Okay, just admit it. You know you want to. We can admit it, so we're sure you can. You want us to do it for you? Alright then, here it is:
You suck at Photoshop.
See, it wasn't so bad, was it?
The truth is, most people suck at Photoshop. But most of us also wish that we sucked a little less at it. Luckily, if your ego can handle it, Donnie Holye has created a hilarious and educational series of Photoshop tutorials titled You Suck at Photoshop.
These videos aren't for the faint of heart. Donnie has been known to use more than the odd bit of profanity, and some of the subject matter might be off-putting to our more sensitive readers. But if you have the fortitude for it, You Suck at Photoshop is an entertaining way to pick up a new Photoshop technique.
Ever get the feeling your guitar teach must suck because he still hasn't been able to teach you to play "Spirit of Radio" by Rush properly? Well, if you'd be willing to pay $10 for a personal lesson from Rush's Alex Lifeson, iVideosongs can help.
iVideosongs provides a selection of video lessons for acoustic or electric guitar, banjo, drums, and piano. Most of the tutorials are presented by iVideosongs instructors, who do a great job of breaking lessons down step by step. But a handful of lessons are presented by the professional musicians who either wrote or performed the songs. In addition Alex Lifeson, there are tutorials from drummer Russ Kunkell, The Allman Brother's pianist Chuck Leavell, John Oates of Hall & Oates, and Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, among others.
You can either learn to play specific songs by paying to download a song lesson, or you can learn a specific musical technique. Most of the technique videos are available as free downloads. Paid lessons from iVideosongs instructors tend to run about $5, while lessons from professional instructors are closer to $10.
One of the best and handiest tools in the power user's toolbox is GParted. I've written about it before, and the short version is this: GParted is an open source Linux app for modifying your hard drive's partitions without losing any data. It has support for a huge number of file systems, including those belonging to Windows, and though it's not as easy to use as some commercial solutions, it has the distinct advantage of being totally free. If you want a hand getting up and running with GParted, Ihighly recommend Modify Your Partitions With GParted Without Losing Data, a new article over at HowtoForge. It runs you through the whole process of using the fantastic GParted LiveCD to shuffle around your partitions to your heart's content.
A bit of a warning, though: Repartitioning is an inherently risky activity, and messing with existing partitions without first making a backup could, as the kids say, end in tears. Always backup.
One of the great things about WordPress is how easily you can have it up and running, completely customized to your liking, in such a short period of time. After setting up WordPress for several of my friends, I found that having a 'checklist' makes things go even faster - so I decided to write it all up and share with you.
Please don't hesitate to use the comments to suggest additions etc, I'll update the checklist accordingly.
Depending on how you've installed WordPress (manually or by a "one-click-install" that many hosting providers offer) - one of the very last installation steps is to choose a blog name and provide an email address. That's where this checklist begins. Click on a heading below to get started!
Jon Peck wanted a file server for streaming media across his network so he wouldn't need to leave his main PC on 24/7. Rather than buy an expensive preconfigured NAS machine, he did what real men do: He built it himself, in about 45 minutes, for under $80. Built around a cheap refurbished Dell and loaded with Ubuntu Linux, he does all of the machine's administration through web-based interfaces like SWAT and TorrentFlux. Of course, he gives step-by-step instructions on getting the machine set up, which took him less than an hour "from zero to a fully functional system." Very cool.
In her never-ending quest for interface perfection, Lifehacker Gina Trapani has written a great Geek to Live tutorial called Consolidate Firefox's chrome. In it she teaches you how to pare down Firefox's menus, toolbar, address back, and bookmarks toolbar until all that's left is what you absolutely need. To be specific, you'll learn how to eliminate entire menus from the menubar, how to keep toolbar buttons hidden when they're not available, get rid of the Go and Search buttons, and how to organize your bookmarks for maximum accessibility and minimum clutter. The tutorial does require you to edit Firefox's userChrome.css, so if that makes you squeamish, well... now's as good a time as any to get over it.
With every new release of Firefox--like yesterday's release of Firefox 2 Beta 2--comes the question, "How do I make my old extensions work with the new version?" Some extensions--which Mozilla is now calling Add-ons--made for older versions of Firefox really don't work with the newer features and can cause problems, but for the majority of add-ons, all that's needed is basically the flip of a switch. Of course, that switch is hidden deep in the add-on's code, but Nightly Tester Tools makes it possible to flip that switch with just a couple clicks. To that end, I've put together a short tutorial video showing how to use Nightly Tester Tools to make most of your old add-ons work with the latest version of Firefox. It was recorded in Windows, but should work basically the same on OS X and Linux:
In case you have any trouble with the video, or if anything's not clear, you can find complete instructions after the jump. Also, this is my first-ever screencast, so if you have any comments on the video itself, please voice them in the comments.
Engadget's Will O'Brien has written a great piece called How-To: Run your own network wiring. I think it's fair to call it a pretty quick-and-dirty guide, as some of the commenters are criticizing its ad-hoc nature, but if quick-and-dirty is what you need, this is the guide for you. O'Brien tells you what supplies and equipment you'll need to put together your own custom-length cables and then gives some tips on where to hide them. Sure, you might say this new age of wireless obviates the need for wired networks, but if that's not possible or cost-effective for you, take a look at Will's guide and also the comments, which point out some safety and legal issues you might want to be aware of.
It's no secret that with a little elbow-grease and know-how, popular open source blogging tool WordPress is a pretty versatile platform for web publishing. To that end, writer Leon Kilat has written a nice guide called How to use WordPress to run a mazine, news website. He describes the process of building Cebu Living, an attractive webzine powered by WordPress. Like I said, a little elbow grease is required, so this isn't for you if your knees shake at the sight of a little PHP code, but if you want to know how to turn your blog into something more than a blog, Kilat's tutorial is a good starting point.
The other day I mentioned Engadget's blog backup guide, which works great but may be too Linux-centric for some. Reader Matt wrote in to point us to an alternative for Wordpress users, a tutorial at davebgimp.com that describes how to set up Wordpress to automatically e-mail a backup of your whole Wordpress blog to you every day. The tutorial requires you to install two Woirdpress plugins, WP-DB-Backup and WP-Cron, both by Scott Merrill. If you've ever installed a Wordpress plugin before, it will be a snap, but even if you haven't it won't be tough. The tutorial suggests you configure the plugins to send your backups to a Gmail account, but there are several other options to choose from.
I'll admit it, I used to be a Winamp snob. For years Winamp was by far the best Windows audio player available, and not too long ago the sight of any other app-usually Windows Media Player-on a friend's desktop would send me into a fugue. Okay, not really, but you get the idea. Nowadays Winamp's competitors have brought up the rear, but there are still things Winamp can do that the major players can't, and those who are still wild about its functionality should check out this Winamp Tweak Guide from TechSpot. Though some real power-users might say "so what?", it has some good tips on settings and plugins for intermediate users looking to move up to the next level.
While many have been satisfied with Portable Gaim for their take-it-with-you IM needs, some people are stuck on Trillian (and not without reason). What are those people to do if they want to be able to take a complete Trillian install with them on a USB drive? Trillian Anywhere poses a solution. It's not a portable version of Trillian you download, but rather an "online wizard" that will guide you through the steps of creating and modifying a Trillian install that will play nice on portable storage. There are separate wizards for each version of Trillian, but the process basically goes like this: Install Trillian in a temporary directory, install your skin, plugins, and copy over your profile, then edit its INI files so that Trillian behaves the way you want it. This seems like a good opportunity for a developer to automate the process, but there's only six steps involved and it's straightforward enough even for novices.
Though I hate to admit it, my "poor man's TiVo" solution consists of me checking CAT every morning to see what's new and then hitting the BitTorrent trackers to start my downloads. I know there are better ways to go about it, but what can I say, I'm a creature of habit. But speaking of better ways, Lifehacker's Adam Pash has written a brand new guide to automatically downloading your favorite TV shows using the free Windows app Ted and the BitTorrent client of your choosing. He steps you through setting up Ted and configuring it for your favorite shows, making it work with Azureus and uTorrent, and setting up custom feeds.
Free cross-platform screencast creator
Wink hit version 2.0 today, at least for Windows users. Wink lets you make
software tutorial or demonstration movies by recording whatever's happening on your screen, adding text boxes, buttons,
and so on, and saving it as a Flash file. The new version features unlimited text boxes and buttons, image and shape
objects, audio recording and editing, undo and redo, improved Flash output, and more available languages. No word on
when the Linux version will be available.
I
have to wonder what it's like at Apple right now, what with everybody and their grandma installing Windows XP on their Intel Macs.
Are heads rolling? Are doves being released into the sky? Do they even care? Well, if one thing's sure, it's that
installing XP on your Mac is only going to get easier, ergo this video tutorial from UNEASYsilence, which donated $500 to the
cause. The tutorial is about 12 minutes long, formatted for your iPod (a higher-resolution version is coming soon), and
pretty easy to follow.
In related news, I'm pleased to report than OnMac.net (the home of the $13,000
bounty) has gotten a nice redesign, its forums are back up, and its wiki is coming along nicely, with a constantly improving HOWTO and a very handy FAQ for would-be installers.
Okay, just admit it. You know you want to. We can admit it, so we're sure you can. You want us to do it for you? Alright then, here it is:
I'll admit it, I used to be a Winamp snob. For years Winamp was by far the best Windows audio player available, and not too long ago the sight of any other app-usually Windows Media Player-on a friend's desktop would send me into a fugue. Okay, not really, but you get the idea. Nowadays Winamp's competitors have brought up the rear, but there are still things Winamp can do that the major players can't, and those who are still wild about its functionality should check out this
