Getting Started

If you already have a Gizmo5 and Skype account, go on to the next step.

First off, you’ll need a Gizmo5 Account. Gizmo5 is similar to Google Voice, except it relies more on a local program, similar to Skype (which we’ll get to in a little bit). Setting one up is really, really easy, and totally free. You’ll just need a username, password, and email (which you should have). You shouldn’t need to download the Gizmo5 program, unless you really want to. Next, if you don’t have one yet, you’ll need a Skype account. Skype is the premiere program for video and audio chat. It also supports an IM feature, although no one really uses it (except in conjunction with a video or audio chat). Go to Skype’s website, download the skype program (make sure you select the right version for your operating system), run it, and set up an account.

Setting Up Redirection

Next, we’re going to have Gizmo5 forward all incoming calls to your Skype account. This is where things get a little interesting. Go to Gizmo5′s website, click on the “My” tab, and select the “Call Forwarding” tab. Select “Forward all calls” on the left hand side, and on the right, select “Skype” and enter your Skype username. If you’d rather use your Google Talk account (Google Talk is Google’s video chat program), then you can select that instead.

Adding Gizmo5

Finally, we’re going to link your Gizmo5 account with your Google Voice account. Leaving your Gizmo5 “My” page open, open a new window/tab in your web browser and go to the Google Voice website. In the upper right hand corner, click “settings”. Then select the “Phones” tab. At the bottom of the page, click the “Add another phone” link. Enter a name that will remind you that this is the Skype forwarding number (it doesn’t have to be anything specific). For a number, you’ll need an SIP number from Gizmo5. Every account gets an SIP number. To find out what your number is, go back to the Gizmo5 “My” page. On the general settings page, you’ll see a field that says “SIP,” followed by an 11 digit phone number (it’s a 10 digit number plus a 1 digit country code). Copy this number, and enter it in the “Number” section in Google Voice”. Make sure the “Phone Type” is set to “Gizmo,” and then hit “Save.” Don’t worry about advanced settings.

Verification

Google Voice will now attempt to authorize your Gizmo phone. A window will pop up with a 2 digit number and a “Connect” button. If you don’t see this, check the “Phones” tab for the Gizmo phone you just set up. You should see a message telling you to verify it, and a link that says “Verify Now.” Click this link. If you don’t see this message or your phone, then you should try to add the phone again.

Make sure your Skype program is running, and that you are logged in, and click the “connect” button in the Verify window. Google voice will now call your Gizmo5 number (the SIP number you gave it earlier). When the call reaches Gizmo5, it should automatically redirect the call to your Skype account. When Skype detects a call and starts ringing, answer it. You’ll hear some automated woman’s voice asking you to enter your two digit verification number. Make sure you have the audio chat window selected, and just press the two digits on your keypad. I wasn’t sure how to do this at first; I had tried sending it to the google voice number via an IM chat, or by trying to dial it into Skype’s on-screen number pad, neither of which worked.

If you can’t verify your Gizmo5 account with Skype, you can alternately try downloading the Gizmo5 program and running that. You’ll need to go back to your Gizmo5 “My” page and turn off call forwarding first, and then try verifying again. You’ll receive a call through Gizmo5 asking you to verify your account. After this, you’re all finished!

Other Notes

It turns out that Gizmo5 forwards calls to your Skype account through a service called OpenSky, which is not entirely free. If you use a call for less than 3 minutes (per call, not total), you should be fine, though. I haven’t tested to see what the results are for Google Voice, so if anyone does, let me know. Regardless, I have been able to successfully make free calls to US and Canadian home phones and cell phones. How’s that for impressiveness?

How to Control Your Computer with Your iPod Touch

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z17xS9xRb8

Make sure you comment, rate it 5 stars, favorite it, or subscribe to my youtube channel. I really appreciate it. Thanks to everyone for all the hits. I love it. I owe you guys one.

Peacefire.org has a newsletter service that produces a new proxy website, or a website that allows you to browse other websites via a third party server. I use it whenever I want to visit a website that is suspicious, as a proxy hides your IP address (the third party server’s ip is used in place). It also allows browsing of websites that would normally be blocked, for whatever reason. A popular website to visit via proxys is facebook, seeing as it is blocked in public places due to the risk of people accidentally staying logged in. Myspace is also rather popular, as are most email websites.

Want to know how to set up your own proxy to run off your computer? The benefit of this is that you don’t have to deal with ads, and you don’t have to worry about the 3rd party server logging your private information. Read on to find out how to set one up.

Before you start, there are a few things that you should know. Number 1, Windows Firewall must be disabled or must allow internet connections from all the programs you’ll be installing. If the firewall blocks any part of it, you will get a message from the Circumventor Setup software, explaining how to unblock whatever is being blocked. In addition, the proxy will only work if the computer the proxy is installed on does not have any blocks on it, and is constantly connected to the internet. The computer that is being blocked will access your un-blocked computer in order to access the internet.

Ok. Here’s how to set up your very own remote proxy server, on your own computer.

1. You’ll need some software first:
   ActivePerl – This must be installed at C:Perl or it will not work.
   OpenSA - (FireFox users — please right-click and pick “Save Link As”).
   Circumventor Software – This is the software that actually
2. Install the software one at a time, starting with ActivePerl. Once again, it must be installed in C:Perl or it will not work.

   Next, install OpenSA. If you get to a screen titled “Server Information” and it doesn’t have values filled in for “Network Domain”, “Server Name” and “Administrator’s Email Address”, just fill in these boxes with made-up random values — the Circumventor software doesn’t use them.

3. Lastly, run the Circumventor-Setup.exe software. It will set up everything for you, and will allow you to actually run the proxy server. If you did it right, you will see an ”It’s ready!” page at the end of the install. If it fails, it will create a file circumventor-setup-log.txt — send that file to bennett@peacefire.org and he will try to figure out what went wrong.

So is my processor, but thats not the point. I think my hard drive is something like 5,600 rpm’s, which is slow. my computer makes up for it by having a sweet graphics card, but again, thats not the point. I hate my slow hard drive, and I wanted to fix it. Being my lazy self, though, I didn’t look into it until something popped up in my inbox today. The letter is from Tuneup, the makers of the software I use to speed up various parts of my computer. I experienced a noticable boost in load times of some applications after following their advice, and I can now copy files to and from my hard drive about 25% faster. Awesome.

How did I do it?

All these nifty speed boosts can be obtained by activating your computer’s “Cache.” Normally, your computer writes 100% of everything it needs to save directly onto the hard drive. Because hard drives can only write so fast, this slows your computer down as it waits for an accumulating list of files to be written. By using a cache, files that need to be written are saved on a portion of your RAM, so that whenever your computer is under less of a load, the files that are ‘cached’ can be written. In the mean time, your computer just keeps on going full speed ahead. Read on to see just how I did this. Be warned that this tutorial is Windows-specific. Sorry, Mac users.

Awright. Here goes nothing.

1. Open up device manager. You can do this various ways; On Windows XP, hit start, right click “My Computer,” click the “Hardware” tab, and click Device Manager. On Windows Vistas, hit start, and type in “Device Manager,” and click the “Device Manager” menu option.The way I like to do it personally is to hold down the windows key and hit R, then type in  ”devmgmt.msc” to open up the device manager. It takes like 10 seconds, and you don’t even need to use the mouse! Fancy that.
2. Find your hard drive. It should be under the “Disk Drives” section. Be warned that any flash drives or external drives that you have plugged in will also be under this section, so make sure you pick the right one. Right click this drive and click “Properties”
3. Click the “Policies” tab. Make sure that “Optimize drive for performance” is selected, unless you plan on removing the drive often (which, hopefully, you don’t). Check “Enable Write Caching” to enable caching. If you want to go a step further, check “Enable advanced performance.” Be warned that power failures are more likely to cause corrupt files with caching on, but if you’re running on a laptop (like myself) or if you have an uninterruptable power supply (a UPS), you’re fine.
4. Thats it! Go enjoy some speed. The kind on your computer.

The software you’ll need is…

• DVD 43 (free, as I said) if you’re on a pc
  OR
• Fairmount DVD Decrypter and VLC Media Player (free also) if you use a mac.
• Handbreak (also free. Isn’t it fantastic?)

Read more to continue.

Step 1: Decrypting your dvd’s.

First of all, you’ll need to install an on-the-fly DVD decrypter. What this simply means is that as SOON as you put a DVD into your computer’s DVD drive, it strips all the encryption off of it so programs like Handbrake can go to work converting them to a format that your computer can save. You literally don’t do anything. There are 2 different options, depending on if your a Mac person or a PC person (I, for one, am a PC person, but only because PC’s are clearly loads better).

For the PC folks…

DVD 43. What this does is it scans dvd drives for dvd’s, and strips any encryption off of them. You’ll know its working because its tray icon will spit out a little message when its decrypting, and you’ll see a little green smiley face when its done. How nice. From this point, you can really simply drag the files off of the DVD onto your computer, but thats not what we’re going to do for right now. DVD 43 supports most types of encryption, and is updated as new ones come out (so check their website for updates frequently). You can continue to step 3 now, or you can read the Mac section if you’d really like, although that’d be pointless.

And the Mac people…

The program Fairmount DVD Decrypter works almost exactly like DVD 43, as described above,with one exception; you need an additional piece of software, called VLC Media Player. Install this first, and Fairmount second. Fairmount runs like this; whenever you pop in a DVD, a little window that looks like a DVD getting slathered with whipped cream on it pops up, and your DVD icon turns into a removable drive icon. Simple as that. Now then, onto the fun part.

Step 2: Getting everything ready.

The next thing you’ll want to do is to install Handbreak. It used to be a Mac-only program, but by the grace of popular demand, there is now a PC version widely available as well. Handbreak used to have a nice dvd decrypter built into it, but in order to not suck at ripping DVD’s (for example, the audio and video wouldn’t sync up, so it looked like a poorly-dubbed Japanese film), it had to remove it, which is why we needed DVD 43 or Fairmount. It works now, which is what really counts.

Ok. First things first. Make sure the dvd you want to use is already loaded and decrypted (see step one if its not). Secondly, you’ll want to open up handbrake, select “Source” (its a big huge button) and select the DVD you want to rip. I will be ripping Robin Hood, Season 1, Disk 3. Best show ever, as you may have guessed. Handbrake will take about a minute or so to ‘read your source,’ which pretty much familiarizes it with everything thats on the disk (like movies, chapters, subtitles, etc). Next, go to the “Title” box and select what you think is the movie from your DVD (here’s a hint: its typically the LONGEST file, and HandBrake often selects it for you). Next, select where you want to save your new ripped movie file. I like to shove ‘em in my Videos folder, but its up to you.

Step 3: Selecting your output and ripping

Here’s the real beauty of handbrake: On the right side, pick the format that you’ll ultimately want to play your video on. I personally pick “iPhone & iPod Touch” so I can take my insanely good Robin Hood clips with me everywhere, but Apple Universal works well if you have a bunch of iPods (for whatever reason). It also sports some nice selections for popular consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360 (except the Wii, because, as we all know it has yet to spit out DVD support). When you’re done, hit start.

Handbrake will open a console window on a PC (not sure what it does on a Mac) and opens up a Queue window. Just let it go; For me, a typical movie finishes in about an hour and fifteen minutes, while a Robin Hood episode takes only 30. Thats it! Read on for some advanced tweaking.

Ripping multiple DVD’s, and ripping TV shows.

Say you want to rip a lot of DVD’s at once, but only have one drive. This is a lot easier than you’d think. First off, start by running your decrypter. Secondly, insert the first DVD you want. Put its “VIDEO_TS” folder in a folder by itself. Repete this with all the other dvd’s, and make sure the VIDEO_TS folders are separate, as they will otherwise overwrite eachother.

Then, open handbrake. Under “Source,” select “DVD/VIDEO_TS Folder” and complete the rest of the steps as you would normally. However, rather than hitting “Start,” hit “Add to Queue.” Do this with all of your dvd’s. When you’re done, hit start. It will convert all your dvd’s in the order that you queue them, and save them to the folders you told them to save to. Thats it!

The same method applies to TV show DVD’s (Like Robin Hood!). When you select ‘Source,’ select your dvd (not the ‘DVD/VIDEO_TS Folder’ option) and choose the first episode you find on your dvd (its around 30-45 minutes long). Finish the rest of the steps, and add it to your queue. Repeat this for all the episodes on your dvd. Just like that, you can rip an entire Robin Hood DVD all at once. How fantastic is that?

=GAME(“StarWars”)

And watch the fireworks. I won’t tell you what this does, but I can tell you that it has no detrimental effects to your computer, nor does it do anything visually displeasing. Just try it. Its rather entertaining, in fact.