Sunday, April 30, 2006

Hellllllllllloooo banner!!!!!

Hello All,
I'm sure that you've noticed that the boring text title of my Blog has now changed to a nice banner with the title on it. Theres still a few bugs to work out but so far it looks good and I like it. I also edited my JCXP signature to say "Advanced member @ JCXP" in white letters at the bottom right.

There is a new Beta for uTorrent. I actually haven't tried it out yet but I will tommorrow.

So I hope that you like the banner...

PS: Please post comments on it.

Thank you.

Well today I'm moving back

Hello All,
Well I'm moving back today (literally) to the backroom in preperation for the home-stay students who will be here in a few days. I've suddenly got like 50 MSN contacts. Why? Because I added some of the people from JCXP. I have seen on Thoth's Blog that he made it so that some of the text covers the rest. It sort of like:
The Montreal Writers Storm
Sewer
Except that "sewer" is further up and half-covering some of the text. I want to find out how to do that.

I saw a picture of the final UI for Windows X's site. I really like the look of it. He's currently looking for newsposters for hire to post tech-news (I guess) onto his website.

Anyway bye for now

I'm advanced...




Hello All,
Well I'm advanced in JCXP forums! I'm now up to 150+ posts and can now post in the advanced members forum... I'm really happy about this. I am now 4 stars out of 5! Well I'm moving up...

Above are some photos of the WinWizards (SuperMod @ JCXP) computer. Great isn't it? I wish that was mine...

I'm going over to andrews today to discuss the website and to watch the video tutorials for macromedia dreamweaver on his computer because this internet connections so slow...

Anyway bye for now and enjoy the photos!

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Yet another biking session for the Blogger

Yes, I went biking again today. I had a good time doing it. This time I biked over to lachine, which is farther than any time I've done before. And I didn't have one break. So that went very well.

Stella had said that she could get me dreamweaver from BT and email it to Andrew who has a high-speed internet connection. So thats good. I already have the free trial but it would be great if I could get it permenantly.

Today I found out about something called skinstudio. It lets me design "skins" for windows that I can apply using windowblinds. Thats useful. Now I can actually make my computer exactly what I want.

Andrew decided to try out Maxthon. He told me that its looking good so far. In fact the article on my last post was what convinced him. It also showed me the advantages of Maxthon. Actually my browser experiance was not so different as the guy who wrote that article.

Anyway bye for now

Well Well Well....

Hello All,
As you can see in the sidebar I am now blue Ginkgo Press webmaster. I downloaded the free trial of dreamweaver yesterday. And I also have CuteFTP 7.

WindowsX's new site design is excellent. I posted a cmment. www.windowsx.jcxp.net Vista Transformation pack 4 will in fact be released in JCXP. I'm really looking forward to that. Because I liked his forum before he left it and now that I have got along with JCXP its great that he chose that one.

Anyway I am very pleased to now be Blue Ginkgo Webmaster. I am learning how to design a website now, and am learning HTML and later on JavaScript and CSS, XML etc.

Heres an interesting article on Maxthon:

Browsing the Browsers

Which browser is the best, and why has nobody heard of it?
I have to admit, that up until a year ago, I gave very little thought to my browser. When I wanted to use the internet, I clicked on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and surfed the ‘net. I thought that the browser wars had been settled between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape’s Navigator eons ago. Why would I waste my precious time on something with the excitement of dental floss?

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been stuck in version six for years now. We’ve been promised a new version, and it is currently available as a beta, known as version seven. It works, although I’ll warn you that it can be buggy at times. I don’t know about you, but my feeling is that I’ve done more than my fair share of beta testing for Microsoft through the years between Windows and Office. I’m not about to do any more.

There is one killer feature that Internet Explorer lacks, and that is tabbed browsing. Quite simply, once you try it, you’ll be hooked. I routinely run three to five tabs on my browser, and it has become a necessity, especially when creating web site content to have a stable browser with excellent tab features.
About a year ago, I found out about FireFox. This is a great browser that has grown in popularity at an exponential rate. It has also served to put Microsoft on notice to get their butts in gear and get their new browser out. FireFox is generally stable, and is open source so it has thousands of plug ins available. With some effort, you can customize it to the exact browser you want. Truthfully, I never got into the plug ins, but I basically liked the browser.However, after the initial courtship, I lost interest in the browser. Why? It’s not always fully compatible with all sites. I once did some pasting up of content in WordPress, and I unknowingly crashed the entire site to every browser except FireFox! One other pet peeve is that when opening a new site, it opens in a new FireFox browser, and not as a new tab. After this happens a few times, I end up with the confusion of three browsers open, with two to three tabs each. I’m sure there is a work around for this, but I wasn’t wasting my time to find it!

I next turned my attention to Opera. They were the innovative folks that invented tabbed browsing. Up until recently, they were the only browser that was charging for the privilege; now it is free. Their browser works well, and is stable. However, two annoyances keep me from using it.
The first is when using blogger, not all the buttons for the content come up. Therefore, I have trouble adding links and images. This is completely unacceptable. The other annoyance is that the tabs have an “x” to close the window right on them. This is very convenient, but more than once I inadvertently closed a tab that I wanted to keep when switching. This got real old, real fast, and I was moving on again.

I next heard that Netscape had decided to make a run for it again. Remember Netscape Navigator, and Netscape Communicator? Well, don’t get too nostalgic, because it now is called Netscape Browser 8.1. It’s really a decent browser in the end. Apparently it is based on the FireFox engine, but it can be toggled into an Internet Explorer mode when needed for compatibility. It also has an antispyware and security feature set built into the browser. It’s like getting FireFox with the plug ins already preinstalled and ready to go. Uniquely, there is even a way that you can set it up to access your online email accounts at the click of a browser button which is very convenient.

What are the shortcomings? Like with Opera, there is the issue of the “x” on the tabs that closes a needed window when navigating the tabs. Close a tab more than once, and believe me, you’ll be moving on as well. The other problem is that with all the preinstalled add ons the browser takes the longest to boot up. Computer folk are generally inpatient; we’ll pay thousands for the latest processor and the most RAM to avoid waiting for more than one millisecond. Let’s just say, I still wasn’t happy.

After trying so all the major browsers out there, I had given up on trying to find a really good one. I obviously had a problem with all of them. I often was surfing with FireFox and Internet Explorer both open at the same time (waiting to find something better)!

Last month, I heard about a browser known as Maxthon. I had never heard of it before, but I saw that over 50 million of you had downloaded it, so I decided to give it a try (if for no other reason than be able to complain about it and write this article). It’s based on Internet Explorer’s code (version 6), so compatibility with web sites shouldn’t be an issue. That’s also the problem it’s still vulnerable to the same things that IE 6 is. Also, no one knows you’re using it because it comes up as IE, not Maxthon. Therefore, it’s never going to win a popularity contest, because no one knows you’re using it.

What’s so good about Maxthon? Well, first is that the tabs don’t have an “x” to close them like Opera and Netscape. Done with a tab? Then right click it to close it. This is the way it should work. Speaking of tabs working, when you open a link, even one for a new window, it opens in a new tab. This way you can have many tabs all at once open in the same one browser, and not have the three windows of two tabs each like with FireFox. If you need a new tab, just click on the icon on the toolbar; sure FireFox can be setup to have this, but Maxthon does it natively. When you close the whole browser, it checks that this is what you want to do, and asks if you would like to save these pages. If yes, it will go to the same pages the next time it starts. What a timesaver!
There are also a ton of other great features. Want to see the source code for the page? That is only a button click away. Also, you can see the site “full page” and eliminate the bottom tool bar by clicking another button. Your IE bookmarks also automatically get imported so you’ll feel right at home. There is also ad popup blocking included in the browser. Links can be dropped and dragged into tabs which is uber cool.
There is an RSS feed reader also built in. Unfortunately, you do need to add the button to the toolbar in the configuration options. I guess they figure if you’re tech savvy to want an RSS feed, you can figure out the feed button.
While Maxthon may have reverse engineered Microsoft’s bowser, I think that Microsoft could learn some things from the Maxthon crew at this point. So, if you really want to impress your friends, tell them that you’re using Maxthon, after all FireFox is just too common as an alternative. I keep all five browsers on my Windows desktop, but I use Maxthon the most. In the end, it works great, and is the most comfortable when using the internet.
Maxthon’s Home Page.
–Jonas


So as you can see there are plenty of reasons to switch to Maxthon.

Its my favorite.

Bye for now!

Mr J Harris
Blue Ginkgo Press webmaster
jacobharris99@gmail.com

Friday, April 28, 2006

Oh Dear....

Oh dear indeed...
Yesterday was a day full of computer problems.

1.)I tried to install windowBlinds. But when I did and applied a skin all my vista transformation pack themes were gone. Then I got a warning messege saying that the video card had malfunctioned. There was a beep from the computers internal speaker and then the video card shorted out and the screen was a mass of unintelligable lines.

I restarted the computer and everything was fine except that I was at the exact same point as I was before the video card shorted out. I removed WindowBlinds but then Windows was in the windows classic theme. The Vista themes were still gone so I managed to put it into windows XP theme, then I discovered that the vista themes were back! So I applied one of them and everything was fixed.

Then later on I had to go over to my friend Andrew to get dreamweaver from BT on his computer because the file is big and my computers internet is slow. He uses AVG but I knew that it would not be sufficient to protect his computer from virus's from a P2P network. So I decided to install McAfee onto his computer, however he didn't want to remove AVG as well and then I had to restart and I was getting this weird series of messeges at startup, stuff about "Orphaned files" and "checking disk for consistencies" and "Verifying USN journal" and "chkdsk is checking for File system on c:\" "file system if NTFS"

So mcAfee caused a few problems. And then as I knew it would it conflicted with AVG so he couldn't receive emails. And then I was having problems dowloading the stuff..... etc,etc,etc.etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,
etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc......

So as you can see Yesterday didn't go too well for me!

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Special news

Hello All,

I have created another Blog. You can access it at www.montrealcomputerkid.blogspot.com It is supposed to be recording my past and stuff. More so than this one.

Windows X has created a new website. I signed up for it today actually. You can reach it in the links section but here it is anyway: www.windowsx.jcxp.net

Anyway bye for now

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

My new website

Hello All,
Today I made myself a new website. Theres not really anything on it yet. I will do much more with it later on. I'll use it to teach myself how to make a real website like the one I'll be making for my moms. Heres the URL: www.freewebs.com/mrjharris

Soon enough I will put on a real title and pictures and text etc. Please don't misunderstand what I'm doing. I'm making myself a site not a blog. I will still continue posting in this blog even when my website is all set up.

What do you think of my newest wallpaper? (see post below) WindowsX had posted it one time on Neowin.net and I decided to try it out.

Anyway bye for now

PS: I am thinking of setting up a sitemeter on my new website.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Some maintenace on my Blog

Hello All,
Perhaps some of you noticed that the "Neowin.net" link in the sidebar wasn't functioning correctly. I descovered that I had made a bug in the code and corrected it. So as you also may have now noticed, the links fixed.

I'm thinking of adding a few more links on that sidebar of mine (not my vista sidebar though) I'm thinking of putting one to Thoths new blog (once he gets it going) and several others. I'm also considering removing some links. I want to only have links to blogs and sites which I think are good and that other people would enjoy.

I am getting suspicious. Why? Because I haven't gotten a single email to my Gmail account in days. Although its probably just because I haven't sent any to other people.

One thing that I would definetely want on my laptop is a DVD-ROM so that I can play DVD's. I forgot to mention that when I talleyed up the specs on my last post or second last post. (I forgot which)

Windows X used to use Neowin.net to release his products. Then it was techconnect. And now it will be JCXP. Quite a lot more people than I had thought have already moved from Techconnect magazine forums to JCXP.net. In fact today I discovered that this one person had used to have another alias on techconnect. But he switched when he moved to JCXP so I hadn't even known that it was the same person until someone started a thread on Vista Transformation pack 4.0 being released in JCXP, and I brought up the topic of lots of people moving from techconnect.

Anyway bye for now :)

Monday, April 24, 2006

Neowin.net

Hello All,
Just today I decided to check out Neowin.net forums of which I had an account which I never used. I like Neowin.net forums. In fact I would place it as one of my favorite forums, right next to JCXP.

Lindsay said that she would be getting a laptop. However I seriously doubt this. She doesn't need one for one thing, as all she does on her current desktop computer is email, Browsing, and MSN. None of which require a laptop or anything. I find that our chats on MSN have been going literally nowhere. So I decided to block Lindsay for a while.

Anyway enough of that.

Neowin.net is a very pospular forum. JCXP is newer I think. It has about 5000 members while Neowin has far more. However I think that I like the people in JCXP, so I'll stick more with it. Well actually its not a choice. Today I've been chatting in both of them.

Anyway enough of that as well!

There is a scheduled outage for bloggers servers. Thats probably why there were problems when I tried to publish this post.

Anyway bye for now...

Some news from today :)

Hello People,
Heres the address to Thoths other Blog: www.montrealwriter.blogspot.com
I asked in JCXP forums how you make a Vista sidebar gadget and what software is required. No response yet-due to the fact that I posted it 1 minute ago! ;)

I can't beleive that its actually still raining. It was Okay this morning but it started up again a while ago. Actually I just noticed now by looking out the window.

I don't like Dell. Dell is more expensive than other companies and I don't like some of there products, primarily because I'm against Intel. (I prefer AMD, when I get my laptop I will get AMD turion 64 instead of Intel Pentium M or Celeron M. ) Right now I'm chatting in the JCXP forums, in the Windows Vista section. I just tried to check the Vista Sidebar section but that section has not been created yet.

I made a good choice of webcam. It has the best picture quality of any webcam that I've ever seen actually. It cost me nearly 100$ but after the mail-in rebate it was a bit less.

Anyway bye for now :)

Sunday, April 23, 2006

A quick addition to my last post

Hello All,
In some ways find posting on this blog is like posting on a forum. BTW the picture of the laptop in the sidebar is just an image that I found when I Googleimaged "laptop". I'm not exatly sure even what brand or model it is. I just like the look of it. :) -although I wouldn't buy a laptop just because it looked nice!

Anyway bye for now

Stellas desktop and a few notes

Hello All,
Above is the image of Stellas desktop with a particular WindowBlinds skin that you can download from here: http://www.wincustomize.com/Skins.aspx?LibID=1

I don't know why but I still have not installed windowblinds. I will on my next laptop though.

Do you know what Lindsay Oksenberg said to me today? She said that she though that laptops were useless. Weird thing to say. Laptops have more use in some respects than desktops do. eg. they are protable, have batteries, and have built in wireless network card.

I found out today that it is possible to take a screenshot of the bootscreen. That is useful to know.

I haven't been doing much today except be on the computer and watch a movie. Its really rainy today. Its not rainy in ottawa though. Actually a friend told me that yesterday it was raining in ottawa and that today its cleared up. This rain seems to be moving east.

My current desktop hasn't changed much since last screenshot. I'm not changing or adding to this computer anymore as I know that I will be getting a laptop later in may. Which is actually quite soon.

Heres my desired minimum specs of my upcoming laptop:

AMD Turion 64 1.60 GHz
512 MB of RAM
60 GB Hard drive
64 MB graphics card

I would be willing to pay 1,200 tops for that. Not counting tax, antivirus, warranty etc. If I get something better than I would be willing to pay more.

The laptop brands I like are: Toshiba, Dell, ASUS, and Hewlett-Packard. All of which are major companies. My favorite mainboard model is actually an ASUS being an A8N-SLI Premium/Deluxe. Toshiba Satellites are my preferred tosiba laptop series. It is very popular and actually quite cheap.

Anyway bye for now

and enjoy the screenshot.

Vista build 5365 screenshots

Hello All,
Yesterday I found 24 screenshots of Vista Build 5365 on JCXP forums. And another great thing about them was that they are all extreme high quality PNG's !!!! I'm downloading them all to my computer. One of them is downloading as I write this Blog. I'm thinking of putting more pictures not only in my Blog posts but into the sidebar and the footer etc. And I want to get a good internet-quality picture of me for my Blogger profile. I now realize that I could use Photoshop to compress the images so perhaps we will be seeing pictures in the sidebar afterall. Actually its not exactly easy to put in new pictures into the sidebar. Well for me it was easy to figure out but its not exactly a straightforward process. You have to know where you can put the code etc.

Well another rainy day today. It was raining last night and hasn't stopped at all since then.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Heres those signatures I told you all about in my last post. (the first one with the grass was the harder one)


Now anyone can post a comment into my blog

Hello all,
I have now changed the settings of my Blog so that anyone, even somone with no Blogger account can post comments. I would like some feedback on my Blog, tips, ways I can improve etc.

I went biking again today. My roommate has given me the red bike, which I'm really happy about because my old bike really wasn't good. I made myself 2 new forum signatures today. I think I'm inproving at Photoshop CS2. I'll post them in my next post. The first one I made in a really stupid way: I made it and didn't do a spelling check before I flattened it. You'll see some typing errors when I post it. (sorry :( ) However I'm just going to make a second version with the errors fixed. Heres another error I forgot to mention: I slipped in some text right at the end and now the line right above it it squeezed right next to it. The second one has no problems. Actually I downloaded the PSD file from the person who had originaly made it and then I figured out how to put in my name. Number two was a lot harder. Let me explain what a PSD file is by the way in case you're wondering: A PSD is a Photoshop image file which has all the layers, eg. it is not just a background (flattened) so I can edit individual layers or delete layers or modify type. (which is what I did by the way. The problem was duplicating the font and effects that the designer had made the text. However I just copied and pasted the "layer style" which automatically made the type what I wanted it. )Also because the windows logo at the top is a layer of its own I can put anything else I want over there even I picture of myself!

Anyway as you can see I'm learning how to use Photoshop quite effectively. My computer has been moved to another room in the apartment in preperation for the new roommates.

Anyway bye for now!

Friday, April 21, 2006

The cactus and the red Bicycle...


Problems trying to insert images to sidebar

Hello All,
It was my original intention to put images into the sidebar. However due to the large size of the images and lack of software to compensate that is currently impossible. However when I get new laptop I will get ACDsee on it so that I can decide what the image size is. Then I will put images into the sidebar.

Bye

Preperation for new laptop


Hello All,
I'm already preparing to get my new laptop: I'm putting all my files and programs on CD so that I can bring them over to my next computer. I will continue my forum postings and my Blog from the laptop after that. The reason I'm waiting till the end of may is because I'll be getting more money at the end of the month. The laptop will have McAfee Virusscan for Anti-virus. (McAfees my favorite) and lots of other software.

By the way the image is of my current desktop, with Vista sidebar, and new wallpaper. (also as you can see I have less icons due to the fact that I'm clearing away files on my computer in preperation for the new laptop) I find that wallpaper very nice.

Now that I've started using WindowBlinds and Vista transformation pack I find that I wouldn't want to use a computer without it! My next laptop will definetely have it. And I'm using Window Blinds 4 (latest 5) and Vista transformation pack 3 (upcoming version is 4) so my next laptop will definetely have both of those! :) (please excuse any typing errors in my quickly typed blog) I am on my 100th post on JCXP forums.

Aeroexperience has changed its URL from www.aeroxp.net to www.aeroxp.org. I am signed up for aeroxp and in my opinion its a very good forum solely devoted to Windows Vista, Windows Live, IE7 etc.

Anyway byr for now.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Contact me

Hello All,
Let me remind you that you can post opinions on my Blog either by emailing me (see "contact me" button at the top of the "links") or by posting comments.

Thank you

Gmail drive

Hi All,
I just installed Gmail drive onto my computer. It allows me to use gmail as a storage medium and treats gmail as if it was an actual drive on my computer. Its nice to gain 3 more GB's of space. Soon a new room-mate will get here at the end of april and I'll get a new laptop at the end of may. Both of which I'm looking forward too....

I'm going to install windowblinds on my computer later today-at least I hope so.

Bye for now

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Windows Live Messenger new build

Hello All,
I am going to be downloading Internet Explorer 7 and the new and improved build of MSN. After seeing the screenshots I was sure that I wanted it.

I successfully installed Vista sidebar onto my computer today. I un-RARed the files to progeam files and ran the exe which started up the sidebar. But when it started it gave me runtime error. I found out that one of the gadgets causes this runtime error so I removed it and now it works with no problem.

There is a new cafe near by where I live which offer free Wi-fi. When I get my laptop I will be able to use that.

Anyway bye for now.

A quick post

Hi Again,
I'm just posting to inform you of this: I removed text block in my profile so that now "about me" is shown in the Blog itself. I'll be having pizza for supper :)

I've just downloaded a Dr Who wallpaper and a few other wallpapers from various sites. Maybe I'll post them some time

Bye

Hey People!

Hi Everybody,
Stella jsut sent me windowblinds. Actually she gave me link to it where she had posted it on her website. I downloaded RAR file but have not installed yet. It is version 4 so it is second latest version.

As you can probably see I have signed up for AdSense which puts ads on my Blog so that I can actually make money from it.

I chatted with this person I know called Jeremiah on MSN yesterday. He told me about Stuffit expander, which is useful to me.

Anyway The Computer Kids Shrine is gaining more and more posts and features all the time. My blog is growing!

Bye for now

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

News sidebar up and running

Hello All,
As you may have noticed on the sidebar there is now some news being posted under the "news" section of the sidebar. I had run into a few problem at first while trying to make titles above the actual news post itself but I put in title using the HTML editor. So everything looks OK. Right this moment I am downloading Internet Explorer 7. Its the upcoming version of IE currently in Beta but with lots of good features already.

Bye for now! Enjoy the news!

WindowBlinds

Hello People,
Have you ever heard of something called WindowBlinds? It can apply skins and change the look and feel of Windows (eg. Icons, buttons, taskbar etc). I don't have it right now but am thinking of getting it. (On my next laptop of course :) theres also a setting that you can use which makes everything transparent. Glass2k does this but doesn't have any of the other features. Stella just sent me a picture of her desktop with a certain windowblinds skin. Maybe I'll post it.

For some reason I'm feeling very depressed. Maybe I'm just tired. I have a goal which is to learn visual basic and to build my website several months after I get my laptop. Then I will be able to put a downloads section with my finished stuff. WindowBlinds 5 is the latest version so probably has the most features. Stella said that she could send my the file but I don't know if it is version 5. If it is then great. If not then I will just download it myself.

I really like Cyberlink PowerDVD. It is a DVD player program. I'll put that on my next laptop if it has DVD drive. (which I intend for it to have)

Anyway bye for now!

Monday, April 17, 2006

My news today


Hey People,
I'm going to be making a new website after I get my laptop. I'll make it have lots of flash. It will have images, new, downloads, and Windows Tips & tricks. In other word it'll be a tech site.

I now have 70 posts on JCXP. By the way the image above is of my latest vista desk. My next laptop will have lots of good software on it. And I will be able to connect wirelessly which is fast unlike this horrible dial-up!!!

Bye for now

Sunday, April 16, 2006

The news today

Hey People,
I got the Vista sidebar today, I've been chatting in the JCXP forums even more. And I went biking yesterday. Theres a new Vista build coming out tommorrow. (The easter vista build!) LOL.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

I went biking yesterday


Hi Everyone,
I went biking to the mall yesterday. Reasons: To get some excersise biking and to go to the mall :D Anyway I went to the mall to check out if there were any laptops that I liked and to get a book on web page design.

I downloaded desktop sidebar. Although I haven't been able to find a good Vista skin that looks authentic I may just design one myself. Anyway Its a really good thing that I got the web page design book because I'll be making my mothers and my own websites.

I'll go biking again later today. I'll report on that later today or tommorrow.

Bye for now!

PS: The image is of my newest vista desktop with the sidebar and a new wallpaper. Enjoy.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Heres what I think of eMule

Hi Again,
I'e tried out eMule and guess what? Its great! You get lots of results and less viruses. And it is more like LimeWire in that it gives you a list instead of a webpage.

Bye for now!

(Please pay no mind to any of y typing errors. I type this out really quickly and don't do a spelling check :) )

Thursday, April 13, 2006

I got eMule!

Hey people,

Heres a little post:

I got eMule and I'm downloading it right now.

I'll edit this tommorrow once I start using it :)

I'm back

Hello After 2 days of no posts!
Sorry for being incomuicado from this Blog foor so long. I've been chatting in the jcxp forums a lot recently and have been downloading screenshots of Windows Vista.

I love the JCXP forums. The responses are so fast and the design of the forum is really nice. I've been chatting in the Windows Vista section a lot. I've gotten elevated to the second level by the way :)

I should add a few more links in the "links" section of the sidebar. Lets see what could I add??.... 1) JCXP, 2) Coffeecup GIF animator, Theres a couple others I'll add as well :)

By the way the CoffeeCup GIF Animator is a program that animates images eg. it makes them move. It seems like really good software. Only problem is that its shareware so I have to pay :(

News:
MSN Messenger 7.5 is now the most-used IM client.

I myself use MSN Messenger 8.0.0566 (Beta). It has a few new features but as I had said before the interface is terrible. See post: Windows Live Messenger.

My free trial of ACDsee has expired. I'm kinda sad about that 'cause now I have to switch back to the primitive and limited Windows Picture and fax viewer. Oh well I'll get the full version on my next Laptop. I'll get the torrent.

I've switched to Avast! Antivirus. (and yes that exclamation mark is supposed to be there)

A few other torrents that I'll get on my next computer:

Pinnacle studio plus 10
Half-life 2
Photoshop CS2
McAfee virusscan

(and a few others I forgot the names right now :)

Anyway bye for now

PS: I see that my sitemeters gone past 100!! Whoah!

Monday, April 10, 2006

I did it!!!


Hello People,
Its official. Mr J Harris turned his computer into Vista!!! It looks just like it with a round start button, black taskbar, eyecandy, a different clock, lots of new vista themes, screensavers and wallpapers! And there are also new icons and when I check to see what version of Windows I have it says "windows Vista service pack 1".

Heres a picture of my Vista desktop.

Todays the day!

Hello,
Todays the day that I get that disk from andrew! By the end of this day my computer will be looking like Windows Vista!

As you can see there are some new people who are visiting my Blog including some from Germany.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Windows Vista beta build 5308










Here are some pics of the latest vista build.

Enjoy

The Info I've got with my Sitemeter so far

Hello People,
Well I've got a host of info from my sitemeter so far. I can tell that there are people who speak english, dutch, and Chinese, that most of the people who check my Blog have Windows XP, and that a few use Linux. I can tell that there are peopl from Canada, the Netherlands, Taiwan (hello stella!) , India, and the UK. How interesting! I can tell so much!

My third Sitemeter, and the sidebar

Hello again,
As you can see I've added the third Sitemeter. I have so many now! I checked the clustrmap and saw that the only visitors were from Taiwan and from where I live in Montreal. Also as you can probably see I've started posting in the sidebar. The Computer Kids Shrine is getting more and more features! Just yesterday I assigned a password to my computer-I gotta be careful not to forget it! But now my systems more secure so I think that the extra troubles worth it :)

I've gotta start posting more images! I was posting a lot before but now I seem to have stopped. I'll post some recent ones in upcoming postings... Anyway I really like the new sitemeter. The reason I used three is because they all have advantages and disadvantages over each other.

Computer report
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Have you ever heard of Writely (www.writely.com) or Meebo (www.meebo.com)? The first one (writely is an online word processor and the second one is basically Trillian pretending to be MSN web messenger:))

Right now theres lots of pidgeons on the balcony outside where my computer is. In fact ones right on the Window sill. I was waiting and waiting for the emaail from Webstats4u. (the second sitemeter) They took longer to email than the others so I thought the I had mistyped my email adress!! I only got it this morning.

I find that the AVG Antivirus Virus alert is weird. Because it has a picture of a goblin face thats smoking a cigar (no I'm not kidding!) And below it it asks whether I want to "heal" it (whatever that actually is) or move it to the vault. I think I prefer McAfee above all of the others actually. Because it has lots of features without slowing down your computer or being to big a download, its easy to use and detects lots of viruses!

I tried out mIRC again today. (As I found out today "IRC" stands for Internet Relay Chat) I'm starting to ge the hang of it more, and I find that I like it. It also lets you share files and stuff. It seems pretty good. You know that when you click on Khaleds nose in the welcome screen theres a squeak??!! And when you right click anywhere on the same screen a little bouncing dot appears above the "I" in "mIRC"

Anyway bye for now!

Saturday, April 08, 2006

My new sitemeter


Hi!
I just got a new sitemeter! I really like it. I can tell how many people are going to my blog. Just click the button at the bottom of my Blog (the one that says "sitemeter") and a page will open which says how many people have checked it out in the past year, month, week, day, our and minute!

I'm also planning on signing for webstats4u. Then I can get a sitemeter which shows the locations of all of the people checking my blog be they in Taiwan, New york, Algeria, Africa... You name it! As you can see I've enabled the email forwarding of posts in my blog. And now that I'm signed up for Photobucket I am going to upload an image of myself to my Profile.

Above it an image I took with my webcam....of my eye! I've actually changed my Avator to that. Only in MSN though... Not anywhere else like any forum, my Yahoo Messenger or my Email account. I can use my webcam to put a moustache or crown or whatever on my face-even make me look entirely like someone-or something for that matter. Like an Alien, or a dinosaur or a gingerbread man!!!!! My Webcam is a Logitech Quickcam pro 5000. Its really clear and its what I would recommend. My old webcam was just dreadful. It seemed to only be in black and white except when you were holding the object up close to it-and even then it had to be a vibrant strong color. And the quality and the clarity of it was just awful as well. Never mind the fact that it didn't have a built-in microphone. My current webcam has a built-in rightsound microphone and a VGA sensor with Rightlight. Its the best! It clips right onto the top of my LCD Monitor, but the clip can be bent (this isn't bad for it) so that it is flat and then it can be put on top of a flat surface or a CRT monitor. However you can get cheaper webcams which are OK-but still not as good as mine which ordinarily cost 150$!!! I recommend Logitech completely. It is the number 1 webcam producer. My keyboard however is not a logitech but a microsoft. It is really good although it is not wireless. However it is still excellent and has lots of extra keys and some pretty good software.

Bye for now!

Stella's websites URL

Hello,
Heres the URL for Stella's website: http://homecoming.nhltc.edu.tw/~919304/

It has pictures of the times when she was here and some other stuff.

Just today I downloaded the MSN Messenger enhancer. I really like it. It gets rid of all of the ads and seems to be very useful.

Bye for now!

A bit of a revision to the first Photoshop work


Hi,
I've made a bit of a revision to my previous work with Photoshop. Please tell me what you think.
Bye

Friday, April 07, 2006

My latest Photoshop work


Heres an image that I've been working on in Photoshop. It is of the Windows Vista Boot screen. I started off from scratch when I made this and it was harder to do this than it seems.

Windows Live Messenger

Hi,
I had tried out WLM (windows Live Messenger) a while back. I had really liked the Beta 1. But then I had to download the Beta 2 which I hate. With the previous one you could set the color as dark as you liked, and it had a host of other features. This one removed some of them, switched to an awful interface and the icon looks like the old windows Messenger icon. I'm thinking of switching back to 7.5 if thats even possible now.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

April 06 2006

Hi Everybody,
I just downloaded mIRC. I like it but unfortunately I have to pay 20.00$. Also I wasn't familier with the interface. Maybe some other time I'll try it out again some day. WinBeta.org forums and IEXbeta are both forums talking about various products in beta ie. Windows Vista, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live mail, etc. I like Windows Live mail but the reason I switched to Gmail is becuse the space offered by it is even bigger, a tastey 2.7 GB! Compared to Windows Live mails 2 GB. Also Windows Live mail has irritatting ads. And I can use Gmail with outlook express. So as you can see there are plenty of reasons to switch to Gmail. I love it! (Gmail) I also like the new Yahoo! mail and the new Yahoo! Home page which I find is WAY more cleaner than before. I think that I'm going to download the Vista transformation pack soon. Since I have dial-up I'll have to wait till a time when phone calls aren't a concern. Hopefully that'll be soon. I like going on Photography trips. I like taking pictures in general with my digital camera!

Anyways

Bye for now

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Even more forums...

Hello,
I've just joined several more forums:

Amandtech forums
WinBeta.org forums
IExBeta forums

All of which I like!

Computer magazines

Hello,
I'm signed up for PCworld magazine the second issue of which I got last week. I had also bought 1 copy of Maximum PC. I'm thinking of signing up for Maximum PC some time. I get a CD with each copy, filled with games and programs. I get a CD-ROM with PC world but it arrives seperately-I'm still waiting for it to arrive. Theres another magazine that I know about called Techconnect Magazine-I'm signed up for their forums. I also get these free ones from Microbytes. So all in all I'm pretty up-to-date in the computer world.

April 05 2006

Hello,
I'm still reading the Photoshop CS2 book today, as well as another book called "how to build an affordale quality fast PC"-not that I haven't already read this one, I have read it but I'm reading it again. I use ZoneAlarm Firewall, I switched after I found out that the Windows Firewall doesn't provide 2-way protection (that was quite some time ago) so I switched to ZoneAlarm which I'm ver y happy and satisfied with.
Bye for now

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

4shared

Hello,
Today I decided to start using my 4shared account some more as I had signed up for it a while back and had nearly forgotten about it. And in my opinion its excellent! 500 MB's of space for stuff that you can share with other people. Its even free. I can load movies, music, photos, documents and other stuff in it. Including software! you can sign up for it at www.4shared.com I've seen some people who make patches and software put some things (like images and software) onto 4shared. My preferred website provider is iPower web. You get 10,000 Mb's of space, and up to 2,500 email accounts for only 96$ a year. I'll probably use it for my next website. I've already uploaded some images and videos onto my 4shared account. Now I can just give people a link when I want to give them a photo or video.

I heard from PCworld that BitDefender is the best, but for some reason I still prefer McAfee. I wonder why... Maybe because McAfee is a bigger company. I installed two new programs onto my computer today. Everest, and firegraphics Xp. Both of which I got from a Maximum PC CD and both of which I really like. Everest is very useful imdeed if you want to know about your computer without prying it open.

Its a rainy day today. Or as it turned out afterwards, a snowy day. But nevertheless I like it. For some reason I like rainy days. And going out on one (can you believe it!)

April 04 2006 tuesday

Hello,
I've been reading through "Adobe Photoshop CS2 in easy steps" which is where I had originally learned Photoshop from. I'm reading through it again to refresh my memory in preperation for using it to help design my mothers website-and to just play around with and enhance my digital photos.

Zipcentral
Just today I stumbled across something called Zipcentral (actually I found out about it from a book of mine) which does the same things as winzip but is completely free! You can get it from http://zipcentral.iscool.com

So much snow
I'm surprised by the fact that theres snow-and a lot today. It was such nice sunny weather yesterday and now its all snowy. However its too warm for the snow to mount up so it's landing like rain would.

I'm planning on, after I finish working on my moms website that I will create my own website. Probably jacobharris.net or something like that. I'll post the adress as sonn as its created.

Bye for now!

Monday, April 03, 2006

So many forums.......

I just signed up for yet another forum. neowin.net

I'm signed up for so many forums now heres a list of all of them

neowin.net
techconnect magazine forums
P2P forums
TechGuy

I like neowin. It seems to have been worth signing up.

I got Photoshop CS2!




Hello everyone,
I got Photoshop CS2 today, which i'm really happy about because I had been having problems installing it before. It really is an excellent program. I had read books and tutorials on it so I know how to use it well. ANother thing I would really want is pinncale studio 10. So that I could edit movies. I think I'll be getting a laptop some time after I've built a desktop PC for myself. I would have ACDsee, Pinnacle, Photoshop CS2 etc on there. Heres something you might want to check out: www.sightspeed.com they make a very good video Phone which I myself use. Windows Vista is scheduled to come out in november later this year. As is the next version of office. Office 2007. Windows XP service pack 3 will come out in early 2007. Heres some images from my recent photographing trip.
I myself think that they're pretty good. I went on the photo trip yesterday. (check the time and date of this post and you'll find out when exactly "yesterday" is.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Recovery, and this game I've been playing

I've recovered from my flu now! Only problem is that my mom now has it!

I've been playing this game recently on the computer a LOT. Its the Harry Potter and the sorcerers stone game. I don't know why I like it. In fact I find it way to easy-compared to a game like Doom 3, Quake 4 or Half-life 2. Maybe its just that its the only game I can play on this old computer. My video card is really old and not 3D making 3D gaming impossible for me-but it will on my next computer. I've recently got WinAmp, and I tried to get internet explorer 7 beta but it requires validation and my copy apparently isn't valid.

Anyway as I was saying before I am recovered which I am extremely pleased about. I was having to lye around all day resting in order to recover, not able to do any of the things I wanted to do such as read PCworld magazine.

Heres some cheats I found for Harry potter:

Cheat Effect
Harrygetsfullhealth Restores Harry to full health
Harrysuperjump Massive jump
Harrynormaljump Big jump

You just have to type these in while playing. I mean theres no window you have to open or anything like in Doom 3.