I’m not the best at being organized, but I hate a cluttered computer. I hate having things on my hard drives. I want it gone. I want a clean computer.
You know you need back ups. We all do. But we also need space on the computer. So here’s the quick tip from me for today.
Drag your WoW game, your ripped copies of movies and music you have CDs for, etc., and put them all on your external hard drive. I got the Verbatim hard drive from a PR rep, and all I can say is… it’s so small. Small. But with over 300 gigs of space. They have a bigger one for 500 gigs. With WoW or other games running off of the external hard drive, you get at least 20 gigs of space free on your main drive. I think I just purged 40 gigs of games off of my hard drive onto the Verbatim, and the games still run smooth.
Copy files you only have digital copies of into three ways. Frequent, Back Up and Never Used. You know those old files you never look at any more, but hang on to? Save that to your external storage space, and to a couple of burned CDs (or release into the cloud).
If you use it frequently (at least once a month) store it locally and put it on your current backup drive.
Update your Never Used spaces if you use something and then stop. Drop it into an “Empty” folder and then once a week empty it onto your back up and never used files. You can schedule your computer to do this automatically. (Yes, people talk about it, and never do it, but it takes thirty minutes.
File, file, file. This isn’t your filing cabinet, with marker-ed up reused files and limited space. This is the magical world of tech and Internet. Write your files with really long labels. Rename it when you’re done. Move them where you want.
Remember, if you only have one copy on your back up hard drive, then it isn’t a back up. Duplicate it.
Today, Huffington Post announced that Sir Patrick Stewart has been knighted by the Queen of England.
“This is an honor that embraces those actors, directors and creative teams who have in these recent years helped fill my life with inspiration, companionship and sheer fun,” says Stewart.
Guess who also was knighted? Peter Jackson! New Zealand has their own honors list for knighthood, which is then approved up by the Queen.
Sir Peter Jackson is currently working on The Hobbit.
Puts tears in a geek’s eyes. He was recognized not only for his work with Star Trek, but also for his stage work, including his Tony nominated performance for MacBeth.
Some of my favorite things aren’t in film or stage. I love his reading of The Last Battle, written by C. S. Lewis. He does additional audio books as well.
Elementary school teachers and high school teachers that I had were great, but I really did lack in the math department. It may not be the fault of math teachers. As someone at the TED website posted in the comments, some teachers end up being math teachers and they hated math. They even said so to children.
So when we’ve got math teachers who hate math teaching these skills to kids who also have learned to hate math, you can easily see why science and engineering careers seem like the impossible reach to kids. Many may have the aspiration, but when we make math ‘harder’ on ourselves by trying to memorize formulas instead of building formulas ourselves, it’s a limitation. We get told it may be too hard and to try something else.
Some people hate it. Some people think Google’s new side bar looks a lot like Bing’s. I think so. I think it’s silly. Their previous look was fine. I liked the more zen and simple design.
The logo changed too, but no one really noticed or cared since the left bar was the real deal killer for many searchers. Many are threatening to switch to Bing. (Who doesn’t use more than one search engine, anyway?)
So here’s the quick way on how to get the side bar off of Google.
Go to Tools.
Click on Options.
Click on Privacy.
Click on Remove Individual Cookies.
Search for PREF.
Delete the google.com PREF.
Refresh, repeat deleting the cookie if you need to.
This should work. Let me know if you have a few extra tips on getting rid of the Bing-like side bar.
I hear not all countries are getting the side bar, either, and sometimes not all states are getting it. Let me know if you happen to get it or you don’t. Maybe you don’t have the updated cookie, preferences or whatever.
Subscribe to stay up to date on additional changes, quick fixes and how to do other tech stuff. I’ll make a video on this later and will probably post it here in this section.
Alright, so celebrities do things. Sometimes it’s interesting. Sometimes it isn’t.
I know that the latest celebrity gossip is big industry. Really, it’s a billion dollars a year at least. There are people who write, photograph, share thoughts and make big assumptions about the private lives of celebrities.
I don’t particularly read celebrity gossip, except when it’s about Nathan Fillion. However, I know there are others out there who just love this stuff and enjoy learning all about their favorite actors, actresses and other talent. What I am sometimes surprised about is just how much people read about other people’s lives. But we love reality shows, about real people, so celebrity lives must be even more interesting.
I think it’s more interesting only because they’re trained to be interesting. They go through lessons and plan their day and while they say they can be normal… I don’t think they can be. (But then again, what’s normal?)
Think about it, they usually have to watch what they say and do amongst everyone. The only time they get to be themselves is when they’re alone, or with family and very close friends. Even then, a family member could easily relay a message that they said, out of context, to reporters and it could all go bad.
If you don’t think it matters, just think about Mel Gibson and the whole drunk debacle. He was drunk and yet they were holding him responsible for what he said. Silly, I know, celebrities? Drink? No way!
So I when I read celebrity gossip, I do prefer honesty, but I only want to know what celebrities have approved of and want us to know. Maybe that’s silly, because many people have opinions and ideas about what’s going on. Dunno. I like nice gossip. Oh hey, so and so is getting married and they wanted to tell everyone. By the way, someone adopted a little boy. Isn’t that nice?
I don’t think I want to know about affairs and who took who out to dinner and it may possibly mean they are getting married or that they’re breaking up with someone else. I think those are what I don’t like. The silly assumptions. But when it’s done nicely, and with taste, I’m happy with the idea.
What’s your idea on what you want to hear about from celebrities?
So about leveling quickly in World of Warcraft like the pros do it… ??Ok, so like, I’m only a level 42 as of this blog post in World of Warcraft with my latest ‘toon. Give me a break, I just started this year and I usually only play on weekends. (I know, excuses, excuses.)
So I just recently discovered random dungeons. Ok, being new is hard when you’re not in a guild, I suppose. There’s no one there to tell you about all this stuff you can do. Yeah, it’s in the forums, but you have to admit, there’s a lot in the forums and instructions. This stuff is easily missed.
It really breaks up the monotony when you can do an occasional random or dungeon while you’re rolling through solo questing.
Now that I’m learning what DPS means (damage per second) and wondering how to build up my new warrior girl up to start tanking, I’m left with wondering about the fastest way to grind through a few levels quickly on World of Warcraft.
Here’s what I know so far about leveling on your own (mostly):
Level 1 – 10
Getting to level 10 these days should only take two hours, three at most if you’re in an area where there’s a lot of back and forth running involved. Blizzard made getting to level 5 pretty easy. You more than likely won’t leave the ‘newbie’ area until you are level 5 or close to it.
Basically, you want to do all of your intro quests as fast as possible. So you’ll need to pick up more than one at a time, and then look at your map. Check as to where those quests are located. Set a path toward the closest ones, and work your way around and back to the safe tree or building or cave or hut.
So go ahead and grab as many golden “?” as possible in the first part. When you leave the ‘safe zone’, plan on doing more running as it’s more spread out, but it’s very similar. Pick areas where there’s a whole lot of fighting, and avoid ‘errand running’ unless it leads to a fighting quest or some good gear.
Level 15
After getting to level 10 in a hurry, you’ll want to do some exploring and find new places to level up. The easiest place on the alliance side that I’ve found was at the Loch Modan in WoW. There’s an area where the center where the quests are coming from are relatively a shorter distance from all of the enemies you’ll be looking for. Don’t be afraid to swim through that big lake to get to where you need to be.
Randoms and Dungeons
As soon as you are able to do randoms and dungeons of all sorts, use your Dungeon Finder to locate groups for you. Have this running and grind through your dungeons with your groups. These break up the solo questing without joining a guild to help you along.
These dungeons award lots of prizes and you’ll level pretty quickly. Even at 40, I managed to get to 42 in a couple of days (playing just a few hours a day).
20 and Up
Once you’re at twenty, and you have a steed, mount up and travel to different flight masters where it makes sense to go. Flying is the best way to get around until you get faster mounts, and you’ll save time if you just spend an afternoon running to different flight points. From then on if you need to run errands (and you will) you can hearthstone to your chosen town and then fly out from that spot.
That’s how I’ve done it so far, getting to 15 as fast as possible in order to do some randoms and just plugging away at quests where fighting (especially humanoids) was the main request.
Any tips from more seasoned pros? What’s your best leveling tip? If you’d like, I’d post a pic of your ‘toon and your tip in the next blog post I do about World of Warcraft.
Targus recently sent a laptop messenger bag my way to try out.
Given that I recently got an Aspire One netbook for Christmas as a gift from my brother, I was delighted to try out one of the new messenger bags. I hadn’t purchased a carrying case for mine yet, so this was a great idea for me.
I’ve carried it around for a couple of weeks now, stuffing in my netbook, notebooks, pens, and smaller gadgets like my cell phone and PDA and the cords needed to power them.
The bag itself has a great outer shell material. There’s several pockets both inside and out. I love the magnet feature, much better than the Velcro closures you see on many bags of this type. I like the solid click of the magnets when they attach, so I know it is closed. I hate being in a quiet room with a lot of people, like a library, and the noisy sound Velcro makes. The magnets totally work well in replacement. One slight wish is that the magnets could be a tad bit stronger. More for my “feeling secured” rather than actual practicality. I want have to tug a little to open my bag.
The outer material feels great and the padding within the walls of the bag makes me feel more secure about what I am carrying. If I drop this on the floor with my netbook, I feel my netbook has added protection to it. I can plop it on the floor or table and not worry about the ding.
I love the color, the red one is the one I got. Targus offers different colors for different bags but the red is fitting with this particular model.
Some things I thought the bag was missing was a bit more extra room for notebooks. There was room but I felt like the material was less “giving” if I wanted to stuff some books. I felt like I was stretching it a bit with a couple notebooks and a folder. However, if you just use a small notebook and carry around your laptop or netbook with this case, there should be plenty of room. Plus extra pockets for notes and pens and other small gadgets.
As I was carrying it around, my shoulder felt the weight. I think it needs an additional shoulder pad. I see this on other Targus bags and maybe they could add that to this bag. Still, it wasn’t too bad, just slightly uncomfortable. The extra padding with a shoulder pad on the strap would fix that quickly.
In all, it would be a great purchase. Stuff your laptop into your backpack or a purse? Not sure about that but this Targus bag totally works.
It’s that time of year again. Spring and summer weddings are coming up soon. According to statistics, 35% of weddings occur in the summer; 29% in the spring; 23% in the fall; 13% in the winter. What’s a chic-geek going to do with a spring or summer wedding? Need ideas on how to handle themes or want glimpses into weddings past? Here’s a few snapshots I’ve admired from across the web.
Most people like to get married close to home, but top destinations for weddings are Las Vegas, Hawaii, Bahamas, Jamaica and the Virgin Islands. Looking for something different? How about Hobbiton? Of course, most people think of the Star Trek weddings in Las Vegas when it comes to geeks, but not all of us are Star Trek fans. (I am, but you might not be!)
Even if you can’t go to a far away location, your own location can be decorated to your own themed wedding. Ren faires, beaches, and chapels can all be beautiful in their own way, and just as chic-geek as a Star Trek vessel.
Outside of location, what about the wedding dress? Pick a hot wedding dress that fits your style, and embellish it a little. Even some slightly-off-white binary code with “love” or the groom’s name can be a little geek that can be a great touch.
Gwen Stefani’s pink wedding gown is totally chic. There’s tons of possibilities so don’t be limited by what you see on the racks. You may find a seamstress that can turn a plain gown into something you’ll absolutely love.
Mixing and matching chic elements with a few geek highlights is hot. If you’re going for chic-geek throughout your wedding and the after party, try hidden elements. A sword knife and shield spoon as wedding favors and as utensils for the wedding party?
Later this week, I’ll share gift ideas for friends who are getting married, for both bride and groom. It’s not just the bride and her friends that have work to do when a wedding is coming up. What do you get for the couple who has everything? How do you avoid getting them yet-another toaster? Keep reading!
PS: Check out this cake. Looks like an average wedding cake? Check the ribbon. Is that binary? That’s so cool!
Rumor has it that Felicia Day is going to be staring in a new SyFy movie, Red. (source) It’ll be based off of the Red Riding Hood story… except all grown up and with werewolves and creepiness. Don’t we just love that?
Best of all, for a werewolf hunter, her new beau starts out by being changed into a werewolf! Guess she’ll have to kill him? Or not? Who knows! Kind of reminds you of that Underworld movie, right? Well, who cares. Felicia Day rocks.
Just one of these days, I hope someone does a movie about Bitten, or any of the books from the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong. How many male werewolves do we have to see before we see female ones? Hollywood needs to get their fantasy boots on.
Back to Felicia, I certainly hope to see more of The Guild and other shows and movies with her. Such a cutie and a whole lot of fun. About time geek girls got some recognition.
I can’t believe I haven’t been following this girl’s on Twitter before now. Why didn’t she email me personally and say she had a Twitter feed? Darn it.
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