There is this great tool called MailTrap that lets you set up a free account. Using this tool allows you to send email and it goes to the http://mailtrap.io/ site that you can either check on the web or have it automatically forward to your own email.

First step is to make sure you know your AKO password. Once that is done follow these steps below.

More to follow. This is just a placeholder right now.

My theory is that you just have to keep your mind too busy to be able to do the hiccups. Here is the process:

Hold your breathe

Choose an odd number between 30-100 that isn’t a multiple of 5 or 2.

Now, count BACKWARD (this is important) by 3, 6, 7, 8, or 9

You will notice that while you are concentrating on counting your hiccups will go away. This is very simple, but it works!

NOTE: Most tips only apply to a Windows machine.

1) Mouse. Clean your mouse. Sure, this peripheral is a relatively cheap item, but it can be devastating when you need it and it all of a sudden it doesn’t work! If you have an optical mouse, a mouse that uses light rather than a ball and wheels, disregard these instructions.

To clean your mouse look under it and you should see the ball toward the middle of it. There is a circular thing around the ball that should have instructions to rotate it one way or another. Then, look inside and notice a few wheels, usually, one at the top and another to the side. If you notice black stuff, dirt, on the wheel, you should use a toothpick or something small and skinny to scrape the dirty away. Immediately you should notice smoother movement of the mouse.

2) Keyboard. Most keyboards have little crevices between the keys. All kinds of things can find its way between the keys. For some of the stuff, simply lifting the keyboard upside down and shaking can result in a lot of the stuff falling out. What I suggest is getting a can of compressed air or similar product and blow out what ever might be in the keyboard. This should result in a better working keyboard.

3) Scan Disk. This system utility should be run at the very least once a month. It’s better once a week. Scan Disk will check the physical disk for errors and check all files and folders for errors as well. Certain problems with computers can be simply be remedied by Scan Disk. Be prepared for a couple hours of letting the computer do its thing with this utility. The bigger the hard drive the longer it will take.

4) Defragment. This is another important utility that should be run at the very least once a month, preferably once a week. This utility rearranged the ‘pieces’ of data on the disc so that they are linear and quicker to access. With later versions of Windows (Vista and 7) this utility is not as vital but it is still a great utility to use regularly.

When a file is created and saved on a computer then is exited from what ever program used it, it is saved as “clusters,” or tiny segments of the hard drive, and can be in many different places around the hard drive. Defragmenter finds the multiple clusters from all over the disk and puts them right next to each other. This will make programs and files load faster. As with Scan Disk be prepared for a couple of hours of letting the computer do its thing.

The bigger the hard drive the longer it will take. Also note, that the more often you do this the less time it will take to do it again. For example, if you haven’t defragmented for over a month and your hard drive is 20 Gigabytes (GB), it may take 3 hours to complete, but if you waited through that and defragmented every week with that same hard drive it may only take 1 hour because there hasn’t been nearly as much activity in a week than in a month so there is less work.

5) Backup. If you have email, or letters or reports or anything you deem important on the computer, of course you don’t want anything to happen to it. Computers are far from perfect and things can and usually will happen where files can get lost, hence the importance of backing up. Use a DVD/CD recorder. The media (blank CD’s) are less than a dollar a piece; they are versatile and last pretty much forever (within reason. Don’t expose to extreme heat or cold and take care of them and they will last several years). The expense is between $100-$200 for a CD recorder, but its well worth it to not lose your precious files. Or, use a zip drive. These can be about $100 and the media (zip disks) run about $10 a piece. Also, the difference between a CD-recorder and a zip drive is that the CD-recorder holds 650 Megabytes (MB) of space and a zip disk would only hold up to 250 Megabytes (MB) of space (depending on the type of disk you buy).

6) Anti-Virus. This is most likely the most important thing one could do to help the upkeep of their computer. There are two well known anti-virus programs: Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee Anti- Virus. Both of these have their pluses and minuses and virtually work exactly the same. They will both get the work done and protect you from viruses. A person can follow all of the above outlines and then a virus can wipe out the computer if the person didn’t have an anti-virus. Free Alternative Microsoft Security Essentials can be downloaded and used 100% for free.

Computers can be scary to non-techie owners, but with the right care they can last a long time and be less intimidating.

Terms and Conditions

Adobe Store

Enter SAVE80EDU at checkout.

Acrobat X Pro Student and Teacher Edition $23.80 (Retail $449, Student/Teacher $119)
Photoshop CS5 Extended Student and Teacher Edition $39.80 (Retail  $999, Student/Teacher $119)
Creative Suite 5.5 Design Standard Student and Teacher Edition $59.80  (Retail $1299, Student/Teacher $299)
Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium Student and Teacher Edition $89.80 (Retail $1899, Student/Teacher $449)
Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium Student and Teacher Edition $89.80 (Retail $1699, Student/Teacher $449)
Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium Student and Teacher Edition $89.80 (Retail $1799, Student/Teacher $449)
Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection Student and Teacher Edition $179.80 (Retail $2599, Student/Teacher $899)

Check out their site for more information. These are great deals for a limited time. Get them while it’s available! Ends March 2, 2012

ALL of these suites are perpetual licenses and CAN be used for commercial purposes.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/25f26dd.html#main_education_discount

For copying simply select the text you want to copy and press CTRL and C at the same time. Then move to the place you want to paste it and press control V. If you want to remove the text from the original spot you can Cut it by pressing CTRL and X and then paste it using CTRL and C.

You can navigate text quickly by using CTRL. Simply hold down the CTRL button and use the arrow keys and you will move by a single word. A word is defined by being separated by a space. Sometimes if there are hyphens this method will go to the hyphen, but in general it will move by the word separated by a space.

To select the text as you move simply hold SHIFT and use the arrow keys and you will move by a single character. If you want to select by a whole word you can hold SHIFT and CTRL and press the arrow keys and you will move by an entire word.

Getting quickly from the top to the bottom of the document you can use CTRL and HOME or CTRL and END, respectively.

All of these and a few others are illustrated in a video I recorded recently that you can see below.

Thank you for reading and give me a thumbs up and subscribe if you like my tutorial. More will come shortly.

Do you get it? If not, then this article is for you! Binary is the basic ‘language’ of computers. Common analogies are on and off switches. In binary, on and off are represented with 1 and 0 respectively.

Computers use bytes to store data. A byte is represented by 8 bits. A bit is a single 0 or 1. The highest number value a byte can go up to is 255. Technically it’s 256 values because 0 is a value which is a power of 2.

For example 0000 0010 is 2. To figure out a value in binary one must multiply each number from right to left by the power of two. This illustration will give a better picture of what I mean.

This is just a basic introduction to what binary is. I hope this helped you in understanding what people mean when they talk about binary. Please leave comments below if you have specific questions about binary you would like me to address.

We discussed the types of games we liked to play and our skills we could bring to the group and it turns out we had 3 programmers and 3 artists. The competition took place over a weekend at 6pm PST Friday evening until 6pm that Monday evening. We decided to go with a top down game and we used Unity 3d as the engine for the game using c# as the language. Our artists used Maya and 3ds Max for the art assets.

Keep in mind I had only met this group a week prior and then spent just about 60-72 straight hours with them in the same vicinity. We, of course, took sleeping breaks and ate because there’s only so long you can go without sleep before you are useless at anything you might try to do.

By Monday afternoon we had turned out something pretty nifty, in my opinion.

Was it polished? No.

Was it finished? No.

Was it working and playable? Definitely.

But it was something we did in 3 days with very little sleep and with almost complete strangers, and that says a lot.

You can check out the version we submitted here. We are going to polish it up and put another version out here in a couple of weeks. We all have day jobs and simply cannot dedicate all our free time to fixing this project.

The point of Ludum Dare is to be creative and to create something. We collaborated an idea, worked together and produced a working game. That is a tremendous accomplishment.

Throughout the competition we kept a blog on the Ludum Dare site check it out here.

All in all I had an absolutely awesome experience. I met new people, proved to myself I had what it takes to be a valuable part of a team and best of all I created a game!

Please leave comments below on what you think about this game. I will post an update when we get the more polished version of the game done in a couple weeks. Also, keep a look out for a preview of another game I am working on using Unity3d!

Links:

My Groups Ludum Dare 22 Entry

My Groups Ludum Dare Page

Unity3d

For example if I want to sign up for a free service of some kind, say a newsletter or something to see if you really will like it but don’t want to give away your real email. You simply signup with an email like dontspamme@mailinator.com (you can literally use that email address, but it might be a commonly used one too). When you sign up and it says that they sent you an email simply go to http://www.mailinator.com and type in dontspamme in the username box and it will check that email.

Keep in mind that anyone that knows the username can check that mailbox. There is no password required. You could use a random sequence of letters like ertyuiop@mailinator.com and just check it right away not having to worry about remembering it later.

OS: Operating System. The essential piece of software to use any type of computer. Whether it be a graphing calculator to the computer you used to get this article there is an OS instructing the computer how to turn the information it receives into something you understand..

Tech Fact: Microsoft DID NOT steal the idea of a GUI (Graphical User Interface) from Apple, in fact, they both got the idea from Xerox who developed the GUI and the mouse. Microsoft just released their product a little before the Macintosh was released and a lot of people hate them for that.

Install/Setup: These terms are used almost interchangeably. They are used when a new piece of software is put on the computer. Most of the time a program will have a ‘setup.exe’ program which when executed will ‘install’ all the files on your computer.

Download: This term is used when you are getting a file FROM a Web site. DOWN means FROM server.

Upload: Web masters should know this term more than an every day user. This means YOU are sending files TO a Web server. UP means TO server.

Hard Drive: This is the physical piece of hardware that holds all the information. Information is stored using binary. This is the only thing that a computer can understand. Binary is a system that only has 2 states, on or off, 1 or 0. This is also referred to as a base 2 system. Our decimal number system is a base 10. Another popular number system in the computer world is called Hexadecimal, this is a base 16 system where the values are expressed as 0-9 and A-F, A being 10 and so on.

Byte: A byte is made up of 8 bits which is a 1 or a 0 in the binary system. A single byte with a value of 0 would look like this 0000 0000 (the space is added for readability, to see the numbers in blocks of 4). To count in binary you must know the powers of 2. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. Using these values and switching on and off numbers in the byte can produce a number from 0 to 255, or 256 values (including the 0).

I explain more about binary in it’s own article.

Kilobyte (KB): Because data storage is measured in bytes which is a base 2 system a kilobyte is made up of 1024 bytes. Most of the time it is rounded down to 1000 for simplicity. 1024 is 2¹⁰

Megabyte (MB): Megabyte.

Central Processing Unit: This is the ‘brain’ of the computer that determines the speed of the computer.

Megahertz (MHz): 1,000,000 (one million) hertz. This measures the amount of cycles or lines of code the CPU can execute per second. 800 MHz has 800,000,000 cycles per second.

Gigahertz (GHz): Gigahertz. 1,000,000,000 (one billion) hertz.

This is just skimming the surface of all the techie computer terms that are out there. If there are terms that you think should be on this list please leave a comment below. If you heard a term and would like to know what it means, please leave a comment and I will add it.