Computers Information

Secrets Of How To Remove Virus From Your Computer The Easy Way by Michael Silvester

Virus virus everywhere.

Viruses are the most common threat on the Internet. Computer shops are making thousands of dollars every week fixing people's computers that are infected with viruses. The viruses that could have been prevented in the first place with a few easy steps.

The most important thing that you need on your computer is an anti-virus software program. There are many programs out there, that will do the job. And there are many out there that are completely useless. In particular free programs.

Unfortunately, even the best of antivirus programs can't fix a virus until they know about it. If a brand new virus has been written, and you have it there's nothing you can do about it until the anti-virus software company has an update that will fix that problem. It's not a complete loss, just make sure you have an anti-virus software program that updates on a regular basis. The reason you need this is because new viruses are being written every day, and the software companies work hard to solve these problems for you every day also.

Always make sure that your anti-virus program is updated. Some anti-virus programs need to be updated manually, some do it automatically. No matter which one you have make sure it's updated all the time. I Make sure mine is updated every day. There may not be new updates to download, but at least you know, you're safe.

Okay, now that your anti-virus software is up to date, you need to run a full system scan. Anti-virus software programs are all different, so there is no similar way to do this. But there will be an option in your software to do a full system scan. Just make sure you select everything you possibly can to be scanned and the software will go ahead and do that for you.

The software will then search through every single file in your computer for a virus. If it finds one. It will give you the option to delete it or it may even just do it automatically. If your particular software program does not have that way to delete the virus. It will contain the virus until it has an update ready to deal with this virus.

Another hot tip is always keep your version of Microsoft, updated as well. People the right virus is a clever little buggers, and always finding new ways to gain access to your computer or ways to infect your computer with a virus. So make sure your operating system and any additional programs you have up to date. So that no one can exploit your system.

About the Author
I am a Self confessed Internet Junky and I've had my fair share of Computer Infections and Lived to tell the tale. Click the link below to findout what Antivirus software saves me every time. http://goreviews.wordpress.com/2007/03/08/secrets-of-how-to-remove-virus-from-your-computer-the-easy-way/

If you're serious about being healthy, get in front of a computer by Jez Heath Marketing companies are constantly inventing new and expensive fads to help us exercise, lose weight and get healthy. But if we're really going to get results, it's probably just best to do more and more of the things we already enjoy. Frankly there aren't any shortcuts to good health and fitness, the only real way to be healthy is through a good diet and good exercise. To get results, we need to commit to a regular schedule, ideally we should be doing something every day if possible. But whatever our personal circumstances, I don't think there's a single one of us that doesn't find that difficult with so many demands on our time. Of all the choices of exercise available, yoga is perhaps the most versatile, allowing us to exercise almost anywhere, without the need for any special equipment - we don't really even need a mat. This means that we can exercise anytime morning to night, wherever we feel comfortable, at home, at work or in our hotel room when we travel. For most of us, the limitation of yoga, is also one of its most important aspects. To practice properly, we have to know the postures, and the correct sequence to do them. But now we can all get our own private professional yoga instruction.

Ancient practices, modern technology

The latest technology now allows us to follow video based yoga instruction, without having to buy the videos or DVDs. Instead we can access a full library of videos online at the click of a mouse. Our high-speed computers can stream the videos over the internet to our homes or wherever else we want to practice.

Convenience and quality - all the better for us

Having access to a range of different yoga routines and instructors gives us the benefits of going to class, without the hassle or its limitations. Online yoga classes give us:

Yoga instruction on demand so we can practice yoga according to our own schedules. Fit a session in before work, at lunch or in the evening - there's no need to check your yoga center's class schedules.
Yoga wherever you are No need to fight traffic, pay for parking or even make a special trip to our yoga center. We can just practice at the click of our mouse, wherever we feel comfortable. Even our hotel room when you travel.
Clear visual and audio instruction - Using the same technology as the Hollywood movie studios, we can get full screen, High Definition (HD) quality streaming video online. We don't need to wait and we don't even need to waste electricity downloading the videos overnight. It's as convenient as putting on a DVD. More health improving yoga poses - Having access to a library of online videos means we get a wide range of routines and a greater range of yoga poses and their unique benefits to your body and mind - just like you'd get in class.
The highest quality yoga instruction - All yoga instructors have unique styles and quality standards. Don't let your development be limited by the instructors in your area, get access to yoga instruction like you've never experienced before.
So although it's still more desirable to attend a class to practice yoga, we're all limited by the practicalities of life and the teaching available in our areas. With the latest technology it just gets easier and more convenient for all of us to share in the joys of yoga.

About the Author
Jez Heath is helping real people to achieve the health benefits that yoga has to offer, even if they can't make it to yoga class. To find out how online yoga video instruction can help you commit to a regular exercise routine necessary to improve your health, visit http://www.TotalYogaPractice.com

How to Make Political Cartoons with a Computer by Blue Steel

Get Started Making Political Cartoons

Even if you're not a great artist, you can still make compelling political cartoons with the help of a computer. Take it from me; I'm not a great artist, not by any means, but I think I've still been able to entertain people (and amuse myself) with my Pollyticks political cartoons.

A great deal of credit goes to the developers of a few pieces of software that I use on a regular basis. The programs I'm referring to are Adobe's Photoshop Elements, an image editing application; Macromedia (now also Adobe) Flash, which I use to create text effects and to enhance some of my hand drawn (albeit horrible) artwork; and Plasq's ComicLife, a cartoon and comic layout program that simplifies the process of adding comic speech bubbles to your cartoons.

I prefer to use an Apple Macintosh (Mac) computer most of the time, but all of the programs I've mentioned, with the exception of Plasq's ComicLife, are also available for PCs running versions of Microsoft's Windows. In this article, I'll describe how I use all three applications to produce illustrations, comics and political cartoons and show how everything I do can also be done on a Windows PC without the use of ComicLife at all.

Over many years working with computers I've used quite a few programs in the image and illustration editing arena and will point out how alternatives to my favorite applications can also be used to accomplish a lot of the same tasks.

For the record, I don't claim to be an expert with any of these programs or techniques, nor do I claim that my way is necessarily the best way to accomplish the things I'll cover. My goal is only to describe how I do what I do, so that you can do it as well as I do, if not better.

Know What You Want to Say

Alright, let's get started. The first thing to figure out is what you want your political cartoon to say, in other words, what it will be about. Very often I'll be at my day job when an idea comes to me, and I'll reach for a piece of scratch paper to jot it down, but typically I make my political cartoons in the mornings before work. I'm a creature of habit, and what works for me most of the time is jumping into the day's news first thing in the morning. I get most of my political news from the Internet now, so I crawl out of bed into the living room, wipe the sleep from my eyes and point my laptop's web browser at CNN.com. I start with CNN because I like the layout and trust the source, but I suggest you start with whichever news site you like best.

Remember, it's usually 5:30AM when I'm looking for daily cartoon ideas, so what I want is a site with a simple layout and good headlines. At that hour I'm not ready for a 3,000-word treatise on Bush White House foreign policy. I'm looking for a quick rundown on the big news of the day.

Use Tabbed Browsing

I like a web browser that supports tabbed browsing, like Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7.0, Apple's Safari or Mozilla's Firefox (for both PC and Mac). Tabs let you open many different websites at the same time and quickly jump between all of them. If you've never used tabs for web browsing before, I highly recommend you give them a try. The feature is probably built right into your browser already. I find that of the hundreds of features available in most web browsers today, tabs are among the most useful, especially for research.

My favorite websites for political cartoon ideas are CNN.com, Yahoo.com (particularly their News section), Drudgereport.com (sometimes conservative, but often breaks big stories before the traditional media outlets do), Google News, YouTube (yes, YouTube), Fark.com (great for offbeat news), Digg.com (World News section), Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index, Washingtonpost.com and -- brace yourself -- FoxNews.com. FoxNews has a reputation for media bias (leaning to the right), but I don't care. They write great headlines and employ some of the best photojournalists in the business.

In addition to the above websites I have a small library of Gary Larson's Far Side books, which I lovingly refer to as my "secret weapons."

Storyboard Your Ideas

Once I have an idea in mind for a political cartoon, I either scribble it down on scratch paper or fire up TextEdit (on the Mac; Notepad or Wordpad on the PC) and quickly type it out. If you haven't noticed, a lot of my cartoons are photo-toons, so when I find an image I want to parody in a cartoon I'll copy and paste it into an image editor like Photoshop or save a copy of it to my computer desktop for later use. I'll describe that process soon. For now, the focus is on figuring out what you want your political cartoon to say.

Some of the best advice I've ever encountered on how to generate political cartoon ideas comes from famed political cartoonist Mark Fiore who said, "The most important factor in making an animated editorial cartoon effective is having something to say. Just like with a print political cartoon, it's got to have an opinion and punch or it becomes something entirely different."

With an idea for a political cartoon firmly in mind, the next thing to decide is if I'm going to draw it out, use photographs to tell the story, or try a combination of both drawn art and photos. Now is as good a time as any to address the question of copyright.

Get the Right Tools for the Job

I'm going to assume you already have access to a computer, odds are either a computer running Microsoft Windows or Mac OS 10. I do everything for Pollyticks -- from writing articles to producing my political cartoons -- on an Apple Mac, specifically a 12" Apple Powerbook with a 1GHz G4 processor and 1.25GB of RAM running Mac OS 10.4. That's a lot of techno-babble that translates loosely to "My slow 3-year-old laptop."

To get hand-drawn artwork into my laptop for upload to Pollyticks.com I use an inexpensive $50 Canon flatbed scanner (Model: LIDE 80) or a $99 Wacom Graphire4 digital drawing tablet, which allows me to draw and paint directly into programs like Photoshop or Flash. If you can draw at all, I highly recommend getting a drawing tablet because it not only saves time but also produces better looking results. When you use a scanner to import artwork into a computer, the scanner captures all the tiny imperfections on the sheet of paper, in addition to your artwork. By drawing directly into programs using a digital drawing tablet, you avoid that problem.

Everything I do on my Mac can also be done on a Windows PC with a few slight modifications to the process to account for the absence of ComicLife for Windows. Plasq, the program developer, says they're working on a version of ComicLife for Windows users, so stay tuned for that by checking their website for updates at Plasq.com.

I prefer the look and feel of Apple computers and the software that runs them, but for something like designing political cartoons, the choice between Windows or Mac is a matter of personal preference more than anything else.

Earlier in this article, I mentioned the three programs I use to make Pollyticks cartoons: Adobe Photoshop Elements, Macromedia Flash, and ComicLife.

The one I couldn't live without is Adobe Photoshop Elements. With Photoshop I can draw cartoon characters, edit a picture of the White House, or paste a picture of Vice President Cheney's head onto a turtle's body. It can also create comic panel borders, apply drop shadows (subtle shadows around comic panel windows that produce a cool 3D effect) and create speech bubbles with text for dialogue -- pretty much everything it takes to be able to produce a Pollyticks-style political cartoon.

Macromedia Flash is first and foremost a program used to create 2D (two dimensional, ala Comedy Central's South Park cartoon) computer animations, but it's also a useful drawing tool. I use Flash when I draw characters for cartoons because it has a feature (Bitmap Tracing) that smoothes lines, giving them a professional look. And Flash produces what are called vector graphics, which can be easily enlarged or shrunk without losing detail. Normally, when a picture or drawing is enlarged, the tiny colored dots (pixels) that make up the image start to look blocky. Not the case with vector graphics, which retain their smooth lines regardless of size.

The final program I use to make political cartoons is Plasq's ComicLife, a tool so far available only for Apple Macs (sorry Windows PC users). It simplifies the job of adding speech bubbles and dialogue to cartoons. Photoshop can do it too, but it's a lot easier with ComicLife.

Photoshop Elements is the one tool I couldn't live without, but if you're just starting out and want to see what using a similar image editing program is like before plunking down $70 on Photoshop Elements, GIMP, an open source (free) image editor, can do everything Photoshop Elements can do and more. It's not quite as user friendly, meaning it might take you a little longer to figure out, but it's a powerhouse program available for both Windows PCs and Macs (make sure you download the right version). Many of the features I use to make political cartoons, like the lasso tool (which I'll describe later) and layers, work much the same way in both Photoshop and GIMP.

Draw with Flash

Let's work on an idea I have for a political cartoon starring me and President Bush. The image of me will be a hand-drawn caricature, but I'm going to use a photograph for the president. I'll combine both images together, add speech bubbles and save the cartoon in a format ready to email or upload to a website or blog.

The first program I'm going to use is Flash, in which I'll create a cartoon version of myself and export it to an image. Images you want to email or upload to a website should usually be saved in .jpg format. Your other options are .tif, .gif and .png (among others), but most of the time you'll use .jpg files because they're compressible, meaning able to be shrunk and downloaded quicker.

File size is a different measurement than the actual physical dimensions of an image. That's a tough concept for beginners to understand. File size and image size are two different things. Be careful not to compress an image too much as the more heavily something is compressed, the lower the detail. The goal is to find a balance between file size and image detail. I usually compress my cartoons down to around 100KB each.

FLASH TIP: One of the best Flash tutorial websites around is Bradfitzpatrick.com. Brad has a number of video tutorials showing how he uses Flash's drawing tools to draw. Brad is a great cartoonist. I use the same Flash technique he does, which involves using the "line" and "selection" tools instead of the more popular paint brush and pencil tools. I'll explain how to draw with Flash further in a future article. For now, you can use a mouse and Flash's "pencil" tool. They'll work fine too.

Edit Cartoons with Photoshop

Now that I've got my caricature created in Flash, I'm going to open it in Photoshop Elements. From the File menu in Photoshop, I click 'Open' and select the file of my caricature, wherever I saved it on my computer. While I'm here, I'll also open the picture of the president, so that both images are opened in Photoshop at the same time.

Using Photoshop's Magic Wand or Magnetic Lasso tools I'll select, or cut out, the caricature from its white background, because all I want to paste into the picture of the president is the caricature itself, not the white background that surrounds him.

In most programs, the concept of copy/cut & paste works similarly. First, you copy something -- either a single word, pages of a document, a file, a piece of an image or an entire photo -- which sticks it into the computer's memory. Then, you can paste that thing someplace else. The catch is that generally only one thing can be copied or cut (like copy, except that it moves the original) at a time. Once you copy or cut something new by clicking the copy/cut button, the batch of text or picture you previously cut or copied gets replaced in memory.

Copy into ComicLife

With my caricature pasted into the photograph of our fearless leader, I want to get the combined image from Photoshop into ComicLife where I can easily add my speech bubbles. Once again, the copy/paste feature is perfect for the task. First, from within Photoshop I select the entire image (Select>All), and then copy it to memory, aka the Clipboard (Edit>Copy Merged).

Then, I open ComicLife, drag a panel over from the right column into the main drawing area of the page, stretch the panel out as large or as small as I want it to be, and paste (Edit>Paste). Voila! The combined image I created of myself and the president in Photoshop appears within the panel I set in ComicLife. Some clipping may occur, meaning depending on the height and width of the panel you made in ComicLife, you could inadvertently cut off the edges of the image you created in Photoshop. To minimize clipping, try to make your ComicLife panel about the same shape and size as your image in Photoshop.

In ComicLife, I click-drag speech bubbles with the mouse from the selection window at the bottom of the screen up to where I want to place them on the image. A few lines of text later and that's it. All done. Lastly, I export my creation (File>Export>Export to Images) as a 72dpi (dots per inch) jpg file for easy upload to Pollyticks.com.

You Made a Political Cartoon

In future articles I intend to go into greater detail on how to use Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop Elements, ComicLife and digital drawing tablets to produce political cartoons. For now, I hope you found this simple overview helpful. Feel free to drop me a line with your questions or comments at bs@pollyticks.com. And please send me your own political cartoon creations. I'd like to start a page on Pollyticks.com with user-created cartoons. Stay tuned, fearless reader!

-Blue Steel

About the Author
Blue Steel is the comic-inspired proprietor of www.pollyticks.com, one of the funniest political cartoon, satire and humor sites on the Net. Enjoy, fearless reader!

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