School's Out

School's out for the summer!  Exams are done, I officially passed all my classes, quite easily I might add, and now it's back to work.  I'll have one more semester in the fall before I graduate which equates to 5 more classes.  My girlfriend graduated last Saturday so now shes working full time til she retires I suppose.  The last two weeks of classes were definitely busy as we were preparing for a party for her as we were not only celebrating her graduation from college but it was also her 22nd birthday.  So we had plenty of yard work and cleaning to do as well as study/take exams.  On top of that we went down to Myrtle Beach  on Monday and stayed through Thursday.  So we were also packing and preparing for all that.  But, now it's all over, we're done, had our vacation, and it's time to go back to the real world.  I'll be headed to work just 6 hours from now.

All in all though it was busy we've had alot of fun.  The beach was great.  It's only the second time that I've been to Myrtle Beach so I got to see alot of new things and experience quite a few others.  Brought back a few souvenirs and such as well.

Dreading headed back to work right as the weather starts to get much much hotter in a non-air-conditioned building that is frequently over 100 degrees f.  Oh well, we gotta make money somehow and I suppose I'm lucky considering how many people can't find a job at all right now.

Sorry its been forever since I posted, hopefully I can update more frequently now that things have calmed down.

Three Headed Monster!!!!

Short post today because I'm configuring desktops and what not now that I finally got my adapter today for the third monitor.  This also means that I've got pictures to show you of my new setup.

Spending money like it aint nothin

Friday I woke up expecting to go to class, find a displayport adapter, get dinner and see a movie. For the most part, this is how the day went. I went to class, went to breakfast and then went out and checked the local electronics stores for a displayport adapter. Of course none of them had them so I was forced to order one. It should be here sometime tomorrow or Tuesday. Hopefully tomorrow. We went to the mall and let my girlfriend shop around a little bit for some clothes and hung out for a bit afterwards.

Then it got crazy.

We went home and didn't get to even sit down before my girlfriends mom called and asked if I had $500. I told her hesitantly, "Yes, what for?". Then she told me that Kohl's was having a huge sale on all of their merchandise including jewelry, plus she had a coupon, plus you could save extra by signing up for their "Kohl's card". Now, I've been dating my current girlfriend for almost 3 and a half years and its been coming up more and more recently about me buying a ring and popping the question. So I said "Fuck it, let's go". Me and my girlfriend got in the car, picked up her mom and headed to Kohl's.

We got there and proceeded to the jewelry department. She started looking at all the rings and asked the jeweler to pull one out so she could see it. She fell in love with it on the spot. A 1/2 kt. $2200 ring. So, we all looked at it, decided it was what she really wanted and we started working out the final price. Kohl's was having a 65% off sale on EVERYTHING so we took 65% off the $2200, then used the 20% off coupon on that, then I signed up for their card for the extra 25% off. The funny thing was that because I have no credit cards of any kind the card was denied (she still gave me the 25% discount for applying) and Kohl's will be sending me something in the mail asking for "more information". I'll of course just rip this up and throw it in the trash as I was going to simply cut the card up as soon as I paid for the ring in the first place.

So, all in all I ended up buying her the engagement ring that retailed for $2200 at an end price of $494.80. Not a bad deal if I do say so myself.

After buying the ring we went home, changed, and headed back to town to have dinner and see Fast Five with some friends as well as show them all the ring. Even though she doesn't have it yet as it is being sized, and I haven't "popped the question" yet. That'll come a little bit later. We just couldn't pass up that deal.

It's been a busy weekend to say the least. We did that all on Friday, we cut down some trees and did some other yard work Saturday, and today has been project day for me finishing up my last project of the school year.

This week starts exams and I have my first on Thursday which is really the only one I have to worry about. Fuck Math. My other 3 will be a breeze so I'm almost done for the semester. Only a few more days. Then she graduates and we go to the beach!

Looking so forward to it.


OH AND BTW...OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD.

Well...

I wasn't planning on posting today. I was gonna wait until tomorrow. I got my monitors set up on my desk lookin sexy as hell but I can't find that damn Displayport Adapter for the third monitor to work. ARRRGGHHH!!!! So right now I have 2 of them on and one lonely, blank, black screen :(.

Sorry to everyone who wanted to see them but I'm gonna hold off on posting pics until I get the third monitor up in all its three headed glory. If I can't find the adapter tonight I'll stop by Best Buy and/or Walmart and see if they have one for cheap and if not I'll have to get one off Newegg.

I know, I know it's so sad. So to keep your's and my spirits up heres a very epic meal time. It's a parody made by a 10 year old kid and I laughed so hard at this vid. EpicMealTime truly is an inspiration. Watch this and laugh:

It Happened!

200 Followers and over 2000 views. At least somebody likes my blog. Maybe i'll get noticed by someone famous on the internet. Maybe they'll show me to some awesome people with lots of money. Then they'll pay me millions of dollars to write stuff.

Yeah right.

Anyways, Hopefully i'll have my new monitors set up, hooked up, powered on, and looking sexy in the next couple of days. Just gotta clean up the desk a bit more and figure out how I want to orient them. Gonna be epic!

Interesting, and pretty exciting day

Class was cancelled today because of the holiday so today was a pretty fun day for me. We went to my grandmothers house last night for easter and had alot of fun watching movies and chatting. We left this morning and came home where I had a nice surprise waiting for me at the door. Fed-ex arrived earlier than I had anticipated and the 2 monitors I bought on Thursday are now here. This means I now have 3 monitors! So i'll be setting those up tomorrow after class.

After connecting and powering up the monitors to make sure they were in working order I left to go fishing with a friend of mine. We showed up at the lake around 1:15pm. We got out in the boat and began trolling around and before we knew it we had already caught several. About 6 or 7 fish between 6 and 10 inches in about 1.5 hours. Considering how cold the lake still is we were doing pretty good. THEN!!! I cast my line out towards the bank near the back of the lake, began reeling in the line and WHAM I got a major bite. After a decent fight I got her to the boat and we weighed and measured her. She ended up being about 7 lbs and was 25" long (largemouth bass btw). This is a citation here in Virginia and is the longest fish I've ever caught. I'll be sending off tomorrow to get a certificate for the citation fish.

Today was a weird day at the lake. We frequent this lake sometimes as much as 5 times a week and we've never caught anything nearly that large there. After catching this monster we didnt catch any other fish until after dark and even then we only caught 1. At one point we got out of the boat and bank fished to stretch our legs for a bit where I got my line caught on the bottom. After failing to retrieve the lure I decided to just wait until we got back in the boat to get it so I sat down and chilled for a bit. When I sat down, I looked down and spotted a 4 leaf clover. Odd Odd Odd indeed. Catch a monster, no more fish, hang the bottom, find a 4 leaf clover! Weird stuff.

Anyways, I am now home and getting pretty tired after a long day. Until next time, thanks for reading.

Happy Easter Everyone

First off, Happy Easter. Whatever your plans are and your religious beliefs may be, here's hoping you have an enjoyable time today filled with family, friends, and a little bit of rest.

Sorry again for not posting in awhile (seems the past few weeks have been terrible for blogging). Ive been playing ALOT of Portal 2 and I must say it will not disappoint. There may be a few spoilers in the following few sentences so read carefully. I'll try not to give away TOO much. In the beginning you'll be introduced to the games controls as usual while acquiring the portal gun. The game starts out a little bit slow, having more or less pretty easy puzzles to solve. But once you reach the point where Wheatley takes over it begins to get a little challenging. Around the end of the 6th chapter and afterwards you'll probably find yourself stuck on a number of puzzles for awhile before it clicks in your mind how you're supposed to do it. Whether it was from sleep deprivation or some other reason I actually had to look up on youtube how to solve one of the later puzzles. I was completely stumped. Once the video started and I saw the first part it clicked of course and I smacked myself for not seeing it. Chapter 9 concludes the story with and ending that will make you shit bricks. I swear it could be one of the best game endings I've ever witnessed.

The story is very involving and you get sucked into it pretty quickly. Portal 2 ended up being a fully immersing experience that I very much enjoyed and would recommend to anyone. Co-op is no pushover either has many of the 2 person puzzles are very involved proving difficult without good coordination.

The only thing I really had a problem with were the loading screens. THERE WERE SO MANY!!!! After every level there is a loading screen for the next level and depending on how fast you can solve the puzzles you may be seeing a loading screen every few minutes.

All in all the game took me about 8-9 hours to complete all of which I enjoyed to the fullest.

tl;dr? Get Portal 2 and you wont be disappointed.


I'm also considering switching from Ubuntu to ArchLinux. Haven't fully decided on it yet but I may have a fresh install on my laptop before the end of the week.

Again, Happy Easter, and thanks for reading.

Turret Defense Systems and Portal

South Korean military officials and weapon designers have come up with what they are calling the "Super aEgis II".  This weapon is a robotic turret capable of acquiring a human target during the day or night, through rain and high winds, up to 3 km away.  This machine is awesome to say the least.  It also requires little to no human interaction.  Though this could aid South Korea in their ongoing struggle against North Korea, I would personally love to see the U.S. come up with something similar and mount it to fences along the southern border of the states in order to reduce illegal immigration as well as drug trafficking through the border.  If you'd like to take a look at this pretty sweet piece of machinery go here.

Today is the last day to get Portal 2 for a discounted price from steam.  I recommend buying it from steam as it will cost you $45 today and $50 tomorrow vs. $60 for the Xbox 360.  Along with this you'll be looking at paying the $60 per year charge to play online with friends.  I went ahead and purchased my copy on Thursday of last week and then replayed Portal (which came with the purchase of Portal 2) in anticipation of the games release tonight/tomorrow.  I'll for sure be staying up at least for a little bit playing with friends.

Be on the lookout this week for another post from me where *hopefully* i'll be sharing a video which could be quite interesting.  Here's hoping I can finish it and share it with y'all.

A good buddy of mine...

A good buddy of mine has recently started blogging.  His most recent post has been written about the controversy over Mac's vs. PC's and has some eye-opening information for alot of people.  If you like my blog  I'd recommend you go check his out.  He is our blogging brother and should be supported for contributions to our community.

Check him out here.

A little peice of advice for this fine friday.  Take a few minutes of your time this weekend to do a little bit of spring cleaning.  For me personally, the only spring cleaning I have done has been to rearrange the desk, and to clean out my computer.  While cleaning the desk I disconnected my computer and took it out to the garage and proceeded to spray out the internal components with the air compressor.  Doing this not only made it look much nicer not having dust bunnies from the winter clogging everything, but also reduced my CPU temps by around 3 degrees.  Not bad for 3 minutes of spraying air through my case.  It's also a little bit quieter now as well.  My recommendation to you is to open up your case and blow a little.

If you want to clean up your hard drive I'd recommend picking up CCleaner for Windows.  Running the cleaner should free up some space, some of you may even gain close to a gig or more of space.  Running the registry sweeper will detect registry errors from things like uninstalled programs leaving peices behind and things like that and remove them to clean up the registry.

My GAWWWD....

Firstly, I apologize for not writing a new post since THURSDAY (damn that's a long time) but i've been a little busy...again.   Not necessarily for school reasons this time though.  The main thing that's been tying up my time has been rearranging my desk.  Previously I had a hutch on the desk that was taking up quite a bit of room.  The hutch itself is 37"W 26"H and 10"D.  That being said, the desk is rather large but almost half of the left side of the desk was taken up by this monstrosity.  Having dealt with it long enough, I proceeded to place it under the desk where it could keep its abominable face still in the room giving my storage space, but not taking up valuable desk space.  The removal of the hutch has given me much more room to work as well as to my surprise made the room look much larger than it was previously.  I have also been working on my server, specifically the website, designing an interface for it rather than using the directory list.

Now that that's over.

EpicMealTime has uploaded their new video for the week and I must say it is the most epic thing since the TurbaconEpic.  They have made a lamb version of Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld.  You can watch their new video below:




Pretty epic if I do say so myself.

In the spirit of good food I'd also like to point out to you that today April the 12th is Free Scoop Day at Ben & Jerry's so if you have one around you should go pick up a free scoop of ice cream today.  Unluckily for me, the nearest shop is more than 50 miles away so I won't be able to get mine but hopefully you can.  You can find the closest shop to you here.

Google is also pushing out their efforts to reduce spam from your search results today.  They have been actively working to remove content farms from search results to improve the quality of your searches during the last few weeks and they are implementing these measures for all English users today.  You should start to see better search results fairly soon.

This one you may have heard about and you may not have.  Apparently Adobe is looking at rental services for its Creative Suites.  This includes Photoshop and others and the jist of it is, you'd pay a monthly fee in order to use the program, without payment you won't be able to use it.  The listed rate for Photoshop extended is $49 a month.  Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended is $999 from Adobe's website so 20 monthly payments would equal out to buying it.  Or for those pirates of you out there, you could just go download it for free.  For those virtuous people in the world, you could completely bypass the entire Adobe bundle and go for the open source image manipulator known as GIMP.  Why does Adobe think this is a good idea? Anyone that is going to use this software is not simply going to use it for only a month or two.  If you simply need a few things, you'll either outsource the project to a professional, who already has the software, or buy it in order to allow one of your departments to use it for an extended period of time.  In my honest opinion, I highly doubt Adobe will be making much money from this.  It just doesn't sound reasonable.

Anyways, thanks for reading as always.

Tax refund

I should be receiving my federal tax return shortly and I have a few plans.  I would like to get a 2nd monitor to use on my desktop.  I currently own an Asus VE245H and I love it.  The size is nice for my available space, nice lighting, great picture.  I have not had a single problem with this monitor.  I even bought it manufacturer refurbished from Ebay for a steal at $140.  Another monitor like this would be great.  I also need more storage space for my server.  A 2TB drive is currently hovering around $80 from several retailers so i'll definitely be picking up one.  The last item on my list are headphones.  I currently use some crappy old headset I bought from Walmart years ago.  I'm not a huge audiophile but I still listen to music, play games, and watch movies.  This being said, I almost always have my headphones on while I am sitting at the computer.  The Walmart headset was definitely not made for comfort and after a while they start to cut into my ears.  This makes it very uncomfortable to sit and listen to something at all.  So after a little bit of research I think I may have settled on the Sony MDR-XB500's.  Almost all of the reviews for these state that they are very comfortable with good or better quality audio.  The kicker is i can get them for about $40 from Amazon, or Ebay.

I'll of course be checking online frequently until the check comes in the mail so that I know that i'll be getting the best deal when the time comes.  Can't wait.

I'm also thinking about buying DragonAge II.  I really enjoyed the first one and despite having a few lack luster reviews on the net I still think it should be a pretty good game.  I've also heard that if you buy it before April 30th you can get yourself a free copy of Mass Effect II.  Another game that I really enjoyed the first one.

On a less relavant note...Sitting in math class and I just now realize as my teacher looks around the room with a smirk on his face that he somewhat  resembles the clown (The Violator) from the HBO series of Spawn from the late 90's.

Natty Narwhal

So I updated my laptop from Ubuntu 10.10 to the beta release of 11.04 yesterday and i must say...it feels distinctively clean.  The unity interface is quite nice and i am rather enjoying it so far.  There are obviously a few tweaks to make it just right and exactly how I like it but all in all i feel that the Unity interface is quite likable.

Inclusion of several applications over others i.e. LibreOffice over OpenOffice as default installation is quite nice as well.  There are quite a few differences in the replacement applications and all of them look like they are for the better.  Also, FireFox4 comes preinstalled where 10.10 has trouble updating from 3.6.  The official release however is not for a few more weeks though and unless you're willing to see a few messages stating that such and such application crashed, I'd hold out for it because there are a few of them every now and again.

Sorry for the short post but I'm working on several different things lately that are taking up alot of time.  Will try to post more in the coming days/weeks ahead.

Long weekend

So I told you about a 10 page paper that needed to be written and turned in on Friday.  I also said that updates would be few or non-existent until I was finished.  Well, i'm finished and back.

Wednesday I stopped all blogging in order to do a little research on the topic at hand.  Thursday I woke up  at 9:30 to go to class, came home after, and began writing the actual paper at around 3p.m.  I finished the paper and submitted it online at 7:03a.m. Friday morning.  So if you do a little calculating you'll find that I was sitting in front of the computer for about 16 hours.  Sleep was not near yet however because as soon as submitted the assignment online it was time to get ready and go to class.  I went to class and turned in the paper copy, went and got breakfast and then took about a 20 minute nap before having to take a test online.  Left and came home and got about 2 hours of sleep before heading out again.  We went and saw SuckerPunch (pretty good movie imo) and then hacked apart an old non-working laptop to see if we could repurpose any of its materials.  I finally got to sleep around 3:30a.m. on Saturday.

I woke at 4:30p.m. from a deep slumber and was notified that we would be going to dinner with my girlfriend's parents at a restaurant about an hour away that we had never been to.  So, we got in the car and drove there.  When we got there the wait was an hour and a half or longer and for some reason we decided to sit and wait.   After sitting for 2 hours and talking to others in the "waiting to be seated" area who had been there for much longer we finally decided to leave and go somewhere else.  We drove back towards home and arrived at Texas Roadhouse where we were nearly immediately seated and ordered our food within 10 minutes.  This was a welcome solution to our hunger.  Needless to say, we will not be going to "Perky's" again in attempts to eat dinner.

That's pretty much how my weekend has gone.  Anything interesting happen to any of you lately?

Samsung may be the wrong choice in a laptop.

Lifehacker today had an article describing how Samsung has shipped a few different versions of their laptops with Keyloggers pre-installed on the system. A Mohamed Hassan found the keylogger after purchasing a Samsung laptop, taking it home, and running his preferred anti-virus software. After removal of the keylogger software, Hassan returned the laptop due to a different issue (video display driver problem) and picked up a different laptop also made by Samsung. This laptop as well had the same software loaded in the same folder as the previous laptop. The keylogger is called "StarLogger".

Lifehacker article
The Discovery by Hassan
Samsung's response to Hassan when confronted

So in short, if you have a Samsung laptop, or any other really, make sure you run a full system scan on your computer to check for the normal stuff but now you need to make sure the manufacturer didn't preload dangerous and privacy invasive programs on your computer.

My preferred anti-virus? I currently use Microsoft Security Essentials.  It's free and is one of the most highly recommended anti-virus programs for Windows Vista/7.  I also run Malwarebytes every week or two.

Enough of the serious stuff.  Here's a video that absolutely makes me think it should be a new advertising campaign for why you should not text while driving.

BEFORE YOU WATCH THIS!!!

There are a few things to watch for. Obviously the guy playing Mario Kart. He does some random, crazy, weird, funny things throughout the entirety of the video. At 1:57 the "ad campaign for why you should not text while driving" occurs and is the most important part of the video lol. Also the guy in the tan jacket makes some pretty weird faces. Props the the guys on the piano as they are quite talented at playing and the singing isn't bad though it couldn't be considered farther away from my taste in music. Also there's a mini-remix at the end. Check it out.

Blog Achievements

So it just happened. 150 followers. And earlier today we crossed the 1000 views mark.

Shoot the fireworks!!! Off with their heads!!! So on and so forth.


Sorry for the short post today but I got a 10 page paper to write by Friday and I'm just now starting on it.


EDIT: During a break (can you really call it a break if you haven't accomplished much of anything yet?) from writing the paper I stumbled upon this and it may seriously have been one of the funniest things I've ever read. Take a look and you won't be disappointed.

Teh Updatez!!

Today: An update on my Minecraft experience, a new screenshot from Windows 8, and for ctweten a few more links on the PS3 hacks.

As you may have noticed, there was not a new post yesterday.  This was partly due to me sleeping til noon and then going to see a few family members, but also, i wasted more than 5 hours playing Minecraft before I realized what time it was.  This caused me to turn in a paper late for my online class when I realized "Holy Shit!! When did it become 12:30" and the paper was do at Midnight.  I had told myself when I got home, "I need to write that thing but i'll do it after some Minecraft".  You see how well that turned out.

As far as Minecraft goes, you can probably already come to the assumption that I enjoyed the game.  I spent several hours collecting and building a rather large fortress before I realized that I had built it on top of the highest mountain, and that this wasn't a good strategy involving climbing and descending this mountain in search of resources, and then needing a place to hide at night from all the creepers.  So, I destroyed the fortress and rather than simply running down the mountain; I decided I would tunnel through the mountain and come out on one of the sides.  This however turned out not the way I had planned.  I ended up spending over an hour mining through tunnels and caves before i finally broke through to the surface.  Needless to say, it all looks the same underground and without any point of reference or a map, I got very, very, VERY lost.  LOL.  It was fun though and I learned a valuable lesson.  I then found a nice waterfall with a stone pillar near it that looked sexy as hellblahblahblahblah(if you don't wanna read about the rest of my Minecraft experience so far skip to the next paragraph).  I proceeded to set up torches along the cave and extend the waterfall into a lake.  I then built another rather large fortress.  This lead to me thinking it would be a good idea to build another pillar.  So astacking I went before I accidentally fell off of the pillar and suffered my first death.  Thus, losing all my hardwork.  And then I started over.  But enough of that, i'll have more stories probably in the future.

Yet another image of the upcoming Windows 8 has been leaked.  This one previewing the System Restore and System RESET features.  The system restore seems like it will work as it always has by restoring your system to a set restore point.  The system RESET however is the feature that will save you from having to do a fresh install.    This is the feature that Micro$oft says will be able to restore your system to its factory shipped settings in 2 minutes.  If you remember, they also claim that Installation of the OS will be as short as 8 minutes, but who knows for sure about these times as of yet.


As for the PS3, I wrote earlier about it being hacked.  Yes, a hacker called geohotz and his group of hacker friendlies have cracked the firmware for Sony's PS3 in less than 24 hours allowing the use of pirated games and software to be used on your PS3.  The hack itself, is the attainment of the PS3 root key allowing you to have full read and write access for the PS3 potentially allowing the use of unauthorized software to be run on the console.

For more info about the PS3 hacks see any of the following links:

PS3 Hacked Wide Open: Edge Magazine
Hack Proof Video Games: Computerandvideogames.com
PS3 Firmware 3.56 Hacked in Less than a Day...:Engadget
PS3 Hacked Through Poor Cryptography Implementation:Arstechnica.com
Playstation 3 Hacked :Guardian.co.uk
Sony Investigates PS3 Hack :IGN
The PS3 is Hacked: PS3-Hacks.com
PS3 Hacked Again : Theregister.co.uk

Minecraft?

So I've been hearing alot lately about this and I think it may be time for me to jump on the bandwagon.  As most of you know I am in college.  While going to college I don't work during the school year so that when projects and such come up I have time to do them.  So I tend to not spend very much money during the school year (as little as possible.  Only gas, food, cigarettes usually) This cuts my gaming budget alot so I only buy games if I really think that me and my friends will play it for a long time or if it will turn out to be a very interesting play through.  This being said, Minecraft is super cheap and I think I can get away with it.  Hopefully it's as good as everyone says it is.

Do yall play Minecraft? What do you think about it?

In other news.  Nvidia has come out with their newest GPU.  The GTX 590.  This thing is nothing less than a powerhorse completely blowing the current top tier 580 completely out of the water.  With dual cores and 3gb, yes 3GIGS of ddr5 ram, it is quite possibly the most powerful, and fastest GPU on the market right now.  The only drawback? Asus and EVGA both have this card out now but they are priced at ~$800 or more.  Who has that much money to spend on a graphics card.  My Radeon HD 5750 will play most games out right now including Crysis 2 and others with no hiccups.  I think i'll stick with this card for awhile.

Also, I have a softmodded Xbox (you remember that old Mechassault exploit?) with XBMC on it.  The problem? I havent used it or updated it in like 5 or 6 years.  I think this weekend i'll be looking into updating it and using it to stream stuff to the T.V. again.  What do you use your old Xbox for? Do you have any other modded consoles.  I know the Wii can be modded and allow you to play homebrew games.  And just this year the PS3 was hacked to allow the same (this really pissed off Sony and i LOL'd).  What do you do with your old consoles?

Will be posting to tell you how Minecraft turns out later as well as what I end up doing with the Xbox so check back later this week for this update.

Want some more info on these stories?

Minecraft
Nvidia GTX 590
PS3 Hacked

Tell me if there's anything else from this post you want to know more about.

A little bit of Safety goes a long way

I am a college student.  As many college students do, I own a laptop.  Sometimes it happens that when I am sitting in the computer lab, or maybe eating a quick bite at and on campus venue, something comes up where I need to get up and leave for a few minutes.  This could be a phone call, bathroom break, smoke break.  Sometimes you just don't feel like packing everything up for the 5 minutes that you'll be away from your computer.

Now.  There are hundreds of students, faculty, and staff walking around ALL the time right?  So it should be relatively safe to get up and walk away for a few minutes and trust that you're stuff will be left alone.  I have actually done this a number of times.  It is however, becoming more and more unreasonable to trust ANYONE (i really don't trust many people anyways) with anything so I've decided to install a little program called Prey.  Prey is a free, lightweight application that will track you're laptop or other device (works on windows, mac, linux, even android) if it is stolen through its wireless card and even use a built in webcam to take snapshots of the perpitrator for you.  As long as the thief does not plan on wiping your HDD before using the computer, you should be able to get it back.  Once your device is stolen, you can view any of the info including location and webcam shots through any browser you can get to and do several different things including setting off alarms and locking the user out remotely.

Sounds like win to me.  So just to be on the safe side, I'm gonna go ahead and install this on my laptop.  Never can be to careful.  It might just save me a few hundred dollars.

Check it out here.

Its a little random...

During my perusing of the interwebz today through StumbleUpon I came upon this picture:

Feelssketchman.  There is certainly quite a bit of similarity here.  Didn't Disney make a Pocahontas 2?  Yes they did.  It is possible then, based on the similarities in this post, to watch Avatar 2.  Interesting to say the least.

Still don't believe it? Check this out.


I've heard alot of things as I'm sure alot of you have about how James Cameron waited ~20 years for technology to advance far enough along so that he could make Avatar. Honestly though, after all this, he could have rereleased Pocahontas in HD with live actors and done it along time ago. But then again, he needed all that time for people to forget about Pocahontas all together. Something to think about.

On the topic of copyright infringement/pirating, it seems Ubisoft is being scrutinized for selling pirated music in their latest game, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.  Apparently Ubisoft used the popular P2P service, Demonoid, to upload the game's soundtrack almost 4 months ago, and are now selling it in the Limited Edition packages of AC:B.  Sounds a little ironic that the company who is most recently and infamously known for their DRM "Always on" programs require players to be online whenever they are playing one of their games in order to prevent piracy and/or cheating/hacking would be selling pirated material, of its own making, to it's customers.  All sounds a little backwards to me.  Here's a little more, expanded info on the topic.

Which browser is REALLY the fastest?

Earlier today Lifehacker.com posted an article about this very topic.  Their goal? To test commonly used web browsers and see how fast each of them were in different categories, and compare them to each other.  Considering Internet Explorer 9 just came out a few weeks ago, the stable release of Firefox 4 came out today, as well as the usual updates that come with Chrome and Opera, it's the perfect time to run these tests and let everyone know about the results.

The results?  If you would like to read the entire article with pretty graphs and a few snippets of interesting information in the way the results were determined, or what they mean check it out here.  If you just wanna know "Which browser is the absolute fastest", (based on the six categories tested) the winners are:

Opera 11
Chrome 10
Chrome 11
Firefox 4
Internet Explorer 9 (no real surprise here)

So if you're still clinging to that old Internet Explorer, you may want to think about upgrading to something a little faster.  You'll probably see a pretty large improvement if you were to watch a video on Youtube.

On that note, if you don't need many extensions, or special extras or "goodies" go ahead and try out Opera 11.  It might just shave a few minutes off your daily routine.  Maybe.

Kontingency out.

EDIT:  I forgot to mention something I found the other day, and now is the perfect time to tell you all.  If you like for pages to load faster, theres a neat little trick when using Google Chrome to have your GPU aid your computer in rendering web pages.  Open Chrome and go to "about:flags".  In about the middle of the page there are 3 options.  GPU Accelerated Compositing, GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D, and Web Page Prerendering.  The first 2 Options will use your actual GPU hardware (the graphics card inside your computer) to help load the webpage.  Try it and see if you like it, or notice better performance.

Little more about Windows 8

My earlier post about Windows 8 possibly coming out in 2012 seems to have garnered some interest as of late.  In response, I like to keep my followers happy, so here's a little extra insight on Microsoft's endeavors with Windows 8.

Windows 8 Roadmap

Spring Break's over

Which means I'm back in classes today and for the next 8 weeks.  Let the boredom begin....Again.

Windows 8?

Yup.  Across the web today there have been a few leaked images of Microsoft's new Operating System.  Some rumors include that Microsoft's progressive download notifications in the taskbar for for downloads through your browser, will now be available for such things as hardware installation.  Also, reportedly users will be able to log into their computers with their Windows Live ID's as Microsoft moves more towards cloud computing.  On top of all this, some think, based on the availability of previous Windows OS's and a leaked strategic plan, that Windows 8 may be out as early as next year.  Think about that.

In other news, Mozilla is supposedly finalizing Firefox 4.0 as the RC (release candidate) has hit their servers.  If you really want to get it now though you can visit the link below.  It appears that Linux/Mac users are able to download 64-bit versions, while Windows users are stuck with 32-bit for now.  The finalized version should be out soon with many improvements in security and user friendliness just like they've always done.

All in all, a pretty exciting day in the tech world.

For more information on any of this, go here:

Windows 8  - A picture of the leaked Windows 8 desktop.

Firefox 4  - Mozilla's FTP server housing Firefox 4 RC.

Firefox 4 new features  - Detailed lists, pictures, and information on changes in Firefox 4.


EDIT: Google Chrome version 10 is now available for download as well. If you haven't done so yet go to options, "About Google Chrome" and let Chrome do it's thing. Then simply restart Chrome and you're good to go. For changes go here.

Customize your desktop now with these simple tools.

Many people on the internet today love to have their desktops in just that way. You know, the perfect wallpaper all the Rainmeter skins, custom start orbs, some like an icon for every program on the computer while others can do with only a few.

As far as wallpapers go, many use good ol, plain and simple, Google Image Search. Others go to DeviantArt, or the astoundingly large number of "wallpaper" sites on the web. Ive been to many, seen that I had to download a 500MB folder of wallpapers just to get the one I wanted, or even not been able to find a wallpaper that suits me. Then I StumbledUpon 4walled.org. Currently there are 400,000+ wallpapers available freely and with a little searching I am sure anyone can find a desktop background right for them. On that note, 4walled has several search options that you should look at. Keywords can be used to search for a specific type of background, i.e.: kittens, flowers, superman, guns, etc. Almost anything you could think of honestly. There is also a "SFW" tab. SFW for those who don't know stands for Safe For Work. This means that a wallpaper marked SFW can be opened at work, on a work computer, without fear of being punished. That being said, if you are surfing for wallpapers on 4walled at work you would be wise to open that tab and select the SFW option as many of the wallpapers on the site can be pornographic in nature. I can not be held responsible if you open a wallpaper deemed inappropriate for the work environment and your boss catches you.

This leads us to Rainmeter. Everybody knows about the Windows Vista sidebar. Most everybody also knows that one of the first things you did when you installed Vista, was to deactivate the sidebar. It just wasn't very useful. Thousands of people have found Rainmeter and know that it is perfect for everyone from the minimalist to the most extreme computer use who needs to know everything thats going on on their computer, at all times. I find myself somewhere in the middle. I have launchers, the weather, rss feeds, and information about my Computer including CPU/RAM load, HDD capacity, and Network speeds. Of course all of this is customizable to the users wants and needs and there are hundreds of preconfigured skins available online.

I have already talked about custom start orbs so next up is icon management. I use a little program distributed by StarDock called fences. Fences is a program that allows you to make areas on the desktop (fences) that are resizable, renamable, etc which house icons in a neat way that keeps your desktop from becoming too cluttered. Along with this application comes the ability to hide all your icons inside fences by double-clicking anywhere in the desktop area. So for those who like icons for easy access to programs and applications, but don't like the desktop clutter, you can hide or reveal all your desktop icons with 2 clicks. Very simple, very nice.

Throughout this post I have mentioned several programs. Following are links to download these programs.

4walled -Desktop Backgrounds
Rainmeter -Desktop Information
Fences -Desktop Icon Management
StartOrbz -Custom Start Menu buttons

This is a picture of my desktop with all the aforementioned items in use.

Why I switched from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 10.10

In early February I posted here that I had reformatted my laptop hard drive and installed Windows 7. Well....this week I reformatted again and install Ubuntu 10.10. Why? Well, I use my laptop mainly for school and rarely at home (usually use my desktop computer while I'm at home) and I decided that Windows was just to costly. I realized that I always have to do virus scans at school because their network isn't exactly the most secure, Windows was very heavy on RAM and CPU usage, it was slow to load in some cases especially when I had a lot of tabs going or when i needed to run more than one application at a time. So, I decided to get away from the mass marketed OS and switch to something lighter, more cost effective, funner, and something that would teach me new things.

All this lead me to Ubuntu. The most used Linux distribution in the world. The transition was fairly easy as most things that I didn't know were just a short Google search away. I must say, my laptop's battery lasts about an hour longer (sometimes more depending on what I'm doing) even with all the desktop affects. All my documents for school can be saved with the window's extensions so the teachers can still open and read them. Everything pretty much worked as soon as I booted up. The only real thing I had to do was install flash and get it working in chrome, which took me about 15-20 minutes. I've been tweaking different things here and there since I installed, but none of it is necessary for most users, and I've been learning alot. This may have been the best decision I'll have made all semester.

For those of you who like the look and feel of Windows 7, you can install themes that give your Ubuntu installation the same taskbar, you can run commands allowing you to have the Windows Snap feature, and you can even allow your wallpapers to cycle. The Ubuntu community works hard to make everything as easy as possible and to provide options for every user to customize their setup, as they see fit. They are also much more helpful than Microsoft's online support.

All in all I believe I made a good decision in switching to Ubuntu. I even got one of my best friends to switch to it on his laptop.

If you want to know more you can go here and read up on Ubuntu and what features it offers. You won't be disappointed.

If you want to keep your Windows 7, or Vista, or XP or whatever other operating system you are using then you can always burn a "Live CD" of Ubuntu which you can use to load the OS on your system and give it a "try-out" without installing it. You simply run it off the CD and you can then test drive it yourself and see if you like it. If you decide you like it, but you play games on your Windows PC, you can download Wubi here and install Ubuntu on a separate partition on your hard drive, along side your current Windows OS and then choose which OS you want to boot into at startup. This way you keep your Windows OS for whatever reason (games, editing, etc) but you can play with or use Ubuntu whenever you like as well.

Also, let it be known that Ubuntu gets major revisions in April and October of every year. These are optional if you like the current version but often add most stability or support. Like windows however each version of Ubuntu is supported for 2 years after deployment. This being said, the current version 10.10 came out in October of 2010. In April of this year 11.04, code named Natty Narwhal, will be released and many communities on the web are expecting great things.

For further help websites like Lifehacker who this week is actually doing segments on fresh installs of Ubuntu and how to get your OS the way you like it, as well as Ubuntu Guide, and Ubuntu's own help page will be of great help to a new user. As always Google can assist you, and the vast Ubuntu community is always somewhere willing to help.

Tell me what you think and if you switched in the comment box and let me know how you like Ubuntu, or why you think Windows will always be better :).

Windows 7 SP1 MESSED UP MY START ORBZ!!!!

So several days after I installed the Windows 7 SP1 I now realized that before hand I had made custom start orbs (the button you click for your windows start menu) because the original Windows one was, to me, bland and boring. I was now on the hunt for the program I used previously and after I finally found it I now have new start orbs.

My start button now has these images for Normal, Hovered over, and Pressed, respectively.

Much more fun to look at then the boring little circle with the windows logo in it in my opinion. If you're interested in downloading and using the program that I used to change my start orb it can be found here.

This is the best program that gives many more options than the other programs I tried to use. My recommendation if you're planning on changing your windows 7 start orb with little hassle and as much freedom as possible.

Still Noone

Noone has yet stumbled upon this here blog o' mine. Safe to say it goes by relatively unknown, and under the radar.

I just recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop as I was becoming tired of Windows 7 and I must say, I missed it.

Someone find this...

Everyone is sick...

Today, everyone in the house is sick.  I am the only one not laid up in the bed, but am simply trolling the internet, performing maintenance on the server, learning what little I can about the topics that wildly enter and exit my brain.  If anyone comes across this blog there are a few things that I would like to present to you, in order to further your daily knowledge, and possibly add a little spark to your day.  Lifehacker is one of the first things I do in the morning.  It seems impossible to wake every morning and not find something interesting or educating on this site.  Mozilla Thunderbird downloadable here, is the fastest, easiest, and simply best solution I have found for keeping up with multiple e-mail accounts.  These are two applications I use everyday and would recommend to anyone.

If you know of a program that you would like to have but, for whatever reason, is out of reach then I would suggest you go here and find a suitable replacement.

One last thing for now...I recently reformatted my laptop while installing windows 7.  To make this process much  easier and less time consuming I found a website which greatly speeds up and streamlines the process of getting your most used and favorite programs or applications back.

Until later...

Kontingency

Welcome..

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