Automatically Synchronize All Your Firefox Browsers

If you use multiple computers and have several Firefox browsers that you use on a regular basis you will know the headaches caused by having different settings, bookmarks, history, cookies, and saved passwords. I actually use about four different Firefox installs. I have three computers I use on a daily basis and a USB thumb drive with a portable Firefox install. I needed all of these to automatically sync with each other. This is how I did it...

Get a Google account

The add on that syncs your browser uses a Google account to store the sync info. To do this click here then fill out all of the information. Make sure your account is active and then move on the the next step.

Get the Addon

1. Click this link to go to the download page for the Firefox add-on.
2. Click on the link that says "browsersync.xpi"
3. Click "Agree and Install", then click "Install" on the next window that pops up.
4. Let the program install and then let your browser restart.

Activate the Addon

1. Make sure you have your Google account information available because you will need it.
2. Follow the on screen instructions that will appear before your browser starts back up.

Add It to All of Your Firefoxes.

If this is going to help you at all you must install it on all of your personal browsers.

And that's all. Right now this only works for Firefox 2. Support for Firefox 3 should be coming out soon.

Save XP!

According to InfoWorld, Windows XP will no longer be sold after June 30, 2008. For those of us who are not big fans of the resource hogging Vista, this will be a blow to our sanity (not to mention our wallets). InfoWorld has started a "Save XP Petition". I understand that many people wish that Microsoft would just die and let Linux and OS X reign, understand that many of us would like a choice. For many, Vista is not a viable option for computing. It is slow, bloated, and buggy. Not to mention that there are five different versions available to choose from ranging from $129 -$399 for a OS! I am not saying that we should kill Vista and everyone go back to XP (although that doesn't sound too bad of an idea!) but Microsoft is making a stupid decision just to push their new OS. Sign the petition and hopefully MS will listen to the people who pay their bills - the end user!

Bathroom Tech...

If you ask anyone who knows me well they will tell you that I am totally obsessed with tech. Having said that, I also believe there is tech that is contributing to heinous violence in our country as well as spreading death and disease. Anyone who has been forced to interact with these electronics from hell will agree with me explicitly. Among the offenders are as follows:

1. Automatic Flushing Toilets

Urinals aren't so bad but the stall version was designed by terrorist trying to overthrow the western world. Toilets in of themselves are gross, so most places are starting to put those nice paper seat cover dispensers in the stall. Automatic toilets mock those who wish to protect the purity of their posterior. I was in a Walmart not long ago when nature called in a big way (yeah I know, too much info). So I go into the wonderful Walmart bathroom and proceed to cover the seat with the paper protection. I get it just right and turned to sit and the toilet flushes sucking down the seat cover, as I am hovering over the seat preparing for a landing. Now I'm a patient man but this is not funny, I quickly grab another and get it just right turn and goosh! This happens four times. By now nature is not only calling it's texting, emailing and paging me all at the same time. I grab the seat cover throw it down, spin around, and plop down just a split second before it flushes....Success!

2. Automatic Faucets

So I answer nature's call and proceed to the sink. ...it's “automatic”... I say a quick prayer and stick my hand under the faucet... nothing... (I love how automatic these things are!) So like anyone who has encountered one of these monsters, I start waving my hands all around like I'm directing a symphony orchestra until the tiny stream of water comes out. Yay, success.

3. Automatic Soap Dispensers

Now that my hands are almost wet I reach for the soap ...it too is “automatic”... I start directing my orchestra, but this demon is too smart for that. Just as I get my hand in the right place it waits a second and then spits out a microscopic amount into the sink, not in my hand. Then it waits before serving anymore soap to the sink so that we greedy bathroom users won't waste it on things as trivial as washing our hands. When you finally out smart the sneaky soap squirter, you then have to find the sweet spot for the sparse stream again.

4. Automatic Hand Dryer

Now that my hands are nearly clean, I proceed to dry my hands. There are two kinds of hand dryers to choose from, the kind that blows your hands dry in a little less than an hour, and the paper kind that kills trees but takes just a fraction of the time to use. This should be easy right? Wrong! Since I have now spent nearly two hours trying to do what would take just a few minutes at home, I don't have the time or patience to deal with the blow dryer, so I try my luck with the paper towel kind. I walk up to it and it has this picture of a waving hand just over top a dark glossy spot with a red light in the middle of it. (I really think that red light is a camera that sends a direct feed to the Terrorist Funniest Home Videos network.) So you walk up this thing start flailing your arms around until a single sheet slowly descends. Of course this is never enough. So once again you have to wait for a while before it will work again (an effort so keep you from using it for what it was made for). After finally getting enough you walk out of the bathroom enraged about how that someone made something as simple as using the bathroom such a painful process. Continuous encounters with this system will either turn someone into a homicidal maniac or they will die of some kind of strange bathroom disease because they skipped the whole painful sanitation process entirely.

If you look below at the statistics that I've made up, you can see how since these things have been placed into bathrooms, violence has gone up while life expectancy has gone down. Unless these bathroom torture devices are not corrected America will continue to decline until it will be completely destroyed.

C.G. Quick Tip: Email on the Fly

I recently found this easy way of emailing someone on the fly. If you use Firefox this is very easy.

1. In Firefox, right click on the bookmarks toolbar.

2. Click "New Bookmark..."

3. In the "Name" box, type something like "Email the Boss".

4. In the "Location" box, type "mailto:(enter-email-address-here)" (without the quotes)

5. Click "Add" and you are done. You now have a single click way of emailing whoever you want.

Not Geeky News But Still Awesome!!!

This blog usually features cool geekery but today is going to be a little different. My wife and I are having a baby and yesterday (April 1, 2008) we had an ultra-sound and we found out that we are going to be having a boy!! We are very happy. (especially since my boss has nine daughters and no boys!) I had heard that people who play with electronics too much are not able to have boys after a while. (case and point; my boss) Either this is an old wives tale or I was just lucky. Anyway, his due date is July 6th. We plan to name him Robert Steven Reed, after his grandfathers names. Pray for us during this time and I promise to bring you more geek stuff soon. I am planning on writing a post on how to build yourself a rock-solid $250 computer, with step by step pictures and directions. I have built this same computer for about five different people and have had zero problems with it. My aim is a fast, easily upgradeable, inexpensive, all around good computer. I, however, will have to wait until someone orders one again from me, because I really am a really cheap geek and can't afford my own wares.

Save Hundreds Every Year on Ink with a Virtual Printer!

It is strange that we spend more on ink for our printers than we do for the printer it self. Even the most expensive printer will quickly be double by the cost of a few replacement cartridges. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to virtually print and save your documents, web pages, email, and receipts? Then you have to check out a cool little app called PrimoPDF. PrimoPDF is a app that will take any printable document and turn what would be a physical printout into a PDF document. This program is totally free and does not leave a watermark on your PDF like other "free" virtual printers do. I use this all of the time to make PDFs to save web pages or to send a word doc to a friend or to make a large Publisher document easy to save.

Here is How It Works...

1. Download it



















2. Install it





















3. Use it

1. In whatever program you are in, go to file --> Print

2. Choose the new PrimoPDF Printer from the drop down menu

3. Click print


4. Save it
- This screen might take a few seconds to appear especially if you have a older computer. This screen will allow you to set any settings you will need. Most of the time you can just click create PDF without changing anything.

- If you are intending on emailing your PDF after it is made you can make it do it automatically by setting the Post Process to "Mail PDF".

That's it. This program has saved me hours of pain and tons of money. Check it out, I think you'll like it.

Free Software You Shouldn't Live Without!

I have an obsession with usb flash drives, as well as an obsession with free software. These two things go well together and every geek should have a thumb drive on their keyring with their favorite software on it. This is as important to us geeks as coffee. This list covers a variety of different categories and I will list them as I have them arranged on my thumb drive.

If you have a ton of software on your thumb drive you need to have it arranged in a way that will allow you to find what you need quickly with out having to search for several minutes to find what you are looking for.

I have my software arranged like this.

















Great Free Software

1. Burning Software

-InfraRecorder - Great burning tool, can be ran off your thumb drive. (no installation needed)

-CD Burner XP Pro - Works like Nero, very easy to use

-Img Burn - Great for burning ISOs and anything else you might need

2. Developer Tools

-DevCPP - C++ IDE (if you don't program you don't need this) Easy to use, better than some of the non-free IDEs I've tried.

-Notepad++ - A wonderful notepad replacement. Has the ablity to markup a varity of languages such as php, java, html, c, etc. Not a complier.


3. Hardware Testing and Inspecting Software

-CPU-Z - Can give a lot of information about your cpu.

-Heavy Load - A stress testing tool, good for when you want to see if your system is stable after a overclock.

-SpeedFan - Can show the status of your system fans, temperatures, and hard drive conditions.

-SIW - System Information For Windows can give you information about nearly everything on your system. Works off a single exe file, one of my favorites.

4. Internet Utilities

-FileZilla - A great ftp client, updated VERY often.

-Firefox - Internet browser --The very best of the best on the top ten lists of every uber geek.

-Foxit Reader - a very lightweight replacement for Adobe Reader. Less than 2mb, and it does every thing that Adobe does only faster.

- Pidgin - An instant messenger program that can work with nearly every type of instant messenging software. Can replace all of your other IM clients.

-ThunderBird - A great Email client that works like Microsoft Outlook. Easy to setup and use. Has built in spam killers.


5. Media

-Audacity - A very capable audio editor. Make sure you get the MP3 support with it.

-dbpoweramp - it converts and rips to a ton of formats. Some formats will require you to buy a license to use. This is one piece of software that I would pay (and have paid) to get the full functionality out of.

-DVD Shrink - This is a very controversial piece of software. It will decrypt and rip any DVD and then shrink it to fit onto a single layer DVD. I am not going to link to a download page but will link to his home page for you. DO NOT USE THIS FOR DVDs YOU DO NOT OWN. This is only for making backup copies of your own collection so that when your four-year-old uses it for a frisbee you don't lose your copy of Lord of the Rings.

-Gimp - A poor man's version of Photoshop. Very nice and works well.

-Paint.net - Easy to use version of MSPaint on steroids.

-VLC Media Player - Can play nearly any media format better than any other player can. Will play DVDs better than any other software I have used. Very simple small and uses less system resources than other media players.

-ZaraRadio - A fully functional free radio automation program. I work at a radio station that uses a $10,000 piece of software that does all of the same things that this does. Great for internet DJs.

6. Misc Utilities

-Autoruns - Shows every thing that is running on your computer.

-7zip - A full featured zip program similar to Winzip

-Advanced Windows Care - Cleans, repairs, and optimizes windows quickly and easily. One click fix for most problems. Works great, a new comer to my list of favorites.

-CCleaner - Cleans up unwanted junk from your pc.

-My Mouse Meter - Pointless program that tells you how far your mouse has traveled. Fun but won't make you any better as a person.

-nLite - If you have a old windows installation disk and want to add hot fixes, drivers, software, or service packs to your installation disk this will add all of that to your install disk and give other options such as making your disk fully automatic and put your key in for you so you don't have to babysit your computer while it installs.

-Primo pdf maker - Can turn any document into a PDF including web pages. Anything you can print it can turn into a PDF. Very useful, I use it all of the time.

-Real Desktop - Pointless desktop replacement. Turns your whole desktop into a 3D environment. You will need a fairly good video card to make it work.

-Visual Task Tips - Gives you Vista like thumbnail previews of all of the items in your task bar.

8. Office Software

-Abiword - Small and lightweight, this word processor is great if you need simple document making with out all of the bloat.

-Open Office - A full blown Microsoft Office killer. Works great and can fully replace Microsoft office.

9. Security Software ( I break this down into two categories: Anti-virus and Anti-malware)

ANTI-VIRUS

-AVG Free Edition - Works great I have it on all of my computers and have never had any problems.

ANTI-MALWARE

-Adaware 2007 - The free edition will clean up most all spyware from your system.

-Spybot Search and Destroy - One of the first things I run on a infected system. It looks for specific types of spyware and malware. This will quickly destroy your biggest problems.

-Threat Fire - This is know as a "zero day attack defense". It watches for suspicious behavior and alerts the user of it. This works great if coupled with AVG. When used with AVG it can keep you safe from most any problem.

-Windows Defender - A spyware killer from Microsoft. The 0nly free real-time scanner for spyware I know of. Works about as good as you can expect from Microsoft.



Unsorted Programs, zz Personal Stuff, and Drive Content Map?

These last three things are nice to have on your drive. The Unsorted Programs folder is great when you find that piece of software that you don't know where to put it yet.

zz Personal Stuff - Your personal junk. Start it with a zz so you will always have last in your list to find it easy.

Drive Content Map - This is a text document that has a index for all of your stuff. This is nice if you don't want to look through ever folder to see if you have something or not. You will want to keep it updated.

All of these programs will fit on a 1GB thumb drive. If you are looking for a place to get one for very cheap, check out NewEgg.com. I bought a 4GB drive from them for only $18 last month.