Digital Payag

This guide is almost similar to my previous article about using your camera for this function. However, the beauty of this guide is that we are going to use one of Windows Powertools called Timershot. It is a free lightweight program that works perfectly right for this guide.

Things to remember

Software required: Windows Timershot
System requirements: Windows XP on a basic desktop PC
Installation difficulty: Easy
Optional requirements: Apache server software and a broadband connection

Let’s now get started:

1. Run your Timershot exe to install
2. Open Timershot.exe
3. Look for active device (This is your usb camera)

4. Expand your settings

5. Adjust some Timershot settings

- Take pictures every – I suggest you set this to 3-5 seconds.
- Resize the picture – Set this to Large (1024 by 768) to have a clearer picture.
- Save In – Browse to your folder of choice. You can save this in your Apache’s folder, if you want to view your pictures on the internet. You need to have an “always online computer” to make this work.
- Check save a new copy of this file every time a picture is taken. This is to have a copy of each picture taken with the exact time and date displayed when you browse your pictures online.
- Click Apply Settings

6. Click Close Window to send the window to your taskbar.

That’s all you’re going to need to turn your ordinary pc camera into a surveillance camera. This is ideal for monitoring a home office or a small shop.

No matter how many ways you can find free mp3s online, I still prefer to use P2P because of how easy and fast it is to look for mp3s. For those of you who wants to have full control of what’s going on in the background of your Cabos software, follow me as I show you how to make a secure configuration for it. I’m going to use Cabos for this guide because It is free, light download and they say it is spyware-free. Yeah, it really looks like it is spyware-free because it doesn’t have ads.

Fire up your Cabos software, go to Edit and open Preferences

Under the Searching menu – An extra protection won’t hurt.

Check Ignore files that are adult content
Check Ignore files that are spam content

Under the Download menu – I prefer to move all of my files to my Desktop then transfer it later for me to monitor each file that I receive from the network.

Save downloaded files in your Desktop
Move completed music files to Desktop
Move completed picture files to Desktop
Move completed movie files to Desktop

Under the Sharing menu – If you are uber conscious with security, you should disable sharing to keep out lechers from connecting to your machine. But mind you, this will have a drastic effect on your download performance because for some reason you’ll appear selfish for not sharing your stuff. The network hates pure lechers and loves seeders. Which side are you in?

Uncheck Share partially downloaded files (Recommended)
Uncheck Share completely downloaded files (Recommended)
Share files in the following folders: Desktop
Maximum uploads per person: 1
Maximum uploads per person: 1

Network – If you disable the settings above, then might as well disable the following settings for added protection. Ohh, this will hurt your download efficiency real bad. Also connect to hosts that are English. Why? I don’t trust hosts coming from badass countries with badass reputation for hackers, viruses and the like (Turkish, Russian). Not necessarily but just weighting the odds. Again, this will limit your search results but who cares as long as you are secure right?

Preferentially connect to hosts that are - English
Uncheck Allow this computer to become an Ultrapeer
Uncheck Allow freeloaders to connect to this computer

Reminder: Please be considerate; buy the original stuff from the record bars. Not all artists specially the band groups are rich. They also fight poverty and want to live a good life.

I made a clean install of my Windows XP because I accidentally messed up some system files. During the process I stumbled upon my old copies of Windows XP tweaks and I found this particular tweak that significantly cuts the waiting time during startup. I’m surprise when my Windows loaded in less than 1 minute and 15 seconds after applying this tweak.

Boot Winxp Fast

Follow the following steps

1. Open notepad.exe, type “del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q” (without the quotes) & save as “ntosboot.bat” in c:\
2. From the Start menu, select “Run…” & type “gpedit.msc”.
3. Double click “Windows Settings” under “Computer Configuration” and double click again on “Shutdown” in the right window.
4. In the new window, click “add”, “Browse”, locate your “ntosboot.bat” file & click “Open”.
5. Click “OK”, “Apply” & “OK” once again to exit.
6. From the Start menu, select “Run…” & type “devmgmt.msc”.
7. Double click on “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers”
8. Right click on “Primary IDE Channel” and select “Properties”.
9. Select the “Advanced Settings” tab then on the device or 1 that doesn’t have ‘device type’ greyed out select ‘none’ instead of ‘autodetect’ & click “OK”.
10. Right click on “Secondary IDE channel”, select “Properties” and repeat step 9.
11. Reboot your computer.

If you want to skip step 1, download this file instead
Click here to download

Have you ever whish you can delete all those junk files safely without worrying that you might accidentally delete legit file/s? Bold Fortune of Neowin.net compiled a great guide for us to learn and fully understand what are those files we are about to delete. Some of them are safe and some may vary from one user to another user. What I’m going to show you here is a summary of junk files I prepared taken from the original article of Bold Fortune. This list of junk files is compatible and recommended for most users with Windows XP.

PART 1: Junk Files We Can Safely Delete

*.bak Files…Backup Files
*.chk Files…Lost Cluster Log Files
*.old Files….Backup Files
*.query Files
*.sav Files….Backup Files (you should skip this file if you have games installed)

*.~* ……Temporary Files
*.~mp……
*.^* ……Temporary Files
*.^……..Temporary Files
*.—……Setup Temporary Files
*.__…….Temporary Files
*__ofidx*.*…Microsoft Find Fast Indexer File
*._dd……Lost Cluster Files
*._detmp…Temporary Files
*.&db……Temporary Files (dBASE IV)
*.?$?…..Temporary Files(st Reader)
*.?~?……Temporary Files
*.??$……Temporary Files
*.$$$……MS-DOS Temporary Files
*.!!!……

*.000……sequential file in split Zip archive?
*.001……sequential file in split Zip archive?
*.002……sequential file in split Zip archive?
*.1st……(system.1st is a Windows diagnostic file)

*.b~k……Backup File, some text editors
*.bak……Backup Files
*.bk…….Backup File
*.bk?……Potential junk
*.bmk……

*.cam……
*.cb…….
*.chk……Lost Cluster Log Files
*.cln……
*.cnt……
*.cpy……Backup Files

*.da1……
*.da2……
*.diz……
*.dmp……Potential junk
*.doc……
*.err……Error File
*.fic……Potential junk
*.fix……
*.fnd……Find Result Files
*.ftg……Word List File of *.HLP
*.fts……Word List File of *.HLP
*.gid……Windows Help Index Files
*.ign……
*.ink……
*.lgc……
*.lge……
*.lhx……
*.lic……
*.license.txt…Potential junk
*.log……
*.log.txt…Log Files Windows diagnostic files
*.mp…….Temporary Files
*.nav……Backup Files
*.new……
*.old……Backup Files
*.out……
*.par……
*.pvt……
*.prv……Backup Files (bootlog.prv: Windows diagnostic file)
*.query….
*.sav……Backup File
*.sdi……Archive Content File
*.sik……Potential junk
*.syd……Backup Files
*.tds……Borland Temporary File
*.temp…..Temporary Files
*.tmp……Temporary Files
*.txt Files
*.umb……
*.wbk……Word Backup Files
*modemlog.txt…Windows Modem Log File
*install*.txt…Potential junk
*order*.txt…Potential junk
*whatsnew*.txt…Potential junk
0*.nch….Temporary Files created by MS Outlook Express
chklist.*…Lost Cluster Files
eula.txt…Microsoft end-user license agreement
file_id.diz…Description of Shareware
iebak.dat…Internet Explorer Junk File
modemdet.txt…Windows Diagnostic File
mscreate.dir…Setup Temporary File
msoe.txt…Readme for Microsoft Outlook™ Express
mssecure.xml…Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer File
readme.txt…Potential junksuhdlog.dat…Windows diagnostic File
system.st…Windows diagnostic File
twain???.mtx…TWAIN Temporary File
ws_ftp.log…WS_FTP Temporary File

PART 2: Make Your Own Junk Cleaner

Written by Bold Fortune

In Notepad, make a list of TEMP and Junk File extensions you would like to remove.

example:

*.bak, *.chk, *.cnt, *.diz, *.doc, *.edb, *.gid, *.lic, *.gid, *.log, *.old, *.query, *.sav, *.txt

Copy and Paste your list into the search box of Search Assistant.

Be sure that under Search Options you have checked “Advanced Options.” Under Advanced Options check “Search system folders,” “Search hidden files and folders,” and, “Search Subfolders.” Now run your search by clicking on Search Now. Now, at the top of the Search Assistant, select File then Save Search. Next time you want to search for those particular TEMP and Junk files, just click on your new search file. Search Assistant will automatically popup, and you’re ready. Just click Search Now.

Just an hour ago while I was writing an article using MS Word, I remembered a useless trick shown to me by my board mate back when we were in college. Back then, I was baffled when he changed his MS Word’s toolbar from the default name that looks like this

Into this

Here’s how he edited his MS Word toolbar and made a fool out of me.

1. Go to Tools, Select Customize

2. Right click File while the Customize window is up
3. Change the Name: &File into something different like Name: &Your name

Well, those were the memories.

What’s your old school trick?

Email me at cecortezATgmail.com

We all know that most internet users have this top 10 websites they often visit everyday (or even more). This makes typing the entire URL too tasking and boring. However, by doing this tweak you can quickly access websites just by one click alone.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Open your Firefox browser
2. Go to Google.com
3. Key-in the name of the website
4. Point your mouse at the link of the site you’d like to bookmark
5. Hold the left-click of your mouse and drag it to your Firefox toolbar
6. Now you’ll see a button-like bookmark with the name of the website on your toolbar

7. Click your newly created button to launch the website

There are users both in the rural and urban areas who still rely on Dial-up connections to surf the internet. Many of their settings are poorly configured for maximum performance which degrade not only their web experience but their work as well.

Maximizing performance so to speak includes a number of things we should consider.

Things like:

1. Increasing connection speed
2. Saving more time
3. Saving extra resources
4. Improving security

There is a myth that there’s little you can do with a dial-up modem. I guess, many of you will prove that myth wrong once you read on.

Let’s begin,

PART 1: Tweaking your dial-up modem

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Open Phone and Modem Options
3. Click the Modems tab
4. Select your modem
5. Click the properties button
6. Go to Modem tab
7. Under Maximum Port Speed change it to the highest value which is 115200

8. Go to Power Management then uncheck Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby. (This will save you extra CPU cycles)

9. Click OK to apply the changes

PART 2: Tweaking your dial-up connection

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Open Network Connections
3. Open your default dial-up connection
4. Click the properties button
5. Under the General tab, click the Configure… button
6. Change the Maximize speed (bps) value to 921600.

7. Go to options tab. Under the Redialing options, change the Redial attempts to
999999999 (This setting will save you from clicking the redial button when dialing fails.)

8. Change the value of Time between redial attempts to 3 seconds. (This will cut the long wait between redial attempts.)

9. Always check Redial if line is dropped.

10. Go to Networking tab

Uninstall other services like Qos Packet Scheduler, File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks,
Client for Microsoft Networks and other services except Interent Protocol (TCP/IP).

11. Select Interent Protocol (TCP/IP)
12. Click the Properties button
13. Under the General tab, click the Advance button
14. Go to WINS tab
15. Select Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP (Disabling the NetBIOS adds extra security against intrusions)

16. Click OK to apply the changes

I suggest you read this related post for further tweaking. CLICK HERE

I love to advice my colleagues to defrag their hard disk this way.

Safe Mode

I always tell them to defrag their computer under safe mode to enjoy the benefits of a faster and more stable defrag. This is for the reason that under safe mode, fewer system services and fewer device drivers are loaded which in theory suggest lesser cpu and memory usage.

NO GUI = LESS Memory Usage = Fast & Stable Defrag

Background Defrag using DirMS-CL

Question:What is DirMS-CL?

Answer: DirMS-CL is a program that allows the user to defragment hard drives using the command line.

Oh well, im not an avid fan of the Windows built-in defragmentation program. I prefer to use DirMS-CL instead because it runs using the command line. It can run well on a computer with low memory and slow cpu. And oh, it comes for FREE!!!

CLICK HERE to go to DirmS-CL download page.

For all those tweakers out there, lets not forget this simple MS XP UI tweak.

Do this:

1. Open your Control Panel
2. Go to your mouse settings (mouse icon)
3. Click the Pointers tab
4. Uncheck Enable Pointer Shadow
5. Click apply and ok

Hate that tiny tooltips popping up whenever you hover your mouse anywhere in your Firefox browser?

Stop it by doing this simple tip.

1. type about:config
2. look for this entry browser.chrome.toolbar_tips
3. change the boolean value from true to false by double clicking it
4. restart your browser