I have been looking for this since I started playing with Linux a long time ago.  This way you do not have to reboot your machine to run Linux and you can run it natively in Windows.  This allows you to run your favorite Linux applications inside Windows without rebooting and it just shows up like a windows application.

Sure you can go the virtual machine route, but that is a huge pain in the butt and can take a long time to setup.  This makes it so that Ubuntu runs totally separately from Windows so you can install applications and take it with you and put it in another computer with all your favorite applications ready for you to use.  This is hugely helpful for things that need X-windows or any terminal output as Linux does a better job.  Lifehacker has a full writeup on the application check it out to read the full article.

Download Portable Ubuntu!

Below are some links to a few cheat sheets that come in handy.  I find myself constantly looking for the basics these days because I haven’t set them to memory because the internet has made it so easy to find stuff that you no longer need to set stuff to memory.  Kind of like speed dial I don’t know anyone’s phone number anymore!

• HTML Cheat Sheet
• PHP Cheat Sheet
• htaccess Cheat Sheet
• CSS Cheat Sheet

So I finally decided to jump into 2001 and upgrade our cable package to include HD programming.  After creating a spread sheet and running the numbers of my current Comcast cable/internet package and moving to DirectTV I found that I save a whopping $6/month on service and I get all the HD channels and an addition 50 channels.  I decided to keep my internet with Comcast as unfortunately that is one thing that they actually do very well.  I picked the choice package which has 150 channels and then picked up the HD package and an HD DVR.  The DVR has a 500GB HD and holds 40 hours of HD TV and 200 hours of standard def. It also has 2 USB ports and 1 eSATA port so you can easily add an additional external drive.  And yes they actually work unlike the Comcast or Tivo boxes that you have to kinda hack to get those ports working.  HDMI out makes super easy installation to the TV and it has 2 ethernet plugs (not sure why, wish I had a redundant internet connection!) so it is hardwired to my network.  The internet is how it downloads the On Demand features.

After waiting all day for the installer to get there (hey at least they gave me a discount afterwords) and watching him install the satellite and then plugging everything in a setting it all up I am very happy.  I was sad to call Tivo and let them know I needed to cancel my account but running the numbers on a new Tivo box and staying with Comcast and doing a cablecard was just too much money and sounded kinda complicated.  One nice benefit that I didn’t even take into consideration was the dual tuner of the box.  This was something we have fought with on our Tivo for as long as we have had it, we could only record one show at a time.  Well not anymore so finally we can capture just about all the shows we can throw at it.

The navigation of the menu and moving around is a little slower than I would like but nothing that is a deal breaker.  I actually found it easier to use my iTouch and download the DirectTV app and browse the shows that way to decide what should be recorded.  Then go on the DVR and just search for the show.  It is also nice to have On Demand type features so we can download via the internet certain shows and not have to worry about recording them.  The downloads work pretty fast and you can queue up as many as you want and it just pulls them down in about 10 minutes or so for a 30 minute show.  One funny thing we noticed is all the adult channels and porn they have that you see while searching for just about every show.  Chances are I will play with the parental controls and try and remove those from the search as it just makes it more cumbersome.

The Tivo like functions work as expecting and the video output is set to the highest of 1080i which looks a little bit better than my old standard definition basic extended cable!  I took a $12 increase on my internet because I dropped the cable package but thats alright as I get $13 back from cancelling Tivo so it’s basically a wash there.

All in all if you are looking at an HD package I would suggest DirectTV.  Of course we only have one TV in our house so setup was pretty easy and our house isn’t pre-wired seing as our house is older than me!

So I have decided to resurrect an old laptop that I had sitting in my office for about 2 years.  Well after $40 to quadruple the memory and replacing the hard drive and then re-installing XP from scratch and then all the manufacturer drivers, we finally are in business.  I then plugged this into my network and our LCD TV and the stereo.  So it is our own little home entertainment system for our TV.  Well I decided that since this thing would be on 24/7 that I needed to do some automation to some tasks to keep it clean.  Because Playon and Hulu and other web based tools like to create awesomely large temp files that just hang around if you do not delete them.  Also because it is a WindowsXP machine I figured scheduling a daily reboot wasn’t a bad idea either.  Well turns out these are all very simple things to automate and then schedule.

For CCleaner you just need to run it in the silent mode by creating a schedule that kicks off ‘CCleaner /AUTO’

For JKDefrag you just need to schedule to run the JKDefragCMD file

For a scheduled reboot you just need to schedule a job that kicks off ‘Shutdown.exe -r -t 00′

Lifehacker has a great article on other processes you can automate but these were the first three I went after to keep my computer clean.  I scheduled CCleaner and JKDefrag on my work laptop and it really does keep things clean and moving along a whole lot better!

So last night I was bored and decided to redo my entire website (again). I just changed the theme about a week ago, but the more I dug into it the less I liked it and decided I would spend a little more time redoing my blog. After picking a theme I put it on a local copy of Wordpress and started banging away. I started changing header images and fixing CSS issues with AJAX overlaps and image overlaps and fixing up a few other issues I noticed.  This is usually pretty typical for themes I have found in the past.  You get what you paid for and because all these themes are free I guess that would make sense.

One of my co-workers turned me onto Firebug which is a Firefox plugin that reads the CSS and breaks it out into a tree structure so you can see what is really going on behind the scenes with formatting.  This application saved me probably about 2 days of frustration searching through the CSS and the PHP files trying to find the correct classes and div’s to edit to make it look how I want it to.  The program allows you to edit the CSS on the spot so you can see if what you thinking works…this is great for things like spacing or overflow or text size.  This application is a must have for any web developer or anyone who likes to tweak their Wordpress themes to get the most out of them.

Finally an application that does everything that I want it to.  I subscribe to FileHippo’s updated RSS feed so I need all the programs that are updated daily.  MediaMonkey was one of them and it caught my eye that it finds and fixes missing album art.  So I figured I would try it to manage my music.

Wow! Amazing application within a few hours I updated all my missing music art and also corrected a bunch of mislabeled tags, deleted some duplicate music, and leveled the volume on a few tracks.  This software is amazing and is really easy to use.  What would have taken me like 5 applications I can do all in one.

It also will manage my phone and iTouch.  So no more working with iTunes to sync music and it is soo much easier to pick music and fill my iTouch and I can also have it automatically sync and fill based on music I listen to here and there on my PC.  It also links in streaming music and a few other things amazing!

There is a paid version of the application that gives you more robust usage of ripping music and managing your large music library.  The price is a modest $39.99 but so far I haven’t found a reason to upgrade past the free version.  One thing I like is the super light package this all comes in <10MB  This software is a must have!

Download MediaMonkey

Beta 3.1

This is a great freeware program and will convert all video’s between multiple formats and will automatically upload to YouTube if you want. They have a paid version of their software that will do a little higher quality if you need it. This is what I used after using DVDShrink to rip the .VOB files, then I converted the .VOB to .FLV so I could put the videos on my blog.

Download Any Video Converter

So I managed to get our wedding slideshow into a flash video enjoy!

Have you ever needed to make a copy of a DVD and wondered how to do it? Well it is very simple.  I just used this software to create a copy of our Wedding DVD so we can burn multiple copies and you can also watch the .VOB file via any media player so you do not have to worry about the DVD the software is super easy to use and creates files that can be easily burned to a DVD using NERO Burning ROM.

DVD Shrink 3.2

Well we finally had our trip and got married in Cozumel Mexico on 3/21/2009.  I have attached the pictures to this post.  These are just 106 of the 450+ photos the professional photographer from the hotel took.  We also had Jessica and my dad taking pictures as well as about 20 digital cameras rolling around.  So lets just say that this wedding was well documented!

We were very surprised at the quality of these shots and it also came with a nice little DVD and we also have all the raw images they took.  We will be putting together a little slide show for the reception here in Denver but thought I would upload these for everyone to enjoy.

[Show as slideshow]

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