Another Phishing scam has turned up. This one poses as a credit card purchase.  A fake confirming order comes in your email with an attachment.  The attachment is a zipped file. When you download, unzip and open the “document” to read the details, your system becomes infected. I know about this scam firsthand because it […]

May 5th is Cartoonists Day.  It’s a day that draws (sorry ’bout the pun) attention to all who doodle, draw and cartoon their way through life. Comic strips and cartoons are a uniquely American art.  Cartoons have made an amazing impact on our popular culture and society in general.  Cartoons and cartoonists have shaped public […]

I stopped by my father’s house the other day, and a couple of neighbors came to the front door. They were volunteering for the area schools, going door-to-door, and getting out the word on the school levy vote coming up. Of course, they were hoping Dad would vote for the levy. I asked a few […]

As I’ve mentioned in the blog before, I use The Gimp for all my photo editing.  I use it exclusively when creating/editing all my cartoon features. The Gimp is every bit as powerful as other graphics applications and absolutely free!  You can download Gimp for Windows or Mac.  If you decide to give Linux a […]

My brother David was having some problems with his Windows computer.  He asked me what would help clean his system.  I offered a few suggestions, and hopefully, he’ll get his system back to working order. When you run Windows, you need to periodically tune and clean the system in order to make sure it’s running […]

Independence day always falls on the Fourth of July.  Christmas is always on the 25th of December.  Halloween is the 31st of October. Thanksgiving (here in the U.S.) is always the fourth Thursday of November. We’re all familiar with these dates.  They’re set in stone and occur at the same time each year. So, what […]

Personal computers are absolutely wonderful for keeping our financial household straight. There are many financial software applications available for keeping our checkbooks balanced.  (And by the way, if you’re NOT using a PC and some form of personal accounting software, you are really missing out on a terrific tool!) Over the years, I’ve used the […]

Here’s a snippet from the BBC television show Click. They review PCLinuxOS and have some very nice things to say about it. You can see the original post and review on Click’s site here. PCLinuxOS is one of the very best Linux distributions in use around the world today. It’s easy to test drive (via […]

Recently, hardware keyloggers were found on library computers in the UK.  I learned this from a post on the PCLinuxOS forums (by menotu).  You can read the article here.  You can also view a brief video from the BBC here. You might be asking yourself, “What the heck is a hardware keylogger?” A keylogger is […]

On Tuesday,  I posted a friendly reminder about lighting and protecting your computer. I needed an image for that post, and quickly turned to The Gimp to create it.  And it was easy! I first went to Deviant Art and downloaded lighting brushes for Gimp. You can get those here. Extract the file and drop […]