The Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing

by Gary W. Eldred

ISBN-10 / ASIN: 047164711X
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780471647119
Publisher: Wiley
Number Of Pages: 312
Publication Date: 2004-04-09

Everything you need to know to begin acquiring properties--now! No matter what obstacles you think you face, real estate still offers you multiple money making opportunities. In The Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing, successful investor and author Gary Eldred presents the tools and knowledge new investors need to get started. This no-hype guide presents case studies of people just like you-regular people who used these simple, smart strategies to earn big returns. You'll not only gain the basics of real estate investing, but also a vault full of specialized techniques that the pros rely on to grow their long-term wealth. Concise yet comprehensive, this practical guide shows you how to: * Find below-market deals * Invest using little or none of your own cash * Use low or no down payment seller financing * Find creative ways to finance your investments * Make money with foreclosures and REOs * Increase the value of an investment property * Negotiate a winning purchase offer * Manage rentals hassle free * Flip properties for fast profit In addition, Eldred shows you how to tailor your investment strategy to make money in any place in any type of market. With proven techniques and timeless principles, The Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing is the prime resource you need to start building a prosperous future-today.

Code :
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How To Create A Custom Splashimage For GRUB

Almost all the popular Linux distributions use the GNU GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) as the bootloader of choice these days. If you have been experimenting with a number of distributions, you must have seen that some of them have a backdrop image for GRUB and some (like Ubuntu) don’t.

If, like me, the default black background of the GRUB menu looks boring to you or if you would like to change the default backdrop to something of your choice, like your girlfriend’s photo for example, then follow along!

We will use:

• An image of the photo you want to use as the background
• GIMP
• A text editor

Steps

First, open up the image you want to use as the backdrop in GIMP. There are a few things you should keep in mind while choosing a image for a task like this. You must keep in mind that when the GRUB menu is displayed, your system has limited graphic capabilities. So don’t choose an image that is too wide or too high. A normal 4:3 aspect ratio photo or image would work well.

Also not something that we will have to reduce colors (to a mere 14 to be precise), so again don’t choose something with gradients, or soft edges or varying tones of a single color because all this will look abrupt once we finish editing to make it work with GRUB.

Once the image is open inside GIMP, go to Image > Scale Image. In the dialog that appears, type 640 for the width, the height would automatically be reduced to 480 (if it’s set to constrain proportion and if you chose the right sized image). Once you are satisfied hit ‘Scale’. The image will now be scaled to 640 x 480, which is perfect for our needs.

Next go to Image > Mode > Indexed. Check ‘generate optimum palette’ if it’s not already checked and key in ‘14′ in the ‘Maximum number of colors’ box. Leave color dithering to none. Hit ‘convert’ and you will see that your image loses some colors and looks a bit out of place. If it’s too much for you, maybe you should try it on a different image. It’s all about what you would like to see! If it looks good, then we are almost done.

Click on File > Save and save the image as an xpm file. Further use gzip ~/background.xpm (assuming you saved it as background.xpm in your home directory) to create a file background.xpm.gz. You may also use File Roller to achieve the task as long as you get background.xpm.gz

Now for the final part we need to tell GRUB to use the masterpiece you have just created as the background. Since now you know how to create the backgrounds for GRUB, you might as well create a dedicated directory to store them. Quickly type in the following set of commands:

sudo mkdir /boot/grub/backgrounds/
sudo mv ~/background.xpm.gz /boot/grub/backgrounds/

Finally edit the boot menu file to let GRUB know about the location of your master piece(s). You will need to edit the /boot/menu.lst file. Do so as follows:

sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst (or “gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst” if you prefer GUI)

Scroll down or find the line which reads ‘End Default Options’. Just next to this line and before the title paragraphs start you need to insert the following line

splashimage=XXXXXX/boot/grub/backgrounds/background.xpm.gz

replace XXXXXX with your root partition. If everything went well, you should see the background next time you boot.

There you go, your very own personalized GRUB splashimage. You can also find ready made splashimages at gnome-look and other places.

Let me know in the comments if you have some questions. Oh and don’t forget to show us what you are using as a splashimage for the GRUB menu on your machine.

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