IMO, flashcards are a waste of paper. After you go and get a couple hundred from your nearest Staples or Office Depot, you use them once, and you’ll never touch them again. If you need to have flashcards, but don’t have any on hand, go try RogerHub’s new rCards flashcard maker. Unlike other flashcard makers, no registration is required. Simply type in your flashcards and they’ll be hosted on RogerHub.com for three weeks. I will be adding more features to rCards in the future. -Roger

As a programmer, you should be familiar with lots of computer-related reserved words used in programs. Most of the time, you wont use these obscure words anywhere except your coding environment. So, pronunciation issues are pretty common. Here are a few that I’ve had trouble with: ASCII Wikipedia says that this word is pronounced like "ask-skee", but that sounds kinda weird to me. I usually just spell out the letters when I think of ASCII. Boolean Boolean is another one of those weird ones. Is it like "boo-leen" or "boo-le-an"? Either one sounds weird to me. How ‘bout just "bool"? Daemon Daemons are programs that run in the background. Daemon can be pronounced "day-mon" or "di-mon". Foreach You might not have heard of foreach, as it’s not available in some languages. At first glance, you can tell that foreach is a compound word, but where are you supposed to… more →

Intro Do you ever wonder how warm your computer is? Feeling the case isn’t a good indicator, and taking apart your PC while it’s running isn’t a smart idea. Computers overheat just like cars. If you run too many programs on your computer without adequate cooling, a computer may heat itself to the point where it is automatically shutdown to prevent damage. Usually, you can check your computer’s temperature using the Bios, but that method doesn’t work if you planning to use your computer. SpeedFan Speedfan, a program developed by Almico, can be used to check your PC’s temperatures directly from Windows. Different parts of your computers usually have sensors that detect temperature. These sensors can be on your CPU, Power Supply Unit, Motherboard, or even your Graphics Card. Speed fan will put together this nice chart of temperatures for you to look at whenever you… more →

Codecs The word "Codec" is short for Compressor/Decompressor. In order to play music or videos, we need a specific "codec" to read the media file’s information. Different media formats need different codecs to play them. You’ve already seen many kinds of media formats. If you listen to music, you probably have many .mp3 files. If you watch movies on your computer, you might have MPEG-2 files or .avi files. Windows already comes with some basic audio and video codecs, but usually that’s not enough. KLite KLite Codec Pack is a bundle of common video and audio codecs. Instead of downloading multiple codecs for different video formats, you can let KLite take care of everything for you. KLite Mega Codec Pack includes codecs for DVDs (MPEG2) and DivX Common video formats like .avi, .ogg, .mp4, and .mkv DirectVobSub for movie subtitles Real Media formats like .ra .rm .rmvb .ram .rpm .rv… more →

Edit: I wrote this post two and a half years ago. It is no longer relevant. Please don’t read it. Fragmentation Just like the cables underneath your desk, things on your hard drive have a tendency to get tangled. Files fragments are scattered and things get harder and harder to find. Thankfully, Windows has come with its very own Disk defragmenter since Windows 95, but many (faster) alternatives have been made available to the public. In this review, I will be comparing AusLogic’s Disk Defrag and Piriform’s Defraggler. User Interface Auslogics Disk Defrag Auslogics Disk Defrag features a minimalistic design. At the top, your disk drives are listed alphabetically by their drive letters. At the bottom, the selected disk is displayed as a grid. Defraggler Defraggler’s User Interface is very similar to that of Auslogics Disk Defrag. Drives are listed at the top; a grid is show underneath it.… more →