My current desktop setup.

Looks pretty cool doesnt it?  It's an interactive Heads Up Display (HUD), with current time, date, weather info, network and disk usage statistics, functional media played controls, links to commonly used folders, programs, and websites, and more.  I love the look and functionality of it.  So much cooler than having icons cluttering up my desktoip.

To achieve this you need 2 things, rainmeter and a skin called jarvis.  Rainmeter is available at: http://code.google.com/p/rainmeter/  and the jarvis skin can be found at: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=jarvis+rainmeter+skin#/d36eee6

Once you download and install both of those, you can customize the skin by right-clicking different sections and going to variants, which will allow you to open up a .ini file where the variables are stores, so if you installed photoshop(for example) to a different directory than default, you can point the link to your installation.  You can customize all the clickable links and point them to wherever you like.

Unfortunately the media player controls seem to only work with winamp, but i installed winamp just so that part of the HUD would work.  It was worth it in my opinion.  I might still do some more customizing on this later, but we'll see.  Let me know what you think.

FaceNiff

This is going on both of the blogs I can post on. 

How to make C-1

Because I can't think of a good topic to write about, I was thinking maybe an insane one would suffice.

Some Useful Effects

People like me to post blog tips so here's a couple I picked up recently.

A neat new gadget.

Well this is kind of neat.  I found a chat gadget for my blog that will send any messages you type into it directly to my instant messenger account.

Napalm

It's pretty easy to make napalm, here's how.

How to LOIC

Don't really know what to write about today, so I'm going to teach how to DoS a website using LOIC.

Snakes in the Tubes!

Seriously, there are snakes in the tubes!

Paypal Buttons Revisited

A couple people have asked me how to make it so paypal will not show your email address when you use a donation button on your blog/site.  So in response to these questions, here's how.

Encryption Pt. 2 (hidden volumes)

Yesterday I covered basic file encryption, and it got some good responses.  So today I'm doing a follow up with some slightly more advanced features in truecrypt.

Encyption Pt. 1 (File Containers)

Ok, I've been saying I'll post something on file encryption for a few days now, so I'll get started with a pretty basic way to do things that should work well in most situations.  I titled this "part 1" because I may do a "part 2" on some more advanced ways to do things, but I'm not sure yet.

Security Tips

I've posted all the useful blogger tutorials I can think of, so I was thinking about branching out and writing some tutorials about other computer/IT subjects.  I just got a new 1tb hard drive for my birthday and the first thing I did with it was encrypt it (which took 38 hours, but 1 tb is a lot of space).  This gave me the idea to write a tutorial on encryption and security.  So I'll put that up soon if there's any interest.  I would do it now, but I'm not done yet.

Pop Goes the Comment

Yesterday I was asked how make comments appear in a smaller, popup window, so today I'll cover that.  It won't make for a very long post but I'm always happy to answer questions, so keep em coming if anybody has anything else they want to know.

Adsense 101

Well here I am again with not much to post about, so I'll just answer a question from yesterday.  I was asked "could you do a tutorial on adding the ads to the bottom of the page because I don't want them in my face when I'm commenting and I would like a sleek look."  Many of you probably know this already, but for those who don't I'm always happy to answer questions.

After the Break

Want to make your blog load faster?  Want to help your followers who have a slow connection or are opening up 50 blogs at once?  A couple people have asked me how to make a blog display an intro paragraph with a link to read the full post, and I think it's a great idea for a tutorial.  It's also really easy.  Click to read how.

Clearing Things Up.

I'm feeling kind of lazy tonight so just a quick tutorial on making the background to your posts invisible, so it doesnt block the view of your blog background...

Squeaking my Mind.

A few people have mentioned my new Squeak a Comment logo, and I'd like to say thanks for giving me something to post about.  It's so much easier when I don't have to think of a topic myself.  I might cover reaction buttons too if there time, or maybe tomorrow.

A word of caution, don't attempt this if you haven't selected a layout.  If you're using default settings I'm pretty sure your code is different.

A few posts ago I covered making a banner for you site using cooltext.com  I used the same site for the post a comment message, because you can use a picture instead of just text.  So I'm not going to go over all of that again, but if you need help go back and see this post.  Just make the text a little smaller when creating your pic for comments.  I used the same style and font so it would match the site banner.

...so anyways, take your picture and upload it somewhere.  i used http://www.picturestack.com/ because it's easy and they keep your pictures indefinitely.

So, you got a picture uploaded with your new message?  Good.  Now lets put it in your blog.  Log in to blogger, go to design, edit html, and check the box for expand widget templates, as seen here:

hit ctrl+F and look for <data:postCommentMsg/>  this appears in 2 places and you'll need to replace both of them.  so when you find the first one replace it with <img src='http://www.picturestack.com/878/814/octcooltext50yS7.png'/> but make the address point to the picture you just uploaded uless you want to use mine and have people squeaking on your blog too.

After you change that, hit the button for find next occurrence and change the second one too.

Once you've changed all the codes from <data:postCommentMsg/> to <img src='http://www.picturestack.com/878/814/octcooltext50yS7.png'/> then hit preview(you won't be able to see the change in the preview but just make sure you don't get any errors) and then hit Save Template and your done.  You should have a nice new comments graphic/text thing.

You don't have to use an image, you can supposedly just replace <data:postCommentMsg/> with text that you want it to say, but i got errors when i tried to do that.  your mileage may vary.

You may want to change your footer to match your new Comment entry text if you're doing a theme, like AnonyMOUSE making everything say squeak or whatever.

This is easier since I don't think you need to change any code to do it...

this'll bring you to a nice little popup where you can change these settings.

While you're there I might as well cover reaction buttons too.  You see it a couple settings down in that last picture but theres a bit more to it than that.  If you want these, go ahead and check the box, and/or click edit next to that setting to change what the buttons say.  Now if you're using the default blog template, they should just show up, but if you have a custom layout its back to the html editor and expand widget templates(see above).

 This time find the code: <data:post.body/> and immediately after it paste in the following code:
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
<b:if cond='data:top.showReactions'>
<table border='0' cellpadding='0' width='100%'><tr>
<td valign='center'><span class='reactions-label'>
<data:top.reactionsLabel/></span>
</td>
<td><iframe allowtransparency='true' class='reactions-iframe' expr:src='data:post.reactionsUrl' frameborder='0' name='reactions' scrolling='no'/></td>
</tr></table>
</b:if>
</span> 

 I put my code a little further down it looks like but I don't recall why...anyway, here's mine so make yours look something like this:

Preview to check for errors, save it and you're done.  That concludes this post because I really don't feel like writing anymore.  I hope this helps somebody out.  It's not too difficult and I did my best to break it all down into manageable steps without making this post too long.  Let me know how it works for you if you try it.  I know it might seem like a lot but I covered a few different mods so...get what you can out of it.

Stumbling in the Right Direction.

This is sort of a follow up or correction to my last post about StumbleUpon.  I'm still new to blogging and while the method i discussed yesterday does work, this way is better.  A couple people asked about other buttons like reddit, and similar services.  This handy trick should cover all services in one fell swoop and hopefully we'll all get even more traffic! 

So apologies to anybody who used yesterdays method, you can leave it there or just go back and remove that line from your code.  Lets get to it.  I haven't even tried this out yet, so I hope things go according to plan, as I know sometimes putting these things in a gadget can reduce functionality.

1.) Log in and go to design then add a gadget:

 2.) Search for: Sociable, click the +

3.) Set options, I recommend vertical to maximize visibility of this gadget, but horizontal looks better IMO.

4. Add it and preview changes, to make sure it works.  If you see this, save changes.

Wow, that's a lot of services for 4 easy steps.  Also I noticed yesterday that if you put the stumbleupon code into it's own gadget element, it will only get people stumbling to your main page.  Not with this gadget!  This gadget lets people stumble to each post that's submitted, as seen here:

That URL is for a post, not the main blog!  So this gadget rocks, and it's easy to add!  Now I just gotta make accounts for some of these services so I can submit my pages and get people "liking" em.  Just made a technorati acct and they want me to put the code: ESWAZ7P9PXFW into a post, so just ignore that. :)

This is probably enough for one post, but you see those reaction buttons at the bottom of my posts now?  If you don't know how to add those, I'll cover that in tomorrow's post if there's any interest in the subject.  I thought they were cool.

Enjoy the extra traffic sources!

Stumbling along.

A good way to get some extra traffic to your blog is a site called "stumble upon".  Stumble upon lets users input keywords and then takes people to a random site matching those keywords.  So if somebody was interested in weblog tutorials or chemistry, theres a chance it would take that person to my blog, because i have posts that were submitted to stumble upon, with those keywords.

Before I get to that though, somebody asked me how to make comments appear in a popup window.  So i'll run through that real quick.  Log in, go to Settings, comments, look for the setting for comment form placement and set it to popup as shown below:

Moving on, creating an account with stumbleupon is pretty straightforward, so hopefully you can all get through that without helpful screenshots.  Just go to http://www.stumbleupon.com/ and click the big button that says "Join for free" and fill out a short form.

Once you have an account it's time to add their code to your site, so it'll work with your blog.  I like to put it in the footer like this:

Some people embed it in their posts, but that looks kind of sloppy to me, but if you know basic html you can play around with it's placement a bit and find what works for you.  If not, here's how to set it up the way i did mine. Log in to blogger, go to design > edit html, and click expand widget templates as seen below.

Once you've done that, you'll see a bunch of nonsense in the window below that, so just hit ctrl+F to do a search.  Type in postquickedit (if you get multiple hits, the one you want is below where it mentions "quickedit pencil" but it should be the first result).  Create a new line below the one that mentions postquickedit, and paste in: <script src='http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=3'/>
Your code should now resemble this:

I should mention that the code I'm using is for the button style I currently use but there are different styles.  I think this one looks best in the blog footer but if you want something else you can change where it says s=3 to another number from 1-6.  i might try s=2, because i like that style button too.
When you're done click preview to make sure you dont get any errors and to see how it'll look.

You can see I changed it to s=2 so when i hit preview I see the new style at the bottom of a post:

I'll keep it this way, so now close the preview window/tab and click the button for save template:

For reference I'll inclue a pic of what buttons correspond to the different numbers in the code.

I numbered them for you in red.  I don't know why they don't go in order but whatever...

The number displayed next to the SU logo is how many people like it or recommend it.  The higher the number, the more chance you have that your blog will get stumbled to.  At first though, the badge won't have a number, it will say Submit.  You(or somebody else) has to submit the page to stumbleupon by clicking the button.

Note, on your blog homepage, all of these will submit your blog homepage.  When you click on an individual post, then you can submit that post.  Always double check the URL you're submitting to make sure it's just the link for your post and not a link to a comment or anything like that.for example when i go to my january archive i see:

but that won't subit the post it's under, it would submit just the archive page.  It may be possible to work around this but i think you'd have to edit your code every time you post and get new code from stumbleupon for each new post and I didn't want to do that, so this method is the best i've found.

When you click submit, you'll be taken to a page like the one seen below where you choose relevent keywords and if it's safe for work and then it gets added to their database.

So then I'd click submit and people can now stumble to my january archive page.  Once you have an account with stumbleupon, if you see the button on somebody's page that you follow, click the button and you'll be taken to a page or popup like the one below, and you can then click i like it, to help out the person whose blog its on. 

Even without anybody "liking" my page, this has been one of my best sources of traffic to this blog, so it's well worth doing, but if i see this on any of your blogs, i'll be sure to take the few seconds needed to "like" your mainpage and your post.  We can all get more traffic this way.

Results:

If you feel this post is unclear or need additional assistance, or run into any problems, just let me know in the comments and I'll help out if I can.  Let me know if you guys like this or found it helpful.

That's all for now.  See ya next time.  :)

*******************************************************************************

EDIT: ugh, this post is now useless. sorry everybody who already put it in.  this method does work, but i just found a better way to do things...i'll post it in tomorrow's update which should go up at midnight CST.  I still have some things to learn myself...

so if you were thinking about doing this, don't; wait for the next post for an easier solution with more features.

I've only been blogging for a couple weeks so i don't know all the tricks yet.  *Squeak*

Another Whiteknight Post!

Anonymouse Blog is filmed live before a studio audience...  

On today's show we'll cover interior decorating!  OOH! AH!

Umm a few people have asked me to go over some tips for tweaking the way a blog looks, so I'll cover some basics of that, maybe change/improve mine a little bit as I go.  We'll see how long this gets and maybe I'll make a part 2 or something if there's enough interest in it.  I have more helpful tips for getting more views to your blog too, but that post keeps getting pushed back as I get requests for things and try to help out.  So lets see what happens here...

Ok, first up I guess I'll cover simple banners.  Why use plaintext for your blog title when you can have it in 3d or glowing green or something.  If you have leet photoshop skills feel free to skip ahead but I'm personally too lazy for that so go to a site like http://cooltext.com/ and you can generate a neat banner with your blog name.  This is pretty easy to do, just click on a banner style, i chose "nova" and then change the text and colours if you want as seen below.  click render when you're done.

This will take you to a page where you see your new banner and under it a link titled Download Image.  Click the link and save it somewhere.  Then hop over to blogger, log in and follow along with this pic to go to Design and click edit for the header thing.

This should take you to the following screen, where you should click browse,select the image you just created, set the setting to "instead of..." and click save.  See pic if you get lost:

Hmm I liked my old one better...oh well, i'll fix it later.  That was pretty easy though right?  I don't really feel like doing this right now, but I'll cover a few more basics now and then see how I feel maybe do some more stuff with it tomorrow.  Also keep in mind the size of the banner you create, I had to resize mine in paint, but that shouldn't be too hard for you guys.  If you need help let me know.

Ok, some other random tweaks.  Backgrounds are easy. Fire up your favorite search engine; I use bing or google, and do an image search for something related to your blog or just something shiny and pretty, whatever.  save it. and go to the design tab and click template designer:

forgot to circle it in paint but i'm too lazy to fix that...moving on.  I don't even know what to make my background so I'm just going to keep the current one and reupload it.  (EDIT: just changed mine, thanks to http://epicwallpapersandart.blogspot.com/ for the new one.)  first off when you get to template designer, pick a template that goes with the general color scheme you want to save yourself some work.

then go to the background tab/button/thing on the left...Click that part where it says none and then you can browse the default choices or click upload to upload the one you just downloaded.

The scroll with page option (see below) determines what happens when users scroll down your page, does the background appear fixed or can they scroll down in the background too.  set it however you want.

then click apply to blog in the upper right corner and you have a shiny new background.

Ok, that's the basics.  If you want more on this subject I can follow this up with more tomorrow, or you can play around with it yourself and try tweaking little things like font colours, just don't use anything hard to read. If most of you know how to tweak your settings already I'll go on to posting some other more helpful tips for everybody.  

I feel like this stuff is pretty self explanatory but I know some people wanted me to go over it, so I don't mind helping those few who asked.  Feedback is always appreciated.

So tune in next time and i'll be back with some more umm...words and pictures!  Same great time, same great channel, and now a word from our sponsor...