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2002 February

My New Sound Board

There's a new sidebar link underneath my boob. Er, underneath the link to my live or not-so-live television screen capture. My Sound Board was made in Flash. I wanted to use SWiSH to tweak it, but that didn't work out too well and I ran out of time yesterday. Yes, I'm still avoiding work. Quite well, might I add. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little piece of me on your computer.

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King Of The World

I am the number one Chris on Google!

Movable Pizza

Movable Type
I'm stupid. In an effort to make an exciting GnomeVIDEO for the newsletter, I made myself sick. Don't ask how; you'll just have to wait until Monday when the whole world will find out just how dumb I really am. I had to lie down for an hour or so; that didn't help at all. Gretchen just got back from the Chinese parade thing. I convinced her to order a pizza from Pizza Italiana. I want a large Pizza Contadina (which comes with tomato sauce, zucchini, pepperoni, bell pepper, mushrooms, black olives, fresh tomatoes, sausage, salami, and mozzarella cheese). I won't eat the crust – the thinner, the better. Oh yes, as I was tidying up earlier, I noticed the cover on this week's San Francisco Chronicle Datebook. Ben and Mena, eat your heart out. Click the thumbnail for a larger (640×480) image.

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Just Like Brian Wilson Did

Howto: Using Ogg Vorbis. “TuxPPC has done a small Ogg Vorbis HowTo on how to use the free audio codec to store and play your music data as an alternative to Mp3.” [I refuse to use an audio format which doesn't roll off the tongue. Ogg Vorbis?]

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Clueless Ad Agency (Inbox)

Never having considered myself a geek or a nerd, even though I have spent
over 35 years working in the computer industry, I guess I really am.
While watching the Olympics – yes, sometimes I actually look at something
other than my PC screen, although not often, I promise – this
enlightenment suddenly came to me. An advertisement for ATT.COM
appeared, and to my amazement blue ants were running all over the screen.
I don't know about you, but to me, ants are bugs, right? Now, do I
really want to subscribe to an Internet server which is filled with bugs?
To my increasing horror, these bugs kept multiplying, and even bridged
gaps. Can you say VIRUS and WORM? What was this company or it's ad
agency thinking? Maybe others had the same thought because after a week
the ants disappeared. Perhaps they developed a patch? I think I will
just give ATT.COM a pass, at least until the are RAIDed! [Chuck Erickson]

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More PDF Tools (Inbox)

Just wanted to let you know about PDF995 – it's a great program for creating PDF Files. Once you install it you can create a PDF file from any program by just printing it to the PDF995 printer. It can even be used to pull things from various files together into one. There are also a couple other programs for tweaking pdf files a little more on their Web site. It's adware and displays an ad in your browser each time it's used, but for $10 that can be disabled, or for $20 you get all three programs. [Brady Mitchell]

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InoculateIT Will Die

“In June 2001, users of InoculateIT Personal Edition (IPE) received notification that the program was ending and being replaced with the eTrust EZ Antivirus subscription service through my-eTrust.com. At that time, Computer Associates also advised that support would be continued at no cost for existing users of IPE who chose not to migrate. Since June, the level of virus activity on the Internet has increased to the point of making the older technology used in the IPE program obsolete. This adversely impacts our ability to maintain high quality support. Consequently, we have made the decision to end the InoculateIT Personal Edition program effective May 15th, 2002. Between now and May 15th, users of InoculateIT Personal Edition will need to select a new Antivirus solution.”

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Some Kind of Record (Inbox)

Well, here you have it folks… Microsoft has finally pulled the plug on
anyone who still has the audacity to be running Windows 95. They no longer
offer updates for “MY COMPUTER”. Not my Operating System – “My Computer”! I guess they have determined that I should now replace this paperweight with
a brand new machine so that I can have the privilege of purchasing their
latest OS. I will be doing this soon anyway, but sheesh! This machine (PII,
266MHz), has served me well over the last four years. I have been running
Windows 95 'C' and have it tweaked and personalized just the way I want it.
In fact it has been up and running every day since April 05, 1999 and has
been through a lot of intensive and grueling experiences. Shareware,
trialware, betaware, MS Office (two major versions), StarOffice, Paint Shop
Pro and many other major software applications including every upgrade of IE
till v5.5 SP-2. It is still quick and very responsive in spite of the
constant installing/uninstalling. Two 6.4 GB hard drives presently have
about 3 GB total free space. I wonder if this is some kind of record -
almost three years without having to format – reinstall. [John Paré]

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Ugly Situation (Inbox)

I have become increasingly distressed by a malignancy spreading through
the net. Several friends and otherwise good people have fallen victim
to something that while strictly legal is morally and ethically just
not acceptable. There seems to be pirates waiting in the wings to
pounce on unwary folk who happen to let their domain registration
lapse. If the registration lapses for even so much as a day, they find
the domain they have spent countless hours sweating over turned into a
porno site overnight. These people then are more than happy to turn
the domain back over to you… for an exorbitant price of course!
These extortionists are not afraid to ask thousands of dollars for the
return of your now smeared name.

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Ben Goes To Hell

Okay, I didn't plan on doing this at first, but I just can't take it anymore. I just received another flame from some jerkwad going by the name “Ben Friedman.” The exchange started on Thursday, February 21, 2002 at 10:43AM. Sadly, he's not the first person to do something like this. Go to hell, Ben, and please do your best to hit every thorn on the way down.

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This Is Really Weird

Funny Voice changes the pitch of your voice. Higher pitch will let you sound like a smurf, less pitch will give you a deep voice. All you need is a microphone. Instead of your microphone, plug in the sound output of your tv card or your audio system and listen!” [Trust me, you've gotta give this a whirl. It's a quick download and I'll be featuring it in Lockergnome very soon.]

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Spirit Of Fire

“Fairy fireplace and very realistic flame, calm blink of light and time create the atmosphere of coziness and light mystery. The usage of advanced 3D technology let express that ancient, nearly forgotten spirit – Spirit of Fire. Besides the ancient clock always will show what time it is, and you will be able to replace the picture standing on the shelf with your favorite view.” [This screen saver totally kicks ass!]

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My New Autoresponder

Dear You,

Your rude, insensitive, and/or pompous e-mail message has triggered this pseudo autoresponder. You must be under the assumption that:

(a) You're the only other person on the planet.
(b) You're the only person on the planet who e-mails me.
(c) I have all the time in the world to pay attention to you.
(d) I have no life outside of Outlook 2000.
(e) I have no other function in life than to answer your questions.
(f) I'm the only person on the planet who can answer your questions.
(g) Search engines don't work.
(h) I type one thousand words per minute.
(i) I don't have one thousand other people who demand my attention.
(j) I get paid to take care of you in my “off” hours.
(k) I don't sleep.

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Sysdumb Restore

Here's another one for the XP book. Has anyone noticed that when using System Restore, you lose valuble hard drive space?
This happened to my father. He ran into trouble and used SR to correct it. When that didn't fix it, he undid the restore and chose another restore point! After doing this about 6 times, he noticed that his computer was taking a really long time to boot. When he ran defrag (thinking it was needed), it, too, took much longer! Then he noticed that he was suddenly using much more of his hard drive space than ever before. He took note of his free space (and after checking to make sure that it was not in fact a virus causing his trouble) he tried SR again. He immediately noticed another 3% jump in his free space mising. Needless to say, we eventually reformatted and disabled SR. Just thought I'd drop this info on you because I haven't read anything about this phenomenon anywhere. It is amazing how easy it would be to lose free space without noticing it. [Angi]

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Macintouching

Hey, I just realized that the semi-regular derogatory comments about Apple
are a marketing test to see how many Mac users are reading your Newsletter.
This makes good sense, since they tend to be a very local 1% of the
computing world. Any negative comment guarantees an immediate response from
the entire Mac community.
To determine if the long promised Mac newsletter would be viable, you could
take the number of Mac responses and multiply it by three, you would
probably have an accurate number to base subscribers on. This number could
then be used to determine advertising feasibility.
Someday the newsletter may actually surface, I believe it will generate a
large viewer ship.
I've noticed that even though they seem to be a rather small company,
everyone wants to know what they are doing, and that most of those people
have a very negative view of Apple, even if they've never used their
products.
A very odd response for such a small market. If this was any other group of
people we would be required to be tolerant of them and required by society
to accept their race / religion and or lifestyle.
Oh well, everyone has a windmill. Keep at 'em, Chris! [Chris Brocka]

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