How to Make a PCB

I’ve run into a few projects that I needed to make a custom Printed Circuit Board for doing things around the house. I did a lot of experimenting with this when I was building my own Computer Numerical Controlled (CNC) Routing Machine. (Keep an eye out in the near future for an article on my machine and possibly a series on how to build your own.)

I started my journey in learning about making my own PCB’s with absolutely no background in ever making my own so I had a lot of trial and error that I wanted to share with you all. There are a lot of articles and websites on line, however I wasn’t able to find an article that encompassed everything that I wanted to do and was geared for someone that had never done this before.
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Add Run Command to Vista Start Menu

This is a quick item that I left out of my 7 Steps to Improving Your Vista Experience article. This is a short easy step, but I felt that it was important enough to merit its own article.

When I first started using Vista I was about ready to pull my hair out looking for the “Run” command. I had become accustomed to it’s location in Windows XP and wasn’t really in the hang of using the Windows + R shortcut.
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10 Eco-Friendly Tips for Going Green Under $10(ish)

In this article I’m going to throw a couple options at you that you can cheaply do to help reduce your impact on the environment. Now I have cheated a little as two of them are not under $10, but they are very close.

With the weight of everyone on the environments shoulders these days it is important for us all to do our part and with some of the options out there it isn’t very hard. I hope to decrease that difficulty by finding cheap alternatives for you that will make it easier on your pocket book.
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Web Filtering Using the Hosts file

Let me first start out by saying that if you are looking for a good freeware Web filter for parental controls then I highly suggest checking out Best free Parental Filters. However, if you are looking to do some simple webpage and ad blocking yourself, then read on.

If you are running Windows 2000 and higher, navigate to your windows directory. From there go to System32\Drivers\ETC. This is the location of a file called hosts. The hosts file can be opened using Notepad.

So, what is the Hosts file anyway? The hosts file is first file by default that your computer looks to for name resolution. Name resolution is what tells us that Xtremediy.net belongs to a certain IP address. For example, lets say Xtremediy.net has an address of 192.168.153.229. Name resolution basically translates the 192.168.153.229 to Xtremediy.net so that we don’t have to remember that number to type into the web address.
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7 Steps to Improving Your Vista Experience

I’m a recent convert to Windows Vista from XP and I’ve always been one to tweak my operating system to perform to its highest potential. In the following article I’m going to cover 10 ways to improve your experience with Vista. Some are simple, while others do require a bit of technical savvy and I’d urge you that if you aren’t comfortable performing these steps to have someone that is familiar with the operating system do it for you.

One of the biggest hurdles to conquer is insuring that you have enough RAM to handle to system. Actually Vista won’t even install with less that 512mb of RAM, however it should be noted that this is the minimum for installation not the optimum amount. Personally I would suggest having at least 1GB of RAM, up to 2GB for those of you running a 32bit system.

One step before we get into the tweaks I strongly recommend is to create a system restore point. I say this because we all operate at different levels of capability and accidents do happen. I’d hate for somebody to lose everything that they have because of a little oops. To do this you want to click your Start Menu and inside the start search box type “System Restore”, click on system restore in the search results, at this point the User Account Control (UAC) will pop up, it’s safe to click the continue button here. The system restore GUI should pop up now. There should be a link in the bottom of this interface that says “Open System Protection”. Click this link, make sure the check box next to your hard drive is selected, and click create. Now all that is left to do is name your restore point and click the create button again and voila…we have a restore point.
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Go Green for Free

Going green has taken on a higher level of importance in todays world events. In doing so it has a lot of people wondering “What can I do to help”.

In this article, I intend to answer some of that question. The good news is, every one of my suggestions won’t cost you a dime. That’s right, today we’re gonna save the world for free.
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31 Days - Beginning Summary

I plan to provide everyone with a summary of my blog during the course of my adventure. I’d like to take a few minutes here to provide a baseline set of statistics so that we know what we are going off of and establish a trend.

The blog is a couple weeks old now and I’ve gotten some traffic and subscribers so far, so I’m not starting at 0.

I use a program called StatCounter to keep track of my stats. Unfortunately I am having problems logging into StatCounter tonight…Some sort of error. I’ve given it a few hours now and it still hasn’t started working again, so I’m gonna go on with the post and update it after I can get the rest of the stats for ya’ll.
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How to Add A Custom Favicon

I’m going to kick off my 31 Days to a Better Blog series with something that is fairly simple to do and can benefit my blog (or yours) greatly.

First off for those that aren’t familiar with it and are asking “What is a favicon?”, let me go ahead and clear that up for you. Favicon.ico is an image file that gets attached to your website or blog. Look up at the address bar in the Browser, notice the X next to my URL? That is a favicon. Favicon’s are a great way to brand your blog and you may benefit from the added prominence in your readers bookmarks folder. Personally I think using a favicon gives your blog that flare and taste of professionalism that I feel is very important in creating that reputation that is so important to blogging. Are you going to get ridiculed for not having one? Probably not, but every little step towards building that relationship with your potential readers counts.
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How to Get Free Stuff

In doing my usual bouncing around the blogosphere, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of contests floating around.

Today I’m going to be writing about one hosted by Katy Castro over at I’m Blogging That. She’s been lucky enough to get her hands on a few copies of The ProBlogger Book by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. This is an excellent book that takes a lot of the great information on their respective websites and consolidates them into a book that is great for new and old bloggers alike.
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Green Alternatives for Pest Control

With the warm months rapidly approaching, pests are going to become a common issue for many of us. The area that I live in is predisposed to ants, mosquitoes, and cockroaches (they love the trees for some reason). During the spring and summer it seems like I am fighting a constant battle trying to keep these critters at bay.

Now I could go out and by all the insecticides and poison’s at my local hardware store and probably rid myself of them temporarily, however I have a young daughter and a dog that are both very dear to us and I would hate for them to get into any of these items. This got me looking and researching for some safer pest control practices and I’ve compiled a list of what I have found for your reference.
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