The Computer Guy

HOWTO: Skip 30 seconds with your Comcast DVR

Do you have a Comcast DVR box?  Are you annoyed when you fast forward past the commercials and the box keeps going?  Well, it’s time to take control of you box.

Your remote is missing a button.  This button will skip ahead 30 seconds exactly like the back button skips back 15 seconds.  This guide will use the ‘A‘ button to be the skip ahead button.  If you would like to use another button, replace the ‘A‘ button in the following steps with whatever button you want.

Setup the 30 second skip:

1. Press the Cable button
2. Press and hold the Setup button until the cable button blinks twice
3. Press 9 9 4 — the cable button will blink twice
4. Press Setup
5. Press 0 0 1 7 3
6. Press A

That’s it.  Happy Skipping

Uninstall Photostop: 14 Awesome GIMP tutorials

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It’s like photoshop in many aspects, except that it’s free. You can download GIMP from here.
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Bit Torrent Introduction

File sharing has been around for over a decade and every few years there is a new method of sharing files.  The current popular method is called  bit torrents.  It is fairly easy to get started with bit torrents, and I will show you how.

Steps to get started

1. Download and Install uTorrent from http://utorrent.com/
2. Find a .torrent file on the web, googling should be adequate.
3. Open the file with uTorrent and the download will begin.
4. Once the download is finished, right click on it and left click on open containing folder to access your download.
5. Scan the contents of that folder with your anti-virus.

Notes

• Closing uTorrent will not exit the program.  It will have an icon next to the clock in the bottom right of your screen.  The icon is a green square with a “u” in the middle.  Right click and exit to exit the program entirely.
• There are a lot of options in uTorrent.  The most important are upload speed (set to 30KB/s or less for cable/dsl), encryption (set to required), and the download folder.

Warning!

Some sites, such as http://thepiratebay.org/ have illegal torrents and I am in no way suggesting you download anything illegal as it infringes copyrights and may contain viruses or other malware that can take over your computer or possibly steal your personal information.

How to get followers on twitter

I’ve spent the last 5 days on twitter and I’ve got 1,661 followers so far.  Here are the steps I took:

1. Create a new account on twitter.com.
2. Follow everyone on this list: http://socialnewswatch.com/top-twitter-users/.  Most of the people will follow you back, plus you will get followers that watch these users.
3. Interact with the people you are following.  Answer someone’s question, post a twitpic, RT(retweet) someone’s post that you like.
4. Follow everyone that follows you.  Do this 3-4 times day.  Use http://huitter.com/mutuality/ to follow those following you.
5. After 2 days, use the mutuality tool to unfollow people who are not following you.
6. Find someone who shares your interests and follow some of their followers.
7. Repeat steps 3-6.

That’s it.  If you have any questions, feel free to  leave a comment or tweet @compguyaug.  Happy tweeting!