I can’t tell you how many times I see the I’m a PC vs. I’m a mac commercial on TV. All those commercials do is piss me off and make me want to turn the channel. Mac is always bashing on Vista. Well MAC I hate to break it to you but your commercials SUCK! I love Windows Vista I have been using it since beta. Those people who don’t like it most likely don’t understand how to use it.Today I’m going to talk about one of Vista’s cool features “SideBar”.

The sidebar which is an application that resides on the side of your desktop provides information via gadgets. In case you are not sure what a Gagets are let me clearify it for you. A gadget is a small application that provides information or a service such as weather updates, the time of day callander dates, temp of your PC equipment and much more. This sidebar can be customized to provide information tailored to your needs and specifications – this article describes how you can customize the sidebar to your preferances.

Add a Gadget to the Sidebar

1. Right-click on Sidebar and select Add Gadgets
2. Double-click desired gadget to add to sidebar

Remove a Gadget from the Sidebar
To remove a gadget from the sidebar right-click on the gadget and select Close Gadget or click on X in the upper right corner of the gadget.

Change Order of Gadgets
The display order of the gadgets in the sidebar can be modified by dragging the gadgets around into the desired order.

Place a Gadget on Desktop
A gadget can be removed from the sidebar and placed anywhere on the desktop.

1. Right- click on the gadget to detach and select Detach from Sidebar
2. Drag the gadget to the desired location on the desktop

Notes:

• To add the gadget back to the sidebar right click on the gadget and select Attach to Sidebar
• You can also move gadgets between the desktop and sidebar by dragging and dropping the gadget.

Keep Sidebar and Gadgets on top
You can change the display options of the sidebar so it always appears on top –that is you can always see your sidebar and gadgets regardless of what is open on your system.

1. Right-click on the sidebar and select Properties
2. Check Sidebar is always on top of other windows
3. Click on OK

Change Location of Sidebar
The sidebar can be displayed on either side the left or right side of the display. In addition, if you have multiple displays you can specify which monitor will display the sidebar.

1. Right-click on the sidebar and select Properties
2. Check the either Right or Left for the desired screen location
3. If using multiple displays select which monitor to use under the Display Sidebar on monitor choice
4. Click on OK

Change Gadget’s Options
To change the options for a particular gadget, right-click on the gadget and select Options from the menu. The screen that appears will vary depending on the settings for the gadget. Also be aware that not all gadgets will have options.

Add Additional Gadgets
In addition to the gadgets that ship with Windows Vista there a thousands of available gadgets that can be added to the sidebar that range from dictionaries to games to recipes. To access and install additional gadgets

1. Right-click on the sidebar and select Add Gadgets
2. Click on Get more gadgets online

This will take you to the Personalize Windows Vista Sidebar website where you can browse thousands of optional sidebar gadgets – just a side note! Don’t go crazy as you can easly by adding hundrads of gadgets. I recommend keeping it to a minimal amount there are many helpful and informational gadgets to choose from, there are just.

Kids do the weirdest things. Mine decided to turn a pop/soda box into a hat he then began to bang it against the fridge on his head. Why he did this I do not know and will probably never understand. However makes for an interesting hat. We will call it his crazy Sierra mist Superhero Hat.

This could make for a cool project tho. We could take some paint markers glue and construction paper and add some other cool designs to it. Kids love to turn things into cool superhero things.

So why don’t adults do things crazy and weird like this anymore. Well Most adults would probly be convicted and stuck in a mental institute for having an imagination. We tend to lose our imagination as we get older. I think this is due to society today. Start thinking outside the box have a lil fun today!

With hard times amongst us many people are looking for ways to save money for the holidays. While some are also looking for practical gifts. One gift you are sure not many will think about could actually save ones life when there is a emergency.

If you go to any camping store or website you will find it. An Safeguard Emergency Preparedness Kit.Sierra Adventure Gear Offers some of the better kits I have seen around. So if you want to get something unique and useful try checking out there Safeguard Emergency Preparedness Kit. They contain everything one would need in case of a emergency. You never know when a major storm could hit your area or loved ones home. So why not give them the gift of being prepared for the worst.

Some of the things a Kite include are:

• First Aid Kit-
• Tool & Gear Packing Cube Which Holds:
• Multi-Tool
• Duct Tape Roll
• Deck of Cards
• Tool & Gear Packing Cube Inventory List
• Food & Water Packing Cube Which Holds:
• 3 Day Supply of Water (9 Purified Water Pouches: Good for 5 Years)
• 3 Day Supply of Food (One 3,600 Calorie Meal Bar: Good for 5 Years)
• Food & Water Packing Cube Inventory List

There are much more in these packs so please take a look. If you don’t have one of your own you may want to get one for your home. This is also a good thing to carry with you if you are caming or taking long road trips. As you never know when a disaster could strick.

With the new look I also decided to go though my who site and add in the rel=”nofollow” in attempts to get back some Page rank. It has taken me alil over two days to finish plugging in the rel=”nofollow” into all posts on both blogs. So far thedigipix.com has gained in PR it went from a 0 to a 1. Now I’m waiting to see what happens to this blog. At one time it was a PR 2. It dropped to a 0 when Google went though and started smacking blogs down who participated in Payperpost. rel=”nofollow” Here’s to hope it works on this blog too.

This new WordPress Theme - Digital Statement took me about a day to tweak it to my liking. This is because I had a hard time understanding the tutorials as they where lacking a major explanation that was for getting the Featured posts section to function properly. I had found two tutorials and followed them to the T. This below is what BlogOh!Blog stated in it’s tutorial:

This theme has a featured component (top right) which can pull posts and display them as a neat slide show along with corresponding images (done through custom fields). The posts are pulled from a particular category which can be specified in the gallery.php file of the theme. Open gallery.php file and change the category ID (cat=) in line 14 :-

<?php query_posts('showposts=5&cat=2');?>

For the slide show images, you will have to make a custom field with each post in the category with the key => “gallery_image” and value will be the upload path of the image.

Get more information here. Also, remember that you will at least need two minimum posts (with custom field set) before the slide show will work properly.

In order to get the featured section to work properly you have to have two posts with the image key imputed into the post customs field section. I understood this and when I asked why it still wasn’t working they told me you have to have two posts selected. I had four already selected, but it still did not work.

What was neglected to be mentioned was in order to get the featured section to work properly, the two posts marked with the custom field key ‘gallery_image’ have to be within the five most recent posts. This is where in the code the number 5 comes in. What I did is I changed this to the number 10, as all the post I chose where within the most recent ten posts. Whalla now the featured posts section work’s as it is suppose to.

So if you are having the same problem you can either increase the number 5 in the code. If you don’t you will need to remember to included at least two posts for the featured section within the most recent five posts.

Some of the other changes to the theme that i did:

1. Added a Ad spot
2. Widened the side bar
3. Removed one of the Tab sections form the sidebar
4. Within the one tab section Added another tab for Meta information
5. Extended the post to read the full post on main page instead of excerpts
6. Added a Logo image to the top!

If you are interested in learning how to do any of these things feel free to ask and I will try to remember how I did them!

You can download the digital_statement with the edits I did to it! Keep in mind that you will need to make your own logo and change the links in the code to your site.

I gotten tired of looking at the old theme and wanted to stream line and clean up the site. So I found a theme called Digital Statement from www.blogohblog.com. So far I have gotten everything to function like it should and how i want it to look. I do have one problem so far in getting it to work completely. For some reason the image where the featured post is located. It also does not work right when you go into a single post. So I have some tweaking to do.

Later I also plan to create a logo for the site, but not until I get the rest of it functioning.  For those of you who read this blog I apologize for the mess it has been. I will soon finish it! But until them I appreciate your patients.

Here’s an image I took yesterday while walking around the neighborhood. I honestly don’t like this one but I thought I’d post it anyways as someone else may enjoy it more than me. It’s way out of focus for my liking . I may go out and attempt this one again.

You can view more of the photos I take on my flickr account. The full size if this image can be found on my flickr account located here.

If you like this photo leave a comment below if not leave a comment below and tell me what you don’t or do like. I would love some feed back. Alays any and all feed back is welcome unless its plain blatant SPAM.

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I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to. As I have been very busy with writing some articles on my other blog about the Nikon D300 and offering a few Tips of my own. I have been learning allot of new things about my camera and felt why not share them on my Photo blog.

I also if you forgot to vote in Canon’s National Parks Contest! If you remember I entered in the image of a Moth I took in a park near my home. If you have the time stop by www.usa.canon.com/parks between Oct 28th-Nov. 24th and vote!

Oh and if you cast a vote you could win a Canon EOS Rebel XSi/EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6IS Kit! If you happen to like my photo of the Moth I’d sure appreciate the vote.

If you are looking for free images that you can include in blog posts I recommend checking out http://acobox.com. They have several images that are being used as blog pictures specifically. This is a new site that is offering a way to get your images used in news or other related articles online. I chose a image taken by Dag Peak titled Lightning over Denver at Denver, Colorado for an example of the quality of images found on this site.

The site is pretty easy to use. I first set up an account and tested it out by uploading an image of my own to view the process. Once you create a account you go log in with the user name you created and the password they sent you. i.e check your spam folder as the email sent went into the spam folder for me.

After log in in you can submit your own images to be used by other bloggers by clicking the submit link on the rights side of the page under your ID. You will then follow the instructions and provide the information it asked for. You will then wait for your image to be approved. simple as that! Now once its approved someone can come to the site and use your image you uploaded in there blog post.

Acobox provides five optional sizes for each image, from which you can find a size that fits your blog best: 500 px, 400 px, 300 px, 200 px, and 100 px. I chose to use a 200px size image for this post. To use an image you sort though the images on the site until you find one you like, click it select the size and then copy the link. pretty simple works and you don’t have to hunt down the person whom took the image for permission to use it.

To Never buy an Epson Printer again! I recently bought an epson printer to replace my HP All inone that stoped printing. The epson took less than 2 months to stop working. It works but dosnt print. Basically it acts as if its printing then it spits out blank pages. Yay for not printing my stinking documents I need. I would not ever recomend buying a epson printer. they work for a short amount of time then the nozzles stop working do to clogging. No mater how many times you try to do a nozel cleaning it does not fix the problem. It makes it worse. Now I have a Epson scanner and no printer. BLAH I know it would cost me out the nose just to take it in to have it fixed it be cheaper to just replace it. Oh and taking it appart and trying to fix it just ended up in a huge mess! I now have multi colored hands!