Widescale Global.. Cooling?

What? I thought we were all doomed because the Earth was heating because man is evil?

From the article (emphasis mine):

“Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.”

It goes on:

“A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases.“

Wait a minute… You mean to tell me that that giant ball of burning gas that is responsible for maintaining all life as we know it is also responsible for heating the Earth? My mind is blown!

What now, hippies?

Hat tip RHOG.

Customize Your PC: #3

Welcome to part 3 of Customize Your PC. In this post, I will briefly show you how to make your own icons for use in Windows.

The first thing you will need to do is get, and install, a free open source image editing program called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program).

Next, gather images that you would like to make into icons. The thing to remember when doing this is that they are going to be resized to 255×255 or smaller, so it works best if they are already square. Also, it’s best to use images that are already roughly that size and that are not too complex. When you resize and save as an ico file, they tend to lose a little quailty and sometimes things get blurred.

Step 1: Open GIMP. The only window that opens is a small narrow window with all of GIMPs controls.

Step 2: Open the image you want to make an icon by going to File > Open. GIMP will load the image in a new window.

Step 3: First thing you need to do is resize the image (if you are using an image that is at or below 255×255 in size, skip this step). In the new window, go to Image > Scale Image:

A new window will open:

The portion with the black square around it is all you need to worry about. Type in 255 or a value less than that in whichever box has the highest value. GIMP will automatically change the other to keep the ratio true. The end result is that both width and height values must be 255 pixels or under. Click the Scale button to apply changes and close the window.

Step 4: Now you need to re-save the image as a Microsoft Windows Icon image.
- In the image window, click File > Save As. Since this is most likely your first time using GIMP, you will need to expand “Browse for other folders” and futher down “Select File Type” to see the options you need. First, browse to where you want to save the new image. Then, down under the newly expanded “Select File Type” you will need to scroll down and select Microsoft Windows icon. This will add the extension .ico to the end of your new file. Name it as you wish then select Save.
- When you do this, it will pop up a window with a preview of the image and a drop down menu with something like ‘32bpp, 8-bit alpha, no palette’. Just ignore all this and click Save again. If it pops up another window telling you you need to export, just click Ignore.

Now, it is time to put your new ico file into use. If you wish to replace a system icon such as the “My Computer” or the recycle bin, follow step 5A. If you wish to replace the icons used in Windows Explorer for your hard drive(s), follow step 5B. If you wish to replace a desktop shortcut icon, follow step 5C.

Step 5A: Right click on your desktop and select Properties. The Display Properties window will open; now select the Desktop tab. At the bottom of the window, click on the Customize Desktop button.

Select an icon you wish to change, click Change Icon, navigate to where you saved your ico file and select it. All done!

Step 5B: Replacing the hard drive icons is not as simple. First thing you need to do is copy the icon to the root of the hard drive and rename it HDD.ico. Now, you will need to open Notepad (Start>Programs>Accessories). Type in the following exactly as you see below:

[autorun]
icon=HDD.ico

Click file, save. In the save window, set the “Save as type” option to “All Files” then save the file as autorun.inf and save it to the root of the hard drive (same place as the icon).

Now you will need to reboot the computer before it uses the new icon.

Step 5C: Right click on the shortcut, click Properties. Click “Change Icon” and the rest is the same as step 5A.

That’s it. If I left something out or you are confused, leave a comment or send me a message.

For a how to on actually making your own icon image, check out this Microsoft website.

The Format War…

is over. HD-DVD is dead. Go with Blu-ray if you are planning on buying new hi-def discs.

Microsoft just dropped HD-DVD. Now that they are dropping it, the game is over, Blu-ray is the new format. But I guess the war has really been over since Toshiba (one of the main drivers behind HD-DVD) dropped it, but there were still some companies holding out, Microsoft being one of, if not the last major players still supporting HD-DVD.

Here is a good comparison guide between Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and DVD.

I, for one, welcome our new blue-violet laser overlords.

Customize Your PC: #2

Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for you screwing something up by doing this. However, if you somehow manage to screw this shortcut up,  I will try to help you fix it. By messing with a shortcuts properties, the worst you should be able to do is make it unusable. That being said, precede at your own risk.

This tip is about how to force Windows Explorer to start where you want it to. By default in XP, Explorer opens with My Documents selected and expanded. However, you can change this by editing the shortcut. If you don’t have a shortcut to Explorer on your desktop or quick launch, then you will be editing the one in the Start Menu.

Step 1: Find and right click on the shortcut for Windows Explorer and choose Properties. The shortcut is located at Start > Programs > Accessories.

Step 2: On the Properties window you will see the Target box. If you chose the right shortcut it should say “%SystemRoot%..explorer.exe” without the quotes.

Step 3: Click in the box at the end of explorer.exe, if it highlights everything in the box, hit the right arrow button. Now hit the space bar and type the following without the quotes and without the space in between C: and .. (MySpace won’t let me put them together): “/n, /e, /select, C: ..” click apply, ok and try out your modified shortcut to see if it works.

What it should look like after:

Step 4: Now when you open explorer using the shortcut if should open and display a left panel with a tree view of the system and a right panel with a tile view of the system drives with C highlighted. Something like this:

The only differences there may be would be the address bar and the toolbars just depending on how you have previously configured it, and of course the number of drives.
You may notice that my icons for my hard drives are different then what Windows uses, as well as the icon for My Computer in the left panel. Part 3 will be a guide on how to make and change system icons.

For more information on command line options for explorer.exe, please refer to this Microsoft knowledge base article.

Customize Your PC: #1

I’ve decided to start a series of posts that give you cool little things you can do to customize your computer. These tips will be for Windows XP only unless otherwise noted.

Want to be able to roll windows up into their title bar (yes, like Macs do)? Now you can do that in Windows with Winroll.

This cool little application installs fast and runs in the background. With it running, all you have to do is right click on a windows title bar and the window will roll up so nothing but the title bar is showing. Great for switching between windows fast. Also included is a neat little feature that you can enable or disable that turns the window transparent (adjustable) when you middle click on the title bar.

Before:

After:

Mrs. Obama

What a great speech this woman gives:
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/

Highlight:

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

Really now? Since when is the President allowed to demand something of the people? Isn’t it the other way around? Here I was believing that the government had to answer to the people, not the other way around. Silly me. Land of the free? Sure as long as you are don’t want to be uninformed and uninvolved.

Spend your life as you see fit… not if Barack Obama gets elected.

I thought that at least if Obama got in, well hey, he’s better than Hillary. Not so sure about that now. Anyone want to take bets on how long it’ll be before the stars are dropped from the flag and replaced with a hammer and sickle if this jackass gets elected?