November 21, 2007 - Reading time: 2 minutes

I’m ashamed that I did not notice this sooner. In my earlier post on how to make Avira AntiVir more usable, I described a way to make updates invisible.

Of course, this is also possible with AVG Free Edition, and the process is much easier. I’m documenting it here to help myself remember it in the future.

By default, AVG Antivirus will spawn a new window whenever it updates, thereby interrupting your current task (including breaking any full-screen applications). To quickly and easily prevent this from happening, launch the AVG Control Center and select the Update Manager. Read more

September 30, 2007 - Reading time: 5 minutes

Almost exactly one year ago, I became a member of the Digg community. My life was perfectly fine beforehand, or so I thought. To me, Digg was just another news site, and I suspected I would occasionally scan it for interesting articles and then be on my merry way, giving Digg no more than five minutes of my time per day. Boy was I wrong!

Now, my life is forever changed. My eyes have been opened. I’ve swallowed the “red” pill. Before my Digg addiction, I was a happily married man in the early stages of my career, a fairly-devout Christian, a Windows-using Republican, and a technology enthusiast. I’m still a technology enthusiast, but since Digg overtook my life, a few things have changed.

For starters, Digg taught me that Microsoft Windows is a crap operating system, and Bill Gates is the anti-Christ. Or was it Steve Ballmer? One never knows…. So, I switched to Linux, but not just any Linux. The collective wisdom of the pre-pubescents who populate Digg informed me again and again that Ubuntu is the best Linux. Naturally, whenever I see any word resembling Ubuntu in an upcoming story, I froth at the mouth in a rabid digging frenzy! Ubuntu = Dugg. No other Linux matters. Read more

August 27, 2007 - Reading time: 3 minutes

I bought a white Macbook mere hours after they were first released. It’s a beautiful machine, and I have enjoyed every moment with it so far. Some of its common uses include: giving presentations to my classes (with Keynote), computer-based music notation, recording musicians, and writing essays (lots of them!). Heck, I even use the built-in camera to record my conducting lessons (via iMovie)!

However, my machine has not been without flaw. Since it’s a revision “A” product, I’ve experienced some of the bugs that have plagued the first generation Macbooks. First of all, my Macbook “mooed,” but a firmware update took care of that.

Second of all, the shell around the touchpad (the “palm-rests”) became discolored, but I probably should have washed my dirty paws a little better before using the machine. 🙂

Third, my Macbook developed a distracting “screen flicker” problem. I thought I could live with it for a while, but the flickering increased in severity, sometime blacking out the screen for seconds at a time. I had enough. Read more

August 23, 2007 - Reading time: 3 minutes

A few days ago I found out about OpenDNS – it’s one of those services that once you start using it, you wonder how on earth you ever got along without it before.

In short, it’s a FREE Domain Name Service (DNS) that you can tap into on a specific computer or router level. I simply logged into my Linksys WRT54GL router, entered two server addresses, and rebooted. That’s it.

What can it do for you? A lot! 🙂

Anti-phishing

For starters, it protects you from “phishing” sites, such as attempts to steal your PayPal passwords and bank account information. This alone is enough reason for anyone to use it. Also, it corrects common misspellings and re-directs to the appropriate site. For instance, if you type “craigslist.og,” it will redirect you to “craigslist.org.” Pretty slick. Read more

August 15, 2007 - Reading time: 5 minutes

Update: there is also a more recent version of this article here.

For years now I have used the free edition of AVG Antivirus, but recently I switched to Avira AntiVir (free edition). I still like AVG, but a number of reports show that it suffers in comparison to AntiVir. While my system has not had a virus in a long time, I decided to give AntiVir a whirl.

I like it, for the most part. However, there are a couple of easy hacks improvements that one can make.

Disable the Annoying Popup

The free edition of Avira AntiVir comes with an nagging popup window that rears its ugly head after each update (usually) every day, begging you to consider upgrading to the premium version. The popup is easy to dismiss, but annoying nonetheless. I understand that Avira needs to make money, but every single day is excessive. Read more

June 29, 2007 - Reading time: 12 minutes

Screencasts, or capturing a digital video of movement on your computer screen, are a great way to create tutorials, presentations, and even entertaining videos. Software used to create screencasts abounds for (nearly) every operating system, and ranges in price from free to upwards of $50.

As an example, here is a sample screencast (2.5 MB – Ogg Theora) showing the installation of Google Desktop for Linux. If you can’t open the video, please use VLC.

Naturally, I prefer the free options, but will give credit when credit is due if a paid option is simply better than a free option. That said, here is an overview of some of the screencast options available for Windows, Linux, and OS X, and possibly other operating systems. Read more