in your ftp address and hit next one more time (make sure to type ftp:// before your ftp address). Unclick Login Anonymously and type in your login name. Name the connection and hit finish. You will now be able to instantly connect to your site via My Network Places. For extra ease, place a shortcut to the connection on your desktop or quick launch bar.
Posted in How To, Internet, Technology, Windows | 3 Comments »
April 16th, 2008 Jeremy
Before you get too excited, I don’t mean portable like the portable versions of Firefox, Pidgin, etc. I mean for a portable harddrive (at least 7.5GB). Portable harddrives come in different sizes and types. I personally use an old laptop harddrive placed inside of an external drive enclosure and my iPod. You could also, if you’ve got one large enough, use a usb flash drive (thumb drive, pen drive, etc.). Obviously, in addition to a drive, you’ll need a copy of World of Warcraft and a subscription to it (so you can play it).
Use With Portable Harddrive
This is very simple. Either install directly onto the harddrive or go onto your C Drive and copy and paste your World of Warcraft folder onto the drive. It’s that simple. You can now use world of warcraft on any computer you want (assuming it has the required specs).
Use With an iPod
If you’ve already set up your iPod to be used a harddrive, go back to Use With Portable Harddrive and follow those instructions. If you haven’t, keep reading. Please note that this is done with iTunes 7 on Windows XP, so if you’re running OS X, it might be slightly different.
Plug your iPod into your computer and open up iTunes (if it doesn’t automatically open). iTunes should display information on your iPod. If it doesn’t, select your iPod under “Devices” on the left side of the program. Under Options, you should see a small list of options. Check Enable Disk Use. Now go back up to Use With Portable Harddrive and follow those instructions (or click here).
Playing the Game
To play the game, all you have to do is open up your harddrive and open up Wow.exe (or whatever the OS X or linux equivelant is). It’s that simple.
Posted in Apple, Gaming, How To, Technology | 2 Comments »
January 31st, 2008 Jeremy
When you’re a geek like me and you’re forced to survive in the wild (outside of your room), you might not know what to do. Conversations can be awkward, and often lead to you striking up conversations about that shock video you saw last week online. But I find when I’m at school, surviving in the wild is much easier, because I’m surrounded by computers. The only problem is that its not MY computer. With this article, I aim to help you make any computer YOUR computer.
All you need is a USB flashdrive. I use a 1gig LG flash drive, but something as small as 128mb will do. First of all, go to Portable Apps and download the Portable App installer. Install the program onto your flashdrive (it’ll take a while to do this, so go watch 2girls1cup or something :D). Once that’s done, you’ll want to start up the portable version of Firefox. This is where a majority of your survival kit will be going.
If you don’t already have one, head over to google and sign up for an account. With this account you’ll have access to Google mail (gmail), Calendar, docs, and many others. With this account, you get 6GB of online storage. And the best way to use that storage is a little Firefox plugin called GSpace. With GSpace, you can upload/download any file you want via Firefox. That means that if you’re finishing up a class and you’ve got some homework you need to finish up, you can upload the word doc, the images, the audio files, or whatever you need to Google and head home, download/complete the assignment and reupload for download at school. Now you might be saying that you can easily do this with a flash drive. This is true. But if you’re a graphic or web design major (I’m web major), you’ll have MASSIVE files that will very quickly fill up your flashdrive. But with Google + GSpace, you can fill up your 6GB with endless amounts of stuff.
This next one is setting your homepage to http://igoogle.com. Here you can find little widgets and dock them on the page. Personally, I’ve got Calendar, Gmail, and a few others docked so I can easily view my schedule, email, etc. Also remember to trick out your Firefox. Even though its portable, this version of Firefox can use plugins and themes just like the full version. The only difference is that Firefox auto-clears the browsing history when you remove the flashdrive (this reduces the amount of space needed to store Firefox).
Lastly, make use of the programs on Portable Apps. There are a ton of smaller versions of popular programs that you can use. There’s graphics editors, text editors, IM clients, and more. Also, you can easily add your own programs that will show up on the Portable Apps menu on the computer. I’ve got some GBA/SNES emulators on mine, alone with a few smaller games (Conquest, Crayon Physics, etc.).
Posted in Google, How To, Life, Technology | 1 Comment »
January 19th, 2008 Jeremy
One of the greatest things about Mozilla Firefox is the addons. And since a lot of Firefox developers are web designers, there’s a ton of tools made just for web designers. So I present to you my 5 favorite. Which means they’re the best, I guess.
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Posted in Internet, Microsoft, Technology, Web Design, Windows | No Comments »
January 11th, 2008 Jeremy
love to play games. So much so that I like to do other things while I play them. For example, while playing World of Warcraft, I often have to read up on something in the WoW Wikipedia or the official site. So instead of minimizing the game, I have it set to windowed mode.
World of Warcraft has really spoiled me, because it has excellent built-in windowed mode support. But most games don’t. The other PC games I play a lot are Sim City 4 and The Sims 2. Neither of which have any built-in support for windowed mode. This is quite annoying for me, because I’m one of those people that likes keeping an eye on their buddylist, inbox, etc. So I googled around to find the answer and now I’ll share it with you. First of all, find the shortcut to the game (or the actual .exe file of the game. Either will do) and right click on the icon. Then click Properties.
On your game there should be a little box with the path to the game in it (labeled as “Target:”). At the end of the path (after the final quote mark), type -window. Then click “OK”. This only works with some games, so you might need to try just -w after the final quote instead of -window. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just look at the above image. It’s the “final product” of this whole thing. Even with one of the two at the end of the path, it still might not work. I have no idea why, but some (maybe most) programs don’t have support for that. So if those don’t work, you can give 3D-Analyze a shot. Amongst other things, it can force games into windowed mode. To do this, unzip the files into a directory and run 3DAnalyze.exe. Then click “SELECT” and find and select the .exe for the game you want to run in windowed mode. NOTE: It HAS to be the .exe. Using the shortcut doesn’t work with this thing. After you’ve selected it, click off “Force Windowed Mode” at the bottom of the “Performance” column. Then click RUN.
This also may or may not work. But hopefully one of the two methods I’ve given will work for you. If not, actually check your game to see if it has it already. It’ll be under the graphics or display setting. I’ll be updated this article as I find new ways to force windowed mode.
Posted in Gaming, How To, Windows | 2 Comments »
August 4th, 2007 Jeremy
Update (May 30, 2008): I’ve since lost all of the blog post images for this entire site (up until 2008). So I don’t have any of my pictures for this anymore. I managed to find one website that re-posted this story with one of the pictures. Check it out after you read the story here.
I was bored and I had an oldish Dell Dimension 2400 lying around that was collecting dust as a nice foot rest under my desk. So I decided I stripped it of all its parts and make a Lego computer! Before I began construction with the Legos, I figured I should make sure I could put everything back together properly. After a few minutes of reassembly and trying to remember where exactly that one plug went, I got it to boot to the BIOS. Unfortunately like an idiot I had wiped that harddrive clean earlier in the day. So I had to make a choice: Kubuntu Linux or Windows XP Pro. I figured the last thing this computer would need is something that heavily worked the processor (melting plastic isn’t a good smell). So I went with Kubuntu Linux (I completely pulled the idea that Linux would put less stress on the processor out of my ass. I have no idea if that’s true or not). So I installed Linux onto the computer and made sure everything perfectly worked after my little reconstruction. And amazingly it did! So the first thing I did was mark where every piece of the computer would go using a permanent marker on one of those large Lego pieces (1.5 foot by 1.5 foot ones). But like an idiot I forgot to make sure all of the cables from the power supply could reach the motherboard, and all of the motherboard’s cables could reach the CD player, Harddrive, fan, etc. So after a bit of repositioning, I screwed the mother board into a few 2×4 Lego blocks (to keep the motherboard about 1/3 an inch off the bottom of the Lego board.) and attached it to the board.
After that I just placed the harddrive, power supply, and cd player on the board and built legos up around it. The Lego case isn’t complete yet, but the computer’s parts are installed permanently and its just a matter of building up.
Posted in Fun, Legos, Technology | 5 Comments »
June 12th, 2007 Jeremy
Ask some web designers about Dreamweaver and most will tell you that anyone using it is a web design noob that wouldn’t last a minute without their precious little WYSIWYG editor. Well I’m here to say they’re dead wrong. Sure, there’s tons of people out there that got ahold of the program and created a million table-based designs that look like crap, but there are those (myself included) that use or have used Dreamweaver as a way to learn. A year or two ago, a friend of mine gave me his copy of Dreamweaver MX 2004 because he already knew how to code everything by hand and at that point, I couldn’t code to save my life. Because of my inabilities, being able to create a website by just clicking here and there was a Godsend. And being told by my highschool’s computer teacher that “Most web designers these days use Dreamweaver” was even more reason (or so I thought) to use it. So in one night I created six or seven table-based templates to put on OSWD using nothing but Dreamweaver’s design view (absolutely no code is involved with design view. Just clicking and typing your content). I sent them off to OSWD, but they got rejected because they didn’t validate (something I had never even heard of). So after a while I came to realize that I really needed to learn how to hand code. So I downloaded all of Andreas Viklund’s templates from OSWD and played with the code through Dreamweaver. In a couple of weeks I had taught myself XHTML and a CSS.
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Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments »
April 19th, 2007 Jeremy
If you’re a gamer, then you’ve probably heard of Jack Thompson. If you haven’t, well he’s an attorney who is obsessed with getting rid of violent video games and blaming everything that happens on them. His latest push of his anti-video game agenda was a short time after the Virginia Tech massacre. Before they knew that Cho Seung-hui was the shooter, before they knew why, and pretty much before they knew anything specific about the shooting, Jack Thompson was called upon for his expertise (He’s not only a anti-video gaming advocate, he’s also a school shooting expert…). Basically he blamed violent video games for the shootings. Let me state it again…this was before ANY information was known about the killer/motive/etc.. Basically Jack Thompson is so sure that video games are the root of all things evil in the country. Someone with that much of a bias shouldn’t be allowed to present his opinion as a professional one.
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Posted in Apple, Gaming, News, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
