Outdoor Photography 101

I dug this article from our friend Adam out of the archives from 5 or 6 years ago…enjoy! Composition: Outdoor photography is traditionally considered more of a “fine art” than other types of photography. This means that an outdoor photo is evaluated more like a painting than a snapshot. Here are some rules to keep in mind for composing an outdoor photo: 1. Start with a foreground - While the background may...

Free & Pay WiFi Hot Spots in Grand Junction, ...

I thought it might be a good idea to make a complete list of open WiFi hotspots in Grand Junction, CO. A WiFi Hotspot is a place where anyone can access wireless Internet for free and without setting up an account or through the use of a pay account. I also added a few pay sites as well. I certainly don’t know all the spots in town, so please help me make this list more complete with your additions by leaving a comment...

Firefox 3.0 is ready for download – go ahead...

Firefox 3.0 is now available for full download for the masses. It is reported to be the fastest version of firefox yet, and possibly one of the fastest browsers period. We have tested it for a while and it appears to be ready for use. Be careful if you run a lot of extensions, you will want to research and make sure that your extensions are compatible with 3.0. There are several new features to Firefox 3.0 which we will...

Warning: Your computer may be infected with viruse...

Extortionware? What is extortionware. I have seen at least 10 computers in the past two weeks that have recently been infected with extortionware – viruses and spyware that infect your system by pretending to be an antivirus or other security program. With names like Windows Antivirus, WinAntivirus, XP Antivirus 20008, etc. these programs appear to look and feel official. However, they are some of the worst virus or...

AVG is still FREE!!!

This just in…  AVG has not discontinued its free version of AVG. The new AVG 8.0 can be downloaded from their website or from download.com. Beginning today, we have posted a free video that demonstrates how to get the free version of AVG. So, before you buy the version that they are trying to sell you, give this version a shot. It is the version they don’t want you to know about. WATCH FREE VIDEO and...

Defrag, scan disk, and deleting cookies don’...

In the computer world, there are hot rodders – people who will tweak their computers to get every last bit of horse power out of their systems. Just as with automobiles, techniques used by hot rodders were once necessary in the early days when horse power was hard to come by. Today, most computers come with all the horsepower most people need. Important tasks like defragmenting the hard drive, running scan disk and...

Understanding exposure

Theory and Practice of Photography Aperture: Aperture is the setting of the iris of the camera lens. Just as your pupils in your eyes expand and contract to let in more or less light, you can do the same with your camera by setting the Aperture. The Aperture measurement is called F-stop. The higher the F-stop number, the smaller the iris is set in your camera. The trade-off: Each concept of photography seems to have a...

I have Wii Fit in hand

I made an early trip to Sam’s Club today and picked up three Wii Fits to resell on eBay. It has been month’s since there has been an item worth scalping on eBay. It will be interesting to see whether or not I can actually make a profit or just break even. eBay raised their rates by about two percent earlier this year. At the moment the $90 Wii Fit device is selling for around $150 on eBay even though they are...

Widescreen and the intel 8286g graphics chip ̵...

I have faced this problem several times now. I have read every post on the Internet and there are no fixes. The Intel 85865g integrated graphics chip does not support wide screen resolutions. There is no update to the drivers, there is not working hack and there is no hope. The only solution is to either buy a standard (square) monitor or a different graphics card. Any graphics card on the shelf will handle widescreen...

Red Fish and Hero Machine – fun for French a...

Poisson rouge means red fish in French. Poissonrouge.com is one of the greatest web sites for kids that I have ever been to. Chances are it will keep about 75 percent of adults entertained for an hour or two as well. The site is simple, visit and click on anything to discover new areas. The site will seem endless as you or your children click through feature after feature. No keyboard skills are required and the site is so...

Use YouTube.com to review the games your kids are ...

Grand Theft Auto IV was released this week and, as always happens when a version of GTA comes out, there has been a lot of discussion about video game violence and sexual content. Without going into detail GTA is a game that features guns, civilians, cops, cars, prostitutes and an environment that allows you to act in any way you please. As you can imagine, most teen game players choose to use the game as a simulation for...

Craigslist is full of scammers – but they ar...

I recently wrote about the wonders of Craislist both on HelpMeRick.com and in our free weekly email newsletter. Someone posted a comment that I think needs to be addressed. There are many many scammers on Craigslist. However, they are stupid and easy to detect. Here are a list of ways to detect a craigslist scammer. 1. The item is priced very low, but not too low. A $50 digital camera that retails for $5,000 is obviously a...

Come on Grand Junction – discover Craigslist...

If you live in Denver, Portland or countless other larger cities then you likely have discovered Craigslist. On the other hand, if you are in a smaller area or suburb, Craigslist is a secret that you should know about. Craigslist is an online classified ads site that anyone can post to for free. There are few rules so you must be careful, but in general Craigslist is more fun than any print classifieds because it is in...

How to use a USB flash drive

As often as once per day I recommend to someone that they invest in a USB flash drive for backup of regular files. The most common response I get back is, “I have one, I just don’t know how to use it.” Here’s how to do it. Keep in mind that USB flash drives do not work well with Windows 98 so these instructions are for Windows XP and up. 1. Open My Computer and make a note (mental or otherwise) what...

Managing your digital photos

Organizing your digital photos is so important. Too often I see people who have major computer problems and think that everything is backed up only to find that their digital photos were so spread out on their computer that the only had a portion of them backed up. Many people simply copy their digital photos onto their computer wherever a given piece of software puts them and they have no idea where that is. These notes...