How to Balance a Checkbook

Balancing your checkbook is one of those crucial life skills that you need to know. It will give you a clear sense of not only how much money is in your bank account, but where your money goes. It can also help prevent you from bouncing checks, stick to your budget, help you avoid fees, and detect errors from your bank or even fraudulent billing.

How to Avoid Committing Suicide

If you are having suicidal thoughts or feelings, you should seek immediate assistance, preferably from a mental health professional. Whatever the source of your feelings, they can be dealt with appropriately, and things can get better. You're already taking the first step towards healing by reading this for help. The next step is to find a person to help you. If you are in the US, you can call 911 for emergency or reach a suicide hotline by calling 800-SUICIDE (800-784-2433) or 800-273-TALK (800-273-8255). If you are in the UK, call 999 for emergency or 08457 90 90 90 to reach a suicide hotline. In other countries, take a look at Call Emergency Services to find appropriate numbers.

How to Take Care of a Wandering Jew Plant

Wandering Jews are beautiful plants known for their solid or variegated leaves. These hardy perennials thrive outdoors as groundcover or in pots which allow their tendrils to cascade. They are relatively easy to care for and incredibly simple to propagate, making them great houseplants.

How to Trim Your Cat's Nails

A cat may need its nails trimmed to keep them from splitting or breaking, and you may find it productive to trim off the sharp points of your cat’s nails if the cat is prone to kneading, scratching, etc. Trimming a cat’s nails is fairly easy once you get your cat accustomed to it. Read on for detailed instructions.

How to Get a Restraining Order

If you or your children are going through abuse or getting threats, you can get a restraining order against your abuser. The threats can be from a domestic partner, family member, or stranger. A restraining order is a court order that prevents the abuser from coming into contact with you. A restraining order offers certain protections and allows for consequences if your abuser violates the order. Once you understand this information, you can go through the process of getting one.

How to Fold a Cloth Diaper

Before you need to change a diaper, you must learn how to fold one correctly. In this article, you'll learn how to fold a cloth diaper prior to its use, including a variety of different types of cloth diaper folds.

How to Dress L.A. Casual

In Los Angeles, the days are warm enough to live in tank tops, sandals, and short skirts, and the cool evenings provide ample opportunity for layering with jackets or ponchos. Thanks to LA’s casual, laid-back vibe, t-shirts and denim are practically a uniform any time of year. Dressing LA casual is all about choosing well-made cuts and fabrics that are as comfortable as they are stylish.

How to Learn Algebra

Mastering algebra is important for moving on to nearly all other types of math in middle school and high school. However, even the most basic algebra skills can be tricky for beginners to understand the first time they encounter them. If you're struggling with fundamental algebra topics, don't worry — with a little extra explanation, some easy examples, and some tips for improving your skills, you'll soon be solving algebra problems like a pro.

How to Collect Postcards

Deltiology is the official term for collecting (and studying) postcards. The third largest hobby after collecting stamps and money, collecting postcards can be a very rewarding pastime that can be as broad or as narrow as you'd like, and can be undertaken absolutely anywhere in the world. Even Queen Victoria is thought to have had her own postcard collection, so it's certainly a hobby that has both pedigree and time behind it. If you're keen to do something with the postcards you've got stashed at home or you're wondering whether or not to indulge in buying them every time you're traveling or sightseeing, perhaps deltiology will open up a new world of collecting for you.

How to Dance Reggae

Reggae became popular on dance floors in the Caribbean in the 1960s and has been evolving ever since, influencing (and being influenced by) other types of music and dance as it has matured. Because it's now globally popular, reggae dance has countless regional variations, but with a little practice, almost anyone can learn the basics of this unique style. Start practicing today to "nice up the dance" (get the party started!)

How to Breed Ducks

Domestic ducks produce good-sized, rich eggs, taste delicious, can rid your garden of slugs and snails and are relatively easy to care for. Whether you decide to breed ducks as a hobby or as a small business venture, the smartest way to start out is by obtaining information on breeding ducks. Though they are easy to care for in comparison to other poultry, ducks do have a few basic requirements in order to ensure a healthy flock.

How to Treat Spider Bites

Although they may be painful or itchy, most spider bites are not serious and can be easily treated at home. This article will guide you through assessing and treating spider bites, and provide detailed information on the four types of spider bites worldwide that require emergency treatment.

How to Divide a Lavender Plant

Many species of lavender are perennial plants, meaning they live for two or more years. These plants will grow larger each spring and summer, and may eventually outgrow your garden. However, lavender is unusually fragile when divided, so expert gardeners almost always use small cuttings instead to create new plants. If your plant is far too large, mostly dead, or flowering less each year, the risky division process may be required.

How to Recognize Autism Symptoms in Yourself

Do you think your quirkiness extends beyond social awkwardness? If so, you may be autistic. Autism is a highly complex neurological difference, but with thought and research, you can understand it.

How to Relax in Bed

Remaining in bed does not always mean sleeping. Whether it's in the morning and you're lounging around or it's nighttime and you're just relaxing before sleep, relaxing in bed can be some of the best relaxation you get all day. To get the most out of your time spent awake under the covers, you'll need to set the mood, and get to spoiling yourself. Sound goods, huh? Then let's get started.

How to Tell Your Parents You Have a Girlfriend

The exciting news is that you’ve found an amazing girlfriend who makes your life so much more exciting and fun. The only bad part is that your parents don’t exactly know about her yet. Don’t stress about it—just remember that your parents were once your age and that they may be more understanding than you think. Just pick a time and place, plan what you’re going to say, and know that you’ll feel better before you know it.

Studio Portraits: How to Make Your Subject Stand Out

Getting great studio lighting in your portraiture doesn’t have to mean an intricate setup. And most times simplicity works best. All you need is a strobe or two and a plain, dark background.

4 Approaches to Black & White Conversion in Lightroom

Black and white photos can be powerful and inspiring, but it’s not always simple. With digital photography it is easy to convert a color photo to black and white, but if you want to get quality black and white images you will need to do more than simply take that RAW file or JPG file straight out of your camera and convert it to black and white.

How to Blend Images with Different Depths of Field in Photoshop

If you shoot macro photography, you know that you have to focus on just a little bit of content, so your final image will be out of focus in some areas. There’s no way around that—until you get to post production.

How to Use Old School Flashes for Outdoor Photography

On a dull day, it can be used to simulate sunlight and add contrast to a photograph. In this situation, the flash is the main light source, and its direction should be above and perhaps to one side of the subject, just like sunlight. This entails the use of an off-camera flash. It’s important to remember that even on a dull day, the natural light is directional, and when used correctly, the flash should augment that natural light.

The Secret to Photography Success? Wake Up Early

Tolar chases sunrises while others still sleep and dream. At the earliest hours, he’s already out there hunting for images. And he thinks you should do that, too. Landscape photography is best accomplished before, during, and right after sunrise.

How to Get Stronger Legs

You know how that gym meme goes, "Friends don't let friends skip leg day." Maybe you're just starting to build leg muscle or you're trying to integrate leg strength into your existing workout. Regardless of your fitness level, there are several general steps to creating a killer leg workout.

How to Do Envelope Budgeting

After you budget your money, your next challenge is to follow through. It can be difficult keeping track of how much money you have left for everything. The envelope method is one way some people use to make sure their spending stays within their budget.

How to Make a Jeopardy Game on PowerPoint

Want to make a fun and professional-looking Jeopardy game for your class? Looking to spice up game night with a different spin on trivia games? Creating your own version of Jeopardy is a snap with Microsoft PowerPoint. Follow this guide to make your won from start to finish.

How to Use Backlighting for Portraits

Most photographers start shooting with the sun behind them. After all, it’s what many beginning photography books suggest. But, that’s really missing out on a great part of portraiture—backlight.

10 Different Lighting Effects Using Just One Softbox

When you start out as a photographer, you probably don’t have a lot of equipment or money, so you need to come up with unique ways of using what you do have to create professional, beautiful looking images that sell.

Playful Valentines Wallpaper Tutorial

Try your hand at making this playful valentines wallpaper in Photoshop for your loved one!

Learn to 301 Redirect WordPress to New Addon Domain

If you are moving to a new domain, here is how to 301 Redirect WordPress on Addon Domains using htaccess, without hurting your page rank.

Photoshop: Make a Multi-Directional, Optical Illusion, Photo Portrait

Photoshop CC 2014 tutorial showing how to create a multidirectional, optical illusion, photo portrait. Is the face looking to the left or towards the camera?

Allow HTML in WordPress Category Description

A handy WordPress code snippet which allows HTML tag within the category description field on the WordPress dashboard.

jQuery Toggle Show Password

In this tutorial, we are going to take a look at the jQuery show password functionality.

Change WordPress Search Permalink

This is a handy WordPress snippet which allows you to change search permalink in WordPress.

Disable Default Sidebar Widgets in WordPress

In this post, I will show you how you can disable default sidebar widgets in WordPress.

How To Build A Portrait Portfolio

How to build a portrait portfolio from scratch. Maybe you have no clients yet or you want to target a different kind of client. Here's some tips..

Web Worker

A web worker in html5 is a simple JavaScript file.Html5 have an extended functionality to create thread that continues to work on there own in the background without making any compromise in the performance speed of the of the page.Clicking, selecting items, etc..,web workers run without causing any processing halt.

Video: Colorful poster-comic image from a photo in Photoshop CC

In this Photoshop Creative Cloud tutorial video I show how to apply a colorful poster/comic effect to an image of a South Korean street scene. I'll also show how to make it a Photoshop action so that you can run the action on other images easily.

Create Fiery Dragon Ravaging Mountain Village Scene in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the process used to <strong>Create Fiery Dragon Ravaging Mountain Village Scene in Photoshop</strong>. We will use a photo of a metal dragon display in a museum and make it alive and breath fire. We will also create a mountain village scene from several stock images. Have a try!

Design Your Own Pirate Map Business Card

In today’s tutorial, we’ll show you how to create this fun Pirate Map inspired business card. Show off your skills and get new clients excited to work with you because you’re their design treasure!

Difference Between Div And Span

I will be doing a very brief but concise difference between div and span. I some of you might have asked questions like, whats the difference between div and span? Whats the effect of using each? When should I use each of them? I will try as much as possible to give answers to the questions in the best understanding way I can.

Set Resolution of bitmap Images with Rasterino in Illustrator

With the help of the Rasterino plug-in we can precisely determine and set resolutions for Linked and Embedded bitmap images. I hope that you have already experienced using Rasterino if not, download 14 day free trials now!

Photoshop: How to Create a Cinematic, Stargate in Deep Space

Photoshop CC 2014 tutorial showing how to create a stunning, cinematic, wide screen, deep space, stargate from scratch.

10 Photography Projects to Get Your New Year off to a Great Start

Whether it’s experimenting with a new camera setting, or mastering a technique that you’ve long been wanting to learn, pushing yourself to embark on projects that are both interesting and challenging is a great way to test out newly learned theory, and can help to cement concepts and techniques in your mind.

Installing RMagic on Mac Mavericks and Issues explained

Installing RMagic 2.13.1 is generates issues on Mavericks when working with Brew... The problem is that the latest version of ImageMagick on Brew repos conflicts with RMagic version.. So you need to build older versions of ImagicMagick like 6.8.0-1

How to Crop Bitmap Images in Illustrator with Rasterino

Today we will take a look at interactive and numeric ways of cropping a bitmap image in Adobe Illustrator using the Crop Image Tool and Crop Image function of the Rasterino panel. You will also learn how to quickly remove extra white and transparent pixels on the edges of the image using the Trim Image function. With the help of the Rasterino plug-in, Adobe Illustrator gets tools that usually only raster graphics editors like Photoshop have.

Use Spot Metering for Perfect Exposure on the First Try

Over and under exposure tends to be the result of the meter taking readings from the wrong things. If you set your camera to spot metering, you can tell your camera to take readings from whatever you want.

My Photography Journey and Some Things I've Learned

I can remember taking my first pictures when I was seven years old. While on a family vacation, my parents bought me a miniature camera for a few dollars. It used tiny little film and took tiny little black and white pictures.

Tips for Shooting Better Stock Photography

Fifteen years ago, stock photography was a lot less complicated. You could shoot a globe, a handshake between two guys dressed in business suits, or even a smiling portrait of a woman dressed in formals and hope to make some bucks.

How to Create a Silhouette Photo with One Light

Silhouettes can be a fun and beautiful way to illustrate a scene and are surprisingly easy to create. Photographer Gavin Hoey shows us how to perfect the silhouette with a one light setup.