Entanglement – A New Twist In Online Gaming

You have to give this game a try.  It is called Entanglement and you play it in your web browser.

I was not able to find any specific instructions, but once you play around with it you will become submersed in the gameplay.  It may have something to do with the mesmerizing background music and the fact that Entanglement is just plain challenging (and fun).

The game looks like a honeycomb and if you notice in the above graphic of Entanglement you will see a gray hexagon area and a brownish red hexagon area (called the wall). The gray area is the playing area where you will receive tiles with squiggly lines (called paths) on them. When you receive a tile you can rotate the tiles with your mouse scroll wheel or the arrow keys on your keyboard. The objective is to connect the squiggly lines on the tiles to create a path and not come in contact with the red hexagon area (called the wall). Points are accumulated as you play. This game is new to me and I am still learning, but I have found it is not easy and requires strategic thinking on your part.  Really tests my short attention span : )

Note: Entanglement is engineered using HTML5. That means you will need an HTML5 compatible browser (such as the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari or the beta of Internet Explorer 9).

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Notice to Readers – Geek Squeaks’ of the Week

For the past 98 weeks (consecutively) I have posted Geek Squeaks’ of the Week, which was comprised of recent links to articles that were drafted by the members of the What’s On My PC blogroll…

I have thoroughly enjoyed researching and making the deadline for this weekly posting; however, I do believe it is time for a change in the venue. I do have an idea in mind in how to use the term “Geek Squeak” to promote articles that are posted by my fellow bloggers; however, we will see how this pans out. I have great admiration in what articles my fellow bloggers present and often like to post linkbacks to their articles.  This will continue, just in a different way!

Blogging is all about learning and believe me I have learned a lot about writing, computers and discipline that has ultimately benefited me in my everyday life.

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Shutdown, Sleep, Restart or Logoff Your Computer Using the Keyboard

Did you know that there are built in keyboard shortcuts that you can use to shutdown, sleep, restart or logoff your Windows computer?  Well, there are, and they are good to remember in the event the mouse becomes unresponsive. The keyboard shortcuts differ between Windows XP and Windows Vista/Windows 7; however, the initial key press for all of these shortcuts commands are dependent on the Windows key (which is located to the left of the spacebar that displays the Windows Logo on the key).

For Windows XP:

SHUTDOWN – press the WINDOWS KEY and the letter “U” twice

RESTART – press the WINDOWS KEY, then the letter  “U” once and  then the letter “R” once

LOGOFF – press the WINDOWS KEY and the letter  “L” twice

SLEEP – press the WINDOWS KEY and the letter “U” once and the letter “S” once

For Windows Vista/Windows 7:

SHUTDOWN – press the WINDOWS KEY, then press the RIGHT ARROW key three times and the letter “U” to shut down

RESTART – press the WINDOWS KEY, then press the RIGHT ARROW key three times and the letter “R”

LOGOFF – press the WINDOWS KEY then press the RIGHT ARROW key three times and the letter “L”

SLEEP – press the WINDOWS KEY, then press the RIGHT ARROW key three times and the letter “S”

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A Treemap Visualization of the Daily News

If you are a computer person then you most likely heard of treemap visualizations to view hard disk usage statistics. One such example that comes to mind is WinDirStat. This article is not about WinDirStat, but is about an online application, called Newsmap, that gathers vast amounts of news articles (from the Google News Aggregator) and presents the news in a treemap visualization format. The power of this is that you can visually take in more information and readily pick out, from the treemap, what news has been given the most coverage. Newsmap has become one of my daily reads and is very easy to learn and use.

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.

A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap‘s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

Newsmap can be customized for your personal use to display news from various countries and can be further personalized to provide news from specific news categories (such as world news, business news, sports, entertainment, health, technology, etc.)

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Wallpaper of the Week (#4)

This week’s wallpaper is something that is bright and cheerful that will get you out of the wintertime blues.  It is called fine-mellow…

You can get this wallpaper by clicking on the image below.

Need wallpaper software to show off your wallpaper collection? Try one of these:

John’s Background Switcher

Walyk Wallpaper Changer

Wallpaper Updater

Windows 7 Users: If you are using Windows 7, did you know you can create a desktop background slideshow to show off your pictures and wallpaper images?  To learn how to use this feature [ CLICK HERE ] .

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Gain Added Protection On Your PC with Immunet

Bill Mullins’ at Tech Thoughts, who was actually one of the people to get me started in blogging, recently posted an article about an exciting security product called Immunet 3.0, that I encourage you to read.

I’m not going to get into great detail about Immunet because I want you to read Bill’s article first; but, I will tell you this, I installed Immunet on all of my PC’s; AND what is so cool about this security application (that will help protect your PC) is that it is a “companion security product”.  What this means is that it is engineered to run alongside your other security products. For example, I am now using Immunet alongside Microsoft Security Essentials, which is my primary level of protection. From my initial testing I can’t even tell it is on my system due it uses miminal system resources. My gut is telling me that this is definitely a security product to consider.

If you want good insight on this security product (which is totally FREE), read Bill’s article about Immunet 3.0 [ HERE ] .

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A Cool Site to Test the Strength of Your Passwords

A hot subject with me here of late is people and their passwords. I have been in the world of computing for years and to this day people still are using weak passwords. As a matter of fact, I recently was assisting someone with their computer and they forgot a password to a program they were using. After some basic questioning, I was able  through the process of deduction to guess the password and access the program. They really thought I had done something magical, when in fact the only magic was me knowing that the great majority of people use simple passwords and it is something that usually relates to the profile of the person. Knowing what I know when it comes to people and their passwords, it is common practice for people to write their passwords down (which can be a good thing); but, the bad with this is that they will post the password list in the vicinity of their computer. It is the same mentality as hiding your house key under the door mat. When I was managing a network, if I came across a post-it note attached to the users computer monitor or desk with a password, I would deliberately take the post-it note with the hope the user would call me to gain access to their computer. When they did call, an education they did receive.

If you want to know how weak or strong your passwords are, click on the graphic below and you will be directed to the site, “How Secure Is My Password?” The objective of this site is to point out that if you use words typically found in the dictionary, you will eventually become a victim where your account (or accounts) will be compromised. In all of my years of computing, this is TRUE!; especially if your accounts are internet based.

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