Creating a Facebook Wall Photo Hack

New Facebook Photostream hackOne of the coolest new features of the updated Facebook profiles to peoples’ walls is the Photostream to the right of the main profile picture. What it contains are the latest photos with your name tagged in them. If you hover over them, you’ll notice an “x” appear in the corner that allows you to remove them. Remove to your heart’s content to hide all of them from your stream and leave only ones you want there or upload new ones as I’m about to show you and remove new ones from your stream to keep the new look you’re about to make. Ready?

First, you need to find a photo of you that is at least 700x395px in size and have an image editor that allows you to create layers so you can have a masked area to see what your photo will look like when it’s spliced into bits on Facebook. GIMP is free, opensource, but Photoshop Elements and other higher-end programs like Photoshop will work great.

First, grab this Photoshop template to download to make things easy on yourself. Most editors worth their salt can read this format. Drag your photo into a new layer behind the mask and then re-size/scale the photo until it looks good through the peepholes made by the mask. There is one variable that may change that you need to be aware of: the amount of information below your name will push down those boxes and affect which photos will look best. Mine is quite full, so you can adjust my mask by raising the boxes per each line not in your wall view.

With that done, hide the photo layer, select the mask layer, and using the magic wand, select the profile photo window. Unhide the photo layer and crop the image with the area still selected. Now you have an appropriately-sized profile photo. We’ll assume you know how to change your profile photos, since I’ve seen Geico’s page so it’s obvious that cavemen can do it. Back to the image program to undo the cropping, deselect the area selected. Repeat the process, this time selecting one of the smaller photo windows. Crop and save all five of them before uploading any because the Photostream is in reverse chronological order. After you have all five uploaded to your wall or to a new album, tag yourself in right-to-left order that you want them to appear on the Photostream. Afterward, I chose to delete the post of that silly activity on my wall and will just need to delete any subsequent tagged photos of me from the Photostream, which does not remove my tags, just their display up there.

Enjoy your new profile display abilities!

New Technology… Finally!

We went out and bought a new LCD TV last night! I feel the need to preface this with a few background bits of information so I don’t sound like a wreckless, rich jerk. First, we acquired many pieces of furniture when my ex-roommate skipped town and left his HD tube TV, surround sound, leather couch and chair, dining set, and more – so we didn’t spend any money on those items when we got married. We also don’t pay retail for much of anything over $50 and shop at Goodwill regularly for our clothes. We have 3 months of savings, or a tad less if we earmark some for medical or taxes in January, so we do have the liquid assets for replacing items, but the funds were “technically” accounted for other purposes next year.

Okay, now you’re ready for my story, knowing that we don’t go crazy with purchases.

I’ve been wanting a new TV for a very long time. First it was because I was wooed by flat screens, but I’ve since become more satisfied with what we have and stopped trying to keep up with the Jones’.  Later, it was because we kept pushing our couch further back from the entertainment center to make room for a larger coffee table and later allowing us to play Wii without moving things to play. This resulted in us laying on the floor to watch shows to keep Kristin from putting on her glasses to watch with me because things were too small to read.

I have successfully put getting a new TV out of my mind for several months straight in an effort to increase our savings and build up our business account. Then, Kristin complained about it twice. The first time was finally an earnest complaint that it is too small. She was serious about that, but not getting a new TV because it still worked just fine. The second time was a text message while I was out stating that the sound was going out. I suddenly remembered some crackling earlier that day, thinking it was the DVR recording of the show. It wasn’t.

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Know Your 5th Amendment Rights

I’ve placed two parts of a law class lecture below that provide a perfect illustration and explanation about what the 5th Amendment is about and why it is in place. It is in place to protect you. Nothing you say to law enforcement or the government in a criminal investigation can be used to help you. It can only be used against you in an effort to prosecute you.

This is very important. Don’t think that you’ll never be questioned by police because you’re a good person living a good life. My wife and her entire office were questioned a couple of years ago by a SWAT team just because of where they worked, so no one can say with certainty that they will never be questioned by the law or government.

I’ll come out and say that the first man comes out of the chute sounding like a political wacko with a couple of his first statements, but he fully and completely supports everything he says and the second man (an officer with 28 years of interviewing experience) confirms everything the first man said, so keep that in mind when you hear the first man’s fast-paced lecture.

This was very, very eye-opening to me. You can safely ignore the title of the video. The other compilation of this lecture was in 6 parts and entitled “In Praise of the 5th Amendment.”

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Labor Day in Ohio