Daily Cup of Tech

I am not the originator of this (see here) but it was worth putting on!

1. Learn a Card Trick
2. Play Solitaire
3. Learn How to Touch Type
4. Go Swimming
5. Tidy Up Your Room
6. Rename Your Collection of 10,000 Photos
7. Defragment Your Hard Drive
8. Go to the Gym
9. Go Jogging
10. Bake Fudge Brownies
11. Have a Picnic
12. Watch a Movie
13. Have a Nap
14. Mess Around With Photoshop
15. Update Your Address Book
16. Organize Your Documents
17. Lie in the Grass and Watch the Clouds
18. Write in a Journal
19. Drink 8 Cups of Water
20. Learn How to Cook
21. Learn How to Dance
22. Read a Book
23. Visit a Graveyard
24. Get in Touch With Old Friends
25. Look Through Your Old Yearbooks
26. Give Out Free Hugs
27. Figure Out the Meaning of Life
28. Watch TV
29. Organize Your Bookmarks
30. Arrange Your Library Using the Dewey Decimal System
31. Clean All the Monitors Around Your House
32. Play Some Sports
33. Count From 1 to a Million
34. Just Lay Back and Chill
35. Go to the Beach
36. Meditate
37. Walk Around Town
38. Get in Your Car and Keep Driving Till You Run Out of Gas
39. Clean Up Your Garage
40. Wash Your Car
41. Study For an Upcoming Exam
42. Learn How to Make an HTML Webpage
43. Make an HTML Webpage
44. Uninstall Useless Programs Taking Up Valuable Space
45. Play Racing Games and Lose the Race on Purpose, Every Time
46. Go to a Zoo
47. Go Outside and Take Pictures of Random People
48. Mow the Lawn
49. Open a Dictionary and Learn 100 New Words
50. Make a Prank Call
51. Type “bush hid the facts” in Notepad and Try Not to Act Amazed When it Disappears
52. Try Renaming a Folder Into “con”
53. Keep Trying…
54. Call a Friend and Ask Him What to Do
55. Find Out What All the Buttons on Your Keyboard Do
56. Open the Registry and Delete All the Entries Starting With the Letter “a”
57. Re-Install Windows Vista After You’ve Messed it Up
58. Slap Yourself For Using Vista in the First Place
59. Blame Politics and Global Warming
60. Open “about:robots” With Firefox and Press the “Try Again” Button
61. Press the “Please Do not press this button again.” Button
62. Ask Yourself Why It Disappears and Nothing Happens
63. Take a Shower
64. Eat Something
65. Treat Yourself to a Fancy Dinner
66. Play the Pre-Installed Games on Your Mobile
67. Count the Number of Cars That Pass by Your Window Each Minute
68. Arrange Your TV Channels
69. Comb Your Hair
70. Take Something Apart
71. Put it Back Together
72. Read Your Computer’s User Guide, For the First Time
73. Call Your Internet Provider
74. Ask them What’s Wrong With Your Connection
75. Understand All the Network Jargon They’re Saying
76. Dismiss Everything They’re Saying as Gibberish
77. Play a Board Game
78. Invite Friends Over
79. Read a Newspaper
80. Watch the News
81. Look in the Mirror and Try to Act Cool
82. Write an eBook
83. Do Your Homework
84. Buy a Metro Pass and Keep Going Back and Forth All Day Long
85. Smile at a Random Person on the Street
86. Watch Titanic For the 15th Time
87. Hide Behind Bushes and Scare People
88. Go to a Mall and Sit on a Bench While Staring at a Fixed Point for the Whole Day
89. Teach Your Old Dog New Tricks
90. Roast Marshmallows
91. Create Your Own Black Book
92. List All Your Friends and Family Members in it
93. Accidentally “Lose” the Book at School/Work
94. Ask Yourself Why You Didn’t Just Go to an Internet Cafe
95. Rearrange Your Desktop Icons
96. Synchronize All the Watches You Have
97. Think up a Clever List of Comebacks For Your Teacher/Boss
98. Open a Blank Page in Your Browser and Repeatedly Press F5
99. Cry Desperately
100. Open Videos and Images Using Notepad
101. Write a List of 101 Things to Do When You Have No Internet

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I recently bought my wife an Acer Aspire One AOA110-1295 Notebook PC for school. This little unit was really cheap and runs a weird version of Linux called Linpus.

Of course, I needed to mess around with it before I let her use it and, of course, I royally messed it up. I wasn’t too worried because it came with a recovery DVD that I could use to get it back to factory.

Unfortunately, when I went to build the recovery USB device, it failed. Now what?

Well, after some research and effort, I was able to build a new bootable USB device that allowed me to get the system back up and running.

Since I pieced the information and process together from a number of different sources and even used some new techniques myself, I figured that I should document the process and let everyone else know how I did this.

Step 1: Get Your Tools

In order to do this properly, you will need to download come tools from the Internet. You will need:

1. 7-Zip (download)
2. SelfImage (download)
3. MD5 verification software (e.g. WinMD5Sum)

Download and install these applications.

You will also be needing a USB drive. I recommend something 4GB or larger.

Step 2: Download The Image

Next, you will have to download the drive image. It is available from here or you can get the torrent. Be aware that this is a very large file and is 958MB in size so it may take some time to download.

Also, download the MD5 hash file to confirm that the drive image has downloaded properly.

Step 3: Verify the Drive Image File

Once you have downloaded the drive image, make sure that the MD5 hash that you downloaded matches the one that you generated.

Step 4: Extract the Raw Image

Using 7-Zip, extract the raw image from the drive image that you downloaded.

Step 5: Write the Drive Image to the USB Drive

Using SelfImage, write the drive image to the USB drive. In order for this to work, you need to make sure that you are driving to the USB device, not the partition on the device. If you write to the partition, it will not work.

Wait for the process to finish prior to removing the USB drive.

Note: You will probably get a warning that the image was not made for the specific device. This is not a problem and you can continue to image the drive.

Step 6: Boot Aspire One from USB Device

On your Aspire One, put the newly created USB device into one of the USB ports. When it boots up to the BIOS, press F12 and select the USB device to boot from. This will then take you into the setup process where you can then work you way through rebuilding your Aspire One from scratch.

I hope that his has been a helpful tutorial and gets your Aspire One up and running again.

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Just a quick note to let everyone know that Google has just released their own web browser today called Chrome. Free download!

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This is the funniest thing I have seen in ages!

And if you liked the video, you’ll love the game!

I’m still laughing and it’s been a couple of days!

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Marketers are always looking for new and exciting ways to get their message across. Here is a demo of what can be done with computer controlled streams of water.

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