Tutorials and reviews

Creating Aggregated RSS Feed with Yahoo Pipes

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:43 GMT

Recently, I was building a Wordpress powered site for which I needed to pipe an RSS feed from an external site. I also required this RSS feed to publish, not in a widget but, as a regular post. I was able to find and configure a plugin called RSS Digest that could do almost everything I wanted. In fact, save for a few minor bells and whistle I wish it did have such as the ability to specifiy a default Featured Image or image thumbnail, it is a very handy plugin.

GIMP: How To Crop Images

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:27:30 GMT

One of the questions I get asked most often about GIMP are how to properly resize and crop images. Ok. I guess that’s more like 2 questions, but they are quite often part of the same workflow. I will discuss resizing images for printing in a future article. For now, I thought I’d go over the basics of cropping with you.

Let’s start by launching GIMP and opening up an image. Next, let’s select the Crop Tool from the Toolbox.

GIMP Basics: Simple Borders

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:51:24 GMT

If you’d like to add a simple border to your images in GIMP, the process is fairly straightforward. This particular technique uses the Decor>Add Border filter to create a flat or slightly beveled border. Keep in mind that this filter creates a border outside the dimensions of your image, not an overlay, so you’ll need to consider this when sizing and cropping your image prior.

BIOS CMOS Password Reset Method That Actually Works

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:38:51 GMT

A client brought in a laptop a few weeks ago with the rather thorny issue of being locked out of his computer because someone had inadvertently set a BIOS password and, worse, enabled fingerprint security. While in many cases simply cracking open the laptop and removing the CMOS battery for a few minutes or locating the reset jumper will do the trick, this particular laptop was playing hardball.

Not very old, this Acer Travelmate running Vista had a Phoenix BIOS and I had quickly exhausted any trick I had. So, as any normal PC tech who runs up against a wall, I turned to Google and started sorting through all the garbage posts and forum threads that led nowhere. The "backdoor" passwords being suggested, which I suspect are a load of hogwash but tried regardless, didn't work. Trying to boot up into Hiren's and running the DOS based BIOS apps didn't work.

Accidentally Deleted The Show Desktop Icon?

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:13:20 GMT

I know...a Windows XP tip? In 2011? Well, not everyone has made the leap to Windows 7 yet and, as it happens, a few weeks ago, someone called me up with a nagging issue. Somehow, they had accidentally deleted the Desktop Shortcut from their taskbar, a tool they apparently used quite a lot.

Of course, we're talking about a pre-Windows 7 installation. I tried to get him to simply use the Windows Key + D keyboard shortcut, but that wasn't the solution he was looking for. He really wanted that Shortcut icon back on his taskbar exactly where it had always been.

iPhone 4S: What's So Different? What's So Special?

zeke43@gmx.com (Ruben Corbo) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:24:57 GMT

Many iPhone lovers were disappointed when the much anticipated iPhone 5 failed to make an appearance a few weeks ago. In its place, Apple introduced the iPhone 4S. While the 4S is not a huge version upgrade, it does have some very nice new and improved features over the older device, and is an excellent addition to cell phone plans.

20 PR1 TO PR4 Backlinks In 20 Minutes!

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:55:48 GMT

As anyone in the website or blogging business knows, strong backlinks to your site builds authority, better positioning in Search Engines, generates better paying CPC ads and will generally bring you more traffic.

Since SEO is all about growing site authority and traffic organically (i.e. free), there are many ways to get strong referral backlink from authoritative sites with a strong PR (page rank) for free. In future articles, I will cover several of the following methods in more detail.

The Rise of 3D Smartphones in the Mobile Broadband World

ruben.d.corbo@gmail.com (Ruben Corbo) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:30:37 GMT

When most individuals think of 3D technology they think of odd paper glasses and large theaters. While this perception may have been true in the past, 3D technology has taken one large leap forward recently. 3D smartphones are being released to the world and have become the ultimate mobile platform for entertainment.

The 3D effect can be achieved many ways, but up until recently this technology was simply impractical to put on mobile devices. Most smartphones are currently utilizing parallax barriers to develop this effect. Essentially, different images are sent to different eyes, which trick the brain into thinking there is depth on a flat screen. It has taken years to perfect these images, but they have been worth the wait.

SMART: A Failure May Be Imminent

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:40:07 GMT

When booting your computer, you may have noticed the word SMART (or rather the acronym S.M.A.R.T.) pop up on the P.O.S.T. screen (white text on a black screen) and paid little mind to what it is or what it does. That is of course until, one day, your computer doesn’t happily chug along and boot into your Windows, MAC OS or Linux install, but rather, halts on the post screen and displays a warning predicting imminent hard drive failure and prompting you to perform a backup ASAP. Instantly, you transform into the geek equivalent of Jack Bauer as you race against the clock to get your data backups done and your hard drive replaced before your world comes crashing down around you.

But wait! Do you even know what S.M.A.R.T. is? How does it “know” your hard drive is about to fail? And how accurate is this prediction? Is it some highly subjective Nostradamus type of prophecy?

GIMP Tutorial: How To Repair Blown Highlights In Photos

zeke43@gmx.com (Marc Roberge) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 13:41:08 GMT

In this tutorial you will learn how to salvage an image that has blown out highlights. This is a problem that is familiar to photographers shooting transparency film, which has an effective contrast range of about 5 stops. If you are not careful with your exposure you can easily lose all detail in your highlight areas, with no way to get it back: they “blow out” to clear (white).

The basic technique is to graft matching areas of the image into the burned out parts using the clone tool and then to use several additional tools to blend the seams of the cloned areas.