Quite a few April Fool’s Days ago, I shocked a lot of people by making my entire blog look like it was being reflected through a mirror. Everything on the site was mirror-imaged, reversed, text as well as images. It looked great!

So without further ado or adonts, it’s time to set right omissions of the past.

First, the code that made reversing my site possible:

direction: rtl;
unicode-bidi:bidi-override;

These 2 css statements tell the page that any text is to be displayed from right to left (instead of left to right) which of course gives the mirrored look we’re looking for in text generated by a web page. To get this to work for the blog, I had to put these 2 CSS statements anywhere text would be generated such as body, headers, posts, titles, etc.

To complete the effect that fun April Fool’s Day, I reversed all my images on the front page. Sadly, there is no CSS code in the world for reversing images, so you have to do that one manually.

The effort pays off though, it makes a killer April Fool’s prank, let me tell you.

Enjoy. And see you next April Fool’s…

Introducing yet another Navarino Unincorporated Apple insider exclusive! Only here will you find this super sneak peak, never seen before anywhere but here, look at Apple’s latest ultra top-secret gadget. Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m happy to introduce you to the first glimpse/mention of Apple’s exciting new product no one knew they were working on, which will revolutionize everything!

Introducing the world’s first peek at the the iPad mini!

The Apple iPad mini can do everything the iPad can do at a much more convenient size. It can run any app the iPad can and has the exact same features at less than 1/3 the size! It’s like an iPad, but portable! (click on pic for larger version)

The mini’s slogan: “If you didn’t want an iPad you’ll definitely want the mini!”

This Apple exclusive once again brought to you by the good folk at Navarino Unincorporated!

Mr. Steve Jobs, you’ve done it again. Before. Like 3 years ago, wasn’t it? Touche?

Spread the word peeps, this is news! And remember you heard it all here first at Navarino Unincorporated! So who wants one?

If there’s one thing about geeks that’s true, it’s geeks love their TV. They love their computers more but TV is a definite second while TV on their computers is wasteful sweet, sweet perfection. The problem with watching TV these days, is no matter how you get your program information, it’s sometimes not easy to keep track of the important stuff. Such as what all the episodes titles are per season, what each episode was about or more importantly when did they first air a particular show/series and in what specific order?

This is especially needed for anyone catching up on older TV shows on DVDs, services like Netflix / Blockbuster or making sure that their recorder is going to tape a new episode of a show and not a freaking repeat. Repeats suck.

So how do you make sure of this crucial information? Enter a lovely site called Epguides.com.

Epguides.com is a massive index of over 4900 TV shows, past or present! You can find complete episode listings of just about any show that’s ever aired in the United States by searching for it on a nice, simple and clean Google-like layout. Each show has a simple episode listing that displays episode #’s, production #’s of the episodes, original air date and episode title. There’s also a simple cast listing up at the top. There’s no stupid flash, dumbass multimedia contact or anything other than a nice simple listing with links on each episode title so you can get an summary of what each episode is about.

There are also links to get a printable episode list or go to Wikipedia or IMDB for more information.

Epguides comes in real handy when you’re catching up on a show and taping it or want to know if an upcoming episode is a rerun or not. It also helps you realize that when you forgot to set your recorder the other night it was a new show you missed and now you have to download it off of bittorrent iTunes or wait for the episode to re-air.

I use Epguides.com all the time to ensure I set my recorder and skip the repeats and also check out what TV shows I want to rent on Netflix. It couldn’t be any easier to grok, so head on over and check it out. Word.

Every unfortunate while you may find yourself in that sad, lonely position of buying a new video card. Maybe it’s because you’re building a new computer or maybe it’s because your CPU left for a younger, faster GPU. Sure you tried to talk it out of leaving but how long could you keep it happy by playing the original Unreal Tournament in 800x600?

Any way you slice it, having to buy a new video card sucks. First, it costs you money. Second, you have to do all this research-shmeesearch. Pouring through endless articles, stupid sites with gobbledy-gook benchmark scores as well as confusing video card numbers where higher doesn’t mean better, just to get even more confused, for what? Spending $200 or more to double the frame rates on today’s games only to find out your new video card won’t play any decent games 6 months from now?

What you need to do is go to these sites below to see the very best in Video Card Comparison Charts and Benchmarks:

1. GPUReview’s Video Card Comparison Guide makes it easy to compare 2 different video cards side by side. Just select each card you want to compare and BOOM! their endless specifications will be listed onscreen so you can easily compare the two. How does your GeForce 7800GTX compare with an ATI 5770? *sniff* Badly. You’ll also get listings of how many cards are based on the same chipset, as well as reviews for each card and current prices! Invaluable information, all on one page. Clicking on the Card Database tab will also get you popular card match-ups like the Radeon 5770 vs GeForce GTS 250.

2. Tom’s Hardware Graphics Cards Performance Charts is a great page for comparing multiple video cards’ performances in different games and 3D benchmarks. Using Tom’s Hardware guides you can easily see the side by side benchmark scores of multiple cards you select in an easy graphical format. You can compare as many different graphics card as you’d like (I compared 6 when I went there). You’ll also find deals for the graphics cards you’re interested in by clicking
the See comparable product deals link next to each card in the charts. Tom’s hardware has helped many people make smart video card purchases and for that we thank them. By we, I mean me since there’s only one person running this freaking site.

Now that I showed you the best sites to make choosing your next video card as easy as can be, it’s time to show you a site that falls far short of this goal:

TechARP’s Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide currently covers 430 graphics cards from quite a few manufacturers. Cards are listed in table form with the slowest up top and the fastest at the bottom. Unfortunately the details are very boring and dry, listing specs in never-ending table listing that really doesn’t tell you much. And since you can’t compare different cards from different manufacturers, it’s pretty worthless as a guide. In fact it’s just plain horrid *shudder* Don’t go there. Even to see how bad it is. *ack* Trust me, I saved you some pain.

Now with The Best and Worst Sites to Help You Select Your Next New Video Card™ behind us, there’s two pieces of advice I must insist you take:

1. When getting close to picking out your next video card, stop by online retailers like Newegg.com and pay close attention to the comments from people that bought the card you want to get a feel for their experiences. You might be shocked to find the card manufacturer had problems with a specific make or batch of cards or find out that it sucks compared to a cheaper card out there.

2. Search for reviews on the Net about that particular card you want. It always pays to use Google or other search engines to see what the people are saying about your upcoming purchase. It might let you know you picked right or steer you clear of disaster. It’s your hard-earned money. Always take the time to do a little research or you could find out you just tossed good money away.

And now, I leave you to it. Have fun selecting your new video card!

If you’re a worthy geek you don’t want to have to use/install Microsoft Office just to open, edit or view MS Word documents. Or if you’re a spectacular geek like me, you don’t want to run that slow and bloated Office “alternative” *cough!*bull*cough!* Open Office either. So what do you do? You look for the best free light and fluffy alternative you can find, which in this case is Abiword.

Abiword is another one of those open-source cross-platform programs that fulfills a need; in this case a need to not install either MS Office or Open Orifice–er–Open Office.

Abiword can open and save a lot of file formats including Word document formats and the OpenDocument standard. It’s light, trim, easy to use and gets the job done. It’s a full fledged word-processor with quite a lot of bells and whistles, like supporting the sharing and collaboration of documents on the web as well as annotation features found on other expensive word processors.

I’ve used Abiword for a few years, alongside Word and while any other program cannot possibly do everything Word can do, it does so much of what I need that I rarely have to open Word at all.

Another alternative to Word is to upload any Word documents you can’t view or edit to Google Docs, but if you’re a good geek you don’t want to put anything of yours on anyone’s computer but yours. Abiword runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Try it and see if you like this free, open source alternative to Word. And please let us know what other programs you use to open/edit/view Word docs on your system.

For many, many years the Academy Awards have been pretty weird, flaky and a lot of times mean on science-fiction films. Sadly the upcoming 2010 Academy Awards is no exception. While acknowledging J.J. Abram’s Star Trek and James Cameron’s Avatar in several categories, unbelievably all of the actors from both stellar sci-fi films have been snubbed; none of the actors were nominated for any awards! Also, while Avatar is nominated for Best Picture, Star Trek is not. Double snub for such an ambitious and bold reboot of a beloved franchise.

While there is no explanation for why the cast of Star Trek was excluded, it seems that the doltish Academy members excluded the cast of Avatar because of some stupid misconception that the actors aren’t acting if technology like computer animation is used; that their performances weren’t the same as live-action acting. Which is ridiculous, especially since Avatar’s technology faithfully reproduced all of their facial expressions as they performed.

The Academy has had a long history of weird and senseless decisions and refusing to give out Oscars to actors in science-fiction films, as well as the coveted Best Picture title. Many, many actors and films that were sci-fi got snubbed by the Academy over the years. Even if the film took in more money that year than any other film. If awards were given to a sci-fi flick, it was usually to lesser technical categories like sound mixing or makeup.

Isn’t it about time the Academy’s prejudiced view of science-fiction films stops? Was the cast of Star Trek and Avatar treated unfairly? I think hell, yes! What do you think, fellow geeks?

It’s no small secret to people I know that I do not pay for an anti-virus program; I use a free one. My family uses a free one. Friends use a free one. People I know use a free one. And so on. And so on. And so on. (Queue nostalgia for classic Faberge shampoo commercial).

While there are a few contenders for title of The Best Free Anti-Virus Program out there, the one I always thought the best, just got better.

The new version of Avast! Free Antivirus, 5.0 made major changes including a redesigned modernized interface, improved virus and spyware engine, a new heuristics engine to protect you from malware, a behavior shield and best of all optimized performance to take advantage of multiple core processors which can reduce scanning time by up to 40%!

The old interface, which looked more like a music player confused some people and is gone in favor of a modern, streamlined easy-to-use design. There are 6 real-time shields for Files, Web, P2P, Instant Messaging, Network and Behavior; all of which come with real-time activity reporting graphs if you click on them. The latest version is high on performance and even with the additions and faster scanning uses less system resources. Win-win!

I’ve used Avast! for years after running into some problems with AVG Free Antivirus and haven’t looked back yet. And I’m not about to with Avast! Free Antivirus 5.0; I love it even more now and there are plenty of other people that agree with me. Avast! recently crossed the 100 million user mark last December. They’ve also recently joined a partnership with Google to promote Avast! and the Google Chrome browser.

If you’re paying for an anti-virus program or you’re using a different free one, give Avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 a try. Or not. It’s a free country.