How to Change Your Local IP Address

Your Public IP address is what identifies your computer when you to connect to the internet. It is assigned by your ISP and depending on the type of service you have subscribed to, your public IP may remain the same (Static IP) or is periodically updated (Dynamic IP). Basically if you want to change your public IP then the only way is to get in touch with your ISP or use a proxy service such as Tuxler or Hotspot Shield to hide/spoof your IP address. 

Each computer also have the local IP address. The local IP which is also referred as Private IP address is used to identify computers on the local network (behind the same router) and it is managed by the operating system. If required, the local IP of a machine can be changed via the router settings (refer to the manual provided with the router or check on the manufacturer's website) or you can change it via the Windows Control Panel.

Refresh your IP

There exists a simple command in Windows to refresh your current IP, which can be useful to fix IP address conflicts when two computers present on the same DHCP network share the same IP. But it should be noted that this procedure generates a "random IP" (within the allowed range). 

Click on Start > Run > type cmd and press Enter to open the Command Prompt. Next, type ipconfig
 to view the current address. Type  ipconfig / release , followed by ipconfig / renew
. 

Change your local IP

Open the Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change Adapter Settings > Network Connections. A list of known connection will be displayed (Ethernet or Wi-Fi). Right-click on the desired connection and select Properties from the contextual menu. Under This connection uses the following items select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP / IPv4) and then click onProperties: 

Select the Use the following IP address option instead of Obtain an IP automatically (default) and register the IP address (within the pool of acceptable IP addresses and which is not already in use by another computer), Subnet Mask, Default Gateway and DNS Server addresses:

Click on Apply > Ok.

Save Web Pages as PDFs Without Installing Extensions

While there are plenty of PDF writing software and online conversion services around that can help you save web pages as PDF files, the fact is that you don’t need any of them as long as you have Google Chrome on your computer.

Open any web page inside Google Chrome, press Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P if you are on a Mac) to open the Print dialog and change the destination printer to “Save as PDF.” Hit the Print button and the current web page will instantly download as a PDF document. Simple!

You neither have to install any software on your computer nor any extensions in your browser because Google Chrome itself acts as the PDF writer.

This is especially useful for downloading PDF copies of web pages that involve transactions or session data – like the checkout page on a shopping website – because you often cannot pass such pages to any online PDF conversion service.

One more thing. You can also use Chrome’s PDF engine to convert your local image files, text files and any local HTML web pages to PDFs – if you an open a file in Chrome, it can convert the file to PDF.

Parallels Workstation for Windows & Linux – Free Download

Parallels Workstation is a commercial desktop virtualization program that lets you run multiple Operating systems on the single physical computer and you can easily switch between them without rebooting.

For instance, you could be running Windows Vista and but some of your programs (like your old Tally accounting software) require Windows 2000 or XP. In that case you can download Parallels Workstation, create a virtual machine for Windows XP and run it over Windows Vista just like any another software program. You can also use Parallels Workstation to run Linux on a Windows machine or vice versa.

If you are planning to rebuild a computer, it is recommended that you use a virtualization program like Parallels Workstation for all experimentation work – i.e., any software that you plan to use on a temporary or trial basis should be installed on the virtual machine and not on the main computer.

Parallels Workstation sells for $50 but you can request a licensed activation key for free using this Lunarpages offer. Key in your email address and they’ll immediately send you the download links for the trial version and serial number to convert the trial into a full retail version.

Virtual machines are very helpful for web designers as well as it lets you test websites on different browsers – you can have a virtual machine with IE 8 and another one with IE 6 while your main desktop is running the latest IE 7.

In case the above offer expires by the time you read this, you can always download the free Virtual PC (Microsoft) or Sun’s VirtualBox which is available for Mac as well. 

Use an Old Linux Computer to Put your Baby to Sleep

If you are not a geek, let me explain the logic of this very simple program. 

The program will first auto-eject the CD-ROM drive of your computer and then it will close that open tray. This open-close loop will run forever unless you terminate the program manually.

while [1 = 1]
 do
 #eject cdrom
 eject

 #pull cdrom tray back in
 eject -t
 done

Now the interesting part – using just these four lines of code, a geek turned his old Linux* computer into a baby rocker.

He attached a string between the tray of the CD-ROM drive and the baby seat and as the tray would open and close repeatedly, the smooth movements were enough to put his baby to sleep. Awesome.

[*] you are not on on Linux, you can build a similar Baby rocker program for Windows using Autohotkey software.