Uncle Eddie

Hi. Whats up! Creating a website to learn how to and share helpful tips about what I learn along the way.

Mumble is a good way to communicate on the World Wide Web with your friends, it is a free open source group voice and text chat program  popular with gamers but has many other uses besides talking to your team while playing games, like keeping in touch and hanging out with friends from around the world in a secure group text or voice chat room :)

PayPal is a good, quick, easy and secure way to send and receive money online, highly recommended for online shopping and other transactions

GameRanger is a good place to play multiplayer games like Axis and Allies (download unofficial AAStarterPack from back in the day on warzone), Civilization Call to Power (check ctp2.info if fan of CTP) , Age of Empires, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Disciples 2 Gold, Risk and hundreds of other games.  Another similar site to play multiplayer games is Voobly but gameranger is much bigger and has more games it supports.

Favorite game is Supreme Commander Forged Alliance and there is a free open source community supported lobby to find multiplayer matches at FAForever.com. You can get the game on Steam or GOG.com. gold edition recommended as original has map making tool but SC Forged Alliance is a stand alone game and is all that is required to play, it is on sale every couple months for 80% off or more so can get for under 5$ if dont want to pay the 13$ but well worth it years of replay value thousands of different maps. Supreme Commander 2 sucks dont waste money on the complete bundle. HumbleBundle is another good site to buy games online. Also you may want to check out oldpcgaming has free retro PC games from around 1990 to 2005. Also try old-games for downloads of old games.

Entertainment  - Be aware your ISP (internet service provider) can see where you go online so recommend using a VPN like NordVPN when accessing movie/tv series sites as they may block them and report them and shut them down, a VPN disguises your ip address so they can not see where you are going - recommended unofficial (legal grey area sites) sites to try  todaytvseries1.com (download file in rar form can be unziped with 7zip a free open source app) , 123-movies.zone . Use VLC media player for free open source player. Some official (legal) sites Plex , Tubitv , Plutotv , Fawesome and Sling Freestream for free online tv streaming. Also CWTV.com ,  CBS.com and ABC.com have alot of free content. Plex free will be all most people need but they have an upgrade to unlock more features if you upgrade recommend lifetime as monthly for 2 years is same price. Media Center Servers Jellyfin , Kodi , Stremio , Media Portal , Universal Media Server and Myth TV are all free. JRiver MediaCenter is a pricey paid server worth a mention but the free servers do just about everything these days so cant see paying for one but it is a good software to check if you need something specific you cant find in the others. TVlistings.Gracenote for tv listings. To locate where your Over The Air antenna stations are located try Antennasdirect , Antennaweb, Channelmaster, Rabbitears, Otadtv, FCC and TVfool(been down most of 2024) have some good tools. NordVPN for secure surfing the internet, recommend getting the multi year deal as it saves you some money and ends up costing around 3$ a month. Free vpns dont work very well, NordVpn is a top 5 vpn and works good. Avast for free antivirus. IDM is a good downloader if you download alot of stuff its worth the one time lifetime fee. Speedtest to test your connection . Media tools MakeMKV , Avidemux. Recommend Ebay for shopping , buying and selling online. Thursday night football is now on amazon prime only this year but if you do not have you can watch for free on twitch , may need to turn off your VPN as need to verify from USA, coverage starts at 7pm est.

Linux recommend LMDE ( Linux Mint Debian Edition run by community ) and also Ubuntu ( fork based on debian but run by corporation so Ubuntu can get bought out like IBM just bought linux Centos a free server os with substantial % world market and now you have to pay for it, rumor is Microsoft is going to do the same to Ubuntu so I would go with LMDE for desktop and Debian for server ( Cinnamon desktop is good and most like windows 7 desktop you can make a live usb os and try LMDE and Debian before installing on computer )  run by community so it will be free forever and cant be bought out. ) are free popular linux OS if you do not want to pay microsoft or apple to operate computer. Linux also needs very few resources so works well on old laptops and desktops with older cpu and small amount of ram. Tails to be secure and avoid surveillance, censorship. Mozilla firefox is a good free web browser. Duckduckgo for private search engine if you do not want your search info saved and sold like google and microsoft do.

Information sites. News streams  AbcNews , CbsNews , CNN can use official site or try CnnNews. Information / Knowledge Ballotpedia , Library of Congress , Justice.gov , AARO.mil , NY.gov ,  CA.gov , CDC.gov , CIA World Factbook , USdebtclock , Senate.gov , House.gov , Worldometers , Nasa , Britannica , Britannica.com , Merriam-Webster.com ,Gutenberg.org , Archive.org ,  Doomsday Clock

FYI Web Sites ending in .gov are government , .mil are military , .edu are education and .us is a individual , business or organization that is a citizen of, or licensed in, the USA. You have to be verified to aquire these domain suffix.

UPDATE be aware that as of Jan 20 2025 when Trump administration officialy sworn in and in control of executive branch of USA government they have immediately started deleting factual information from government sites ( .gov ) that contradict their narative such as - DEI purge delete non-whites like Jackie Robinson, Tuskegee airmen, Navajo code talkers, Enola Gay aircraft that dropped first atomic bomb because of the word gay, information on vaccines, Tracking virus spread in USA that doctors rely on to treat patients, anything about climate change, anything about green energy (solar,windmills), WW2 Holocaust and Nazis, and on and on as their belief is if they delete it then it is not true and it never happened.

UPDATE March 2025 Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services orders CDC staff not to release news and information on measles outbreak, other virus outbreaks and not to recommend vaccination. Also Kennedy fires top scientists and others resign like top vaccine official Dr. Peter Marks who wrote that undermining confidence in vaccines is irresponsible and a danger to public health and " It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies" , "This man doesn't care about the truth. He cares about what is making him followers."

PLEASE educate yourself and understand what is true and factual so you know when you are being lied to as this is extremely important when you make decisions affecting your life, our lives, our country and our planet.

Featured Tips

Install Mumble ,should only take a min and go smooth on any modern os but if you are getting an error make sure you have windows Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable installed like the note mentioned on mumble download link is there for x64 download, you can click default settings as you can always run audio wizard later to adjust anything. If you want to connect to public servers you can allow, if you know private server you want to connect to you dont need to allow public servers just enter server to connect to mumble.uncleeddie.net and start texting and talking in group chats. Mumble server can be password protected my favorite cat's name if so. Also rooms in mumble can require token (password) and other credentials if you encounter a room that denies access that is why. Now you can hangout in a secure room group texting and voice chat with your friends anywhere in the world.

Site is a work in progress as it is only a hobby.