Supergeekblog

HP, Windows Live, and 50 different bloggers have teamed up to give away $300,000 worth of prizes!  50 bloggers will be giving away 50 prize packages worth $6000 each.  Here’s the full list of participating bloggers at HP.  Like ThatEdeGuy said, I would love to pick up one of these packages and I really would have loved to be one of the participating bloggers.  Of course I am totally ok with winning one of the prizes as well… but would have been awesome to do the review for SGB.

Here’s the details on the prize package as well.  Each of the 50 blogs will be holding their own individual contest with their own individual rules so you’ll have to visit each one and catch up on the rules.  Ede is going see if I can’t throw in a few updates as we go along too, so I plan on keeping an eye on both some of those blogs and his site.  It doesn’t look like they’ll be starting the contests until Friday, but you might want to just add them all to your feedreader now so you get the contest update post right away.  I have already seen a couple, and look forward to seeing how the rest of the contests turn out.  Good luck!

Technorati Tags: HP, Windows Live, Contest, ThatEdeGuy, Supergeekblog

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It’s finally coming!  The last half of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica.  (The final season as well.)  I have been waiting for this all year, so pretty pumped it is almost time!

They have it for pre-order now, but the release date is before Season 4.5, so you have enough time to get caught up… (or a subtle hint to friends and family…) but here is a link to season 4.0.

Technorati Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Season Preview, Youtube, Supergeekblog

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In a follow up to my post on Tweaking Your Desktop, I found this great post on Lifehacker.  Essentially what it does is tell you how to change your default windows Wallpaper directory.

I had actually forgotten you could do this.  (I prefer to change my wallpaper quite frequently, so make use of John’s Background Switcher.)  This is a pretty quick reg hack, but note you will need to have permissions to make modifications to the registry. (Start: Run > Regedit)

The difficulty, as you see on the Lifehacker article, is pretty minimal.  The risk of messing up your computer, pretty low as well.  However, if that is a worry for you, skip this and go straight to the background switcher program I recommended.  That way it is like any other program you can install/uninstall at your leisure.

As you can see, there are a variety of options when it comes to customizing your computing experience.  Dig in and try it - have more fun!

Technorati Tags: Desktop Wallpapers, Desktop Tweaking, Supergeekblog, Lifehacker

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There are various ways to tweak your desktop.  Some more invasive and complicated than others.  Today I will start with the quick and simple ones, then get to the more complicated ones.

The first and easiest is to automate your wallpaper.  John’s Background switcher is hands down the best for this.  It also is able to be installed without admin permissions.  So if you work in a corp environment where your machine is locked down, this will work for you as well.  Integrates with a bunch of online places as well, so you have quite a bit of flexibility.

Lifehacker has a great article on 5 different desktop customizations that you can do.  From embedding files into your desktop to gui modifications.  I am a fan of apps or widgets like Rainmeter. I like to know what my machine is doing.  It is a great indicator if something is impacting performance.

After a view mods like that you can move to the higher impact modifications.  Full gui replacement ala Stardock.  (Though I am not even sure if it is worth it on Vista.)  Widgets are another way to get your tweak on without worring about going deeper than you are ready to.  Yahoo widgets is a nice application form.  They also have quite the library of different widgets for all sorts of purposes.  I am a fan of the stock one, and use a widget to monitor CPU/RAM as opposed to Rainmeter.  Tweaking gets down to personal preference.  A lot like the extentions one uses in an alternative browser like Firefox.

Try a few things out and get more out of your computing experience!

Technorati Tags: Desktop, Tweaking, Lifehacker, supergeekblog

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• Computer Networking Products Overview
  Posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 in Websites - Comments: (1)
  Computer Networking Products Overview is a guest post from Eric at CXtec.Intro:There are enormous amounts of computer and networking products available to consumers. Determining what items are best suited to meet your needs can be a time consuming task. Unless you are directly involved with work in the networking field, I think it is reasonable to assume that you don’t read up on all of the latest network technology products that have come out.
• Sick of Googling for people? Try this!
  Posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 in Websites - Comments: (1)
  Ok Jackson over at LifeHacker did a post on this, and it is just too good to pass up.  I know many (and I mean many) of us get request all of the time.  We pop over to google, do a search, and send back the first 2-3 links that look like they will do the trick.Let Me Google That For You allows the user to see the search term you used, an animation showing how to hit “search on google,” with the funny quip “was that so hard”, and finally ending with the google results.
• SuperGeekBlog - WP Plugins
  Posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 in SGB Tech - Comments: (3)
  The number of plugins I use for this site has grown quite a bit.  If you have your own blog, take a look at the below list of plugins.  Perhaps you will find one useful.  I have the name of the plugin linked to where you can find it, along with a brief description and explanation of why I use it.
• Trek Trailer Breakdown
  Posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 in Websites - Comments: (0)
  Ok, just about everyone is aware of the Trek movie coming out in 6 months.  Some Trekkies are pretty leery of the “reboot.”  I for one look forward to the new take on the original crew just to hear more stories about that crew.  (Kirk and the gang are still my favorites.)Here are a few links for you to get caught up on:Official Trek Movie WebsiteApple Trek Trailersio9 has an awesome breakdown of the new trailer (2).
• Twitter Backgrounds
  Posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 in Social Media - Comments: (0)
  I have yet to create a custom background for my Twitter page.  However being on my second week of really diving into Twitter, I have noticed other bloggers and big time Twitter folks take the time to customize their background.There seems to be a basic convention to it, and I have to admit it makes it look more professional/more information/and generally more appealing.

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The number of plugins I use for this site has grown quite a bit.  If you have your own blog, take a look at the below list of plugins.  Perhaps you will find one useful.  I have the name of the plugin linked to where you can find it, along with a brief description and explanation of why I use it.

Advanced Tagline - Installed this one for fun and flexibility.

Akismet - A must have… blog spam is annoying and frequent.

All in One SEO Pack - Meta tags, etc… if you don’t know what this does - research it.  It will be worth your time.

Best Posts Summary - Awesome plugin.  Gives daily, weekly, or monthly post summaries.

CyStat - Awesome stats plugin for wordpress.  Tab right in the admin menu.

Digg This Reloaded - Adds the Digg button to the bottom of single posts.

FeedBurner FeedSmith - Some people don’t like to redirect feeds via feedburner.  It was worked well for me to this point, so still use the functionality.

Google XML Sitemaps - Great plugin, auto-generates a sitemap for google robots.

RSS Footer - Nice plugin that lets you tweak the footer of individual posts in your RSS feed.

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form - Great and easy to impliment contact form for wordpress.

SimpleTags - Adds technorati tags to the bottom of posts.

Social Homes widget - A widget for the sidebar that allows you to link to your various social networking websites.

Spam Karma 2 - This plugin worked well for a number of years.  It has been discontinued and Akismet has been doing the trick.  So will probably be pulling it soon.

Subscribe To Comments - As the title sounds, allow your readers to subscribe to idividual comment feeds.

Tweet This - Adds the twitter button to the bottom of blog posts.

TwitterCounter - Displays the number of followers you have on Twitter.  A fun little addition.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - Awesome must have plugin.  As the name implies, automatically upgrades your wordpress installation every time a new version comes out.

WP-Amazon - Generates amazon links with your affiliate id to add into posts.

So that is actually quite a few plugins.  Hopefully that will give you some ideas on how to geek out your own wordpress install.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, plugins, supergeekblog

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Here is a great page. It has 6 sounds that hard drives make.  Do note that these are sounds you also hope that your hard drive isn’t making.

I have heard a couple of these coming out of my case before actually, fortunately knew enough to know that was an indication to start backing up whatever I didn’t have already on a different drive or dvd.

Over at PC Tech Guide, you can learn a little bit more about hard drive construction if you are curios.  Knowing the parts of the hard drive, and those sounds, can help you diagnose problems if they creep up on you.  Possibly saving yourself time, effort, and money.

Technorati Tags: tech support, HDD, Hard Drive, diagnosis, supergeekblog

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I saw this… and instantly thought I should get a few at home.  I think my wife really wouldn’t care for them, but who doesn’t want coasters that look like iphone icons?  Toxel.com actually has a whole list of cool/unusual coasters - most of which have quite the geeky theme.

Found this off of TechEBlog originally.  Look through the listing on Toxel though.  Tell me if those *wouldn’t* be awesome in the living room or the BSG room?  (Wife and I have a slight disagreement on what to call our downstairs family room.  BSG Room is my name for it and totally unapproved for home use. Yes, by BSG I mean the one and only Battlestar Galatica, which is returning for the final half of the season in January.)

Technorati Tags: Geek, Coasters, BSG, Supergeekblog

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The follow up to yesterdays Dilbert Comic is equally entertaining.  It is pretty much up there as a must read.

Technorati Tags: Dilbert, Office Humor, Internet, Entertainment, Supergeekblog

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I just couldn’t help but repost this one.  Today’s Dilbert, I think we have all experienced at the office.  Perhaps even the words “oooo shiny!” have been uttered.

I fully blame the invention of RSS Feeds for lost productivity.  (While also bowing to their greatness.)

Technorati Tags: Dilbert, Supergeekblog, Office Humor, Gadgets, Shiny Things

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