The Columbus Public Library has a relationship with Overdrive as do many public libraries across the country. Unfortunately, Overdrive distributes most books in epub format. The Kindle does not support this format. To get the book onto your Kindle you need to convert it to a format that the Kindle can read. The Kindle does support the Mobi format and you can easily convert the file using Open Source software.

To get the book, you will need a few things.

1. Your Library card
2. Adobe Digital Editions
3. Overdrive Media Console

We suggest downloading and installing the software before attempting to checkout an ebook from your library. Once the software is installed, you can access Overdrive from your library’s web site or by visiting Overdrive directly. Even though the ebooks are digital, Overdrive still limits how many copies are available. So, much like the real library you may have to place a hold on a popular item. Once a book is available, you will be able to add it to your cart and start the download.

You have downloaded the book and now need to convert it. The software of choice is called Calibre.

After installing Calibre, it will run you through a wizard when it first runs. The wizard is very clear and self-explanatory. To convert a book, you will need to add the book to Calibre before you can convert it. Once you have added the book, select it in the middle view and click convert. That’s pretty much it. It will create a Mobi file which you can copy to your Kindle or optionally email to yourself through Amazon’s service.

So, you might have had a problem. It might tell you that the download is protected and cannot be converted. Overdrive protects many of its books with DRM and will prevent Calibre from converting the book. The solution is to remove the DRM, however, this is against the law.

DRM or Digital Rights Management is protected in the United States under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This laws makes it illegal to remove copy protection. We personally find this law ridiculous, but we must warn you that it is indeed against the law.

So, if you still want to remove the DRM, you can easily find the tools on the internet. The easiest to find is a set of scripts for a scripting language called Python. To use the scripts you will need to install Python as well as a cryptography module.

Tools

1. Python
2. PyCrypto
3. Ineptkey.pyw (Windows) or Ineptkeymac.pyw (OS X) Search on Google
4. Ineptepub.pyw Search on Google

Because of the DMCA, we cannot host the inept files. You can easily find them by searching for them on Google. Links are provided above.

Install Python, then the crypto module. Once, Python is installed, you can run ineptkey.pyw by simply double clicking on it. This program will create the keys file, called adeptkey.der.

To remove the DRM from your ebook(s), you first run the ineptepub.pyw. This will open a window with three options. It will most likely have the key file already populated. The remaining two are the input path and output path. The great thing about this tool is that it will remove DRM on multiple books at the same time. Just put them all in one directly and set your input path to that directory. Set the output directory to a folder where you want the ebooks without DRM to be saved. Lastly, click the Decrypt Whole Directorybutton and wait for it to finish.

That’s it. After you have removed the DRM, you can simply go back to Calibre and convert them to your format of choice. Have fun playing with your new Kindle.

The reality is that simple microfiber clothes work much better with no cleaning solution necessary. Microfiber towels can be purchased virtually anyplace and don’t require soap or chemicals to work. Just rub the screen with a clean dry microfiber cloth until clean. Done. If your microfiber cloth gets dirty, just throw it in the laundry with the rest of the clothes and you are ready for your next cleaning job.

Save yourself some money and buy a microfiber cloth and use it to clean all of your electronic screens. It will work whether you have an old laptop screen, shiny new iPad or maybe an older iPhone.

Today, we are going to tackle a common problem with the cymbals involving the cord. To test whether this might be your problem, simply go into practice in Guitar Hero or Rock Band so you can get visual feedback on your drums. You should be able to press the wire to one side while drumming on the cymbal. You might find that pressing one direction results in your cymbal magically working again. To fix this problem you can buy replacement cables from several web sites. If you are more inclined to fix it yourself, then read on.

Mini stereo phone plugs are either meant to accept 2 or 3 wires. You can use either for this fix, but the wire coming from the drum kit only has two wires. We bought a replacement mini stereo phone plug from Radio Shack for less than $4.00.

Now for the hard part. Convince yourself that the game doesn’t work as is, so it isn’t likely that you will damage it further. Take scissors, side cutters or your cutting instrument of choice and cut the end off of the cymbal connector. This is the part that plugs into your cymbal and what you will be replacing. You will then need to remove the insulation( the rubber coating) from the wire for about 1/2 an inch. The video below shows a clever way to strip the insulation without cutting into the shielding wires. You can try to use normal wire strippers, but this method seemed for more accurate. What is left looks like a silver wire. There are many individual wires around the outside of another coated wire. All of these wires will be twisted together to make the wire for the sleeve. The center wire needs to have some insulation stripped from it as well so that it can be soldered to the pin of the connector. Don’t get carried away here. Just strip about half of the amount from last time, or about a 1/4 of an inch. You want to try to prevent these wires from touching after they are soldered. They will create a short if they touch.

Once you have your wire prepared, you will need to slide the connector cover onto the wire. We taped this away from the end of the wire to prevent it from falling into our work. Lastly, we will solder the wires onto the pins. The shielding wires should be twisted together at this point forming what looks like another wire. This wire will be soldered onto the sleeve pin. This pin is most likely on the right hand side and might be longer than the other one. If you look carefully, the pins are fairly easy to identify. The tip pin connects to the center of the connector. The sleeve pin is an extension of the sleeve on the outside of the connector. The center wire will be soldered to the tip pin.

So to clarify. Tip pin = center wire, Sleeve pin = shielding wires that have been twisted together.

A Tip. Soldering is much easier if you tin both the wires and the connectors.

Below is a video detailing this process. In this case, they have a three wire cable, but you can simply ignore the shielding in this case. It gives good detail on tinning the connectors and wires. It also shows the method mentioned above for removing the insulation. All in all, this isn’t a hard fix and should take less than 30 minutes.

The symptoms of the internet hanging also seemed to hang the entire computer. Accessing other applications was slow or inaccessible. We tried multiple browsers, new network cards, and ran the latest anti-malware, anti-spyware, and anti-virus scans all with no success.

In the end we removed Microsoft Security Essentials and our problem went away. There were a few posts regarding problems with Symantec Workspace Virtualization and Microsoft Security Essentials. In our case, we did have the Symantec Workspace Virtualization application installed but needed it for other applications.

Microsoft Security Essentials had worked flawlessly up until this point and is considered a reliable anti-virus application. We chose AVG Free as an alternative anti-virus. This application is also free and allowed us to keep the virtualization software.

Note: There does not seem to be anyway to disable Microsoft Security Essentials. Because of this, you need to uninstall to see if this fixes your problem.

AVG Free, http://free.avg.com/us-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free
Microsoft Security Essentials, http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Note: This method depends on having descriptions for your images. Obviously, if you do not fill in descriptions then your dropdown menu is going to display blank listings. Manage galleries allows you to edit numerous details of your images including the description.

Open the file in your text editor of choice and navigate to the section that starts with

. There will be a second

at the end of the section.

All we need to do is to change the id and filename to description. Alternatively, you could use the alttext property instead of description ($picture->alttext).

Here is the original code.

Here is the modified code.

Keep in mind that you are editing a plugin directly. This means that you will need to repeat this step whenever you update your NextGen gallery plugin.

Different download options highlighted

By having multiple versions installed in different directories, you can use any of them and know that they are isolated from each other. So, you can go grab that nightly build and know that it isn’t going to break your stable development platform. Furthermore, if you follow a couple of simple steps, the platform will also update its plugins.

If you want to try a new build, simply download it and install it. After this, just start the application. The application will then detect and ask if you want to import settings from a previous version. Once the application fully opens, it will then look at any installed plugins from previous versions and ask if you want to import them. It will also warn you if an older plugin isn’t compatible with the new build.

So, in the end all you really need to do is run the new build before you uninstall any previous builds. Eventually, you will need to uninstall old builds, but there really isn’t any rush since they are isolated.

Have fun and go grab the newest build of Netbeans.

spadgy / CC BY 2.0

With the explosion of laptops and netbooks, many of us are tied to a little touch pad to move around our computers. It usually isn’t practical to hook up a mouse even though this makes navigating easier. The alternative is to use your keyboard.

We are still surprised that so few people know the shortcuts for simple tasks such as copying and pasting. We will cover the most common shortcuts and try to cover a few that may be less obvious.

First, what is a keyboard shortcut? It usually involves holding two or more keys are once, although some shortcuts only use a single key.

On Windows based computers, most shortcuts involve holding the control (CTRL) key and the pressing another key in combination. If you are using an Apple computer, then you likely will hold down the Command key. In the past, many of our friends called it the flower key. It looks sort of like a four leaf clover. It also may sometimes have an apple logo on it. On either Windows or Mac OS based computers, the key is usually to the left of your spacebar. Sometimes, you will have more than one Ctrl key on Windows computers.

Let’s get to the meat of this tutorial. From now on, we will use ctrl to describe the shortcut. If you are on an Apple computer, substitute the Apple command key for the Windows ctrl key. We are using the plus symbol to connect the two keys. So, if you see ctrl + c, we want you to hold the ctrl key and the c key at the same time.

Absolutely, MUST know keyboard shortcuts.

All of our copy and paste commands. Obviously, you need to have text selected to use cut and copy.

Ctrl + c: Copy
Ctrl + x: Cut
Ctrl + v: Paste

Some navigation keys

Tab: The tab key will move between controls and will move text to the right in tab increments.
Shift + Tab: This moves backwards through controls and moves text to the left in tab increments.
Ctrl + arrow keys: By holding down the CTRL key and the left or the right arrow, you can skip through sentences, by one word at a time.
Shift: This allows you to select text. If you hold shift with another modifier key(s), you can move through a sentence.
For example, hold Shift and then pressing either the right or left arrow keys will add to or take away letters from a selection
Additionally, hold Shift + ctrl and then pressing your right or left arrow key will add or take away entire words from a selection

Home: Takes you to the beginning of a text line.
Ctrl + home: Takes you to the top of the page and the beginning of the line.

End: Takes you to the end of the line.
Ctrl + End: Takes you to the end of the page and the end of the line.

Some other useful keys

Ctrl + A: Selects all, this might be all text or an entire image.
Ctrl + P: Prints
F1: Open Help. This is the first function key we have covered: Function keys do different things in almost every program. But F1 is usually reserved for accessing Help.

A couple of web browser specific shortcuts

Ctrl + L: Selects all text in the location textbox. This allows you to start typing a new url
Ctrl + E: Jumps to the search Window
Ctrl + Enter: This is an interesting one. If in the location textbox, just type the center portion of your url and the browser will complete the rest.
For example, you want to go to http://www.outlookutilities.com. Simply type, outlookutilities and then hit ctrl + enter. The web browser will fill in the www and com portions for you.

Lastly, if stuck, use your Esc key. It will get you out of most binds. Take the time to learn your shortcuts. They can save a huge amount of time and make your time spent in front of a computer, much more enjoyable.

Check back for future articles in this series.

For this tutorial, we will assume that you know about NetBeans, and how to create a new project. We are planning a couple of tutorials on using NetBeans for WordPress development in the future. These will cover more basics of using NetBeans.

If you would like to try NetBeans, go to http://netbeans.org/ to download the newest version. They have many different configurations depending on what your needs are. We use the php version.

On top of what comes in the php version of NetBeans, you will need to add the Ant plugin. The plugins dialog is located under the tools menu.

Next, click on the available plugins tab. If you click on the name column head, the plugins will sort alphabetically putting Ant at the top. Simply check the checkbox next to Ant and click the Install button at the bottom of the dialog. That’s it.

All that’s left is to use the file. In Netbeans, you can access the targets in multiple ways. The most common access points for us, is to right click on the file itself in the project window and click run target.

You can also view targets inside of the navigator window. Right clicking on the target you want to run, and selecting run is all there is to it.

You should see the results in your output window. This will also display any errors in your build file if you run into problems.

We simply structure our development code under a single folder and then we map that folder to a drive letter. There is a Windows utility called subst to accomplish this but it doesn’t maintain settings if the computer is turned off. We recently ran across a utility from NTWind that provides a visual GUI for this utility and furthermore, allows the settings to be persistent.

A note to keep in mind: If you need to run another application that needs elevated permissions and also need access to this drive, you will need to elevate the permissions for the Visual Subst utility as well. Just right click on the shortcut, click on the compatibility tab and check the checkbox next to run as administrator.

http://www.ntwind.com/software/utilities/visual-subst.html

To get started you will need to following resources.

1. WordPress - this is the blogging software that you will install on your thumbdrive
2. Thumbdrive – you don’t need a huge drive for this purpose. 1 gig is plenty but more will not hurt
3. XAMPP - your web server. Alternatively you can use UniformServer, but for this tutorial we will cover XAMPP

That’s it!

Downloading software:

Simply download the latest release of WordPress from their web site using the link provided above. The default zip file is just fine. When downloading XAMPP, you will want to choose the ‘lite’ version. This requires a manual install but this does not make installing the software more difficult.

Installing the software:

1. Copy XAMPP to your thumbdrive
2. Copy WordPress to your thumbdrive

WordPress depends on the web server so we need to install this first. The only difference between the exe and zip file for the lite version is the exe version will run the setup batch file after it finishes copying files. In our case, you DO NOT want to run the setup. So all we need to do for XAMPP, is to unzip the files onto the root of our thumbdrive.

By root, I mean that you should have xampp directory directly after your drive letter. DO NOT create a directory.

For example: (replace i with your thumbdrive drive letter)
i:\xampplite (correct)
i:\journal\xampplite (incorrect)

Depending on your file, the folder inside of the zip may be called xampp or xampplite. This does not matter, either is fine.

To install WordPress, we follow the same steps. We simply unzip the file into the htdocs directory. In our case we also made a subfolder called journal. This isn’t necessary but allows us to have more web sites or applications using our web server in the future. When you are done, it should look like this.

Configuration:

1. Start Apache (the web server)
2. Start MySQL
3. Create a database for WordPress
4. Create a new database user
5. Give new database user full rights to the database for WordPress
6. Edit WordPress Config file
7. Run install file for WordPress via web browser

Now to start using the products, we will need to start the web server and database server. We do this by double clicking on apache_start.bat and mysql_start.bat. Alternatively, you can launch the xampp_control.exe which will open a console window that will allow you to start the two servers.

Next open your web browser and go to http://localhost. This should redirect to the following page.

We need to create a database for WordPress. To do this, click on phpMyAdmin in the bottom left of the page. When prompted for a login, you will login with the user ‘root’ and a blank password. If this doesn’t work, check the readme file in the root folder of the xampp install. This should have your login information. Next create a database. We chose journal as the name of our database. The name is not important as long as you remember what you named it.

While still in phpMyAdmin, create a user for your new database. Go back to the main page and click on the Privileges tab at the top. You can get back to the main page by clicking on the text link that shows localhost at the top of the page. About half way down the page you will see a link for adding a new user. Here is the information we used. You can change the user and password to whatever you would like as long as you remember it.

User: wpadmin
Host: Localhost
Password: journal2009

Click the Go button at the bottom of the screen. When the screen refreshes, click the privileges tab again to see all of the users. To the far right of the wpadmin user, click the pencil icon. About half way down the page, there is a section for database specific privileges. From the database drop down, select the journal database. Click Check All when the screen refreshes. This will give your user full access to this database. Don’t forget to click go at the bottom right of that section.

We still need to edit the config file so WordPress will know how to connect to the database. In our example, the WordPress config file is located at I:\xampplite\htdocs\journal\wp-config-sample.php. Just open this file in notepad and edit the top section. Change the following text

Save the file as wp-config.php. Start the WordPress install by opening http://localhost/journal/wp-admin/install.php in your web browser. Once the install completes, make sure to write down or record the admin’s password. The admin is the main user inside of WordPress and there is no way to recover the password if lost.

Using the journal

1. How to add a post
2. Optionally change theme

To add a new post, you will need to log into WordPress. Most default themes give some link to the login script. If one is not available, just navigate to wp-login.php in your site. If following along with our example, you would go to http://localhost/journal/wp-login.php After logging in, you should see the following screen.

If you wish to record something quickly, you can use the quick post. You can enter the main post editing dialog by clicking the new post button at the top right. For a journal, it is unlikely that you will care about anything other than the title and body. I usually title my journal posts with the date, something like 2009-07-04. I do use tags when I enter my notes for the day. This makes it easier to find my notes at a later time.

WordPress has the ability to change the look of the content by using themes. WordPress.org has a list of themes as do many other web sites. WordPressThemesbase.com is another one. Look around and find something you like. I chose a very plain Jane type of theme for my journal because I didn’t have needs for ads, widgets, other users etc..

Have fun. Leave any questions in the comments.