Having suffered through seven (or is it now 9, can’t remember) hard drive crashes in the past year, I was intrigued by this article by Geeks Are Sexy about freezing your hard drive to recover data.
I, too, had heard about this technique over the years, and while it kind of makes sense, I passed it off as one of those dumb myths that get passed around a lot. Well, maybe I was wrong.
After this, I shoved it in the freezer, and waited an hour.I finally installed it back in the computer, closed the case, and pushed on the power button.
YES! it works, the computer is starting correctly! Unfortunately, after I logged in, Windows froze and I wasn’t able to do anything. I tried rebooting, and….Well, at least the hard disk spinned for about 2 minutes before crashing again. Maybe that’s not long enough to let me recover any data, but it worked for a little while. :)
In the comments, there are a lot of other recommendations and admissions that this has worked for other sufferers of hard drive crashes. I’ll have to try it next time…pray there is no next time.
involved in that, do you? But it’s true. We all like to have a good time and the joy of computers is their ability to have fun and play games as well as their ability to do the task at hand.
up there), and steering. Your mouse skills will improve greatly by just playing this game for twenty minutes. The problem will come in stopping after twenty minutes!
Oh, boy! Want to leave the planet and have the time of your life? The games produced by 
forward in time to stop someone from messing with the time line. You visit incredibly realistic and interactive locales such as Leonardo da Vinci’s studio and home, the ancient Mayan Temples in their prime, the castle of Richard the Lion-hearted during a siege, a space station floating out in the far reaches of space, and more. Award-winning, these games are not for the weak minded. They will test your analytical skills and problem-solving techniques. These games involve a lot of learning, about history, archeology, anthropology, art, and more. You learn to build things using da Vinci’s plans and drawings and pour through his brilliant designs and blue prints. You learn about the secrets of the priests inside the Mayan Temple and learn to read a little Mayan. Brilliant time wasters that teach as you go, without feeling like you are learning but experiencing!
The first of the most incredible interactive realistic RGP computer games ever made, Myst brought to the world the real potential of what a computer could do to the world. In Myst, you help research the ages created through books, which transport you to the same island but a different time and 
and place. You become an archeologist and detective, searching for the clues as to what happened here and who done it – who is ruining or interfering with the ages? In the sequels, Riven and Exile, the technology improved greatly so you can actually get sea sick watching the water move around the island. These are not violent games and there are few chances to die, but there are tons of challenging puzzles that will get your brain working to figure it all out. A new sequel, 
You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. 
by all. One of the great granddaddy of the first computer games was Zork. Imagine reading a book and being able to control each page, twisting and turning down different paths, a treasure hunter – finding things and figuring out how to make things work to get you further along the way, exploring as you go, occassionally meeting the bad guy in the form of a troll or gru (ah, they hate the light) and risking your life to defend yourself. Most of the best interactive games today came from the successful techniques created in Zork and its sequels. Over time the Zork games became more sophisticated, culminating in the Myst style interactive and highly graphical interface of 
This is the ideal, rarely boring, and completely addictive Maj Jong or Tai Pai game. Based on the traditional tile Japanese games, this goes way beyond with incredible colors and responses. It is not only fascinating, it stimulates the brain’s recognition of patterns and combinations. I’ve introduced this to many friends who hate me later for getting them totally hooked. Don’t take my word for it, download the 
When people stop by, they are always amazed at how my computer talks to me. You know, it gets lonely being stuck all alone with just a computer to amuse you, so why not have it really amuse you by talking to you?
When you need some help in Microsoft Word or Excel, you know the little paper clip dude or the puppy dog that pops up to help you? This is one of your Window’s operating system helpers, a character. With a little help, these characters can do more than just help you when you need help.
To use MSAgent characters, you have to download a few free add-ons to Windows. Begin by visiting 
available online and my particular favorite comes from 
Uncheck the box next to AUTOMATICALLY DOWNLOAD MESSAGE WHEN VIEWING IN THE PREVIEW PANE (press spacebar to download the message)
From the menu choose TOOLS, OPTIONS
Click OKAY
capabilities doesn’t mean you can’t get some information about the email before you delete it while still protecting your computer. To view the text of a message, including the names of the sender and any encoded content, you have some choices:
programs including the older ARC, PKZIP, and WinRAR programs. Winzip is simple and easy to use, allowing you to compress a single file or multiple directories of files into one single compressed file, great for sending files over the Internet. I used to use it to put huge files onto floppy disks and now I use it to get multiple deep file directories onto CDS and DVDs. My CD burner will not record directories (folders) past three deep, so if I have any files below c:/directory1\subdirectory2\subdirectory3, the directory of subdirectory3 will be listed but the folder will be completely empty of files, giving me no end of heartache during a recent computer crash, since Windows stores many files 4-6 directories deep. I now use Winzip with its “save path information” ability to backup my entire directory with all the subdirectories into one file and then copy that single file onto CD or DVD for backup. Fifteen years later and it is still incredibly valuable. It is frequently updated and gets better and better with time! A must have for any savvy computer user.
All of our Website was developed and designed with HotDog Pro. I’ve been using it since 1997, if memory serves. It is an amazingly powerful HTML editor with built-in features to keep you up-to-date with accessibility and web standards. It comes with a built-in page viewer, though I tend to use Internet Explorer, which is an option, to see what I’ve created with my coding. It features a variety of automatic code features from table and form wizards to do-it-yourself hints. If you are serious about web page design and want to step away from word processing programs and desktop publishing programs that “say” they will export to HTML, give Hotdog Pro a try. It isn’t for the faint hearted, but once you get a grip on the process, it makes it fast and simple to create outstanding web pages.
thousands of photographs annually, it can be a pain to resize and change the resolution to hundreds of photographs I add to our web pages constantly. Using Advanced Batch Converter, I divide the horizontal images from the vertical images into separate directories and then run them separately through the program, choosing the optional output versions of my choice. I can take a load of jpg files and convert them to gifs. Or resize a bunch of jpgs down to 150 pixels wide from whatever their original size was. I can change them from color to grayscale and sharpen the focus as I go (resizing from huge file sizes to small sizes often requires a tiny sharpen). If you are dealing with a lot of graphics or digital photographs, get this program!
One of the most frustrating features of most Windows-based programs is their horrible lack of capability to hold more than one piece of information in the clipboard. For instance, if you are editing a document and you need to cut and paste this paragraph here, and that word there, and then move this section to that section, you have to do each change one at a time, moving all over the place, back and forth. Clipmate is a program that sits in the memory and stores everything you cut and copy in its database. With a couple of clicks you can paste the different elements in, storing dozens of bits of copy waiting for your command to paste it in. It handles not only multiple cuts and copies, but allows you to change the order in the list and then do a “power paste” of everything in order. It is an incredibly powerful program that I have used for years and can’t live without. It helps me in my word processing programs and HTML editing programs, among others. If you are a power computer user, get this shareware!