I love a game that entertains me for five or ten minutes without sucking up my entire day. Bloons is one such game (assuming you can overlook the, uh, overly festive color scheme). A monkey pops balloons. Pac-man makes a cameo. What more do you need to know?

Use this tip to play it full-screen. I got to Level 27 before getting bored.

I just answered a reader question on my other blog that might interest this audience. Mark wanted some guidance on hooking up a TV to his computer. Basically, unless you’re playing games or watching video, I’m against it. I have a Media Center computer hooked up to a very nice plasma now, and it’s great for video, but not much good for anything else. Well, give the blog a read.

I had a friend ask me what to buy for an inexpensive macro setup so he could close-up pictures of the products they make for work. He wanted to be able to get within 1-6 inches of the product, which doesn’t really tell me the magnification he needs, but it gives me some idea that he wants to get closer than most cameras will allow.

I have a very expensive macro setup for my Canon 5d–a Sigma 150mm lens with a Canon ring-flash. That whole setup would run about $4k-$5k, and would be way out of his price range.

The hardest part of macro photography is the lighting, and you really need a ring flash mounted to the front of the lens if you’re not going to setup an entire macro studio. So, I started with the lighting, and found the Nikon Macro Cool Light SL-1 for their CoolPix series of consumer cameras. The best camera that was compatible with that flash is the Nikon Coolpix 5000. To connect the camera to the flash, you’ll need the Nikon UR-E6 adapter. Oh, and you’ll need a CF card for the camera.

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Here’s a simple version of SimCity that you can play in 20 minutes: DotVille. Build farms to create food and markets to make money. If you feed your dots enough, they’ll be happy with you and promote you. The goal is to reach Emporer status, and then to defeat the evil squares in a cunning battle of strategy. OK, there’s not really any strategy in the final battle, but it kept my interest.

Use this tip to play it full screen. It took me two tries to win the game with a high score of 759,124 (proof after the jump). A full review is available at Jay Is Games.

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I sell digital photos on my home page, and the most common question I get is, “Are these pictures 300 DPI?” Unfortunately, I usually can’t answer definitively, because they don’t tell me the size they’re going to print at.

DPI (dots-per-inch) depends on two factors: the resolution of the picture (“dots”) and the size of the image as you will print it (“per inch”). My website shows the resolution for every picture at the top of the page, as part of the pictures description.
For example, this picture has a resolution of 3072 x 2048:

If you wanted to print it at 3×5, it would be 614.4DPI (3072/5=614.4). Vertically, it would be 682.6DPI (2048/3), but you’d need to crop it vertically to get the 3×5 proportions, so the DPI will be the same once it’s cropped.

Question:

Can I add extra pixels in a picture saved im my computer by Photoshop or something else for enlarge or resize it??

Lauro

Brasil

Answer:

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Question:

Hi Tony!

I’m going to try to make this simple. Retired,love my back yard birds of which some species I had to work on attracting them after reading (Back Yard Birds), Woodpeckers,Finches etc. I got good at this and was flabbergasted when I finally got to see my first woodpecker. This was a big event for me and now I want a camera to go along with this great media center windows xp computer with 20” wide screen monitor. I would like to purchased a middle of the road digital camera that is fairly user friendly and yet has some step up settings for defined photos. With so much software out there which would you advise for me in the type/brand of camera and the softwhere that makes things more simple. I also have the printer that can handle this,a ( all in one photo printer ),pic bridge.plenty ram,photo ink & paper,and a wide variety of supported memory cards of different cameras. It would greatly appreciated if you could help me on this subject about which camera and software.

This is a windows xp media center computer and the monitor & photo printer was in mind with this kind of computer. One more thing, a external hard drive. Would it be wise to have one for photo backup or what would be appropriate and gig size. I liked your simple kitchen photos since I also garden peppers of all colors for my homemade salsa. I also would like to be able to make 8×10 portraits-Pixels ?

Sincerely,JDEME

Print a photograph from a memory card Printing tasks Scanning/Copying/Faxing tasks Troubleshooting

Most digital cameras use a media card to store photos. The Dell Photo AIO Printer 964 supports the following digital media and USB keys:

CompactFlash Type I and II

Memory Stick

Memory Stick PRO

SmartMedia

Secure Digital

MultiMediaCard

xD-Picture Card (up to 512 MB)

DELL – 256 MB High Speed USB 2.0 Memory Key, Part Number 311-4341

DELL – 128 MB High Speed USB 2.0 Memory Key, Part Number 311-4340

DELL – 64 MB High Speed USB 2.0 Memory Key, Part Number 311-4339

Answer:

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Question:

Hello Tony

Sorry I am technologically very ignorant. Finally I have managed to set up my blog space. I just cannot figure out how to publish this into RSS.

Hope you could help me.

BTW your notes were very helpful and they help me setup my Windows live space.

Cheers
Satha

Answer:

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Here’s a great way to kill ten minutes on your Sunday morning: NaaC. This simple, two-dimensional, one-room shooter reminds me of asteroids. Move around the room with your cursor keys, and hold down the left mouse button to fire. If you pick up a weapon, click the right mouse button to switch to it. The pace of the game cosntantly increases as new enemies are released into the room. When everything gets quiet, that means you’re about to meet one of the bosses.

For strategy:

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RC airplanes are made up of many different parts. Even if you buy an airplane that’s already assembled, you’re going to need to learn every part if you make more than one flight–because you’re going to break something, and then you’re going to have to fix it.

Don’t worry, airplanes only have a few parts, and they’re all user-replaceable. The parts are:

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I’m a fickle gamer. I love games, but I don’t have much time to play games, so when I do sit down with a controller I want the game to be great.

For years, I just bought games new from the local Circuit City. Often, though, I’d get a game home and realize I hated it, and I was out $50. When GameFly started, I thought, this’ll be cheaper than buying the games, and I won’t have to worry if I get a game that I hate–I just send it back and get another.

I’ve been a GameFly member for more than three years now (since January of 2004), and overall I’d give it 3/5 stars. It does work as advertise–they mail me games, and I send them back postage-free in the included mailer. They’ve always given me whatever game I had at the top of my queue, including games that would have been hard to buy in stores. They sell used games at very cheap prices ($20-$35) for the few occasions that I want to buy one.

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I’ve used Vonage for voice since August, 2004. Voice was okay; it was never great. There was always some delay/latency. Sometimes it wasn’t really noticeable, and other times it was very distracting–it seemed like a whole second between the time you spoke and the time the other person heard you speak. You’d be surprised how awkward that makes conversation, because you’ll often be inadvertently interrupting the person you’re speaking to, and you won’t realize it for a second.

I decided that I needed some Quality of Service (QoS) so I replaced my router with one of these D-Link GamerLounge routers. That series of routers has a much more aggressive QoS than other routers, because it will constantly break large, lower-priority packets into smaller segments. See, while QoS will prioritize realtime traffic like Voice over IP (VoIP) over traffic like Web transfers (say, HTTP and FTP), it can only prioritize queued traffic. That helps, but if the router is in the middle of transferring a large packet, it can’t be interrupted with a VoIP packet, and the VoIP packet has to wait the few milliseconds it takes to transmit the large, lower-priority packet. The GamerLounge routers minimize this effect by fragmenting all large, low-priority outbound packets so that the interruption will be less.

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FrostBite is a platform game that combines Super Mario Brothers and DigDug. Use the cursor keys to move and jump, and use your mouse to aim your grapple. My hi-score is 20850, at which point I got bored. It’s a good game, though, I just have to get back to work.

Use this tip to play it full screen. A full review is available at Jay Is Games.

Here’s a way to kill two minutes: the New Nest of Moai. I always find these foreign-language games funny. Well, click the bottom button on the first screen, and then click the top button on the second title screen. Then, move your mouse over the tower heads that appear to get points. Click to zoom in, which reveals hidden heads that are worth more points.

Crazy stuff. I don’t even know what my high score was.

Question:

Tony,
Moved to Hilton Head SC, which allows for all types of pictures. I was 35mm guy for years. now I am looking at a Canon D30 with a 17-85 lens for walking around and an additional 75-300 for the long shots. do you think I’m on the right track. Used to work up in Cambridge for a few years great subjects, and I really like your pictures.
Regrds
Hank

Answer:

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Maybe you’re a stalker, or maybe you just want to know what personal information about you can be found on the Web. Either way, you’ll be surprised at the information that’s available. Just follow these steps:

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For the love of God, please stop watching Lost. Look, if you’re waiting for questions to be answers and secrets to be revealed, you’re really just waiting for the writers to make up answers. This show hasn’t been planned out; they’re making it up as they go along. Until the show gets cancelled, they’ll just keep making up more stuff and adding more ridiculous characters.

I’m still watching it. It’s like 7th Heaven; it’s an awful show, and I hate it, but I can’t stop watching it. I loved Lost at first, though, and my conversion happened gradually over season 2 and 3. Now, every time they introduce a new character, I swear I’m going to stop watching.

But my stupid DVR tapes it next week, and at some point, I end up watching it again.

As they say, “If you liked Flash Element TD, you’ll love Flash Circle TD.” In this flash game (it runs within your browser), enemies come in waves and navigate your simple maze. You setup towers to kill the enemies. You have five different towers to pick from, and each tower can be upgraded up to level 9.

I tried two main strategies to choose from:

• Add as many towers as possible
• Apgrade a smaller number of towers.

A larger number of towers is clearly the better strategy (I tried both). My high score is 2326 (proof after the jump), which I got using the “add more towers” strategy. Upgrading a fewer number of towers only got me 1059.

I can’t imagine that the Slow tower does any good, so just avoid it.
Start by adding only Splash towers, positioning them to cover as much area as possible. After the first Air creeps appear, add enough Air towers to take them out. If you get Air creeps circling around and hanging around too long, add a bunch of Air towers. You don’t need to eliminate them quickly; you just need to keep the total below 100. Ideally, you’d keep your Air towers busy 100% of the time without letting the Air creeps build up too much..

Unlike Flash Element TD, you don’t earn interest on the money you have saved up. So, spend it right away.

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Here’s a way to forget your pain for five minutes: remote controlled lego cars. Drive around with the cursor keys. Press S to kill the awful techno music, and press Esc to return to the main menu. Eh, I’ll give it a 4/10. I’ll do better in the future.

You probably haven’t put much thought into wind in your life, but it’s a big part of anyone’s life who wants to fly an RC airplane. For your first dozen flights, you’ll want a day with less than 3 mph of wind–hopefully, it will be completely calm. Winds are most calm just after sunrise or just after sunset, so plan to fly before or after work. To anticipate wind speed, punch your zip code into the USAirnet website.

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