Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Traveling with electronics

Most of us like to travel. But when travel time comes so does the electronics packing. I have made a set of top five tips for traveling with electronics.

  1. If you have a good laptop, get a good laptop case. You don't want a crappy case where you have the posibility of the case breaking and then breaking your laptop. Thank would be a trip killer. When buying your case make sure that your laptop will fit in the chase too :).
  2. Make sure that you bring all power chords for any electronic device that you bring. Even if you fully charged the device before you left, bring the cord anyway. You never know when a device could die.
  3. If your traveling with a family, get a good backpack for all your electronic devices. This keeps it simple and easy to know where everything is. Have your travel partner give any cords or electronic devices to you the day before the trip so that you can pack them the night before. It's easier to keep all the electronics in one place because its harder to loose them.
  4. Label any and all cords with what they are and who they belong to. Just get a roll of masking tape, or a label maker, and just write a simple identification like jerry/cellphone and attach to the proper cord. It makes finding the proper cord easier. (For my full tips on cable management, refer to this post.)
  5. Make a list of everything that you are bringing with you so that when it comes time to leave you can just look over the list and make sure that you have everything. It will re-packing much easier.

Bonus: These two tips go for anyone traveling.

  • Just obey the law. They are there to protect you. If the speed limit it 35 then going 40 is ok, but going 45 is just plain stupid, and very dangerous.
  • If your going to be driving, and like to talk on your cellphone, get a headset. Most states now have laws saying that you can't hold your phone and drive at the same time. And it makes the road safer for the people traveling.

Here is the Chris Pirillo video of this list.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

#Jerry Chat Rules

These are the established rules for the #Jerry chatroom.

  1. Explicit language is not allow, use results in an automatic kick.
  2. Spamming of off-topic or live stream links will also result in an automatic kick.
  3. Any op can kick for any reason, so be nice to them.
  4. Discussion of illegal activity is not allowed and WILL RESULT IN A BAN, and may result in WyldRyde staff notification.
  5. If you fell your were unfairly banned or kick send an appeal email to nj.jerrysmith@gmail.com with a subject of "Kick/Ban Appeal". Your appeal will be review by Jerry and appropriate action will be taken
  6. Do not ask for vop/hop/aop. If you currently hold one of those PRIVLAGES and you ask for a level above the one you have you will AUTOMATICALLY loose an xop level.

 
Note: If your a nice guy/girl you won't have any problems here. 

Chat provided for free by:
WyldRyde IRC Network: Fun, free, and safe chatrooms.

Rules update on 5/12/2008 at 7:11 PM

-- Jerry Smith

Friday, April 18, 2008

The Final PC vs Mac battle

This is what any human geek will find when he gets bored and wanders to youtube. Please note there is a few adult words in this video so do not let your children watch if you are trying to keep their minds clean. Sorry but i had to post this it's funny.

-- Jerry Smith

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Texter

We all have those certain sayings that we type in over and over again, such as your email, or the link to your blog. All this typing takes up productivity time. Even if you are a fast typist it will still take longer to enter 20 characters then it will take to do 5 key strokes. Well, thanks to texter that is now a possibility to only type those five key strokes. Once you download the software just use the command string Ctrl+Shift+H and you get a nice popup with two textboxes, one for the hotstring (or the text to be replaced) and the text to be inserted. It's simple and it also provides a approximate time saved statistic in the preferences menu. It's cool but say that you have multiple signatures that you have programmed and always forget what they are? Don't fret there is a "print cheetsheet" button in the preference too. As I said this program is cool. Once you start working in this software you won't have problems and it will become a real time saver. Below is a video from the texter website:

 
-- Jerry Smith

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

BitStrips Comic Creator

Bit Strips is a completely online comic strip creator where you make your own avatar and the put him through what ever you want. You can do as many strips as you want, with as many frames as you want. Its pretty easy, but I would recommend using a mouse to create the strip because it was kind of hard for me to move and resize items in the editor with the touch pad that I have on my laptop. Overall I would say that this was pretty good, but it was nice that I didn't need to download any software to run this. The future of software is heading to be completely online and this is a step in the right direction. On a ten scale this would get a 7.

Here is a .png image of the strip.

 

--Jerry Smith