Why visiting my site makes you special

Because I will start to post (in a way back up and delete off my computer) website links that i have accumulated over the years flying around the Internet. Some of my best computer secret websites that help to make you a geek? free games and applications that make life sweeter and web services that make your life easier and also makes webmasters stand out.

Websites that i don't even share over stumbleupon . . . . (sorry friends of mine who share with me on Stumble)

Its super exciting, I'll post a heap of sites with descriptions in a single post to save space.
Its all too good to be true, he is just pasting from Google and making us think he has got something special. No actually Its just my bookmarks folder is getting too big for me and posting it here can help me future reference it. Sure I could back it up as an archive on an external disk but I will have no idea what websites do and where the website I want is, on here i could place descriptions and have a built in search function.
I could have downloaded an application that allows me to organise bookmarks and add comments but that will just make me not post it here and you don't want that right?

I mean I am posting it for you guys (not gender connotation) , yeah no back up incentive, I just love my readers (which is none, no one votes in my polls!)

Travel back in time. View webpages that have died

Do you want to know what the Internet looked like a few or even ten years back?
Do you want to visit a dead site? Are you missing a website?

If its recent:
Google it and hit "cached" under your websites link.

If its a long time ago:
Try this website. http://www.archive.org
I tried to have a look at what my websites looked like before but they seem to only copy a small piece of the gazillion PBs of websites.

BMW M3 Challenge - Free Full Racing Game

Click to view larger image.

Website: http://www.m3-challenge.com


As you may have noticed I am posting all my free full games that I have and am playing at the moment.

Not much explaining to do here, I think its quite simple. A basic but nice graphics racing game. Limited cars and track selection but an excellent game for BMW enthusiasts. Multi-player, manual and auto driving modes, horn, headlights. Really a game to enjoy the art of BMW rather than the experience and thrill of racing and drifting and etc.

A thing I didn't like was it had the toughest physics (when you go off track), if you drive too fast and go into the sand or grass you'd be stuck there for ages, encouraging you to always drive on the road (like you should be) but seriously most racing games give you enough time to get on your wheels again and catch up but if you slip a corner in this game you may was well drive slowly and enjoy the views as your not going to be in the top 3!

TrackMania - Nations Forever

Here are some screen shots. One of the quality screenshots of on-road racing cars (that i like best) and the other of the cars in the free game I am reviewing today (F1 cars).

Website: http://www.trackmania.com/en/

Click to view bigger images.

United Forever


Nations Forever


Did you want a free full racing game with nice graphics and sound to download and play offline and verse people online too?

This game is a full blown free racing game with no trialware conditions or anything. A great racing game indeed. The graphics and sound blew me away and made me love the power under the hood of my laptop. It is rare to find such an excellent quality game for free. It even has multi-player free, I thought you would have to join but nope! its all free and well. I've played online before and a 256kbs connection did the trick with plenty to spare. The file is about a CD in size but well worth the wait. The game is a bit different to normal racing simulators in that this is a game for track cars (like hotwheels model cars) and the race course is on a track, the handling is excellent in the cars and everything is just perfect. The creators have done a real good job with this one. Oh and I have to mention it has 3D glasses mode too!, I mean not even commercial games give you that, you'll have to find a pair of glasses with red and blue lenses first though (in my experience it didn't work, maybe only because I made the glasses and they weren't perfect to scale)

One thing I didn't like too much is that I am a fan of the racing simulators more but I still enjoyed this game plenty. The free version (Nations Forever) features a full F1 set of cars. They also have other games available for the on-road racing cars (United Forever) but I am yet to understand the fees.

Here are some screen shots. One of the quality screenshots of on-road racing cars (that i like best) and the other of the cars in the free game I am reviewing today (F1 cars).


EDIT: Did i forget to mention they have a track editer so you can make your own tracks and all? Check out the website for more details on game, more screenshots, videos etc.

How do I find my IP number?

What is my IP number?
How can i find out my IP number?
How do i know my IP number?
How do i get my IP number?
I want to know my IP number
I need my IP number

Shouldn't you be looking at the image below instead of still asking these questions?

Sign by Danasoft - Images for Myspace Layouts

Free Sudoku Game

http://www.websudoku.com

This is a website with a huge range of sudoku puzzles.
It's in different languages and has different levels of difficulty.
Overall a good website and it claims that you don't always need to be online to play it but I am yet to examine that. It would be a good idea for when your traveling and don't have or access to the Internet is too expensive. It also gives the option to print them.

Belkin G Plus Mimo

This is a bad router. Both wired and wireless will drop out during downloads. The lowest downloaded size is 516KB and largest is 76MB, with none of the files complete.
Streaming radio will get me ~4 minutes until it disconnects.

I thought I might have had wrong settings but it seems everyone with this problem on Google are experts and have checked their settings. Some will wait for a firmware update and some just returned it.

Possible fix post:
http://gecsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/belkin-tech-support-temp-fix.html

Have you used DVD angles?

With VCDs sometimes you get two languages recorded in left and right channel audio and you have to play the movie in mono to play it in only one language. With DVDs you can have 5.1 channels of different languages.
You can also have different angles too, so far I have never ever seen a movie in different angles and have never used this function.

Have you? and what movie?

Computer Nerds, Lol

Just reading Icon digital living.

Found an interesting article on computer hacker's roles in movies.

Tron (1982)
A guy gets sucked into his computer and is forced to play the game he invented until he dies playing in it, LOL :D

War Games (1983)
A guy plays a game thinking its a war game but it is somehow connected to a defence computer and his playing causes real missile launches, LOL


Hmmm, we don't get this type of story lines in modern movies no more. Thanks to Charles Purcell for writing this article.

MS News

Bill is expected to step down today from his full time MS duties.

MS was told not to use Fiji as the name for the next Windows OS.

Sources: www.smh.com.au

FireFox open new link w/o switching

I talked about using Ctrl + Click to open hyperlinks in new tabs and Shift + Click to open in new window.

To open a hyperlink in a new tab without switching to it, use Shift + Ctrl + Click

Undo and Redo then to you

Skip past red line if you don't want to hear story.

I am quite sure almost everyone in Asia has heard this story. Maybe some in the West too. Its suppose to be the biggest celebrity scandal of the year. Google almost exploded.

Wiki quote:

In January 2008, Edison Chen was involved in a widely publicized sex scandal when sexually explicit and nude photographs of himself and several high-profile female celebrities from the Hong Kong entertainment industry became widely circulated on the Internet. Celebrities implicated in the scandal included Gillian Chung, Bobo Chan, Mandy Chen, Candice Chan, Rachel Ngan and Cecilia Cheung. Nude photos of Edison's current girlfriend, Vincy Yeung, were also made public and the future of the relationship is in doubt.

The way the pictures were circulated on the Internet is not a hard question. The question is how did they manage to get the pictures from his camera?
According to the newspapers Edison bring his computer in to get it fixed, the servicemen went through his computer and copied all his photos, at least that's what it is to my knowledge. Making a bad name for IT people :( , Edison could have prevented this if he deleted his data off of his computer (like really delete it, not only from the index but the hard drive.) don't tell me your surprised or confused because you should already know that data is not deleted when its deleted from the rubbish bin, its only removed from index to allow data to be stored in that location of the disk now (come on, i posted about this ages ago).

My Story:
When I sent my Sony mp3 player back to warranty I did a complete delete, I only had music on it but for some reason IT people like to leave nothing (so i copied and left 2 songs only), maybe its so the technicians can't know I have bad taste for music, harhar but anyway I was glad to do so as it didn't come back. I got a replacement warranty and my old mp3 player along with my music was not given back to me. I did however place a few good song on it so to allow the technicians to test the mp3 player without having to spend additional time uploading a song to test it.

________________________________________
Use this type of precaution to wipe out private data when:
* Recycling old storage devices
* Selling it
* Giving it to a friend or someone to borrow
* Warranty return
* When ever the situation means someone can use it and you don't want them to see your data

! The above story is used as an example of what can happen, I am not suggesting your have such content on your storage devices ;)

Method 1
Get a large file and fill up the usb drive or mp3 player (only for small devices, don't use this method for hard drives, you've got too much space on a HD and the data will be written in free space, maybe) I deleted all my data and sent a demo game which was 600MB to my mp3 player and that destroyed any recovery option fairly well.

It is probably still possible to recover but for basic security this will do, I mean your not trying to secure a $1 million dollar idea, are you? For general photos etc. for privacy reasons this method should be enough, maybe even delete the large file and write something else large to the usb again? Remember the file you write to the usb to overwrite your personal data should be data you don't care about like a game demo file where it doesn't matter if someone knows you've saved that on there. Overwriting a gallery of family photos with a HD movie your your family's last holiday is not a good idea. Usually if you not important, no one will go to extreme lengths to recover your data so I think this method is the fastest.

Method 2
Use software, commercial grade if you wish or a simple free application like Spybot. Spybot has this feature built into the latest version of it. If you find it too hard to find that feature (on left hand menu under tools, called secure shredder) then you could try and download and use a single purpose deleter. I have Eraser and Restoration (Google to download it, I don't have a URL). Personally, I like Restoration, Its main purpose is to scan your removable (and HDs) drives for data that can be restored. We are interested in this as well, what can we restore?? Find out and then select the files and go to the top menu bar and choose the option to delete completely. This will delete it a couple of times to make sure its been over written with different data. Do a scan again and it shouldn't be recoverable.
For HDs you may want to try Eraser where you can selectively choose the files on the HD that you want to destroy.


Method 3
Physically smash the part that is holding your data or the whole storage device all together. Not environmentally friendly but works the best. Smash it into little pieces, grind it into powder, dispose of in garbage bin over 5 months (little handfuls of powder at a time).

If it is still under warranty - make sure to bring the powder and tell the clerk that you can assure it is broken and not working and require a replacement warranty. I am sure they will believe you ... now

If your selling it or giving it to a friend - make sure the powder is in an air tight container and ask your friends to not lose any of it because you want to piece it back later when they are finished borrowing it.

Metaphor in technology

Have you realised that technology uses a lot of metaphors? My lecturer brought that to my attention. Like the use of OS, to make it simple and familiar for paper-based users to switch to computers they use an office as the metaphor in OSs.

You have our desktop to place files and folders, a rubbish bin to place unwanted documents. Software and application names do that too, for example a software that deleted and overwrites your files on your computer so no one can recover it is called shredder, which is like what real shredders do.

And now I am starting to notice that we have advanced in technology and can't think of any real obvious metaphors. You? comment back if you have discovered one. I am so tech. immersed that its everyday normal to me and I can't think of any analogue to digital metaphors used in tech..

Blog Labels Idea

Please remember to use the search box at the top to find posts. My labels aren't perferct because I have diversed i what I talk about and need to make new labels so some early posts may be in the wrong labels.

I wished if I would organise labels better like:

Software > MS
Software > Freeware
Software > Updates
Software> etc.


Allow you guys and girls to go through sub categories to make using labels more precise. Get the hint Blogspot crew? lol

FireFox 3 Add-on version overwrite

I was talking earlier about my add-ons not working after the FF3 update.
I've found a workaround, Currently all my add-ons work but i get 2 error messages when FF3 is launched so this is really a temporary solution until the add-ons get updated to the new version.

If your add-ons are vital to your browsing then this should work alright for the time being. I don't know what add-ons you have so I can't say how many errors you may get. Mine were not recurring so it isn't too annoying at least when compared to not being able to use add-on features.

Check this

Belkin problem

My problem pretty much is:

"I can access the internet fine, but I find that files I download like quicktime movies, zip files seem to drop out when they are downloading. They stall and I have to restart them to get them down.

I'm using Firefox on windows XP professional."


as quoted from: This Site
Same problem but different ISP.


Possible fix post:
http://gecsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/belkin-tech-support-temp-fix.html

My Bad Back Up Habits

Bad backup system, maybe human errors?

I was working on a project for a system development for uni.
I work on this project on my desktop (better ergonomics) and laptop (at uni for team contribution)
After the exams I was all lost (emotionally confussed) and am not sure if it was human error or error in programming of sync software. All I know is I lost the whole prototype data, I sent it to people, lucky because i had a copy in Thunderbird attachment in my "Sent folder" and could save the files from there. Not latest version though because i edited the data the night before so none of it was re-sent therefore not in Thunderbird.

I think I may have saved everything in my USB drive and then thought the back up was successful and deleted it off the usb thumb drive. So it couldn't really be a human errors could it? because my laptop and desktop both don't have the file, instead of just not updating to the latest version of the prototype, it deleted it all, on both computers {Cry} well ok, both human and computer error or maybe the computer error was my human error too, maybe just a bad system?

I am thinking about simplifying my computer usage to simplify my back up process. But, it is very hard to do All the work on Only One Computer.

MS Word bible

Thanks to my guide (Icon crew from SMH newspaper) for recommending this site:

This website covers everthing about MS Word from errors to formatting to how to mail merg.

MVPS

Belkin Router download problems

Oh crap, as i expected, Installing the new network was OK and simple but its not perfect, whenever i download on any computer connected to the router, big download will drop out in < (Blog edit error) catch this one and be able to post it because I have seen a few websites around with people complaining the same thing but with no solutions, not even suggestions in the websites.


Possible fix post:
http://gecsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/belkin-tech-support-temp-fix.html

Sync Firefox Bookmarks between computers

How do i sync bookmarks between computers?

Having the same FireFox bookmarks is so convenient especially if you go online on multiple computers at home such as laptop and desktop and if you dual boot OS too.

I am currently using: FoxMarks

Its been OK so far (fingers crossed), go to the website, download the add-on and create an account.

HP in mini-notebook market

Last time, I talked about Dell entering the mini-laptop market along with Asus. HP is now in the market too. Check it out somewhere ..... oh its right

Here

TechBlog can solve all of your tech problems

Yes! that's right this blog is your source for every problem ever! even the ones with no solutions.....?

Ok well I obviously don't have the time to cover every problem you may ever want answered so maybe this will?


WikiHow


Its like the famous wikipedia only it shows you how to fix things, upgrade things to do with tech and computers.

Stuck Files

How can i delete a file, Stuck file can't be deleted, Can not delete this file, File comes back after deleting it, Can't move or delete a file, Stubborn files, Problems deleting a file.

Sometimes you get files that just simply won't delete, is always busy or it comes back after you delete it. I've had that problem more than once before and I am here today to try and help you solve such stress.

If the files are always busy and you can't move them, rename them or delete them or edit in any way:

Try to use Unlocker (search my blog for my post on Unlocker) to try and stop the program that may be locking up that file. Files that belong to torrents, part-downloaded files, ISO virtual drive files and files that are used by applications are common types of files that are locked by programs and you may not know about the application using it because it may not be in the program files folder, e.g. downloading files are not in the FireFox folder so you have no idea FireFox is using it and adding data to it which is preventing you from editing or deleting it.


If the doesn't work try this:

Use a program called Delete Doctor (do a Google search if link no longer works) this program has given me a 90% + success rate. Try the normal functions and if the file still can not be deleted try the function where deleting the file will occur during start up and requires a reboot, that one usually gives me the Best success rate at deleting a file.


If your files are re-born after deletion:

I have bad news for you, in my experience when this happens you got some sort of a virus, spyware, malware etc. it may not always be entirely true but in my experience that is the biggest chance of why the files are re-born, a virus somewhere is creating that file everytime you delete it, the file your deleting may not actually be the virus and that's why you need to get rid of the mother of the file (virus) to entirely stop the files from being re-born.
My solution is to run anti-virus scans in full scan mode, run spybot and whatever you have and even get some other scanners (well known ones, sometimes those so called anti-XXXXX software are the actual cause of viruses, my suggestion, use anti-XXXXX software recommended by my blog! ;)
Do a scan and if your anti-virus can delete it or fix it, do that. If not find out what virus you have and go to Symantec.com and paste the name in the website and search for a solution for that virus, sometimes Symantec will give you an .exe patch to run to get rid of the virus and sometimes it will tell you how to fix it but using registry edits (not recommended for basic users with little technical knowledge)


The file that keeps of being re-born is My XXXX:

When you find a fix for this tell me! LOL using Windows XP and MS products will sometimes create My Sharing folder, My Music folders etc. after you delete them, everytime you run Windows Media Player the My Music folder is re-created if you deleted it. This isn't a virus, just an annoyance from MS. There are ways around this but I don't want to talk about this headache right now, I thought i found a solution before for the "My Music folder" by adjusting a setting in WMP and it worked for a while and is now back so yeah .....

Some may say use Apple!, I'd say only use that as a solution if your never planning to use Windows again because Apple creates files for each folder that describes how the folder should be displayed in Mac OS and these files won't be invisible in Windows OS, so if you annoyed by one My Music folder then hehehehe

Piracy, is it really happening?

Grand Theft Auto IV made US$500 million in the first week of sales. The Iron Man movie made US$200 million in it's first week. (David Flynn, May 12-18 2008, Icon Digital Living, pp 8)

This kind of makes me think about all the things such as the newspapers and South Park making record companies look like the bad guys. Articles and discussions that debate if piracy is really hurting artists or just their record company. Concerts make money for the artists but the record sales are usually there to profit mainly the record company? if you think about it artists wages will increase from good profits to the record company. . . .

I don't know where i am standing at the moment but it all seems that the record companies are making people scared of technology and makes you think you can go to jail as long as your computer has an electrical cord and telephone or Ethernet cable plugged in your computer. . .

It seems the harder the record companies fight back the harder they get hit from pirates or general society. I wonder if they overkill anti-piracy policies one day and the public will boycott them (record companies, buying CDs from them)????

Yes pirating is against their intellectual property but anti-piracy methods are usually against the general public's privacy . . . ?

Remove all hyperlinks (MS Word)

How do i remove lots of hyperlinks in one go?
How do i batch remove hyperlinks?
Anti-hyperlinks
Deleting hyperlinks in one go
How do i get rid of all the hyperlinks?


I am guessing your copy and pasting? maybe, anyway sometimes its annoying getting a heap of hyperlinks in your Word documents, even if you going to print them and not use them digitally because there is the blue lines which is a waste of ink.

For whatever reason getting rid of hyperlinks is a common job, right-clicking each line or word (when there is a space sometimes the hyperlinks are separated and requires you to apply no-hyperlinks to each word separated by a space) is a stupid task to do individually.

To get rid of all hyperlinks in one go:


For Copy and Paste from websites or other source

• Copy text from website
• Go into Word
• Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text
  
  

For text already in Word document

• Select all the text that you want un-hyperlinked
• Copy it
• Delete it
• Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text back into Word

Non-Copy and Paste easy way

• Select all hyperlinked text
• Right-click
• Remove all hyperlinks
  

Longer "don't know why you would use this" way

• Select all hyperlinked text
• Insert > Hyperlink > [Remove Link]

Hmmmm, removing hyperlinks doesn't seem too hard when writing this post. Was it harder in Word 2000? don't know just seems to be very nicely designed in Word 2003.

Changing Windows XP Vista icon size

How do I change the size of icons?
How do I make my desktop icons bigger or larger?
Changing Windows XP Vista icon size

I like to have my screen in a higher resolution because it looks better and desktop wallpapers are usually a better fit.

A problem is I am usually use to having medium sized desktop icons which are now very small in a high resolution. To prevent me having to learn to be more precise with my mouse clicking I will have to adjust the icon size to be larger but how?

Here is how:

Vista:
Right click on an empty space on the desktop

Click “Windows Colour and Appearance

Click on “Open classic appearance properties for more colour options”

Click on [Advanced Button]

Select “Icon” under Item: dropdown

Change the “Size:” field to a large number that suits you

You can always set the Size: to a smaller value to make icons smaller too if you ever have that need.

Windows XP:
Right click on an empty space on the desktop

Properties > Appearance > Advanced

Select “Icon” under Item: dropdown

Change the “Size:” field to a large number that suits you

You can always set the Size: to a smaller value to make icons smaller too if you ever have that need.

How do I save a file as .doc in Word 2007?

How do i save a file that will open in word 2003 using Word 2007?
Saving .doc in Word 2007
How can i make my files compatible with Word 2003?


To save files so others can open them in Word 2003 or older Word versions or to teach others how to save in .doc before sending a file to you, point them to one of the following sites below:
I have tested them for accuracy.

• MS site, simple text only instructions.
• Nice graphical tutorial, really nice wbe site check out their other Word tutorals.
  

Exta:

Just found this beauty of a site that teachers you that there is a method to save .doc as a default. Which is great cause it kills my comment about people being lazy and saving files as .docx by defaut.

Default Word 2007 to save in.doc format.

How do I open .docx files in Word 2003?

How do i convert .docx into .doc?
How do i open .docx files in MS Word 2003?
How do i open .docx?
I can't read .docx files

I had this frustration before and I think I promised in my past posts to shed some light on how I am now able to open .docx files in my MS Word 2003 in Vista.

Get this package, install it and MS Word 2003 will open .docx files like normal .doc files. I think its slightly slower to open but negligible speeds for my computer.

And another fix would be to do what i do and have a e-mail footer saying to send you .doc files only. Some people are thoughtful and will send you .doc and .docx because they are not sure which version of Word you have but most people will become comfortable with the lazy way of just hitting save (which will save to .docx by default) and also some people have no idea what your talking about when you tell them to save it in .docx hmmm... maybe I'll find a tutorial for you guys and girls on that one to forward to others to get them to save in .doc for you.

Download this package from MS

How do i burn an .ISO file?

An ISO file is an image of a CD or DVD and contains everything a disc should contain inside that one file, kind of like a .zip file.

A common mistake for people and often frustrating to them, is they burn it and can't run the program or software that the ISO was for. This would be because they have only burnt the ISO file directly to disc with the data disc function. Burning the ISO in data disc mode only burns the whole of the ISO file to the CD/DVD. What you want is to use the burn image or burn ISO function in burning software, this adds the additional step of unzipping the ISO and burning each file contained inside the ISO onto the disc, making it operable as the software CD or DVD rather than a CD or DVD with an ISO file.

Summary: Your burning the ISO file itself not the files contained inside the ISO.

Burnaware has a good, easy and simple ISO burning tool but it is no longer available as seen in last post.

Good Free Nero Alternative for Vista

I had to use an alternative to Nero when i got my laptop because it runs on Vista and i was a bit disappointed because Nero was one of the Best burning suites.

I then came across BurnAware and it is great, I had a friend who was having troubles burning ISO files and I recommended it to her and she loved it too so it passed by far and I was going to recommend it to you guys but I am sorry to say, the other day i went to hit update in Burnaware to see if it can give me any new functions but was disappointed that BurnAware had been sold out to commercial business and it no longer a freeware tool.

So there is really no point in telling you about it, you may still be able to find it in some mirror sites but I don't think I am allowed to upload my copy of the installer file, so sorry.

http://www.burnaware.com/downloads.html

Faster Goolging of keywords

I just did a search through my blog and can't believe that I haven't talked about this handy tip for quickly finding things inside a website.

I am sure i have but anyway here it is again.

When you search through Google and find a website with a sentence you want, (but only part of it) you hit the website hyperlink right? and then the page loads and you have a 50 page website displayed, oh crap, now it seems impossible to find that sentence that you want through these 49 pages of irrelevant information.

The trick is to use the power of the Ctrl + F , when pressed in your browser a box should either pop up or appear in the bottom of the browser windows and it has a search field in which you type in a part of the sentence your looking for or type in a keyword (in the sentence your looking for). Press enter and it should jump to the first keyword that your searching for or go directly to your sentence.