Stop SOPA Now

SOPA is a law that is described by the law makers as a method to stop piracy on the internet, by blocking websites and their domain name servers,along with the protect-ip law.
SOPA makes major labels, become the powers that be and prevents the independent labels from starting up on the web, because somewhere, anywhere, somehow, something has already been done before.
SOPA prevents people from reporting news independently and getting out real news without a mass media mentality.
SOPA prevents people from telling the world that they are being treated poorly by the governing bodies.
SOPA prevents speech and freedoms.
SOPA’s acronym states that it is to stop online piracy, but it’s build has little to nothing to do with piracy at all.

Law makers get a 9% approval at first hearing so they stated they would reschedule for 2012. Then they snuck in a a December 21st 2011.
Call your local news and tell them what is going on. We need the whole planet to know. You need to tell your friends. You need to email the news papers, the local news, the national news. If enough people do this, then the whole world knows. You have to prove that everyone knows what SOPA is up to and how crooked SOPA really is.

From here who to contact to fight SOPA

cnn

msnbc

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3303518/

Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77538,00.html

Anderson Cooper

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/

http://twitter.com/andersoncooper

http://www.facebook.com/AC360?sk=info

David Gregory

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6872152/ns/meet_the_press-more/t/meet-press-mailbox/#.TuyoTNX3Jgg

AND DO SEEK OUT YOUR LOCAL NEWS STATIONS AS WELL!

Contact each location and tell them how you feel about SOPA
Stop online piracy ACT.. Yeah, act like you are doing us some good while you cage us.

Need For Speed World is Briliant

Need For Speed world is just brilliant.
EA the makers of Need For Speed games, have put together probably the biggest gaming idea, EVER!.A totally free version of NFS. On a cable connection, you download and install NFS world in under 10 minutes. You play just as you did in the previous games (the epic ones, not the lame ones) you do races to level up and you make points, As you level up, things begin to unlock for you. Good things. and your car gets faster as you buy (with the money you earned while playing) the things that have recently unlocked for you. “But how does the EA team make money?” You ask. You can purchase super duper awesome stuff, if you buy Credits, or “Boosts”. You can only buy certain things at certain levels. So you don’t have a bunch of weirdos in the game doing unbelievable stuff while still being a level on. So they balance it pretty well. Downside is.. I think you can only buy one car with earned points (not referring to purchased boosts) and that’s when you first create your account.If you can buy more, please tell me how.
Something weird I could do without. The menu area as you bring your mouse over stuff, there is a spark thing they do. Looks cool, but really does make it look like my video card is about to give up on me.

nfs buy cars

nfs buy cars

First thing I did when I realized they were actually using previous cities. Was drive around looking for the hide outs.
The game is flawless. I left everything at default settings, except I did turn the music down. A bit loud at start.
With the video at default settings, the game has no lag no hesitation no hiccups. But it really feels like you are playing the first Need for speed.

Default Video Settings for need for speed World

Default Video Settings

 
At first when I adjusted the video settings to the maximum I could , I didn’t see any issues. I drove for about an hour. Did one race and drove around town seeing what my top end looks like with all of the shadows and reflections I now see.

Max Video Settings for Need For Speed World

Max Video Settings

While driving around, I found locations that looked the same but different, as if ten or so years have gone by and the place has changed. Updated and upgraded.

Found an Error while driving

Found an Error while driving

Now I search to see if I can find someone explaining “servererror_fatal_errorcode_7”.

Game play 10/10
graphics 9/10
fun 10/10
cost FREE

Need for speed World, is a must download. It’s everything that the Facebook games are, plus an actual game to play.

Need for Speed World can be downloaded from the Need for Speed servers HERE And finally free. a game that pays for it’s self.

XP Antivirus 2012 – Scam

Well a technician at the office got the virus “XP Antivirus 2012” for me to remove from his hp mini.
steady pop ups. No executable files would run.

To fix your .exe executable files to work again, you need to edit your registry and change one insert to say exefile
open regedit by right clicking the file in your windows folder, select RUN AS, uncheck the box that says “protect my computer and data from….” and then click ok. The regedit.exe will open
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Scroll down till you find the folder icon labeled “EXE”
look for (Default). Right click it and select “modify”. a text box will pop up and just type: exefile
and then click ok.
Now your executables are restored to functioning again.

reg fix for Xp

Now… Since the virus runs as a spin off of an old virus that has been floating around, the fix is similar for each version of windows it was created for so here is the fix for the windows 7 version of this virus

Just scroll down till you see the virus scanners and all of that and use them all. They are all very important in removing this stupid thing.

RogueKiller.exe
ATF-Cleaner.exe helps clear up what’s on your computer in folders that you got locked out of in the attack.
Spybot
ESET Online Virus Scanner  to clear out the Virus
[Microsoft Essentials Windows 7] | [Windows Defender Windows 8]Not a bad free Virus Scanner. Works pretty good.
unhide.exe will get your icons back and your files back if they disappeared when the virus hit you.

If I didn’t make it clear before. This is not a real virus scanner. This is not a real antivirus. This is a virus and will cause stress on your regular computer usage. You will be at your best interest to remove this resource hog bloated garbage and do not give these people money. do not give these people your personal information.

THIS IS A VIRUS!

WordPress 3.3 Makes Changes

The New WordPress 3.3 has made some changes
Lots of changes. It looks as if the folks from WordPress have brought the top toolbar we just recently got, and added it to the side left menu we always had. This look a bit sleeker.
I am quite please with wordpress 3.3 , Even though I had a tiny panic attack and a bad hiccup on the update.

New Media Feature

New Media Feature

There is an updated media feature that allows you to drag and drop the files you are uploading, instead of searching all around your computer for them. I really wasn’t too bothered with the browse button.

The single media icon now launches the uploader
for all file types, and the new drag and drop
interface makes uploading a breeze.

I See the latest wordpress update also changed, the spot that you select image thumbnail sizes from when you are placing pictures on your website. Nothing big enough for me to need to take a screenshot for. you will see the option in your menu when you get around to it.
They added a “View Post” in the toolbar at the top of the screen that they nearly stripped for the menu on the left. In doing that, they removed the option to click your site’s name at the top of the page, to take you to your home page.

After that…. Meh.. nice. looks great. bit large and slow… but ok.
wordpress updated. We are now using wordpress 3.3. Plenty of nice looking features… ok two.. maybe three, bu they aren’t super useful, they kinda just force you to look for stuff.

WordPress 3.3 killed my log in

***update***

Everything below this point is just me trying to solve the issue of admin section of my wordpress website being down. My problem is solved. By manually downloading the latest version of wordpress. replacing all of the files in the new download EXCEPT FOR THE CONTENT FOLDER, OR ANYTHING IN IT. I repeat, do not replace or update or delete your content folder.
How I did it was I downloaded the latest wordpress from WordPress Update Site  and then followed these instructions “WordPress manual update howto”

To sum it up, I download the updated wordpress, extract the content. Of the files that I just extracted, I deleted the folder labeled “content” and then I just dragged and dropped the remaining files into my server, over writing the files on my website. after all was done, I was prompted to update the database. I clicked next, and then all was done. The admin panel got a bit of change. Looks quite nice.

Oh and I normally do the howto in the main section and save this page for news, but this kind of started out as news.

***update***

WordPress 3.3 killed my log in on my review site.
What in the heck do I do now?
I did the update, and was in maintenance mode for about 20 minutes. When it all came back up wp-admin was inaccessible.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_update_data() in /wp-admin/menu.php on line 34

So…. Now what ?

Is my website now just a news site ?

I found the Menu file in the Admin folder and found lines 33 and 34

33.if ( ! is_multisite() || is_super_admin() )
34. $update_data = wp_get_update_data();

Since they work together I just deleted both out. That fixed the issue with 34 but now came the error of line 148 with the same command as line 34

148. $update_data = wp_get_update_data();

I will now try and back up the menu.php file in admin folder and try and get a menu.php file from another one of my sites and just drop it in and see what happens.

Ok.. that was bad. It looked as if the CSS had crashed there also. So.. One last thing to back up and swap out.. and then I just pray that works. If not I restore and search the web some more.. Everyone on the web is saying disable the plugins page and themes. I tried that and it did not work for me. that is why I am doing it this way.
I switched the Meu file and all of the Css files for admin. Fail.
I re-uploaded the original css files and the menu file.
back to original error

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_update_data() in /htdocs/wp-admin/menu.php on line 34

Now I am doing a full manual update. I wish I could do a down grade though.
WordPress manual update howto:

Meanwhile DIGGDIGG floating has been killing all of my websites. and they are all quite different from each other. I wonder if by disabling diggdigg all together (instead of taken from floating down to normal just to get it to work) will prevent this issue.
If anyone seeing this, is also using digg digg, please respond below, I guess it would answer some questions if someone who is not using diggdigg has the exact same problem, would respond below.
So far it looks like diggdigg might not be the issue, just a separate issue all it’s own.

Fake Windows Repair On Windows 7

last month I wrote about fake system restore on windows Xp.
Well I can say without a doubt that the repair restore virus hits windows 7 also.
On windows 7 I got a notice that Google updater needs to update. The virus would not let me select “no”. I uninstall all Google updater and Google toolbars. So I know that there should be no reason for a Google updater program to want access to my computer.
This is the first Windows virus I have experienced on Windows 7. But being a veteran of this specific virus. I knew what to expect. Main thing, is don’t click any of the pop ups. At all.
Push the “windows” logo button on your keyboard and the letter “R” at the same time. because you are about to have everything on your computer hidden from you.
once that opens type in “c:” and press enter. That will take you to your C drive. You can now watch everything look as if it is getting deleted off of your computer. Actually what the virus is doing, is making all of your files “hidden” similar to what you see in this image.

looks like files deleted

hidden files

Don’t worry, your files are not deleted, they are just hidden.
How to get your files back
This pretty creative of the virus writer, because the warning you will see, will look legit and they will say that your hard drive is corrupt or having write errors or that you have a bad sector. So when you look into “my computer” all of your files are gone.. they aren’t gone. If they were gone, you’d be looking at a blank screen.
Well the link I gave above, is the fix, it works the same with windows 7 as it does for windows xp.

Good luck. Took me only 45 minutes this time.
The first time it took 6 hours to solve the issue because I was the first to fix it and post on it. :-)
So yeah.. you are in luck.. you found the right site because everything I link to, to fix the virus, is free.
So have fun with it.

Sceptre 32 inch TV Review


I have the 32″ screen sceptre television. 720p resolution. Presets for picture temperature are either very dark or very white washed or low color. After a bit of manual adjustments, the picture is near flawless.
3 hdmi connections on the back, 1 usb connection. All of the typical rca jacks.
Usb connection is for usb storage drives. Sorry only mp3 and photos. Wont play video.
Screen sizes are normal, zoom,stretch and cinema. Cinema is zoomed way in. Most of the image does not fit in screen are. Its like being zoomed in on 1/4 of the video.
Zoomed mode, zooms in too far also, just not as bad as cinema. Stretched, basically stretches the images to fit the width of screen area. Leaves black bars and middle of viewable area distorted from stretching. Though the manual says the outer edges will be stretched looking.

but. When you have the image set at the default original setting where you have black bares on left,right,top and bottom, your video will be at the highest resolution that your tv can display . So if image quality is your goal…..

bottom left button on the remote is one of the first buttons you should push. hit that three times if you want out of the dark, energy efficient mode. top right button, hit that twice. These are the defaults that I found most bearable with the lighting in my house. I still made manual changes.

The audio through the built in speakers, far above and beyond what I expected. This beats the LG tv I have for comparison. (specs to come in other posts).
External speaker sound, again above what I expected. This is while selecting between 2.1 surround, and 5.1 surround sound.

Overall weight of the sceptre 32 inch tv, a lot lighter than my 19 inch lg monitor and slightly less weight than my 32 inch lg television. Weighs less than 5 lbs. Or at least feels that way to me.
Assembly of the factory stand, very simple. Wall mount is 200mm/200mm and again very simple. For this, there is an extra backing piece you find in the box. I saw mine and was certain the manufacturer goofed and gave me an extra back for a some remote that didn’t get packaged. No worries, this backing is for the lower section to cover the hole when you removed the stand. I chose not to use the wall mount, Since I am in a new house and I really do not want holes in my wall. I may want to relocate that television some day, and would be stuck with holes. So um…. no thanks.
Use of local tv through antenna (had to purchase one) images are amazing. Now that is true high def at it’s finest, if this is an option for you, I recommend it. Highly recommend it. Full screen at default settings with high crisp images.
Signal through local cable, not using the cable box, well there are hundreds upon hundreds of channels that can be received. The Hd channels are of no quality comparison to local broadcast.
Pretty much the same if you use the cable box, you just have to find channel 3 and let the cable box do all of the work for you.

Ratings of Sceptre 32 inch TV
image quality in default 8/10
image quality at full zoom 7/10
audio on board 9/10
Audio through external speakers 10/10
ease of install 10/10
image set up ease 7/10
Broadcast signal image 10/10
Look of the tv (physical appearance) 9/10

Full review rating/score (based on TruXter Tech Review’s unprofessional opinion) 8/10

 

 

Update 12/28/2011

Lately I have noticed a weird noise when the  tv warms up. and then again when it cools off. Sounds like the plastic is snapping.

Update12/5/2012
But still. Bang for buck, this is a great T.V. . One year later and this t.v. is working like it was brand new. Speakers are good with no buzzing, no dead pixels, no off coloring. The t.v. is in great condition.
Menu is a bit slow. Especially selection reception resolution. That’s a tad frustrating. I haven’t found anything about upscaling so. I am not sure it does this. The popping I posted about earlier, seems to have stopped for a good while now. wasn’t a loud pop, more like a surprising crackle.

Found Computer Case

computer case

computer case

Found a computer case on the side of the road.
so. now I have a new addition to my custom computer cases to work on.
I plan to strip this one to the metal. Totally sandblast this one and then chunk a clear coat and have the whole polished aluminum look.
It is a small case. There is a motherboard inside that looks like the max size that can fit inside, and boy, is it ever tiny. The motherboard is supposed to be an economical motherboard. I read a few reviews and watched a couple presentations. Why? I dunno, might not even work. I guess so I have some history on what this computer used to be. So I can stay with in the theme somehow.
No powersupply, no hard drives and no cd or dvd drives. but soon.

Android apps for Fire Alarm and design

Android apps for Fire Alarm and design

hd measure instrument – right off. asks you to put in your height. in centimeters. so you will need this page http://www.onlineconversion.com/length_common.htm
You have to be the exact height you stated and your eyes have to be the “regular” position from top of the head. So if your forehead is a bit high, I would suggest you take it down a centimeter or so. You can get a pretty accurate reading . You are measuring the distance from where you stand, to the base of the object across the room. So, if you are measuring the distance to a wall, you need to point the sites on the spot where the wall meets the floor. Once you establish distance, you can then measure height. Works like smart meter but seem much more precise.

measure & sketch – this one has potential for something. but I couldn’t get a measurement. looks more like a designing tool than a measuring. actually looks like you take a photo of a space and start measuring available area to design in. Would be awesome if it would export to autodesk.(if I am correct as to what it does. but really, I haven’t a clue.. couldnt do much more than take a picture of the room.

distance and area measurement didn’t do anything but say “awaiting signal”

smart measure – got it right on the mark. no setting no configuration needed seems to work on the feature that repositions your screen to tell what angel you are holding the phone. the more straight up the phone, the further out. plus an obstructions are sensed by the camera. very nifty. error is you have to consider your distance from the base and the distance to the top and subtract your distance from the base to get the full height.

navaile electrical calculator

voltage calc
voltage drop free

Built Computer from Spare Parts

I have been hanging on test parts that have been given to me for reviews, and been allowed to keep. So I have held on to them because, who the heck throws away good computer parts?
Again they were all free so they are not top end but they aren’t trash.
So I snapped together a complete computer using an old HP case.
The computer boots up fine.
The parts are now dated a bit. IDE hard drive and a single core 2.5 gig Pentium Processor and an AGP slot on the motherboard.
but the cooling is good and the boot up is fast and smooth. XP operating system.
I am considering making a contest here, or turning the computer into a Roku box type media center.
The computer is currently plugged into my little 19 inch LG tv right next to the cable box and dvd player. Nothing is passing through, like cable, or dvd player. Heck it isn’t even plugged into the internet yet. I may go wifi with this computer. Uncertain yet.
I do have other cases in the garage, but I kind of want to save those for the custom mod cases I will be doing pretty soon. but that case is very heavy. Has to be over 30lbs.

You tell me, just vote yes or no if I should give the computer away in a contest here on the tech review.

[poll id=”15″]