http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2006/05.php .
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If you've been thinking of getting a job in the prestigious, lucrative world of tech support, you should read Tech Support: Life on the Other End of the Line, to see what it's really like to work in an entry level tech support position.
You can probably guess at least a few of the Top 10 Deadliest Animals, but I bet you'll be surprised at which one is the most deadly.
I always thought that Chuck Norris was taller than he is in this video. It must be his cowboy hat that makes him look taller in the movies and on TV.
I've never been a big fan of TV personality, Ali G. I just never "got" his humor. But even I can tell that he's teasing veteran 60 Minutes curmudgeon, Andy Rooney,
in this funny video.
If you've ever tried to use Windows XP's Recovery Console, you know that Microsoft has severely limited its features "for your protection." It's like being at a command (DOS) prompt and discovering that all of the commands that you want to run are disabled. Luckily, The OS Inside The OS, will show you how to quickly and easily remove Recovery Console's frustrating restrictions so you can use it to do the things you need to do.
There are only so many ways you can cover the human body with pieces of cloth. But the textile and fashion industries have to keep trying to sell their products, so they rotate the same basic fashions in and out of style on a regular basis. Except for your box full of shirts with a Nehru collar. In the same way, new Web design features seem really stylish at first, but as more and more sites use them, they start to look dated and their popularity wanes. The Web Design Trend Obituary & Death Clock, lists several features that it says are on their way out of style.
It's the type of software that you probably only need once every few years, but when you need it, you really, really need it, and that's when you discover that it's almost impossible to find freeware to undelete your accidently deleted files. Instead, you'll find about a hundred "free undelete downloads" -- every one of them will install and run on your computer, and every one of them will show you a list of your deleted files, but then every one of them will tell you that you need to buy the commercial version of their software if you want to undelete them. I can tell you from experience that that is an extremely frustrating situation to find yourself in. So, to avoid all of that stress, download Restoration right now, before you forget. It's freeware; it runs without being installed, so you can run it from a CD, a flash drive, or even over a network; and it will undelete your deleted files. It also includes a feature to permanently delete any sensitive file(s) that you want to prevent from ever being undeleted.
At times, he reminds me more of a shy, funny friend than a polished professional, like when his timing is just a little bit off. But, all in all, Demetri Martin is a pretty funny guy. Here's
about 20 minutes of him performing on Comedy Central.
Today is my wife's and my anniversary. How long have we been married? About 4 years less than what most people guess my age to be, which is about 15 years younger than I actually am. Those of you who are good at algebra can chew on that problem for awhile, until you realize that you don't really care how long we've been married. My wife has been my best friend since the week we met, and her love has gotten us through many rough times together. I don't want to even try to imagine what my life would be like if she hadn't married me. I just thank God that I have her.
The Internet contains tons of information about antivirus software, firewalls, and other ways to protect yourself while you're online, but How to Protect Your Privacy puts many of the most important pieces of security software and privacy protection techniques on one page.
Everyone has seen photos of the rings of the planet Saturn, but did you know that the Earth had its own ring in the 1960s? And it was man-made, out of 480 million tiny copper needles? It's a very interesting story.
We've always known that Olive Oyl was anorexic and Bluto (and "his brother,"
Brutus) took steroids, but poor Popeye! Now we finally know
why he looks and talks the way he does.
Here's another one of those topics that come up every once in awhile but is worth repeating. With this Web site, I've always tried to be as helpful and honest as I can. Basically, I follow the same concepts described in the Top 10 Rules for Creating Content that People Will Want to Read. Can you tell?
I hate to sound critical, but if they are the Best Futuristic Concepts, then why are most of them so useless?
If you are a regular reader of this Journal, then you're probably computer literate enough to recognize that computer use is portrayed unrealistically on TV and in the movies. For example, you've probably noticed that, on TV crime shows, no matter what they are asked to do -- i.e. "Find me a map of all the near-sighted men with facial hair who wear size 10 shoes and live within 12-blocks of the murder scene" -- the show's stereotypical "computer hacker" character always completes the task by typing just 3 characters on their very loud keyboard. Or that when the CSI people are looking for a fingerprint match in the online AFIS fingerprint database, their computer inefficiently displays every single fingerprint in the database onscreen, one at a time, as it searches for a match. If you know much about computers, you know that Hollywood's Take on the Internet Often Favors Fun Over Facts.
To borrow a phrase from a crime reality show, I think police officers have a name for people who drive like this. They call them organ donors.
Yikes! Someone is in very serious trouble (and rightfully so) for stealing a laptop computer from
this professor.
Here's something you probably already know: Many IT people are not adept at social skills. They compete with each other instead of collaborating, and they look down their noses at non-IT people. Both of those habits can be counterproductive or even destructive in a corporate setting. If you work in IT, or you're thinking of working in IT, do your employer, your coworkers, your users, and yourself a big favor and read The 10 Worst Ways To Communicate With End Users.
Korean scientists have developed a very realistic-looking female android. I hope they eventually figure out a way to give androids a little twinkle of recognition in their eyes that would make them look more alive and less creepy. Right now, it's obvious that their eyes don't "see" anything -- they just stare out blankly.
I've said it before, but it applies in this situation, so I'm saying it again: My favorite definition of creativity is "the ability to look at something and see something else." A Boston train worker showed a lot of creativity when he saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by looking at a butcher's hairnet and seeing a traction motor intake filter.
You know those depressing TV news stories where they show you how the government wastes millions of dollars every year, funding worthless research projects that study things that everybody already knows? If you like those types of stories, you'll enjoy reading about the
Top 10 Scientific Non-Discoveries.
A publicity stunt for the new movie, Mission Impossible III, backfired when people saw the musical devices that had been implanted in Los Angeles newspaper boxes, and thought that they were bombs. Police stations were called, thousands were frightened and inconvenienced, and at least one hospital was evacuated. It should come as no surprise that the movie, which was produced by and stars the most continuously visible member of the Church of Publicitology, would employ such an insensitively boneheaded advertising tactic.
Here's a short-but-funny commercial for a video game called Katamari Damacy.
I don't drink alcoholic beverages. I just never had any interest in even trying them. Here's a funny commercial about a guy who probably wishes that he was a teetotaler, too.
As soon as I saw it, I knew that I had to send a link to it to my twin cousins, Micki and LuAnne, even though they're nothing like the twins in this
funny commercial.
Chances are, you're going to own several different computers during your lifetime. What can you do with your old ones? Here are 25 Uses For Your Old PC.
Funny Real Headlines is the type of article that's fun to read out loud to a friend.
Do you remember the Rubik's Cube? I know a lot of people gave up on solving it, but many years ago, I solved it in about 3 hours -- using a step-by-step book that my brother-in-law had bought. Here's a six year-old kid who can solve it in 37 seconds. Without using a book.
Here's some very elaborate automotive choreography and trick driving, shown in commercials for Isuzu cars.
They live among us. They are sentient beings. And
they are made of meat.
Early Sunday morning, I went fishing with Lyle, the guy who fixed my home's air conditioning a few weeks ago. We went out on the Intracoastal waterway on his 18-foot boat. He goes out every weekend, but it was the first time that I'd been fishing since I was about 10 years old. Back then, I think all I caught in the Fox River in Illinois were several tree branches and an old tire. Sunday morning, Lyle and I caught and released several silver trout, speckled trout, needlefish and pinfish. A few sharks released themselves by biting through our 80-pound leader; I got a 3-foot shark up to the side of the boat, but he released himself by biting through Lyle's fishing net. We ended up keeping one legal-sized silver trout, one legal-sized speckled trout, and two sharks about 2-feet long apiece. Lyle gutted the sharks almost immediately and put them on ice, to keep their meat from going bad. When I got home, I filleted and broiled my shark with a little margarine. I was a little surprised that it tasted a lot like salmon. My wife didn't want any, but all of our pets enjoyed eating some.
For nearly 2 years, Mike and Annamarie have been the best next-door neighbors that my wife and I have ever had, but Sunday afternoon, I took a sledgehammer to the side of their house. I couldn't help it -- they were asking for it. A few months ago, they started a construction project to add nearly 75% more square footage to their home, and Sunday was the day to finish knocking down some of the home's original cinder block walls to expand it to its new size. If you ever wonder why home construction costs are so high, try doing some of that manual labor for awhile and you'll understand.
Microsoft Power Toys For Windows XP are cool additional programs that Microsoft provides but does not officially support.
What do you get when you take an aging hippie and add some soapy water and a cigarette? You get Bubble Magic, of course.
How can you combine the convenience of driving your car to work with the speed of taking the subway to work? By driving your car in the subway.
Chriss Angel knows how to levitate, and he's really good at it. In this video,
he shows you how. Don't get all excited -- it's just a trick.
Australian scientists are working on a way to use optical circuitry to possibly accelerate the Internet to 1000 times its current speed. Insert your own lame joke here.
Congratulations on finishing your coursework at our prestigious university with a perfect 4.0 grade point average. Too bad it cost your parents their life savings to pay for your tuition. But, hey, at least you have a $100K job waiting for you after graduation. Oh, and one more thing: you'll have to swim 100 yards without stopping before we'll let you graduate.
Speaking of college, here are 10 Tips for College Students. As a guy who went through my Bachelors, Masters, and PhD programs with all "A's" except for one "B" my first semester and one "B" my last semester, I would add one more tip: Just keep telling yourself, "I can force myself to be interested in anything for one semester." As a former college instructor, I would add an additional tip: Don't give smart-aleck answers on college tests.
On April 28, 2006, I wrote that I had figured out the following definition of art: "If it can serve any purpose other than 'just being art,' then it is not art -- it's just weird stuff; however, if it exists without any purpose or redeeming value whatsoever, other than 'just being art,' then it is art." Here's a New York City "artist" who is proving my point.
When I was a kid in the suburbs of Chicago, there was a drag strip that used to advertise on the radio all the time. I still remember their commercials with a shouting announcer and a lot of echo effects: Sunday! Sunday! At the beautiful U.S. 30 Drag Strip! Big Daddy Don Garlits versus Don The Snake Prudhome in a nitro-burning grudge match! Funny cars! Super Hemi excitement! U.S. 30 Drag Strip -- where the great ones run!" It would be funny to hear that type of commercial for
these drag races.
In the past few months, Max's Lighthouse has become a neighborhood landmark. While the light in its tower was bright enough to be seen at night, it wasn't bright enough to shine out like a real lighthouse. The problem was that the lighthouse was built with a tiny plastic light socket that only took nightlight-sized bulbs. Its incandescent candelabra bulb was only about 15 watts, probably because there's nowhere in the tower for the heat of a bigger bulb to escape. On Monday, I replaced the tiny light socket with a standard-sized ceramic socket, and replaced the little candelabra bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb that gives off the same amount of light as a 40-watt incandescent bulb, but uses only 10-watts of power. Now Max's Lighthouse shines very brightly with very white light, and its efficient CFL bulb creates very little heat.
Long-time readers of this Journal, and readers of my old articles, ComputerBob's Guide to Windows vs. Linux and ComputerBob's Review of Mandrake Linux 9.0, know that for years, I've had a goal to eventually replace Windows and commercial software on my PC with some version of Linux and free, Open-Source software. When I read things like Giving Desktop Linux A Try, they give me hope that I might end up using Linux instead of the upcoming Windows Vista.
The next time you lose something important, Professor Solomon's 12 Principles will "lead you directly to any lost object. Like a bloodhound!" If those don't help you find it, then maybe 15 Ways to Live Longer will give you more time to look.
Fifteen men on a dead man's chest. Yo-ho-ho and a barrel of rum.
This funny video proves that former Beatle John Lennon
invented the iPod back in the 1960s.
If you edit programming code, HTML or CSS, you use some sort of editing software. Are you using the best tool for your needs? Editor Hub has reviews of all kinds of shareware and freeware editors and development tools.
Are you looking for ways to drive more traffic to your Web site or blog? You'll find some good tips in How To Increase Your Traffic Without Increasing Your Budget.
If you're willing to use a prepaid long-distance calling card, you may be able to save a lot of money on your long-distance bill. For details, see Best Buy Phone Cards.
What's your favorite geek movie? Mine is probably the original Back to the Future. See if your favorite is on the list of The Top 10 Geek Movies.
Speaking of movies, the film that made everyone's list of the worst movies ever made is the old black-and-white
Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's got zombies, aliens, vampires, space ships on wires, and the original Count Dracula, Bela Lugosi, who died three years before Plan 9 was made (see the Plan 9 link above for details). Plan 9 is so horribly bad that it's really fun to watch it with a bunch of your friends. And now you can see
every extremely low-budget, dimwittedly directed, inexcusably written, laughably acted, ham-fistedly edited frame of it.
Taskbar Shuffle is a small freeware app that lets you drag and drop your Windows taskbar icons into any order you want.
The first step to recovery is admitting that you're an addict. The second step is checking to see if you have any new email messages. No wait, that can't be right.
For years, we've known that nobody can possibly look as good in real-life as they are made to look in magazines. Here's proof.
The Japanese have made tremendous progress at giving their robots a sense of balance. These robots can dance, throw a box, kick a box, skate, move their upper body while standing on one foot, and even pick themselves up when they fall down.
My excellent next-door neighbors, Mike and Annamarie enjoy riding their Harleys. Maybe some day, instead of hearing their "rolling thunder" go down the street, we'll hear it overhead.
Isn't it romantic when a guy asks his girlfriend to marry him during a live, televised sporting event?
Not always.
Do you know how to properly set your television's brightness, contrast, color, hue, and sharpness? I bet you think you know how to set them, but there's a good chance that you may be wrong. Read Getting Good Video and see if it helps you improve your TV's picture.
If you're like most people, when you take pictures, you probably use your camera's automatic exposure feature. You might not realize it, but if you learned how to adjust your camera's aperture and shutter speed settings, the quality of your photos would significantly improve. The SimCam is a fun way to learn the basics about camera shake, film speeds, and aperture and shutter speed settings.
Victor Borge was a very funny musician. Here's a short video of one of his comedic musical performances. Every once in awhile, the PBS network airs a few of his old shows. Do yourself a favor and record them when you get the chance.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Here's a funny video of two brothers having a few problems
trying to take a picture of themselves for their mother.
Happy Mother's Day to anyone who fills the role of mother for anyone else -- selflessly choosing to give them what every child deserves, whether or not they are her biological offspring.
A few years ago, I spent several months planning and then completely redesigning this entire site to use XHTML 1.0 Strict for structure and CSS for layout amd presentation, while making sure that my pages meet or exceed the Web accessibility standards. Now IBM explains the importance of using those same Web standards on your site.
Writing Copy for the Website has some good advice for how to write better Web pages. Writing for a Diverse Readership has more good advice for anyone like me, whose readers include beginners, experts, and everything in between.
Long time readers of this Journal know that I try to be as honest as possible with my readers about what it's like to work in IT. If anything I say about it makes you not want to work in IT, then you probably shouldn't work in IT. If you choose a career in IT with your eyes wide open, knowing both its joys and its pitfalls, then you probably belong in IT. See how you feel after you read The Top 10 Most Stressful Professions
When people in the media explain a news story about science to you, do you believe what they tell you? Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity says that media people often know less about science than you do, and what they tell you is often wrong.
I love to feature
Animusic videos here, because I think they're amazingly amazing. Here is
Animusic Future Retro, the first animation on the first Animusic CD. I learned how to create a certain sound on an electric guitar by watching that video's animated guitar. If you'd like to learn how the Animusic people create their amazingly amazing animations, take a look at
Inside Animusic's Astonishing Computer Music Videos.
In 1996, Web site usability expert Jakob Nielsen created a list of the worst Web design mistakes he found on Web sites. Three years later, he noted that the list was still valid. How many of his Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 1999 can you still find on your Web site?
Since moving to the Gulf Coast more than 2 years ago, I've spent a lot of time sitting at the shore, watching the waves roll in. But even when I was a kid, living in the landlocked Midwest, I wondered why no one had developed a way to use wave power to generate electricity. Now General Electric has announced that it has invested in a Scottish company that develops ways to generate electricity from off-shore ocean waves. Maybe someday, you'll be able to hold a lightbulb up to your ear and hear the sound of the ocean.
I think you have to be a pretty smart, creative-and-analytical thinker to create working robots. If you add a little sense of humor to that mix, you might even create one of the Top 10 Strangest Robots.
I've said it before -- the best and most memorable television commercials are the ones that use humor along with a plot twist. Here's a funny commercial that reminds us that
things aren't always the way they seem.
Analog television sets are getting cheaper almost every day. You may be tempted to buy a nice big one at a really good price, but you should probably wait until you can afford to buy a digital one. To find out why, read What You Need to Know About the Coming Switch From Analogue to Digital Television.
Do you suffer from hay fever? You need to find someone to kiss.
It's musical. It's graphical. It's interesting. It's animated. I have no idea what it is or how it works.
Eat some pie or go for a run. Eat some pie or go for a run.
Eat some pie or go for a run.
Are you aware that Google's various services can make it easier for people to hack your server or Web site? Learn how to protect them in 5 Ways Google is Shaking the Security World.
If your Web site uses Cascading Style Sheets, you might find some good tips, or even share some of your own good tips to add to CSS Best Practices.
Can you believe your eyes? Not if you're looking at Mighty Optical Illusions.
Back when I was a teenager, I did a lot of babysitting (at 75 cents per hour). Some of those kids were fun to be with, but others were wild and uncontrollable. I wonder if any of them were Feral Children.
Comedian Steven Wright once said, "99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name." Apparently, his rule applies to
artists, too.
If you'd like an estimate of what your Web site's domain name is potentially worth, visit LeapFish. It says that the name ComputerBob.com is potentially worth $11,616.00 (U.S.D).
If Vista Beta 2 is any indication, the upcoming Windows Vista will have an intrusive new security feature called User Account Control that might drive users crazy.
If you were to drill a hole straight through the Earth from where you live, where would you come out on the other side? The Show will show you. I'd end up somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Rob Gonsalves' Seamless Pictures combine the influences of M.C. Escher with a somewhat ominous cynicism and a dream-like quality, resulting in unique, often disturbing perspectives.
Jim Gaffigan has a lot of funny things to say about
Hot Pockets.
If you're one of the handful of people who are eagerly awaiting Microsoft's Vista operating system, you might be interested to know that MS has released a list of the minimum hardware required to run the new OS. If you're one of the millions fo people who believed Microsoft when it announced the minimum hardware requirements for each of its previous versions of Windows, then you know that those minimum requirements are nothing but a marketing ploy. The OS itself is the only thing that might actually run under those minimum specs, while your applications will just sort of walk in slow motion. Here's an example: I was doing tech support at a multinational corporation when the original Windows came out, so part of my job was to upgrade a few hundred PCs from DOS to Windows. Each of those PCs met Microsoft's minimum hardware requirements to run Windows, but a lot of disappointed employees called the tech support department to ask why their newly upgraded PCs were taking 2 minutes just to print the first page of multi-page documents. Here are some other reactions to Microsoft's new list.
Long-term readers of this Journal know that I created and maintained this entire site over a dial-up Internet connection for more than 7 years, and I didn't switch to a DSL connection until November, 2005. I'm still using and loving that DSL connection, which gives me ~725 Kbps download and ~130 Kbps upload speeds for only $14.95 (U.S.D) per month. I know that Verizon offers broadband speeds that are many times faster, but they cost more per month, so I don't really need them. Are you paying for broadband speed that you don't really need? Read Beware of Broadband Speed Overkill and see if you could save a lot of money by switching to a slower broadband connection.
If you've been following the discussion about anti-spam company Blue Security in my forums, you know that Blue Security came under attack by spammers several days ago and went out of the anti-spam business two days ago. Now a group of software consultants has announced that they hope to create an Open Source replacement for Blue Security's anti-spam service.
At the grocery store the other day, a book with a familiar black and yellow cover caught my eye. It turned out to be Living Longer For Dummies. I'm sorry if this sounds callous, but is this a good goal for society to have?
Now for something that I never, ever thought I'd say in this Journal: Here's a really interesting video of
a forklift.
A Microsoft bigwig has stated that Open Source software is not reliable or dependable. The vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe said, "Some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model." Strangely, he didn't mention the third group of people: those who want to run Microsoft software.
If you think that you may be ready to try a really good version of Linux several weeks from now, I recommend that you place an order right now for an absolutely free-of-charge CD of Ubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS or an absolutely free-of-charge CD of Kubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS (or both). You'll have to sign up for a LaunchPad account (which only takes a minute to do) before you can place your order. It may take several weeks to receive the free CD because the new version (AKA "Dapper Drake") will not be ready for release until some time in June. Ubuntu Linux is an extremely popular, powerful, and user-friendly version of Linux. Kubuntu Linux is exactly the same as Ubuntu Linux, but with the addition of the very powerful KDE desktop environment, which I prefer to Ubuntu's simpler Gnome desktop environment. Both Ubuntu and Kubuntu ship with many, many free software applications. And the free CDs function both as "live CDs" to let you try out Linux on your computer without installing anything on your hard drive, and as "install CDs," if you choose to permanently install one onto your PC. If you decide to permanently install Ubuntu or Kubuntu, I recommend that you do it on a separate physical hard drive from your Windows installation, to guarantee that Windows and Linux will coexist (and dual-boot) without any conflicts.
Take some unused piece of technology, modify it to do something completely different than what it was designed to do, and you might end up with one of the Top 10 Strangest DIY Gadgets.
How would you like it if anyone in the world could interrupt whatever you're doing and demand your attention any time of the day or night, whether you were at work, at home, on vacation, in your car, or even asleep in your bed? If that doesn't sound very appealing to you, maybe you should get rid of your cell phone.
Here are some
cute advertisements that each make their point with only one photograph.
Some people forward every email message that says, "Please forward this to everyone you know." Thinking that they're doing everyone a favor, they clog up their friends' email inboxes with all kinds of political messages, chain letters and hoaxes. If you're one of those people who send forwarded messages, or if you're one of their victims, I recommend that you read -- or ask your forwarding friend to read -- my article, How To Prevent Email Hoaxes and a great new article, 5 Rules of Forwarding E-mails.
Have you ever wanted to repartition your computer's hard drive, either to divide a huge hard drive into several logical drives, to shrink or enlarge an existing partition, or to create a new partition? The problem with using the Windows Command Line partitioning command, FDISK, is that it cannot make any changes to your partitions without destroying the data in those partitions. Probably the most popular of the commercial partition maintenance applications is Partition Magic, and it will do the job, but it costs about $50 (U.S.D). Instead, I recommend that you download and burn a CD of the absolutely free-of-charge GParted Live CD. GParted is user-friendly and works like Partition Magic, but GParted runs in Linux instead of in Windows. That means that when you boot your computer with the GParted Live CD, it will be running a version of Linux off of the boot CD. Though it runs in Linux, GParted recognizes many different operating systems' file formats, so it has the power to non-destructively read, copy, create, resize, and move your Windows partitions, whether they are in one of the old FAT formats or the newer NTFS format. Once you've finished working on your partitions, just remove the GParted CD and reboot your computer to get back into Windows.
I don't know what's stranger about this video -- the guy in the musical suit or the Russian television host who acts like a stereotypical Russian character from the old Get Smart TV show.
Sometimes, you blow up the balloon. Sometimes the balloon blows you up.
Fans of the Seinfeld TV show know that Jerry Seinfeld is a big Superman fan, and there was a reference to Superman in every single episode of that show. Here's a cute 5-minute video of
Jerry and Superman that is actually a very subtle commercial for something. See if you can figure out what they're advertising.
You've probably heard of social bookmarking sites. They're a great way for people to share information with each other very quickly. Basically, they're sites where users submit hyperlinks to interesting news stories and other online content, and vote on each other's submitted stories to move them up or down a list of the most popular stories. Currently, some of the most famous and popular social bookmarking sites are Digg and Reddit and Slashdot and Shoutwire and Newsvine and del.icio.us and Technorati. Yesterday, I added "submit" icons to some of those sites to the left navigation column of most of my pages, to make it easy for anyone to submit my pages to them.
I've gotten enough feedback to know that people like my article, ComputerBob's Guide To Switching Web Hosts, which tells how to move your Web site to a new Web hosting provider. I just learned that you can minimize your site's DNS propagation time significantly if you're willing and able to change your site's DNS settings, so I updated my article to include a link to Moving your website to another server? Tune your DNS for minimum downtime.
CNet has published another one of its lists of Top 10 Must-Haves. Though I'm a technophile, I like to keep things in perspective, so CNet's list looks to me like the "Top 10 Gadgets That Nobody Really Needs, But A Lot of People Are Going To Buy Anyway."
Okay,
Mr. Vai -- you can be in the band.
A few months ago, my aunt, who lives about an hour away, had her house painted by a painter whom she had heard about from a friend. I was at her house a few times while Rich the painter was working, and was really impressed with how he painted her house as if it were his own. After having her tile roof professionally cleaned and her entire house pressure washed at 3500 psi, he sealed the stucco by brushing and rolling (not spraying) one coat of the very best sealer on the market. Then he brushed and rolled one coat of the very best paint on the market, with a lot of attention to detail. When he finished, her 30-year-old house looked like new again. I asked him if he would consider repeatedly making the 100-mile round-trip to paint my wife's and my dream home. To make a long story short, Rich came late last week and pressure washed our entire house himself, to remove the chalky residue of the old paint, and used chemical treatments to remove some rust and mildew stains. This week, he's painting our house. On Monday, he sealed a little less than half of the house. It was very slow going, as our house hasn't been painted in years and it has a pebbly stucco surface that soaks up a lot of sealer. In fact, it took 3 gallons of sealer just to seal the front of the house. As you can see from the photo, the sealer is much whiter than the old white paint. Rich hopes to finish the whole job this coming Thursday or Friday. When he's done, our dream home will be the same white as Max's Lighthouse, and its fascia and shutters will be the same dark maroon as the lighthouse's roof.
Do you know what a favicon is? It's a tiny graphic file that you can add to your Web site to have a unique icon appear in your users' browser whenever they visit your site or bookmark one of your Web pages. On this site, it's the little red and blue CB that you see next to my site's address in your browser's address bar. I first added a favicon to this site a few years ago, by drawing the little CB by hand and saving it in the special favicon format, but now I've found a much faster, much easier way to do it. For the details, see the Favicon Generator.
I've worn glasses since the fifth grade. I tried wearing gas permeable contact lenses several years ago, and the vision was incredible, but because the outside corners of my eyelids are slightly lower than the inside corners, my contacts kept popping out. Eventually, I'd like to get some sort of permanent corrective eye surgery, but every time I seriously consider it, I hear about a new and better surgical technique that is just being developed, so I wait. Though the prospect of having someone make cuts in my eyeballs to reshape them is pretty scary, I think I'd still prefer that to glasses that require you to pierce the bridge of your nose to mount the corrective lenses right on your face.
Can you train goldfish to swim in formation at your command? Apparently,
this guy can.
On Tuesday, Rich finished sealing the entire house with the white sealer, then did two coats of dark maroon paint on 2 of the 4 shutters, and the first coat of dark maroon on more than half of the fascia. When he first showed me a gallon of the dark maroon paint on Monday, it looked lighter than we had wanted it to be, with a slightly pink tinge. That afternoon, he took it back to the paint store and had them add pigments to it from memory until he thought it looked right. When he brought it back to our house on Tuesday, it was exactly the right color to match Max's Lighthouse. Amazing!
Whether you support a lot of PCs or just try to keep your own PC working, Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands could save you a lot of time and trouble in the future.
If the results of a small research study turn out to be replicable, doctors may some day use a sleeping pill to "wake up" some patients who are in a permanent vegetative state.
Years ago, I took a test to determine if I was more right-brained or left-brained. My test results went right down the middle of the page. That means one of two things -- either I use the analytical and creative sides of my brain equally, or I don't use either side at all. If you'd like a fun way to see how logically you think, take the series of non-scientific logic tests. I got all but 2 of the questions correct, but I may have used both analytical and creative thinking on some of them.
Look at all of
these photos without reading any of the text on their page. See if you can figure out what the photos have in common.
On Wednesday, Rich finished painting everything that needed to be dark maroon, and painted more than half of the rest of the house white, on top of the white sealer. Afterward, I reinstalled downspouts, shutters, house numbers and outside lights in the painted areas. My wife and I are really happy with how nice our house looks. I'll post a photo of it here in a day or two, after Rich finishes his work.
Do you own a U.S.B flash drive? PenDriveLinux will help you install, boot and run your choice of several different Linux distros from it. The site also has support forums, in case you have any problems, questions, or suggestions.
Over the years, I've directed many television production crews and managed a few corporate tech support departments. I've also "managed" over 3,000 students, faculty members and corporate trainees in classroom and individualized settings. How Not To Lead Geeks has some valuable insights into managing technical people. Here's another one: most of the insights also apply to managing non-technical people.
If the world ever switches its monetary system from a gold standard to a sand standard, those of us in the Sunshine State will be rich enough to build a hurricane-proof dome over our entire peninsula. While we wait for our terra non-firma to shoot up in value, we'll continue to squish our toes in it, and form it into
incredible sand sculptures.
On Thursday, Rich finished painting our house. When he painted my aunt's house, it took 6 gallons of sealer and 6 gallons of paint, for a total of 12 gallons. He estimated that our house hadn't been painted for about 10 years, so even though it's much smaller than my aunt's house, our house took 8 1/2 gallons of sealer, 7 1/2 gallons of white paint, and one gallon of dark maroon paint, for a total of 17 gallons. Now it looks new again; it matches the colors of Max's Lighthouse; and it practically glows when it's in direct sunlight. Thanks, Rich!
Do you know what an .htaccess file is? Does your Web site need one or more .htaccess files? If you answered no to those questions, then you can skip this story. If you know that your site could use an .htaccess file, the .htaccess File Generator can automatically create a customized one for you.
A few years ago, I redesigned this entire site to use valid XHTML and CSS. At the time, I didn't know much about CSS, so my CSS stylesheet quickly grew to be quite large and hard-to-maintain. One of these days, I might toss it out and create a new one, because that would probably be less trouble than trying to redo it. If you want to create your CSS stylesheet correctly the first time, you'd be wise to follow the good advice in My 5 CSS Tips, and in the comments that follow it.
It's a common problem nowdays: you find that you have way too much money, and not enough things to spend it on. If that's what's bothering you, you'll feel better after you buy some of the Top 10 Gadgets for the Filthy Rich. And when you get tired of them, toss them in my direction.
Think of all the fun things that you can do when you're in a swimming pool. Now think of all the
Things you CAN'T do when you're NOT in a pool. Now think of all the things that you cannot think of not doing unless you're not thinking of not being in a pool.
How many software applications do you use? If you're like me, you have about 50 different applications on your computer, but you only use about 8 or 10 of them on most days. You have others that you use every week or so, and still others that you only use every month or two. And you might have several that you only use a few times each year. You might even have one or two pieces of Weird Software You'll Never Need.
I'm willing to bet that you've had the misfortune to use (or even buy) at least a few of The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time. I used 3 of the free ones in the past, but I no longer use any of them.
In the 1970s TV series, Kung Fu, David Carradine played a Chinese monk living in the American West in the early 1800s. One extremely memorable scene showed him earning his monk-hood, and the dragon-shaped scars on the insides of his forearms, by stoically lifting a red-hot iron box at his "graduation ceremony." Here's a funny Pepsi commercial that pays homage to that scene.
Speaking of funny commercials, here are
seven of them.
Three of the attractions of using a version of Linux instead of Windows are that:
It's even pretty easy to set up secure, fool-proof Ubuntu (Linux) For Your Grandmother.
How much do you know about the creation of some of the world's greatest inventions? Take The Great Inventions Quiz and find out. I just wish they had included a little of the interesting story behind each correct answser, instead of just stating which answers are correct.
Here's a funny little video that shows an interesting way for a woman to get revenge on her mean boss.
Speaking of funny, here are
some funny commercials.
I've never been a big fan of video games, whether they were in arcades or on computers. To me, the best computer game has always been getting my computer to work exactly the way I want it to work, getting it all backed-up, and knowing that it is stable and secure. Each time I accomplish that, I win the game. Apparently, there are video games that have value other than just entertainment. A recent study shows that playing video games for 20 minutes before starting work helps surgeons work faster and with fewer errors. I bet those surgeons would do just as well if they played a few games of this.
There are a lot of people like me who don't want their cell phone to play music, games and videos, do text messaging, take pictures, shoot videos, and play ringtones. We just want simple, sturdy, reliable phones that do a good job being phones. On the other hand, the wireless industry wants us to use complicated cell phones that have lots of features, because they make tons of money when we use our cell phones for non-telephone services. Who do you think will win that struggle?
Here's a fun activity for people who have a lot of extra money to spend on cars -- automobile soccer.
I think this looks real. What do you think?
I've always utilized Web development methods that make this site friendly to people who use dial-up modems, including:
Even though many people switch from dial-up to broadband Internet connections every day, the vast majority of the online world is still using dial-up connections. Since this site's target audience is the whole world, I'll continue to do the extra work required to make it friendly to dial-up users.
Australian scientists have successfully used a new laser technique to enrich uranium for use in nuclear power plants. The new process could halve the cost of uranium enrichment, which is a significant percentage of the cost of nuclear fuel. Will the new technique increase power companies' profits? Of course. Will the new technique lower consumers' electric bills? Probably not.
I can imagine myself possibly using a few of the Top 10 Strangest Office Gadgets. I can also imagine my coworkers incessantly teasing me for using a few of them.
Summer is almost here. The kids are finishing their school year. You're due for a vacation. It's time to pack up the whole family and go to Fantazy Land.
I've featured him here before, but he was really good, so here are some more funny clips of the late
Mitch Hedberg.
It's a long-familiar Microsoft marketing technique. Every time Redmond develops a new version of Windows, it starts a self-cannibalizing FUD campaign, bad-mouthing its older operating systems to try to build a market for its new OS. The current campaign will probably scare a lot of people into buying expensive new hardware that will support the upcoming, bloated Windows Vista operating system. A new article on a site that I've never heard of before says that computers running Windows 98 should be disconnected from the Internet, because they will no longer be secure after Microsoft officially ends all support for Win98 and WinME on July 11. The article also says that this news won't affect very many people, because, "Only a few private users have for whatever reason chosen not to move to the newer Windows XP." I'm one of those few. I've been running versions of Win98 since 1998. Even though I've been dual-booting Win98SE and WinXP on my main PC for the past several months, I still do nearly all of my work in Win98SE. That's because, unlike Win98, Windows XP is so "foolproof" that it hurts my productivity by constantly trying to prevent me from doing the things that I want to do. That forces me to waste time looking for ways to "work around it." I imagine that Vista is going to be even worse in that regard, which is a good reason why I hope to eventually replace Windows with some version of Linux.
Cool web buttons in Fireworks teaches you, step-by-step, how to make those popular rounded-corner buttons with the little arrow in them for your Web site. Of course, if you don't have Macromedia Fireworks software, you could probably use some other graphics software.
Some people are really clumsy and uncoordinated.
Some people are really strong, coordinated, and extremely flexible (once you get past their singing).
Whether you're clumsy or coordinated, after you work-out, you'd probably appreciate a nice massage.
Tim Slappy Babb is a funny guy who has a lot of funny things to say about
Disneyland.
