Learn Awesome Skills For Free

WebSites That will Teach You Awesome Skills For Free

Everyone knows the internet is filled with useful (and not so useful) information, and many site’s won’t even charge you a penny.

Why spend your hard-earned dollars on a class when you can gain tons of new skills online for free?

Become an Excel expert.
http://chandoo.org:  Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?

 

Instructables.com: Learn how to DIY just about anything (seriously!) with instructions from hundreds of contributors offered up free of charge. DIY solar food dehydrator, anyone?

Make your own animated GIF at http://gifmaker.me/ http://makeagif.com/: Learn how to make a gif. Create animated gifs online with our free gif animator in just three easy steps. Upload, Customize, Create.
SAMPLE ON HOW TO MAKE GIFT ANIMATION FROM YOUTUBE VIDEO:

http://makeagif.com/D8deb5

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/how-to-make-a-gif-without-photoshop

Lifehacker.com/Night School: Hidden among the hacks on this uber-useful site are posted tagged “night school” where you’ll find freebie lessons on everything from how to build a computer to photography basics.

LEARN PHOTOGRAPHY

Lifehacker’s basics of photography might be a good place to start. Learn how your camera works, the basic of composition, and editing images in post-production. Life Hacker Course

Skillshare.com: Find out how to brew a perfect cup of coffee, pickle like a pro, knit, sew, and 100s of more skills. Cram your head full with the site’s complimentary 14-day trial, stat!

JustinGuitar.com: Always dreamed of becoming a rock star? You won’t even have to busk to take advantage of this site’s 850+ gratis guitar lessons.

Drawspace.com: Sharpen your drawing skills with lessons from pros. About 15% of Drawspace’s content is on the house.

All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity.

DrawSpace is a great place to start. I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy

YogaMeditationAtHome.com: YOME is made up of 100% free online yoga videos that will get you saying ‘omm’ in seconds.

Chesscademy.com: Become a chess master by watching videos, solving puzzles,  and playing games, all free of cost.

GoHighBrow.com: Sign up for unpaid bite-size courses delivered to your inbox daily, aimed at expanding your knowledge on topics ranging from philosophy to Greek mythology.

Spreeder.com: Quick: How fast can you read these words? Use this Spreeder’s completely free reading program to double, triple, even quadruple your reading speed.

DuoLingo.com: Learn a new language from this site’s extensive costless online courses. Bonus: The ‘lessons’ are set up like games!

Codecademy.com: Get yourself up to speed on the in-demand skill of coding—all without spending a dime.

Online College Courses

How to modify hosts file on local computer?

Easily edit the host file on Windows, Mac, Linux

The hosts file is a computer file used by an operating system to map hostnames to IP addresses.

The hosts file is a plain text file, and is conventionally named hosts. Originally a HOSTS.TXT file and maintained centrally by Stanford Research Institute for the ARPANET, the hosts file predates the Domain Name System, which was first described in 1983 and implemented in 1984.

Prior to DNS, the hosts file was manually edited and served as a table of accessible hosts. It was due the size of the growing Internet and coincident growth of the hosts table that the more robust DNS was embraced and the hosts file supplanted.

---

Editing your hosts file will allow you to override the DNS for a domain, on that particular machine.

Can be used to test your site without the test link, prior to going live with SSL, verify an alias site works prior to DNS changes, or for other DNS related reasons.

This causes your local machine only to look directly at the IP specified.

Your hosts file will need to have two entries added that will contain the IP address you want the site to resolve to and the address. Adding the below two lines for example will point www.yourtesturl.com and yourtesturl.com to our current PHP5-ITK (“Refreshed” PHP5) cluster:

127.0.0.1  localhost loopback
::1        localhost

or

127.0.0.1 www.yourtesturl.com

127.0.0.1 yourtesturl.com

Below is how to locate and edit the hosts file on several OS platforms. Once the proper domain information is added you will save the file and your system will begin resolving to the specified IP. Once testing is finished these entries should be removed.

Contents

 

• Windows 8
• Vista and Windows 7

• Windows NT/2000/XP

• Linux

• Mac OSX 10.0 – 10.1.5

• Mac OSX 10.6 – 10.8

local host file

Windows 8

Editing a HOSTS File in Windows 8

Here is what you can do in order to edit the HOSTS file on Windows 8.

• Copy the HOSTS file from the  C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc folder to your Desktop.
• Open the copy from your Desktop in Notepad, and make all necessary changes.

Or directly open file location from NotePad or other PlainText editor like

 

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Vista and Windows 7 use User Account Control (UAC) so Notepad must be run as Administrator.

1. Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories

2. Right click Notepad and select Run as administrator

3. Click Continue on the “Windows needs your permission” UAC window.

4. When Notepad opens Click File -> Open

5. In the filename field type C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

6. Click Open

 

 

Windows NT/2000/XP

1. Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad

2. Click File -> Open

3. In the filename field type C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

4. Click Open

 

Linux

1. Open a terminal window

2. Type sudo nano /etc/hosts (you can substitute any text editor)

3. Enter your password

 

 

Mac OS X 10.0 – 10.1.5

1. Open /Applications/Utilities/NetInfo Manager.

2. To allow editing the NetInfo database, click the padlock in the lower left corner of the window.

3. Enter your Admin password and click OK

4. In the second column of the browser view, select the node named “machines.” You will see entries for -DHCP-, broadcasthost, and localhost in the third column.

5. The quickest way to create a new entry is to duplicate an existing one. So select the “localhost” item in the third column.

6. Choose Duplicate from the Edit menu. A confirmation alert appears.

7. Click Duplicate. A new entry called “localhost copy” appears, and its properties are shown below the browser view.

8. Double-click the value of the ip_address property and enter the IP address of the other computer.

9. Double-click the value of the name property and enter the hostname you want for the other computer.

10. Click the serves property and choose Delete from the Edit menu.

11. Choose Save from the File menu. A confirmation alert appears.

12. Click Update this copy.

13. Repeat steps 6 through 12 for each additional host entry you wish to add.

14. Choose Quit from the NetInfo Manager menu. You do not need to restart the computer.

 

Mac OS X 10.6 – 10.1.8

1. Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

2. Open the hosts file by typing the following in the Terminal window:

sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Type your user password when prompted

3. Edit the Host File,The hosts file contains some comments (lines starting with the # symbol), as well as some default hostname mappings (e.g. 127.0.0.1 – local host). Append your new mappings underneath the default ones.

4. Save the Host File, When done editing the hosts file, press Control+x to save the file.

5. Make your changes take effect by flushing the DNS cache with the following command:

$ dscacheutil -flushcache

6. New mappings should now take effect.

 

 

❶Copy ❷Paste ❸Be Happy ★ Special Characters for Social Media are ♨HOT!☺

💰 Special Characters Map for use on Twitter, FaceBook, Blogs and Social Media Sites

★ Free character maps online where you can copy and paste a special character from a Web page into

Here are some to get you started:

♈ ♉ ♊ ♋ ♌ ♍ ♎ ♏ ♐ ♑ ♒ ✐ ❂ ♓ ☨ ☧ ☦ ✁ ✃ ✄ ✎ ☬ ☫ ❉ ❆ ♅ ♇ ♆ ♙ ♟ ♔ ♕ ♖ ♗ ♘ © ® ™ … ∞ ≤ ≥ « » ç ∫ µ ◊ ı ¥ € £ ƒ $ º ª ‽ ♤ ✈ ♪ ☤ ♀ ☾ ☝ ♖ ✽ ☯ ♥ ☺ ♬ ☹ ☑ ✩ ☠ ✔ ✉ ♂ ✖ ✏ ♝ ❀ ♨ ❦ ☁ ✌ ♛ ❁ ☪ ☂ ★ ✇ ♺ ☭ ☃ ☛ ♞ ✿ ☮ ♘ ✾ ☄ ☟ ✝ ☼ ☚ ♟ ✺ ☥ ✂ ✍ ♕ ✵ ☉ ☇ ☈ ☡ ✠ ☊ ☋ ☌ ☍ ♁ ✇ ☢ ☣ ✣ ✡ ☞ ☜ ✜ ✛ ❥ ♗ ♚ ♛ ♜ ♝ ♞ Ω ≈ * § ∆ ¬ † & æ π ¡ ¿ ø å ∂ • ¶ œ Æ ß ÷ ‰ √ ª % ♠ ☎ ☻ ♫ ☒ ˚ ¯ º ‽ ≠ ˆ ˜ ˘ ∑ ƒ

❄ Add Special Characters in Twitter With the Windows Character Map

1. Click Start, open your list of All Programs, and open the Accessories folder. Navigate to System Tools and open the Character Map program.

2. Select a font from the list.

3. Check the Advanced view box.

4. In the Character set list, select Unicode.

5. In the Group by list, select All to browse all available characters by font, or select Unicode Subrange to browse characters by category.

6. Collect characters by highlighting them and clicking Select. When you are finished collecting, click Copy to copy the characters to the clipboard. You can now paste them into your message.
Use Facebook Emoticons

Here is the complete list of Facebook Chat emoticons and what character combinations create them. Note that these currently only work in Facebook Chat and will not display correctly in Facebook status updates or comments.

Smile 🙂 🙂 :] =)

Frown 😦 😦 :[ =(

Tongue 😛 😛 :-p :p =P

Grin 😀 😀 =D

Gasp :-O :O 😮 😮

Wink 😉 😉

Glasses 😎 8) B-) B)

Sunglasses 8-| 8| B-| B|

Grumpy 😡 >:-(

Unsure :-\

Cry 😥

Devil 3:) 3:-)

Angel O:) O:-)

Kiss :-* :*

Heart :O >:-O >:o >:-o

Pacman :v

Curly Lips :3

Robot :|]

Chris Putnam :putnam:

Shark (^^^)

Penguin <(“)

42 :42:

Using Emoticons in Gmail, Gchat, and Other Google Services

To unlock all available emoticons in Gmail:

1. Click the Gear icon in the top right corner, then click Labs.

2. Type emoji in the Search for labs box.

3. Enable Extra Emoji and click Save Changes. Enable the Extra Emoji option in Google Labs.

4. When composing a message, click the Insert Emoticon symbol to browse. Click any symbol to insert it into your message.

You must be in rich formatting mode to insert emoticons. In GChat, some emoticons are easy to select, but others are hidden:

1. Click the Gear icon in the top right corner, then click Mail Settings.

2. In the Chat tab, select Emoticons on at the bottom. Click Save Changes. Switch on emoticons in the Chat tab.

3. Open a new chat window and click the emoticon in the corner to browse GChat emoticons. Nice job!

One final tidbit: The emoticons listed in the GChat window aren’t all that are available.

Here is a top-secret list of hidden GChat emoticons:

Devil }:-)

Moustache :{

Robot [:|]

Poo ~@~

Rock Out \m/

Monkey :(|)

Bell +/’\

Crab V.v.V Wince >.<

Broken heart

Pig :(:)

Kiss 😡

Use your number keypad (ALT + Number Pad.) for these special characters

Special characters work on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr.

☺           ALt+1

☻          ALt+2

♥            ALt+3

♦             ALt+4

♣            ALt+5

♠             ALt+6

•             ALt+7

◘            ALt+8

○             ALt+9

◙            ALt+10

♂          Alt + 11

♀          Alt + 12

♪             ALt+13

♫            ALt+14

☼           ALt+15

░            ALt+176

▒            ALt+177

▓            ALt+178

│             ALt+179

┤            ALt+180

╡            ALt+181

╢            ALt+182

╖            ALt+183

╕            ALt+184

╣            ALt+185

║            ALt+186

╗            ALt+187

╝            ALt+188

╜            ALt+189

╛            ALt+190

┐             ALt+191

└             ALt+192

┴            ALt+193

┬            ALt+194

├            ALt+195

─             ALt+196

┼            ALt+197

╞            ALt+198

╟            ALt+199

╚            ALt+200

╔            ALt+201

╩            ALt+202

╦            ALt+203

╠            ALt+204

═            ALt+205

╬            ALt+206

╧            ALt+207

╨            ALt+208

╤            ALt+209

╥            ALt+210

╙            ALt+211

╘            ALt+212

╒            ALt+213

╓            ALt+214

╫            ALt+215

╪            ALt+216

┘             ALt+217

┌             ALt+218

Special Characters in HTML

left single quote		‘	‘
right single quote		’	’
single low-9 quote		‚	‚
left double quote		“	“
right double quote		”	”
double low-9 quote		„	„
dagger		†	†
double dagger		‡	‡
per mill sign		‰	‰
single left-pointing angle quote		‹	‹
single right-pointing angle quote		›	›
black spade suit		♠	♠
black club suit		♣	♣
black heart suit		♥	♥
black diamond suit		♦	♦
overline, = spacing overscore		‾	‾
leftward arrow		←	←
upward arrow		↑	↑
rightward arrow		→	→
downward arrow		↓	↓
trademark sign	™	™	™
unused	�- 
horizontal tab
line feed
unused	
space
exclamation mark	!		!
double quotation mark	“	"	“
number sign	#		#
dollar sign	$		$
percent sign	%		%
ampersand	&	&	&
apostrophe	‘		‘
left parenthesis	(		(
right parenthesis	)		)
asterisk	*		*
plus sign	+		+
comma	,		,
hyphen	–		–
period	.		.
slash	/	⁄	/
digits 0-9	0- 9
colon	:		:
semicolon	;		;
less-than sign	<	&lt;	<
equals sign	=		=
greater-than sign	>	&gt;	>
question mark	?		?
at sign	@		@
uppercase letters A-Z	A- Z
left square bracket	[		[
backslash	\		\
right square bracket	]		]
caret	^		^
horizontal bar (underscore)	_		_
grave accent	`		`
lowercase letters a-z	a- z
left curly brace	{		{
vertical bar	|		|
right curly brace	}		}
tilde	~		~
ellipses	…	&hellip;	…
en dash	–	&ndash;	–
em dash	—	&mdash;	—
unused	˜- Ÿ
nonbreaking space		&nbsp;
inverted exclamation	¡	&iexcl;	¡
cent sign	¢	&cent;	¢
pound sterling	£	&pound;	£
general currency sign	¤	&curren;	¤
yen sign	¥	&yen;	¥
broken vertical bar	¦	&brvbar; or &brkbar;	¦
section sign	§	&sect;	§
umlaut	¨	&uml; or &die;	¨
copyright	©	&copy;	©
feminine ordinal	ª	&ordf;	ª
left angle quote	«	&laquo;	«
not sign	¬	&not;	¬
soft hyphen	­	&shy;	­
registered trademark	®	&reg;	®
macron accent	¯	&macr; or &hibar;	¯
degree sign	°	&deg;	°
plus or minus	±	&plusmn;	±
superscript two	²	&sup2;	²
superscript three	³	&sup3;	³
acute accent	´	&acute;	´
micro sign	µ	&micro;	µ
paragraph sign	¶	&para;	¶
middle dot	·	&middot;	·
cedilla	¸	&cedil;	¸
superscript one	¹	&sup1;	¹
masculine ordinal	º	&ordm;	º
right angle quote	»	&raquo;	»
one-fourth	¼	&frac14;	¼
one-half	½	&frac12;	½
three-fourths	¾	&frac34;	¾
inverted question mark	¿	&iquest;	¿
uppercase A, grave accent	À	&Agrave;	À
uppercase A, acute accent	Á	&Aacute;	Á
uppercase A, circumflex accent	Â	&Acirc;	Â
uppercase A, tilde	Ã	&Atilde;	Ã
uppercase A, umlaut	Ä	&Auml;	Ä
uppercase A, ring	Å	&Aring;	Å
uppercase AE	Æ	&AElig;	Æ
uppercase C, cedilla	Ç	&Ccedil;	Ç
uppercase E, grave accent	È	&Egrave;	È
uppercase E, acute accent	É	&Eacute;	É
uppercase E, circumflex accent	Ê	&Ecirc;	Ê
uppercase E, umlaut	Ë	&Euml;	Ë
uppercase I, grave accent	Ì	&Igrave;	Ì
uppercase I, acute accent	Í	&Iacute;	Í
uppercase I, circumflex accent	Î	&Icirc;	Î
uppercase I, umlaut	Ï	&Iuml;	Ï
uppercase Eth, Icelandic	Ð	&ETH;	Ð
uppercase N, tilde	Ñ	&Ntilde;	Ñ
uppercase O, grave accent	Ò	&Ograve;	Ò
uppercase O, acute accent	Ó	&Oacute;	Ó
uppercase O, circumflex accent	Ô	&Ocirc;	Ô
uppercase O, tilde	Õ	&Otilde;	Õ
uppercase O, umlaut	Ö	&Ouml;	Ö
multiplication sign	×	&times;	×
uppercase O, slash	Ø	&Oslash;	Ø
uppercase U, grave accent	Ù	&Ugrave;	Ù
uppercase U, acute accent	Ú	&Uacute;	Ú
uppercase U, circumflex accent	Û	&Ucirc;	Û
uppercase U, umlaut	Ü	&Uuml;	Ü
uppercase Y, acute accent	Ý	&Yacute;	Ý
uppercase THORN, Icelandic	Þ	&THORN;	Þ
lowercase sharps, German	ß	&szlig;	ß
lowercase a, grave accent	à	&agrave;	à
lowercase a, acute accent	á	&aacute;	á
lowercase a, circumflex accent	â	&acirc;	â
lowercase a, tilde	ã	&atilde;	ã
lowercase a, umlaut	ä	&auml;	ä
lowercase a, ring	å	&aring;	å
lowercase ae	æ	&aelig;	æ
lowercase c, cedilla	ç	&ccedil;	ç
lowercase e, grave accent	è	&egrave;	è
lowercase e, acute accent	é	&eacute;	é
lowercase e, circumflex accent	ê	&ecirc;	ê
lowercase e, umlaut	ë	&euml;	ë
lowercase i, grave accent	ì	&igrave;	ì
lowercase i, acute accent	í	&iacute;	í
lowercase i, circumflex accent	î	&icirc;	î
lowercase i, umlaut	ï	&iuml;	ï
lowercase eth, Icelandic	ð	&eth;	ð
lowercase n, tilde	ñ	&ntilde;	ñ
lowercase o, grave accent	ò	&ograve;	ò
lowercase o, acute accent	ó	&oacute;	ó
lowercase o, circumflex accent	ô	&ocirc;	ô
lowercase o, tilde	õ	&otilde;	õ
lowercase o, umlaut	ö	&ouml;	ö
division sign	÷	&divide;	÷
lowercase o, slash	ø	&oslash;	ø
lowercase u, grave accent	ù	&ugrave;	ù
lowercase u, acute accent	ú	&uacute;	ú
lowercase u, circumflex accent	û	&ucirc;	û
lowercase u, umlaut	ü	&uuml;	ü
lowercase y, acute accent	ý	&yacute;	ý
lowercase thorn, Icelandic	þ	&thorn;	þ
lowercase y, umlaut	ÿ	&yuml;	ÿ
Alpha	&Alpha;		Α
alpha	&alpha;		α
Beta	&Beta;		Β
beta	&beta;		β
Gamma	&Gamma;		Γ
gamma	&gamma;		γ
Delta	&Delta;		Δ
delta	&delta;		δ
Epsilon	&Epsilon;		Ε
epsilon	&epsilon;		ε
Zeta	&Zeta;		Ζ
zeta	&zeta;		ζ
Eta	&Eta;		Η
eta	&eta;		η
Theta	&Theta;		Θ
theta	&theta;		θ
Iota	&Iota;		Ι
iota	&iota;		ι
Kappa	&Kappa;		Κ
kappa	&kappa;		κ
Lambda	&Lambda;		Λ
lambda	&lambda;		λ
Mu	&Mu;		Μ
mu	&mu;		μ
Nu	&Nu;		Ν
nu	&nu;		ν
Xi	&Xi;		Ξ
xi	&xi;		ξ
Omicron	&Omicron;		Ο
omicron	&omicron;		ο
Pi	&Pi;		Π
pi	&pi;		π
Rho	&Rho;		Ρ
rho	&rho;		ρ
Sigma	&Sigma;		Σ
sigma	&sigma;		σ
Tau	&Tau;		Τ
tau	&tau;		τ
Upsilon	&Upsilon;		Υ
upsilon	&upsilon;		υ
Phi	&Phi;		Φ
phi	&phi;		φ
Chi	&Chi;		Χ
chi	&chi;		χ
Psi	&Psi;		Ψ
psi	&psi;		ψ
Omega	&Omega;		Ω
omega	&omega;		ω
password dot	●		●
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