Special Messages, Links, Other Sources

I have always loved these little toys it is always fun to see
history in the making. With the old we make a new. It does not get any better than this in my opinion.

No matter what technologies we come up with there is
always that simplicity which is pure beauty. My father who
brought me up to appreciate such things as this, I will pass on to my family.

I only wish we could return to these days again. I'm so thankful, we still have folks who bring back special value to the old school traditions of the past

These photos are free for desktop backgrounds. They work well with any format. Just click the link go to the page and right click save as. There is more to come as I break out my collection. These photos are available to anyone as long as they are not altered or used for resale without the original owners permission.

"Find Your Area Freecycle Here."
Landfills are being filled by the day.
Please help by giving away your
used items to others in need for free.

Freecycle is a part of Yahoo Groups, there is lots of household items being tossed in our community landfills or dumpsters, "another mans junk is another mans treasure". How the group works is simple, if you have a need, you can post to your local group, others on the list if they have it will give it to you for free. this is the cool thing about freecycle, it is just about in every state and county even overseas. If you have things you need to give away for free, people will email you and ask to pick the item or items up. Nothing is sold or bartered all free. Look for your local freecycle group by Clicking Here

There are various methods to backup hard drives.

Method 1: Create A Drive Image

The first approach to hard drive backup is to use a good backup software to create a disk image. Why is this one of the best methods to backup hard drives? Well, because it is a tried and tested method and all the big corporations use this approach as the standard.

A drive image is nothing but a detailed representation of every bit and byte in your hard disk. Once you create a drive image, you’re free to restore it to any hard drive you want. PC just crashed? No problem. Restore the drive image into a new hard drive. I like to create a drive image just after installing a clean version of Windows XP. This allows me to restore and revert to a clean hard disk image in case some virus or malware affects my PC.

I’ve used it since the days of DOS, and it has proven time and again to be at the top of its game. The latest version supports Windows XP and incremental backups – meaning you can create on drive image snapshot and keep adding changes to it.

Acronis True Image is a competing product which has garnered many awards too. I haven’t tried it out, but I certainly will, since many people have raved about its performance and ease-of-use.

Method 2: Backup To Another Hard Drive, CD or DVD

Another ‘best method’ to backup hard drives is to use another hard drive. What do I mean by another hard drive? Well, you can simply copy your existing important data to another hard disk in desktop PC. Another approach is to get an external portable hard drive and copy your stuff there.

Of course, you should understand that there are risks. The second hard drive that you backup to may also fail. Some alternatives are to use CD and DVD media for backups as they are much less likely to fail compared to hard drives.

Method 3: Use An Online Backup Service

Using an online backup service is also fast becoming one of the best methods to backup hard drives. Essentially, these services allow you to store gigabytes of data online for a fee.

The huge advantage of online backup services is that they are resilient to disaster and theft. If you were to backup stuff on your own, then in the event of disaster or theft, you lose everything. Online backup services, however, have huge, clustered servers that are designed to withstand such calamities.

The downside of online backup services would be the cost. However, these are fast coming down.

Xdrive is a great online backup service, with the one of the most competitive rates around. It is extremely popular for storage of photos, music and videos amongst the younger crowd. Do check it out if you’re looking for an online solution to your backup problems.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article has shown you the best methods to backup your hard drive. Try applying any one of the above methods the next time you feel you need to backup data. If you backup data in the above ways on a regular basis, I can guarantee you’ll have a much smoother computing experience.

Kids Zone

Cool Game Zone

Play Free Online Kids Games, Enter Contests and Sweepstakes, Take Quizzes, Solve Puzzles, Join Clubs, Express Yourself | Scholastic.com

I Found This Interesting/Property of Godtube.com

Louie Giglio - Laminin This blew me away! A snippet from a great message entitled How great is our God! by Louie Giglio, this section talks about Laminin, an amazing molecule in the human body. A must see! Full DVD available at www.268generation.com Order your very own LAMININ T-SHIRT, inspired by this message, at http://www.soulharvest.net today! Tags: louie giglio how great is our god dvd laminin atlanta georgia Added: 86 days ago by thefacelesswarrior Runtime: 8m43s | Views: 555970 | Comments: 173 (181 ratings)

DVD Media/What To Buy

GeekMasters Corner

Although you might be tempted to buy low-priced, off-brand DVDs - don't! Even though DVD media may look alike, there are vast differences in quality among the products on the marketplace. Surveys show it is best to select name brand media because discs manufactured by well-known companies are less likely to fail and are more compatible than generic discs. All of the DVD media manufacturers represented on our web site are respected firms who subject their products to the strictest testing standards.

How To Create Your Own DVD's

Creating Your Own DVDs
A Handy Guide to Help You Satisfy Your Yearn to Burn!
You just took your brand new DVD burner out of the box and you can't wait to get started doing fun things like customizing movies and archiving tons of data. You've got your user manual in front of you, but you really would like to cut to the chase rather than wade through a bunch of technical jargon. Don't fret - we've designed this handy guide as an easy-to-read shortcut to get you started. Of course, we do recommend that you get around to reading your user manual, but first it's time to satisfy your yearn to burn!

Selecting Your DVD Media
Although you might be tempted to buy low-priced, off-brand DVDs - don't! Even though DVD media may look alike, there are vast differences in quality among the products on the marketplace. Surveys show it is best to select name brand media because discs manufactured by well-known companies are less likely to fail and are more compatible than generic discs. All of the DVD media manufacturers represented on our web site are respected firms who subject their products to the strictest testing standards.

Choosing Media for Burning Video
We recommend that you choose DVD+R or DVD-R for burning video. These formats are the most reliable for one-time use. You can add data to these discs, but you can only play them back in other devices after you have completed their content.

The Proper Care and Handling of Your Media
DVD discs are delicate objects, which are particularly sensitive to light and heat. Therefore, you should keep they away from heat and direct light. Exposure to these elements could make your data unreadable. Make sure you clean your discs properly using a lint-free cloth, compressed air or a liquid cleanser specially designed for DVDs. Dust and other particles can scratch the surface of your disc, causing imperfections in copying and playback. When you clean your DVD disc make sure you do not use a circular motion and NEVER use a tissue, paper towel or rag that could have abrasive particles or fabric.

For Data Backup and Video Editing
When you back up data or edit video it is best to use DVD±RW or DVD-RAM discs. These formats can store both routine data and video. Each adheres to a corresponding video recording mode that makes it easier to edit video on disc. Unfortunately, the corresponding video recording mode limits the disc's compatibility with other players and recorders.

Watch that Speed! X-Rating Matters
To increase your efficiency, it pays to take your media's x-rating seriously. If you use media that matches your drive's speed rating, you will get more speed out of your drive. Media speed matters less with stand-alone DVD recorders, because you are going to record television in real time.

Organize Your Data
If you arrange your data in a scattershot fashion you won't be able to easily access the files you are likely to burn. We recommend that you store the files you are most likely to burn under one folder. You can create various sub-folders to further organize your data.

How to Import Audio and Video
Importing audio and video is a relatively easy process with the right equipment. You can accomplish this by using an audio visual input box connected to your PC's USB 2.0 port. Alternatively, you can use a TV tuner card or graphics card that has A/V inputs. We recommend that you work with S-Video to attain the best visual clarity. And FireWire will enable you to make a digital connection between a DV camcorder and your PC.

How to Get the Most Video Data on a Disc
You can squeeze more video data on a disk by using a different video codec or lowing the bit rate. Only an hour of video can be stored on MPEG-2 - the standard codec for DVD-Video at its maximum bit rate and image settings. However, other encoders can cut a video file size in half, allowing you to fit almost 7 hours of video on a DVD without compromising your video quality. In order to play the video you create by altering the standard codec you will need software that supports the different codec or a DVD player that is compatible with the format.

Getting Inventive! Creating Your Slide Show or Movie
With the proper software there's no end to how far you can stretch your imagination with your DVD burner. Many software suites give you the capability to create a customized photo slide show on DVD that includes your choice of musical selections and graphic images! You can also emulate a Hollywood director with the help of software suites by creating stylized video productions that even allow you to jump to specific sections in your video.

The Joys of Dual-Deck VHS-DVD Recorders
You've collected a huge stack of VHS tapes over the years and fear that DVD technology has all but rendered them obsolete. Fear not - because an investment in a dual-deck VHS-DVD recorder will give you the opportunity to transfer those old VHS tapes to DVD! If you choose to purchase a Dual-Deck VHS-DVD recorder, we recommend that you also buy high quality cables to go with it to ensure superior picture quality.

Maximizing Burning Performance
As we mentioned earlier, you will maximize performance if the write speed you select corresponds to the speed rating of the media you use. If you plan to use your PC while burning a disc it's a good idea to reduce the recording speed. This will improve the quality of your recording and prevent buffer under-runs. A buffer under-run occurs when your PC isn't supplying data quickly enough to the CD writer for it to record the data properly. When an buffer under-run occurs the writing action stops and your disc may be ruined.

Making Sure You Burned it Right
Once you've finished burning your DVD, we highly recommend that you verify your data. Unfortunately, verifying data is a tedious operation, but it is necessary if you want to ensure your data's safety. Most burning software packages support data verification, which is a process in which the software compares the data you've just copied with the original data still on your hardware.

Survey Sites Are They Cracked Up To Be?

Interestingly enough once I signed up there are a lot of things to channel through however depending on the time that you have. Can you honestly say that you are going to complete all these surveys and gain the prises that these survey sites are offering. These so called surveys are designed with the consumer in mind meaning you.

This means that you must go through a series of tons of email sorting out which ones that offer the best goodies, once that has been established they comes the process of doing these surveys. I have done these over the years nothing in the way of cash or prizes has come to my doors. The catch is companies higher these survey companies to set up these surveys for a fee, in turn flash the Internet with these catch ads sending you fishing for that great prize or points to obtain these prizes or drawings. The whole time the links at the end of the surveys brings you to the paid advertisers sales site or promotional offers. In order to win this prize or obtain a prize you have to complete their offers, which means purchase their goods or services. Great advertising, however are we stupid enough to fall for it? "I did".

Until I got so bogged down with junk mail and offers, surveys that would take me a lifetime to fulfill. You will get bored and very tired of the process. It is not pretty to say the least or it is not for me. So if you want to waste your time doing these things by all means go for it, have fun and remember to get yourself a throwaway email address and use that.

Saving Your Lap Top After A Spill

Water, coffee, and soda are among your laptop's worst enemies. Just a little bit of such a liquid on your laptop keyboard can damage or destroy your machine or cause you to lose data.

Some laptops are more vulnerable to damage from a spill on the keyboard than others, and it doesn't always have anything to do with the price tag.Some keyboards have a thin rubber membrane beneath the keys with electrical contacts molded right into little domes under each letter; that design may feel squishy and cheap to some users, but it stands up better to a splash or a flood than a more traditional design with
springs and exposed contacts. How do you know which type of design you have? Take a look for yourself by prying off a keytop; if you're shopping, you may be able to get the information from the manufacturer or a dealer.

The best way to prevent damage from a mix of liquid and electronics is to keep them as far apart as possible. Keep your laptop far away from cups of coffee, glasses of water, and cans of soda.

But in the real world, stuff happens. If you have a choice of poisons, take the water spill. A hot cup of coffee, a cold glass of soda, or a glass of wine are each bad news; all of them are slightly acidic. Acidic liquids are nastier than nearly neutral water because the acid can corrode metal contacts. And both coffee and soda can become gummy and sticky as they dry.

Here's the drill for an emergency recovery from a spill:

1. If you have your machine plugged into wall current, turn off the power at the circuit breaker in your home or office.
2. You don't want to touch a wet wire carrying 110 volts or so.
3. If you're running the machine on battery power, it's still operating, and
   you don't see sparks, hear odd noises, or smell burnt electrical components, shut your laptop down through the normal Windows process.
4. If something is obviously wrong with the machine, turn it off immediately by depressing the Off switch or by removing the battery.
5. Ground yourself by touching the center screw on the faceplate of a dry electrical outlet or by touching some other metal object that reaches to ground.
6. If you haven't done so in emergency mode, remove the AC adapter and the battery, and set them aside.
7. Disconnect any external devices (such as a mouse) attached to the USB, FireWire, serial, or other ports.
8. If you find any liquid on the battery or AC adapter, wipe them carefully and set them aside.
9. If your spill has thoroughly soaked the AC adapter or the battery, you
   probably need to consider it a loss. You can get replacement AC adapters and batteries from various sources, including the original equipment manufacturer, laptop accessory companies, and the used market.
10. Remove any cards installed in the PC Card slot.
    If they're wet, carefully dry them off. If any water has gotten into the narrow slot, dry out the area with a cotton swab, taking care not to leave any threads of cotton in the internal connector.
11. Wipe off any liquid on the display.
    Use a clean cloth dampened with water to remove any sticky residue.
12. Remove the hard drive and the CD/DVD drives if you have them installed in plug-in bays.
    Dry them off if they're wet. Set them aside.
13. Open the memory module container; remove and dry the memory modules.
    Make notes on the placement of the modules. Set them aside.
14. Hand-dry the keyboard surface with a lint-free cloth.
    If
    you spill soda or coffee, consult the instruction manual for your computer and learn how to carefully remove each of the keycaps for the affected area. If the instruction manual includes a picture of the keyboard, make sure that you can see the names of all the keys and their locations; otherwise, make a drawing of the board, paying special attention to the location of some of the specialized keys, including cursor keys, Page Up, Page Down, Scroll Lock, and the like. Or you can use a digital camera to take a picture of the keyboard.
15. Clean the exposed membrane or switch cover and the keys themselves.
    Leave the keys to dry before replacing them.
16. Leaving the display open, place the computer on a sturdy surface supported by two books or small boxes.
    This setup lets air circulate all around the computer. Leave the computer and all of its separate parts to air dry for at least 24 hours. Don't
    use a fan or (horrors) a hair dryer to attempt to fast-forward the drying process.
17. Reassemble the pieces that you removed.
    Do this step a day or more after doing Step 1 through Step 12, and make sure that everything is dry and that you don't have any dried puddles of sticky acid left anywhere on the machine.

Remember to ground yourself before touching any circuitry or modules, and begin
the power-up process with the battery first and the AC adapter second. If in doubt about the safety of any part, you should go ahead and replace it instead of using it. Replacing a battery, an AC adapter, or even a hard disk drive always costs a lot less than replacing a motherboard.

One Things For Sure Gas Prices Are Climbing

Gasoline is expensive, do we want to continue paying the high prices at the pump? What choice do we have? Do we quit driving? Can we survive this crisis? We are getting to the point of economic breakdown. The oil rich companies are getting greedy and we seem to be letting it happen when we could be drilling for oil in our own land. EPA does not want us to drill because it will not protect the environment. EPA lobbyist's are focused on the vote. They shell out campaign funding for their candidate. Which in return keeps the fund raisers happy. When this election is over then and only then will the gas prices go down maybe? We are going into global crisis, economic catastrophe.

We the people that govern this wonderful country, can step up as a whole vote and stop this. We need to think about this and find ways to stop this from taking over not only our wallets but our freedom to move about. To go to work and pay the tax dollars that our government wants is to pay to support their programs. We control them we control the dollar. If we would all join in as a world wide group and vote for a gas vacation for one day or one week fill our tanks just enough for one week and not but any more fuel for the rest of that week we would protest using our willingness to be just as stubborn as they are. We need a protest in the worst way all of us proclaim an anti gas purchase for one week. These companies would loose a lot of revenue and would open their eyes to this protest.

We are beginning to strike back this is the only way to win this war on gasoline for America. Notice the new cars all of the sudden they are advertising Hybrid cars, Air Cars, Water Cars that are being introduced at a extremely unfordable rate for the average American consumer. Now they are just coming out of the woodwork. You see there is a reason as to why our gas prices went to the roof. Instead of just advertising these cars and making them affordable for the consumer, they decided to raise the gas prices freaking out the public just like they did with the Y2K junk to get folks to buy the turnover software as well as the various other softwares that would put a so called stop to it. Then it went away never to be heard of again.

So folks are going to run out and buy these cars after being freaked out. It is the same thing. When are we the people going to see the power in panic sales? Just another thought here. What do you think?

GeekMasters Corner: What To Know?

GeekMasters Corner: What To Know?

Get Name Brand Computer 30 to 50% Off Or More

So You Want To Learn The Tricks To Movie Burning?

Hi everyone, are we having fun yet? This is just the beginning, I have been blessed with so many cool and fun sites that I wanted to share them with you. First things first, for your protection and information the sites that I will list are in no way telling you to steal material that is copy write material, although some of the links are movies that do have copy write material, they exist and are out there for Internet movie hounds like me. Spread the word these sites will soon be gone and maybe forgotten. However for those of you that are not into this kind of thing then please do not read any further.

For those of you that enjoy a good movie that costs you nothing to purchase then these links are for you. You must first have these programs at your disposal listed below.

1. Peergaurdian
2. BitComet
3. Anti-virus installed
4. Firewall Enabled
5. A Fair Amount of Hard Drive Space
6. WinAvi
7. Memory 256 or better

First go to this link and download this program. This program protects you from intruders that wish to hack you are gather your information for whatever they deem necessary to get your personal information this program is good for all types of protection. P2P programs are a treasure chest full of mail ware, spy ware, virus's all sorts of germs that will infiltrate you computers hard drive and reek havoc.

When you have done these steps and are ready for the real fun to begin. You will start by going to and logging into BitComet the torrent portal site. When you get logged in type in the search box one of these names listed below in any browser and see what you come up with. Now of course you can use many various software programs for converting movies but I have used just about all of them and I find the WinAvi is the quickest way as well as the most easiest program with way less junk involved.

You will get to the several movie torrents and you will see movies that are current with this list of names that you will use to find them here they are. 1. Axxo 2. FXG 3. Diamond 4. Klaxxon these names one at a time with get you to hundreds of movies that are quality movies. Be sure to look for large amount of leechers and seeders as well as read the comments on the movies. Once you get used to a few of these torrent downloads then you can venture off to other lands. The key is do not do this without the proper software recommended above because you will just be frustrated trust me on this. I will be back with more information later if you have questions I will be more than glad to assist. The GeekMaster

The Cost Of War