Microsoft Surface - Multi-Touch Table

This thing is crazy co...

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Convert Pictures to ASCII art

I found a really cool site while Stumbling on my lunch break. It converts any jpg picture (must be 60 x 50 pixels) to ASCII Art!If you want to give it a try, click the link here: www.typorganism....

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War on Terrorism II

This a fun 1st person shooter game that lets you pretend to kill terrorist sc...

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Another Nick Burns Video

Happy Memorial Day! Here's another goody from good ol' Nick Burns, the company computer g...

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Thanks for your donation!

You seriously rock! Creating, and maintaining Bauer-Puntu Linux is a tough, and time consuming hobby. People like you are what makes doing this worth my while! I of course am not making Bauer-Puntu for the money. I do it for the love of Linux and technology. Making Bauer-Puntu is basically my way of sharing the Linux love the best way I know how! If you liked Bauer-Puntu enough to donate, please tell your friends about it. Word of mouth is the best way to spread the news of cool stuff in my opinion. That is one of the reasons I started writing on Bauer-Power! I hope to keep this blog going for a long time. Once again, thank you for your continued support!   ...

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NSA on the 4th Amendment

This is a humorous video on the NSA's knowledge of the constitutional amendment that is supposed to protect us from them...

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3D Pong

I found this really cool 3D Pong type game while using my Stumbleupon toolbar. It is called Curve Ball. I hope you like ...

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Another Reason to use Ubuntu Instead of Vista

If you were still on the edge between upgrading to Windows Vista or not, let's revisit the Ubuntu Linux alternative. Here is a cool video of Ubuntu using XGL which shows that you can have the same cool animations and 3D desktops as Vista, except you get all of this for FR...

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The Truth: God Created The Earth Using Command Line

I found this Bash History file while surfing with Stumbleupon today. It is completely ridiculous, but funny none the less, especially if you know a little something about Unix/Linux or even remember the good ol' days of DOS. [celobox.googlepages.com]Click Here to Check it O...

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Secrets of the C.I.A.

This is a very interesting documentary on some of the secrets that you may or may not know about the Central Intelligence Agen...

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Ubuntu on a Dell?

Sure, it doesn't sound that crazy to those of you who installed ubuntu on your Dell yourself, but now, you can order your new Dell PC or laptop with a fresh copy of Ubuntu 7.04 already installed and certified on a number of Dell products.You can more read about it He...

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Encrypted E-mail for the Non-Savvy

I wrote a while back about free OpenPGP email encryption using GnuPG, and how you could litterally take any e-mail service you used and secure it using PGP encryption. For some of you, having to download, install and configure something like that is too hard. Some of you may just be lazy, others not very technically savvy, either way, there is an even easier option available to you.There is a free, secure, web-based e-mail service that offers secure OpenPGP e-mail. It is called Hushmail, and it is completely free to use. All encryption and decryption is done on the fly and completely transparent to you, so you don't have to think too hard about it. If someone you know uses PGP, you can upload their public key to the hushmail server using HushTools,...

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Why Use Gmail?

The Google engineers put together this funny little video on why to use Google's email system, Gmail...Before you switch over though, read my post on securing Gma...

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Linux: Free Operating System

You see, almost daily, those funny, witty commercials from Apple about how hip and cool it is to have a MAC, and how lame it is to have a PC. Of course, Microsoft fires back with their new Wow campaign, but not as hard as Apple because lets face it, Microsoft is top dog and they don't really need to do to much advertising. The funny thing is, with all of this bickering between Apple and Microsoft, most people don't realize that there are more than those two flavors of operating system available. Just like there is more than just chocolate and Vanilla, there are other choices in operating system.Think about it for a minute. Let's say you still have an old Pentium III computer, with 256MB of Ram, running Windows 2000. You see these commercials...

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Cool New Logo!

Some of you may have noticed that I have finally designed a decent Bauer-Power logo! The old ones I tried out with the thumb print and the other biohazard symbol didn't agree with me. Especially when I got my hat in the mail from The Bauer-Power Shop and I couldn't make out that it was a biohazard symbol.Anyways, after spending a few hours on the PC last night with an evil eye from my wife because I was spending too much time on said computer. I cranked out a better biohazard Bauer-Power logo using The Gimp.Behold!All items in the Bauer-Power Shop have been updated. Enj...

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The Art of Keylogging

I found a juicy little application yesterday, that I'm sure you all will like, or at least be somewhat interested in. There are many things you can do with such a utility, mostly subversive, but also morally sound. Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that In some states (and some countries, for my international readers) use of such software may be illegal. I do not encourage or condone the use of any software in violation of applicable laws. Please check your local laws before use of this software.With that out of the way, let me give you some scenarios to think about:Scenario One: You have a teenage daughter around the age of 13. She has lied about her age, and signed herself up on Myspace and is absolutely obsessed with maximizing her friend quantity. She is adding...

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Is the NSA Tapping You?

I was browsing around one of my favorite conspiracy sites on the internet last night when I found a link to this Wired blog Article talking about how to detect if the NSA has setup an illegal wiretap on your internet connection. Keep in mind that the article I found is a few years old, so the information may be out of date, but it still gives you something to think about.Anyhoo, here's what you do. For Windows users, open a command prompt and type tracert nsa.gov then press enter. You should get something like this: C:\> tracert nsa.gov1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 12.110.110.204[...]7 11 ms 14 ms 10 ms as-0-0.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [64.159.0.218]8 13 12 19 ms ae-23-56.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.123.173]9 18 ms 16 ms 16 ms 192.205.33.1710 88 ms 92 ms 91 ms tbr2-p012201.sffca.ip.att.net...

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Hey Brits! Beware: Big Brother is Watching You

Man I am glad I live in the US. At least the United States Government has the decency to spy on you covertly. In the UK, the Government puts it right in your face..."We are watching!"I found this startling article on DIGG. It looks like the the UK underground needs to start thinking of a few new ways to get around the prying eyes of Big Brother...read more | digg st...

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Bloggers Rights

There are people, and companies out there that don't like bloggers. They don't like what bloggers have to say especially about issues dealing with copyright "gray areas."If you are a blogger, and are concerned with your rights as a blogger and/or a journalist, then you should check out the bloggers rights page over at EFF.Some of these are outlined on their bloggers main page. Here are some of them quoted directly from EFF:Bloggers can be journalists (and journalists can be bloggers) Bloggers are entitled to free speech Bloggers have the right to political speech Bloggers have the right to stay anonymousBloggers have freedom from liability for hosting speech the same way other web hosts doThat is all I am going to say about that right...

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Audio Video Player Freeware

Have you ever downloaded a video clip, or put a DVD into your computer to watch, only to find that the built in Windows Media Player does not support it? Many times I have too. The problem is that the built in media player doesn't have all of the necessary CODECs (CODEC stands for COMpression DECompression) to play every format out there. Windows lets you get the CODECs for a small fee though to use with their built in Media Player.I'm here to tell you that you don't need to fork over any more money than you already have to Micro$oft. They already got you with the outrageous cost of Windows Vista and Office 2007, I think they are good for this year. I'm going to talk about a free CODEC pack, and a player that will play just about...

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Nick Burns: Company Computer Guy!

Nick Burns is my he...

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Stopping Spyware

Wikipedia defines Spyware as "...computer software that collects personal information about users without their informed consent." Some of it is worse than others. Most of it is used by marketing companies to track website usage to tailor advertisements to match your surfing habits. Others are a little more intrusive and can harm your computer.I find that a lot of people are completely oblivious to spyware, and it's affects on their computers. Most average users have only heard of antivirus, and pay no consideration to an antispyware solution. I have on numerous occasions taken calls, or went to some one's house asking me to do something about their computer running so ridiculously slow. 9 times out of 10, their systems are riddled with spyware.So...

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Stop Illegal Spying in America

For those of you who know me personally, you know I'm as right-wing as they come, but that doesn't mean I don't like my privacy. Help EFF stop Illegal Spying in Ameri...

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Flash Asteroids Game

It's kind of like asteroids from Atari except with better Graphics. I hope you like it ...

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Pimp Your iGoogle With These Greasemonkey Hacks

While surfing around Digg today, I found this post about ways to make iGooge (The personal Google Home page) pop if you use Greasemonkey! If you use iGoogle as your home page like I do, you know how ugly it can be (Especially now that they have added the navigation bar at the top!). So check out these tips, and tidy up your home page!read more | digg st...

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Tales from the TrueCrypt

I mentioned this once before in a previous post, and in that post I said I would be blogging about it a little more in depth. Well, here it is, I am blogging about it now, so you can let go of the horses your were holding.In that previous post, I mentioned that I used TrueCrypt to create an encrypted volume on my USB drive, but it can and does go way beyond that. It can create a small volume with in an existing volume like I did with my USB thumb drive, but it can also encrypt the entire thumb drive! That's right, full thumb drive encryption! It can do the same on a regular hard drive as well.TrueCrypt uses AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish encryption algorithms to secure your data, and it does it fast and on the fly so the whole process is transparent to you. Once you create your volume,...

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Super Mario Forever

So here I am sitting in my Windows 2003 Server class in school, listening to my instructor Brent jaw on and on about domain structure, and how to use the "New Trust Wizard". Blah blah blah. booooorrrinnngg! Half of you just fell asleep reading that I'm sure.So I do a little Google search for a free game to pass the time. I played some of the open source ones I told you about before, but I wanted something else. I wanted something that would take me back to me childhood. Well I found it in Super Mario Forever.After you install, you can start playing. It plays in full screen. The graphics are pretty good (better than the real Nintendo version anyways).Sure, it isn't up there with XBox, or PS3, but it certainly passes the time in Brent's server cla...

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Alternative Explorers

For many Windows users out there, one of the things they hate about it is the built in file explorer that comes with it. It is too basic, and doesn't have too many features with it. For Linux users, you already know that there are a bunch to choose from. You have thunar, nautilus, konquerer among others. Windows users, don't have too many to choose from. It actually took me a few hours of Google searching, and checking out places like SourceForge, Download.com and Softpedia before I came up with three free alternatives to Microsoft Explorer.The first one I found is ExplorerXP. It is a pretty versatile explorer program that offers tabbed file browsing, and also displays the total file size of each folder. It also features an easy to use toolbar for easy access to My Computer,...

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Starwars Help Desk

Another great Help Desk bit...

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Medieval Help Desk

Take a look at what my ancestors went through...

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Remote Administration: Tools of the Trade

For those of you out there that are system administrators, and for those of you that aspire to be system administrators, you probably know that without the ability to remotely administer a server or workstation, your life would be 100 times more difficult. Like in the early days of computers, you would physically have to move from computer to computer to do anything. They call that type of network, a "sneaker net" network because of all the walking.I am going to mention a small, yet versatile set of free utilities that let you can use for free. Originally, these tools were developed by a man named Mark Russinovich. Many in the IT community know these tools came from Sysinternals. Like, most successful software companies, Microsoft bought them out. (If you can't beat 'em buy 'em).These...

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Computer Nerd Enjoys a Brat

I know, I know, this blog is primarily for finding out about cool free software or other computer tips and tricks, but it is Saturday, and not too many people are at home or at work to read my blog anyway. If you are, great! Thanks for stopping by!So anyway, my wife and I were at the park with our daughter today, and my daughter asked if she could have a hot dog. I immediately had an idea to go to the new hamburger and hot dog joint that opened up the street from us call Windy City Beef.Now, I'm not from Chicago (Though I spent a little time up there when I was in the Navy) but I love a good hot dog, or a nice brat every once in a while. What we got, really blew me out of the water.The brat I ate was probably one of the best I have ever had. My wife, Mary, had herself a Windy City Hot Dog...

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Painting with the GIMP

How many of you out there like to take pictures? Now, keep your hands raised if you like to take those pictures and edit them to make them look better? Now, keep your hands raised if you are willing to spend $1500 for the full version of Adobe Photoshop in order to do some serious editing on those pictures and images. Why did you all put your hands down? Don't worry, I did too.I don't want to spend that kind of hard earned dough on that, frankly it isn't that important to me. I will however use a program that is free, and you should too. Like just about any program out there, there is an open source answer to it. The open source answer to Photoshop is the GIMP. (Gimp stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program). GIMP is available for Windows, MAC and of course Linux.Now, close your...

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Bauer-Power Gear!

I signed up for my own CafePress store. Now you can help support my blog and sport the latest in Bauer-Power fashion! Get your Bauer-Power gear tod...

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Adding Digg Buttons to Blog Posts

I found this little article on how to add the digg buttons to all of my posts. As you can see, there are buttons in the upper left of all my posts. The reason i can do it is thanks to this blog I found while searching Google. If you are a blog writer, and like to use digg to generate traffic to your posts, you should check out this very well written "how-to" on adding the digg button!read more | digg st...

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USB Apps: Portable Productivity

About a week or so ago, I misplaced my USB flash drive. It didn't really have anything too important on it, but I was still pretty upset. I loved that thing. It was only a 1GB drive, but that was good enough for what I used it for. Anyways, I had to get a new one, so I decided to upgrade a bit. I went out and got a 4GB flash drive, and it just came in the mail yesterday. I immediately planned out how I was going to use the additional space. I set aside 1 GB for an encrypted volume using Truecrypt (I'll blog about it later). I put a folder for miscellaneous items I need to save, or transport. Lastly, I created an applications folder. That's right, you heard correctly, an applications folder. A directory where I can place portable applications that I can run on any computer.Yesterday,...

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Bauer-Power was down: Sorry about that!

ERROR 404Page Not FoundEarlier today, my blog along with someother "blogger" blogs were down with the dreaded 404 error. Sorry about that. Not sure what went wrong there. I couldn't find any links to complain to blogger.com about it or else it may have been back up sooner. Once again, I am sor...

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Games: A Cure for Boredom at Work

Unlike most people, I don't have a lot of time to mess around. I am constantly taking phone call after phone call, or answering tickets submitted into our ticketing system all from people who have mild to serious computer issues. Every once in a while, I get the oddball call where someone wants to play a game on their PC, or install their iPod software. So I know all too well that some people out there really don't have anything better to do with their time.This post is for all you slackers out there looking to get an escape from your job through the wonderful world of video games. There are a few sites you can go to to play free flash games, and there are even free games you can download and install yourself (That is if your company gives you administrator rights, otherwise you...

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Open Source Alternative to M$ Office

I had a native American History class a few years ago at SDSU. In that class there was a lady that was also in my Natural Disasters class. We were discussing the power point slides for one of the two classes and how the instructor provided them on the school's blackboard website. The only problem was that she couldn't view them from home because she didn't have Microsoft Powerpoint at home. I of couse, felt that there was no excuse for this. Why does everyone feel that Microsoft is the begin all and end all of software? Because Microsoft has a helluva marketing team, that's why.I let her know that there was an alternative out there, and that it is free. I am talking about OpenOffice! Many people on the internet already know of this, but just as many still haven't heard the news....

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Add Bauer-Power to Yahoo!

You can also add Bauer-Power to your Yahoo home page!Click He...

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Doing the Family a Service

Since my name is Bauer, and also due to the popularity of the hit show 24 on Fox, My site has been getting a lot of hits for Jack Bauer screen savers and other 24 themes.Me being a big fan of secret agents and secret government agencies, of course I can't turn my back on the great CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) for which my own family member (Jack) works.I have stumbled across a great site with 24 desktop icons, screen savers and wallpaper. So for the fans of 24 who have showed up here looking for such things....You're welcome!Click here for 24 related computer items.Don't forget to come back though, and tell your frien...

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Break Away from Limewire

How many of you use Limewire to download music, software, videos and sometimes viruses? Millions I am sure. Limewire is a fantastic program for peer to peer file sharing. The only catch? It's not free. Limewire Pro costs $18.88. Limewire does have a light version but to get all of the good stuff, you have to pay for it.Being as how I don't like to pay for software if I don't have to, I prefer to use a different Gnutella client for my file sharing goodness. I like Frostwire, an open source Gnutella client spun off from the community of Limewire.You read that correctly. Frostwire was created by community members of Limewire? What for? Because Limewire was forced to implement copyright protection into their program to prevent you from sharing or downloading files without the proper license.Frostwire...

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Vista Light. Tastes Great, Less Annoying

Vista is out now, and it is a really pretty operating system. Lots of bells and whistles, and even less intuitiveness that ever before. It has more security features, than any previous distro from Redland. So what's the big deal?If you decided to upgrade to Vista today, you have to take a look at your current hardware. Many people would have to buy a whole new computer in order to get the full benefits that Vista has to offer. You also have to look at your current software situation. Many applications that are running on your Windows XP or Windows Vista system are not Vista compatible, so you will have to upgrade your software as well. What does that all mean? Money! You need to have a lot of money to upgrade to Vista.Like most IT guys, I'm not planning on upgrading until Microsoft gets most...

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Gmail Secure?

I am what you might call a little bit of a paranoid nut. I supposed it is because I'm in the I.T. industry, and have a mindset for security. Anyways, I am Gmail user. I love it, and everything about it. It was one of the first free POP3 systems to use TLS for e-mail clients as far as I know.Anyways, when I was looking at my Gmail account today from their web interface I noticed that it defaults to http://mail.google.com and not to httpS://mail.google.com. What does that mean? You may ask. It means your e-mail is not secured. As you know, https is used for web based SSL encryption to protect your data over the web. If you are browsing to a website with only http, you don't have any encryption to protect you. That means that the "man" can monitor your e-mail traffic coming from...

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Feel the Burn!

I don't know about you, but I'm a CD and DVD burning freek. I am constantly burning stuff. I'm always burning software, and music to CD's, and I'm always burning movies (Home movies of course), backups, and everything else to DVD. I love it, and just can't stop.Lot's of people have pay-for software like Nero or Roxio for their burning needs, but they can get kind of pricy. Seriously, if you are too cheap to buy a movie, then you probably can't afford software like Nero or Roxio anyways. Don't fret, Bauer-Power to the rescue. I'm going to tell you about two absolutley free burning programs that I use all of the time, and quite frankly, I think they work better than Nero or Roxio.The first one I will talk about it CD Burner XP Pro. This little puppy is primarily made for burning CD's...

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Print Jobs Won't Delete from the Print Queue!

Today a user called me up because she couldn't print. The problem was apparent when I went to take a look. She had a print job stuck in the queue, and the rest of her documents were lining up right behind it.I tried to delete it, but all it did was sit there saying deleting indefinitely. What the heck was going on?Lets get one thing straight, this is not going to be a freebie post on where to get free software, this is one of those tips and tricks. Lots of administrators know exactly what to do in this case, but do you?Here's what I did:1) I remoted into the print server using Remote Desktop.2) I stopped the print service ( I like the command line method: net stop spooler)3) I browsed to %systemroot%\system32\spooler\printers and deleted the stuck file in there.4) I started the service again...

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Add Bauer-Power to your Google Home Page!

For those of you who like what you see here, and keep coming back, first of all.... Thanks! Second, if you use iGoogle as your home page, you can now add my blog as a gadget!Click the "add to google" button below to add Bauer-Power as a gadget to your Google home pa...

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The iRack

whether or not you support the war, this is pretty funny...

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Don't feed the Pidgin's!

Let's dive right into the fun stuff. That's right, no pre-amble, no mumbo jumbo. Just pure unadulterated fun stuff. I'm talking about things we do on the computer for fun. There are several things right? Games, myspace, email etc. I'm going to talk about instant messaging! We all have our favorites right? My cousin and my brother like Yahoo messenger, while some of my friends prefer ICQ or IRC. Personally, I'm an MSN guy myself. So what are you supposed to do? Install three or four instant messenger clients on you computer? You can, but then they all eat up resources and eventually slow your computer down.No, the solution is to get a client that will handle multiple Instant messaging services all bundled into one client. There are...

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Printing to PDF for Free

Not everyone is a tech guru, or just a slight geek like me. Infact most people don't realize the full potential of their computers and they only do simple office tasks like read e-mail and create excel spreadsheets. That is perfectly okay!I realize that in my previous posts, you might have to be somewhat technically savvy to understand what I'm talking about. I mean, most users can barely spell FTP, let alone know what it is. I will try to throw in reviews about regular software from time to time for those out there that don't speak nerd. This blog entry is one of those reviews.Many people out there want a low cost, yet highly effective way to create PDF documents, but don't want to shell out $200 to $400 dollars to Adobe to get it done. They want to be able to easily convert their...

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