Let me give you all an update, I am behind in starting the new year off with a bang, but hey I figure better late than never. Life keeps trying to get in the way, but I am determined to get some more good stuff posted here and keep the flow of information moving along. So, hang in there and check back soon because I have lots of new stuff coming, especially with all of the new technology hitting the streets!

OK folks, this one is important so listen up.  I get calls all the time from “charities” soliciting money for their cause.  When you ask a few questions you find out this is a front company for the “charity” and they are skimming as much as 80% to 85% of your donation to cover “administrative fees”!!!  Talk about getting screwed.  We might donate $100 (it makes the math easy), and $15 or $20 might make it to those who need it.  That to me is not acceptable so I don’t give them any of my hard earned duckets.

Now, that isn’t to say that I don’t give money to charity, on the contrary, I do.  But I have been burned in the past so I try to check them out now.  That’s why this post is important, I found a great charity that helps children in need, it was started by a pair of cool guys (Yep, the same pair that brought us Penny Arcade) and they take almost nothing in “administrative fees”.  Instead of taking 85% off the top, these guys take as little as possible and make sure it doesn’t go over 2% or 3%.  Yeah, you read that right, it’s not a typo.  Have I got your attention now?  Good.

The charity is called Child’s Play, and they work to help children who are stuck in hospitals with long term illnesses cope with the mental anguish, fear, boredom and everything else they go through.  Tons of money goes into the medical research side of things which is good, but these guys are trying to help the other side, the kids and coping with whatever hardship they are going through.  They are hooked up with over 70 hospitals all over the world with more getting added all the time.  Most donations are made through a third party like Amazon.com.  You can go to the Child’s Play website to pick the hospital of your choice, and then buy something on amazon for that hospital.  It can be a toy, a game, a game console, books, whatever moves you, it’s all good.  However, instead of shipping it to your location, you can instead ship it directly to the hospital.  Wanna know the best part?  100% of that donation just went to the hospital that you picked.  You can donate money too, and other things/ways/etc that are spelled out on their website, and almost everything goes straight to the intended target.

So, check it out, take a look at the site, spread the word and when you feel like giving, do some good with a charity that is working as hard as you are to help kids that need all the help they can get.

Thank you.

Just a reminder folks, don’t forget about the Solarum forums.  Be sure to register if you haven’t already and hop on over there and ask some questions or just chit chat with folk.  They aren’t as busy as they used to be, but I’m trying to stir up the fire a little bit and get people back in there.  It really is a good place to ask questions, because we have some really smart geeks in there that can help you get it answered!  So check it out …

Here at Solarum, the idea that I started this site with was to share information.  If I share what I know and the experiences that I have had, and others that visit this site do the same, pretty soon we have a great deal of information that anyone and everyone can use anytime they need it.  So far, all of the information posted here has come from me.  Now, that’s fine because it’s my site and I wanted to share that information.  However, in the interest of making this site better, I am putting out the offer for others to become contributors here.  If you like to write and have some type of technology background and/or experience that you want to share with others, please contact me and let me know.  I will then contact you and we will go from there.  Just so I don’t misrepresent anything, this is not a paid position or anything like that (it’s not for me either, I am running this site out of my own pocket to try and do some good for people), but anyone that wants to contribute will get full credit for their work and will be helping others from all over the world that come here to get help and info.  It’s a pretty cool thing all in all.  So what are you waiting for?  Sharpen up those pens, light up those keyboards and get to writing!

XanaNews Screenshot

I was looking for a good, solid and preferably open source news reader (usenet client) whilst booted into Windows XP on my laptop earlier, and I found a dandy. I found a lightweight client called XanaNews, which although lightweight, not over burdened or bulky, it is also solid and easy to use. Throw in that it is open source and free, and it’s a nice application.

I looked at the screen shots and it looked like it was along the lines of what I wanted, so I decided to download it and give it a try.  After running the installer I easilly configured my news server (Giganews, if you aren’t using them and you want AWESOME usenet access, check these guys out! Like NOW!) and off I went, effortlessly subscribing to groups and reading posts on procmail.  That’s what I was working on at the time.

Well, I liked XanaNews so much, that I decided to install it on my main machine running Ubuntu.  I fired up Wine and ran through the same install steps and it again worked like a charm.  So now I can use this dandy little news reader on Windows and Linux.  I felt like I just had to share with everyone, because it seems like good usenet clients are hard to find unless you want to try and use something bundled into a web browser or email client which I usually don’t.  Give me an app made especially for what I want to use it for, and it’s probably going to do a better job of it every time.  Not always, but most of the time I would say.  Hope you enjoy it!

Fallout 3 rocks, rocks big.  It’s awesome.  Between that and work, you see I haven’t posted much in the last few days.  Keep the faith, I’ll be back soon, there is a long weekend coming up and I hope to get some new stuff up!  Thanks