It has been weeks in the planning, so I finally found a good deal and bit the bullet to get a 22″ Widescreen LCD.  I have read many articles including one from New York Times, about how adding an additional monitor can increase your productivity by 30%.  Since I found myself constantly minimizing and moving windows around, I am sure I increase my efficiency by at least 25% when I am really crunching a lot of work. 

I already owned a 19″ LCD with a resolution of 1280X1024, so I knew that my only options were either another 19″ with the same resolution or a 22″ WideScreen LCD with a resolution of 1680X1050 so that the vertical pixel height was nearly the same.  Having the vertical pixel height nearly the same makes dragging windows from screen to screen easy. 

In combinaton with a Dual DVI Nvidia Card,  I am using the software UltraMon which configures the screen layouts, so that each screen can have a seperate taskbar, seperate screensavers, seperate background all while acting as on long monitor.  This program adds icons onto every window so that any window can sent to the other monitor with one click of a button or any window can fill the space of both screen with another click of a button.

The setup was easier than I ever imagined since I have read about people having a lot of problems.  The hardest thing that is still a problem now,  is the color adjustment between two monitors of different type.  Each monitor has a certain brightness and natural color, so to match the two while having the gamma and brightness correct is quite difficult.  I have been trying to find programs to help me, but they all cost a fair amount of money.  So for now it looks alright, but probably would not be great for image editing.

Anyways, I absolutely love it so far and it also makes Flight Simulator X a lot more fun.  If only I had more time to fly!

NOT MY SETUP, BUT HAVING TWO MONITORS IS GETTING CLOSER

Read some of these articles that I found if you are interested in a dual monitor setup.

Dual Monitor Better than one: Setup

The Virtues of a second screen

Two Monitors are way better than one

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If you haven’t hear of “You don’t know Jack”, then you are really missing out on experiencing this entertaining game.  If you have heard of “You Don’t know Jack”, did you know that you can play it online?  A little while ago they released the 8th episode of YDKJ and it is just as fun as ever. The online version isn’t quite as cool as the actual game you buy, but it does ask questions relating to today, so it is good in its own way.  This game is a great game to play with friends and family especially if you have a big screen.   Anyways check it out, because it only take 10 minutes to play and you will definintely enjoy yourself.  Good Luck.

YouDon’tKnowJack.com

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Today while checking out some of my favortie blogs, I came across a new and extremely popular blog on the internet which talked their predicted Page Rank.  

With mention of how that site was expected to get a PR of 4, I immediately was curious and scared to know how my not as popular blog was going to rank, because I was always hoping for a PR of at least 4.

So I quickly went over to iwebtool.com to check out the predicted ratings of some of my favorite blogs that started blogging around the same time frame as me. 

What Results did I get?  Let’s just say it surprised me greatly.  Here it is.

That right, a PR of 5 is what I am expected to get.  How can that be? 

I think I know how this is possible, because back when I didn’t know any better, I submitted my site to probably 100 directories and participated in a lot of random PR increasing methods.

Lets just hope that it actually comes out to be a PR of 5 and then I will be really happy.

The real key needs to be for me to focus on increasing website traffic so I feel like my work is worth while.

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After reading the story about using Myspace to increase blog traffic on BloggerLounge.net, I decided to try this out with my new site BlogBait.net.

The idea is to have a MySpace page that is about the blog your trying to promote; in my case BlogBait.net.  To promote that page, there are software bots that automate the process of adding friends and send messages. 

First thing, Badder Adder and Friend Adder are no longer available online.  I am suspecting that they have been attacked by MySpace for having bot software and were either paid off or worked out a deal.  So it isn’t as straight forward as it may seem to use one of these friend adder tools. 

I did manage to find a program called “Easy Adder” that worked fairly well and has yet to be taken down by MySpace.  They do have a 60-minute time limit though so I didn’t get to use it very long before it stopped.

I also was able to find Badder Adder on a Torrent site, so by this morning I was able to try out Badder Adder. 

Badder Adder has less features than Easy Adder, but it shows what it is doing in a browser window.  Badder Adder is also much faster than Easy Adder, because Easy Adder has “Ban protection” techniques that prevent your account from getting banned.  I found that Badder Adder simulates a human users behaviors fairly well just really fast.  After some time, MySpace requires a “Image Text Verification” about every 10 add requests which is a little annoying, but necessary to prevent bots.  Both BadderAdder and Easy Adder have a nice way to enter the text verification even though sometimes Easy Adder doesn’t work and I had to restart.

RESULTS:

So far so good,  I did a total of about 500 friend requests. I have had about 15 new friends in 10 hours overnight and I expect those numbers to grow much larger as people check their MySpace throughout the week.  The real test will be seeing my Google Analytics to see how many people came to BlogBait.net through MySpace.com.

I will report back the results next week.

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I recently went to the store to buy regular light bulbs and decided to do a little comparison of the energy and cost savings of using a Fluorescent bulb vs. a normal incandescent bulb.

For the basis of comparison, I am going to use the worst case scenario for the fluorescent bulbs.  That means for life span I am using the minimum life span of 8000 hours, for price I am using a high price of $3 which is really high, and for energy consumption I am using 28 Watts for comparison with a 100 W normal bulb.

So lets dig in a compare the two bulbs side by side.
 

With these numbers we can easily calculated how much each bulb cost’s per hour in electricity to get 1200 Lumens of light.
Assuming the cost of electricity to be $.12/kWh here are the numbers.

Fluorescent Bulb
$3/8000hrs. + .12 * 26 watts / 1000 watts = $.0035 per hour
COST TO USE FOR 8,000 HRS = $28

Regular Light Bulb
$.50/1000hrs. + .12 * 100watts/1000watts = $.013 per hour
COST TO USE FOR 8,000 HRS = $104

So there you have it.  It is substantially cheaper to use fluorescent bulbs over regular light bulbs.  It is discouraging to see that a fluorescent bulb costs 6 times more money but the pay off comes after only using the light bulb for 17 hrs.

So if you go and invest in all fluorescent light bulbs for your house, the saving will be noticeable within a month.

This is seriously one of the most obvious investments that anyone should make. 

I have been using mine for about 2 weeks now and I can’t tell the difference as far a light or color, so there is no disadvantage.

REMEMBER THIS IS THE WORST CASE SCENARIO, YOU PROBABLY WILL SAVE MUCH MORE MONEY THAN THIS STUDY.

Order bulls now: 

23-Watt Fluorescent Bulb , 4-Pack 100 WATT equivalent

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If your like me the thought of flying an airplane has been fascinating but out of reach for most people because of the cost and the time associated with flying.

Many flying hobbyist’s have gone to the next closest thing to flying which is using a Flight Simulator on their computer.  With the speed of today’s computers, flight simulators such as Microsoft Flight Simulator X have become so realistic looking that the experience is quite thrilling. 

The big mistake that most people make when buying Flight Simulator, is that they don’t have the correct flight controls.  Without the correct flight controls, the realism of flying an actual plane is totally lost.  I had always known this and was tired of using a joystick, so I took the plunge and bought the CH Products Flight Yoke and Pedals which are rated as best value for simulator controls.  There are professional grade controls, but they cost well over $1000 and don’t feel a whole lot different than the CH Flight Controls for only a little over $200.

CH Flight Yoke
The CH Products Flight Yoke consists of 4 push buttons, 4 rocker switches, 1 hat switch, and throttle, mix, pitch, elevator, aileron and trim controls. 
The bottom of the yoke has two large plastic clamps to hook the yoke onto you desk.  These clamps are plastic, but are heavy and seem very solid.  When the clamps are tightened the yoke is very sturdy.
 
The yoke controls for aileron and elevator, are resisted by springs which seem to be fairly loose, but do a decent job of keeping the controls centered when left free.  The elevator does have a little play in the center, so it can almost be used as temporary trim.  This is not natural to a real life experience, but for the most part it does not affect the flying.
The ergonomics of the yoke are very good in that all of the buttons are easy to use without moving hands too much.  The size of the yoke is true to life which makes the experience that much more realistic.
The one beef I have with this yoke, is that the trim is way too small and doesn’t have enough travel. Centering the trim can be affected by the slightest touch of ones fingers.
All in all  the Flight Yoke is very sturdy and solid built.  It has a very good value.

CH Flight Pedals
The CH Pro Pedals are not completely necessary for the average user in that most people don’t know how to use a rudder anyway’s, but for the realistic enthusiast, it is a must. 
The pedals are made of a heavy plastic and are fairly large.  The pedals try to duplicate the feel of a real plane in that they slide back and forth for rudder control and have rocker switch’s for the brakes.
The usability of these pedals is very natural and easy.  I don’t know how they compare to the real thing, but they work very well for what they were designed for.

The size is really nice in that I can use shoes while flying and the pedals don’t move all over the place.
As a bonus, the pedals include a piece to prevent the sliding mechanism, so that the pedals can be used for race car games. 
I really like the Flight pedals and think they are an excellent value.

This whole package for around $200 is a bargain and I am sure any flight simulator enthusiast and/or wanna be pilot will just love the experience they have with these pedals combined with any flight simulator from X-Plane to Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

So go out an get them and have fun flying.

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If you ever wonder what is the world doing about dependance on oil, then your not the only one or company that thinks that same thing.

Ormat Technologies is a leader in Renewable energy resources and has been on the cutting edge of the industry.  They currently are located all over the world and their corprate offices sit in Reno, NV (Hence the reason I know about Ormat). 

Ormat specializes in using geothermal energy and most recently heat recovery to generate power.  The process is fairly simple in that they use either hot spring water or hot exhaust gases to heat pentane which is run through a turbine connected to a generator.  The pentane is cooled in a condenser and the process starts all over. 

The largest geothermal plant owned by Ormat  is currently operating at over 200 MW. While a normal coal fired plant generates about 500MW. This is less power, but the environmental effect of geothermal is close to zero and the cost of producing the power is the same as coal and gas fired power plants.  Also the technology is capable of producing much higher outputs of up to 1000MW, but none of currently operated by Ormat.

With many states introducing legislation to use 20% of renewable source energy by 2015, the demand for Ormat’s technologies is ever expanding. 

This industry is up and coming bigger than ever before and there is no stopping them, because after all they are essentially pollution free and cost efficient.

Find out more about Ormat Technologies.

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