Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

Love history? Love media clips? You might love to take a look at iCue. I found it recently while looking for educational videos. My kids love to watch videos, but I won’t allow them to browse YouTube. There is so much junk, so much perversity flowing through YouTube, YUK! iCue looks better. It’s run by NBC, so expect the usual self-promotion. But some of the stuff is worth watching. It’s an interactive site, too, with games and the social networking aspect (isn’t everything about social networking these days, lol!). Good site for homeschoolers.

It is hard to fathom, but 1 in 150 children are diagnosed with autism in the United States. This is a phenomenal number, in my opinion. It tells me that something in our environment, be it vaccines or water quality, are afflicting our kids. It is terrible.

Parents with autistic kids can use all the help others can give. Here’s a wonderful new help– the ZacBrowser! It’s designed especially for children with autism. It looks great! It’s getting the attention of major media networks, too. The download is free. Looks like it can be a great browser for very young kids, too.

Have a blog and need to keep track of your word count? Or, if you are like my daughter, do you tend to write 5,000 words for a 1,000 word essay and need to keep track, lol? I found a handy little online tool called the Word Count Tool. It’s free to use. It’s an online software program. Just copy and paste your words into the box, and click “submit.” Pretty handy. And it’s a lot less weighty than having to copy and paste your words into a bulky program like Microsoft Word or Open Office.

In other news, I haven’t been blogging to this blog much, and I’m sorry! I have a lot on my plate right now. And now that spring is here, the gardens have been calling me. But I’ll be popping in from time to time, giving links to the latest cool promotional products, free software, and security news. I also hope to keep posting my tutorials regularly.

Remember, if you have a geeky question, always feel free to ask. Use the “Contact Me” link at the top. I will try my best to get back to you.

I was asked to explain how one captures a screenshot of your computer desktop. Believe it or not, it is extremely easy! And very fun.

Simultaneously press “ctrl” and “PRTSC/SYSRQ” on your keyboard. This essentially copies what’s on your desktop to your clipboard. What’s needed now is how to paste your copied content into a document. This is where things get varied, because not everyone has the same software.

The most basic graphic program is Paint. It’s not terribly sophisticated, but it will do the job. You can also download a plethora of free editing programs, like Irfanview or Paint.NET. I have a tutorial on using Irfanview here, and I have written something up about making small thumbnails here. You can find Irfanview for free by doing a search at download.com.

I use PaintShopPro, because I like to crop my graphics. Irfanview does not crop images, but it does resize them. Paint and Paint.NET do crop images; they resize images but I think Irfanview does a better job with resizing.

OK, so I’ll just tell you what I do, and you can choose your software program and take it from there.

I make a copy of my desktop image. I then crop the image so I only get what I want in the photo. Then I resize the image to, usually, about 180 width (about how wide my sidebars in my blog are). I then sharpen the image for clarity.

Then, I upload my little graphic to Photobucket. They have a cute little editing program, too. I use this to build a picture frame around my graphic, and I save it like that. And this is what I wind up with:

As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment or email me via the contact form, and I’ll try my best to answer your questions in a timely manner.

Do you have your own blog on your own domain, or manage a website? I have to admit, for a long time I was in the dark about ftp and such. I actually am still learning the ropes, after finally taking the leap into my own domain several months ago. I use a variety of ftp programs, but tend to like SmartFTP more than FileZilla. For the longest time, I had no idea what I was doing! a lot of what I have learned has been trial and error. Emphasis on the error, lol.

I found, by pure accident, some excellent tutorials for SmartFTP users. They are flash movies, and are really good. So if you use SmartFTP, or are even desiring to learn the ropes of ftp, these tutorials may help; they are here.

I haven’t tried this out yet, but it looked so interesting and I have some readers who love graphic design that I thought I’d give you a heads up on this. There’s a little 3D modeling and animation program available for download called the Anim8tor. It looks really nice! I’ll bet kids would have a blast with it. The author says it’s not “professional” grade, but it’s free and it looks like a ton of fun. He put a lot of time into it and I think it’s great when developers offer their creations for free.

There’s texture support for bump maps, soft shadows, spotlights, fog, and more, for graphic files such as .BMP, .GIF, and .JPG formats. It looks like a great beginner’s tool. I know my young son, who loves creating graphics on the computer, would love this. I intend to download it and try it out. Soon. I hope. My son has a math book to finish, and that’s really the only reason why I haven’t tried it yet! LOL.

One quick reminder: when you download files–any files but especially executable files like those that run programs– always be sure to run a scan through your anti-virus. and always make sure your anti-virus is updated. Almost all software is safe, but it definitely pays to check and double-check. hotel deals are nice to have, but you don’t want them popping up in browser pop-ups, all over the place, because you didn’t scan and now you have spyware! Be sure to always scan your files.

If you are as old as I am, you remember that old television commercial for Eggo waffles, where the kids scream at each other “Leggo my Eggo!” Eggo waffles were pretty good. I might even have screamed that at my brothers to get one.

Anyway… I’m quite off the topic, lol. There’s a new cute computer game for Lego lovers (I have two sons who have spent a small fortune on Legos). C|Net does a good review and has a download link. It sounds like a very cute game, and I’m sure my sons will love it. They are quite the Lego fans– they are members of the online Lego Club, too! So now, instead of buying tons of Legos, we can buy a ton of ram to run the new games!

Amic Email Backup
I was initially very impressed with this program. It’s is a speedy little program that will backup all your emails, whether it be Opera Mail, Eudora mail, Thunderbird, or the ubiquitous Outlook Express. It will backup all your emails and settings with the click of the mouse. It stores the information in a small file and keeps it in the My Documents folder. You can move it to a safe place (like a flash drive separate from your computer’s hard drive) in case of a computer crash or reformat. I love that you can schedule it to backup automatically (I have mine set to every 2 days but you can backup every month or two or three).

When the day comes and you need to restore, you click on your stored file, and Amic begins. The process of restoring your email is another simple click away. IF IT WORKED. It didn’t work for me. The backup process went smoothly, but when I tried to restore, an error notification popped up telling me the file was corrupted.

This could be a great little program. I use Windows Vista, so perhaps this was the problem. I have not tried it on XP yet. If you are looking for a quick little program to save your email, this is free, at least. If it works for you, please let me know!

Here’s a cute little beta program I found! It’s the StumbleUpon Alerter, built by Adam at AdamAntSolutions. He’s an Australian blogger, and a stumbler, obviously. I’ve been trying out this little tool, and it’s pretty neat. It’s small and not terribly detailed. But I like it.

This program, which runs in your system tray, alerts you when someone has stumbled a blog post of yours. You have to manually submit your blog post. I noticed that you have to manually submit your url– every individual url that may be stumbled. This is the only negative feature. It would be far too laborious to enter in all my possible stumbled blog posts. I’d like a feature where you could just enter in the main domain url, and have it show you which posts on that domain were stumbled.

Still, I like the program. It’s small and nice, and helps me keep track of which friends have stumbled my latest magnus opus and help me weed out the non-friends who never stumble me. If you are a stumbler, or a stumble-e, check it out. It’s neater than sliced bread and Rolex Datejust!

P.S. Feel free to Stumble this post, heh heh.

I found a wonderful little tool for those of us who are “hue-challenged.” Lol. It’s the Color Match Remix, a free online tool to help you find colors for your blog. It matches hues and shades automatically, with handy little sliders. It makes me want to start up some new blogs, so that I can create some cool new color swatches! But I’ve already got enough blogs! I’m writing about everything including the kitchen sink! Actually, if I start up another one, it would have to be about kitchen faucets because I’ve already got the kitchen sink, lol!

This color mixer is a fun tool for anyone, blogger or not. It has a design layout preview and the hue color numbers are easily exported. Free to use, too!

I was talking with my sister today, who also has scads of kids who use computers, and I mentioned Blue Coat K9. She had never heard of the program. I was surprised! I don’t know where I first heard of it, but it was a few years ago. I love it. I have the program on all the computers and it works wonderfully.

Blue Coat K9 is a “web protection” software– an Internet filter– that is downloadable to your computer. I have tried numerous free (and not free) programs, and K9 is by far the best I’ve ever had. It is extremely thorough. Check the link for more information. I checked and I see that it is Vista compatible now, too. I like that it is thoroughly customizable– you can whitelist or blacklist specific sites, or types of sites. You can set time limits and monitor Internet activity. The only thing I do not like about it is that it signs you out automatically after fifteen minutes or so. This stinks if you have a long list of Internet activity to sift through. It is very annoying to have to log back in and start the whole process again. Blue Coat says they do this to ensure that a child who has hacked into the system is bumped off… but if a child has figured out the password once, won’t he just have to retype it in again to continue? I hope they fix that part of it soon.

But as far as free Internet filters go, I love K9. Moms, check it out. Your kids may not be looking for trouble, but you don’t have to be looking for trouble to come across some pretty nasty sites! K9 should effectively block them. It has worked for us– it may help you, too!

P.S. When you create your password, be SURE not to lose it or you will be locked out of your account. Heh, now how do I know that? :S

I love to study the Bible. For a long time, all I had was my very good study Bible. I amassed several study books, like Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, the Interliner Bible with the Hebrew and Greek words, and some Bible dictionaries and commentaries. It was quite the event, studying the Bible! I had to have a lot of space to spread out all those books, and I wrote all my notes by hand in a notebook.

Modern technology has made studying the Bible much faster and easier. I have surfed around a little, looking for Bible study software. Some stuff costs several hundreds of dollars! I could never afford something like that.

A guy named Rick Meyers thought the same thing. So he invented his own program, called E-Sword. It is amazing! And it’s free! E-Sword has the basic King James Bible in the program, with String’s Concordance. From that basic program, you can download a variety of plugins as you want them or need them. Maps, dictionaries, commentaries, tips, books, everything! I am amazed! I have John Wesley’s commentaries on the New Testament, Charles Finney’s Systematic Theology, and Josephus’ works. There is a ton more, too. And Rick offers it all free. It’s a wonderful program, I’ve been using it for almost seven years now.

Don’t ask me how to pronounce it (is it “grow” or “grew”?) but ask me if I love it and I’ll say YES. It works with Firefox (and Internet Explorer, for those of you still using it!). It is extremely customizable, which is why I love it so. You can choose the search engines you’d like and choose which of their buttons you’d like, all within one easy toolbar! You can read more about the Groowe toolbar here.

There’s a fantastic new plugin for Wordpress users. It’s the Photo Dropper Flickr Wordpress plugin. It looks absolutely terrific!

Photo Dropper is a Wordpress plugin that lets you add Flickr photos to your posts.

It searches for Creative Commons licensed photos - images that are licensed for shared use - and lets you drop them into your posts - right from your dashboard with just 1 click.

Impressive. Might even be more impressive than those new-fangled motion sensor lights I’ve heard about (and which we need to get, since we spend a fortune on our lights burning all night long).

Check out the plugin if you have Wordpress. I have a few, and intend to install it. I’ll be back to let you know how it goes.

If you do use it, be sure to check the Flickr photos you are capturing. Nothing worse than transgressing copyright laws. Except stealing. Be nice.

HT Blogging with Cents for the plugin heads-up.

I found another terrific photo-editing program. It’s Easy Thumbnails, and it is amazing!

I do a lot of photographing (and photo-editing and uploading) pictures for my blogs. Because I usually deal with a large number of photos, I prefer to resize them all at once. Irfanview– my favorite photo-resizing program, does do batch editing like this, but I have found it confusing, and I have to reset all my settings every time I use it. So I’ve been looking around for something easier. I absolutely love Easy Thumbnails.

This little program (it’s free) will resize one photo or all your photos. The default setting is to resize them all to 200px by 200px, but you can change this to anything you like. It saves the newly sized photos in the same folder, but with a “tn_” in the title. This is helpful because you won’t have to go searching for your new photos (or have to make an entirely new folder to keep them), and it won’t copy over the original photos. Once again, the settings will change those features should you want them changed.

I love Easy Thumbnails. It has become part of my top ten favorite programs, ever.