How to Use Your Laptop as A WiFi Router in Windows 7

Some times you need to have a wireless network when you don't have a wireless router. But what you may not have know is that your laptop (or possibly desktop) could do it all along...for free!

You will need a computer with:
- Windows 7
- A LAN port and Wireless Card

1. Right-click your network/WiFi icon on the taskbar and select "Open Network and Sharing Center"
2. Click "Change adapter settings"
3. Make sure your network cable is plugged into your laptop or desktop and your modem or router. 4. Right-click "Local Area Connection" and select "Properties".
5. Select the "Sharing" tab. 6. Check the "Allow other network users to connect though this computer's Internet connection" checkbox and click OK.
7. Right-click your network/WiFi icon on the taskbar and select "Open Network and Sharing Center" again.
8. This time, select "Manage wireless networks".
9. Click "Add".
10. Select "Create an ad hoc network".
11. Enter an name and password for your personal WiFi network.
12. Left-click your network icon and make sure you're connected to your new ad-hoc network that you created.
13. Connect your any other WiFi enabled device to the network you specified with the password you created.

Note: If you want to use your computer with a normal WiFi network, you need to go back and uncheck the setting in step 6 to disable sharing of the Local Area Network.

Some tools and tips to help organizing/optimizing/de-clutter one's computer

One of my most frequent problems is that I will run out of space. A few excellent space visualization tools are:
Diskitude: http://madebyevan.com/diskitude/
also Mindgem’s Folder Size: http://www.mindgems.com/products/Folder-Size/Folder-Size.html

Another all around great tool is Piriform’s CCleaner (http://piriform.com/ccleaner/), as well as getting your computer to run smoother it is great for managing what programs start up when your computer does. Disabling many of the unneeded ones will make your computer load your user account faster, and free up visual space when all of these programs aren’t popping up all over the place.

Another simple tip that is sometimes overlooked is your desktop background. Change your desktop background to a picture that isn’t too “busy”. If you find your eyes straining at all to read your icons you very well may have a busy background. Change it to something simple. Scenic landscapes are excellent. If you want a picture of your loved ones, find a picture that doesn’t has a simple background behind them, maybe even crop the picture to position it so that your icons don’t land on their face.

Maybe there are some files you don’t need anymore?
In windows 7 you can easily search for files by specific filters such as:
datemodified:‎1/‎1/‎1996 .. ‎12/‎31/‎2008 which selects all old files modified between 1996 and 2008!
or find large files with: size:>100mb

I hope these ideas can help you in the weeding out and organization of your computer!
Peace from Ahren

See more progress on: organize my computers

Ahren's Essential Firefox Add-Ons

Today I shall share with you the Firefox plugins that I always install every time that I have to reinstall Firefox. So here goes:

Adblock Plus
http://adblockplus.org/

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When I browse the web on someone else's computer or a computer at school, I sometimes have to take a step back and remember that the web actually does have ads! This plugin is amazing, it even removes ads from within youtube videos.
To still support the web however, they have an option to keep unobtrusive ads such as simple text based ads and I encourage you to keep this option enabled. An option I always disable is: show tabs on flash and java. When enabled, this puts a small button to potentially block an element on every flash and java element on a webpage, something that I find to be quite annoying since ABP already takes care of practically every flash based ad that you'd want to get rid of. There is also a version of  ABP for Chrome as well.

Xmarks
http://www.xmarks.com/

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Xmarks is a genius add-on for syncing your bookmarks. Not only does it allow you to sync your bookmarks between multiple computers but it is cross-browser platform as well supporting Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari. I personally use it 1. to back up my bookmarks 2. to sync between the two browsers that I mainly use (Chrome & FF) and 3. to sync between my main computer and others that I use. 


Add to Search Bar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-to-search-bar/

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If you like using the search bar up in the top right of Firefox for more than just Google, this add-on is a must. It allows you to add practically any search box on any website FF's search box. So simple but very helpful.

Textarea Cache
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/textarea-cache/

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A pure lifesaver! One of the most frustrating things is when you are in the middle of a post...and Firefox crashes! Instead of losing all of your post, Textarea Cache keeps a log of what you are typing and it's all available when you load up Firefox again.

InvisibleHand
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/invisiblehand/

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If you do any shopping online, especially stuff that has a model number, this is a great money saver. It detects items on many pages and searches to see if it is available cheaper on a different site. If it's available, InvisibleHand will pop up and let you know!

Web Developer Toolbar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/

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A webdeveloper's best friend. This toolbar contains many tools to help. From editing CSS directly on the page so you can immediately see changes, to disabling a variety of things to help troubleshoot, to resizing the page to see what it might look like for users with other-sized screens this add-on is key for anyone working in web dev.



Honorable mentions:

Foxytunes
http://www.foxytunes.com/

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I often install foxytunes but not always. It allows you remotely control a very wide variety of media players directly from your browser while browsing. I find that feature helpful every once and a while but what I end up using it the most for is an alarm clock. It has a feature where it will turn on your music at whatever time you have specified. So I just have it play my "Wake up" playlist in iTunes.

Firebug
http://getfirebug.com/

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Another addon for web developers and although I haven't used it too much I realize that it's quite good. It's comparable to Chrome's "Inspect Element" option it allows you to gain more information and improve webpage design and functionality. 

Yyyyeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh Booooooiiiiiii

So I finished my chemistry final and had such jubilation from doing so (as chemistry has been my hardest class this quarter) that this song just popped into my head...so I recorded it.


Chemistry's Over by djahren

Lyrics:
Chemistry's over!
I'm done with that ish, son.
Gonna take two more finals
and then I'm gonna be done
One more quarter to go
'til my associates degree
but I'll be still be rocking
this mic like check 123!

Such a freaking load off of my chest! Now here's to hoping that I pass!

A Wonderful Night

I had a freaking amazing day/date with Sara in Seattle.

So in bland play-by-play style, here we go...
We bused into Seattle together and talked all the way. Upon our arrival, we went to eat some food at the Seattle Center food court and had burritos the size of an infant. We then wandered over to the Key Arena and hung out around the fountain (which is the second time we'd been there and where the first picture of the both of us was taken) before the show started. We went into the show and talked quite a bit before it started (Sara answered tons of questions I had about live sound about array positioning, frequency dispersion, reverberation - direct reflections and more). The show (Trans-Siberian Orchestra) started and it was such a cool experience!

Awesome music played with such expertise and super-super cool lighting! All the while the show was going on we were having a wonderful time enjoying it as well as talking every once and a while about different aspects of the show, ranging from technical to musical, and I just kept thinking about how cool it was to have such a friend to be by my side, someone who I could talk to about the things that excite me (who actually understands me) and share awesome - and not so awesome as well - moments with.


Following the show, we tried to go see FOH on the main floor but were thwarted in our efforts. I then took Sara in a bit of a wild direction to confuse her as I had a (barely planned) surprise in store for her... which was the Space Needle! I think I only have been up there once and that very well may have been when I was only about 5 years old not to mention that we both wanted to go as we are in the process of bidding our adieus to Seattle for now. It was so special going up there as we both were very excited and it actually was quite romantic.

Being up there with Sara reminded me of the many reasons why I'm with her. Among the site seeing and figuring out where everything was in relation to us we talked a lot more just about our lives and the direction that we are going, about us, and something about that moment just made me feel so very close to her.

A beautiful day spent with a beautiful girl who also happens to be my best friend and the love of my life.

Free-writing

So I recently attended a Power of Hope camp and a common activity at such camps is free writing. Basically writing whatever comes to your head with out stopping. As one of my goals from coming back from camp was to be more creative, this is one of the ways I'm doing that. So here goes! Enjoy my mind vomit. :P

Synthesized freedom comes at too high a price because what we really want in life is hidden behind the gauze black and dark in front of our eyes. Push through push through I say, break out break free. Free from your judging mind that limits creativitivy and tells you that you can do it. Tells me that I'm not cool enough. You know what mind, fuck you ! I tore up my cool card ages ago! I can do what I want and I am one of the coolest cats I know! Rocking lines on the mic and I don't smoke the dro you know I flow so slow but passionately massivly getting ideas across but only when it needs to be said, I'm not filling the silence with nonsence that no one ever needed to hear. I'm filling it with silence broken sometimes by a thought that was well thought out. Sometimes that thought comes to slow though, after lightyears of conversation have passed and my thought ran out of gas, no longer holds the same meaning. It seems to me people are so speedy in our culture today, no time to slow down, your mind has to think fast or you get left behind. Schools with timed tests, which test only one small part of your brain, that's not intelligence, that's ignorance. Some of the greatest minds in history didn't test well. So you best tell the leaders of our institutions to start rethinking the structure. What if we could incorporate love into the curriculum leading youth to become powerful positive people posing problems for people who pass judgement on the less fortunate people in life. Now that'd be fresh.

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Started out playing: Royksopp - Eple
Now playing: Rjd2 - 2 More Dead
via FoxyTunes

Emailing Print Quality Pictures in Picasa

Let's say you want to be able to send higher quality prints to someone via email through Picasa so they could print them out if they so wished (and the printed images won't be grainy – assuming that the image was from your camera or something).... here's how!

Click Tools and select Options



Select the Email tab and slide the Size for multiple pictures slider all the way to the right so it says 1600 pixels. This setting should allow a high enough picture resolution to print a 4x6 at good quality.




If the person you are sending the images to needs to print the images in a size larger than a 4x6, you will need to do the following:

• Make sure that Size for single pictures is set to Original size
• and send the images one by one (one picture per email)

Once you have selected the image(s) that you wish to send, click the email icon at the bottom of Picasa, select your preferred email method/client and send the email as normal.

I hope this helps you in your image sending conquests!

As always, if you have any questions of how to accomplish a certain task, please let me know and I will try and help you out and probably do a tutorial on it.