Author: admin

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Making Media Player Always Show Song Title…

I needed a way of making Windows Media Player 11 always show the current song’s title while in toolbar/mini-player mode. This isn’t an option when it should be, so if you want this done you’ll have to go into it’s registry and add an entry. And I quote…

You [fix] this in v11 by creating REG_DWORD value named “DeskbandFlyoutTimeout” under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\P references . If you set it to 0x0, it’ll never show up. If you set it to 0xFFFFFFFF it’ll always show up. Anything in between it’ll show up for that many milliseconds. The normal setting is I believe 3000ms. If that value is not present, the default is used.”

I found this method here… in one of the anonymous comments. I didn’t reference the original forum thread because it is no longer valid.

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Opening UIF Files

A friend recently came across an uif file and couldn’t open it. Why? Well, it’s quite simple he is too cheap to go buy a copy of MagicISO. What did he do? That’s simple too, he asked me to open it for him like I was some sort if tech geek. 🙂 Anyways, I told him what I normally do, which is…

  • Go to download.com and download a trial version of it, linky.
  • Extract
  • Uninstall

Downfall… the trial version has a limitation, the file size must be 300mb or less. You guessed it, his file was 800mb. So, another method was needed. I did some Googling and hit a gold mine by the name of UIF to ISO Converter GUI. This simple yet very useful program did the job perfectly. All credits go to Luigi Auriemna for the program and Janis Elsts the GUI. Thank you both.

Yes, this program only converts the file to the ISO format. The only difference is there are a handful of free ISO programs, while MagicISO (you have to buy it) is the only one that handles uif files.

Final Thoughts: In the end I walked away from helping someone in need with a nifty little program. NICE!

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Turn Off XP Error Reporting

XP Error Report is today’s subject. Specifically, if you wish to turn it off because it is super annoying… this is how you would go about doing it…

1) Go to your Control Panel
2) Select System Properties
3) Select the Advance Tab
4) Click on the “Error Reporting” tab
5) Turn it OFF

You will see that it is possible to turn all off or do it for specific programs; this is especially useful if you have a third party software that consistently causes the errors but want to know of all the XP Operating System errors.

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WordPress = Spam Central

Lately, my blog has been inundated with spam. I have tried blocking a few of the servers that had been leaving me all the spam comments but the number of IPs have also been growing exponentially. If someone has a solution to this incipient problem, please let me know.

Thanks,
Thuan

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Desktop Text Background Color

After installing XP on a new machine, I noticed that the text on it’s desktop had a background color when it should be transparent. If you run into the same problem, try this…

  1. Go to your “Control Panel”
  2. Double click on “System”
  3. Select the “Advanced” tab
  4. Click on “Settings” in the Performance category
  5. Scroll down and make sure the “Use drop shadow for icons labels on desktop” option is checked

That should do it.

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Don’t go to the Post Office

An important lesson I recently learned since I started actively selling on eBay is that no one should have to ever drive to the post office. It doesn’t matter how close you live to your post office, USPS should come to your house daily if necessary, except Sundays.

We all know that mailing a letter is as easy as putting it in our mail box, right? Well, I hope so. 🙂

The internet has made mailing packages just as easy. If you sell through eBay, this service is tightly integrated into their system. Once a sale is done and payment has been received, all a seller does is click on a link labeled, “Print Shipping Label.” From there we are sent to PayPal’s shipping center where we enter in the package’s weight and our preferences. The final step is to print out our “save a trip to the post office shipping label” and stick (clear packaging tape is necessary) it to the package.

What if you want to ship something that wasn’t sold through eBay? Can we still ship our packages using this method? The answer is YES! My uncontrollable excitement for this answer is the reason for this blog. All you have to do is follow this link…

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ship-now

Oh, of course, you’ll at least need a PayPal account to this service.

There are many benefits to doing things this way:

1) you’ll save gas < — hello my name hurricane IKE
2) you’ll save time
4) you can stay in PJs
3) you’ll save with delivery confirmation, which cost $0.75 at your local P.O. and $0.18 online.

You don’t want to use PayPal? There is still hope. Go straight to the USPS.com website and sign up with them, just click on their “print a shipping label” link. The drawback to this is you are limited to Priority or Express Mail only, which cost much more.

Final notes… you’ll need a scale of some sort to accurately see how much your package weights. And if your packages is a big one, you might have to take it in to your local post office. If you aren’t sure what is or isn’t too big, I’d visit USPS.com for their say in it.

I hope this helps someone because it has helped me tremendously; especially for the non-eBay items.

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The Dilemma, What would you do?

As an IT expert, I try to do whats best for family, friends, and clients all alike. I give them all the same advice. However, I have been having a dilemma with a specific piece of software.

I am talking about the Firefox plugin, named Adblock. What it does is blocks virtually all ads while you are surfing the web. What this means is faster surfing and less annoyances. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without it… as a constant web surfer. But as a website developer, I know those very ads sometimes pay for the site’s cost.

So far I still tell everyone to use it as normal, mostly because my sites are either hobbies or so small that their cost doesn’t mean much. I could just imagine the big time players running multiple servers and their cost.

What would you do?

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WordPress CMS

WordPress as a CMS, its do’able but not so obvious; finding or understanding the information on how to do it can be quite complex.

For example when you search using these keywords: WordPress as CMS…

1) you’ll find premium skins like Remix 2 ($75) that’ll do it for you but to me that going against the whole open source “thingy”
2) you’ll find WordPress how to(s) and discussions on the matter and examples of it being used as a CMS
3) you’ll find how to(s) on how to do it the right way with special coding, lol

Simply put you’ll find everything but…

1) go to your setting page
2) find your “Reading” settings
3) now set your front page to a static page

Now, you will need to make that specific page before you can set it as the frontpage. Please don’t tell me that what I am suggesting is simply a work-around. To me the only difference between WordPress and any CMS is the homepage’s content.

Beg to differ? Comment Away.

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A Briefer History of Time

I vaguely remember when Stephen Hawking’s first version of this book came out, but I do remember reading it. It was an easy read; the concepts were explained in ways that made understanding them a cinch.

Now with, A Briefer History of Time, Mr. Hawking out does himself by making the scientific concepts even easier to understand.

Even with science not being my most knowledgeable subject, the book was profoundly easy to understand and intuitively concise. The reading was so enjoyable that I finished the book in a couple days. I love how the book is structured, chronologically; it is riveting to see our concept of God and the universe changed over time.

Moreover, it’s up to date! It includes an explanation of the widely accepted unified “string theory” and our more modern technical achievements (i.e. satellites, telescopes, etc). It doesn’t stop there; this book has sufficient illustrations that help with conceptualizing and discerning the truth…

Review Thoughts: Rating (5/5). It’s a must read, even if you have read the older version.

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Screen Shot Application

For a while now, I have been looking for a better way of taking screen shots. The old fashion way, you know –> [ print screen, open image editor, crop, export ] wasn’t cutting it anymore. With the plethora of software readily available, I knew there had to be one made for my needs. I just didn’t think it’d be a free one that I’d end up with; notably named, “Screen Shot Application“…

There are other similar applications that you download or buy out there, but if you are looking for simplicity and ease of use I suggest giving this one a try. You can find it on the codeproject.com website, click here.

Oh, BTW, thank you Arman Ghazanchyan for the freebie.

Update 1: Don’t forget to download the .CAB file you’ll need it in the same directory of the setup.exe file for the installer to work. Click Here.

Update 2: This took me 2 days of Googling to no end; but I finally figured out that my [control f / ctrl f] was no longer worked due to a conflict with this application. If you run into this problem, go into the program’s settings and change the full screen shot capture hotkey to something else.