The personal blog of a regular guy

As you can probably guess from the title, this article is about my experience with Google’s Adsense program, which powers all the text and sometimes image ads that you see around my site. Be advised that this is not one of those “how to make a sh*tload of money from Adsense” type of literature and I’m not one of those “experts” who writes those articles. Rather this is a summary and reflection of my past 13 month experience with the program. No, I didn’t end up making a ridiculous amount of money, but the results were encouraging and better than I had hoped initially, which goes to show that even a regular Joe (or Tony, in my case) like me can make money from the internet (without doing something illegal).

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Here’s another one of my computer upgrade articles. At the time of writing my computer is almost two years old, which means it’s pretty pointless trying to upgrade a major component. However, a situation arose where I need to read files off some Flash memory cards that my digital camera didn’t support, so I waited until a sale came up and picked up a card reader to do the job. This article basically documents how I installed the card reader and it’s also sort of a photo op for the installation and a mini-review for the card reader I chose, the Sony MRW620. Installing an internal card reader is pretty simple, and there are enough photos in this article if you want to learn how to install one of these devices.

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This is a simple Photoshop tutorial on how to create a simple energy blade. Anybody with some basic knowledge of Photoshop (like me) should be able to complete this tutorial with no problems whatsoever. Keep reading to find out.

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It’s time for summer vacation now (at least for university students), and this is the perfect moment to look back upon the past school year. As you read through this article, you’ll find out what I did and did not do in my first year in university, and my thoughts and feelings for my time at school. University is certainly very different than high school, but since I didn’t flunk out, I can safely say that I have adapted to this new style of learning, at least for the first year. Read on to find out about my exciting escapades and unforgettable experiences (or lack thereof, yeah, mostly the lack thereof) during my first two terms at a post-secondary institution.

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I just spent the last two days updating and adding new material to my “venerable” guide about Super Smash Bros. for the N64. Mainly I uploaded information about the bonus target and platform stages. Yes, I know Smash is an old game on an obsolete platform, but it’s one of my favourite games and more pages may mean more traffic for me, which might translate into more dollars :-D. Oops, sorry about the daydreaming there. If you are interested, pop over to my Smash Guide and look at the third page of each character’s guides.

Even though I’m supposed to be studying like mad for my end-of-term exams, I took the time to dig around my old stuff and found a movie review I wrote back in grade 12 for film class. The review is about the horror movie The Grudge, which is an American remake of one of those typical Japanese “ghost girl” movies (ex. The Ring). It was an okay film overall, but I don’t like horror movies in general, because I’m not exactly what people would call “brave” and some horror movies make me uncomfortable.

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Ever since I built my own computer a while ago, I’ve had my fair share of computer troubles. I’ve had encounters with bad memory (both mine and the computer’s), stuck DVD drives, and also various software problems. And now after 1.5 years of operation, my computer’s power supply decided to quit on me, so I was forced to buy a replacement power supply and install it in order to get my computer working again. Here’s the documentation of this experience, from choosing which power supply to buy to actually installing the power supply.

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Recently I encountered a strange problem with Windows XP that screws up the logon process. I spent a whole night trying to figure out what the problem is a how to fix it, and I eventually prevailed. This whole experience had taught me something about troubleshooting computers, and I write this article to share my experience and also to help the people whose computers have this annoying problem.

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It’s been ages since I’ve written a real article for my personal site, and finally I managed to come up with something. This is a computer related article that chronicles my experience trying to find the right monitor. You’ll also be treated to a short review of the winning choice, the AG Neovo F419 19 inch LCD. This is not one of those professional reviews done at hardware review sites but rather just a personal judgment on the LCD panel. Unfortunately, you’ll also have to tolerate my poor photo-taking skills for the pictures in this article.

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Well, it’s that time of the year again. My first term in university is over and I seemed to have survived. I wish a happy holidays to all my visitors. I would like to write a new article but I currently have writer’s block, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to come up with something new.