out fox the net

Need some decent free replacement fonts for your system?

First the Redhat liberation fonts. The liberation fonts give you a free alternative Sans, Serif and Mono.

My personal favorite is the
Bitstream Vera font family. The Bitstream monospaced font is really nice in my opinion and I primarily use it with my text editor when writing html or programming code, such as PHP. With a monospaced font, columns line up since all characters are the same width and spacing. This Bitstream mono makes "Courier New" seem absurd.

A vintage gem and just what the undercover OFtN team needs!

First available in 1937, this was one of the world's first "automatic" coffee makers. This is the grandma of your gramdma's old coffee urn. You know the one that she used to setup before the bridge party...

What you say? You have no idea what I am talking about and you were born in the decade of the 80s?! Gah, kids!

You still might be able to find one here.

I get asked about what LCD computer monitors are good from time to time, so I did a little research. Here is a list of recommended LCD monitors. This list came from the Newegg site, but I can't seem to find the page any more.

• Samsung 226BW Black 22". About $325. The only complaint about it is the lack of a height adjustable stand.
• Samsung 204BW Black 20". About $250. The only complaint with this one is a poor vertical view angle. So if you stand up at your desk it might be hard to see the screen well. Really I don't know how much of a problem this is.
• Acer AL1916WAbd Black 19". About $175. People are not as happy with the stand on this one, and all around it isn't as good as the two above mentioned monitors. It is however about $100 cheaper though. Most people seem more than happy with it for the money.
• ViewSonic VG2230wm Black 22". About $310. Another 22" option. People don't like the built in speakers on this one, but few other complaints.
• Chimei CMV 221D-NBC Black 22". About $250. Budget 22" model. Some buyers mention that their monitor has minor backlight bleed (white edge fringe visible in a dark room or when displaying dark images).

In addition to the above, from what I have seen, the Dell Ultrasharp models are good. Especially these models:

• 30" 3007WFP
• 24" 2407WFP
• 20" 2007WFP

If you are still using a CRT type monitor, consider an upgrade. LCDs can offer sharper images with less eye strain. They also use less power and desk space. The quality of an image on a CRT degrades over time (very slowly) and you may not have ever noticed that things are not as sharp as they once were.

Before you upgrade make sure your computer is able to display the resolution of the LCD you select or be willing to upgrade your video card. If you don't have a DVI video output, it might also be worth a video card upgrade since the new flat panel look best drive with the digital DVI connection.

Personally I find my LCD Computer Monitor a pleasure to view compared to my old video tube.

Once upon a time I was very interested in studying herbalism and the use of herbs in holistic healing. After I developed some health problems, herbs turned out to be very helpful to me during my recovery. Even though the herbs certainly didn't "cure" me, I am convinced they played an important role in getter better faster and ending up in a better place then where I could have been.

Along with herbs I also tried out quite a few difference types of multi-vitamins and minerals. The main thing that you learn about taking minerals and vitamins is that it is a waste of money unless your body can actually absorb what you are putting into it. That makes up the basic difference between cheap and expensive vitamins - how they are formulated in order to assist your body in absorbing all of that concentrated nutrition.

So finally we have liquid vitamins. I am sure liquid vitamins have been around in one form or another for ages but they have generally not been readily available at your local health store. One brand that is making the rounds is, Eniva VIBE. The main claim that these new products offer is superior absorption.

Some of the brands are extremely expensive, so you might consider buying a small sample size to see what types of results you can expect. Personally I notice a difference in changing vitamins right away, but I am not sure that is true for everyone.

Liquid Vitamin Nutrition Facts from your leader is random topics, OFtN.

Today, June 28, 2007 at about 5pm, Out Fox the Net enjoyed its 100,000 page view. Thanks for everyone who has come to visit.

OFtN (Out Fox the Net) started about 2 ½ years ago. Here is how it happened.

I met someone online who was interested in a certain web based marketing tool. Being a programmer and having been involved with the web for a long time, I understood just what he wanted and why. In essence the tool, when given a list of websites, would determine and rank which of them were most popular i.e. had the most traffic, highest page rank etc. I registered the OFtN domain and put the tool up in a password protected area.

The guy was very happy with it and suggested that we open a “for pay” service with it. That didn’t sound like a bad idea at all so I started to develop a better interface for it and some supplementary tools to go along with it. That also was working out pretty well until one day…

…completely out of the blue, the guy accused me of “stealing” his ideas and cutting him out of the business he had developed… and on a public message board we both visited frequently. Total paranoid delusions coming from this guy who had been so friendly up until then. Keep in mind that no one except he and I had ever even seen the tool at that point – it was never opened to the public and hadn’t made 1 cent.

Well anyway, to cut a short story short, I posted a calm reply and told him I was done working on the project and was returning “his precious ideas” unused.

But I still had the domain and nothing to do with it.

Over the next year or so, I would occasionally come up with an idea and make a half-hearted attempt at implementing it. Webmasters tools, news aggregator and nothing much of interest.

And then. I bought World of Warcraft.

After disappearing into WoW for several months I came back with some unique techniques for making money in the game. Hmm, Out Fox the Net and crazy money making scams, hmm, goes together like peanut butter and chocolate.

So I wrote up my World of Warcraft money making guide and posted about it on the official WoW web forums. Bam, 100 people showed up and read every page. Then people started to link to it from their guild boards.

Then it got 'ed.

Then it got posted to Digg.

Then Dan Hunter from Terranova contacted me to do an interview.

Then a BBC reporter contacted me to collect information for an article.

Final run down:

• Age of Site: 2 ½ years
• Unique visitors: 27,856
• Page Views: 100,004
• Time spent correcting spelling mistakes: 312 hours
• Number of times site has been completely deleted: 3
• Most unusual visitor location: Greenland
• Number of pages average visitor reads: 3.6

The site has cost me about $239.85 in domain name registration and web hosting costs. Altogether I have made about $196.38 from it.

Prices exclude my blood, sweat and tears