How-To Geek

How to Roll a Window Up Into its Title Bar in Linux Mint 12

Lori Kaufman — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:00:14 GMT

If you have a lot of windows open on your Linux Mint desktop, wouldn’t it be nice to “roll up” windows to get them out of the way, but still see what you have open?

We found a setting in Linux Mint 12 that allows you to change the behavior that occurs when you double-click on the title bar of a window. By default, double-clicking on a title bar maximizes that window. However, the maximize button on the title bar does the same thing. So, why not have the window “roll up” when you double-click the title bar?

To change windows to “roll up” when you double-click on the title bar, select Other | Advanced Settings from the Applications menu.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

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Geek Trivia: Where Is The World’s Largest LAN Party Held?

Jason Fitzpatrick — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:37:09 GMT

Where Is The World’s Largest LAN Party Held?

1) London, England
2) New York, United States
3) Jönköping, Sweden
4) Munich, Germany

Think you know the answer?

ChaserTraser Visualizes Storm Chaser Movement Across the Continental US

Jason Fitzpatrick — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:00:36 GMT

This time-lapse animation shows the movements of hundreds of storm chasers (and the storm cells they are chasing) across the United States–it’s a fascinating eye-in-the-sky look at storms and the tracking community surrounding them.

Courtesy of DataTechArt, the video takes GPS and storm data from May, 2011. They write:

Each spring and summer, hundreds of storm chasers, thrill-seekers, vacationers, and scientists search for nature’s wrath. CharserTracer is a visual animation piece showing chasers’ movements as they traverse the midwest seeking twisters. While over-hyped chaser TV shows like Storm Chasers show a heavily edited micro-view of storm chasing, I wanted to create an eye-in-the-sky view of how chasers chase.

Hit up the link below for more videos and additional information the process they used.

ChaserTracer [via O'Reilly Radar]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

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What You Said: Must Have Bookmarklets

Jason Fitzpatrick — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite bookmarklets—tiny pieces of JavaScript packed into browser bookmarks that enhance your browsing experience—and now we’re back to highlight your bookmarklet tips and tricks.

To save you time and energy tracking down the bookmarklets your fellow readers love, we’ve embedded the bookmarklets right into this article. You can simply drag the hyperlinks to your bookmarks toolbar to begin using them. Note: We’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up the names readers used for the bookmarklets so that you can easily drag them to your bookmarks bar with a clean ready to use title.

Scott writes:

Without a doubt, this “Force Password Save” tool has helped me avoid frustrations many times.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Enable Restricted Accounts to Improve Productivity

Jason Fitzpatrick — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:00:51 GMT

If you’re struggling to stay focused while working on your computer, enable restricted user accounts with access to only the tools you need.

At the productivity blog Stepcase Lifehack, they share an effective–albeit radical–technique for increasing focus:

The first thing you must do is figure out what tools you need in what context and then create a separate user account that contains those tools. For example, if you are a writer you may want to have a “writing account” where all you have access to is a simple text tool (or whatever writing tool that you prefer) and everything else is locked down.

Some contexts that you work in require access to a bunch of tools, so you have to sit down and list out only the tools you actually need. This is the first step to create environments on your computer that don’t destroy your concentration and attention.

Hit up the link below to read more about the technique. Would you be willing to set up distinct user accounts to help improve your focus?

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Fantasy World Waterfalls [Wallpaper]

Asian Angel — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:30:16 GMT

Islands and Waterfalls [The Paper Wall]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Game On The Cheap with Print and Play Games

Jason Fitzpatrick — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:00:11 GMT

If you’re looking for some way to enjoy a new table top game this weekend without breaking the bank, print and play games offer nearly free (printing cost only) fun.

Print and play games can take on various forms, from something as simple as printing a single sheet or two of paper and using coins as markers to heavily thematic and decorated sets like the Battlestar Galatica print and play set seen above.

For more print and play games, check out this fantastic list at Boardgame Geek for more ideas.

[via MakeUseOf]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Friday Fun: Dinosaurs and Meteors

Asian Angel — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:19 GMT

In this week’s game it is literally a fight for survival as you marshal your dinosaur defenders in a last ditch effort to survive the deadly meteors falling to Earth? Do you have what it takes to succeed or will you become extinct?

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Analyze & Optimize Your Wireless Network with Wi-Fi Analyzer for Android

Chris Hoffman — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:00:46 GMT

Wi-Fi Analyzer for Android is the complete package. Not only will it show you the channels used by nearby wireless networks on a slick graph, it’ll recommend the ideal channel to reduce interference on your wireless network.

Once you’ve selected the ideal channel, you can flick over to the signal strength meter. With the meter in the palm of your hand, you can walk around to analyze your coverage area, find dead spots and identify interfering objects.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

How To Run Windows Software on Ubuntu with Wine

Chris Hoffman — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:00:43 GMT

Linux is a great operating system, but its software catalog can be lacking. If there’s a Windows game or other app you just can’t do without, you can use Wine to run it right on your Ubuntu desktop.

Wine is a work in progress, so it won’t run every application perfectly — in fact, some applications may not run at all — but it’s improving all the time. This beginner’s guide will get you up and running with Wine.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

From the Tips Box: Run Calibre’s Content Server from the Command Line, Scoring HDDs on The Cheap, and Windows 8 Menu Tweaking

Jason Fitzpatrick — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Once a week we round up three excellent reader tips and share them with the greater How-To Geek audience. This week we’re looking at how to run an ebook server from the command line, scoring cheap HDDs, and tweaking Windows 8 menus.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

The Time Spectrum [Wallpaper]

Asian Angel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:30:20 GMT

The Time Spectrum [The Paper Wall]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

How to Use the Reveal Formatting Feature in Word 2010

Lori Kaufman — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:00:44 GMT

Are you used to the Reveal Codes feature in WordPerfect? These codes show you your text with integrated formatting codes that seem similar to HTML formatting. However, if you’re using Word, there is no comparable function.

WordPerfect treats text and formatting codes the same, putting start and end codes around text as you format it. When you display the Reveal Codes window, you see the formatting code markers integrated with the text. You can select the code markers and even insert and delete them manually. For example, if you manually delete an end code, the rest of the document will be formatted according to the start code that now has no corresponding end code.

In Word, text and formatting are treated completely independently. Word stores the formatting for the text in a different part of the file than the text to which the formatting applies. It is not inserted in the text stream. Instead, Word tracks the character and paragraph formatting you apply throughout your document, and does concern itself with start and end codes.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Medieval Help Desk (with English Subtitles) [Video Classic]

Asian Angel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:00:43 GMT

Those pesky books were such a hassle when first introduced! No rest for the Help Desk crew…

Medieval helpdesk with English subtitles [via Fail Desk]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Geek Trivia: What Widely Used Insulating Enclosure Is Named After a 19th Century Scientist?

Jason Fitzpatrick — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:37:32 GMT

What Widely Used Insulating Enclosure Is Named After a 19th Century Scientist?

1) The Faraday Cage
2) The Van der Graff Box
3) The Edison Sphere
4) The Tesla Shield

Think you know the answer?

The Video Game Entertainment Curve

Jason Fitzpatrick — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:00:35 GMT

Any dedicated game knows, there are certain genres and game types that simply require a bigger time investment to maximize your enjoyment of the game–this comic pokes fun at the time/enjoyment curve.

In what has to be an example of cosmic coincidence, a friend of ours practically direct-quoted the RPG player quote from this comic yesterday at lunch. Where do your favorite games fit on the curve?

The Video Game Entertainment Curve by H. Caldwell Tanner [via Neatorama]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

How NASA Makes Super High Resolution Images of Earth

Jason Fitzpatrick — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:00:01 GMT

Last month we shared an ultra-high resolution image of Earth with you, courtesy of NASA’s Suomi NNP satellite. Now we’re back to highlight the process by which NASA generates such beautiful images.

Wired Magazine shares a great overview of how the satellite creates such fantastic and high-resolution images. They write:

How were these highly detailed images created? The satellite flies 512 miles above the Earth, but the images appear as if they were taken from a much higher perspective: an altitude of 1,242 for the first image and 7,918 miles for the second. This little trick was accomplished by stitching together data from several orbits, creating an image that appears to be “pulled back.”

NASA launched the 4,600-pound Suomi in October to remotely sense variations in the Earth’s oceans, continents, and atmosphere and get a better understanding of climate change. It passes directly from pole to pole 14 times a day, imaging 1,865-mile swaths of our planet with each trip.

Hit up the link below for more information on the process.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

See What the Web’s Largest Websites Looked Like When Launched [Images]

Asian Angel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:30:53 GMT

Are you ready for a trip down Nostalgia Lane? Then you will definitely enjoy this picture slide show of the early launch designs for the web’s biggest websites.

You can view the complete slide show over at Mashable using the link below.

What the World’s Biggest Websites Looked Like at Launch [via Reddit]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Upgrade Your Outlets for Adapter Free USB Charging

Jason Fitzpatrick — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:00:47 GMT

If you’re cluttering up all your outlets with USB charging adapters, this simple home improvement adds in two USB ports per outlet.

Over at Apartment Therapy they share a guide to rewiring your outlets with USB support using commercial outlets (don’t worry, you won’t have to build it yourself). They also showcase a plug in model that sits over your existing outlet if you prefer not to do any hard wiring.

How To Give Your Wall Outlet a USB Upgrade [Apartment Therapy]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

Eric Z Goodnight — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:00:00 GMT

JPG distortion, tiling, and artifacts can ruin an otherwise great image. While no technique can truly restore and image, here’s a How-to Geek tip on how to remove and repair JPG distortion and artifacts in a few easy steps.

Nothing shy of a miracle can recover the image data lost when an image is saved in a lossy format like JPG. But with some clever trickery and a little bit of Photoshop magic, you can fix the worst parts of your image and get a better result in almost no time at all. GIMP users, follow along, as this Photoshop howto is GIMP friendly. Keep reading to see how you can finally restore your images!

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Find Hidden Features on Opera’s Internal Opera: Pages

Chris Hoffman — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:00:23 GMT

Opera contains hidden features that aren’t exposed in its user interface. They’re on internal pages, which you can access by typing Opera: into the address bar, followed by the name of the page.

Opera’s hidden Opera: pages are its counterpart to Firefox’s About: pages and Chrome’s Chrome:// URLs. They contain hidden options, alternate user interfaces and diagnostic information tucked away from the main interface.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

How to Report a Malicious Website to the SmartScreen Filter in Internet Explorer 9

Taylor Gibb — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:00:51 GMT

One of Microsoft’s leading technologies that protect us from the dangerous web is the SmartScreen filter in Internet Explorer. Since the filter is crowd-sourced, it helps tremendously if you do your part, so let’s take a look at how to report a malicious website.

Reporting a website in Internet Explorer is made extremely easy and can be done from the Tools menu.

Navigate over to the safety section.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Ask the Readers: What Are Your Must-Have Bookmarklets?

Jason Fitzpatrick — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:00:08 GMT

Bookmarklets, tiny chunks of JavaScript packaged in a browser bookmark, offer uses a simple and cross-platform way to interact with the web. What are you must have bookmarklets?

Image courtesy of Marklets.com, a bookmarklet search engine.

You can use bookmarklets for everything from streamlining a page for easy reading to turning an otherwise boring website into a round of Angry Birds. This week we’re interested in hearing how you use bookmarklets to enhance your web browsing experience.

Sound off in the comments with your favorite bookmarklets (don’t forget to include a link for other readers to go grab a copy for themselves) and an explanation of how they improve your browsing experience. Check back on Friday for the What You Said roundup to add some new bookmarklets to your collection.

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Elf Warrior Maiden [Wallpaper]

Asian Angel — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:30:19 GMT

What new adventure awaits next?

Beauty scenery [DesktopNexus]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps

Psycho Siri does not Want to be Sold, Goes Terminator on New Owner [Video]

Asian Angel — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:00:49 GMT

This is not the kind of Siri experience you want to happen to you!

Psycho Siri [via Geeks are Sexy]

How To Remove JPG Artifacts and Ugly Image Distortion From Photographs

How To Transfer Files, Web Sites, Comics, and RSS Feeds to Your Amazon Kindle

How To Use DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps