Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Office

Do you use Microsoft Office in your daily life at work or school but don't have it installed on your home computer because it is too expensive? Well like most other things there is a free alternative to this and it is called OpenOffice.org. This office suite has everything that you will need from writing papers to creating data bases and everything in between that you would need in a office suite. You can download your free copy from here: http://www.openoffice.org. OpenOffice.org has a very nice interface so that if you have used any of the Microsoft Office programs before everything should look very similar or even close to the same. You can also save your files to all of the same formats that a ton of the other office programs use. So you can still send your files to whom ever and they will be able to read them just fine with the programs that they have installed. So if you need an office suite OpenOffice.org is a very good alternative to the Microsoft Office suite if you want to go open source and not have to pay any money.

OpenOffice.org Writer


OpenOffice.org Impress


OpenOffice.org Draw


OpenOffice.org Calc


OpenOffice.org Base

Find New Websites Using Stumble Upon

Have you ever found yourself bored or just having some extra time on your hands? There is a Firefox Add-On to suit your needs and it is called Stumble Upon. It can be downloaded from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138. Also if you do not have Firefox installed you can download it from here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/. To add this to Firefox all you will need to do is just click on the Add to Firefox Button on the Stumble Upon download page. All you will need to do after it is installed in Firefox make an account. Then from there choose the kinds of content that you would like to see then just start stumbling around the web. By clicking on the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons in the toolbar Stumble Upon will be able to show you more sites that will like better and also know what you don't like as well. I can assure you that you will have hours of fun browsing the web and finding a ton of new sites along the way.

Back-up Songs From Your Ipod To Your Computer In Windows

Have you ever wanted to take the songs from your Ipod and put them onto your computer? You may need to do this some time if your hard drive crashes and you lose all of your data and do not want to have to spend all of the hours recopying your whole cd collection back to your computer. There is a free tool that can make this task very easy and it is called iDump this can be downloaded from here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/IPOD-TOOLS/Multimedia-IPOD-tools/iDump.shtml. Now all you will need to do is just download and install the program and then start it up. After you have that completed you can get started with this tutorial.

First you want to make sure that you have your Ipod plugged in to your computer. Other wise you will not get anywhere and the program will not open either. Once it is started up it will load all of your songs. After it is done loading the songs you have there are a couple options that you can select from the drop down menu. You can select from the different playlists that that you have created on your ipod and select songs from there or you can just leave it on the all songs selection. Now you can select the songs to be copied by selecting them one by one or you can right click and choose select all if you just want to get all of the songs from your Ipod.

Selecting songs to be copied

Now that you have all of the songs selected that you would like to copy to your computer you can now select where you would like the songs to be copied to on your computer. To do this you will need to click on the Output Options tab toward the top of the window. From here you can just browse to the directory that you would like to copy to. I have just set mine to a music folder on my desktop but you can copy them to where ever you choose. You can also change how the folders will be laid out in the directory that you choose by changing the File Output Format. I have just left mine on the default option because that is just the way that I like my folders to be sorted but you can choose to change yours as you choose. You can also select the Unattended transfer so then you will not have to monitor the whole process of your songs being copied.

Output Options window

Now to copy the songs to your computer all you will have to do is go back to the Ipod tab and then just click on the Start Copy button. Now all you will have to do is just wait for all of the songs to be copied and then you can transfer them to your Itunes or what ever other music player that you have installed. Now you will not have to worry about loosing all of the songs on your ipod and not being able to get them back onto your computer without spending hours.

Songs being copied to computer

Installing Telnet In Windows Vista

So the other day when I was booted into Windows Vista I wanted to play some old BBS games that I haven't played in a while using Telnet. This is where I noticed that Telnet isn't installed automatically in Vista like it is in XP. This is a very simple fix though and can be done in a matter of just a couple minutes. So let me show you how.

First you will need to click on the the Start Menu (Vista Globe). Then select Control Panel. From here you will need to select Programs and Features in the Control Panel window.

The Programs and Features window

Now in the side panel in the window you will need to select Turn Windows Features on or off. You will then seen a window pop up with a list of a bunch of things. You will need to scroll down to Telnet Client and then put a check in the box and then click OK. From here Windows Vista will install Telnet on your system.

Windows Features window

Now you should have Telnet installed in Windows Vista. The installation may seem like it is stalled but it will install after a bit or at least it did on my machine for a little bit. Have fun with Telnet.

Removing The Background Of A Picture Using GIMP

Have you ever spent a long time trying to delete the background of a image in GIMP or Photoshop and thought that there has to be a faster and easier way. Well there is a method that I use and it seems to be pretty quick and easy enough for most of the projects that I have done. To do this I will be using GIMP so if you do not have it installed already you can get it from here: http://www.gimp.org/.

To start off you will need to open the image that you want to get rid of the background on. To do this you will just need to navigate to File > Open and then just browse to where the image is saved on your hard drive. Once you have the image open you will need to go to the Paths Tool in the Toolbox window it is the that looks like a pen. Now what you will need to do is just click on the border of the image to create a small dot. Then to create a path around the image just click around the image to create a path all the way around. Then once you click back on the first dot it will leave a open space between the last and first dot.

Image with path drawn around it

Now after you have you path around the whole image you will need to go to the Toolbox window and click on the Tool Options tab. You will then need to click on the button that says Selection From Path. This should now make your path into a selection.

Image with a Selection Path around it

Now you just have to press Ctrl + C to copy the selection then press Ctrl + V to paste the image back onto the image that you already have. Now you will have to click on the New Layer button in the Layers tab in the Toolbox window. This will now put your pasted image onto it's own layer. From here you will need to select the background layer and then click on the Delete Layer button. Now you should just have you image with no background.

Image with no background

From here you can be done or you can move on and just copy and paste this image onto another one and resize if needed. If this method does not seem work the greatest for you or if you think that you have a better way on how to do this you can post it in the comments or you can send me an e-mail at thegeekylife@gmail.com. This method does seem to work very well for me though in the past and just remember to have fun with it.