Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Windows Registry and System Restore

The following are all Microsoft Knowledge Base articles;

Back up the registry in Windows XP

How to Back Up the Registry in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition

Windows System Restore

WIndows Start-up Programs - Help Sites

Just a few sites that offer some insight and advice as to what programs your computer is running from start-up. Several resources noted as some go down at times. Use caution and think these through BEFORE applying changes to your computer.

And please, back up your Registry before starting.

1) Black Viper Windows Services ~ Includes complete explanations of each service and advice on which services you can safely disable.

2) Arvind Gopu's Tweak Windows XP services

3) Beemer's Optimize XP Services

4) GovernmentSecurity.org - Disabling unnecessary and potentially dangerous services
Don't ask me about the site name - I couldn't find the reason right up front. What they look like is a six-year old network security group who share information about resolving problems and advising members as to proper network security protocol.

That's about it. Other sites found were ambiguous in their instruction that just might possibly make a someone mess up their computer.

Just take care with what you do, it will take some time so don't start unless you're willing to devote, at minimum, an hour reading everything and then another half-hour to 45 minutes actually resetting your system from the instructions.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

TUTORIAL: 50 Excellent Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

And someday I'll get to this program as well. Earmarking this for future use.

TUTORIAL: Learn How To Automate Photoshop With Actions at Photoshop Essentials.com

Just something I want to run through and accomplish someday. Heck, once this economic crap is over I may just get a membership and download some of their lessons.

Creamundo

Just a basic font site listed alphabetically. You can alter the display text, but I haven't yet found anything to make the text larger; or anything to sort categories. 

How to create a Photoshop Chrome Effect Style

Set of mini-tutorials that take you through the different steps of creating your own Photoshop layer styles.

TUTORIAL: Windows Live for Blogging

A short, graphical tutorial for using Windows Live to post to your blog.

The Digital Scrapbook University

Beginning digital scrapbooking step-step guides to creating a digital layouts Advanced scrapbooking on how to use the graphics editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop, and JASC Paint Shop Pro, as well as an many other design and style tutorials.

RESOURCE: PNG Compression

OptiPNG: Advanced PNG Optimizer
"OptiPNG is a PNG optimizer that recompresses image files to a smaller size, without losing any information. This program also converts external formats (BMP, GIF, PNM and TIFF) to optimized PNG, and performs PNG integrity checks and corrections."

PNGCrush
"Pngcrush is an open source optimizer for PNG
Its main purpose is to reduce the size of the PNG IDAT datastream by trying various compression levels and PNG filter methods without compromising quality."

On this date I have no idea how these work, but I am interested in trying them out to see if they compress well without degrading the image.

TUTORIAL: Heathrowe's Photoshop tutorials

Sometimes the oldies are the besties.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

FontSpace

Free font repository. Nice decorated fonts.

PSP RESOURCES: Humbug Graphics Freebie Scripts

Several decent freebie scripts here. Some tutorials as well.

SCRAPBOOKING: CU Freebies

There are some Commercial use freebies here. Many look like vector work.

TUTORIAL: Dizzinz PSP-Tuts.com

Dizzinz extensive $20 for 182 (currently) tutorials for Paint Shop Pro.

TUTORIAL: Keep the Chains

A nice little tutorial on how to make shiny metal chain links.