How to do the Eggbeater (lifeguard training)

http://www.ehow.com/video_2262518_do-eggbeater-lifeguard-training.html

(For some reason the video wont imbed, so there is the link to it on my ehow account)

Step 1:
The easiest way to start learning the egg beater is to sit on a chair. Put both of your right leg out and start to move it in a counter clockwise direction. Once you can do this pretty easily, stop with that leg and try your left leg going clockwise.

Step 2:
Once you can do step 1, continue sitting in the chair and start with your right leg going counter clockwise, when you have that going, add in your left leg going clockwise. If you can get the two motions moving together without smacking your legs against one another, you are successfully doing the proper motion for egg beater. There is a video of these two basic steps above.

Step 3:
Now that you have figured out the basic motions, it is about time you hop in the water. Just give it a try. It will be difficult. If you keep practicing, you should hopefully eventually be able to keep yourself a float.

Step 4:
To get endurance, keep practicing for one, but also try doing it without using your hands for help. Then try doing it with your hands out of the water. Next try with your arms out of the water. Then your shoulders, and so on.

Step 5:
To get power in your egg beater, you have to keep your legs apart and sit in a squatting position. Make the leg strokes moving towards the center of your body very strong and pronounced, this will help add a bit of power.

Step 6:
If you have any questions about trouble shooting your egg beater, just leave a comment and I can message you back a possible solution.

Tips & Warnings:

• Make sure that you are keeping your body straight up and down. If you start to lean back or forward, your egg beater will propel you away from your starting position.
• If you want to use the egg beater to move quickly without jerking your body (Lifeguard Tow) simply incline your body with your legs further towards the surface. You should be able to get a strong, constant movement going backwards.
• If you find yourself getting sucked under the water instead of being pushed out of the water when doing the kick, you are probably moving your legs in the wrong direction, inverse your left and right legs from clockwise to counter clockwise, and so on.
• After prolonged egg beater kicking, your shins will undoubtedly start hurting. This is normal, simply take a break and try again later or the next day. With practice and endurance, you will be able to egg beater much longer without the shin pain or discomfort.

How to beat the worlds hardest game

This is a video of how to beat the worlds hardest game. I forgot lost the videos of the 27th to 30th level, but next time I have a lot of time on my hand, I will post them. This is also on eHow.

How to Reduce the Size of your Wallet with a Multi-Purpose Card

Don’t you hate having your wallet full of different customer cards? Reduce the size of your wallet by making a Multi-Purpose Card with many different bar codes on them.

Things You’ll Need:

• Printer
• Paper
• Tape
• Spare Card to glue onto

Step 1:
Assemble all of your customer cards such as Safeway Cards, Save on Foods Cards, Shoppers Drugmart…

Step 2:
On the back of all the cards, underneath the bar codes, there should be a series of numbers with either 7,8,9,12 or 13 digit code. Write these down.

Step 3:
Go to the website (http://www.milk.com/barcode/) and put your card code in the generation box (if you have 9 digits, it will say that it should be 7,8,12 or 13 digits, simply add a ? to the end of the number series).

Step 4:
Compare the generated bare code with the one on the back of your card. If they match, then voila, you have a bar code.

Step 5:
Assemble all of the bar codes that you have, label them in a way that makes sense for you. Cut them out (as closely to the code as you can to maximize the number of codes you can get on the card).

Step 6:
Place the bar codes on an old card/used gift card and tape them in place (a continuous strip is best as to not distort the reading laser).

Step 7:
There you have it. A multi-purpose card. The cashiers will look at you funny at first, but when they realize how small your wallet is, they will want to do it too.

Enjoy

Review: Ink’d Smokin’ Buds by Skullcandy

Review of Ink’d Smokin’ Buds by Skullcandy

So I bought these headphones from The Source a days ago and I have to say, I am very impressed with these headphones. I wouldn’t usually buy ear buds that cost 30+ bucks but since they were on sale for half off, I indulged. I have to say, I am happy with my decision, and here is why.

So this what SkullCandy says about their own product:

“INK’D delivers the frequency range and response found in full-size headphones ina direct-to-ear package – all the while isolating you from external haze”.

Frequency Range 20~20k Hz

Speaker 11 mm

Cable length 1.3 m

Plug Type 3.5mm Gold Plated

Impedance 16 Ohms

Max Input Power 100 mW (max)

Now for my thoughts.

These headphones are sleek and sexy. They come in many colours and have bud attachments of varying sizes. They come with 3 different sizes, a small, medium and a large. I am using the small because the others just seem ridiculously large, but I guess if you have large ears, they would work great for you. When you take them out of the box, they come with the medium buds on, so I guess you can try them out. If they don’t fit and you want to switch them for another size, all you have to do is gently pull the buds off, and slide the new ones on by pushing them into place. Simple!

The sound these things put out is pretty nice. I would say it is comparable to the buds that come with most iPods, with perhaps a bit clearer of a sound. But the added bonus is the noise canceling ability of the in ear headphones. These things quiet everything down so you do not have to have your ear phones blazing just to hear the tunes. They are lacking a bit in the bass department (iPod buds had better base) but the bass is by no means too little.

The cord on the buds is a bit too long for my liking though. I end up having to tuck parts of it into my pocket so I don’t have a bunch of cord hanging out of my shirt, but this is a minor flaw. It is also up to personal preference.

Plus, while reading the back of the box that the buds came in, I found out that these buds have a Limited Lifetime Product Warranty, which is awesome. But then again, I just payed 3 bucks at the source and got the 3 year no hassle extended warranty so I can just exchange them when they start to lose their juice.

So in summary…

Pros

-Sexy/Different Colours

-Good Sound

-Cancels lots of the exterior noise.

-In ear

-Different sizes of ear buds/Easy to change them.

-Good Warranty

Cons

-A little weak in bass output

-Cord is a bit too long.

Overall, I would rate these headphones as being very good. I am pleased with my purchase and would definitely recommend these to anyone who is looking for a good pair of In Ear buds.

Highly Recommended

How To: Speed up Firefox (2 easy ways)

Alright, this is an easy one. To speed up the web browsing speed of Firefox, there are two easy things you can do. One is a little add-on and the other is a change in some settings of Firefox.

1) To speed up your browsing, you can disable all banners and adds or just the ones you do not want to see by using Adblock Plus, a simple, easy to use Firefox add-on. When you install this add-on, after you restart Firefox as it’s instructions will tell you, you will be prompted with a selection of lists, subscribe to the one you feel fits you best (I use the US one). After this is installed, most of the banners will automatically be stopped from loading, and the rest you can stop from loading by right clicking on the banner, then clicking AddBlock Image. Because there are fewer images to load on the page, the page will obviously load faster, usually its a very substantial change. This application does not cost money, just to let you guys know.

2) The second easy way to speed up Firefox is to allow your browser to use more pipelines when accessing a web page. Think of it like draining a pool, the more pipes you have coming out of it, the quicker the water will spill out. I believe it is a similar instance with Firefox pipelining. You send more pipes to a web page to acquire data, and thus will load the page faster. This is how you do it.

Step 1: Type in the following url: about:config It will look like this when you see the page.

Step 2: You will want to scroll down to where it says “network.http.pipelining” “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” and 2 below that one at “network.http.proxy.pipelining”.

The 1st one, by default, will read false. You want to change that to true. You do this by simply clicking on the line, the false will turn to a bolded True.

The 2nd one, by default, will read 4. Click on this bar. An input box will open up. Enter 150 (150 pipes instead of the default of 4 going to a page at once).

Lastly, the 3rd one will read false also. Click on it so that it reads True. A picture of what it should look like is below.

And thats it. Doing these two things, or even one of them, will substantially increase your web-surfing speed.

Good Luck

How To: Make your computer start up faster

Well, this is a slightly more abstract How To, but I will give it a shot anyways. From my experience, it seems as though most people complain about slow start up speeds and yet run a million programs at startup. I guess I will outline a couple of steps that can be taken to minimize your startup time.

1)Run the Disk Defragmenter that can be found in Start–> Program Files–> Accessories–> System Tools –> Disk Defrag. Defragmenting your disk rearranges your data in ways that hopefully will optimize read time. It can take a long time (2+ hours) if you have a large hard drive that has not been taken care of.

2)Scan your computer for viruses with whatever anti-virus program you have. This is an obvious one, but often a slow startup can have to do with an infection.

3)Scan your computer for spyware in the same manner. Steps 2 and 3 will hopefully rid you of any hindering malware that could potentially slow your startup time.

4)Go through your add/remove programs list (found in control panel) and remove any program that you KNOW you are not using and is not used for a vital system process. If you are not sure, simply google the name of the program you are considering deleting and make sure it is not vital.

5)Get rid of any bloat-ware (memory hogging, or unnecessary memory using programs that are not really used). Unless you have a lot of memory (2+ gigs), you are probably losing major performance by running the store-bought anti-virus software that most people have (such as Norton and McAfee). My suggestion is that you remove these anti-virus programs that are hogging your limited system resources and replace them with a small reliable anti-virus program like AVG Free as I have discussed in the How To: Load up your computer for FREE post. This will speed up your computer a substantial amount, especially at the start when Norton usually loads all of its constituents.

Also, most computers come with pre-loaded software. Lots of this stuff is completely unnecessary and is usually unused by the general pc user. If you have (for example) a toshiba laptop, it usually comes preloaded with Toshiba … Utility. Google each utility on the net and see if you are going to use it, if not, remove it.

6)Most people have a million programs that start at the start-up of the system. Most of these programs can be found down in the bottom right corner of the screen. Chances are that most of them are not actually being used by you and are instead just sitting doing nothing. Get rid of the ones you KNOW you don’t need.

Also, if you are using Windows Live Messenger, stop it from running at start-up (can be done in the program preferences or by using msconfig–> next part).

7)Alright, this is the only somewhat tricky part, and you have to be sure what you are stopping from loading at startup. If you run msconfig (as shown in my little clip) you can go to the startup tab and see all the programs that run at startup. You will then systematically google every .exe program that you are uncertain as to what they are. If the program is unneeded, simply de-select the check mark and that program will no longer start at startup.

Now, make sure to always leave the antivirus, antispyware and other vital system processes alone when checking and unchecking what programs you would like to have start at startup. When you restart your computer, a notice box will appear telling you that have have modified some settings, just click on the “don’t tell me again” box.

How To: Use Bit Torrent (Easy Picture Guide)

For those who don’t know, BitTorrent is a p2p (peer to peer) protocol used to transfer, download or upload data/movies/music etc. Unlike the old style p2p using Limewire or other p2p clients, torrent “data is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, each recipient supplies pieces of the data to newer recipients, reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source, providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence on the original distributor” (Wikipedia). This means that you will no longer be downloading a large file using Limewire and have it say “Unable to Locate Sources,” because this system uses so many different users as sources.

Oh and by the way, I would like to point out that I am not pro-pirating, so use this software wisely.

1) Get a bit torrent client. The client is the program used to download files using the bit torrent protocol. My personal preference is uTorrent. When you arrive at the website, it will look something like this. Clink on the download link highlighted in orange.

Once you click on this link, the page will look like this…

Click on the link that is highlighted, after the uTorrent name, it will say what version it is, I just omitted that part to avoid confusion. If the installer is downloaded to your desktop, go to your desktop and open the installer. It will look like this…

Chose which options you want, and click on yes. The program will generally install instantly because it is an extremely small program and thus will use very little memory. The screen upon the first startup will look something like this…

So as a default, uTorrent will automatically put the files that you download into the download folder in “My Documents”, if you want to change this, you can do so as follows…

So you will click on options, then on preferences, as is highlighted on the picture. Then you will get to this screen…

At this screen, you will set the destination of the downloaded files to where you want them.

Alright, now that the client is set up, you will want to find a site that supplies the bit torrent links. I use btjunkie but there are many others, you can find them using google, but btjunkie is great as is. The homepage looks like this…

Once here, simply type in what you are looking for into the search bar. As an example, I searched for We Own the Night. Once the search is complete, you will have a screen like this…

The highlighted box is what you would click on to get to the download screen, but I will explain what all the different parts of the screen are (the vocab is pretty much universal across sites).

1) Is the file I would download. This is because it comes from a well known dvd ripper (FXG–> axxo is also good but is faked a lot). Also, when downloading a movie in avi format, it should never be much more or less that 700 MB. Just as an aside, to get the movie to play on WMP11, you need Xvid and DivX codecs.

2) Is simply the category that the torrent file falls under.

3) Is the size of the file or package of files that will be downloaded. Average sizes for different file types are as follows…

DvdRip/.avi –> ~700mb

Music Album –> ~60-120mb depending on quality desired.

DVD images or full copies –> ~4450mb

4) This is the amount of people that are either downloading and uploading, or just uploading. When choosing a file to download, generally the one that has the most seeders is the one you will want to chose. Also, the more seeders there are, the faster your download will go.

5) Leechers are the amount of people who are just downloading the file, not uploading.

Alright, after you click on the file you chose, you will arrive at a screen like the following…

Number 1 is what you will click on to download the torrent file. Number 2 is the comments box. Always try and check what comments people have written to see if the file is in good condition. And if you want to be extra helpful, sign up for an account at btjunkie and add comments of your own to help fellow downloaders. At the bottom of this page, after the comments, there is the list of the files that are contained in the torrent.

Number 1 is simply a file that shows the tag of the “dvd ripper”. Number 2 is the main file of the torrent, the movie itself (hence the .avi). And number 3 is the subtitle file.

After you download the torrent, you will have 2 options. You can either open up the torrent with uTorrent, or you can download it to your desktop/some folder. If you open it with uTorrent, the file will automatically be put into the torrent client. If you download it to your desktop, you will simply have to drag it into the uTorrent screen.

Once you have dragged the torrent file into the screen or opened it up with uTorrent, you will get to the following screen.

At this step you are able to select which parts of the torrent file you will actually download. If you simply want the movie file, de-select the other files and click ok. You will then get to this screen…

Now, number 1 is the amount of the file that has completed downloading. Number 2 is the amount of seeders you have connected to. Number 3 is the current download speed. And finally number 4 is the estimated time to completion of your torrent file. Now you have to realize that your download will not start at blazing fast speeds. It can take minutes before your client connects to enough users to have a fast download.

Once your download is complete, it will look similar to this… (Oh and by the way, I didn’t actually download this movie, I just coloured in the status bar to illustrate what it would look like –> hence the 23h ETA)

At this point, your download is complete. This means that your movie is ready to be watched. If you want to seed to other users, simply leave the client open. If you want to delete the torrent file and keep the files you downloaded, right click on the file, go down to Remove And, the click on Delete .torrent.

This might seem like an extensive process, but in reality it is very quick and easy. I just broke it into many steps to try and make it easier to understand.

Now you are ready to download to your hearts content according to your local copyright laws. <– I don’t know if this is necessary, but I figured I would add it in just in case.

How To: Load up your computer for FREE

So, I have compiled a list of all of the free software I use to get my computer going at maximum capacity. So basically, this list is for, hypothetically, a blank computer. With these programs, one can have a safe, functioning computer that can watch movies of all codecs, edit pictures, use windows media player as an all around player (instead of using 2+ for random codecs).

So here it is.

Part 1: Defences. These are the programs that will keep your computer in good working order, free of viruses and other sorts of malware.

1)AVG Free Anti-Virus. So far, with this anti-virus software, I am yet to get a virus that is not removed within 10 seconds. It has the advantages of having real time protection, free auto-updates, and all the other gismos and gadgets necessary for a home-based PC.

2)Spyware Blaster. This little program automatically stops thousands of malware programs and sites from being displayed/downloaded onto your computer. It doesn’t have auto-update (updates every 3 weeks or so) but it does not take long to get used to. You have to enable firefox support, but there is a tutorial in the program.

3)Spybot Search and Destroy. To my knowledge, this is the only free spyware tool that has a resident scanner. It has a powerful scanning engine, as well as an intuitive GUI.///AVG Anti-Spyware Free is great too, but the resident scanner only works for the first month after installation, then you have to buy the program. So this decision is up to you, do you want complete automation? If so, go with SSD. But personally, I prefer the AVG scanner better.

Part2: Work Software

1)Open Office. Basically, this is a free, open source, version of Microsoft Office. It does pretty much all of the same things, has pretty much all of the same commands. This provides for an easy transition from Microsoft to Open Office. I don’t personally use this program at the moment (got office for christmas), but I used to and it worked great.

2)Foxit Reader. This little bombshell of a program is the alternative to the Adobe Reader. “Wait,” you might say, “Adobe Reader is free”. Well, it is free, but it is a huge memory hog. This little program takes less than a second to open, so no more of that waiting 20 seconds for a PDF page to open up. Has an intuitive design, so it only takes a few uses to know your way around perfectly.

Part3: Media

1)Windows Media Player 11. I love windows media player because it has a great library function, is esthetically pleasing, and can be formatted to run just about any video or audio codec (as I will say later).

2)Codec Packs. So I use 1 particular codec pack, Defiler Pack , in particular, because it is a lightweight codec pack that lets you play just about anything. Now, this pack comes with ffdshow, which is the second part of the Windows Media Player Does All segment, but I have had some trouble with the integrated one in the past. So my suggestion is, install the Defiler pack, de-select the ffdshow part. After installation, install FFDSHOW and install that. This will allow your Windows player to play all codecs save quicktime and real (which will be solved in a second).

3)Quicktime and Real Alternative. These aren’t necessary unless you often use these file formats. If you often play Real codecs and Quicktime codecs, I suggest (for least amount of memory and hard disk space) to use Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative. This is because these two alternative programs have no registration, and no background processes to slow down your computer. When installing these programs, if you want Windows Media Player to play everything, you have to select that particular box during installation, and you don’t have to install the Media Player Classic. If you use iTunes, you will probably have some problems with the Quicktime Alternative, so you have 2 options. 1.Use the real Quicktime. or 2. Install in a certain order… First Quicktime Alternative, then iTunes + Quicktime, uninstall Quicktime, install Quicktime Alternative.

3)DScaler MPEG-2 Filter. This is the utility that will allow you to play DVDs in your computer. Not many people know this, but you need a program like this to use DVDs. Generally, your computer comes preloaded with some software to do this for you, but it is also generally bloatware (takes up lots of space and does next to nothing). This is a small, free way to do this.

4)Paint.Net. This is the open source version of Adobe Photoshop. Its easy to use, but yet has tons of functions that I don’t understand for doing semi-professional editing. It is small, updates often, and works great.

5)ImgBurn.  This program is not used for burning music or movies but instead for burning images, iso’s or video files (vob…).  This program is a little complicated to use but I will write  guide to it soon.  For a temporary free alternative, you can just use the trial of Nero . It works great, is kinda a memory hog but works well.  Remember, to burn cd’s, you can always use windows media player.

Part4: Browser

1)Firefox. This is a must have program, why use Internet Explorer when you can use Firefox? It is faster, more secure, more customizable, has more plugins, more addons, more everything. It is just simply superior. Enough said?

Part5: VoiP and Instand Messaging

1)Live Messenger. I think everyone knows this one. Used for instant messaging.

2)Skype. This is for having video conversations with people.

Well, thats all I think you really need for a good, running computer. Of course, the selection is up to you, pick and choose what you need. If you don’t do video messaging, don’t get Skype. If you think paint.exe is the best program out there, don’t get paint.net, etc. Hope this helps some people with getting a newly reformatted computer up and running, for FREE.

Exams

I am currently in the process of studying for 4 exams that will take place in the next 5 days. Now, I am pretty good at remembering, and studying for exams, but this is a bit much. I usually have my 5 exams spread over two weeks or so, but not this time. How can the university expect maximal performance when the minds of the students are taxed this much? I guess its all just preparing us for the intensity of post BSc, but common.

I am also infuriated by my math midterm. I love it how every math midterm I have ever had has not tested me on my knowledge of the mathematics, but instead on my ability to take written examples, and turn them into pliable formulas. Ok, thats not that bad, its not like they are asking that much from us right? Well, when you never practice something in any particular context, how can the professors expect us to perform in a stressful exam? I mean, give me a complex word problem and a formula to work with, and I can do whatever you ask. If this is what the midterms are going to be like, they could at least give us some practice problems or examples. Some people might think this is simply too much work for the profs, but in reality, they have given all the students a set of problems that are supposed to prepare us for the exams, and let me tell you, none of them (I did all of the problems) help to prepare for this kind of problem.

Well, back to studying I go, there is my rant for the day.

Video Games and Youth

So in my first year English class, we had to do a research paper, and I think I did pretty well on it. I got a mark of 80% but regardless of the mark, I had fun doing the research, and I figure other people might want to read it. It is about how video game violence effects people. I tried to be as objective as possible, but of course there is some bias for me because I am myself a well rounded gamer who has never had any aggressive thoughts simply due to playing video games.

Video Games and Violence

Remember, I did this a while ago, but it still has some good points.