Reuse that old supply

You can use a old supply to run devices such as a water cooling system or anything that needs 12 volts by following the steps mentioned below.

This is also a good method to test a supply before you plug it to the main board.

Using something such as a thin wire/paper clip, short pin 14 [PS ON] for the 20 pin connector or Pin 16 on the 24 pin connector to any one of the pins with the black [ground/return] wires.

There are no voltages that can hurt you on any of the pins but if you short the wrong one you could blow out the supply or trip a breaker.

The first ten pins from the orange wire end are the same for the 20 and 24 pin connector Just that what is pin 11 for the 20 pin connector becomes pin 13 on the 24 pin connector. Shown below is a 20 pin connector.



More resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX

Free Document Templates

Did you ever need to write that bill of sale and all of the sudden realize why you didn't make it into law school. Judge Judy would burst a vein if she read a rental agreement I would come up with. Let experts in many fields take the worry and embarrassment out of doing business for you. These sites are what the Internet is all about.

http://www.scribd.com/ - Scribd gives you advise and info on a wide range of topics. I typed "car loan" and was presented with documents on how to set up your own loan agreement to how to prepare to sell your car. It's like having Dads advise on the Internet.

http://www.docstoc.com/ - Docstoc is a resource for professional documents.

http://www.gazhoo.com/ - Gazhoo is a marketplace where experts upload their documents and people in need pay a small fee to access it. This is a library of document on many topics and subjects. I wouldn't submit a term paper downloaded from this site but it would make a great reference.

How serious are you about security?

http://www.astaro.com/our_products/astaro_security_gateway/network_protection


You may be serious about security but knowing what you are doing is another story. This is more than a plug and play application and require some networking and PC skill to implement correctly. There is nothing worse than to think you are safe when you left you keys in the locked door. This product is focused at small and medium business and the home version is free. There is a question whether you need another layer of security. For the business its not only important to secure your network from the outside but its just as important to keep confidential files secure on the inside of your network. Just because your business is small doesn't mean you are one big happy family. This will go in my really Geeky category.

Astaro Security Gateway Software Appliance – Turns any PC into a security appliance within minutes, offering maximum deployment flexibility. Download your trial version of the Astaro Security Gateway Software Appliance here.
These links bring you to a page to get a login. Once you get a login you can follow my link at the bottom of this post to jump to the free software.

Astaro Security Gateway Virtual Appliance – Ready-to-go virtual machines for VMware environments, helping you to consolidate your IT infrastructure. Download your trial version of the Astaro Security Gateway Virtual Appliance here.




What does it do?
With Astaro Security Gateway Network Protection, network administrators gain a simple and effective way to:

Control network access. Use the latest stateful deep inspection firewall techniques to control user access in regard to specific information and access times, access times and usage of IM and P2P applications.
Stop intruders. Implement state of the art intrusion prevention technology for in-depth filtering, protecting against more than 6,000 attacks as well as zero day attacks.
Secure remote access. Use SSL, IPSec, L2TP or PPTP protocols to create secure virtual private networks, connecting branch offices and granting remote access to workers.
Optimize performance. Leverage our patent-pending content inspection framework to scan traffic with little or no latency and reserve bandwidth for time-sensitive applications such as VoIP.


Astaro Network Protection
Why should you use it?
Astaro Security Gateway provides complete protection for your network through a single, easy-to-manage solution, featuring a Firewall, Intrusion Prevention and VPN application.
Eliminating the administrative burden and integration issues associated with separate point products, Astaro Security Gateway delivers a fully integrated state-of-the art network protection solution.

The software is free for home use. The link is a little hard to find. They offer a ISO CD download and a VMware version.
https://my.astaro.com/license/home/

GIMP Screen Capture in Windows

Gimp has a very useful screen capture function under the "acquire" from the main toolbox menu. You select "screen shot" and it lets you choose a window or the full screen. The timer option gives you a chance to get set up before you take the shot. The window option uses a drag and drop crosshair to make the selection.


I will show you another method to select a part of that window and save it to a JPG file.

Steps 1 - 4 can be done with the acquire function mentioned above. The reason I'm showing you this method is so you can get familiar with the size options. The ability to manipulate the screen size in pixels as well as inches is unique.

1.) Determine you display resolution by right clicking on the screen and choose PROPERTIES, then SETTINGS. From the screen capture below you see 1400 x 1050 resolution.

2.) CTRL PrintScreen - captures your entire screen to the clip board. I captured my writing this blog post with the gimp toolbar visible. I will cut out and save just the GIMP toolbar next.

3.) On the GIMP toolbar select new image and set the box size to equal your screen resolution.





4.) Paste the image into the new box. (this can also be done using Print Screen Button and the "acquire -> then paste as new")

5.) Now you have a full screen image. To select an area you need to select Layer from the GIMP menu and Anchor Layer.

6.) Now you can use the selection tool to select an area and cut or copy it.

7.) Go to your GIMP tool bar and select new again and the window will pop up in the exact size of the area you just cut or copied.

8.) Paste it into the new window.

9.) Now just save it to the file format of your choice and you are done.
In my case I chose JPG and Export and I was done.



The process seems long but takes about 10 seconds. If you do a lot of this I would suggest you use one of the screen capture utilities I recommend in an earlier post.

Synergy in the workplace, not what you think?

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Synergy allows you to share the same keyboard and mouse across multiple PCs across a network connection.

The process is actually quite simple but Synergy also does it quite well. The program works cross platform with any OS. You can even share the clip board. You tell the application which machine is the server. That machine is the one that has the keyboard and mouse attached. Then you tell the program what machine you will be taking over the contols when your mouse passes the edge of your screen.

Does this replace a KVM switch?

Not really, you still need a keyboard and mouse attached to each computer. Secondly it doesn't support multibox gaming. I have a program I'm working on that will support multibox if I can generate enough interest in it. Right now it can run a macro that controls keystrokes and mouse movements. Synergy sometimes has issues connecting to the server where I find a reboot of one or both systems is required.

Download for Windows - SynergyInstaller-1.3.1.exe

Take a Note

What we are looking at today are tools to improve productivity and to allow you to work more efficiently with fewer disasters. When I say tools I really mean the line up of front runner replacements for a staple program that most people use everyday.

NotePad

NotePad adheres to a few rules, fast, simple, and lightweight. I will add a few more. What ever you open in notepad isn't going to reek havoc on your machine. The file size is small. The txt format is a standard but you can save with any extention.

So why use a replacement? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The replacements offer many features that puts more power at our finger tips. Because there are feature differences I choose to point out the ones that do the most with the least amount of skill required to operate.

Most of these are FREE.
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Notepad ++ - Open Source notepad app that goes beyond the definition of notepad. This is a easy install, go with the defaults and its ready to use.

For most people this is a nice editor but in my extensive testing it was prone to crashing and locking up. Also when copying over special characters it stops at the first special character and you loose the rest. Both of these are major bugs and makes this unusable.

Download - Executable



Here are the features of Notepad++ :
Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding - supporting many programming languages
WYSIWYG
User Defined Syntax Highlighting
Auto-completion
Multi-Document - a must have for a notepad replacement
You can edit several documents at the same time.
Multi-View
You have two views at same time. That means you can visualize (edit) 2 different documents at the same time (screenshot). You can visualize (edit) in the 2 views one document at 2 different positions as well. The modification of document in one view will carry out in another view (i.e. you modify the SAME document when you are in clone mode, see screenshot).
Regular Expression Search/Replace supported - extremely nice feature
Full Drag ‘N' Drop supported - sort of brings it out of the realm of a note pad
Dynamic position of Views
File Status Auto-detection - nice feature that can sometimes save you and can sometimes be the end of you if you don't pay attention.
Zoom in and zoom out
Multi-Language environment supported
Bookmark - again goes beyond a simple notepad
Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
Macro recording and playback - not sure who would need this
You can save several macros and edit their keyboard shortcuts for the next use.
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Notepad2 - this lives up to the notepad replacement philosophy, small, fast, and simple. The one drawback, it does not use tabs. It does have html highlighting.
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html


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Metapad - they haven't sold me but there is nothing stopping you from trying it.
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/download.html

Metapad is a small, fast (and completely free) text editor for Windows 9x/NT/XP with similar features to Microsoft Notepad but with many extra (and rather useful) features.
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This guy has a few nice apps - http://www.paehl.de/english.php

SimpEdit 1.0.053 - is a notepad replacement with a built in Hexeditor (great idea)

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PSPad - another editor that has built in FTP and a HexEdit feature as well. The interface may be too busy to call this a notepad replacement.
http://www.pspad.com/en/

spell checker - might be useful, God knows I need it.

Here are some of its features:
Work on several documents at the same time
Save desktop session to later reopen all open files
FTP client - you can edit files directly from the web
Macro recorder to record, save and load macros
Search and replace in files
Text difference with color-coded differences highlighted
Templates (HTML tags, scripts, code templates...)
installation contains templates for HTML, PHP, Pascal, JScript, VBScript, MySQL, MS-Dos, Perl,...
Syntax highlighting auto set by file type
Auto correction
Intelligent internal HTML preview using IE and Mozilla
Full HEX editor
Spell checker
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EditPad Lite - Free for personal use (non-commercial)
Again here is a great program that has many powerful features that can be very useful to a web admin. The one feature I enjoy is a find and replace that will span over all of your open documents if you choose. It you have to admin tons of files this can make it well worth the price for the pro version, not really.

They want a whopping $50 for this thing. I would buy it at $10, no questions asked even though I use Edit+. This is another example where programmers look to cover the cost of business with corporate sales and in the long run the corporate red tape will make them the looser.

http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html

EditPad Lite is a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor. EditPad Lite works with Windows NT4, 98, 2000, ME, XP and Vista.
EditPad Lite is free for non-commercial use. That is, you may use EditPad Lite if you do not get paid, directly or indirectly, for the work you do with EditPad Lite. Registered charities may also use EditPad Lite. If you want more editing power or need a text editor to use at work, check out EditPad Pro.
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EDIT+ (my recommendation)

If you work is mission critical and you need a powerful notepad this is well worth the money.

http://www.editplus.com/ - maybe too much going on to be considered a notepad replacement but this is the one I use and I paid the $30 for the privilege. Is it the best? Probably not but I have to use it all day long and I like the built in features. Its easy to use right out of the gate.

1-user license: US $30 - I would go with $18 if this were my product

EditPlus is an Internet-ready 32-bit text editor, HTML editor and programmers editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.

Syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, Perl, C/C++, Java, JavaScript and VBScript. Also, it can be extended for other programming languages based on custom syntax files.

Seamless Web browser for previewing HTML pages, and FTP commands for uploading local files to FTP server.

Other features include HTML toolbar, user tools, line number, ruler, URL highlighting, auto-completion, cliptext, column selection, powerful search and replace, multiple undo/redo, spell checker, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and more.
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For the MegaHigh Tech
____________________

Scite

http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html - source code editor - this can work as a notepad replacement and is extremely powerful but I found the initial configuration to be a bit beyond the normal or even semi-pro skill set.

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Kedit - a windows based Vi like editor that has one very nice feature. A built in command line
http://www.kedit.com/index.html

Kedit has command line editing similiar to Vi. Its really a macro facility built on REXX. Check out the features page for more on this amazing editor.
http://www.kedit.com/features.ia1.html

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Full List of editors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_editors

The hunt for the lowest price begins

There are loads of websites that help you find the lowest price. There isn't always a best place to search.

I prefer http://pricewatch.com/ because it usually fishes out the lowest price (which it did again in my test today). They also include the shipping costs in any comparison. The main interface lets you scan over a range of products in a category that allows you to maybe upgrade to a better model of what you are looking for, for less money in some cases. The global price comparison also lets you see where technology takes a big price leap. I usually buy the best product just before the price jump. An example of this would be a search for CPUs. I can compare Intel vs. AMD. I can then compare models. For example we see a $45 jump from a Athlon 5200 to a 5400 CPU. Oddly enough the 5600 only has a $20 jump from the 5200 which means it comes in at $20 less that the 5400. The idea here is that you get to see all the prices side by side to make a comparison.

Price watch does a good job policing its retailers. One thing to look for is a GSA contract. If a retailer has special GSA pricing they have to go through a rigorous process to get the licence and they tend to have fairly low prices to compete with other government contractors. The GSA price is a percentage below the retail price.


Today we are hunting for:
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - Retail at NewEgg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16823126179
Original Price: $71.99 You Save: $4.00 $67.99($47.99 after $20.00 Mail-In Rebate)

All of the items below have access to the manufactures rebate.

pricegrabber.com - 68.90 - includes shipping - from ClubIt.com (I never heard of these guys and neither has CNET

pricewatch.com - 67.99 - Includes shipping from NewEgg

nextag.com - 67.84 ($8.00 shipping) - From mwave (good company, great support)

Bizrate.com - 67.84 ($8.00 shipping)- mwave again

pricescan.com - 67.99 - Includes shipping from NewEgg

pricesearch.com - not online yet

lowpriceshopper.com - brought me to multiple stores offing the product. It might be a good start if you want to find the product at a local store.

cnet.com - 68.90 - includes shipping - from ClubIt.com (I never heard of these guys and neither has CNET

Dealigg.com - Multiple prices, they include current rebates to help you find a deal that might be passed up. They also show past rebates so if you can wait these usually cycle around.

buy.com - $70.70 - shipping $9.40 - total $80.10
shopzilla.com - $63.99 - $9.95 shipping - Total $73.94

http://www.google.com/products - xpcgear.com - $66.99 shipping $9.28 - total $76.27

pricingcentral.com - waste of time
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Buying DVDs Online:
http://www.deepdiscount.com/

Members of http://www.dvdtalk.com/ get a discount at deepdiscount whick will usually produce the best price.