The following is help list to get anyone started with cutting their cable T.V. cord.

Streaming T.V. Boxes:

A Streaming media box is a little box you connect to your t.v. which connects to the internet either wirelessly or with an ethernet cable to stream internet media to your television.

• Roku – http://www.roku.com
• gbox – http://www.boxtoptheater.com
• google t.v – http://www.vizio.com/costar/overview
  

  Posted On February 3, 2013 6:04 PM  by: Angel Categories:  From the mouth of Angel, Ubuntu, Windows Tags: Computer, cordcutting, Miscellaneous, streaming, T.V. ·	One Comment

Chrome recently implemented a change removing the ability to install scripts & extensions from 3rd party websites. You can easily work around this to install the ice quick stream script and other user scripts & extensions from 3rd party locations by doing the following.

• Find the google chrome icon on your desktop
• Right click on the icon and then select properties
• In the dialog that opens you’ll see a box labeled target
• The target box contains something similar to the following line
  C:\username\App Data\Local\Google Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
• at the end of the line add a space then paste the following:
  --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install
• your end result should look like this:
  C:\username\App Data\Local\Google Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install
• Click apply and then click OK
• close chrome completely by clicking the wrench and clicking exit and then relaunch it using the shortcut you just modified. You should now be able to install user scripts & extensions from any website once again.

I hope this helps.

p.s. this also works on linux launchers.

So with Guild Wars 2 coming out and my current computer being about 4 years old and not really on the high end The hubby & I decided it was time for me to have a new one.

Lately I’ve been finding myself perusing the MMO Market. Maybe it’s just a listlessness because for the most part all MMO’s are starting to feel the same, just with a different lore behind it. I’m trying to be as patient as possible but the more information that is released about Guild Wars 2 the harder time I’m having being happy with my current MMO choices. I have been quite happily playing Lord of the Rings online. Just being in Middle Earth more than makes up for the games quirks. Since I already have one max level character I haven’t really been playing so much.

Recently I read a review over at Massively about a little game that is both quite new to

So after having heard, seeing, and experiencing numerous Scares while using windows systems in the past, I thought I would share here a list of things anyone who uses Microsoft Windows Should be aware of.

Protect Yourself

• A website tells you that you have a virus, or spy-ware/malware has been detected.

First don”t panic, second don”t trust the source. Their have been many cases where people have been infected by malware because they clicked on the “FREE VIRUS SCAN NOW” advertisement in their browser from a website claiming that they have malware, It”s a very old trick. I personally was shocked to discover how widespread this practice actually is, but even some very well known sites have been “tricked” into running what they thought were legitimate ads on their websites only to discover they were actively infecting their visitors. Here are a couple of examples of Fake Virus scans:

Fake Vista Scan	Fake xp Scan

• Make sure you run updated anti-virus on your windows system – I  recommend Avast it”s free and updated quite regularly.
• Make sure you run updated anti-spyware on your windows system – I highly recommend the free Spybot S&D Make sure run regular scans of your system.
• If your using firefox there are a few more ways to help you avoid those types of fake scans and javascript/flash based attacks. Two extensions I make sure to install on any firefox installation are Ad Block Plus, and WOT(Web of Trust).
• Be Smart, think about what the website in front of you asking you to do. Legitimate Visus & Malware scanning sites, generally wont just pop up in your face, and beg to scan your sytem.
• Stop handing out your email address – You don”t have to give your actual email address to every website that asks, actually there is a free service that helps stop spam in your inbox by giving you a temporary email address that you can use  to register at that one website you just have to check out. Mailinator.com allows you create any email address at random and then check it just by using the email address you created, there is no actual account and no registration required. Be aware though, all email is deleted after a few hours.

Back up and Maintain!

Remember Computers are like car”s you can just Gas & Go, you have to perform regular maintenance.

• Start a back up schedule – Hardware doesn”t last forever, and losing all those precious photo”s or a huge media collection can really make things difficult for you. The best thing you can do is get some external storage, and start a backup schedule. If you don”t have much to back up you can always get a free Dropbox.com account, and have your important files backed up the web. But in case you need more than 2 gig”s of storage space and don”t want to pay for extra an external drive is really the way to go.  DeltaCopy is a great Open Source program for backing up your file. It offers Incremental backup, Task scheduler, Email notification, &  One-click restore features.
• Back up those bookmarks online – Xmarks (formerly foxmarks) works with Internet explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google chrome to keep your bookmarks in sync and backed up across computers and browsers.
• Find our more about System Restore – Answers.com provides great insight about how to use the windows System Restore feature, using it you can create restore points to set your computer back to should something go wrong.
• Clean Your registry – Ccleaner is a great way to make sure your Windows Registry stays clean, as well as helping you clean any temporary files from your system.
• Defragment your files –  Windows XP comes with a nice interface for Defragmenting your hard drive, however  in vista your left with a command line only option of Defragmenting your hard drives. Luckily there are 3rd party  alternatives to windows built in interface, which works with both XP & Vista, I recommend Defraggler.

Are you tired yet?

So once your tired of maintaining your system on a regular basis all the while having paid to have your computer tell you what to do during your free time, Keep your windows for games, and Use Ubuntu/Linux for everything else!

Well yesterday, my son’s old CRT monitor finally decided to quit working. We don’t have the cash at the moment to run out and get a new monitor, so my husband was kind enough to give him his monitor. It was decided that my hubby could use the laptop for what he does. So I formatted it, then installed & Setup Kubuntu for him. He’s pretty happy with it. That left us with one computer that had no monitor, so I decided to bring it into the living room and make good use of it.

This computer is a Gateway GM5478, it originally came with windows vista and has always had a few bugs that made it not work well with Linux, also dual screen doesn’t scale in linux. The one other issue that kept me from making it a mythbox is that the t.v. tuner(an AVerMedia M791) that came with the system is not supported by linux. So knowing all that I decided to put Vista back on it for our purposes.

So I spent the Past 2 days, formatting both my and Marks computers so I could make partitions and then install Ubuntu along-side our vista installations. It was actually quite simple, though a pain the ass when it came to having to uninstall the unnecessary OEM programs and such on vista and then installing the stuff we need. But actually creating the partitions and then installing Ubuntu was a simple breeze thanks to this tutorial. So It took me about 2-3 hours on each computer to get vista back in prime condition. This includes installing all drivers, and windows updates. What a Pain I tell ya! But the good news is that both computers are now fully dual-booting Ubuntu on partitions and running like a dream. I’ll probably only ever use windows for anything except my T.V. Tuner (because it’s not supported by linux) and gaming. Which means I probably won’t boot into vista very often.

In the mean time I thought I would share my Ubuntu setup list for things I do when installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.1.

If you have a new (or newly wiped) hard drive in your PC, and your Windows Vista DVD is an

For those users who purchased Windows Vista Basic, you’ll notice your missing two of the interfaces available in the other versions of vista. Flip 3D and the Aero Interface. On systems whose graphics capabilities are able to handle such things you may be wondering if there is a way to get these effects without paying the extra cash to upgrade to a different vista version. Good News there is! To get that flip 3D effect users have serveral options available to them.

For $20.00 Top Desk offers the Flip 3D effect as well as the Expose effect found in the mac systems. Better News yet there is also a free utility available to those of you on a tight budget called Shock Aero 3D and for xp users only you may wish to give WinFlip a try.

The following registry hack allows Vista Basic Users to enable Aero on their system (NOTE:BE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR REGISTRY BEFORE PROCEEDING!)

Click Start and type Regedit in the search bar, open the registry editor and navigate to:

net start uxsms

Reboot Your System to see the changes

There is also a program called TrueTransparency that changes the windows border adding png support and so true transparency.

Another option available to users is Stardocks Windowblinds, there are many skins for it which use the transparency effect. Windowblinds however is shareware.

Stardock has released Deskscapes 2.0 beta, which now can be installed by all windows vista user’s not just vista ultimate users! You can see the full article HERE