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How to Connect a Router to a Cable Modem

Tech How To

For people that don’t know, a router acts as a junctions between two or more networks. Basically, in simplified form, a router will connect your Internet Service Providers network (ISP) to your computer(s). Usually, a router is used to gain the ability to connect multiple computers to the network, or to broadcast a wireless signal throughout your house. You can connect to the Internet via just your cable modem, but this will likely limit you to one computer via an Ethernet cable.


You have to have a cable modem to use a router. The cable modem generally has 3 connections: a cable input, an ethernet input, and the power cable. You can connect your computer directly to the modem via the ethernet jack, but this will only allow you 1 connection to the Internet. This is where a router becomes very useful. If you simply connect the cable modem to your router via the ethernet cable (there is usually an input jack on the router marked as ‘incoming’), you can then use the multiple outgoing jacks on your router to connect various computers via ethernet cables. Many routers these days also have Wireless, so they will broadcast a wireless signal throughout your house. Most new laptops can pick up a wireless signal, but many desktop computers need a wireless adapter to pick up the signal.

Some pictures illustrating how this works will be available shortly.


How to Thumbnail in Photoshop

Tech How To

Making thumbnails in Adobe Photoshop is really very easy. It can create a much clearer thumbnail for you than many other methods, and you are able to select as much or as little of the picture as you’d like. The secret is in the Crop Tool, which is selected in the image below. Now, for the best part: you can define what size you want the final thumbnail to be, whether you want a 150px by 150px thumbnail or anything in between. Double clicking the image once the desired area is selected will create the thumbnail.

I have found that using the Save for Web feature will spit out a nicely optimized thumbnail for quick loading, but can sometimes be blurry. A good way to correct this is the following: after cropping your image, go to the Layer menu and select Duplicate Layer. Then, add a Gaussian Blur filter with a 1-2 pixel value via the Filter menu. From the Layer window, select “Soft Light” or “Screen” as shown.
Change the opacity to between 30-60%, and flatten the image (the side popout menu on the Layer window). There, much better! If you’re not a fan of Photoshop, I highly recommend Arles Web Page Creator. It has some really nice built in features and will create some very sharp clean thumbnails. It’s free to try and a valuable tool for your arsenal.




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