As you might have noticed I made a new design, moved some things around a little bit.
I thought as I was updating the version I should design a new layout, hopefully it isn’t looking as scruffy as before I am still working on it so please any feedback would be great.
As with many IT-related industries DVD burning software has increased dramatically in its use, affordability and usability within the last few years. Whether for backing up your essential information such as pictures to free up hard drive space, creating home movies or copies of your favourite films to watch on your stand alone player.
With so many functions it’s not surprising how popular it has become but it’s easy to get confused about where to start so I thought I would try and pass on some basic knowledge to get you started.
Software
My personal favourites are:
Nero: They aren’t the biggest name in the business for nothing, they offer an amazing all round program that gives all the DVD and CD capabilities you need, however, with all these features comes a bigger price tag and a lot of settings and lessons to be learnt; it can sometimes be hard to use. You can find more information at www.nero.com, but I suggest trying a site such as www.amazon.co.uk or your local high street for a more competitive price.
DVD Shrink: If you just want the basics and are unsure of your ability to use more complicated programs like Nero this is a cheaper and more reliable way to back up and burn DVDs easily. Try it free from www.download.com
DVD Santa: A big disadvantage is that this program doesn’t work for everyone but did for me and I found it to be incredibly cheap, easy to use and effective; it puts your DVD, avi files, photos or home movies straight on to a DVD with chapters already included in a few simple clicks. The encoding of video files can take a while, three to four hours, but is the same for most encoders I have used. To see if it works for you give the trial a go from www.download.com
Now all you need is a burning drive, simply go to My Computer and see if your drive(s) are RW, if not www.ebuyer.com or somewhere similar can supply you with good and affordable burners, they will most likely sell the blank DVDs too, now you’re ready to go. Happy burning!
I have to say in some cases I would agree with the use of it and some I would agree now over the news in England we have seen Norwich go WiFi all over I feel sorry for their bandwidth, I think their speed is something like 256kb/s which Isn’t that bad considering how many people will be using it.
But why don’t I like it, basically I can’t stop thinking about war driving (hackers) how dangerous can this be if people are checking their bank account on this WiFi, I for one never check bank details online even if its on a wired stand alone computer it opens up so many possibilities, we already have enough trouble as it is with fraud now we will be getting even more with WiFi.
I’ve recently noticed all the free WiFi around the place for example the FON site they give you a free access point and allow you to use all their other access points which are dotted around the map now to me this is silly letting anyone on your network its a different thing having the government control it but having your home security put at risk because of this is stupid, I would never recommend anyone to purchase a free FON WiFi box so DON’T leave this business to the government to sort out then don’t even use theirs who wants them watching over your traffic its just another way to keep tabs on everyone.
So if your in Norwich or going to go their do not do anything sensitive on their network it could end up with you looking accounts passwords the whole lot, now you might of noticed I did support the Gadget Show free WiFi campaign because WiFi has its uses mainly for people on the move but Norwich are allowing residence to use their WiFi which they will give in to doing a little bit of online shopping which equals bad but good for the war drivers which we don’t want so please stay away from using anything to do with money on their free WiFi please.
It opens other things up like carrying your laptop around which can then lead to it being stolen or stupid little things like that which as most people know you cant get rid of information on your computers very easily unless you format your computers hard drive 5 times.
Overall in the end it all comes down to how security conscious you are, I would never recommend wireless unless your using SSH tunnelling with WEP encryption it just has too many security flaws. So please stick to wires.
Well for me at least its getting time to clean out my PC a full clean meaning from physically leaning hardware to the desk and cleaning files up in the PC.
So to start off I would clean up what i don’t need starting in add and remove programs, now if your security conscious you will find that you haven’t really installed much this year but if you have do what you need to to get rid of them.
Next onto files I start off on the Desktop where all the crap I store is so i make a couple of new folders in My Documents label things like “PDF Files”, “txt files” and “Misc” then I can just start sorting it out hopefully having a empty desktop will also help your performance.
Well now you’ve done that I get started in setting up my boot options using “msconfig” hopefully you all know what it is (its a system configurations utility) as usual with things like this be careful but what I do is go into startup and deselect what I don’t want.
Now the fun stuff opening the computer now what I like to have is a can of air now I’ve recently found that you don’t want to go for the cheap stuff it really is crap, really messed up my computer using it so I like to start of with stripping the computer down, then using the canned air to get off as much dust as possible now if it hasn’t got everything off get a cloth and wipe it lightly, I like to use the cloth to also clean the heatsink by putting it in between the metal and pulling it side to side works very well so after you’ve done it all put it back together and your all done inside the PC.
Next is your desk easy peasy get a bin slide everything into it 
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Global warming is making this world a mess and if we don’t do something we are screwed, now it has been said before that computers are using up a lot of power which can be coming from coal meaning loads of C02 is being pumped out now people keep saying they want to do something but don’t we have the power to.
No I don’t mean putting a windmill in your backyard well it would be brilliant if you did even better of what I’m thinking of but I’m looking closer too you now what’s staring you in the face?
Your monitor, I am still using the old CRT monitors because i can’t afford a new LCD one but I’m thinking more of the computer the monitor does use up power but your PC is a energy hog. So how can we prevent this well I have talked to a couple of customers I’ve had and they all say that they have and sometimes do leave their computer on all day without using it which yeah is stupid now but what can you do to save some power, well I take it you’ve all heard of hibernate and standby and all this stuff well it isn’t always default.
Here is what I recommend get rid of your screen saver is that is set to show up after 5 mins of idle time change your standby to some on after 5 mins.
Basically what standby does is save everything in your RAM i think of it this way if you use firefox 2 or opera, you close the browser and if you’ve set it up you can open it up with the same session so standby is like closing your computer but having everything saved and at the move of a mouse it will show up again, I’m not sure if thats 100% accurate but its good enough.
Now to set up your hibernate after 1 hour of inactivity my hibernate will turn on which saves a lot of power, its like standby but the extreme it will save your information to the hard disk like standby saves it to your RAM but it will turn off the hard disk and any other things you don’t really need this is a brilliant way to save more power.
But the ultimate way to save power is turn off everything you don’t use, your going out for 30 mins turn your computers off the TV’s everything, does it matter if you take 5 mins to start things up again and get back to where you where, it really isn’t that bad is it when you get into the habit of it and you wont feel very guilty any more you could be thanked for saving your power.
Please can you tell me if you liked my comments on this subject or if you have taken action after reading my article global warming is really knocking on our doors and we need to do something, if possible please blog about this do something do everything you can we have the answers we’re just not taking action.
We can do so much for example don’t take bathes have showers brushing your teeth don’t leave the tap on washing the dishes don’t use the dish washer, now I have taken action and done these things and it is a small chip in getting the world back on track but at least I’m doing something, people around me aren’t taking this seriously!
As you might know about Darksats forum it is relatively knew only have a couple of members some I remember from searchmebaby and web-mastery Their is around 5 daily users of this forum, which is good as it is a new forum.
The forum covers many things from hardware to web designing, but as you might have guessed the main topic is to do with internet security it is a great laugh with the members their already after a couple of month I have learned so much about protecting my computer or even about other operating systems.
Their isn’t much of a story behind it (that i know off) but all i remember of Darksat was he used to post a lot on web-mastery and disappeared for a couple of years which was when i joined, everyone used to talk about him a lot on the forum, and curious at why he disappeared (mainly Anthony).
So go and check it out if your interested in IT security it really has a lot of information on how to protect yourself when surfing the net or any other way to protect your computer if you can’t find what you need just ask you will get a very good response.
Well thats the last of my forums to comment on they really are brilliant places to go, here is the list once more.
Today it is time for n2kdesign.co.uk which originated from Justin’s personal website neutron2k.co.uk the old website was partly webdesigning and partly about Guitars.
So what happened was he made a new website dedicated to web design / development and moved everything web design related to that website this included his resources and forums, so we have a brand new website to talk on 
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So the members their isn’t really many to talk about but theirs some good members the one who was their from the start was Sioby she was on the old neutron2k.co.uk site and also n2kdesign.co.uk site but she left, then their was Chris also from web-mastery.net he wasn’t exactly a dedicated member but he did post some good content and then disappeared.
To boost traffic Justin stared a competition for a £10 Amazon gift voucher for the most active user which gave a massive boost in crap posted :p but we saw two new faces pop up one of Justin’s friends nhaines and also bexster but their not exactly dedicated nhaines hasn’t been back and bexster isn’t interested in web designing.
Then the last thing I can think of is the addition of Jolly Rog (Workshy) he posted some really good stuff on the forum mainly to do about computing his is new at web designing and it is the main reason he is their to learn about web designing .
The forum isn’t as alive as it should be but it is getting their so if you have any spare time check out n2kdesign’s forums it really is a good forum, with some good members.
So thanks Justin for your good forums I’ve learned loads from them.
Next post will be about Darksat IT Security Forum.
This week I’m going to dedicate my blog to a couple of websites which have helped learn everything I know now and today I will start with my first ever forum I’ve joined which was Web-Mastery.net.
The early days of this forum was amazing we had Edwin, Darren, Heather, Anthony, Raven, Neutron2k and Chris. It was the best forum going they had the nicest community ever loads more members which I can’t be bothered to remember the names of 
but it was really a good website if you had any questions at all they would answer it and give you a essay on it I really did love the website its where my web designing and development started.
But after when Anthony left it did seem to go down hill I saw this coming as Anthony was in the heart of the community he was a laugh to talk to but disappointed when he made a scene and left (well got banned).
We still have the normal members except Chris (if anyone’s seen comment and tell me ) he just disapered which was really weird I take it he has success on his business, he did start another forum called searchmebaby.com which then I moved over to hoping to get it running but I take it Chris got fed up and closed it.
So it really was going down hill people where spreading out starting their own forums like N2Kdesign.co.uk which will be my next post.
So what’s it like now i take it your saying, we’ve had a couple of new visitors who don’t seem to stay long maybe they post monthly or something like that well even that’s lucky I wish it was like in the early days but it isn’t anymore so if you have any time at all please visit the site it is a brilliant team of webmaster’s and is one of my favourite forums please check it out.
Thanks web-mastery you started my webmaster life .
Next post will be about N2KDesign.co.uk.
Well I have put together ways to promote your weblogs in a list going form good to bad. At the top you will have ones that you should subscribe to for lots of visitors and going towards the bottom will be ones which arn’t bad, so here we go.
Mybloglog.com – This is a really good website as it allows you to talk to other blog owners add yourself to other communities which then will get your blog known the more ‘contacts’ you have the more visitors you have.
Digg.com – Well its slowly going down hill but you can still get a lot of visitors if people digg you, now this is annoying but it can be done maybe asking friends to digg you or things like that.
MySpace.com – This has the good concept of adding friends again which will get you more repeat visitors its easy to get friends just pick one profile and work your way up from their adding all the people you can find you might end up with maybe 2000 friends but that’s a lot of visitors if your just advertising for your website.
Forums – Well we all know how good forums are you can put a signature in and if you do something like 50 posts a day you will get some visitors out of it.
Weblog Commenting – Brilliant idea but not as rewarding as mybloglog you might be able to get one dedicated commenter and that’s it for all your hard work commenting on other blogs but one is better than none.
Trackbacks – Link to other blogs it will get you the respect of the webmaster and nothing else, but you have the webmaster visiting your website.
Well I hope all this helps I recommend you sign up to mybloglog.com it really is good.
The other day my new keyboard arrived its supposed to be a keyboard that allows multiple uses for example gaming and normal office work which is what my computer is used for so I got my keyboard with two keysets one for typing and the other for gaming as for the gaming layout it was awful their is I big gap between the key T, Y also G, H and B, N which really mucks up your typing as you cannot touch type unless you get used to two different keyboard layouts which is very annoying.So I went out and brought the World Of Warcraft keyset which has the normal layout with not gaps in it and also has what the buttons do on the game for example it has arrows on WASD and also has all the emotions as a short cut and loads of commands on the right where the numbers where. It is a massive help in the game especially when your a newbie getting used to all the shortcuts.
But the ultimate thing about this keyboard is when you switch them over it is possible to launch a application for example when i put my WOW keyset on it will launch launcher.exe which then I can click play on it to open up the actual game, if your computer is used for gaming typing the whole lot I really recommend it its a brilliant keyboard.
