TheSa|nt's Blog

Here is a collection of free transparent wallpapers for the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) lock screen. This gallery will be updated as new images become available.

Instructions: To set one as your wallpaper you must click on a thumbnail to view an image, save the image to your PC. Send your an email from your PC to your cellphone with the image attached. Once the email/attachment has been loaded, click to open the attachment. Touch and hold the screen until the menu pops up. Set as your wallpaper and your ready to go!

Note: Won’t see transparency apparently if you use a password on your lock screen. Only for regular slide to unlock. Also, Mango does not support transparent wallpapers so if you upgrade, you will lose this feature (least of your worries though…).

Wallpapers brought to you by http://www.pocnetwork.net

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A while back I had written something that found it’s way into a magazine (in Europe of all places). The advice it offered wound up helping friends and certain family, and I thought I would open it to the public.

This is a simple eBook that gets right to the point when it comes to relationships. It offers a number of points in which can help find the right relationship or strengthen the one you have now.

The price is simple (it’s only $0.99 cents).  Click the buy now button and you will be taken to paypal. Upon completion, you will be brought to where you can download it via a unique link.

Thank you, and I hope you find it useful.

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Author: Evan Ackerman (DVice) and TheSa|nt (me, heh)

Bacteria are clever little buggers. Every time we hit them with a new drug that kills 99.9% of them, that left-over 0.01% regroups and breeds and we’re back to square one. We’re going to run out of drugs before the bacteria run out of evolution — which means we need some new weapons in our arsenal.

IBM Research and Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have teamed up to develop a self-assembling nanoparticle that can selectively seek out and destroy even the most drug-resistant bacteria by not trying to do anything clever with chemicals or DNA and instead just ripping the bacterial walls to shreds. It’s a bit like an old school Terminator’s approach: show up in a human outpost with a bunch of guns and just start shooting everything.

They’ve been testing out these nanoparticles on MRSA, a highly drug-resistant bacteria that kills tens of thousands of people in hospitals every year, and, well, here’s a before and after pic of what happens when the nanomedicine gets sent after the MRSA bacteria:

Brutal.

The nanoparticles are made of plastic, and when they’re injected into the bloodstream, they self-assemble into blobs about 200 nanometers across. These blobs have a slight positive charge, and are attracted only to bacteria, which have a negative charge that differs from all the other cells in our bodies. The nanoblobs stick to bacterial membranes, and poke big holes in them, and then all those bacterial guts just spill out and bacterial DEATH ensues. Then, the nanoblob can move on to attack another bacteria.

Since each nanoblob can kill multiple bacterial cells, you don’t need to use it in high concentrations. And after a few days, the nanoparticles naturally break down into little building blocks of alcohol and carbon dioxide, and your body removes them on its own with no toxic chemicals to worry about.

Now, I don’t know if we can say that nanotech methods like this will spell the end for evil bacteria; there’s always the threat of newly evolved defenses like stronger cell walls or maybe a change to electric charge that would make the bacteria blend in with our own cells. In any case, targeting and attacking the bacteria physically seems to be an extremely promising way of dealing with infections, and the next step is for IBM to figure out how to get their nanoparticles into human-safe testing.

I personally am amused by this. I was wondering when the day will come that we start testing such technology. As much as I fear the rebellion of tech against humans (joke…kind of), I have a mother who has Fibromyalgia who would benefit from this greatly if it leads to something she could use. One tech always opens doors for other possibilities. So I am on board with rooting for this one! “Go IBM!!”

Well I went ahead and bit the bullet and bought a Windows Phone 7….phone. It’s the HTC Surround from AT&T, and I have to admit I am impressed. I have my disappointments but I also understand that Windows Phone 7 isn’t for an extreme techy who likes to treat their phone as more than just a phone/media device.

I like the OS for it’s speed, it’s ability to really take a load while showing little to no lag what’s so ever and it’s deep advantages in multimedia. The is very reliable and so far hasn’t crashed on me. Only certain apps have done something weird here and there (ie Marketplace) but it didn’t effect the OS. It feels very stable, extremely speedy and user friendly.

The user-interface also feels (visually) very happy (unlike the iPhone). Oh, and the GPS (at least on the HTC Surround) is VERY accurate. I was in the dead center of a casino with a giant tower of hotel rooms right above my head and it picked up my exact location. I didn’t have to stand outside and hope it’s not too cloudy or anything. That was great.

Another “VERY” nice advantage of the WP7 phones is that the Xbox integration is really cool. The games on WP7 are finally up to par and quite entertaining.

For normal people looking for a Windows Phone 7, I would recommend it. If you don’t heavily use your phone for business or tcp/ip/port related tasks. If you need a phone that’s a phone yet everything multi-media in one….it’s wonderful.

The disadvantages? Well I am the techy that likes to use and abuse his phone in as many ways as possible. So features I wish it had:

• File Explorer: I enjoy using my phone as a thumb drive to store common files that I need. They could at least reserve a small space that is separate from everything else on the phone so that you can do this.
• Remote desktop applications: There are none…WP7 is locked down tight for TCP/IP/Port related tasks so no remote desktop apps (i.e., VNC). There are other apps/services like Skype that cannot be ported over to WP7 at the moment for these same reasons. This really does cripple WP7 from making use of some nice/advanced apps that business users and techies demand for their daily activities.
• No custom ringtones….wtf Microsoft lol….how can you drop the ball on one of the most common features found in cellphones dating back to…a long time.
• Voice command no longer covers the media on the phone. Windows Mobile 6.x allowed you to play music by using voice command to pick an artist, track, genre, etc….WP7?…nope. You can dial numbers, open “certain” apps and search with bing via voice command but nothing for music. That sucks when you have a TON of music like I do and don’t want to fiddle around with the menus while using it for work or driving.
• Sync…..they took out activesync support (except for Exchange Activesync). So when you sync (using Zune now), you can only sync music, videos and podcasts. You can no longer sync your contacts, calendar, etc. Now if they could relax the TCP/IP/Port restriction a little, maybe someone can develop an app to remotely do this at least. I know I’d love to sync with Thunderbird for my contacts and calendar.
• Office sync: Only syncs “OneNote”….what about the rest? If not via usb then at least via skydrive…common. At the moment you have to email yourself office docs and save them one by one into office.
• Skydrive…….we should be able to do so much more with it on WP7
• We need more full qwerty sliders on the market. AT&T only has the LG and that phone feels and looks like crap. The HTC’s slider looks really nice and has gotten great reviews…..course it’s Sprint only. I hate on-screen keyboards with a passion BUT….I have to say I have been able to compromise a little as the WP7 on-screen kb has to be the best I have ever tried to use.

The “noDo” update is coming soon for WP7 phones that adds a few things like copy/paste (which is why I didn’t add it to the list of things I don’t like). It’s already been rolled out for certain phones/networks. The downside of this update is that it doesn’t fix/add anything that I have mentioned above so …. my list of disadvantages remains the same for now.

Past that, I am beyond happy with this phone. Fastest, nicest looking phone OS I have ever used. Too many restrictions though…feels like MS’s version of the iPhone more than anything. It at least pounds that market very hard proving to be a great threat to Apple.

And that is my review!

I wanted to point out that the forums have a category dedicated to Xbox Live. This section contains a section for clans. If you have a clan on Xbox Live, we invite you to register and let one of our admins/mods know who you are, the name of your clan and some of your moderating users. We will setup a separate sub-section dedicated to your clan with assigned mods.

This way clans could have their own site to come to and improve communication with. Organize clan activities or simply discuss day to day experiences.

Also once the main admins/mods get to know you, you might even get your own sub-domain leading your members straight to your section.

So register at http://forums.animevortex.net and move your clan in today

“I care”

A friend recently learned something about me. I am not an activist, so I will not follow you around every day rubbing it in how bad cigarettes are. I might mention or joke about it here and there, but I try to respect a person’s comfort zone when it comes to that.

However, the way I look at things…is that there is no debate on whether they “are” or “are not” good for you. There is no study that has shown they have a truly positive impact on someone. There is no side of the debate that claims they give you healthier lungs, cleaner oxygen, cures cancer or extends your life. Every study results in negative conclusions about how unhealthy they are. So in truth, there is a 100% chance that by smoking, you are doing some sort of severe damage to yourself.

So if you are smoking around me, I’ll try my best simply to avoid standing down-wind from you…or I’ll just keep my distance. I’ll try to never harass you too badly about it (heh). I warn you though, if you for some reason ask me to hold it for a second while you do something…you won’t get it back.

Think about it. If you had a gun or an explosive, were in a pits (mood) and started talking about how you don’t know if you can take the stress of life anymore…I’m going to take it from you. If you have a knife and I can see you have been cutting yourself with it for pleasure…I’m going to take it from you. If you have been slowly feeding yourself rat poison just for kicks or to find out what happens…I’m going to take it from you. If you have had so many drinks that you show signs of instability and reach for another or your keys…I’m going to take it/them from you. If you hand me your cigarette………I’m going to take it from you.

Hey Everyone! It’s that time again where I whore out another business based on my experience.

As I always say..I will never steer you wrong. If I feel a business is worth checking out, I will let you know about it. If I feel a business needs to be avoiding, I will most def make sure you know about it

In this case, Groupon is indeed worth checking out. I waited to jump onto the train of things until I heard feedback from friends. There is a lot of commotion around the net about this website about how popular it is, but I wanted to hear it from people I trust. When they told me how much they loved it, I jumped right in and since then have enjoyed a lot of great deals.

How it works is you register and choose your location. Then, every day they have a special/deal for a local business near you. The “groupon” is usually around 50-70% off (which is awesome). They shoot you an email each time and if you don’t want it, ignore it but if the deal of the day is something that snags you interest, you login and buy one of them. It takes a couple hours max and they send you a link to print the “groupon”. It becomes valid starting the following day after you bought it and most don’t expire for 6-12 months.

I have been mostly using it every time a sweet deal on a local pizza shop pops up. I am an obsessed pizza fan and love trying new places. So when they send me a groupon that costs about $7-10 but it worth $20-30….I jump on it. I have gotten 80% off a local ice skating place.

So Groupon has my two thumbs up

Click here for more information!

Author: TheSa|nt from Animevortex.net and Grauw from abma (alt.binaries.media.anime)

Even if just a $1, If you find my tutorial helpful, please:

Being an anime-related domain, this site (naturally) gets a LOT of requests on how to find/download fansubs via newsgroups.

Recently I posted on a very quick-tutorial on how to use easynews for newsgroups. However, there are other ways to more thoroughly explore newsgroups via desktop-based applications. A long time ago, Grauw developed a wonderful tutorial on how to do this, but through time a lot of it become outdated. So I have gone through and created a new version of the tutorial to better cover today’s practices, features and additional facts. This will act as the advanced guide on how to dive into the deep end and get crazy with it!

Even though I tried to summarize this as much as possible, the tutorial is still a bit lengthy and might be intimidating when looking at it but trust me when I say “it’s easy!”. It just has to be put into enough words to help even those who have been living under a rock — Now after reading this, if you are still missing anything, it should be easy to pick it up on your own through messing around. If I went over every possible detail on the usage of newsgroups, this tutorial would literally go on forever.

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Last Friday I found a bone while chomping down into my chicken bowl from El Pollo Loco. Not exactly what I expected to be included with the ingredients. It’s a good thing I didn’t somehow swallow it. o_O It’s too bad because I loved going there but now….Idk. I contacted the company to make sure they knew so they could look into that but never heard a thing back from them.

I had bit down onto it pretty well too so pondering the idea of visiting the dentist now just to make sure it didn’t chip anything. *sigh*

If you live in Vegas, have a special someone and want to send them the greatest of flowers money can buy, you should check out of one of the local shops here. Flowers of the Field have some awesome deals, amazing designs and some of the best customer service you can ask for.

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner approaching fast, so jump on the safe train and make sure you get that special someone something from the best there is!

You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong in my recommendations. If it’s worth it, I blab it, if it’s not I will blab it even harder just to rub it in. So Gentlemen, take my word…from experience, these people are the best.

http://www.flowersofthefieldlv.com/

Happy upcoming Valentine’s Day!

TheSa|nt