Category: Computers

Be it a discussion of software or hardware; it will be under here.

This post was inspired by a recent article over at LifeHacker. But before I get into the tips, I’m going to bore you with a slight digression.

LifeHacker is one of the very few blogs that I actually check daily for new content. And I’m not talking about using an agregator, I will actually pop up a webbrowser to hit them up. I read their site so often it wasn’t until today that I realized my portal page didn’t1 link to them. As a general rule, the articles there are interesting and/or useful. I don’t have a Mac, so some articles don’t always help me, but overall they have a really good mix. I suppose given how much use I’ve gotten out of their site, I should be a bit nicer about this…. But the tip posted today was so shockingly lame that I feel the need to compile my own list of tips for windows users. Sorry, justrick but this one shouldn’t have made it past the editor’s desk!

Right that’s more than enough complaints, here’s my favorite Windows tips (in no particular order)

  • Reformat your drives and load your favorite linux distro (I suggest either Kubuntu or OpenSuSE).2
  • Use the Windows Key shortcuts:
    • Win + E: Launches Windows Explorer
    • Win + D: Pressed once, shows your desktop. Pressed twice, restores your windows to their prior positions. The same effect can be achieved with Win+M and Win+SHIFT-M, but Win+D takes less effort.
    • Win + R: Launches the Windows Run Box. True, this isn’t as powerful as the Linux cli but you can do some good tricks with it (I’ll cover some of those later).
    • Win + L: Locks your computer, good for corporate environments.
    • Win + BREAK: Launches the System Properties window.
    • Win + F: Launches the Windows Explorer Searach function, useful in locating files3. Of course, if what you’re really looking for are other computers on the network then you could use Crtl+Win+F.
  • If you use the Windows Command Prompt frequently, then setting up some aliases for your most commonly used commands is helpful. the one I like to do on evey Windows machine I use is to create C:\Windows\X.BAT. This batch file contains only one command and that’s EXIT. Since the batch file is in the Windows directory, it’s in the system path on a default configuration. When I’m ready to close any command prompt, I just hit “x” (minus the quotes) and I’m out.
  • If you don’t have a fancy keyboard with extra keys for macros or launching other programs, you might want to use things like:
    1. Press Win+R
    2. Type in “notepad” (minus the quotes)
    3. Press enter or click ok. This will launch the Windows Notepad accessory, great for editing small text files or making quick notes to yourself. the other app I frequentally launch this way is the Windows Calculator (use “calc” instead of “notepad”).
  • If your Quick Launch bar is overflowing but you still need quick access to more programs and you don’t have a fancy macroing keyboard, then you can setup shortcut keys for your programs by right-clicking on their icon/shortcut, selecting Properties, clicking in the Shortcut Key field and pressing the key combo you want to launch the program. For example…
    1. Go into Start -> Accessories.
    2. Right-click on Paint and select Properties.
    3. Click in the Shortcut Key field and press Crtl+Alt+P
    4. Now whenever you press Crtl+Alt+P Microsoft Paint will launch. Keep in mind that this can cause problems with other programs if you try overwriting a keyboard shortcut that the other program already uses (e.g. Ctrl+C).

Those are all of the Windows tips that immediately come to mind. If any of my readers have additional ones they like, please post them in the comments.

1 As soon as I realized this, I added the link.
2 If this tip offends, I’d apologize but you should know by now from reading this blog, that I vastly prefer Linux.
3 Though installing Google Desktop and using hitting Crtl twice is easier overall and GD does a better job searching.

I used to love playing video games and would waste entire days doing nothing else, but over the last couple of years I’ve started slipping away from that hobby. The expense of keeping my computer updated to handle the latest games combined with the pain I’d get in my wrists just kind of killed the fun. Particularly since I wasn’t seeing a lot of new games to keep up my interest. Well, if the game behind this trailer plays anywhere close to as good as it looks; then I’ll be back to burning the midnight oil to lay waste to the enemy. *grin*

You see, one of my all-time favorite video games was the original Team Fortress mod for Half-Life. The class choices, mayhem and fun were an unbeatable combination1. Then as other mods were developed further; Valve announced they were going to go all out on making TF2. This was 5 years ago and was the last we heard from Valve about it. At least the last we heard until this month when they released the official trailer for TF2. The new character models are wicked cool and oddly enough something about the trailer reminds me of No One Lives Forever (another great video game).

Just wow! I cannot think of any better description of how cool this trailer looks. Go on, hit the link and watch it yourself!

1 At least I’ve always thought so, but others have preferred that POS called Counter-Strike.

For all you people searcing for more information on getting the C4237B soundchip working under Ubuntu, here are the links to my previous posts on the subject:

Some other people out there in Internet land have reported the steps detailed in those posts as working for them. Some have reported that they don’t work. *shrug* My best guess as to why is I think the chip can be configured with a DOS/Windows utility to use different IRQs and what not. Or it could be some sort of difference in the kernel(s) people are using. Or something else entirely. I really don’t know for sure. Lastly I should note that when I last updated the kernel on my laptop to tot 2.6.12-10; the sound stopped working.

According to the Mozilla/Firefox crew, extensions are…

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while keeping Firefox small to download.

I’m going to discuss my favorite extensions here with you. I’ll be starting with the extensions I feel nobody browsing the web today should be without and then move onto some extensions that are a bit more specialized in their application.

Advertisements

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I get very tired of looking at all the various advertisements plastered over the internet. Fortunately, there are extensions for Firefox which help to clean up the web. To block advertisements, I start off with Adblock Plus. This extension lets you setup filters to block just the ads you want to block. The “Plus” version of Adblock also allows you to setup whitelists so you can view ads on the sites you want to support. The only downside, to Adblock Plus, is the time it takes to setup all the filters you want. This is where Adblock Filterset.G Updater comes in. The FiltersetG.Updater grabs a set of preconstructed filters designed to eliminate the majority of Internet advertisements for you. Using these filters alone kills 85-90% of the advertisements out there. But even those two combined don’t catch everything, so I’ve also added in NoScript to the mix.

Actually, I added in NoScript originally because so many sites were using crappy javascripts to add “features” to their pages. Features I did not need or want. But since installing NoScript, I’ve noticed it helps to block a lot of advertisements that are inserted into webpages via javascript. Bonus! 🙂 Also in NoScript’s options, there is a checkbox to have NoScript block Macromedia Flash and other plugins for untrusted sites. I recommend turning these options on as it will catch & block even more advertisements.

Annoyances

Especially if you don’t use NoScript to block a site’s javascript, you should consider installing Allow Right-Click. A number of websites with cool images will use some lousy javascript to prevent you from right-clicking on the image to save it. This is ridiculous as the image has already been downloaded to your browsers cache and is on your computer already. Plus with some of the other extensions I have installed, I like to right-click on webpages to get more info or whatever and to have a site try to block me is a great annoyance. Allow Right-Click specifically blocks scripts that try to prevent right-clicks.

Another annoying thing some websites do is to link to file you want to download but setup the link in such a way that clicking on it will spawn a new browser window. *grrr* This is something that really pisses me off. Fortunately, there’s the Disable Targets For Downloads extension for Firefox to take care of that problem.

Then there are sites that will write out a URL but not make it a clickable link. Linkification fixes that annoyance for you. It can also color code those links it fixes to let you know when a site is being naughty.

And let’s not forget the annoyance of PDF Files. For whatever reason, some sites will put up content as a PDF file and then your browser will1 load the Acrobat plugin to view the PDF in the browser. ARRRRGGGGHHHH! When I want to view a PDF file, I’ll use a proper PDF viewer and not this plugin crap. PDF Download changes Firefox’s behavior so it asks you what you want to do with a PDF fileL Download, View as PDF, View as HTML or Cancel. The View as HTML feature hasn’t worked for me in a long time, but it’s nice to force Firefox to download the file while still having the option to go insane and want to view it as a PDF file in my browser.

The last of my annoyances with the internet are sites requiring you to register to view their content. I run across this the most when trying to view news articles linked to by Google News. Fortunately, there is BugMeNot to take care of that for me. BugMeNot is both an extension and a service. They maintain lists of usercodes/passwords for various registration only websites to allow people to view the content without filling out yet another registration form and giving out their email yet again. It’s very convenient though I’m sure the sites requiring registration hate it.

Web Development

In my spare time2, I like to do small amounts of webdevelopment and for that there’s one Firefox extension which is an absolute MUST HAVE, Web Developer. This extension has tons of features to aid you in your webdev work. The features I use the most are: Live CSS editing (let’s you see your changes as you make them), W3C Validation (submits your HTML/CSS to W3C to see if your code is valid) and Resize (resizes Firefox so you have an idea of what people see of your site at various screen resolutions). While those 3 functions don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what this extension can do; they do give you an idea of how useful this extension is in webdevelopment.

Next up is ColorZilla. This extension is great for helping me decide on color schemes. It let’s me visit a website or look at a photo and find the hexcode I need to use in my CSS to have that color. Current versions also have some other functionality (e.g. full page zoom) but I’ve not really looked into those.

When you’re working on a new design and times are not lining up correctly, it can be handy to see how wide something is. MeasureIt helps you get that info.

If the design you are developing is based off some ideas you got from another site, it can be handy to look at a copy of that site’s source code. But sometimes their source code is very confusing and it is difficult to figure out how they accomplished specific effects. The X-Ray extension shows you the HTML tags of a webpage while you’re still viewing the page.

And of course, if you’re working on a website, you are going to be concerned with how well your site is showing up on the various search engines. SEOpen lets you track your site’s ranking (amoung other things).

Foreign Langauge Tools

I only read English and speak a small smattering of other tongues. But I do have a variety of interests including some that tend to get reported online more by non-English speakers. So it’s handy to have the ability to translate the other langauges back to English. Moji is an integrated Japanese dictionary (including kanji). I’m sure when I get ready to start studying to read kanji, this extension will prove very helpful. In the meantime, there’s Translate Page for all my foreign langauge needs.

Cool Tools

These extensions either improve on the basic functionality in Firefox and/or add something new to Firefox that trips my trigger. They’re cool, but I’m getting tired of coming up with something to say about all of the extensions I use, so here’s just a list of the remaining ones:

Themes

I find the default theme for Firefox a bit dull. Fortunately, there’s a wide number of different themes available out there. I generally use the Mostly Crystal theme for Firefox. However there are some other interesting themes out there and below is a short list of ones I like:

1 If you have Adobe Acrobat installed.
2 Which is to say very rarely these days.