Since it never hurts to learn something new, especially a skill set like computer programming in different languages, we will go over some of the best channels that will introduce you to the world of programming. Let’s look at which channels made the cut.

thenewboston

thenewboston is a truly great channel with an immense collection of programming tutorials. The official website contains a list of all the tutorials made so far, which are well into the thousands (about 1500 videos as of this writing). Not only does it have tutorials for various programming languages, but it also has videos on building computers, tutorials for software like Dreamweaver and After Effects, as well as 3D-modeling software. The website now also has plans to present tutorials for a variety of other topics, like Math and Biology. Since all these tutorials are free, thenewboston is probably the greatest source of video tutorials for people interested in beginning programming languages. Bucky, the instructor behind most of the videos, explains concepts like a peer, so his tutorials are definitely very easy to follow and catch up to.

To jump into thenewboston’s tutorials for different computer programming languages, check out:

• Playlist For Java Tutorials (87 videos) & Playlist For Intermediate Java Tutorials (27 videos)

So you can get a taste of thenewboston’s teaching style, here’s a video from this Java series where Bucky explains polymorphism:

• Playlist For C Tutorials (15 videos)
• Playlist For Python Tutorials (44 videos)
• Playlist For iPhone Development Tutorials (37 videos) & Playlist For Objective C Tutorials (65 videos)
• Playlist For Javascript Tutorials: Playlist 1 For Beginner Javascript (40 videos) & Playlist 2 For Javascript (27 videos)
• Playlist For XHTML & CSS Tutorials (46 videos)

thenewboston also has a number of tutorials for different Adobe Products:

• Playlist For Photoshop Tutorials (20 videos)
• Playlist For Dreamweaver Tutorials (41 videos)

There’s a an impressive number of additional topics that thenewboston has covered already. You can check out all his videos sorted by series at the official website’s Tutorials page here.

Xoaxdotnet (For C++ Tutorials)

Xoaxdotnet has a variety of tutorials (almost 200 videos) on literature, Algebra, and even neural networks and more general Computer Science concepts (such as sorting and searching algorithms, as well as big O notation), but for the most part, this channel has focused on and produced lots of C++ tutorials:

• Playlist For Beginner C++ Tutorials (51 videos)

Here’s the first video of this series:

• Playlist For Beginner C++ OpenGL Tutorials (7 videos)
• Playlist For C++ Win32 Tutorials (11 videos)

Those are probably the most distinctive ones, but be sure to check out the complete list of videos he has produced, sorted by topic here.

phpacademy (For PHP Tutorials)

Like the channel name suggests, phpacademy focuses on teaching PHP, and some MySQL. With over 200 videos, phpacademy is one of the most subscribed guru channels of the United Kingdom so it’s definitely worth a look if you’re interested in creating more dynamic websites.

• Playlist For Beginner PHP Tutorials (24 videos)

Here’s the first video of this series:

• Playlist For Beginner MySQL Tutorials (6 videos)
• Playlist For General PHP Tutorials (77 videos)
• Playlist For Tutorials On Creating An Image-Sharing Site (24 videos)

For more of phpacademy’s videos, check out this page.

Did I miss any YouTube channels with great programming tutorials? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: stock.xchng

Grovo is another fresh ‘n new online learning tool you can use if you want to grade up your internet education. All the education and training on Grovo is through online videos. But then there are so many other places for online video tutorials. Where does Grovo come in?

How Does Grovo Help Me?

Let’s understand it through the word – Grovo, which is a fun brew of ‘grow’ and ‘vocation’. More specially, it is a collection of video lessons that help you discover the nuts and bolts of today leading web apps in cloud services, social media, productivity, and online marketing.

For instance, you have heard all about Facebook but can’t figure out the difference between Facebook Profiles and Facebook Pages. Grovo’s video tutorials on Facebook help to scatter the cloud of confusion. Each lesson shows you how to do something specific on one website or topic.

Grovo’s focus is on online web apps and web services and with it’s professionally produced content gives the site its USP. Here’s a glimpse at the subjects which Grovo covers:

An Example of a Learning Session on Grovo

Grovo has free and premium (for businesses) plans. Right now, let’s register for free and check out what’s on offer.

The next step serves as a launching pad for your first lesson. Grovo gives you three suggestions – pick one.

For instance, I want to learn more about Dropbox. The All Courses page lists all sites that Grovo covers with its lessons.

I can drill down to the course title I am looking for or use the Filter Courses list. Some courses have a “G” (those are paid business courses) courses marked next to them, and some are tagged as ‘under construction’. The introductory tutorials in some of the business courses are free.

Going back to my course on Dropbox, I see that the course page has 6 short video lessons. From here on, the design of Grovo and its usefulness as a learning app emerges.

I can click on Description and get an overview of the course.

I can take the sample quiz or the complete quiz for the course and see how much of the learning I have retained.

Takeaways sum up the key points and gist of the entire course.

Glossary of course, lists all the technical jargon you might have come across in the course.

The Video Lesson Itself

All these features come together for each video lesson you take on the site. The video lessons are professionally produced with excellent screencasts. For that chancy attention span of yours, they are also short. Though there are quite a few half an hour long videos too.

All activity is logged on your account and you can always check your progress and track it.

The Appeal of Grovo

Grovo so far is ad- free. The video lessons are engagingly created with the best practices of instructional theories in mind. Video lessons, lesson notes and quizzes help you to grasp the ins and outs of a web technology quickly. The navigation bar on top of the page makes finding a relevant course a painless experience. The site says that they ‘operate on two-week production cycles’. So you can actually look forward to fresh content.

Is it just one of those new video tutorial sites on the backwash of YouTube? Or does it make for a focused learning experience if you are new to the internet or a particular web service? I think Grovo holds lots of promise for continuing one’s web education. What do you think?

Wikipedia tells me that the first animation film was made way back in 1917. We perhaps link the history of animation more with Walt Disney. Even then, from the days of Snow White to today’s cutting edge CGI powered flicks like Avatar, the world of animation creates a fantasy bubble which lately adults too have found captivating.

But what’s rendered on the screen takes hours of toil and painstaking detailing. Let’s see what happens behind the scenes with the help of these top animation blogs that also give pointers to anyone who wants to learn about the art of animation.

Cartoon Brew

This animation blog takes a look at the industry as a whole and covers animation news, views and lots of teasers too. Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi are a duo of animation historians with a really good hold on what happens in the world of animation.

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Currently, it has gone into a bit of a temporary limbo because of lack of funding, but this long-standing animation resource deserves a spot because it’s a rich source of historical information on animation. The archive is especially useful for students who can see how animation and animators have developed the craft over the years.

Animation World Network

The Animation World Network is the largest animation-related publishing group on the Internet. The site and its network of other animation related websites cover the industry in depth bringing you everything from news to lessons. The free blogging service – Animation Blogspot is also a must follow for animation buffs.

TAG Blog

The daily updated blog is an opinion piece that brings together interviews and news from the animation industry. It is a front row show as the voices belong to the members of The Animation Guild.

Animated Views

The informative animation site has a community and a cool contest corner. Throw in news, reviews, retrospectives, and interviews and you get a model of a well rounded animation website. The site’s focus is more on animation in media.

11 Second Club

If you like to stick with contests, then the monthly character animation competition on this website could be worth a look. You have to download an audio file and then take a month to animate a character performing the line, using whatever acting you feel fits the audio best. Feedback from your peers can help to make you a better animator and perhaps you can win the cool prizes while you are on the learning curve.

Drawn

This simple and neat Tumblr blog is not only about animation as such, but you can get inspired with the showcase of cartoons, illustrations, comic art, and animations on display. You can also contribute your own work or something that has inspired you.

Animation Physics

Physics and animation? If you thought you could leave that subject back in school then let this blog and the companion wiki change your mind. Its physics that will help you define the range of motions as you go about animating objects. The lessons on the site should be a great help to teach you all about realistic motion.

Animation Tips & Tricks

As the name says, this blog teaches you all about the insider tricks that go into creating great animation. Animation professionals like Industrial Light & Magic animator Shawn Kelly among a host of others teach you the philosophy behind animation. The lessons extend back to 2008, so do check the archives too.

All About Animation

The animation blog revolves around podcasts that seek to inspire, inform, and entertain. The blog is run by a trio of animators from my own country (India). It is neatly designed and also contains information on the ‘master class’ they run to teach aspiring animators. The blog seems to be a bit dormant now.

Out of the hundreds of animation blogs out there, these are just ten. You will find a few more core animation links in the blog rolls these ones have. Over the years we also have covered some cool free animation apps which can help you spark your creativity. Which are your favorite animation blogs? Get animated and leave a link in the comments.

Image Credit: Wikimedia

XAMPP is a collection of software that includes Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl. It also includes Tomcat, FileZilla FTP server and Mercury Mail for sending emails. These packages are used for the following tasks:

• Apache – Web Server, hosts content at http://localhost/
• MySQL – Database Server, many software packages use this to store data
• PHP – Programming language, many modern programs use this as a language
• Perl – Programming language, many programs use this language and has been around longer than PHP
• Tomcat – Server used to execute Java programs
• FileZilla – FTP server used to transfer files to/from your local machine (only necessary if you need access remotely)
• Mercury Mail – Mail system used for sending emails

These programs work together to give you a very robust environment for hosting web programs on your local machine.

Getting Started

Download the correct program for your operating system. This tutorial will go over the Windows version, but the MacOS X, Linux and Solaris versions are very similar. Run the installer and click OK on any security dialogs that pop up. When you get to the following menu:

I would suggest checking off Apache and MySQL as a service as this will allow you to better manage this software later.

When finished, click “Yes” to start the control panel.

There is a bug if you are running 64-bit versions of Windows (Vista, 7 or Server 2008). It will say “XAMPP Component Status Check Failure [3]“, but it is safe to ignore this error as everything else seems to work fine.

I also received several popups after installing the software. One was from Microsoft Security Essentials asking to send the FileZilla binary to them for analysis (this software can sometimes be used in backdoors – however this use is legitimate) and also the Firewall will pop up a few boxes asking if you want to allow the port to be used. Leave the checkbox unchecked so that your server will not be available over public wifi and other open networks (for example if you connect at a Starbucks), but to still allow your server to be available from your local PC and other computers in your own private network.

Once the control panel is up, click “Start” on Apache and MySQL.

Your web server is now up and running, if all went properly!

Managing Your Server

The first thing you should do is click the “Admin…” button for Apache. This will launch your default web browser and send you to the Welcome page. If it gives you the option, click your language (in this case, English) and you will see your administration area.

One of the first things to explore are the sample programs. Under the PHP list they include several programs which demonstrate the sorts of things PHP can do.

The “Status” page will show you which services are currently activated. They should all be green except for FTP, SMTP and Tomcat.

Next up is ensuring the security of your server. By default there is no password for your MySQL’s administrator account, also known as “root“. If you are on a small local network and you do not care who has access to the data stored in your machine then it is fine to leave this as is; however if you plan on opening your server up to the internet or you have roomates who you may not fully trust it is good to add a password to this account. You can follow the links to set up security of your system. The first option sets a root MySQL password and the second puts a password on your entire web directory.

Finally, if you plan on accessing your server outside of your home, you will need to log into your router and forward port 80 to your local machine. This is much easier to do if you are set up on a static IP address.

Installing Programs On Your Server

The main thing you need to know about where your server stores data is that it is in a subdirectory of your installation directory named htdocs. In my situation the web directory is:

C:\xampp\htdocs\

This includes the administration program. The default page your web server loads when you visit http://localhost/ is index.php. You can open that file to replace it with your own text or remove it altogether, it is really up to you.

Now that you have a web server set up, what can you do with it? Well one popular thing you can do is to set up wordpress locally. You can set up your own mixtape or even a proxy server, the possibilities are endless.

Really what you get out of it is the ability to learn something new and provide an environment that allows you to create and modify code in a very easy way. Although this server is not meant for production use, it does give you a very reliable development environment and sandbox to learn the ropes, so to speak.

What’s Next?

After you have your server up and running, the world is your oyster. Install and run that software you’ve always wanted to test out. The Apache Friends FAQ page has a lot of information on XAMPP and extended options, check there to take your install further. If you have any problems or questions about your setup, ask below and we’ll be sure to help you out!

That’s the bad news. The good news is that learning how to install a new hard drive isn’t difficult, so there is no need to be concerned about a hard drive that is nearly full.  Read on to find out how to install a new drive to replace an old one.

Identifying The Proper Replacement

Before you can upgrade a hard drive with a new replacement you’ll need to determine the type of drive you need to buy. Today, most hard drives use a data connection known as SATA. However, computers that are several years old might instead support a data connection called IDE. You can easily tell the difference between the two because an IDE connection uses numerous pins, while SATA uses a pin-less L-shaped connector. The picture below provides a comparison – the SATA drive is on the left and the IDE drive is on the right. Laptop drives will obviously be smaller, but have the connections have the same appearance.

Speaking of size, you’ll also need to make sure you buy a drive with the correct physical dimensions. There are two popular hard drive sizes – 3.5″ and 2.5″. The larger is built for desktop systems, while the smaller is generally for laptops and compact desktops. However, solid state hard drives often come in the 2.5″ size regardless of the type of machine they’re meant to be installed in. This rule isn’t absolute, however, because some all-in-one computers use 2.5″ drives.

Transferring Data From The Old To New Drive

The process of installing a new hard drive is one of the least difficult hardware installation procedures around in terms of the physical effort required. However, the hard drive is one of the most critical components in your system because it stores all of your information. Everything from your operating system to your emails to your favorite songs are stored on your hard drive. Obviously, a straight replacement will leave you without that information.

If you’re using a computer that has more than one hard drive bay you’ll find the process of transferring data from one drive to another to be easy. All you need to do is install the second hard drive in your system and then clone an image of your existing drive using one of the many freeware tools available for this task. Once the old drive’s image has been cloned and placed on the new drive, you can simply remove the old drive or reformat it and use it as a second drive (make sure the clone was successful before taking this step, however!)

Computers that have only a single drive bay are more difficult to work with because you can’t have the new and old drive installed at the same time.You can, however, still clone your old drive to your new one. This is possible by connecting your new drive to your PC with a USB-to-SATA cable or an external hard drive dock. Cloning a drive may take some time because of the bandwidth limitations of USB 2.0, but it will complete eventually.

Replacing The Old Drive

Desktop computer hard drives are usually placed in the lower front half of a mid-tower enclosure and are attached using between two and six screws. The process isn’t overly difficult, but is detailed enough to warrant its own post. Please refer to James’s coverage of how to install a replacement or second desktop drive for instructions.

Laptops are different, but easier. Most laptops will offer a plastic hard drive bay cover on the bottom of the laptop that is held in with one or two screws. Removing the cover will reveal the drive, which is itself typically attached with a few screws. Installing a replacement drive is simply a matter of taking the existing drive out and putting the new drive in its place. The power and data connections are built into the mount itself, so you don’t have to worry about tracking down the cables. Please note that not all laptops are intended to be user serviceable in this way,  so please read your laptop’s manual for information about hard drive replacement before proceeding.

Booting & Partitioning

Once you’ve replaced your old drive you will, of course, want to boot up your PC to make sure everything is functioning well. Assuming you did clone your data from your old drive to your new once, this process should be painless. Your PC will barely realize that anything has changed. You should probably visit the Disk Management utility, which can be found by visiting the Administrative Tools –> Computer Management section of the Windows Control Panel, to ensure that Windows is recognizing and using all of your new hard drive’s capacity. If it isn’t, you can extend the current partition to cover the free space or create a new drive partition.

If you didn’t end up cloning your drive, this step will be irrelevant, as you’ll have to format and partition the new drive during the installation process of your operating system.

Conclusion

Hopefully this brief post has given you the information you need to learn how to install a new hard drive. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment.

Image Credit : TigerDirectTV

As a GIMP enthusiast, I learn mostly from following online tutorials over and over till I don’t need the instructions to repeat the steps anymore. That’s how I learned to do the zoom/magnifier effect, which I badly needed for some of my screenshots. Here’s another such tutorial that’s out of necessity for anyone that blogs and needs to point at and annotate some part of the screenshot.

The speech bubble design is actually inspired by the annotations you can get in Screenpresso, which means that if you want a faster way to get these speech bubbles, your best bet would be to download and use Screenpresso. I’m enamored with FastStone Screen Capture v. 5.3 so to avoid having two programs that do the same thing, I decided to just create the speech bubbles with GIMP. Here’s what I found works for me in terms of creating these speech bubbles in a relatively short time.

• Once you have GIMP open, you can either open the screenshot that you want to annotate, paste it from after pressing PrintScreen or create one by going to File > Create > Screenshot.
• Using the Text tool, create the annotation text in your desired size and font.
• Before creating the actual speech bubble, make sure you have your text in the desired layout (preferably, all polished up with your desired gradients or effects) as we now need to enclose it within the bubble and won’t be able to change the text layout later. Create a new layer, name it ‘bubble’ and under Layer Fill Type, pick Transparency, and click OK. Now pick the Rectangle Select tool, double-check that in the Tool Options dialog box, the mode is set to ‘Replace the current selection‘ and create a rectangle around your text. For a nice touch, also check the ‘Rounded corners‘ box under Tool Options. I’m using a radius of 11.6, but feel free to change it according to your preferences.

• Now we’re going to make the tail of the speech bubble to point to the interesting part of the screenshot that you annotated. Use the Free Select tool, then under Tool Options, pick ‘Add to selection‘ instead of the default … and click on 3 different spots (try to make the lines as straight as you can) before going back to the original point to finish the selection to shape the triangular tail of the speech bubble. The first and last spot should be inside the bubble.

If you want to undo these lines, just press Escape.

• Use the Bucket Fill tool, set opacity on 35 under Tool Options and fill with red (I’m using #f41010) or any other bright color that’s not on the screenshot already so viewers can immediately notice the bubble.

• Now let’s give this bubble a drop shadow. Go to Filters > Light and Shadow > Drop Shadow.

• Set both Offset X and Offset Y to 0, leave the Blur radius to the default 15, raise the Opacity to 100 and uncheck the Allow resizing box before clicking OK.

• Now for the bubble’s glow, create a new layer with transparency, just like we did for the bubble, but name it “glow”. You should still have the selection active from the previous drop shadow step. Go to Select > To Path to save this outline.
• Then use the Rectangle Select tool, and under Tool Options, make sure the mode is set to ‘Subtract from the current selection‘. Create a rectangle over the bubble portion opposite to the one that has the tail, which in my case, is the upper portion of the bubble.

• Now use the Blend/Gradient tool, press X to shift the white background color to be the foreground color, set the opacity to 80 under Tool Options, select ‘FG to Transparent‘ in the Gradient field, pick Linear in the Shape field if it’s not there by default already, and stroke from the tail to the side opposite to the tail.

• Now for the subtle, glowy outline, go to Select > From Path. Then go to Select again > Shrink. Set the shrink size to 1 pixel, if it’s not already, and press OK.

• For the third time, go to Select > Border. Type 1 pixel as the border selection size and press OK.

• You probably won’t even notice any changes so you’ll need to either press + (Shift and the = key), go to View > Zoom (100%) > Zoom In, or use the bottom left zoom menu on the status bar, until you get to 300%.

• Now grab the Blend/Gradient tool again. Assuming white is still the foreground color and the gradient is still set to ‘FG to Transparent‘, pick Radial instead of the default Linear from the drop-down menu in the Shape field.

• Stroke outward from the middle of the top portion (or whichever is opposite the tail) of the bubble selection.

• You should now see a slight white line fading into the corner. You can press Ctrl + Z to undo and Ctrl + Y to redo to really see the difference. Optionally, stroke from the top left to the center of the bubble.

• This second stroke can actually be in any corner of the bubble as long as it’s on the opposite side of the tail. To go back to the normal view, either press 1, use the zoom menu on the status bar or go to View > Zoom (300%) > 1:1 (100%). Then go to Select > None.
• Move the text layer by drag and dropping to the top of the layer box. You can merge down any layers to move them around.

• This is how the end result could look like, without the optional second stroke.

That’s it! If you have any tips on making these steps shorter, let us know in the comments!

Similar to Alice, which we have covered before, it is meant as a beginners tutorial to programming; however the main difference is that Alice is a GUI programming toolkit while Hackety Hack is a text-based “real” programming environment.

To begin, download Hackety Hack for your operating system. Versions are available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Even though their website says that it is for 64-bit only the download worked fine on my Windows 32-bit machine so perhaps that is meant for the Mac OS X version only.

Click “Ready” to begin the program.

Learning Programming Basics

Hackety Hack begins with a menu of Lessons. Begin by learning how the Hackety Hack system is set up. It will show you what each button on the left side means and what happens when you click them.

The rest of the tutorials are geared towards beginner programmers but if you are new to the Ruby language they will also be helpful. They are witty and fun which helps while you are learning a programming language; if you have ever read a boring tutorial before you will know what I mean.

How To Program In Ruby

The first program you will write will be a “Hello World” program which is standard in computer programming language circles. Don’t try to copy and paste the program – it won’t let you and you learn the language much better when you type it out.

From there, you get progressively difficult levels of programming from the tutorials. After you have the basics of programming including algorithms, loops, variables and so forth down; you will move on to a graphical programming toolkit included with Hackety Hack named Shoes.

The last tutorial on Hackety Hack is a basic Shoes program. Learning how to manage input boxes and the results on a graphical interface is an important step in writing a “real world” program that you can interact with. The tutorial will run you through a sample input text and output.

I’ve Done The Tutorials, What Next?

If you’ve finished the tutorials the fun doesn’t stop there. Hackety Hack has integration with its website allowing you to upload your own programs and view other programs folks have uploaded. These give you a better idea as to what is possible with the programming language Ruby, and as with most programming languages you are only limited to your imagination. Once you are done with the Hackety Hack tutorials, you may want to check out these other resources for learning Ruby:

• Shoes manual, tutorials, examples and more
• Programming Ruby
• Learning Ruby – O’Reilly Book
• The Ruby Manual

Once you have outgrown Hackety Hack, download Ruby for your operating system and continue on your programming journey.

Conclusion

Hackety Hack is a great introduction to the Ruby language for programmers and non-programmers alike. I would say it is meant for anyone who has basic algebraic math skills, perhaps as young as 10 years old. But don’t let that turn you away if you are older – it is written in such a way that for even experienced programmers it is not insulting and actually it is good to go over the basics again.

I did run into a few program crashes and the lack of the ability to paste in any text, which hindered the import of some larger programs from their website. I’m not sure if this is on purpose or a bug but some paste functionality would be helpful for larger programs.

If you have been wanting to learn a programming language there is no better time than now to get started. Hackety Hack is a perfect way to get started learning Ruby. If you begin to spend a lot of time writing programs just don’t blame me!