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Rick

Castellini on Computers gets bumped again

The radio business is just that. It's a business.

I recieved a call this week from the station manager to let us know that AM 1100 KNZZ is going to be bumping the first half hour of our show off the air locally. It seems that there is a new local real estate show that is paying to be on starting at 11a.m. every Saturday.

Listeners will still be able to listen via the Internet and call in to the show at our regular number, but KNZZ has made the decision to not air our show for the first half hour.

As you will likely recall, they just started airing our entire program a few months ago after cutting the last 30 minutes off to run colon and prostate health infomercials.

Removing one of the built-in search engines in Firefox

We love the Mozilla Firefox web browser because of its safety, speed, and customizability. One of my favorite customizations is the ability to add sites to the built in search engine that let me quickly search web sites I visit most often…weather, recipes, downloads, movies, etc. Occasionally, it is nice to be able to remove one that I'm not using any further or maybe isn't working at all. Here's how to do that:

  1. Close Mozilla Firefox
  2. Navigate to your Firefox Profiles directory (usually C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR USERNAME>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\)
  3. There should be a folder that ends in ".default"; inside it you should open the searchplugins folder (if there are multiple ".default" folders, you may have to look in more than one. These represent different user profiles you have created in Firefox)
  4. In the 'searchplugins' folder, you'll see two files for each Firefox Search Engine you've added. (an image and a .src file). Be sure to get rid of both of them for each of the Search Engines you want to remove

 

Traveling with wireless Internet

If you travel with a laptop computer and like to use wireless Internet at hotesl, coffee shops and libraries, it helps to know a simple troubleshooting technique or two for finicky wireless connections.

  1. Make sure your wireless access is enabled. Many laptops have a button or switch that shuts the wireless network off. 
  2. Restart your computer. Many times, restarting the computer will allow the connection to happen.
  3. If still no connection, talk to someone in the building about your problem and ask them to restart their wireless router. If they aren't sure how, you can let them know that simply unplugging the power from the back of the router and then plugging it back in will do it. Takes about 20 seconds.

These three techniques will get you out of a jam more often than not and make you a happy wireless Internet traveler.

Books on CD are a wonderful thing

Just like Rick, I also spend a lot of time in my car driving from one appointment to another. Lately I have discovered the joy of reading, both traditional books and audio books.

All through school I was never much of a reader. In fact, it wasn't until college that I actually kept up with reading the required text and that was only in classes that I enjoyed like American Government and Creative Non-fiction (yes that was a real class I took).

Late last year I installed a nice bookshelf in our bathroom and since then I have read about 5 books and too many entire magazines to count.

Spam on the rise again

I'm not sure what it it is about late summer, but I have noticed the last few years that my spam is at its worst in late July through September and then it tapers off again until the next summer. I have no idea what the correlation is, but it has been consistent the last three years. 

I don't worry about it, however, because my Inbox stays pristine with the help of Cloudmark Desktop. You have heard Adam and I rave about this product for nearly four years now. Without it, I would have probably given up email years ago! <

“I can’t find stuff on your web site”

We get this comment more often than we would like. I'm going to split the responsibility between our web site design and web surfing experience of the folks who tell us they have trouble navigating our site.

Our site has gone immense changes in the past year…for the better. If you might be in the camp who thinks that our current site is tough to navigate, you may have never returned to our old site after an initial visit. Our old site didn't have consistent menu navigation and had a horrible search engine. Our new site has the same menus on every single page that let you navigate to the main parts of our web site. You will find these menus at top right of every single page on our site.

Taking Better Pictures (Part I)

Taking Better Photos

Part 1 

 

Composing Photos:

 

No reckless shooting of innocent civilians. Take aim, compose the shot and FIRE!

 

Taking Better People Pictures

Taking Better People Pictures:

Taking pictures of people should involve more than just pointing the camera in a person's general direction and pressing the shutter button.

Here are a few ideas and styles for taking great pictures of people.

Remember the rule of thirds.

As a general rule place your subject in 1/3 of the photograph.

<<— Notice how Allen's face is not centered in the photograph. This takes the viewer through the photograph and around the subject.

 

Giving Photos a Professional Look

Giving Photos a Professional Look

Have you ever wondered what makes professional photos look so. . . umm. . . professional?

The following tips will help you create photos that look like you know what you are doing!

Taking Better Pictures:

There are several links in the group archives giving tips on composition. Here are some other helpful tips.

Use the color wheel.