How to Find Water in an Emergency
This eHow has instructions for finding water in an emergancy. Water being so valuable it’s good to know how to find it in an emergancy situation and might sav your life.
I don’t know about step four?
Drink from your toilet’s reservoir tank as a last resort (”but not from the bowl“).
I am in love with my new Ubuntu system thanks to Beryl and a few other great open source applications. In this quick HowTo guide I am going to show you how to get Beryl up and running on Ubuntu Linux without disturbing your Windows installation. A portion of this guide is borrowed from install.exe/Prototype article How to install Ubuntu without disturbing Windows. The article is already out there so no need in rewriting it. If you have already installed Ubuntu using this method you can skip over step one. I have not tested this on Kbuntu, and for the record I am running Linux ubuntu 2.6.20-12-generic with Feisty. Now onto the good stuff goto wiki.ubuntu.com and follow there manual, bookmark this page so you can quickly come back to it once you have your Ubuntu installation up and running. You probably won’t need the installtion guide at all because the installation is very intuitive but if you feel the need you can still give it a read.
Step 1.) Install Ubuntu using the Prototype installer.
Step 2.)Launch your Ubuntu installation and run a terminal window Application > Accessories > Terminal (The applications menu is located in the upper right hand corner of your Ubuntu desktop) now the terminal opens up and you now have a bash prompt in front of you. First we need to install Beryl-Core so we do the following commands.
sudo apt-get install beryl-core
Step 3.) Now you have the Beryl Core installed onto the next step. In the same terminal window or a new one (optional) type the following command.
sudo apt-get install beryl-manager
Step 4.) You now have Beryl-Manager installed on your machine and are ready to start using the cool effects. You can access Beryl-Manager from a terminal by typing the following command.
beryl-manager
You can additionally goto Applications > System Tools > Beryl Manager and select Beryl Settings Manager. This is the configuration of your super cool new desktop system Beryl. The rest of the process is a matter of personal preference. You can setup Beryl Effects anyway you please. You can speed up your system by turning off some effects such as blur, wobbly windows, and even 3D cube. There is really no major hardware required to do this. I didn’t have any trouble installing Beryl and am running a mere p4 HT 3ghz with 1.2 GB Ram and an onboard Intel GMA 900 video card. Not too shabby considering Windows Vista won’t even do the Aero Glass Theme without atleast a 3D accelerated card. Another reason why Linux is awesome.
I spoke with Gina Trapani on Wednesday about my concerns on this issue. The problem is that many online shops are using hidden fields in forms to pass information such as pricing, shipping, and quantity to their online checkout systems. Now I love Google Checkout for its sheer simple integration methods, but there is also an option to auto approve the payment and this concerns me. So I am writing to you today to illustrate some of the methods I have came up with which will hopefully prevent this sort of attack. Here are three ways you can circumvent this little flaw in many online stores.
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A lot of people are switching to Vista for it’s great features. One of the great features is DreamScene which allows you to play high-definition video as your desktop wallpaper. I am stuck with XP for the time being and won’t be switching to Vista anytime soon. So I began looking around on the internet for an alternative to using videos as wallpaper. I found a quick tutorial on Digg on how to do just that. The best part about this little trick is that it will work on Windows XP, Windows Vista Home, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business Edition and maybe even a few other operating systems. Now I could link to the article and probably should, but that would just cause you to have to reload your browser and it’s really quite simple. So what I am going to do is try to illustrate the basic concept of this trick and also link to the article because there is a more in depth explaination of how to get this up and running. I have mentioned VLC Player in the past and many of it’s great features, but if you haven’t already downloaded your free copy the url is http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. Now to do this all you need to do is install VLC Player, open a video file, and right click and check “wallpaper” and thats it. You now have a beautiful animated background using video from your most recent vacation trip, or maybe your favorite movie. It’s that simple.
Bonus Tip:
More than likely you will not want your video to play just once when you are using it for this purpose. So you will need to tell VLC to loop the video in the playlist interface found under navigation in the toolbar menu. Also you may wish to disable the sound so it doesn’t drive you crazy after playing 99 times over and over. To do this goto audio and select disable. Thats it, you now have the great feature of DreameScene on your non-DreamScene compatible operating system.
Linux offers some great stuff to the desktop user. Especially with new desktop environments like Dapper, Edgy and Breezy. However many people are still shackled to their Windows operating systems for various reasons. One of my favorite eye candy apps for Linux is XGL+Compiz which allows you to have multiple desktops mapped to a 3D cube which you can rotate in 3D space to find the desktop you want. XGL doesn’t stop there it also supports window wobble and other great visual effects but all that is another post. I wanted to find some software that could at least come close to XGL and was please to find Yod’m 3D. Yod’m 3D offers the virtual desktop system with all the desktops mapped to a 3D cube similar to XGL but with less features. You can easily rotate the cube horizontally not vertically as with XGL. Yod’m 3D is free and is a great application, so check it out.
Software summary:
The default shortcut keys (which are customizable) are Ctr+Alt [ARROW LEFT] or [ARROW RIGHT] to rotate the cube. You can also Ctrl+Alt and drag with the mouse to rotate the desktops around. There is a zoom feature and customizable background images also.
browser-shots.gifIn the past I have mentioned Browsercam a ‘pay’ for service that allows you to test a site in multiple browsers / operating systems. While this is a great tool for professional web developers who don’t mind paying for every test. There is an alternative for freelance web developers and the weekend warrior. Browsershots.org is a FREE service that allows you to specify settings such as screen resolution, Flash media player, and more. Once you have chosen your configurations and submitted your sites url Browsershots.org will take screenshots of your site using multiple machines with the hardware/software configurations you specified. Browsershots.org does have it’s short comings. The preview is not generated instantly and is instead added to a queue to be processed in the order it was received. This creates a delay and you have to check back with the page, but it beats the hell out of calling everyone you know with a different type of system, browser, etc. to ask them to check out your site and send you a screenshot.
Link: Browsershots.org
It’s no secret I love Open Source applications. Why? Well it’s really quite simple. When an application is Open Source you have much more control over how the application behaves and can easily customize it to your liking. Software that is not Open Source is similar to leasing a vehicle sure you own it, but you don’t have the right to fully pimp your ride. Below I have listed some of my favorite open source apps. Some are more promising than others and I am sure I have not covered all of the great open source apps out there. So to be fair if I missed any good ones please let me know in the comments.
Ubuntu Studio looks like a promising application to fill the gap in Linux that is creativity software. We all know Linux has sported The GIMP for sometime now which is OK for small stuff and definitely better than MS Paint by far. I can just imagine what this new software package will bring to the creative table for Linux. I am going to have to give this a run on Ubuntu. Check it out and let me know how it is in the comments.
Link: http://ubuntustudio.com/
SpeedTest.net is a cool way to test your internet connection speed online. Simply select a server to test and speed test does all the work in an awesome Flash based web application. Speed Test features a speedometer to show you the speed and is a very cool way to do an internet speed test. I highly recommend it, Speed Test is simple to use and just plain cool.
Link: http://www.speedtest.net
Need an XML sitemap for your site but don’t want the hassel of doing it by hand? If so the XML Sitemap generator has got your back. The XML sitemap generator allows you to spider and create a sitemap for upto 500 pages and with their premium service you can create a sitemap for an unlimited number of pages. This is a really cool tool if you need to make a Google Sitemap for your site.
I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when I went to Google and seen a link stating “New! Get FREE breakthrough broadband with Google TiSP (BETA)” So I followed the link and found it to be a system for FREE wi-fi via the toilet. This is obviously somone’s joke but is it Google’s? I strongly doubt this is a real page made by Google. I am not sure whether their homepage was defaced or if this is just some sort of prank from our friends at Google. Regardless I took some screenshots as this page may not be up for long. See the screenshots below.
Link : Via Google http://www.google.com/tisp/
