Checking Your Connection Speed Using Speedtest

Have you ever wondered if your ISP is giving you the same bandwidth speed that you are paying for? There are many ways to check this but one of my favorites is www.speedtest.net. There are many other sites that can check this too but I seem to like Speedtest the most.

First you will need to navigate your browser to www.speedtest.net you will then want to choose a server that is the closest to where you are (usually the recommended one in yellow).

Speedtest showning severs

Once the scan is over you will get the results of your connection including upload and download speeds.

Speedtest results

Now you can see how fast you connection is and also see if you are getting what you are paying for. Also as a note you will get better results if your connection is idle before you use Speedtest.

Easter Eggs In Google

Since it is Easter this seemed like a fitting thing to write about. In case you were wondering Easter Eggs in Google are little things that Google has added to their search engine to keep things a bit more fun. The only hard part it is that they are not that easy to find. So with that being said I would like to share a couple that I know about.

The first one that I would like to share is one that is on the infamous Chuck Norris. All that you have to do is head on over to Google and then type Find Chuck Norris in the search box. Then hit the I'm Feeling Lucky button. What you get should be something similar to the image below.

Chuck Norris search result

The last one that I am showing is almost just as good. What you need to do for this one is type Answer to Life the Universe and Everything into the Google search box. The all you need to do is hit the Search button. You should get an answer of 42 as the answer to life the universe and everything.

Answer to life the universe and everything

Those are just the few that I know of but if you know of anymore you can post them into the comments or send them via E-mail to to me @ thegeekylife@gmail.com. Have a happy Easter and stay safe.

Installing New Fonts In Windows

Have you ever wanted to use a certain font that you thought looked pretty cool but couldn't figure out how to actually use it or where to get it? Installing fonts isn't a hard task at all. The only thing you need to know how to do is drag and drop or copy and paste (which ever you prefer to use). If you are wondering where you can download fonts there are many places to choose from but one site that I like to use is http://www.dafont.com/. That site has a huge selection so you should be able to find what ever you need there.

Once you have your font downloaded you will need to navigate to where your files are downloaded to usually the desktop is the default in most browsers. You may have to right click on the file and choose Extract because some fonts are downloaded in .zip files.

To get to the folder where you install the fonts you will want to go to Start > Control Panel. Then you will want to select Fonts. You should then be brought to a folder where all of your fonts are stored.

Fonts folder

After you have the Fonts Folder opened all you need to do is either Copy and Paste or Drag and Drop the downloaded font file into the Fonts Folder. The font will then be installed onto your machine and can be used in any program that can write and use different fonts.

Font being dragged and dropped into the Fonts Folder

Now you can install tons of new fonts onto your computer within seconds. Have fun writing notes or putting text in pictures using your favorite fonts.

Font shown in OpenOffice.org Writer

Opening Files With A Single Click

Sick of having to double-click on files to open them and wish that you could just open them with just one click? Well that is a very quick and easy setting to change in Windows. First you will want to go to Start > Control Panel. You will then want to click on Folder Options. From there a window should come up with some options you can change.

Folder Options window

Now to change the setting to Single-Click you will just need to click on the Single-Click to open an item button. After you have done that just click on Apply and now you don't have to double-click on files to open them anymore. Also since you open the files with one click now you can't select them with one click. So what you need to do is just scroll over the files to select them. To change this setting back you just need to go back to Folder Options and select the Double-Click to open button.

Single-Click To Open selected

Measuring How Far Your Mouse Moves

Have you ever wondered how far you actually move your mouse in a day? There is a small program that can measure the distance that your mouse travels and it's called Mousotron and can be downloaded from here: http://www.blacksunsoftware.com/mousotron.html.

Once you have it installed and running it should look like something similar to the image below.

Mousotron main window
(you can click on the image to see a larger view)

As with many other programs you can tweak some settings. To do this you can click on the Setup button to bring up the setup window.

Setup button

Once you are in the setup window the General tab should be selected. You can change any of these settings to what you wish to use. The only setting that I have changed was the digits from 7 to 6 so that i could see the whole window on my screen.

Setup with general tab selected

Now if you move on over to the Displayed Items tab you will be able to see all of the options that you can change. What this tab does is makes it so you can customize what items are shown on the main Mousotron window. I have left all of the items checked but you can take off the items that you don't want to view.

Displayed items tab

The two other tabs don't really change any settings they just can log your mouse distance and all of the other options you have chosen to use. You can also send out a report of your results to their website. Another cool thing about this program is that when it is minimized it will the go into the system tray it can still log things and stay out of your working space when it's not needed.

Mousotron in the system tray

Well those are the main uses of this program. There really isn't a huge need to know how far you move your mouse in a day but it can be a fun task to just see how far you actually do move your mouse on a daily basis. So now go out and have fun logging your mouse distance with Mousotron.

You can also join in on the fun over at http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/measuring-mouse-distance-traveled?replies=33.