Archive for June, 2008
Question Asked: How Do I Install A Light Switch?
Installing a lightswitch (or replacing an old one, for that matter) is actually pretty easy. There’s only a few wires behind the switch, that need connecting.
Just remember to always shut the power off first. Here’s a vide from YouTube that I found, that walks you through how to do it. It’s rather easy, from the looks of it.
Question Asked: Why Does Hollywood Keep Remaking Old Movies?
Great question. Since I’m not “Hollywood”, it’s tough to answer correctly.
However, if you ask me (and you did!), I’d say there’s a lack of creativity in Hollywood these days. It seems like almost everything that comes out fits into one of the following categories:
- Based on a true story/book
- Remake of an old movie/Japanese horror movie
- Sequel (or threequel, or fourquel [I know I made those words up, it's okay])
- Crap
- Superhero movie based on a comic book
There’s very few new original movies that have been great lately, in all areas.
Remaking an old movie that was fairly successful, is almost a guarantee of money to be made. Or revamping an old movie, and adding another to the series (ie; Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc).
Hollywood just seems to be stock out of ideas.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s been some great movies lately. It just seems like everything that the masses love is a remake. You hear us Hollywood?! We want more original movies that don’t suck!
Question Asked: What Is The Longest Road In the World?
The longest road in the world is the Pan-American highway.
It starts inFairbanks Alaska, and runs all the way down to Brasilia Brazil. Spanning over 15,000 miles (24,000 km).
Short post today, but it’s an easy answer. Got a question? Ask me!
Ps; don’t be alarmed, the site did change. I had to use a new WordPress theme, because the old one didn’t work suddenly with the version of MySQL that my host is running. You’re in the right place, though. No need for panic.
Question Asked: How Do I Hook Up My DVD Player?
I know it looks daunting – the back of your TV. All those colors, all those wires! Rest assured, it’s not hard to hook up a DVD player, not at all. Especially nowadays.
First thing’s first, it depends on what kind of TV you have, and what kind of DVD player you have. It’s also important to know that there’s a handful of ways to connect your DVD player to your TV. (I’m assuming you don’t have a surround sound system, for this answer. I hope that’s correct.)
Connections:
- Analog – Analog connections would be utilized on older TVs. There are three wires you’d use, red, white, and yellow. The red and white represent your audio stream, and the yellow represents your video stream.
- S-video – While still an analog signal, the S-video connection (in theory) gives you a better video signal. The s-video cable varies in color. But you’ll still need your red and white audio cables, to send audio from the DVD player to the TV.
- Component Video – Component Video is the starting point, if you’ve got an HDTV. Many HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players come with component video, which is a set of three cables (green, blue, and red). Don’t forget, you’ll still need the red and white cables for your audio signal. Component video is the “best” picture of the three traditional methods of connecting your DVD player.
- HDMI – relatively new to the game, is the HDMI connection. (High Definition Multimedia Interface) The HDMI is one single cable that provides the absolute best picture and audio all in one. It’s as simple as plugging the cable into your DVD player, and TV. (Assuming both devices have this feature)
Sure, there’s other ways to hook up a DVD player, but the four listed above are the most conventional.
It’s as simple as connecting the colored connections from the DVD player, to the TV. Oh, and don’t forget to see what input you’re using on the back of the TV (they’re usually labeled), you’ll need to change the TV to that input, to get your DVD picture and sound.
When you include a surround sound system (or home theater, call it what you will), it can get a bit more complicated. But for the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to go down that road.
If you’re really scared of pulling your TV out and hooking it up yourself, you can always rely on the major retailers to sell you an install service. Just know that it’ll probably cost more to have them come out and hook it up, than you’ll pay for the DVD player. Your best bet is to get someone who knows how to do it, neighbor, neice/nephew, friend, etc. It’ll literally take longer to pull your TV out from against the wall, than to hook it up, for someone who knows what they’re doing.
Hope that helps! Good luck, and enjoy your new DVD player!
Question Asked: How Do I Get Started Building A Website?
Before getting started on your website, there’s a few things you should be made aware of, which you generally might not know:
- Building a website involves an enormous learning curve.
- It’s a lot of work to build and maintain a website
- Learning HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language, what makes websites look like websites) is like learning a foreign language.
- There are a million different ways to do a million different things for a website.
- It’s a never ending learning process.
With that said, the first few things you should gather are the following (I’ll explain why you need each of them after the list):
- Web-hosting: There’s literally hundreds of thousands of web-hosts out there.
- Understanding of what your website will be about.
- Desire to learn.
- An FTP program
- A domain name
- Possibly a web-design application. Generally WYSIWYG editors are great for beginners.
You’re probably already confused by the list above, so let me try to explain what each of these things is, how they work, and they purpose they serve.
Web-host: A web-host is a company that provides server space to you, to host your website. How that generally works is simple, you create your HTML files (or PHP, Perl, Ruby on Rails, etc) and upload them through an FTP client to the web-host’s space. That web-host then provides that HTML (web-document) via the internet, through a domain name, to someone who requests it. Other websites out there may provide diagrams about how this actually works, but those often tend to be more complicated than not.
My warning about web-hosts is that you generally get what you pay for. A cheaper web-host might now always be the best one out there. You need to analyze what you need the website to do, before making a decision. A web-host purchase shouldn’t be a spur of the moment purchase.
Understand what your website will be about: Generally when people want to put a website online, it’s for a purpose. Whether it be a blog, an online shopping site, a photo album, etc, generally there’s an understanding of why you want a website. Without having one, it’s very tough to get a designer/programmer to build you something that you want.
Desire to learn: As I said, building and maintaining your own website is a daunting task. As someone who runs a large number of them in their free time, I can attest to this from first hand experience. There’s always a learning curve with building a website, and it seems to never end. You really have to want to learn, in order to succeed.
An FTP program: FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. That generally means that the FTP application takes your HTML (or other programming language) files from your computer, and copies them over to your web-host’s space. They’re generally pretty easy to use, and function just like Windows, with drag and drop.
A Domain name: Selecting your domain name is usually one of the toughest things to do, to start a site. Mainly because the majority of “good” ones are already taken. The domain name that you pick should not only accurately represent your website, but also be easy to remember, so you can ensure return visitors.
Domain names are generally .com, .net, .org, or .biz (those are known as TLDs), but can have any number of suffixes on them. For example, there are country specific TLDs (.rs, .us, .co.uk,. co.nz, etc), and other types of TLDs include .mobi, .cc, .fm, .am, and .cn. Be sure to pick the one that works the best for you.
Domain names generally range from $5 to $35. Anyone that tells you buying a domain name for $35 is the “right” price, is lying to you. There’s no difference in a $35 domain name versus a $5 domain name. They all serve the same purpose, and work the same way.
A Web-design application: Many people will tell you that if you can’t “code by hand in notepad” that you’re not really a webdesigner. And while I agree with that (to an extent), it’s not always true for beginners.
When getting started, you may want to invest in a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get), such as FrontPage
These applications more or less let you drag and drop elements onto your page, where you want them to go. And then it writes the necessary HTML code for you. Some of the better ones, such as Dreamweaver
Once you decide on what your website is about, you need to pick a web-host. Like I said, there’s literally hundreds of thousands of them out there to pick from. So what should you look for?
- Up-time guarantee – This guarantees that the server(s) that your website is located on will be available to the general internet for a certain percentage of time. 99.999% is generally a standard. If anyone promises 100%, they’re lying, stay away from them.
- Price – obviously you want to get a good deal. Most shared hosts range from $3.95 to $16.96 per month. When just starting you don’t need a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or Dedicated Server (both of which are much, much more expensive, and overkill for beginners)
- Features – You may want to run a message board, blog, or photo album that requires MySQL (pronounced My Sequel) database access and PHP. Ensure that your potential host offers both of those, most do nowadays.
- Availability of support – is technical support 24/7? Most are, but some aren’t. Some offer 24/7 support by email only, or live chat only. Getting someone on the phone is generally the best way to resolve any problems you’re having.
- Money back guarantee – When you first sign up, you might decide you don’t like what they have to offer. Many “shared” hosts don’t offer a demo to try out before you sign up, so you may decide you don’t like it after you do. Some, not all, hosts offer a money back guarantee, which may prove valuable to you.
Once signed up with a web-host, you’ll want to get familiarized with their control panel. Hosts use all different kinds, from cPanel, to vDeck, to HSPHERE, to Plesk, and many many more. You’ll use the control panel to set up your domain name, your FTP login details, and your e-mail addresses. As each one of these panels varies greatly, I won’t get into details on how to do that here.
Once you’ve got some familiarity with the control panel, it’s time to get started building your website. Some great resources you should check out to help you learn code, and what it does:
- lissaexplains.com – a great, and helpful, website that explains HTML in simple laymen’s terms.
- dynamicdrive.com – provide some great code snippets to help you achieve basic things with your website.
- hotscripts.com – similar to Dynamic Drive, but geared more towards programmers, than novices.
Those three websites should be more than enough to get you started on learning code. To get started on actual design work, I’d recommend checking out the following:
- webreference.com – great beginner’s guide to learning and understanding design
- designtutorials.com – a great place to learn what makes a design good.
- good-tutorials.com – great place to learn design via HTML, as well as Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator
You may also want to look into open source applications to power your website. Applications that are pre-built, free of charge, and supported by the people who make them. For example, this site’s powered by WordPress, which is one of the best blog management applications available today. Some other applications that might help you get started:
- WordPress – Blog Management Software
- phpBB – Discussion Forums
- osCommerce – online shopping cart software
- ZenPhoto – photo album management software
Obviously, there’s hundreds of thousands of applications available out there. The four listed above are ones I’ve used, and have found easy to work with, especially for beginners. It really all depends on you, what level of knowledge you have, and what level of comfort you have with following directions (to make modifications).
WordPress, phpBB, and ZenPhoto are all highly recommended, because they are based on “themes”. That means you can find a theme that you like, install it, and instantly your website will look like this new theme. There’s tens of thousands of themes available for WordPress and phpBB that are free of charge, and you can use on your website.
WordPress, phpBB, and ZenPhoto also utilize a “plugin” system. Plugins allow you to add functionality to the application without making any changes yourself. Plugins range from improving things that the application already does, to adding new functionality all together.
Once you decide on how you’re going to power your site (either via an open source application, or build it yourself), it’s just a matter of doing the work, putting the content together (whether it be blog posts, or photos for your gallery, or products for your store), and uploading it via your FTP program, to the web-host’s server.
I could probably go on in great detail about the ins and outs of how to actually build the website, but that wasn’t the question that was asked. If you want more details about what to do after you’ve gotten started, feel free to ASK MJ, and I’ll answer.
Thanks for the question, it’s always great when I can write about something I know, without having to do a bunch of research. Hope you enjoyed the answer, sorry it’s so verbose!