Lil Hamsters Ready for New Families!

Greetings! We are pleased to announce that our baby hamsters are ready to find new, loving families to live with.

We will be relocating them by January 4th (you may pick them up then or earlier.)

**Please remember you will need to actually bring at least a cage, water system (bottle or bowl) and a wheel for your new hamster. Those three things are your "coupon" for a $3 hamster :)

We will be releasing 1 hamster per cage. You may purchase as many as you'd like, just let us know how many to hold, and what type.

Text us for further inquiries: (661) 513-3792

**Hamsters must be accounted for by end of day on Jan 2. We will confirm you selection the same day. You may specify which type you would like, or just make an appointment. Then you may pick them up on or before January 4th.

Please see the video for colors. We will try our best to determine which are male and which are female. We make no guarantees and you are welcome to take your pick once you see them for yourselves :)

How to Make Bullet Points Smaller Font in Kingsoft Writer

In Kingsoft Office/Writer 2013, if you are getting huge bullet points (compared to MS Word, for example) here's how to fix that:

1. Right-click on the offending bullet point
2. Click Bullets and Numbering
3. Click Customize
4. In the "Customize Outline Numbered List" window, select Font
5. If you are writing in text font size 14, try size 8 for the bullet points. Where it says Size on the top level, select 8.
6. Select OK and exit all windows accordingly

How to Create a Playlist in VLC

For this guide, I will assume you already have a folder with correctly numbered VLC-playable videos.

1. Add one of the videos to VLC (you can just play it, or select VLC first as default if not already done so.)
2. At the bottom of the VLC window, you should see a Play button (basically a triangle pointing sideways.) To the right of that, click the little icon that has a bullet-point and list. If you hover your mouse, it will likely say "playlist."
3. Click that.
4. Now you are in the Playlist mode. Add your other videos. If they arrive out of order, you may sort them. To do so, click along the top row where it says, "Title." There are other options to sort, such as by duration and ID. You may get even more by right-clicking along the aforementioned row.
5. Then click, along the top-most bar, "Media" then "Save Playlist to File." Choose a location where you want to be able to click-and-run the file. 
6. Done!

[Using VLC 2 and Windows 8]

How to Download Udacity Educational Videos and Skip Quizzes

Udacity is a great place to learn computer-science related topics. Sometimes the quizzes get in the way, however, and you don't want the playlist to pause every time. Here's the link to get around that -

https://www.udacity.com/wiki/downloads

As you can see it's perfectly legal and they're cool enough to provide it to everyone.

Let's look at how to download, and which files are necessary:

Downloads are separated into Units, Problem Sets, Office Hours and Subtitles. For an example of what I mean, check out the great Computer Science If you are only looking for the main part of the course, only page here: https://www.udacity.com/wiki/cs101/downloads#units

If you are only looking for the pain part of the course - the video series, then only download the Units. Unfortunately, as far as I know, you have to download the Units one by one, of which for the CS101 course, for example, there are 11.

[As of writing, I did look for a complete DL from PirateBay and Kickass torrents, but none are available for the term "Udacity."]

If you have downloaded all the Units, then that is great for a general overview. In CS101, I only want the overview, because I am learning Ruby on Rails, not Python. However the CS concepts are similar, so I watch them anyway for the main points.

The Problem sets are like homework. Haven't yet checked out "Office Hours," but if you have, please mention what they are in the comments! I'm guessing it's just Q&A of popular questions from Udacity students.

If you want to take the courses with quizzes etc., just head over to Udacity!

How To Skip Pandora Video Ads on iPhone

Using iOS 7 and the latest Pandora of today, here's how to skip those annoying video ads.

1. When an ad comes on (the video type which hijacks your screen), pull the top-view down (as if checking old text messages etc.)
2. With your finger still having control of the pull-down screen, keep it down near the bottom of the screen, hovering. DO NOT let go of the pull-down screen.
3. The ad should go away at this point.

How to solve “undefined method `title' for nil:NilClass” in Rails Tutorial

If you are following http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html or similar, you may get the awful  “undefined method `title' for nil:NilClass” problem. In that case, just go over to app\controllers\post_controllers.rb and put all "private" headers at the bottom. For example, if you have,

private
      def post_params
        params.require(:post).permit(:title, :text)
      end

which you should, as it's part of the tutorial, then make sure this block, and any others that say anything about being private, as far down the column as possible. Here's how mine ended up looking afterward:

class PostsController < ApplicationController

    def new
    end

    def create
      @post = Post.new(post_params)

      @post.save
      redirect_to @post
    end

    def show
      @post = Post.find(params[:id])
    end

    private
      def post_params
        params.require(:post).permit(:title, :text)
      end
    end

--
Condensed from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17810348/undefined-method-title-for-nilnilclass-rails-guides-tutoraial

How To Use An Oven to Save A Water-Damaged iPhone

I've put my iPhone in the oven two times now, all in the name of saving it from water damage. It's worked perfectly both times with no adverse affects.

Please note, I take no responsibility if something goes horribly, horribly wrong with your phone. I've used this on my iPhone 4. Here's how.

Get a container you can put in the oven (glassware is great.) Put a bunch of rice in there (enough to cover a phone.) Turn off the iPhone (doesn't matter if battery is charged or not, I've tried it both ways), and make sure to take off any case (except those clear sticker cases, which are ok) and stick the iPhone in there so that it is completely covered in the rice, INCLUDING ON THE BOTTOM. You do not want your iPhone touching anything but rice. I suggest white rice, but not sure if any other type would be bad. This will prevent the hotter-to-the-touch glass from contacting the phone.

So stick your phone in the oven and turn it on. I have used convection and normal bake modes. Honestly I think the convection method worked better. If you don't have that, the normal mode should be ok. Set it to the lowest temperature, which is for me 170 degrees. I'd suggest not over 180. 200 is an absolute keep-your-fingers-crossed maximum, for my money.

How long? I'd say increments of 20 minutes. Once I forgot it and it was in there for 40 minutes straight. No worries, but stay on the safe side. Just check it out, make sure battery acid hasn't exploded everywhere (or, that it's not TOO hot to the touch; it should be kinda hot like you left it in the sun a long time, but you should still be able to handle it.) Unless you dropped it in the toilet or some other embarrassing thing, the phone should be good to go after 20 to 30 minutes, depending on convection methods etc.

How do I feel comfortable doing this?
I have been in the sauna at the gym before, where it gets up to 180 degrees. The worst thing that happened is my phone showed a exclamation point warning and locked the phone until it cooled down. For the iPhone in oven method, just turn it off, then wait for it to cool down before using.

To cool down your phone: DO NOT stick it in the freezer or refrigerator. There be moisture in there. You can let it cool down on its own, or take it in your hands and let the heat transfer away to you.

Why rice?
Rice has natural drying properties. Some water damage phone guides say to use only rice, but that is unnecessarily long.

The problems I solved with my phone:
One time when it was really damaged and showed only some strange blue screen with garbled colors.
Another time (today, actually) when it was possessed (by water), and it was doing all sorts of random home-button functions (mostly sending me to Voice Control or whatever it's called.
 

Any questions, I'm happy to answer.