Mitchelaneous

Web of Pain - Comic for the Web Dev Geeks

Mitch — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:53:25 +0000

It is not often you can mix funny with web hosting. Thanks to the latest issues of Ping! Zine, I was turned onto a new comic that covers the web development side of things Web of Pain. Browsing through the archives on their web site, I had a lot of fun. This one still sticks out as my favorite thus far…

Well worth visiting to see the comics up so far. It is updated every second Monday, so there will be more fresh content worth checking out soon! Enter the Web of Pain!

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10 Best Paint.NET Tutorials

Mitch — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:16:36 +0000

I have been playing a lot more with Paint.NET lately, trying to get back in tune with my more creative side. One thing I never realized was there are a lot of great tutorials out there for it, but it is hard to find the best ones. Here are the top ten best Paint.NET tutorials I have run across so far.

Scotch Tape - Create a transparent segment of scotch tape

Glossy/Glass Buttons - Create Web 2.0-like glassy buttons

Toy Car - Turn a real car into a toy car

Make a Chain - How to render individual links, then link them together to form a chain

How to make a Lightsaber - Use lighting and blur effects to render a Lightsaber in

Transparent Background - Make the background of an image transparent

Cutting out Images the Easy Way! v2 - Great method for cutting images out of pictures

LiteBrite(TM) Effect - Transform your pictures into coloured peg-board style images

Lets Make a Software Box - Transform flat images into 3D boxes

Drop Shadows - Add depth to your artwork with drop shadows

It is amazing how advanced Paint.NET has gotten over the years. Also, if your used to the graphic editor layout - it is really easy to pick up and use too. Know of any other great tutorials?

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

Mitchelaneous : Followed by More than 600 Awesome People

Mitch — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:14:05 +0000

Just wanted to share some exciting news this morning, Mitchelaneous has finally broken the 600 subscribers mark! I’ve been watching this one for a while, since I had been hovering in 580 subscribers to 590 subscribers for some time.

To check out every single post, be sure to check out the archives (all of them are on one single page!) It goes all the way back to an article that no longer exists anymore. Fun times, indeed. If you want to go WAY back in time - check out how things looked back in 2005!

Not old enough? Well happened to find a version from back in 2004 (the year the Mitchelaneous fun started here):

Want to help celebrate? Tell your friends, family and your neighbor’s dog they should be subscribing! Need some help?

Subscribe in a Reader! | Subscribe to Mitchelaneous by E-mail

You can also just copy and paste this into your feed reader of choice too:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/mitchelaneous

Thanks for following me for the past 4+ years! You are the awesome 600+ that keep me going day after day and I REALLY do appreciate it.

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

Quickly Share any Images with Rapidpik

Mitch — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:05:20 +0000

Always in search of the next best thing in free hosting, I happened to run across rapidpik. Now I have only played with it for a little ‘bit, but it could very well be the simplest uploading tool with the most features.

You should know the basic song and dance by now. You choose your picture, you upload it and you can share it. This service is much of the same. Once you upload the image you are given the option to “edit” it. Only editing you can do for now is changing the name.

Once you have done that, you are given the final result as a URL. You can check out my test one one to see an example of the final product in action: http://rapidpik.com/show/4406/jd9gf

Some of the nice features here are that you can share the image using a number of social services, you can view the image in all kinds of different sizes and you also get a flash player (which comes in handy if you upload multiple images at one time). So if your looking for another free image host to add to your favorites - give rapidpik a shot.

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

Need Organizing Help? Colorful Vista Folders!

Mitch — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:00:09 +0000

Remember a few posts past, when I asked if anybody had a solution for Windows Vista color coded folders? I had this on Windows XP with the help of programs like Folderico. That is when I decided it might be better off creating my own colorful Vista folder icon pack so I could just do this myself - no extra program needed!

Download the Vista Colorful Folder Pack! (.zip)

All of the icons are in the .ico format, and supports the following sizes:

256 x 256, 128 x 128, 64 x 64, 48 x 48, 32 x 32, 24 x 24, 16 x 16

Why color code your folders? Having color coded folders for certain documents is more than just about “making things pretty”. It is also very helpful when it comes to getting things done. Let’s say you use the green folder for your bills, green is the color of money - hence it makes you jump right to it instead of having to hunt through all those yellow folders.

Depending on how popular these are, I might release more colored folders in the future. Feel free to use them however you like. If you pass it around to a friend, might also mention where you got it and ask them to subscribe to my RSS feed for more!

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

Featured Again in Ping! Zine

Mitch — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:00:26 +0000

Just got the latest edition of Ping! Zine at my door yesterday, and I do have to say it is great cover to cover, front to back. Yes, I also had an article in it this month, Website Hosting vs Personal Backup Hosting (check it out on page 46).

Download Vol 6 Issue #3 of Ping! Zine (.pdf)

If you did not get the paperback copy of the magazine, you can also pick up the digital version from PingZine.com. If you want to get the paperback version of the magazine for free, check out this special subscription offer from WebHostingShow.com.

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

WWE’s Maria Kanellis Desktop Icon

Mitch — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:44:05 +0000

Playing around with creating desktop icons for my Windows Vista PC, I was using this picture as a kind of test to see what I could do. Looked good to me (come on, it is Maria after all), so I thought I would release it out to all of you. Can you tell which icon stands out more?

It is in the .ico format, and supports the following sizes:

256 x 256, 128 x 128, 64 x 64, 48 x 48, 32 x 32, 24 x 24, 16 x 16

Download the Maria Kanellis Desktop Icon (.zip)

Download it and feel free to do whatever you want with it. If you pass it around, just make sure you give me a link back, or better yet just subscribe to my RSS feed and we will call it even.

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

Use Paint.NET to Edit and Create Icons

Mitch — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:56:07 +0000

I had an idea to customize a few of my default Vista icons, but had no way of doing so. I had the icon files, but no way to edit them. So after doing some browsing around I did come up with a solution to my icon editing woes.

First Step? Get Paint.NET!

First step was to pickup Paint.NET. This is an awesome free image editor with all the bells and whistles of your hundred-dollar programs.

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Grab the Paint.NET ICO Plugin

Well worth having, just as a backup image editor if nothing else. Since Paint.net does not have .ico support built in by default, I picked up this plugin from Evan’s Web Site. To use it, all you need to do is unzip and then put it in the “FileTypes” folder in the Paint.NET directory.

Startup Paint.NET and try dragging and dropping an .ico icon onto the canvas. Thanks to this neat plugin, it will open just as any other image would open. With saving as an .ico, I had a few errors at times but doing it again or changing the name of the file seems to have helped.

So there is a totally free way to edit and create custom desktop icons for your next design project or desktop redecoration.

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

Get Instant Feedback with Crowd Sound

Mitch — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:49:19 +0000

Always looking for a better way to get the thoughts of the crowd, I ran across crowd sound. What is this web site all about? It is less of a web site and more of a tool to help you uniquely gather ideas and suggestions from your followers.

We all like feedback right? Here is how crowd sound works. All you do is sign up for your free account, and then login. Once you do, you can embed the widget into your web site. Just copy and paste some simple JavaScript into your own design.

Now with the web site widget, you can add some entries. and then have other visitors vote up the idea or vote down the idea. So this separates things into the people who want to give you good suggestions and the people who just like to vote for things. You can also via the widget browse through the most recent or the most popular.

I think crowd sound is delivering a very unique way of looking at feedback gathering from your base. Those could be customers, they could be readers. The thing that is important is that you get their views to make your content better.

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!

Hardwood Lights Wallpaper

Mitch — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:05:31 +0000

Usually the more creative wallpaper is what gets me going, but for some reason this vanilla version of a hardwood flood with lights is very appealing to me. Well, the fact that I didn’t need Home Depot to get it laid down across my desktop is a green checkmark in the win column.

If your looking for a simple work space, this wallpaper selection should do the trick for you. Check it out over at DeviantArt, where you can also pick up the 1680×1050 and 2560×1600 versions.

Free Download: Download Your Free Copy of My Best of the Web Hosting Show Guides eBook!