Some of you might have heard of Teflon Tape (not the PTFE kind, those are meant for sealing pipes). It’s kind of a very smooth (non-stick) tape which has properties that make it sort of repel each other while on the other side of the tape is an adhesive layer. So it is very difficult for anything to stick on Teflon tape and that includes dirt or dust particles. What does this mean if you stick the tape on your mouse feet? Yes, smooth and silky operation of your mouse. Nowdays, optical mouse do not come a with ball, so the mouse feet (those little pads on the bottom of your mouse) will tend to wear out fast. Or they get stuck with dirt. This makes it every difficult to move your mouse around. And this is very important for a gamer, especially for those “frag” parties youngsters often frequent. They need precision and they need to move their mouse fast. Youngsters nowadays………..Anyway, I have a layer of Teflon Tape on my own mouse too. I just like the feeling and it is pretty maintenance free too (since I don’t play games much).

However, the Teflon tape tends to fade away fast if you move your mouse very often. So you may need to re-apply another layer of Telfon Tape on your mouse once it has faded away. Yes, this is a bit tedious but it shouldn’t take a long time to cut a few pieces of tape and applying it on your mouse feet right? And it is cheaper than getting those expensive mousepads (or mousemats as some will call it) or even those exotic Mouse Feets. A roll of Teflon Tape is about S$10 while a Everglide MouseMat will cost about S$25 to S$55. And that roll of Teflon Tape can last you more than 2 years from my experience.

Oh, a bad thing about using Teflon Tape is that the adhesive edges of the tape when applied to the mouse feet tend to attract dirt and dust to the sides. So you may need to clean it once in a while. However, depending on your mouse surface, you can actually apply the Teflon Tape in such a way that dirt won’t stick to the edges of the Teflon tape. I myself have done it a few times before, with a little luck.

Teflon Tape is a good solution for all your mouse movement problems. You don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate usefulness of the humble Teflon Tape. It makes working on your computer much more enjoyable and less frustrating when you don’t have to fight to control your mouse. You can also ditch your mousepad while you are at it. The Teflon Tape makes your mouse glide even on slightly rough surfaces.

Hey guys, I am back again to introduce to you yet another authority site. This time it is a site for a forum script. The script is called Vanilla. I am sure if you are a forum webmaster, you will know this name. Although I won’t say it is as popular as PhpBB or VBulletin, it is nevertheless pretty famous. Why is it famous? Well, the main reason is it is unique. It is not your regular forum in the way that it displays the messages and threads if the forum, some of which is being copied by other forum scripts. The latest threads will be shown at the top of the main page so you don’t need to browse to a subforum before looking at the latest discussions. The arrangement and the layout of the threads is very intuitive. You can even browse by the regular method of subforums(or by category) if you so wish. They also have a very powerful search function available for those who like to do searching.

The thing about Vanilla is that it comes out of the box lean and very light-weight. Their requirements for installation and setup is low, so most web servers (with PHP support) with MySQL would work. Although it has all the basic functions for the users and the administrator, compared to other scripts, you can say it is very plain. But Vanilla has a lot of “add-ons” available. In fact, it is designed so that developers can easily and quickly create powerful add-ons for the Vanilla system. Oh, if you are worried about the looks, Vanilla sure won’t disappoint. It has the web2.0 kind of feel but there are many other themes and styles out there too. I am actually very impressed with it’s look. So if you are looking for a unique design for your brand new forum, you will be able to find them easily or you can look for developers to help you create one.

Yes, this is a free script. Open source and standards compliant. They have a very active community which I am sure will be willing to help you out if you have any problems with the script. And furthermore, it supports a variety of different languages with add-ons available. You can finally make your truly global internet forum real soon with this forum script.

Oh, the great MJZ Hosting forum is using this script as well.