Tutorial: How to make Google Translate beatbox

Thanks to the listen button on Google Translate, you can listen to a computer pronounce foreign languages.

What’s even more awesome about this button is, that with the right sequence of letters, you can turn it into a beatboxing machine. Here’s how:

1. Go to translate.google.com
2. Enter this text into the box:pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk
3. Change “From” language to German. important.
4. Press the speaker icon.
5. Sit back and enjoy

Help! I have a project due tomorrow and I haven’t started!

We’ve all done this before. It’s 8:00pm on a Sunday, the night before a big project is due. You haven’t started the project, or you’re only halfway through, because you’ve been battling your way through a League of Legends or MW3 tournament. What do you do now?

The procrastinators will start the project right away, working their way through the night and through three Monsters and countless cups of coffee. The truly lazy, nerdy, and risk-taking student, however, will use The Document Corrupter without a second thought. It’s a simple process. You upload your unfinished essay or research paper to the website, and it will spit out a corrupt document that you can take to your teacher and complain.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that your teacher will give you an extra day, so use at your own risk!

Website: http://neddyy.net/docs/

Four tips on getting the most out of your scroll wheel

Most of you who have a computer mouse probably use the scroll wheel to go up and down long web pages such as this one. It’s a godsend to the world of technology, but even so, it is oft neglected. You can show your scroll wheel how much you appreciate it in three easy ways:

1. Use it to open a new tab

The obvious way to open a new tab would be to click that + sign, but did you know you can open a new tab simply by middle-clicking on the empty space to the right of the “+”? It’s amazing, try it out! And yes, it works on browsers other than Firefox.

2. Use it to close a tab

Similarly to #1, middle-clicking on a tab will close it. No more mousing over a tab and trying to find the X.

3. Open links in a new tab

Mouse over a link, and middle-click on it. It will open in a new tab. No more right click -> Open in new tab!

And last but not least…

4. Open a new window

(For Windows users only)

Normally, you would open a new application window by left-clicking or doing right-click -> Open New Window. The middle mouse button replaces the latter. Middle-click on an application icon, and it will open a new window.

Taking time to appreciate the scroll wheel will increase your happiness and decrease your stress. Now that you know what it can do for you, use it to its full potential!

How to present your PowerPoint … in style

By the time you graduate from college, you will probably have made over 100 Power Point presentations, mostly on Microsoft PowerPoint software. Unfortunately, many of us students go through our academic and work lives having to start a presentation in 3 steps:

1. Opening the folder that the file is in
2. Opening the file
3. Clicking “Start Presentation”

Did you know there’s a way to avoid Step 3? At the end of the filename, simply change the extension to .pps. When you click on the filename.pps, it will start your presentation without viewing the ugly PowerPoint editing GUI. Amazing!

NOTE: Changing the extension to .pps will not allow you to edit the presentation. If  you wish to edit the presentation, just change the extension back to .ppt or .pptx!

Making the most of your USB: Autorun.inf

Does that window look familiar? Ever wish you could customize it with options such as:

• opening a file,
• opening a website, or
• running a program?

Guess what?

You can. And here’s how!

Need a good screen dimmer? Try PangoBright

I’ve found myself stuck in many situations where my laptop screen is too bright for my eyes, and yet the brightness is as low as it can go. Up until recently I’ve tried to work around it, including wearing sunglasses at the computer (tip: that doesn’t really help.)

Then, I discovered a utility called PangoBright. While it cannot call your neighbor or help you hack into the FBI’s private files, it does one thing very well, and that is making your screen darker than its lowest setting. It’s a cinch to install, starts up in less than a second, and takes up very little space on your hard drive.

There are some annoying visual artifacts though: portions of your screen will become undimmed when you perform certain tasks, such as switching windows. And since the dimmer directly affects the display and not the backlight, your screen will start losing color intensity at the lower settings. Other than that, the program is simple to use and I recommend it for anyone who suffers from SOBS (Screen Over-Brightness Syndrome.)

Grab it

Link: http://www.pangobright.com/

Platforms: Windows only

Pro tip: Using 100% of your tab button

Recognize that? It’s the infamous tab button on your keyboard. You’ve probably used it for two things: indenting paragraphs and filling out forms without using the mouse. Today, we’ll focus on the filling-out-the-forms part.

Ever wonder why your TAB button has two arrows, one going backwards and one going forwards? It has a double function. If you’ve only used it to go to the next field or text box in a form, you’re missing out on 50% of its functionality.

The other 50% is it’s ability to go backwards through text boxes and fields. How do we harness this awesome power?

Shift + TAB

Give it a try next time you’re filling out a giant, ugly form. After you start using it, you’ll never stop.

Stay safe! Know where that short-URL goes!

Someone sends a link, comments on your Facebook post, or you see an interesting link somewhere on the interwebs, but it’s that annoying bit.ly or is.gd link. Is it absolutely safe to click, or could it infect your computer with viruses?

Getting rid of the cobwebs

Over the span of four years, my bookmarks have become VERY cluttered. Like that picture on the left, my bookmarks were all haphazardly stuffed into one bulging folder. Luckily, I had the URLs and website names of my favorite websites memorized, but when time came to make use of a site that I had cached away in my bookmarks, it was nearly impossible to do so. Even with the search features of Firefox, the sheer amount of bookmarks hurt my eyes.

Messing with the Flesch-Kincaid grade level test

If you have just written an essay or story on Microsoft Word, you can go to Word Options -> Proofing -> When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, and check the show readability statistics. The next time you spell-check your document (F7), a window will pop up. Notice the following:

The Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level indicate exactly what they say. Reading ease is a score out of 100. The lower the score, the harder it is for the average person to read the document. The Flesch-Kincaid grade level represents the number of years required to comprehend the text.

Now, you might be wondering, “how in the world does my computer come up with these numbers?” Like any operation on your computer, it processes your document through an algorithm, and spits out a number. There are several variables used in determining the grade level of a document. Let’s take a look at the formula: