Speculations

HOW TO DOWNLOAD ANY VIDEO ON THE INTERNET THROUGH CACHE

2011-06-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

There are tons and tons of different scripts, programs, and websites that claim to "allow you to download any video on the internet". However, as I'm sure many of you have come to realize, the vast majority of those are crap. Terrible quality, ridiculous prices, malware, ads, and many that just flat-out do not work.

Well today I'm going to show you a neat (yet simple) program that works and that has always worked. All it does is access the video in your cache, and then allow you to copy/move it into another directory, where it will stay (files only stay in the cache temporarily). You could probably do this on your own without the aid of a program, but it makes it much easier.

The program I am referring to is called VideoCacheView, by NirSoft

(direct download)

So whenever you view a video on the internet, the video is automatically downloaded into your browser's "cache". When you open it up, VideoCacheView simply views your browser's cache and tells you about the videos in there. Then all you have to do is right click it...

...and select "Copy Selected Files To..." to save the video to wherever you want it. The advantage of using this grab-video-from-cache method is you don't have to re-download a video you just viewed - it is already existing in your cache. The problem with this method is the video names will not be properly generated (this isn't the program's fault!), so you may have to guess a couple of times to find the correct video (just do "Play Selected File" before saving it to a permanent location on your computer).

Be sure, before copying a video, that the video has buffered completely on the webpage. If not, VideoCacheView will only be able to grab what has buffered so far.

Other things to note:

VideoCacheView supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome

VideoCacheView works with more than just video files

This method works for 99.999% of all videos I've ever come across, with the one exception of Hulu. As far as I know, downloading from Hulu is impossible.

HOW TO HIDE FILES WITHIN A .JPG IMAGE

2011-06-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to send a file to a friend in a very sneaky way? Or maybe wanted to keep files on your computer cleverly disguised, away from prying eyes? Well, using a simple trick with Windows, you can actually hide a file inside of a JPG picture file! Believe it or not, you can actually hide any type of file inside of a .jpg, (.txt, .exe, .mp3, .avi, etc.) Not only that, you can actually store multiple files inside of single JPG file, not just one! This can come in very handy if you need to hide files and don’t want to bother with encryption and all that other complicated stuff.

Before you start, you'll need to make sure you have at least one of the following programs installed:

7-zip

WinRAR

WinZip

(They are all free)

Now we can begin.

1) First, create a new folder, anywhere. It doesn't matter what you name it, so long as you can remember the name. Put the files that you want to hide into this folder.

2) Make the folder into a .rar file (shown below). Name the .rar file "stuff.rar"

(Click the images to see them full sized)

3) Make a new folder, and name it "folder". Put the rar inside of this folder.

4) Take the .jpg image that you want to hide the rar inside of, and rename it to "image" (you can change it to whatever you want later on). Then put it into the folder you made in step #3. The .rar file and the .jpg image should be the only files inside of this folder.

5) Move "folder" (along with it's contents) to the directory "C:\"

6) Open up the command line by clicking start, run, typing cmd, and then hitting enter.

7) In the command prompt, type the following (without the quotes):

.
.

"cd c:\"

8) Press enter. Then type the following (without the quotes):

"cd folder"

9) Press enter. Then type this (again without the quotes):

"copy /b image.jpg + stuff.rar new.jpg"

Your command prompt should read the following:

11) Open up the folder (the one you made in step 3). See "new.jpg"? That's the jpg with your rar hidden inside. You can rename it whatever you like. To open up the rar inside, simply open the image with 7-zip/winrar/winzip. It will open up your folder inside, where your hidden files are.

Did it work? Leave me a comment!

HOW TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR DESKTOP USING RAINMETER

2011-06-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

Of all the programs on my computer, Rainmeter has got be one of my favorites, and I feel obligated to share it with you all. Rainmeter is a free customization tool that enhances Windows PC with useful, compact applets that float freely on your desktop (much like Windows Sidebar gadgets, or dashboard widgets for the Mac). It allows users to keep track of things like CPU performance, news feeds, system resources, online data streams, blogs, tweets, etc.

There are many thousands of various different themes and skins available to download and install to customize Rainmeter to your liking.

Download Rainmeter Here

Once you've downloaded the installer, go ahead and install it.

To add/remove gadgets or configure settings, right-click on the Rainmeter skin and choose the appropriate options. From here, you can set variants, change skin, edit skin parameters, change skin position, add widgets (for battery power, clock, disk, RSS feeds, network performance, memory, weather, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc) and much more.

The great thing about Rainmeter is that you enter all your settings via the GUI (Graphical user interface) interface which can be accessed by double clicking on the sidebar and then going to configuration, then once you entered them all, they’re saved for any theme you apply. This means you don’t have to go re-entering your settings each time you change theme.

http://customize.org/rainmeter/skins/

http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/

Did it work? Leave me a comment!

HOW TO ENCRYPT AND DECRYPT IMPORTANT FILES

2011-05-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

Do you have sensitive, private or secret files that you don't want anybody else to see? You can keep them safe using the encryption tool AxCrypt. The open-source freeware AxCrypt is an encryption/decryption tool made to work with Microsoft Windows and can both encrypt and decrypt multiple files quickly and easily. AxCrypt uses the industry standard AES cipher of 128-bit strength, which is pretty much impossible to crack.

AxCrypt is the #1 open source file encryption software for Windows. It integrates perfectly with Windows to compress, encrypt, decrypt, store, send and work with just about all types of individual files. AxCrypt is an open-source program, making it even more secure and reliable, as the code has been tested by many thousands of expert programmers worldwide.

Download Axcrypt here: http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/Downloads.html. This download is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. Be sure to choose the one for your specific version of Windows. The download is available both as a portable program and as an installation program. The installable version has more features and integrated easily into Windows.

Once you've finished installing AxCrypt, you can encrypt any file you want with ease. Just right-click the file you want to encrypt and click AxCrypt → Encrypt as shown.

You will be asked for a password for encrypting the selected file. Type the password and then type it again (to verify that there was no typing error). Then click on the OK button to start the encryption.

The selected file will be encrypted, and an extension of .AXX will be added to it's original filename. The icon of the encrypted file changes to the icon of AxCrypt (a green vault with a yellow key on it). If later on you wish to decrypt the file, then just right-click on it and select AxCrypt → Decrypt as shown.

yYou will be asked to reenter the password. Enter the same password that you used to encrypt the file. Then click the OK button to decrypt the file.

The decrypted file will be extracted (with the original extension) in the same folder as the encrypted file.

An alternate option to encrypting the original file is encrypting a copy of the original file, by selecting AxCrypt → Encrypt a copy. This leaves the original file as it is and creates an encrypted copy in the same folder. Similarly, if you select AxCrypt → Encrypt copy to .EXE, it will create an encrypted executable file (.exe) in the same folder as the original file. The encrypted EXE is great option if you want to send the encrypted file to a friend who doesn't have AxCrypt installed. Your friend can simply double-click on the encrypted EXE file and type in password to decrypt it without needing to install the AxCrypt themselves.

You can also randomize the file name of the encrypted file, so that no one can guess what the original file was. Just right-click on an encrypted file and choose AxCrypt → Rename. The selected files will be given random names. When you decrypt the randomly named files, you'll get the original filenames back, as AxCrypt stores the original filenames inside the encrypted files themselves.

In conclusion, AxCrypt is superb tool for encypting your personal secret documents. It uses a powerful AES encryption, meaning that it's very reliable. This is an indispensable tool that everyone should have on their computer.

HOW TO CHANGE (NOT MASK) YOUR IP ADDRESS

2011-04-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, you want to change your IP address. How do you do it? Well, there are many different methods. Some may work for you but may not work for someone else, and vice versa. I'm going to cover how to change your IP address in Windows 2000, Windows 2003, XP, Vista and Windows 7.

But first of all, what is IP Lease Time?

"IP lease time" is how long your ISP determines you’ll be assigned a specific IP. Some IP lease times only a few minutes. Others are set to a few days. Some IP lease times are set for as long as a year or more. The IP lease time setting is entirely up to your ISP.

One of the easier methods to change your IP address is to turn off your modem/router/computer overnight. Then turn it back on the following morning. This method WILL NOT work if your ISP has a long lease time set for your IP.

If your connection is *DIRECT* to your computer and your computer gets the public IP and not a router, you can try this:

For Windows 2000, XP, and 2003
1. Click Start
2. Click Run
3. Type in cmd and hit ok (this opens a Command Prompt)
4. Type ipconfig /release and hit enter
5. Click Start, Control Panel, and open Network Connections
6. Find and Right click on the active Local Area Connection and choose Properties
7. Double-click on the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
8. Click on Use the following IP address
9. Enter a false IP like 123.123.123.123
10. Press Tab and the Subnet Mask section will populate with default numbers
11. Hit OK twice
12. Right click the active Local Area Connection again and choose Properties
13. Double-click on the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
14. Choose Obtain an IP address automatically
15. Hit OK twice
16. Go to IPchicken to see if you have a new IP address

For Vista (Windows 7 is very similar)
1. Click Start
2. Click All Programs expand the Accessories menu
3. In the Accessories menu, Right Click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator
4. Type ipconfig /release and hit enter
5. Click Start, Control Panel, and open Network and Sharing Center. Depending on your view, you may have to click Network and Internet before you see the Network and Sharing Center icon
6. From the Tasks menu on the left, choose Manage Network Connections
7. Find and Right click on the active Local Area Connection and choose Properties (If you’re hit with a UAC prompt, choose Continue)
8. Double-click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)
9. Click on Use the following IP address
10. Enter a false IP like 123.123.123.123
11. Press Tab and the Subnet Mask section will populate with default numbers
12. Hit OK twice
13. Right click the active Local Area Connection again and choose Properties
14. Double-click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)
15. Choose Obtain an IP address automatically
16. Hit OK twice
17. Go to IPchicken to see if you have a new IP address

Did it work? Do you have a different method? Leave me a comment!

HOW TO TAKE A SCREENSHOT OF AN ENTIRE WEBPAGE

2011-04-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, the desktop screenshot utilities are not enough when you want to take screenshot of a webpage, because these tools can capture only the visible portion of the page. So how do you capture the complete page from the top to the bottom without having to stitch multiple images together? Here is how to do it.
The easiest way is by using a Firefox addon called Screengrab. Screengrab allows you to take screenshot of an entire page, or the visible portion or just a small selection of the page. It even allows you to save just the contents of an individual frame.

See how this site looks like when captured entirely:

If you don’t want to burden Firefox with another addon, you can try some standalone tools. Webshots is the best among them.
WebShot allows you to take screenshots of web pages and save them as full sized images or thumbnails, in the JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP formats. You don’t have to open the page in your browser - just type the URL and click Start.

Webshots has the capability of automatically determining the page width and height and captures the whole page accurately. It even supports batch processing, where you can specify multiple URLs at once. The only letdown in this application is that it uses the IE engine to render the pages. So sites that aren’t optimized for IE will result in a broken screenshot. But then, you can always use Screengrab for such sites.

Did it work? Leave me a comment!

HOW TO CREATE ANIMATED GIFs FROM VIDEO FILES

2011-04-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

Despite the ubiquity of online video, they’re still not as portable as images, and what better way to get the best of both worlds than through animated GIFs?

You’ll need two programs: VirtualDub and Photoshop (or GIMP), which will each cover half of the process: extracting images from a video file, and turning the images into a frame-by-frame animation.

Create the image sequence using VirtualDub

1) Open video file (you may need to install the appropriate codecs).

2) Mark the start and end of the scene you plan to extract using Edit > Set Selection Start / Set Selection End or the last two buttons in the playback toolbar labeled Mark in / Mark out. Use Clear Selection if you want to start over.

3) Before exporting, you may want to adjust the number of frames exported by going to Video > Frame Rate… Select Process every third frame (decimate by 3) or enter a custom number.

4) Select File > Export > Image Sequence… and click OK.

5) You might notice that you can also export the selection as an animated GIF under the same menu, but if you want better control over the size and appearance of your GIF, Image Sequence is the way to go.

Create the animation using Photoshop

1) Open the Animation panel and make sure it's set to Frame Animation.

2) Select File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack… and select all the exported images in the proper order. Make sure the images are in the correct order (the last file usually shows up on top, so send it to the bottom).

3) Create a new frame for each layer by selecting the Duplicates selected frames icon or the New Frame item in the panel menu. Hide the current layer, then select the next one below it. Repeat this until you’ve made your way all the way to the last layer.

If you have a lot of frames, you can record a Photoshop action that goes:

a) Duplicate current animation frame

b) Hide current layer

c) Select backward layer (this isn’t easy to record so, follow the instructions for creating that step on this page).

Now hit Play until you reach the last layer.

4) Tweak the animation settings accordingly. You may want to set a short delay for each frame, and choose whether your GIF will loop once, thrice, or forever.

5) Crop, resize, and do all your image effects.

6) Select File > Save for Web and Devices… and select GIF. Tweak the color range, dithering, and other necessary settings.

Photoshop alternative: GIMP

1) Select File > Open as Layers… and select the images.

2) Select Filters > Animation > Playback to preview your animation. You can also select Optimize to, well, optimize.

3) Select File > Save As and make sure GIF image is selected under Select File Type.

4) Choose Save As Animation in the next dialog the shows up then click on Export.

5) In the Save as GIF dialog, check the following:

- Loop Forever

- Use delay entered above for all frames

- One frame per layer

- Use disposal entered for above for all frames

Set the Delay between frames where unspecified to something low like 10 milliseconds.

Did it work? Leave me a comment!

HOW TO GET FREE GAMES ON STEAM (LIMITED TIME)

2011-04-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

Wanna know how to get the following games (essentially) FREE on Steam:

Splot

Trine

ShadowGrounds

Jack Claw

ShadowGrounds: Survivor

Go to the following charity site: http://www.humblebundle.com/

Click "Buy Now"

Enter in how much money you are willing to donate. {BUT JOHN, YOU SAID FREE!!} Yes, they are free. This is the part where you donate money to charity (you're not buying the games). You will receive the games no matter how much you choose to donate, from 1 cent to 1 million dollars.

Fill out the rest of the page according to your preferences. Once you've paid, you're free to download the games.

IMPORTANT: If you want the games to actually be on your steam account, don't do the direct download. Find and select the "generate steam key" option, and then use it with steam (Open Steam store, click "add a game" in the bottom-right corner, click "activate a product on steam", "Next", and then "I agree"). The games will download through Steam and will show up in your Steam Library.

Did it work? Leave me a comment!

HOW TO WATCH VIDEOS ONLINE WITH FRIENDS

2011-04-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to watch a video online with your buddies, while being able to chat and discuss it on the side? Well here are two fairly easy ways to do so:

1) If the video is on Youtube

If the video is on Youtube, its easy as cake. Just enter “social” into the URL, just after “Youtube”.

For example, if my URL was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ then it would be

http://www.youtubeSOCIAL.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Go to this new URL, and then scroll down to the bottom. Click “copy URL”. You now have the party URL on your clipboard! Send it to your friends and they can join you in the room. Press play when you are all ready!

2) If the video is on your computer

Upload it to Youtube and do step #1! Just kidding (although that would work just fine).

The advantages of using this method over the Youtube method are:

a) You have a permanent room

b) You have admin abilities (you can kick annoying people out of chat add things to the video, etc.)

c) It’s fun. You run the show yourself! You choose when and what to broadcast, and people can tune in, whether they be your friends or just interested people.

So here is what you have to do:

First, create an account on http://www.livestream.com/ (MAKE SURE YOU CHOOSE A “BROADCASTER” ACCOUNT!!!”

Next, download and install their program, “Procaster” http://www.livestream.com/platform/procaster

This is a great little program that will allow you to play your videos.

Once you’ve got it running, go to “preferences” and then to the “desktop” tab. Change your preferences as you like them. Click save.

Open up your video on your screen (preferably full screen), and press “Go Live”. You are now broadcasting your video to your Livestream page! You can check out the chat on your screen (but your viewers will only see the video, nothing else on your screen) Press “Stop” when you want to stop broadcasting.

Did it work? Leave me a comment!

Brand new blog!

2011-04-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Not too much to say here, I'm just excited to be starting my very own blog :P

I'm not yet entirely sure what the main theme of this blog will be, other than tips and tricks I've picked up over time.

Thanks to whoever may be reading this, I hope you will enjoy the rest of my blog

I hope to update it once every few days.