File sharing.

I’ve used a couple different services to share files with other people. I’ve used Box.Net to share some of my files, I’ve used YouTube.com to share some videos, I’ve used SlideShare.net to upload PowerPoint presentations and also iPaper from Scribd for various documents, including the document I wrote called How to become a commuter power user. And that’s just websites made for that kind of thing. So then there’s email, IM and Skype. Most people use YouTube, almost everyone has used email to send files before, some people use Skype and end up sending files that way, and some people use IM to send files. So everyone does use file sharing, even if it’s not necessarily through Box.net, iPaper, Slideshare, and other places. So which service is the best? well here’s me opinion.

This list is not necessarily the ranking of the specific service listed.

1. Box.net. Any file type.
   Box.net is a pretty good service where you can upload any file, as far as I know. One problem I had was the fact that you can only upload a max size of 10MB without upgrading your account. A plus to this would be that you can upload .exe files, which some sites restrict.
2. Slideshare. Presentations.
   Slideshare is kinda like YouTube, but for presentations. SlideShare doesn’t seem to be extremely popular, I personally use iPapaer instead.
3. iPaper. All documents.
   iPapaer is a great service for uploading documents of any kind. You can either go to the website and upload a file of CC ipaper@scribd.com on the email with the document your sending to everyone for iPaper to also send everyone on that list a version of the document on the web. The only drawback is that everyone will get two of the documents. One with the original document and the other with the iPaper version.
4. YouTube. Videos.
   YouTube, as you probably know, is a website where you can upload videos onto the web so that people can view your videos.

Every one of the listed services handles a special kind of file great, iPaper for documents, YouTube for videos, SlideShare for presentations,  and Box.net for anything else.

My new gaming computer.

It’s not actually new, one of my dad’s friends got a Mac and didn’t know what to do with his gaming computer, so he gave is to me. It’s a nice computer, he also gave us a Wireless Mouse and Keyboard, and a nice monitor to go with it. Now to get to the software part of this post. When I got it he still had all the settings, some of the files and all of the programs he had before still one there. I spent a day cleaning up that computer, removing unwanted programs, running CCleaner, scanning with Ad-Aware, and in general, working with it. I also downloaded Roblox, which, if you read the previous post, didn’t work on the gaming computer, but I think I know why. When I was trying to fix Windows Movie Maker I went an lowered the hardware accelerator to try and fix Windows Movie Maker. That didn’t work and I felt no need to raise it back up, so I didn’t and proceeded to play Roblox, only to find that it didn’t work, just like on the gaming computer. So my theory is that the hardware accelerator was set, be default, to be very low, which made Roblox not work. But before I had figured that out I decided, because the version of Windows XP, Windows XP Pro, wasn’t registered, which meant I couldn’t update the computer using Windows Update, or I could but I couldn’t download the service pack and I kept getting annoying pop-up notices so I decided to re-install Windows XP. I had a copy on Windows XP Pro but I decided to use Windows XP Home. So I popped this disk in, and rebooted my computer. After a few reboots and some consulting of the Internet of which function key to hold down for that particular computer, I got the boot menu open where I could select to boot from the Windows CD, which initiated the Windows XP install process. I said that I wanted to install windows XP, went through the EULA (End User License Agreement) and couldn’t hit F8 to agree to the EULA because that particular keyboard had pre-set functions for the Function keys, I.E, email, IM etcetra. And of course there wasn’t a key that had FN on it (the actual key that was supposed to be the FN key was the F Lock key), so I had to cancel the Windows XP re-install until I figured out which key the FN key was. Eventually I found out be accident, and restarted my computer, hit F8, agreed to the EULA by hitting F Lock F8, and got to another obstacle. It asked me whether or not I wanted to delete the partition I had already, or create a new partition, or install on the existing partition. I knew I didn’t want to install on the partition already existing, but I didn’t know if I wanted to delete the partition that was there, or to create a new one. After while I decided I would create a new one, then come back and delete the old one. When I tried to make a new one, it wouldn’t work. So I deleted the old partition, installed Windows XP Home on the now clear partition, and booted my computer with its new operating system. Now I found out that, though the computer had a wireless antenna, and had wireless capabilities, Windows XP didn’t install a Wireless connection manager to use it. I later found out that the Wireless antenna was a belkin and I needed software to use it. So I went to the Belkin website on another computer, got some software that should have worked, put it on a flash drive, installed it on the gaming computer, and it didn’t work. So now the gaming computer is still without Internet, I can’t play the one game I want to play on there, Roblox, a typical computer day.

Taking a video.

Recently I downloaded HyperCam 2 so that I could take some videos of me playing Roblox and post them to YouTube. So I took my video and opened Windows Movie Maker and imported the video of me playing War CTF. As soon as Windows Movie Maker was done importing the video, Windows Movie Maker crashed. When I went back and opened Windows Movie Maker my imported video wasn’t there, and the autosave was set at 10 minuets so I lost it. So then I tried this twice more with the same results. After that I went to Microsoft Help and Support and found out that maybe my problem was a file called Divxaf.ax, and to search my computer, and if found delete it. Well it wasn’t there, so I went on to the other suggestion which was to lower the hardware acceleration. I did that and nothing new happened, besides the fact that with my hardware “decelerated” I couldn’t play Roblox anymore. So no help there. So I went and tired to chat online with a support person, and it was “after business hours” when I tried last night so I couldn’t do that. Today when I tried to use Microsoft Help and Support, during business hours, I eventually got to a page that told me I had to pay to use the support! Of all the cheap ways to make money. So I went and tried to go to the Microsoft website so I could try to re-install Windows Movie Maker, but when I got to the website it told me that Windows Movie Maker was on the Windows XP disk and that’s where I could get it. So I went to Download.com and downloaded it from there, only to find that nothing happened besides all my Windows Movie Maker icons, instead of saying Windows Movie Maker, said “@C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\1033\wmm2res.dll,-61446″. So I decided I was done with Windows Movie Maker and decided to find an alternative, so last night I went and tried to use Roxio Easy Media Creator 9. I tried Video-Wave and Cine-Magic and both didn’t open. So I re-booted my computer, tried everything I listed before again and turned off my computer for the night. Today I came back and tried to open Video Wave from Roxio but was stopped by an error message reading: “Your video card does not meet the minimum requirements to use this program, please upgrade your video card.” And Cine-Magic still wont open. So then I went and looked for a new movie manager. What I eventually got, was Jahshaka. After a rather lengthy install, where I had to install some library or books, I opened Jahshaka, and was disappointed. Jahshaka is nothing like Windows Movie Maker, Windows Movie Maker shows me frames of about 10 or so seconds, Jahshaka showed me the movie, was slow, and confusing. Windows Movie Maker, to my surprise, was easy to use. If Windows Movie Maker didn’t keep crashing, I would definitely recommend it, and still will, even if I can’t use it. Out of all this, one good thing did come out of this, I know why I couldn’t play Roblox on my new Gaming PC, the hardware accelerator was set to low or none. But anyway. HyperCam 2 is a great program to take videos on your screen, that doesn’t take a lot of CPU up.

More Later…

WordPress or Joomla?

I’ve been using WordPress for a coupled months now, I’ve been writing on This wbesite. WordPress is a nice, simple, easy to use editor, but it’s not very powerful. Especially compared to Joomla. On WordPress you really don’t get a whole lot of Fonts, but then again, you don’t get that many on Joomla either. On WordPress you can’t really customize your colors all that much, at least, not without paying about $15 a month. On Joomla you can change the color, free. On WordPress you can only choose from a certain amount of layouts. On Joomla you can make your own. Making your own layout is a great option for all people that build websites. Since I’ve been using WordPress I’ve been using a layout know as ChaoticSoul, which is a good layout, but I would have liked to change it a little. I lke the way everything’s layed out, but I don’t like the color a whole lot, I would have liked something a little brighter. And I don’t want to comit to paying $15 a month, yet. I have to say though, Joomla isn’t an easy website to set up. You have to set up a MySQL databases, configure PHP, upload the files and more. So it’s definetily not an easy thing, or at least I don’t think it is. On WordPress all you have to do is go to the website and click sign-up and follow the prompts. I’ve tried to add another admin to my website on WordPress, but all that happened was I got another name I could post under. On Joomla I got a username and password. And Joomla has so many features that WordPress doesn’t. One of what I think will become one of my favorites will be the Private Messaging service foiund on Joomla, which, as it’s name says, let’s me send private maeeages to the other writers for this website.  WordPress is a good website host, but Joomla is better for the more advanced bloggers out there.

How to become a Computer Power User.

Since this document is 10 pages long in a word document, way too big to post here, I have this link below that links to the document viewing at iPaper. You will have to have flash enabled though.

How to become a computer power user.