When your computer dies and you don’t have a backup disk of your official Windows that came with your computer, you do have to resort to other ways such as installing an illegal copy of Windows XP. Well, that’s what I had to do since I do have an official license but no disks that came with my computer.

Well, I use Windows Movie Maker to make most of my videos and it’s a great video software that doesn’t break down.

I try to download it from my illegal version of Windows but I have to do a “Windows Update” in order to get the Movie Maker, which I hate to do and most of the time it tries to install this “Windows Genuine Checker” thingee.

Well, to download the Movie Maker without going through those Windows Updates, you can simply go here.

Wish Microsoft just made everything open-source and free, otherwise honest and good users like me don’t have to resort to illegal ways to get the software that I need.

Yes, the biggest problem with Microsoft is that they SHOULD offer online downloads of their operating system by simply entering the OEM product code.  That will help me save a lot of time trying to find illegal ways to get what I paid for working again.

For people who have to use an extension lead in order to house all of the plugs that are needed to get power for all of your hi tech gadgets and any else that you are going to need to get you through the day.

This means that the plugs can stay in place but the power can be switched off by just raising the plug and therefore cutting the power to that particular device.

Source [Yanko Design]

Well, we did a lot of server hacking before with some MySQL, eAccelerator, and httpd.

There’s a lot of major blogs out there I have checked using Web Page Compression Tool that are not using compression. (For one, I checked John Chow’s blog)

Try to check one of your posts instead of checking your main URL as the tool is funky with root domains. (e.g. Check http://zedomax.com/blog/2008/02/23/never-give-up-especially-your-blog-dude/ instead of http://zedomax.com)

Here’s a screenshow of compression test I did for one of John Chow’s posts:

As you can see, John Chow’s blog does not use compression. As a result, he’s losing out on almost 5 times of bandwidth!!!

With level 9 compression, his site could be loaded on your web browser at 21K instead of the whopping 100K.

Now the compression might not be for all of you with slow CPUs. Our Zedomax.com runs on Quad-CPU server which has a lot of CPU processing power.

Here’s a screenshow of my server under normal load:

As you can see, most of the time, my CPU is idling at 80.8%! That means my CPU is pretty much sitting on its ass instead of doing work for me.

Now, if you have a similar situation, compression will help your site load faster and also bring your load down so you can handle more traffic.

Here’s how to enable compression if you have a dedicated or access to root on your server:

(Most servers have zlib installed, if you don’t have zlib installed, you will have to install that first, you can check it by making a test file and putting <?php phpinfo() ?> and search for zlib)

Add the following lines to your /etc/php.ini:

zlib.output_compression = on
zlib.output_compression_level = 5

and then restart apache! (of course):

httpd -k restart

Now, go check one of your posts on the Compression Test Tool here.

As you can see above, I just compressed one of my blog posts by a whopping 76.1%!

If you are using Super Cache plugin for Wordpress, make sure to go to options and do this too:

Now, your server will run faster since there’s less data being transmitted to your visitors, meaning you save bandwith, time, and most importantly, the ability to handle more traffic.

At 70% increase in bandwidth, that could translate to that many more visitors too as bandwidth is directly proportional to amount of time a visitor stays on your site. (Yes, I did take Calculus in college, I failed miserably before passing.) The less time a visitor takes to load a page on your blog or your site, the more time and bandwidth you have for other visitors.)

I was searching through the web for many ways to use compression for server optimization but I couldn’t find any so I sort put everything together here.

Hopefully, it helps you.

And one more thing, you can also check out this great tutorial on your httpd.conf setup.

You can always check out HOWTO decrease load on your server by 5 times also.

(Your computer will be faster and more reliable using Windows XP vs. Vista)

After testing out Windows Vista on one of my 6 PCs laying around my apartment, I finally decided it was time to scrap Vista for Windows XP.

Well, it turns out my HP a6040n desktop I bought off the shelf at Fry’s sucked at downgrading to XP. Why?

You go to HP’s driver downloads and they don’t even have XP drivers. I think HP has to at least put the specs of all the parts on their site. I had to open up the case and track down the motherboard, and then found a generic Intel ethernet driver just to get the internet working.

What a hassle. I love HP computers but this was probably the worst experience. (Well, I could’ve called their tech support but I am too lazy.)

Another problem I encountered? Basically I got one of those blue screen of death because the harddrive is set to “RAID” on BIOS setup and Windows XP cannot detect that unless you got a driver for it.

So all I did was set the settings back to “IDE” on BIOS setup and the blue screen of death disappeared. Wala!
(Trust me, you really don’t need RAID unless you are thinking about running bunch of servers.)

I also did some research and found you can also completely re-format your harddrive using DBAN. Although it took me some 6 hours to DBAN my HP harddrive, it was worth it. DBAN is great if your harddrive seems to be protected or whatever. Just nuke it and go along.
I also made sure to re-partition with room for Ubuntu, which I will be installing next on this experimental PC.

I used to run all Linux computers with VMware running windows on it. It did pretty good and my computer never gave me a blue screen of death. All I had to do was reboot the Virtual Machine but I might be headed down that path again soon.

Now I feel so good, it feels like I really flushed that “hard stool” that was sitting in my gut for 6 months.

Good bye Vista!

Next up we will be covering a step-by-step transition on how to install Ubuntu and use VMware to experience a new way to access the internet. Of couse, if you get bored of our tutorials, you can always go buy a Mac, we like Macs too. (they are unix based, which is pretty much a fancy Linux machine really)

You should also check out the Vista-XP parody ad we made couple months earlier.

Check out this really cool parts organizer you can make using plastic bottles and save the earth at the same time!

If you’re like me, you have a ton of PCBs laying around from things you’ve taken apart. Put them to good use and salvage the components from them.

via MakeZine

This post was guest-blogged by Adriaan from i am jack’s design. (Send your guest blog posts to guest@zedomax.com to get them published for free)

SiteHoppin’ is a new social bookmarking site, combining some of the popular features of sites like StumbleUpon or del.ici.ous, with a few unique twists.

At SiteHoppin’, users can discover new and interesting sites quickly and easily with the site’s simple interface. Sites are broken down into categories and by tags for even easier browsing of sites you might enjoy. In addition to browsing sites in the SiteHoppin’ system, users can also rate each one on a scale of 1 to 5 beers. The scores are tabulated and the highest rated sites appear on a special “Most Popular” page.

SiteHoppin’ is built on a heavily modified version of the popular wiki software MediaWiki and is also compatible with a variety of mobile browsers (so you can SiteHop from the comfort of your shiny new iPhone).

User Benefits While anyone can use SiteHoppin’ to hop around to different sites you’ll probably want to register for an account. When you make a free account at SiteHoppin’ you get access to features regular visitors do not. Registered users can bookmark their favorite sites and share them with their friends, leave site reviews for visitors to see and have SiteHoppin’ remember all of your SiteHops so that you never see the same site twice.

Site Owner Benefits If you run a website it’s definitely worth registering with SiteHoppin’ and submitting your site, blog or articles into the system. As a site gets more beer votes it will rise in popularity and lead to more traffic. This is another opportunity to cash in on the viral marking and social networking traffic explosion happening online today.

While it is new, SiteHoppin’ is still a unique and interesting player in the social bookmarking scene. Anyone interested in an easy and fun way to find new web sites or those of you looking for new ways to promote sites of your own should give SiteHoppin’ a try.

I cannot even think as to why anyone would even want this item, it serves no purpose apart from if the lights went out and then it would look a bit like a lame disco. Other than that you just have to ask WHY?

USB Traffic Lights features:

4-port USB 2.0 Hub
USB Traffic Light as status indicators (Busy, Out To Lunch, Available)
10 Seconds Voice Recording and Playback
Monitor Cleaner
Memo Pad/Name Card Clipper

Priced at $26

Source [New Launches]

This is a nice little gadget that is wearing and looks nice and sleek too. Flash drives are great little devices for transporting apps and other items like documents etc.

Features:

Two Gigabytes of flash memory storage
USB 1.1 and USB 2.0
Brushed aluminum finish
Screw-cap enclosure
You can store 500 songs, thousands of photos, two feature-length movies and 3000 eBooks

Make the ideal gift for anyone who needs to move around different computers.

Priced at $27.99

Source [Think Geek]

Here’s a good one on how to build your own in-car PC! Although I wouldn’t recommended as people woud probably rob you as quickly as you install it.

As a marine electrician I’ve installed a few desktops in yachts to avoid the above mentioned problems so when I bought a used Grand Caravan in July and it had this empty space between the front seats I thought, why not? The first task was to measure the distance between the seats and see if anyone made a case that could fit there.

via HackNMod

For anyone who is interested in learning the old way of communicating then this is the thing that you will need to get you started on learning and practicing the age old art of Morse code.

Before you know it you will be tapping away whenever you are and getting responses from other people, but no one else will know what the hell is going on, great!