"This site may harm your computer" Google Bug

Today morning, as usual, the first thing I did after I sat on my computer was to search for things (in this case a wallpaper or picture from which I could draw inspiration for a website that I was working on...). However, something interesting happened. Instead of going directly to the images or search results, I'd get the "This site may harm your computer" message from Google.

No matter what site I tried to search for, or what the website was (even some of google's own websites come up as 'Malware' for some reason) I am constantly getting the problem. Of course, even this blog was listed as 'potential malware' for some reason. [Update: The problem seems to have fixed itself now, in about 5 minutes after I encountered it. Therefore, it is safely possible to assume that if you experience the same problem, just wait for a while till some Google engineer does some script-fu with the servers and makes things alright]

Clearly, there is some kind of problem with either the google server or my Internet connection. I'm thinking that it's most likely the former. Or, could it be that Google just hates me because I use it so much and rarely click on any ads?

Don't believe me? See for yourself. And no, these screenshots have not been retuched in any way, shape or form.






Something tells me that some one might be getting yelled at as I type this.

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Disable Annoying System Beep on Linux (Ubuntu/Kubuntu)

I've been using Ubuntu (well... technically Nubuntu, as I am most certainly a Linux/Unix Newbie) quite a bit lately (more on that later...!) and if there's one thing that has annoyed me so far, it's probably the little old antiquated system beep that my computer makes when I accidentally press a key I'm not supposed.

The beep is loud (I've fallen off the chair quite a few times because of it), useless (well... sort of), annoying and just plain unnecessary. So, I finally decided to get rid of it. Of course, like any other linux newbie I decided to do a quick search on the interweb to find out how to fix the problem.

The first article I came across, from the how to geek, was a bit useless because it was for Ubuntu Edgy! Since I'm using the 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) version of the operating system, there is no 'System Beep' tab when I go to System > Preferences > Sound! But then I found another article from arsgeek that helped me handle the problem. Except, the instructions on arsgeek could have been a little better... so I'm publishing what I did on my blog.

First, I pressed Alt + F2, which brought up the run application command, and typed in the command as stated on arsgeek with a sudo in the front. Like so:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

And checked the box beside 'Run in terminal' and clicked Run.

Then, I typed in my password when Terminal asked me to type it... and Gedit open with the blacklist file.

I copied and pasted the entry:

#silly speaker beep
blacklist pcspkr

at the bottom of the file, and saved the file > Closed Gedit. Finally, on the terminal window that was still open I typed in (I could have of course restarted my system... but I didn't want to waste the 20 seconds):

sudo rmmod pcspkr

And that was the end of the annoying speaker beep problem, in Linux!

More on my experiences with Linux later!

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Adding annotations to Pictures in Leopard

Unfortunately, for some weird reason, Preview does not allow one to add annotations to a picture file by default. You can, however, add annotations to a PDF file quite easily without changing things around (so you can just go to Tools > Annotate and start annotating). But if you want to do the same for a screenshot or any other picture file, you'll have to add the annotation tool in the toolbar!

To do this, first open Preview (simply click on a picture file). Then right click on the Toolbar > Customize Toolbar > Drag and Drop the Annotate Button to the toolbar and click Done.

Then, when you open a picture file, you'll be able to use the Annotate button to draw arrows, squares, circles, and much more! You can even add notes to a picture, in case it's a picture of your cat that you'll be e-mailing to icanhascheezeburger!

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Text to speech conversion on a Mac

Here's a quick tip (well.. technically quick because its easier in Leopard!) for all you mac fans out there, who are looking for a better way to proof-read your work. Why not get your Mac to read out the text to you, and then you can see if there is a problem in the text?

Here's how you can get your mac to read any text that you want with it's super-powerful text to speech conversion feature. (Windows also has this feature, but its a bit more annoying and a bit more complex to use... more about that later)

First, click on the Apple button on the top left hand corner of the screen and click System Preferences. Then click on Speech and click to the 'Text to speech conversion tab'. Finally, just check the box beside 'Speech selected text when the key is pressed' and click on Set key. Then hold down a combination of keys (I set this to Command + Option + S, but you can set it to anything you prefer).
Now, to use text to speech conversion, just select a bunch of text (with your mouse... as if you were about to copy the text).. and press Command + Option + S. You're computer's voice (Alex for Leopard) will read it out to you. Alex is really smart, and he can understand things like commas, names, numbers and even dollars. It'll even try to read special punctuation to the best of its abilities, so you'll be able to hear if you've missed a comma or forgotten to close a quote. So it's perfect to use this to proof read your essay that's due in 6 hours.

It's fast, efficient and easy. What more could you ask for?

Also, if you are using Tiger, you won't be able to set a key (And Vicky will be the voice of the computer). So if you want to read a piece of text out loud, first select the text, Click the name of the Application in the menubar, Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text.

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Download Free Windows 7 Wallpapers

This goes out to all the Windows/Microsoft/Windows 7 fans out there, who are searching for ways to pimp-out your Windows Vista or Windows XP. Please note that I have not created any of these wallpapers or wallpaper packs, but merely put together a collection of the stuff so that all of you can download it freely and fast.

Oh and by the way you might also want to check out my ‘make your Windows Vista install look like Windows 7 tutorial’ if you really want to get on the Windows 7 bandwagon.

Official Windows 7 Wallpapers (from the Betas and from Vista Final Releases)

DeviantArt Windows 7 Wallpaper Packs (from fellow Windows loving artists)

Windows Se7en Pack 1 by ~Frnak

With some beautiful wallpapers this is probably one of the best Windows “Se7en packs” out there. It has the abstract art, the logos and even the colour schemes that are so prominent in modern Microsoft design. This pack even comes with regular screen and widescreen sizes, so that it won’t look distorted on your widescreen monitor or look like its stretched on your regular monitor.

Windows 7 Wallpaper Pack by ~maoractive

This pack is a great pack for those who want some cool ‘Aurora’ looking Windows 7 ish wallpapers without having the Windows 7 Logo pasted all over the place. It’s clean, simple, and mimics the style of the original Microsoft wallpapers found in the Windows 7 builds.

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Tremulous: Free Open Source Online Multiplayer Game

Here's a good computer video games that isn't expensive. It's free You don't need expensive consoles or super fast computers to play it. And you don't need Windows or Mac to play it because it runs on Linux too (You can however, use a Windows and Mac to play it too... if you wish to do so).

Plus, this games also has elements of a first person shooter game, real time strategy and additional multiplayer online game features. It's based on the Quake engine, and has two main skillsets of aliens and humans.

The game I'm talking about here is called: Tremulous.





It's free, open source (yes, that means hackable too...) fast and easy to learn. The objective of the game is this: There are two teams, humans and aliens. Each team has to build their own base and defend it, while attacking the enemy base to destroy it. Plus it looks pretty good too.

Naturally there are several unique elements in the game. For example, you need to be able to shoot (with several different kinds of weapons that work differently), build a base (both human and alien bases are different) and learn how to use an alien (because aliens can't shoot.)

Plus, since its free there are loads of people all over the world playing the game. You too can host your own game server from your very own computer (provided you have a good internet connection and a fairly fast computer) and all you need to play is a regular mouse and keyboard.

We'll instead of me telling you more about the game, why not give the game a try. May be you'll like it, may be you wont. But it's free.. so you've got nothing to loose.

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Wikipedia: The Free Encycopedia that can't always be trusted

Yes, I know that quite a lot of people use Wikipedia by now. But, sometimes I wonder - should I really trust an encyclopedia that is free. Here are a couple of reasons why using Wikipedia might actually a bad thing, especially when you are using it to do some research or learn more about a topic.

Wikipedia is free. But that also means that it has to rely heavily on volunteers to write articles to the website. Over the course of the past few years, the requirements for a proper wikipedia article have been updated, and now a days, most articles need proper and thorough citations for every point stated. This is a good thing of course, because it ensures better quality information.

However, this doesn't mean that someone who just wants to screw around with the system can't get away with doing something malicious. For example, when I was doing some research for a project through the ever handy Dictionary app, I came across this little "problem".

Clearly, it's possible to say that not everything on Wikipedia can be trusted when people misuse the website for fun. Also, there might be a possiblity of a person using another person's blog/private website (where certain information may be eschewed) and accidently presenting the wrong information.

Furthermore, another problem that wikipedia has is the biased information on controversial topic. Of course, in my opinion it is impossible to get rid of biases in even the best of encyclopedias and news paper articles (hey, we're humans, our prejudices sometimes just come through unintentionally).

Nevertheless, when you see articles like articles on the Gaza/Israel conflict, they always have a 'The neutrality of this article, and factual errors are being disputed' sign, meaning that the information might potentially be way off. Not good when you want to find out something for a project.

But, I guess there are some things that Wikipedia really excels in. For one, it gives you all the necessary information really fast in a well categorized wikipage. Plus, there are always ways to find out if the information in Wikipedia is correct or not. More about that in my future posts...

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Mac Tip: Look up words in the Dictionary

Here's a great little tip for people like me who have a vocabulary of 23 words. With OS X it's super easy to find out the definitions of any word that you come across on the internet, when you are using Safari.

When you come across a word you don't know. Simply select the word, right click and click Look Up in Dictionary. As soon as you do that the dictionary will pop-up showing you the definition of the word.

Additionally, you can open dictionary (its in your Application folder) click Dictionary in the menubar, and click Preferences... and and beside contextual menu select 'Open Dictionary Panel' and you won't even have to open the dictionary and a panel like below will appear.

This tip is especially good when you are reading articles that are full of so many uncommon words that its hard to decipher. In a way, having applications like the OS X dictionary make the computer a much better choice for students and life long learners.

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Bad Request Error and on Firefox

Recently, I've been getting the bad request error on Firefox when I try to visit certain pages, usually after submitting something like a comment form or an e-mail. As a result, I had to open up safari, and redo all my comments and e-mails (because it just wouldn't work in firefox!). But turns out, that there are several reasons why the bad request error might pop-up for you. I've mentioned each of the solutions as well as the solution for my particular problem.

Oh and I must also mention that I was getting the 'Opps... the system encountered a probem (#103) or (#707)'.. and so on when I tried to access Gmail through firefox. (Of course, the gmail problem can be cured more easily by just going to https://mail.google.com as Google recommends) but the bad request error will still persist.

Turns out, the reasons for the bad request problem as well as the gmail problem can be 2 main reasons:

Problem with cookies on your browser

Most often it might be a problem with the cookies in your browser (or your browser not being able to write cookies to your computer). You might want to delete the cookies (Tools > Clear Private Data > Check 'Cookies' > Click ok). Or make sure that cookies are enabled, in your firefox preferences.

Problem with some extension

There might be some extentions/add-on on firefox that you might have installed that's causing the problem. If you're using Windows try running firefox in no-addons mode and see if that fixes the problem. If you're using a Mac, you'll just have to get rid of most of the extensions (I suggest doing this one by one).

Problem with not enough user privileges to write cookies

The problem in my case was that I was using a Mac with a user account with disabled admin privileges (I was experimenting with Parental Controls on my own account... more about that later) and as a result having parental controls enabled on my account meant that firefox couldn't write any cookies on the computer. So, it just gave me the bad result error everytime. Switching back to regular accounts fixed the problem.

So finally, I can still use firefox as my main browser on a mac.

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Get Google Picasa for Mac! Free!

I guess, when people blog about Google, their posts get outdated pretty fast. It seems like it was yesterday when I talked about a method to back-up photos on picasa web online, through additional utilities.

But now, there's no need to get any additional programs, software or even browsers, because Google offers Picasa for Mac. It's possible to do almost anything that you need through Picasa for Mac, which is the same as Picasa for Windows (for the most part.)

I think this is a great tool to help you organise your pictures and upload them directely to the web. Of course, iPhoto can also do the same, but you'll have to pay the price of an added .Mac account (which is about $100 dollars a year) or resort to using additional freeware utilities, that might not integrate as well.

Nevertheless, it's good to see that Google is doing something for the Mac side, as well as the Linux side with their applications. I only hope to see many more applications like this from other companies.

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CalorieKing: A great free website to keep track of calories

Some people are able to maintain their weight in tip-top condition without any effort. Others, are not so lucky. There are many things out there that experts recommend you do in order to lose some weight. But, most of these plans involve cutting down the calories.

Are you counting your calories to get back on track? Good for you. But the problem is, how can you cut down on calories, when you don't really know how many calories are there in something? Things like subway sandwiches, Big Macs and tomatoes don't come with a nutrition label.

However, fear not - where's there's an internet connection, there is a way. It's called CalorieKing.com and it's a website that helps you find how many calories are there in each types of foods. Be it a banana or a egg McMuffin - it's mostly all there.

Plus, you can also specify the method something was cooked and so on. For example when you type in rice, you won't get a option for rice, instead you'll be presented with several options such as brown rice, white rice, sticky rice... and so on.

Of course, you can also pay to become a member of the site, and they'll offer additional features like ability to track your weight, track progress and help you "stay motivated", but I'm pretty sure an excel spreadsheet can help you do the same.

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Improve battery life on a Linux laptop

Often I find that one of the key things that matters in a laptop that you plan to lug around, especially at school, is it's battery life. Without electricity the laptop is as good as a brick, although it might be more shinier. Most laptops sold in the market today usually have good battery life. However, the big question is: what can you do if you already have a laptop with a good battery life... but want to INCREASE the battery life? Also, let assume that you are running Linux on the laptop... since right now I am running Ubuntu on my laptop and I love every moment of it.

Improving battery life for Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu etc.

The first things that you can do to improve your battery life are pretty obvious, but I'll mention them here anyway:

• Lower the display brightness to the lowest possible level to make sure that the screen doesn't sip your battery power.
• Close any applications that you are not using and unplug any usb/external deviceees that you might not be using as well. This saves some memory from being used (and also makes the hard drive work a little less) and ensures that no power is taken for ports that you aren't really using. See below for information on how to disable the USB ports as well to improve more battery life.
  
• Disable all Linux eye candy (Do this by going to System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects Tab > Choose 'None') . This means - No Beryl/Compiz Fusion, no wobbly windows and no fancy revolving cubes. It also means a couple of extra minutes of battery power - So choose wisely.
• Turn off wireless and bluetooth if you don't need it.

Now, for the more technical stuff that's going to improve your battery life. As always, you might want to make sure that you back up your data before you try this, because most of the tips stated below can in fact cause your system to hang and in the worst case scenario - cause it to be inoperable. But on the other hand, if it works fine for your laptop then you might be able to improve the battery power by 20 - 30%.

Step 1: Enable Laptop Mode

This uses the 'laptop' policies that are in ubuntu to ensure that the computer uses only the resources it really needs. As a result, it'll be able to cut down on the resources it doesn't need and save you some battery power. To do so... I did the following:

First, I pressed Alt + F2, which brought up the run application command, and typed in the command:

sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support

And checked the box beside 'Run in terminal' and clicked Run.

Then, I typed in my password when Terminal asked me to type it and pressed enter... and Gedit opened with the file.

Then I changed ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true. And saved the file. And finally I restarted the computer... just to let the changes take effect (but I guess there must be some command out there that I don't know of that will make the changes take effect automatically).

Step 2: Make your CPU run slower by enabling CPU frequency scaling

I opened a terminal window, (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and typed in :

sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector

If it asks you for you password... then type it in and press enter. Then, right click on the menubar and click Add to Panel. Then click on the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor and click Add. From the CPU Scaling Monitor, choose the lowest possible Speed (in my case 1GHz) or choose the "Powersave" option.

Doing so will make the laptop run at a much slower CPU speed and save you a LOT of power.

Step 3: Disabling unused ports on your computer and throttling the wireless card's power

By disabling the unused USB ports etc. on your laptop, and decreasing the power used by your wireless card, you can save even more battery power. Obviously, if you're using a USB mouse or a necessary external USB device, you don't want to disable the ports. But if you're not using then then you can safely disable them.

To disable USB ports, open a terminal window and type:

sudo rmmod uhci_hcd
and then type in your password if necessary and press enter. This should disable the USB ports.

To put your wireless card (sorry... this only works for intel wireless cards) into power saving mode do what i did:
I pressed Alt + F2 like stated above, which brought up the run application command, and typed in the command:

sudo gedit /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/wireless-ipw-power.conf

And checked the box beside 'Run in terminal' and clicked Run.

Then, I typed in my password when Terminal asked me to type it and pressed enter... and Gedit opened with the file.

Then I changed the 0 to 1 for CONTROL_IPW_POWER. Saved the file and quit Gedit. Of course, you could have changed the other parameters as well... but I didn't bother doing that, since the default looked good enough for me.

Step 4: Enjoy the newly gained battery power

That's it... the "hacks" mentioned above are about the only things you can do (with the exception of restarting Ubuntu in shell mode and using only the text interface.) to boost your battery life.

If you know any other ways of improving battery life or battery performance, do state them in the comments below!

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Mac Tip: Extended Menubar Replacement for Dual Monitors

Sometimes, having dual monitors is a great thing (see: 21 killer tips to increase your productivity on your computer). Having dual computers is even better, but at least having two monitors allows you to drastically cut down on the time you spend at your computer.

When I'm using multiple monitors (or multimon) on Windows, I like to use an application known as UltraMon, which stretches my taskbar to other monitors. So I can minimize a window, and it'll minimize to the taskbar on the monitor the window was originally on. UltraMon even adds two arrows to the title bar of each window, so can you move you windows from one monitor to the other with only one click.

However, there is no such alternative on a Mac. As far as I know, it's not possible to have a dock on each monitor/screen, and it's not possible to have a separate menubar for each monitor as well. This gets pretty annoying quickly... because often I have to come back to my primary monitor to launch a window or access the menubar for an application that's on my secondary window. Of course, this constant moving around makes me more prone to mistakes and less productive.

I still don't know how to solve the dock problem, but for the menubar problem, there is a round-about solution. It's called DejaMenu. Instead of extending your menubar, it provides a context menu that contains all the menubar entries when a keyboard shortcut is pressed. So this way, all you have to do is press the keyboard shortcut, and use the menu that pops-up instead of going back to the main monitor all the time.

Using Deja Menu to 'extend' your menubar to any monitor

First, download the application from the DejaMenu Website. Then, open system preferences, and click on 'Universal Access' and check the box next to 'Enable access for assistive devices'.

Then, open DejaMenu, and configure the keyboard shortcut. Now, when you press the keyboard shortcut over any application, a context menu should pop-up, containing menubar items. So, in a way, it's kinda like stretching your menubar on another screen.

Furthermore, as the author says on the page, you can configure a mouse button to emulate the keyboard shorcut, which is going to increase your productivity all the more (and plus, you don't have to remember any keyboard combinations)!

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Make fonts look better on Linux (Ubuntu)

For years, I've wondered, isn't there some way I can get my fonts on Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Any other distro of linux look like the fonts on Mac OS X or even at least Windows? Every time I looked at some website through Firefox on Ubuntu, the text kerning, leading and everything would just look weird. In my opinion linux font rendering was crappy, and to be honest, I never tried to figure out a way to make it look alright.

It wasn't the anti-alising on Linux, it was something else. Nevertheless, I think I've found a way to make the fonts looks as they should be on Ubuntu (and other similar releases like Kubuntu/Edubuntu/SomethingelseBuntu).

Thanks to Jeremy Zawodny's post, and then a post in the masterplan (this post is absolutely correct when it says that we take font rendering for granted on operating systems like Windows and OS X, and then think that the fonts on Linux are just different), I was able to figure out some ways I could make the fonts on Firefox in Linux look like the fonts in Windows or on Mac.

I won't steal the contents from the post in the masterplan, however if you too want to fix the font rendering and font display in your ubuntu install, then do head over to the 'Sexy smooth fonts on kubuntu' post and follow the super simple instructions (if you guys are stuck, then I'll try to help out here).

Furthermore, you might also want to turn on Subpixel smoothing with Ubuntu by clicking on System (in the menubar) > Appearance > Fonts tab > Choosing sub pixel smoothing and clicking close. And Viola, that's an easy way to make sure that you have the smoothing that's best for almost any monitor.

I think the reason this feature is not turned on by default is probably to save some system resources (you know how particular those uber geek ubuntu users are =) !), but nevertheless its super easy to do whatever you want in the operating system. Which, of course, is absolutely great!

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My Blogger Wish List

Hi Blogger team,

I hope you don’t mind reading this blogger wish list, but sometime soon I’d really like to see all the things in this list on blogger. I’ve been wanting these features since 3 years ago, but I’ve never seen any features like this yet, which is why I’ve decided to put up this post. Please try to implement these features as soon as possible, because that would really make my blogging life so much easier. I’m aware that blogger is probably the most biggest blogging platform in the world and hosts billions of blogs, but nevertheless, I think it has potential to become even better!

Furthermore, I would like to say that some of these suggestions are mere rip-offs of Wordpress ideas. But I think that blogger will become a much better platform if the blogger team at least tries to implement some of the Wordpress features.

1. A feature that allows you to do more instead of just upload pictures. I mean, a feature like the one in wordpress where you can actually select a caption for the image, choose its size and orientation, and add an ‘Alt’ tag. The ability to browse through the gallery of already uploaded pictures would also be great. Moreover, the ability to add effects to the image (like the options to add reflections, shadows and borders in Windows Live Writer) would ensure Blogger’s spot as one of the best blogging platforms.


2. The ability to create better hyperlinks - Again, I think that wordpress has a better hyperlinking feature where you can add a title, choose the target, and even add a custom class to the hyperlink.


3. The ability to create a ‘more’ tag. So far, I’ve been using the ‘span’ class hack, but I find it that it’s just too bothersome to keep adding tags all the time, and it’d be a great thing if blogger just has a ‘more’ button that I can click on.


4. A feature that allows everyone to comment with their website address and name. I realize that blogger has finally come to their senses and created an inbuilt comment form but I think they should allow the authors of the blog to choose what fields the author would like to have in their comment form.


5. Faster load times and less ‘We’re sorry your request could not be completed’ messages. Although, it’s not really high on my ‘this thing bugs me’ list, it is something the blogger team should look into.


6. The ability to post from any browser would also be great. For example, when I try to use Safari to put up a post, it creates several weird random div tags around things, has a weird text box on the posting page and other sorts of weird things going on.

Finally, after all this ranting, I think that blogger so far has been a great platform. Especially the things like the sidebar gadgets, have been wonderful, but I think they should really concentrate on making their posting interface a bit more beautiful and easy to use to help people blog... a bit more than helping people display their flickr images in the sidebar.

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Mac Tip: Configure Additional Mouse Buttons to do a task

Do you have a mouse that has more than 2 buttons (excluding the scroll wheel)? This doesn't have to be an apple mouse - it can be any mouse that has several additional buttons. If so, then you can probably configure them to perform special tasks, and boost your productivity. For example, you can set one button to be the 'Expose' button and another button to be the 'Dashboard' button.

Here's how you can do that:
First, click on the Apple button on the top left hand corner of the screen. Then click: System Preferences. Then, in the System Preferences window, click 'Expose & Spaces' and make sure you are on the Expose Tab. Then under expose, configure the options for the mouse buttons that you have on your mouse. For example, in my case I have mouse button 4 set to expose, and mouse button 5 set to show the desktop.

That's it! Just press the additional mouse buttons on your mouse to check if everything is a-okay, and you're good to go!

For more productivity, you might also want to check out my active screen corners post, which allows you to configure a screen corner to do the same thing as your additional mouse buttons (i.e. perform expose and so on).

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Best Free screencasting/screenrecording software for Windows

I’ve always been one for screen recording/screencast/video capture tutorials. I feel that they help me understand and emulate the ‘tutorial’ better, because I can actually see what the person is try to say. Plus, it’s so much easier as a person who is trying to tell someone something to just show how to do it instead of describing to someone how they can do something. Of course, using things like screenshots (with software like the free and excellent Screenshot Captor) should suffice most of the time, but sometimes, its just easier to do screen captures.

Once you are done recording a screencast, you can easily upload it to a video sharing service like YouTube. Plus, screencasts/screen recordings are useful when you’re doing a presentation and don’t have the luxury of bringing along your laptop or an internet connection. I must mention here that if you are using a video recording for a presentation, please do not make it annoying with all sorts of click noises, and also please make sure that the text is readable. I find that many people just take a screen recording of a screen that is 1900 x 1200 and the mouse cursor looks like an ant moving around on the screen – not good when you want to show people something.

First up –

Free and Open Source screen casting and screen recording software

CamStudio – This is probably one of the most well know free open source screen recording software out there. It has the ability to capture everything on your screen in different file formats (like AVI and SWF) and also has the ability to record audio along with the screen recording. It’s perfect for those tutorials that you might want to do. It also has other feature like mouse highlighting, and mouse clicking sounds. However, I find those two features a bit annoying, so I wouldn’t recommend using them, because I’m sure there are many people like me out there. Recommended for Screencasting Tutorials.

Taksi – A screen recording software that was primarily built to recording video games and other 3d applications. Because of this, it has live compressions systems to keep the size of the files produced down (because video games usually have a high frame rate – which inflates the file size of normal screen recordings). Recommended for Video Game Recordings

Virtual Dub – Another open source screen recorder. It was mainly built for Windows though, so it saves files as AVIs, although it has the ability to use several codecs. This doesn’t have as many options as CamStudio though.

Freeware (but not open source) screen casting/screen recording/video capture software

Wink – This is a program that was specifically created for the purpose of tutorials and presentations. It has many additional features like the ability to add ‘comment boxes’ while the video is playing to tell the viewer about important information, and also saves the output as swf files for easy uploading to your web server. It’s almost like Camtasia/Captivate (both of which are paid software) but it does the same thing for free. However, it does have some limitations when it comes to the video player and the design of the callouts.

Evan’s AVI Screen Capture – Simply captures everything on your screen and your screen cursor. You can then import the AVI into some other kind of video editing software like Windows Movie Maker and then add narration if desired.

Capture Fox – Capture fox is a great little addon for Mozilla Firefox, that can capture video recordings of websites as well as anything else that can be displayed on the computer. It can also capture audio input as well. However, you will require Firefox to be able to use the add-on.

Jing – Although I don’t particularly like Jing, it’s still an application that can record everything that’s on your screen. I can also record system audio or microphone audio (but not both). You can also directly upload screen casts to screencast.com. It’s free for now, but in the future, expect premium services.

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Saving gas by putting your car on neutral while coasting downhill

Here’s an interesting thing that I learned this past weekend – Apparently, its possible to save gas by putting your car on neutral (the guy who told me this was driving an automatic transmission car by the way…) while going down hill. Likewise, he also told me that you can preserve your engine by putting the gear on neutral while you are at the lights or an intersection where you have to wait for a long time (read more about that in this post). Now, since cars are technology (oh common, you know they are!) I think it’s alright for me to delve into things like manual/auto transmissions on this blog without upsetting my “subscribers”. Oh and by the way, be sure to read my thoughts on ‘cruise control’ and whether it saves gas or not.

Ok, back to my story – I was going in this car (a VW Passat, w/V6, automatic transmission) with my friend and I noticed that he would shift into neutral every time we were on a steep hill and just coast all the way down. His reason for doing so was that he claimed that it saved a lot of gas. I wasn’t really aware of whether or not this would really save some gas, so I just agreed. But sure enough, when I came home, I did some research and figured that it might actually be a BAD idea to shift into neutral with an automatic transmission (although apparently its ok to do so with a manual transmission).

The first article that caught my eye was an article on examiner.com, which talked about why using neutral while going downhill was actually bad for your car, more so than good. It claimed that it didn’t really save any gas, and instead was dangerous, and could actually harm the engine. Other websites I checked also mentioned the same thing, and some people even claimed that constant shifting back and forth while the car was in motion could actually harm the transmission.

Here’s my take on the story: I think that most people are right when they say putting your car while coasting on neutral might be a gas saver – but most likely only for a manual transmission. Not for an automatic transmission. My reason for thinking this is that if you’re using a automatic transmission:

1. When you are going downhill on a auto-transmission car – the engine doesn’t really do anything anyway because you probably wont be giving the engine any gas by pressing on the gas pedal. So there is no chance of you using up any gas in the process. Yes, engine braking is certainly a factor, but I don’t think that if you disengage the engine from the transmission it will help the car go any further (because in my opinion the force the engine puts on the transmission while going down should be minimal).

2. When you put your engine into neutral it’s still going to use gas. I not an expert or anything, but in my opinion, even if you simply keep the engine on idle while coasting down hill on neutral, it would be the same as keeping the engine idle while waiting at the lights, right? So, according to that hypothesis, the engine will still be sipping some gas while you’re going downhill, because the engine will still be ON. Now, if you’d turn off the engine on the other hand, that’d probably save some gas. But apparently doing so is illegal in the some states in the US (I’m Canadian, but I think according to my driving manual its still illegal to coast or turn off engines while driving I don’t remember… but then if I turn off the engines I won’t be able to break – which is bad… especially when the roads are covered with white stuff known as snow).

3. Shifting gears every time you go downhill is surely going to exert some stress (of course, I’m taking about a really little tiny tiny effect here) on the transmission and the ‘shifting apparatus’ (sorry, I don’t know the exact names of the parts to be precise) and might require more frequent servicing. So, shifting every time you go downhill might cause the transmission to wear down more quickly, although the car will still go on running properly for the most part.

 

If you are using a manual transmission on the other hand – you might be able to save some gas by shifting into neutral because of the lesser drive train drag on the transmission. So I guess, when you go downhill you’ll be going downhill at a higher pace, and you’ll need less acceleration to get up to speed after the downgrade in the road. But, that’s a bit too extreme – even for me. And I’m pretty sure that the gas savings (when you count the pennies I mean) are pretty negligible.

Anybody else have any other thoughts on the topic?

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Improving engine life and saving gas by putting your car on neutral at the lights

You might have read my article about how my friend told me that putting your car on neutral while going downhill saves some gas and my thoughts on it. But in this article, I’ve decided to share my thoughts on improving engine life by putting your car on ‘neutral’. According to my friend, putting your car on neutral keeps the engine running more ‘smoother’.

Again, I was skeptical when he first told me about this, but once more, I wasn’t sure if this was really true or not. So, I decided to research and find out if it would really make a difference if one puts a car with an ‘automatic’ transmission on neutral at the lights. Oh and by the way, I don’t really think that you can save gas by putting your engine on neutral at the lights.. mainly because your engine will pretty much just idle and while it’s idling it’ll still sip some gas  – so I doubt if there will be any gas savings. For gas savings, I’d try turning off the engine when possible (not at intersections though.. because that’s just be too little time to gain any measurable savings), and perhaps use cruise control when possible, and get rid of any extra weight in your car. I guess if you really wanted to save gas, you could try hypermiling (or may be hyperkilometering if you’re Canadian). 

Ok, so the question here remains that would engine life/transmission life really be better if you keep you engine on neutral. In my opinion, I don’t think it makes a difference for 2 reasons:

1. The engine is still on if you keep the gear on neutral. This means that you won’t really be saving any ware and tare in the engine by putting the gear on neutral – so I don’t see how you can improve the engine life.

2. Shifting back and forth might actually put more ware on the transmission, because you’ll constantly have to shift in and out of gear every time you are at an intersection (which is a lot of times, considering the amount of times I always have to stop at an intersection)

Furthermore, I think that on an automatic car, neutral is pretty much the same as stopped. Although, I guess if you’re in neutral, you don’t really have to step on the brakes because the car won’t really move forward as the engine is disengaged from the transmission. Therefore, you can probably save some money with the brake lights, the brake pads, and perhaps break fluid, but I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference if you’re driving a car with an automatic transmission.

Anybody have any other ideas/thoughts on this issue?

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Create free logos for your blog, website, business or company

Here’s a great little website that allows you to create and customize your own logos. It’s called Logo Creator from Logo Yes. And that’s just what it helps you do. All you need to do is go the website, and start going through their process of creating a logo.

It’s pretty simple for the most part. Just go the website, choose a logo, and then it’ll give you the option of saving your logo. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend using such logo creators if you are running a considerably big company – that’d be a job for a real graphic designer. But, if you need a logo for your small business, then websites like this would probably be the best bet.

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