Cheap Wireless Alternative for the Xbox 360 (Or Other )

The Wireless accessory for the Xbox 360 costs somewhere around $100. That's a lot of money (to me anyways). I found a tutorial that shows you how to convert a wireless router into a wireless bridge. Essentially, you'll buy a cheap wireless router and flash it with 3rd party firmware to make it act like a wireless bridge (which cost a good bit more).

I'd suggest sticking with wireless G if you plan on streaming media to your 360 via your PC. If you only plan on gaming, than B might be sufficient enough. Also, it's always a good tip to stick with the same brand as your other wireless router, although I'd guess you'll not run into any problems either way.

Oh, this can be used to connect other devices wirelessly to your network, not just the 360, just in case that wasn't obvious.

Link to article

32 AA Batteries For Only $4-5!

6 Volt Battery Hack! You'll Be Amazed! - video powered by Metacafe

More Tips on saving money on batteries. I was completely amazed when I saw this! Incredible.

Not as impressive, but still awesome:
8 watch batteries from a 12 volt battery.



12 Volt Battery Hack! You'll Be Surprised... - video powered by Metacafe

And, there are 6 AAA batteries in a 9 volt battery. No video for that though

I saw these posted on lifehacker, an excellent website. :)

EDIT: just a note of realization that the first video with the AAs could quite possiblt and probably be a joke. a somewhat off sense of humor. :)

How to: Install Flash On A Machine that Wont Allow You

Ever been at a public computer and want to view a website that uses flash, but the computer does not have it installed? You might run into the problem of not having permissions to install flash. This is what you do.

This is a work around that is actually not installing anything at all, so you wont need the permissions to install anything.

First, you will have to make sure there is a working version of Firefox on the machine. If there's not, than you'll need to get PortableFirefox. The mentioned version of Firefox requires no install at all and is meant to be used on a USB drive, but you can just put it on the computer and it'll work fine.

Next, you need this: http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi.
Right click/Save as. I believe it's a Firefox extension. I couldn't really find much info about it but it's from Macromedia's website and it works.

Unzip the file you just downloaded into the Firefox\Plugins directory. You'll need Winzip or Winrar. If neither of those two programs are installed on the machine you are at, there is a version of 7-Zip that does not require an install, 7-Zip Portable.

Run the .exe that you just extracted into the Firefox\Plugins directory and you are good to go!

If you have a USB drive, you can just keep a version of PortableFlash on it, and not have to ever worry about this. You'll also be able to carry around all of your bookmarks, extension, and personal settings.

DIY: Burning Laser Pointer

Laser Flashlight Hack! - video powered by Metacafe

This is awesome, wish i had a spare DVD burner laying around so i could try this out.

Money Saving Tip: Save Money on Printer Ink

Change your setting on your printer so it prints FastDraft and black&white by default. For most of the printing i do, FastDraft is plenty good enough and saves A LOT of ink. Also, unless you tell your printer otherwise, it's probably always using your color ink, even if it's printing black; it just mixes up all of the colors to make black!

Here's how to change those setting:

Start | Control Panel | Printers and Faxes | Right click on your printer and choose Properties | General tab | Printing Preferences | Paper/Quality tab: Choose FastDraft under Print quality | Color tab: Check Print in grayscale - Black print catridge only under Color options

thats it! enjoy!

How to: Make a JPG That Contains Hidden Files

Awesome video. Not really sure why I'd actually make use of this tip, but I think it's cool.

I saw this posted on Daily Cup of Tech.

Firefox Hack: Easy Media Search

I commented on this in another post, then later discovered a really easy way to execute this search. Here's a very easy way to use Google to search for audio, video and even ebooks.

Make a new bookmark via "Organize Bookmarks..."

In Location, past this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=-inurl%3A(htm%7Chtml%7Cphp)+intitle%3A%22index+of%22+%2B%22last+modified%22+%2B%22parent+directory%22+%2Bdescription+%2Bsize+%2B(wma%7Cmp3%7Cogg)+%22%s%%22

In Keyword, put:
music

Give it a name.

When you type that keyword into firefox's address bar, it's the same as typing what's in Location.

So, for the search, you would type the following in the address bar:
music devo


For Video (.avi and .wmv), use this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=-inurl%3A(htm%7Chtml%7Cphp)+intitle%3A%22index+of%22+%2B%22last+modified%22+%2B%22parent+directory%22+%2Bdescription+%2Bsize+%2B(avi%7Cwmv)+%22%s%%22

and for ebooks (.pdf and .doc), use this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=-inurl%3A(htm%7Chtml%7Cphp)+intitle%3A%22index+of%22+%2B%22last+modified%22+%2B%22parent+directory%22+%2Bdescription+%2Bsize+%2B(pdf%7Cdoc)+%22%s%%22

I don't really see myself using this for media search, but find it an awesome tip for the use of the keyword feature.

Firefox Tip: How to Use More Than One Profile

Want more than one profile for Firefox? Each with it's own set of bookmarks, extensions and customization? Here's what you do.

Right Click on your Firefox shortcut and go to Properties.
find target "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" and add -profilemanager
so it looks like this:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -profilemanager
Now when you startup Firefox, it will load the profile manager so you can choose which profile you want to use. It's that simple.

Want to have a separate icon for each profile, and not have the profile manager pop up everytime? Add -p "profilename" to the end of the target string, so you can have:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p default and
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p desult


Want to use more than one instance/profile at a time?
Click Start | Run
type in firefox -no-remote -p "profilename"
That should, of course, be the profile name of a profile that you do not already have up.

You can make an icon out of the -no-remote switch, I just find it much easier to use the run command. And likewise, you can load the profile manager via the run command with
firefox -profilemanager.


Awesomeness!

Firefox Hack : Slimming Down Firefox for Maximum Screen Space

Click to enlarge

I like to have as much screen space as possible, so i like to slim my apps down, especially the ones I use most often such as Firefox. Here is what I've done. I'm not suggesting this is what everyone should do, but it might give you some ideas, or at least a tip or two that you like.

1. Right click on one of the toolbars and go to customize. Find "Show" at the bottom and choose "Icons" under the dropdown. Now check "Use small icons." Those options may or may not be Firefox defaults, I don't really remember.

2. Get rid of the Bookmarks Toolbar. It's kind of cool, but it takes up too much screen space for my liking. There's a Bookmarks menu, it's useful!

3. Tiny Menu. It's a Firefox extension that allows you to hide the menu items that you don't use too often such as File, Edit, View and Help. I like to keep Bookmarks and Tools handy because I use those two pretty often, but you can hide them all if you would like.

4. Right click a toolbar and choose customize again. Drag a separator to the right of the tiny menu. Now drag everything from the Navigation Toolbar up to the right of the tiny menu to fill in all of the wasted empty space. Now you can uncheck the Navigation Toolbar to hide it because it's no longer needed! I personally got rid of the Google Search in the toolbar, I never use it.

5. StumbleUpon. I like the extension, I hate that it takes up an entire toolbar in Firefox. I just moved it up next to the address bar where Google Search used to be.

6. MiniFox. It's a Firefox Theme that just makes everything just a bit more compact.

Awesome! I hope that someone gets something from this. At very least maybe someone will discover how customizable Firefox is and explore things on their own.

Oh, and no, that is not the resolution I use, I scaled it down to make it easier to view. And no, I do not use the Firefox Google Startpage.

enjoy!

Firefox Hack: Remove Close Button [X] from Tabs

I often find myself with many tabs opened at the same time when using Firefox. I also find myself occasionally accidentally pressing the red X and closing tabs unintentionally. Since I always close tabs by clicking the middle mouse button on them, the only thing the red X is good for is to be a nuisance.

Here's how to get rid of it:

1. Type "about:config" into address bar
2. Scroll down to "browser.tabs.closeButtons" and change the value to "2."

Awesome!


Here are what the other values do:

0 - Display close button on active tab
1 - Display close button on all tabs
2 - Display no close buttons
3 - Display single close button at end of tab bar (Firefox 1.x)

Elevator Hacks

Simple Elevator Hacking. - video powered by Metacafe

Supposedly works on 90% of evelators.

New Skins for XP with Visual Styles

I see a lot of people with XP using the Windows XP Style look. That's probably mostly due to the fact that XP defaults to it. I personally think it's ugly as crap, so it was the first thing to go when i switched over to XP; I prefer the Windows Classic look.

For some reason, Microsoft thought it was an awesome idea to only let you choose "Windows XP Style" or "Windows Classic Style." Any option for 3rd parties to make there own themes was locked out.

These options can be found if you right click the desktop, go to Properties | Appearance and look under "Windows and buttons."

I'm going to tell you how to patch XP to allow you to load up 3rd party "Visual Styles," or skins.

It's easy!

1. Download Uxtheme Multi-patcher and patch your uxtheme.dll to open up your system for these changes. In other words, just download it and run it.

2. Download new themes! A good place to start looking is deviantart.com. Look here on the site: Customization / Skins & Themes / Windows Utilities / Visual Styles.

3. Extract the new theme to the following directory: C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes. You'll find one theme already here, Luna. That's the XP theme.

4. Right click the desktop. Go to Preference | Appearance and Choose your new visual theme under "Windows and buttons." That's it! Most themes come with several color schemes to choose from aswell.

That's all!

Here are a couple visual styles i have found that I like:

Pucko - This is the theme that I am currently using, and liking a lot! I found it looking for a theme that was simular to Ubuntu's Glider theme; I actually like this more. It's simple, sleak, and very usable! It also [thankfully!] does not sport the small caps that the screen shots show.

CodeOpus - This is also a very nicely done theme, it's just a little too bubbly for me though. Worth checking out though, thus the reason I mentioned it.

I tried some others, but a lot of them are matched up with horrible fonts, or are just terrible on the eyes. So be warned!


Want to Change your icons to better match your new look?
Use IconTweaker, it's free and automatically comes with some pretty good sets.

One last note: There are, of course, other ways to change the look of Windows. one of which is WindowsBlinds. I like the way I descibed here for two reasons: It's free and you don't have to have another App running in the background.

Enjoy!

The Quicklaunch Toolbar (XP)

XP Tip:
here's a very handy toolbar that some might not know about. it's the quick launch toolbar. this toolbar is not turned on by default, so you have to actually turn it on to make use of it.
right click someplace on the taskbar, then go to toolbars->quick launch and click. you can put shortcuts here so that they are very easy to access. my advise would be to keep the shortcuts here to a minimal, but you can put as many as you would like. i know some of you like to have 100 or so on the desktop, this practice could apply here.
remember you can make shortcuts to any file or folder, just right click the file or folder and choose create shortcut, then drag it to the quicklaunch toolbar.

i'll write a future blog on how to clean up all of the clutter off of the desktop! :)

enjoy!

Shortcut Key Any File or Folder

here's a very handy tip that not everyone knows.
you can create a shortcut key for any file or folder. then all you have to do is press CTRL ALT (assigned key) and the file or folder opens automatically.

you first have to create a shortcut for the item. then right click and go to properties. there is a spot for shortcut key; assign what you would like and hit OK (or apply). whalla! :) it's done.

i don't particularly like to clutter up my desktop with shortcuts so i put the shortcuts someplace on the start menu.

i have CTRL ALT N open up notepad, which i think is the most handy execution of this tip.
i also like CTRL ALT M for media player
and CTRL ALT D to open and play "whip it" by Devo