Time Wasters of the month October 2008

Posted by Flo in Offbeat on October 2nd, 2008.
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You sometimes have some spare moments in life. What better way to fill those moments with some time wasting games? In this new (hopefully) monthly topic, I will select 5 games (of which 4 are free to play) which can fill up that spare time in a great way.

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Fix your Kubuntu login screen resolution

Posted by Flo in Tech, Tricks on September 13th, 2008.
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After installing Kubuntu Hardy, I noticed that I could scroll through the login screen. This is because Kubuntu’s xserver gives you the option to add some virtual space around your screen, so everything is bigger, and you can scroll to the things you want to see. The problem is that I didn’t want this virtual space. So here’s a quick guide how to repair this problem (a lot of people seem to have it).

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Peazip: a multifunctional archiving tool

Posted by Flo in Open Source, Tech on September 10th, 2008.
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A long time ago, and I mean a VERY long time ago, my worst fear was only to be able to get certain files in a rar format, because I wasn’t able to open them. That is, untill I got WinRar, but it kept nagging me that I should buy the full version. Of course I didn’t like that, so I stopped downloading rar files. That is, until about a year ago when I started to download through usenet, where everything is distributed in rar archives. So I tried to find a better free tool with less irritations than WinRar. This is how I found PeaZip, and it gave me a reason to start downloading rar files again.

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Installing NVIDIA drivers in Kubuntu

Posted by Flo in Site news, Tricks on August 17th, 2008.
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When installing my NVIDIA drivers on Kubuntu Hardy, it came to me that this wasn’t as easy as it probably should be. I use the word probably because I use a quite old graphics card, and Kubuntu automatically seems to install the drivers for the newest cards. However it may be, I had some problems with it, and when solving these problems, I saw that it is possible to install your NVIDIA drivers in a better way than just letting Kubuntu fix this. Here’s a quick guide (with a small troubleshooting section that you can use when you boot into the command line interface) how to install your NVIDIA drivers on Kubuntu the “easy” way.

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Setting your screen resolution in Kubuntu Hardy

Posted by Flo in Tech, Tricks on August 12th, 2008.
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When upgrading to Kubuntu Hardy, I found that the maximum possible resolution I could use seemed to be 800×600… Not being able to select my preferred 1024×768 resolution, I had to figure out how to be able to select this resolution. This took me about 6 hours… and the solution for this problem is quite easy. So here’s my newbie (it’s me who is obviously the n00b…) guide in fixing this problem.

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3 Comments (21,005 views)

Rip videos and music from Youtube

Posted by Flo in Tricks on August 6th, 2008.
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Sometimes videos are just too interesting to let them stay on Youtube, you just need to have them. There are several ways to do this, but I think that using the free program “MediaCoder” is the best way. This is a quick guide explaining how to use this software to get videos from youtube. I will also explain how to use it to only rip the music from a Youtube video (so you don’t have to search for it on usenet, P2P or a torrent site). This trick also seems to work for MySpace, Google Video and some other video services.

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CCleaner cleans your Windows

Posted by Flo in Freeware on August 4th, 2008.
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When you are using your computer, especially when you are browsing the web, a lot of files are saved that you probably won’t need anymore. These files also include information about your browsing experience. CCleaner deletes these files so you can use this space for useful things and to secure your privacy.

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Stop BOINC from slowing down your computer too much

Posted by Flo in Tech, Tricks on June 22nd, 2008.
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Lending your computer to science is a good thing to do, but you don’t want to have any consequences. If you disable the BOINC screensaver, the BOINC manager will even run if you are using the computer. This can slow down your computer pretty much. Luckily there’s a simple trick to prevent this, and still let BOINC run when you’re using the computer.

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Hitman Pro Anti-Spyware Combo

Posted by Flo in Freeware on June 14th, 2008.
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The downside of having a popular OS like Windows is that people make virusses and spyware for it. And because you generally don’t know if you’ve downloaded some spyware on your computer, you’ll need software to detect it, and to remove it. One of the best ways to do this is using “Hijack This”, but it is quite hard to use, so you probably want something more user friendly. The problem of the easier software is that most companies only offer some sort of a demo version for free, so you’ll need different programs to find all spyware. This is exactly what Hitman Pro offers.

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Ares Galaxy – a filesharing powertool

Posted by Flo in File sharing, Open Source, Tech on May 17th, 2008.
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It’s quite a while ago when I last used P2P networks like Kazaa to download files. The main reason for that was that it seemed to be packed with spyware and other nonsense I didn’t want. A while ago this all changed because my favorite bittorrent client, Azureus, seemed to make my computer unstable, so I needed another client. I found Ares Galaxy, a p2p network and bittorrent client in one, and I’m really satisfied about it.

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2 Comments (58,254 views)