Hacksar

If you download any type of video, whether they’re movies, TV shows, or what have you, you may have noticed that they come in a multitude of different file formats. AVI, MPEG, WMV, DIVX; there are just too many file formats to keep up with. I’m sure that if you own any sort of portable video player, say, an iPod or PSP, you’ve come across the problem that your downloaded files don’t play. Instead, you have to wait for hours using some crappy piece of software that’s filled with bugs and usually just dies in the middle of a 12 hour long conversion to convert one video into something that can be played by your portable media player.

If you try to shy away from those commercial video converters, you’ll only be greeted by many other converters that are “free” to try, but have some ridiculous limitation on it until you actually purchase the whole program. Often times, these programs don’t even do what they’re advertised for, and you may end up buying something that is completely useless and is actually worse than your original piece of software. So, why not stick to free software that actually works?. Keep reading for a list of the best of the best when it comes to freeware video conversion softwares.

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Sometimes you’ve been surfing the internet for so long that it seems like you’ve run out of things to do. You’ve read all of your daily news / fun websites, and you don’t want to do work. Rather than typing in random web addresses and seeing what site pops up, there’s a much better way to spend your time.

If you remember back to your childhood, there’s a game called Pictionary, where one person would basically sketch something and other people would have to guess what was being drawn. This game has made its way online, and so you can play with people from around the world in your own game of online Pictionary. Keep reading for the full details.

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If you are even the slightest bit of a geek/nerd, I’m sure you have your own red laser pointer. Who doesn’t? But… do you have a GREEN laser pointer? No, not just a red laser pointer with green plastic wrap over the end (that doesn’t work anyway), but an authentic 532 nm 5mW green laser pointer? I didn’t think so. Most websites list it for $70 or more (cough, ThinkGeek, cough) and it’s just been a tease for years now. Thankfully, I’ve come across a different site that sells this green laser pointer for less than $12. Keep reading for the full info.

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You may be paranoid about somebody else using your computer, and so to combat that, you just Switch Users and leave your computer on the log in screen. Also, you may have it set to go back to the log in screen once the screen saver kicks in, just for those times you forgot to log out. While this may be useful most of the times, it may not always cut it. What if you’re running some sort of intense process (like video encoding/conversion, for example) that you don’t necessarily need to interact with, but you just need to see how far it has progressed? Logging in every time you want to check that is a waste of time and energy, as, since the computer is busy with whatever it is processing, the login will be extremely slow and laggy.

On the other hand, if you simply don’t like the interface of the Window’s login screen (for some reason), or simply can’t access it easily, then this solution might be for you. My computer suddenly decided to stop letting me log out or even shut down the computer through regular means, so I had to resort to finding my own solutions. (It just freezes on the “Windows is shutting down” blue screen, if anybody has any idea why it may do these, leave a comment.)

I came across another AutoHotKey script that locks your computer with a password after either a certain amount of time, or if you give it the lock command. By lock, what it does is it places a white transparent cover over your whole screen and has an “Input Password” box in the middle. The AutoHotKey source is at the bottom of this post. For more information about how to use AutoHotKey, read the previous post on How to Control iTunes Remotely. Keep reading for the guide on how to use this computer locking script.

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NOTE: Facebook has seemed to finally caught on and removed this page. This guide is no longer applicable and is here only for archival purposes.

If you use Facebook on a regular basis, you may have noticed that they have changed their layout once again. This is, I believe, version 3 of the Facebook layouts. Version 2, if you recall correctly, also had a huge uproar about the massive changes, introducing tabs and a Live News Feed. There were options to see more about people you like and less about people you don’t, and it was even smart enough to “learn” who your real friends were (as opposed to acquaintances you’ll never speak to again) and only show you their stories. But, people learned to live with that. It brought you the right amount of information, and most importantly, it was information that you actually cared about.

However, now version 3 of Facebook has done away with many of the new features introduced in version 2, making it much more simplistic and Twitter-like. I honestly don’t like this, because if I wanted a Twitter copy, I’d just use Twitter. Facebook had much more, but I don’t see that anymore. Another downgrade was the fact that they seemingly removed the whole “learning” part of the news feed; Facebook just shows you EVERY post done by EVERY friend all the time. It no longer shows only the people you may talk to, and so it’s giving much more information than is actually useful. Also, all of the updates are delayed by a good 10-20 minutes, whereas at least in Facebook v2, it would be within seconds/minutes.

Thankfully, I was able to find a way to reduce the number of wall posts showing up on my news feed drastically. I don’t care about somebody who I haven’t talked to in 5 years talking about how they skipped dinner to their other friend I haven’t even remember friending. It’s just taking up space on my news feed. Keep reading for the step by step guide on how to customize (to an extent) how much of different things shows up on your news feed.

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Often times, computers get slowed down and bulky if you don’t take proper care of them. Just like anything else, computers too need the occasional maintanance. However, rather than a bath or grooming, they need things like file deletion, hard drive defragmentation, etc. No idea what that means? Luckily, you can learn how to speed up your computer in a few simple steps. Keep reading for the step-by-step guide on how to use different utility programs and how to tweak some of your computers settings to keep your baby running smoothly.

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If you’ve been using computers for any amount of time, you are probably quite aware that there are almost an infinite amount of fonts out there. Serif, sans-serif, it can almost become too much to keep track of. Often times, you may come across a certain font that you really like, but have no idea what it is. Too bad there isn’t a way to find the name of a font just by looking at it…

But wait, there is! (I think I’ve been watching too many infomercials lately…)

WhatTheFont.com does just that. You upload a sample image of some words written in the font you want, and then the website will analyze and give you the closests matches to the font. I’ve used this site multiple times and it has never failed me. Keep reading for the step by step guide.

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The homebrew scene with Wii has grown tremendously over the years, and with every firmware update Nintendo releases, homebrew developers fight back with their own updates. A homebrewed Wii has the ability to run custom applications, and these applications range from DVD players, to internet browsers, to (the most important) game backup launchers. A backup launcher allows you to play burned Wii games, which means that you can basically torrent any game’s ISO (image file) using BitTorrent, burn it to a DVD, and play it on your Wii.

However, if you haven’t homebrewed your Wii yet and want to, but made the mistake of upgrading to Wii System Menu 3.4, you may think that you’re out of luck. Almost every guide that you may find requires you to downgrade your firmware by using some additional hacks, but those are all very dangerous as they can “brick” (render useless) your Wii. Thankfully, after hours of scrounging the internet, I found this guide that works while keeping the v3.4 firmware. I successfully was able to homebrew my Wii on the first try and it works perfectly.

Note that there is always the risk of partially or completely breaking your Wii while doing anything related to homebrew, so proceed with caution only if you are certain you wish to take the risk. Hacksar is not responsible for any damage that your Wii may sustain, even though the risk is extremely low. Keep reading for the guide.

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If you have used Google’s iGoogle personalized homepage, you have probably come across the various updates that have been slowly applied to different accounts. I was just given an update where a Google Chat, or gTalk, “tab” was added to my iGoogle homepage. Gmail has had this little box for a while now, but since I do the majority of my email checking through the Gmail widget in iGoogle, I never was bothered by the gTalk box.

However, now that the gTalk chat box is on iGoogle as well, it is starting to become bothersome. It often lags behind and takes the page a very long time to load; this is especially annoying if you have iGoogle set as your home page, as I do. I looked around for ways on how to remove the gTalk box from iGoogle. True, it has an option to “hide” the chat box, but it still leaves a large “Enable Chat” link in it’s place, which can still be annoying. Here’s the solution I made after not finding any other good / working solution. (Solutions such as editing the XML file didn’t work and I wanted to avoid GreaseMonkey scripts because those can slow your browser down as well.)

Note that this solution only works with Firefox. If you do not use Firefox, change over as it’s much faster, more secure and customizable.

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You may not be artistically talented at all, but there are many times in life where you may need to use some sort of an appeasing color scheme for one reason or another. Whether it’s a color scheme for a website, a poster board, a presentation, a trifold, etc, choosing the right colors can be one of the biggest challenges throughout the whole process. Thankfully, everybody has their talents, and those who can tell whether or not a color scheme matches have banded together to help those of us who are chromoschematically challenged (nice use of a made-up word, don’t you think?).

I’m sure many of you technophiles out there have learned (or were forced to learn) your way around image editing programs like Photoshop, but what good is that if you have no idea what colors to put? There’s only so much you can do with just black and white, and even that can look horribly wrong. Keep reading for the secret on how to get the perfect color scheme wherever and whenever.

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