Hello again, this is Kyle with www.Extreme-Days.com and today I have a cool little tip for everyone. If you’re not a geek, then this probably won’t mean a whole lot to you, but it can provide you with some very useful information.

If you have ever pressed: “ctrl+alt+delete” and chosen “task manager” then you know that you can monitor your cpu usage and all of the programs and applications currently running on your computer. Most people only use this when their computer freezes up and they don’t know what else to do to unfreeze it. Sometimes it is very useful to have a shortcut to this, either on you’re desktop or in you’re quick launch bar, but this can be difficult to accomplish if you aren’t very computer savvy. Now this is the part where I come in and teach you how to do this little task in a matter of 20 seconds. That being said, lets get started with this!

Below is a screen recording video of myself strating this process of creating the desktop shortcut to the task manager. There is also text below the video that states what is happening in the video, if for some reason you would rather read through this instead of watch it.

First off, you are going to need to go to your desktop. I do this by using the keyboard shortcut, “windows key+D”. If you don’t know what the windows key is, it is in the bottom left of your keyboard right between ctrl and alt. Just hold that key down and press the D key on your keyboard at the same time, and you’re computer will minimize everything and show your desktop.

Now you need to right click on a blank spot and go to the tab that says, new, and then click on the tab that says, shortcut. This will pop a box on your screen that says, “This wizard helps you to create shortcuts, to local or network programs, files, folders, computers, or Internet addresses. Type the location of the item.” Below that there will be a box where you can submit text into. Click in the box and type, “taskmgr.exe” and then press next. Now there will be another box asking you to state the name of the shortcut. You can put whatever you choose in this box. In my case I’m going to put, Task Manager. Then just click finish and you will see a new icon on your desktop.

At this point you’re almost complete, there is only one more step if you would like to customize it a little more for your liking. To do this you need to double click on the shortcut you just created and you should see a familiar screen. In the top click, options, and in the dropdown list there should be a few things already ticked. If not, don’t worry they don’t need to be ticked. In that list there will be an option that says, Hide When Minimized. Just click that and you’re all set! Now when you minimize that window, it won’t show up in your taskbar, but if you look to the right, in your system tray, you will see a new icon there that shows the cpu usage on you’re computer.

Now whenever you want to see how much cpu you’re computer is using, you just need to look in the system tray and you will get an estimate of how much cpu is being used.

I do need to site one source for this. I found this information at Technet’s computer help site and I thought it was useful so I decided to pass it on to all of you!

If you think you have a tip or trick that is useful, then contact me and let me know! If I think its good enough, I might even make a video out of it!

Share This

If you’re doing research for school or work and you are tired of clicking through tons of Google pages to find what you’re looking for, then you’re at the right place. The video and post below will show you how to change this so that you won’t have to click to another Google page again!

First of all, you need to go to Google and wait for it to fully load. When it has finished loading look to the right of the Google search bar and you should see Advanced Search and Search Preferences. You need to click on the link called “Search Preferences” and you will come to a screen that has a lot of options on it.

Down towards the bottom of this page you will see sections called SafeSearch Filtering, Number of Results, and Results Window. If you haven’t guessed by now, you need to look under the section entitled Number of Results. Once there, you should see these two sentences: “Google’s default (10 results) provides the fastest results. Display “blank” results per page.” Where the word blank is there should be a drop down box that has options for 10, 20, 30, 50, and 100 search results per page. Remember though, the larger number of Google search results you pull per page, the longer it will take for the Google results to load. That being said, chose the number of results that suites you best and click the save preferences button in the bottom right hand corner of the page. When you have done this a box should pop up that says, your preferences have been saved, so just click the OK button and you will be returned to Google.com.

There is another way to display a given number of Google search results per page by typing in a bit of text after the search in the address bar. I couldn’t find what that bit of text is so I can’t tell you how to just make one search display a given number of results without changing your Google preferences. If any of you know how this is done, please send me a message or e-mail and I will be glad to add it in!

If you have any questions about anything on the computer, send me an e-mail and I’ll do my best to help you and I might even make a video post about it! Thanks again, and I hope this helped you shorten your research time by showing more search results per page.

Share This

This post is going to be about a video made by VvComphelpvV on YouTube. His channel can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/user/VvCompHelpvV I would really recommend subscribing to him because he is constantly coming out with new videos that teach me new stuff all the time! I may be featuring him on another post if I find another one of his videos super useful. If you would like to check out his website, it can be found at: http://www.VvCompHelpvV.Co.Nr where you can support him by purchasing some of his merchandise. You can also follow what he is going to come out with next and what he has previously come out with.

Below is a video showing you what the text below it
explains.

Today I’m going to show you how to get rid of a whole lot of nonsense on your computer, in other words, temporary files. Now this is good to save some hard drive space and it could possibly make your computer run faster.The most space I’ve heard that someone saved is 37 gigabytes! That is a lot of space to have tied up in temporary files that you don’t need. So if you have never done this and you have had your computer for a while, then you will probably save a whole lot of space from this.

So lets get started with the how-to part of this post. First you need to go to start>run and a box should pop up that says, “Type the name of a program, folder, document, or internet resource, and Windows will open it for you”. Down below that there should be a box that you can type in. click in there and type this exactly: %temp% then press OK. Now a window should come up that has lots of files in it. All those files are just files that your computer saves automatically in the background. All of these files are not needed for your computer. If you look through a little bit you will probably see a folder called cookies and history. I wouldn’t recommend deleting those folders because then you wont have those in your internet browser anymore.

Now before you delete all those pesky files, press ctrl+a and right click on a file in there and go down to properties. When the window comes up look at the size of them. Sometimes this will take a minute to add it all up and you will see the size increasing. Once you see it stop remember that number or write it down so that when you’re done you can leave a comment telling me how much space you saved from doing this.

Now you want to select a bunch of the files and delete them. Sometimes you will come across a file that can’t be deleted because you have programs running in the background so just leave those there. You may also have a message pop up asking you if you want to delete the read only file. Just click yes or OK. Another message that might come up is one that says this file is a program file, are you sure you want to delete it? For these files I recommend clicking no or cancel unless you really know what you’re doing. When you’re all done deleting everything that you could, press ctrl+a again and right click on a file and click properties down at the bottom. Now check and see what the size is of the files left. Normally its only a few kilobytes or maybe up to a megabyte or two. Don’t worry about it if it is a little bigger, you just saved a whole ton more space anyway so it doesn’t really matter.

Another thing is that you should do this once every month or two to keep that space saved and not hogged up again by the temporary files. Also remember to leave a comment telling me how much space this saved you. I will be sending this list to VvCompHelpvV to let him know as well.

Share This

Ok, this is just a quick tutorial on saving you some time when hosting images. When most people host images they go to a hosting website, such as: PhotoBucket, MyPhotoLodge, Flickr, and lots more . Sometimes this is not free and it takes a long time just to upload one image so you can link to it. This really got on my nerves so I started uploading to my own servers because that is pretty much the fastest way to upload anything. After a while I had a bunch of clutter on my server and so I looked for another alternative. I eventually came across a Firefox add-on called ImageBot. As Geico would say, “It’s so easy even a caveman can do it!”. This pretty much is the case with ImageBot.

Just go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1174 click the download button, and restart firefox. Make sure you have the ImageBot plugin enabled and you should see an icon somewhere that says, “ImageBot”. If you click the little arrow next to it, it should bring down a a list that says, “Float, Tab, Patcher, and Help. If you click on the “Float” button, ImageBot will open in another window just like a regular program. If you click on the “Tab” button, ImageBot will open in a new tab within firefox. If you click on the “Patcher” button, it will give you options to patch the plugin if you’re having trouble updating it. Lastly, the “Help” button, this is for any help you need for anything that I haven’t covered or if you forgot how to do something.

Now for the next part, actually using the plugin. I usually just open it in a new Fire-Fox tab, but this is just my preference. In the bottom right corner you should see a button that says, “Upload Images”. Click that and you should have a box come up showing your computer. Now just navigate to your image or images that you would like to upload and select them all, click open, and wait a few seconds for it to show you a thumbnail of your pictures in ImageBot. Once this is completed just right click on the picture and click copy. You now have the link to the image copied so just go to the place that you wish to link to it from and paste it there.

There are many other options for sorting and tweaking things inside ImageBot, but I am going to let you mess around with those things because you don’t need to know how to use those to be able to use the plug-in.

Share This

I looked for a while and couldn’t find any tutorials that told you how to set up a mail account that is privately hosted, with your iTouch or iPhone. This gave me a perfect oppurtunity to be the first one to teach everyone that doesn’t know.

For this tutorial you don’t need to have it be jailbroken. First get out your iPhone or iPod Touch and make sure you have the mail application already installed. Then go to settings and mail. Choose add account and pick other. Now you need to open up your mail client with your privately hosted mail account in it.

For me this program is Outlook Express so if you’re running anything else you will just have to try and follow along.

If you are using Outlook Express, then go to tools, then accounts. Find your account you want for your iPod and select it. Once this is done just click on the properties button. Click on the servers tab and at teh top it should say, “my incoming mail server is”. Whatever it says after that is the tab you are going to click on your iPhone/iTouch.

Now, back on your iPod, fill in the name and address blanks. To find your host name go back to your computer and under the servers tab again take whats in the incoming mail spot and put that in the host name blank on your iPod.

Now for the user name and password. To find these look under the servers tab again and in the middle there should be a spot that says account and password. Take those and put those in the user name and password blanks on your iTouch.

Now last, but not least the host name that is under outgoing mail server (SMTP). For this just look right under where you got the other host name that was for the incoming mail server. Just take that and fill it in on the iTouch. Leave the last username and password blank and click save in the top right corner. This may take a while and might come up with some kind of error. If it does be sure to check for misspellingings. If it says cannot connect using SMTP click try without and when its done just send a test email to that address and check it on your iTouch/iPhone. If it shows up then your good to go. If it doesn’t just let me know and I’ll try to walk you through it.

Below is a video showing you what you just read.

Share This

Over the past few days I have been redesigning my Extreme-Days banner. As you can see it’s up now, but we we were having some server troubles so that is why it took a few extra days. Anyway, if you have a WordPress blog and you have designed your own banner, or are in the process of designing one then I have a tip for you!

First off, I designed my banner as a .png file and when it was done it came out crystal clear just how I wanted it, but then when I re-saved it as a .jpg file, it came out blurry after I uploaded it to the site. So I did some thinking and then decided to mess around with it a little bit. I took the .png file and renamed the file extension to .jpg and then uploaded it to the site that way. Low and behold when I looked at it, it was nice and clear, just how I wanted it to be.

Some of you may not know what I’m talking about and thats ok. That is the reason that you’re reading this post, to learn how to do this. So I have a video that I made to help you along.

If you don’t want to read the instructions below, you can also watch the video which teaches you how to do the same thing.

To change your file extensions you must first have this option enabled. Double-click My Computer, and in the Tools menu, click Folder Options. Now click the view tab and look through the list untill you fine the “Hide file extensions for known file types”. Once you have found this, uncheck the box next to it and click ok. Now you should be able to see what type of file your files are. Now that you have done this you can change your .png or other file into a .jpg without it really being a .jpg file. This way you don’t have to mess around with the code of the template.

Now, you should already have an image that you want as your banner and a blog that is hosted on WordPress, but I think that this will also work with Blogger. Now you must set up your blog with an FTP client. I am just going to go over the basics of this because this can get very complicated. If you have a WordPress blog that is hosted on your own domain, then this should be a lot easier for you. So download an FTP program from somewhere, or open one that you already have. Next you need to configure your FTP program to have access to your blog. Go to configure or connect or something else along those lines and fill in your ip address. Next fill in your user name and your password. If you don’t know what these are you probably shouldn’t be doing this. Make sure the server type is FTP and that the port is 21. Then the rest just leave at default and you should be all ready to go.

Once you have done those things, connect to the new account you have just made. If it works, then you did it right, if it doesn’t you did something wrong. The most common thing that you will do wrong is use the wrong ip address, or the wrong user name and or password.

Now that we got all that working, you need to navigate through all of these files to find the file that needs replacing. In my case I need to go into the folder called “wp-content” and then “themes”. Now here it will show you all the themes you have downloaded for your blog. Choose the one you have installed on your site, and open up that folder. There should now be a bunch of files and a folder called “images”, just open that up and ignore the rest.

The easiest thing to do from here is to just import everything onto your desktop or somewhere easy to get to. Then you just need to open up all of the images until you see your header. Now just copy the name of that file and paste that banner name on yours, then just upload your banner with the new name onto your server in the same place you got the original one.

When you check your page don’t be too worried if you don’t see it right away, just refresh the page a few times and it should show up. This method can be used to replace any image that shows up in the template, but be careful because you can really mess up the template in here. If that does happen, just re-download it and everything should be back to normal.

Share This

The jump from medium to hard is the biggest jump you will make in Guitar Hero. When you are making this jump I think that the first two sections are the hardest because you are getting used to the faster pace of the songs and using the orange button.

If you are losing your fingering during this time, try hard to pay attention to the groove on the yellow button because it can be a lifesaver! At first this is going to be really hard and you will probably just not pay attention to it, but after a while when you have gotten used to it a little more, you will find yourself using it.

Another important thing when you get towards the end of hard is your star power. This is a very important weapon and helps a ton! The best time to use it is when you find a spot that you just can’t get past. Usually this will be towards the end of the song, so you should have full star power by then. When you feel the time is right just pull up on that guitar and try your hardest to hit those notes! Most of the time this will get you through that part and you should be able to finish up the rest of the song.

There is no special exercise or some kind of way to get by a song. The only way is to practice! I know you probably practice and are about to throw your guitar against a wall and maybe yourself as well. Trust me, don’t do it! You just have to use practice or play the song a ton of times in a row. Just take it part by part on slow and keep repeating it until you get 65% accuracy. Then if you haven’t guessed already, just do the same on full speed. Once you’re done with that, move on to the next part and repeat the process.

You will know when you are ready to play the song for real because you can just feel that you can do it. I usually go through the tricky parts in groups after I have gone through the whole song in parts just for a little extra practice. Then I usually end up playing through the song in career mode a few times before I finally pass it, and that is a really good feeling!

Even with all this applied there will still be some songs that are just ridiculously hard and seem like you can’t get past them. I happen to be stuck on Knights of Cydonia at the moment, but I keep trying and getting mad and trying again. Even with all the practice and the star power used at the right time, I still can’t get past it. Sometimes you will come across these kinds of songs and is all I can say is to practice harder! Obviously I haven’t gotten up to the point of practicing hard enough, otherwise I would be past this song.

I want everyone reading this that has guitar hero to be able to participate as well. So if you have guitar hero 3 for ps3, xbox 360, or any other system that has the song “Knights of Cydonia”, I want you to register here if you haven’t already, and leave a comment on this post linking to a video of you trying to beat, or beating Knights of Cydonia on hard. I don’t care where this video is hosted just post the link and maybe a little input on this post.

I really hoped this inspired you to keep practicing until you don’t ever want to hear that song again!

Share This

Hey guys! Each one of you that are seeing extreme-days right now have been specially selected to give all of your input on what you think should happen. If you have any electronic related questions, just contact me in the way you like best!
Here at Extreme-Days, we would like to service the public with any information you need to know. We would like to have you be as involved as possible and we want you to help make this site welcoming! As you can see we have just launched this redone version of this site so we would like your full input on what you want to see here at extreme-days.
I am going to be doing my best to be posting at least twice a week, hopefully more. The more questions you ask, the more I answer and post about.
Hopefully we will be offering our own selection of electronic goods such as, the iTouch, iPhone, PSP, and hopefully more. This is also going to take some work and I would like you to also give your feedback on what you would like to see offered here as well.
Everything that we are going to be selling here that is customizable, we will have instructions on how to customize it. We want this to be your number one spot for tips, tricks, and everything else related to technology. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, let us know and we will do our best to get you an answer!
We want this to be the best experience for you and that is why we want your feedback! There is no such thing as a stupid question, or a stupid piece of advice. Anything you think should happen will be considered. So now is the time to input your ideas so that things will be changed when this is released to everyone else!
I think this covers everything and hope you continue to come back to extreme-days for all your electronic help!

Share This