What you will need to create a foggy grave site for Halloween.

• Fog Machine
• Cooler
• Small Fan
• PVC Pipe
• Drill
• Caulk
• Wire Mesh

To make the fog stay lower to the ground, we attempt to chill the fog by using the cooler. We will run the fog through the cooler through a tunnel of ice to cool the fog.

I used the basic 400w fog machine. I bought the fog machine at Halloween USA for $29, with a gallon of fog juice for $10. I am sure you could find one even cheaper right after Halloween.

I used a basic 38-quart cooler with wheels. (Igloo Wheelie Cool). It just happened to be the cooler I had available. I didn’t want to buy a new cooler to drill holes into so I opted to use our old cooler for this project.

I used 2 inch PVC pipe for the fog inlet and outlet ports. So I drilled about a 2 ½ inch hole on opposite ends of the cooler.

I then pushed in the PVC pipe so about 2 inches of the pipe was sticking into the cooler and out of the cooler. I did this on both ends of the cooler.

Then take your wire mess and cut it the length of the inside of the cooler so that it overlaps the PVC on the inside, this will give you plenty of room to secure down the wire mesh. The wire mesh will be wrapped into the shape of the pipe and secured down with some pipe clamps.

Once I had the pipe just how I wanted I sealed up the ends of the PVC around the cooler with a little bit of caulk to keep the fog from escaping out the small gaps. (The fog will escape out any exit it can find). So the better you can seal it the better your fog contraption will work.

Now I took a 2 inch 90 degree elbow and curved the pipe up and around to the top of the cooler so I could place the fog machine on top of the cooler. You could just leave the fog machine on the ground next to the cooler and pump it straight in as well. I wanted to have my fog machine sit on top, just to keep the whole setup more compact.

The final pipe setup looks like the picture below.

I used the 400 watt fog machine with a fog timer. This setup lets you adjust the duration and interval of the fog bursts. A 400 watt fog machine needs time to reheat before running a fog burst. The timer allows you to set the length of the burst, instead of just running until the heater needs to re-heat. It also allows you to set the interval between bursts.

This enables a more consistent flow of fog. I was able to improve this flow quite a bit more by adding the 12 volt CPU fan just inside the PVC pipe at the outlet of the pipe. The fan really helped keep the fog moving more consistently through the system. Since much of the fog will stay inside the pipes between fog bursts, the fan would suck out this spare fog between the bursts to keep at least a small flow of fog running though the pipes.

The cooler, when it is filled with ice. You can see the pipe on the left side is turned to open the lid. This is why it is a good idea leave all the pipe loose so you can move it around as needed. It is still tight enough so the fog does not seep out any of the joints.

Running the fog machine through the cooler before the grave site pipe is installed.

Now time to create the grave piping.

For the fog outlet from the cooler I used 2 90 degree elbows to bring the pipe down so it was just below the level of the ground. I kept all the joints loose to allow for easy adjustments. I used a 2 inch to ½ inch reducer to run to the grid used for the grave site. Then a 2 foot long ½ PVC pipe came from the reducer. I drilled holes into the 2nd half of this pipe.

Then I placed T-joints about every foot and added pieces of ½ PVC to each t-joint with a cap on the end. I also drilled holes in each of these pieces. This grid can really be whatever size you need for your area. My grave was a little bit smaller than an actually grave just so it would fit in the space I wanted.

Once the grid was complete I buried under about an inch of mulch to cover all the piping. I placed a headstone at the end of the grave site The headstone helped to hide the fog machine and cooler.

Now turn on the fog machine and the fan, and watch your grave come to life!

Please leave some comments below!

a

1. The data is stored in the windows registry. Navigate to:
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\PersistentRoutes
3. Export this key and save the .reg file.
4. Copy this file over to the new computer.
5. Double-click on the .reg file on the new computer and it will enter the data into the registry.
6. Open up a command prompt and type “route print”, and you will see your persistent routes are all there.

a

Then all you need to do is type start -> run and type “hosts.vbs” and it will fire up your windows hosts file inside notepad

Set Sh = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
On Error Resume Next
sOStype = Sh.RegRead(_
"HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions\ProductType")
If Err.Number<>0 Then
Wscript.Echo " This doesn't appear to be an NT-like operating system;" _
& vbcrlf & "on Win9x use sysedit or msconfig."
Else
Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
dirConfPath = "%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\"
On Error Resume Next
Sh.Run "Notepad " & dirConfPath & "drivers\etc\hosts"
End If

a

A computer in the Kitchen? Lets face it…for many of us the internet is now one of the basic food groups. We need some each and every day to stay healthy.

Finally made the plunge and put a PC in the kitchen. I liked the idea, but I don’t want it to look cluttered. Look at all the cords on the average desktop, stunning really.

A refurbished Dell came up with everything I wanted on it.

• 4 GB Ram
• TV Tuner Card
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• 64 bit Vista

I figured I saved about $200 by going refurbished, and with the 1 year warranty, I didn’t really have any worried about the refurbished status. Downside is you don’t get to pick exactly what you want on it, but I thought it was a fair trade off. Total shipped price for it was $571.33

Picked up a separate Dell 19″ wide screen for $100, and added a wireless keyboard and mouse and I was ready to roll.

So far I am happy with it, I find we are watching TV on it a lot, even though on the other side of the room  is a 42″ screen…but its more convenient to flip it on in the morning while in the kitchen. The media center features are very nice to have, we’ve never had any kind of DVR before, so it is quite fun to pause and record things. My kids think its amazing!

Please leave a comment if you have a PC in the kitchen, and how you use it and how you might keep your cords to a minimum.

a

Have it perform some simple tasks before shutting down your system for the day.

I have made a simple batch file to run a system defrag, then make a registry backup before shutting down the system for the night.

Here is what the batch file looks like:

defrag C:
regedit /e c:\regbackup.reg
shutdown -s

Save the file as myshutdown.cmd (or anything you want), save it somewhere on your drive, then you can make a shortcut to the file on the desktop.

Then right click on the new shortcut on your desktop and change the icon to look like the shutdown icon.

So now at the end of the day, activate your new shutdown command and it will  defrag your drive, create a registry backup and shutdown your computer.

If you can think of any other maintenance tasks to add to the shutdown script, leave a comment and maybe it can be added in to make the ultimate shutdown command.

a

Another reason to get rid of you Acrobat Reader… SECURITY!

The Foxit Reader can be downloaded for free from Foxit Software

Also, in case you are wondering. Foxit reader will look similar to your old friend Adobe Reader, see the screen shot below.

a

I think I even said out loud…wow Google is hacked! I had to look closer for a second, then I realized it was their Valentines day logo, but it looks a bit menancing to me…

a

network setup before

I’ve been meaning to move around my basement “network” setup for sometime. All my equipment has just been sitting on a table in the back room. I used to actually sit at the table and work at the server, but I rarely ever need to be “on” the server. (love remote desktop!)

So finally changed it up. I think the new setup creates more space, makes for easier access, and probably a little better cooling too.

Setup: Cable comes into the house, and into the Linksys cable modem (a very old cable modem, running software 1.1.5 r2) . From there it goes into my Linksys N router. The router goes to a network printer (Brother HL-2070), and into my 2004 “Server”, which is a Dell Dimension 2400 Celeron 2.4 Ghz  (I just upgraded the RAM to 1GB from 512!). There is also a Fantom external USB drive connected to the server.

Another network cable goes up to the Kitchen PC. And the rest of the home feeds from the wireless signal, this includes 3 laptops, a Wii, and a Dell Axim.

Now everything is easy to get to and with the vents in the shelving, the air flow is much better too.

network setup after

a

You’ll get the Amish mantel for just $298, and the heater is FREE

Say again? Yes over and over during the infomercial they mention the free heaters. They say the offer is SO good, they are limiting it to 2 orders per family. Do people actually fall for this?

I love the video showing the Amish making the cabinets.

screen shot of video showing Amish hard at work

“…The wood is made from solid pieces including solid wood, plywood and poplar as well as solid trim components…”

Yes, it is a nice looking heater, but please don’t say over and over on the TV ad (which is different from the YouTube version above) that you are giving away free heaters!

a

This will enable you to import your order information into PayPal for printing shipping labels. Avoid re-typing the information into Paypal, saving time and preventing data entry errors. This will not make any changes to your database. Once exported, it is very simple import into the PayPal multi-order shipping module.

I honestly do not think we could run the same volume of shipping we do without this export to PayPal feature. It really saves a TON of time.

There are 2 options, export all orders with the status of “processing”, or export all orders for a certain date.

It creates a simple CSV file which includes the order number as well as the delivery address for the order. The export also normalizes the data to correct for proper capitalization, so if the user enter everything in all caps or all lower caps it will correct this for the shipping label.

I am looking for a few people to test before I release, please contact me if this is something you would be interested in trying.

a

• DVD Video NTSC (mpg)
• DVD Video PAL (mpg)
• MPEG-I (mpg)
• MPED-II (mpg)
• Flash Video Movie (flv)
• Mobile Phone MPEG-4 (mp4)
• AVI Movie (avi)
• Windows Media WMV (wmv)
• MP4 Movie (mp4)
• Wave Audio (wav)

The most important one to me is the FLV conversion. Just about any video you wish to put on the web works great in FLV.  Or if you have an FLV and want to edit the file in Windows Movie Maker, just convert it to AVI, or WMV, bingo.

Look at the screen shot below to see all the options you have when converting. (this is the flash file options)

There is a free version and a paid version of the Any Video Converter software. So far the free version has been able to do everything I need without any problems. I would highly recommend this program for your video conversion needs.

Also did I mention that you can pull out video directly from You Tube? Yes, it will do that as well.

a

Click on that and you will bring up the simple window. Here you can choose your address group, and it will extract them all into a nice format that can be copied to the clipboard, and used for whatever you wish. Perfect for exporting into an external email list tool, or newsletter software.

You can get the free Outlook Email extractor/exporter utility here.

a