Know me better

Agree! MS Word incompatibility has been such a big issue for me when team members are sending me work that I have to have a footer in all my e-mails that says "I do not accept .docx formats" although now I've got an application that can help me convert it, also SP (serivce packs) for office can help and I might upgrade soon despite being lost in the changes to the interface in Word2007. Hey this gives me an idea, I'll try to remember to post about the conversion software for those who dislike the new interface of Word2007 or simply won't upgrade yet.




Yeah..... since getting a laptop with wireless i sit in the bus and read wireless name around the city and also in lecture rooms although i don't usually get quality names like in the comic. You'd think i would have something better to do with a laptop with super graphics....?




LOL, I sure hope this stuff doesn't really happen but the message behind the comic is a blast.




I see them like that sometimes but maybe not that extreme. I want a Prius!




I am probably not this person. Can anyone work out the tune the song is suspose to be in? it took me 3 tries to get it right.


I've taken most of these images from joyoftech.com as you might have noticed. Give them a visit sometime they have regular updates of these comics. I am choosing my favourites to post about, there is plenty more.

Googling my Blog

Try using this:

site:gecsoft.blogspot.com gec living

as a search query and you can browse around all my posts in my blog with helpful previews of the post and the normal functions you get with Google search.

Of course you could also use the top search bar of this blog.

Windows 7 preview clip

That's right you've been avoiding Vista for a while waiting for it to be iron out so it will be smother and more compatible but you always put it off because you hear lots of bad stuff about Vista. You won't give up because you know Windows XP can't live on forever and now that you haven't given up, MS has given up on Vista and is trying to build a new OS again to try and win back customers.

Here is a clip of a feature that might win many of you back.

Matrix comic

I've watched the Matrix but never got it, I am quite sure some of you out there will find it funnier than i do.

BY The Way, if the comics are too small for you to see you can click them and see the real sized version.

Once again thanks to the guys at xkcd.com

Citation Comic

This is more funny when I got into uni and realised what citations are.

Formal Party Comic

Thanks to the guys at xkcd.com

Mac-Bashing Joke

This joke is subjective so I'll just sit here and review my test results.

It Joke: Manual Process

I think this is a brilliant comic.

Currently Reading:

Trying to get more content on blog soon so I am just following these guides:

http://www.thesite.org/workandstudy/studying/howtostudy/studymotivation

http://www.study-habits.com/blog/2007/05/01/learning-motivation-study/

Outlook on my blog

I think i might start sharing entertaining stuff. This blog doesn't get a heap of hits and you would hope not cause if it did it means a lot of people are stressing and pulling out hair like i did when i had those tech. problems that your looking up.

So as an addition I'll try posting multimedia to make things a bit more interesting and also link to many funny and entertaining sites (to nerds at least)

MSWord toggling capitals

Select text and press Shift + F3 to toggle between all caps and all lower-case.


Tip from:
http://www.pcdon.com/030407WordPrintProblemsAllCaps.html

Tip of a thought

Google gives the most free web space, i would say.

Before i give you my ideas why don't you think about all the cool stuff you could do with Google's storage?

There usually isn't any time limit of inactivity too, at least if there was it would be longer than most commercial services.

Vista and XP: Some Clousure

Go back to the Toshiba website and download all the other Windows XP drivers so you can get the wireless, mouse pad etc. working just like in Vista.

f6flpy32.exe

f6flpy32.exe can also be found on Intel's website, I am assuming that Toshiba doesn't have Pty. drivers and uses Intel ones so I am hoping that if you don't have a Toshiba brand laptop you might still be able to use the same drivers provided your laptop is set up with the same hardware and set up.

Vista and XP: Attempt one

Attempt one: Download nLite which is an application that allows you to upgrade your Windows XP install disc. It allows you to integrate Service Packs, drivers and even set up settings so when it comes to recovery time you can just simply reinstall Win XP without much effort or many CDs, just integrate everything into one.

The part we are interested in is the drivers part.
I followed the nLite instructions but failed mainly because when i integrated the drivers i didn't unzip the file so it didn't integrate any drivers as nLite could only detect a .exe file and no .ini files which link to drivers and instructions.

The solution: open (in my case it was f6flpy32.exe) and extract it to a floppy disk as the file is a batch that can only do that. After the files have been moved to the floppy you can select the floppy (which now contains the drivers) and integrate your driver into the XP CD by nLite.

Burn and run!!! Done no floppy disks required and keep that CD too so in the future if you need to reinstall you need not have to look for a floppy drive :D

* All efforts were made to cover my event in detail but if you need more info or want to understand how i did something please feel free to contact me, I mean the only reason why i post this is so that others don't have to waste a CD like me to then to figure out that the drivers aren't on the CD and have to burn another one.

Vista and XP on Toshiba Satellite A200 (PSAF6A)

The Aim: To dual boot Windows XP with Windows Vista on my Toshiba Satellite A200/w00 laptop. Windows Vista was installed first but i wanted to go for Windows XP for when I am on the go in hope that the batteries will last a little longer.

The Problem: New laptops come with fast SATA hard drives with RAID and or ACHI set ups and usually don't come with a floppy drive. Windows XP installer CDs can only detect IDE hard drives so in XP's point of view you have no hard drive on your laptop to install XP on.

The Solution: Download SATA hard drive drivers and use F6 during XP installation to load the drivers from a floppy drive to make XP detect SATA hard drives. Problem is that most of use who have the latest SATA HDDs don't have a floppy drive and why would you want to carry it around???

Simple Solution: Download drivers from Toshiba's web site (Notebooks > Support > Drivers and BIOS> Select Model > Select HDD Driver from list / at least it is for Toshiba AU) NOW here is the TRICKY part, for some reason they can't call it SATA drivers but ACHI or RAID depending on what set up your laptop is in.

• After you download the drivers you can get a floppy disk and put all the files on a floppy.
• Turn on your laptop with Vista running and open Intel Storage Matrix Manager and then determine what controller for SATA you use.
• Reset the computer and start the Windows XP installation process
• Press F6
• Plug in a USB Floppy drive (before the Windows XP set up starts)
• Place floppy in floppy drive
• Select model/driver of HDD your using
• Continue on as normal

This option requires you to get a floppy drive from somewhere and hence i didn't use. It was going to be my back up option, maybe borrow one form a friend or school.

Thought of the day: Back up ad syncing

Professionals will tell you file syncing is not a back up system and shouldn't be as it is stupid, dangerous and very easy to lose data as versioning back ups don't exist.

When you sync you copy bad changes or delete the files you have already deleted, so effectively you have duplicated your mistakes where as back up you duplicate the mistakes but also have copies of the good data.


For me syncing is far easier in terms of managing my data, space required and time taked to copy files over to a back up disk. What i do as a back up procedure is back up my data once a year as a snapshot and then have a syncing folder which are active throughout the year and i only back up every so often but copy important files when they are created or modified.

So in result, I get a yearly snapshot for major recovery or regret deletions, a sync folder where all my data are synced to the computer every so often and a folder where important files are manually copied.

The effectiveness of my system over the backing up systems?, you decide. My main hate for back up software are the complicated versioning of data.

Simplicity that works! will be [G]EC Soft's New Slogan.

MozBackup

I re-installed Windows XP.

If you use Firefox and or Thunderbird and have some sort of data in those programs don't install anything until you have used this program, for Firefox it is great, restored everything so it looks exactly the same as my other Firefox before re-install.
Thunderbird hasn't been so successful, only add-ons have been saved, no e-mails or anything like that has been saved.

Very great for FF so far, I mean comparing to my other application, BackupFirefox which did nothing at all when restoring.

A 3.5/5 stars, losing points only because I couldn't get TB back up and running but will fiddle around with it and see how far i can go.

"Thunderbird is already running, but not responding.

"Thunderbird is already running, but not responding. To open a new window you must close the existing thunderbird process, or restart your system"

This is a stupid message i know. I searched through Google and Mozilla forums and didn't really find any straight forward answers so I am hoping to give you that here.
Most people will suggest that Thunderbird wasn't closed properly and has left a lock file behind that causes this error but i never found any "lock" file (sometimes called "parent.lock" and has restarted my computer improperly with Thunderbird on many times but never the less here we go!

This scenario solution is based on people who have their profile folder for Thunderbird moved to a non-default location (to back up there mail or avoid defrag or whatever) or has moved the folders of the default folder. If not try this solution anyway.

1. Open C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\profiles.ini
2. Change the value after "Path=" to "Path= C:\CURRENT FOLDER LOCATION" (no")
   
3. Save file
4. Open Thunderbird or restart and then open Thunderbird.

So as you can see the solution really works for correcting the location of your profile location. You may have to do this for other users on your computer if you moved their profile location as well.

Hope I have made someone's troubles go away ;D



EDIT: WINDOWS 7'S FOLDER IS LOCATED AT:

B:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird

Auto Shutdwon for Firefox

Auto Shutdown, a plug in for Firefox is a good idea if your using Firefox as your download manager because that way you will get an exact time for shut down as Firefox can detect when the download finished before shutting down so for example if the server slowed down a little bit you won't auto shut down your computer when it is 99.9% finished (if you programmed a shut down by time, although you should really give an extra hour to the estimated time remaining when using timed auto shut down programs).

Stupid Auto-Shutdown designers

If your planning to design an auto shut down program you've come to the right place . . . because I am going to drag on about a stupid thing many people do when programming shut down programs.

I have used a few different applications, freeware ones anyway, and all of the auto shut down programs have an insurance policy of displaying a window that says something like "You have programmed AutoShutdown to turn off this computer, are you sure you want to proceed?" and you can click Yes to shut down or no to continue working. This is designed so in case you are working at your computer and haven't saved any work you can click no and save your work and do a manual shut down when your done.

What this means is that for security purposes the software has not actually fulfilled a solution to the problem, the computer did not auto shut down because you have to click Yes for it to shut down. I like to use this type of software at night for downloads or defrags etc., when you can guess an approx finish time. The insurence policy is not a bad idea but it should have an option on to display or not to display before shut down. It is annoying in the morning to have to click no and know that half a nights of electricity has been wasted.

On a contrast side, auto shut down programs that don't give you the option and don't have a cancel button are also annoying because when your setting up the software sometimes you set it off and you can't do anything but to watch everything shut down and then have to turn it on again to set it up for later. A hot key to cancel shut down would be an idea.

**** Please note that when i say AutoShutdown I am not referring to a program but a type of program so if there is an application out there called AutoShutdown I am not referring to them nor suggesting that that program is badly designed. ****

Easier/Faster way to set home page

If your using tabbed browsing click and drag the tab to the home icon to set the web page your currently viewing as your home page, easy!

Fixing noisy PC Fans - Clicking, buzzing, motor sounds

http://www.murraymoffatt.com/hardware-problem-0004.html

Try at your own risk, you never know what oiling a fan could do, it made mine quiet but could set yours on fire :)

Password Protected Screensaver

If you leave your computer and use the screen saver to lock your screen up you will most likely find out that making shortcuts to the screen saver will not get your computer password protected and it will only be protected when the screen saver is run after idle time of X minutes.

solution1 . To over come this you can actually use the lock computer function (Windows Key + L)

solution2 . Using the shortcut keys suck. Make a shortcut the the shortcut that can be treated like the screen saver shortcuts.

• Right click an empty area of your desktop, choose New/Shortcut and enter this line as the command line:

• rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation

• Click Next. Name the shortcut whatever you prefer and click Finish. That's it.

• If you'd like to change the icon, just right click the shortcut and go to Properties/Shortcut/Change Icon. If you want open up c:\windows\system32 and find the keys icon to go with your locking shortcut. As it is now a icon shortcut you can make a shortcut on your desktop and quick launch.

Additional . If you have the welcome screen on you can turn it off to make password entering easier and more corporate when you return to your computer. To do this change the setting back to classic login prompt.

Start > Control Panel > UserAccounts > Change the way users log on and off
> [Uncheck] Use Welcome Screen




some of the instructions was taken from :
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=70

From now on I will post the web site of tutorial places to save me having to reword simple tutorial steps.

24 Hour time in Windows XP

If you think 24 hour time is cooler, more useful, want to save space on the Windows system tray or for whatever reason had AM and PM time as default and want to change to 24 hours, follow these instructions:

Start > Control Panel > Regional and Language options

(Next to English) click "Customise"

click the "Time" tab

Change the value for "Time format" and change whatever foramt you are using from 'h" to 'H"

Apply and your done!

Don't throw away the mp3 player

Many people who have brought mp3 players when they first came out have most likely replaced it with one with GBs capacity. The old mp3 players are bulky and can't store enough of your favourite songs.

Some re-use it as a thumb drive as the flash chip still has many thousands of cycles to go. The problem is new thumb drives that are flashy, shiny and ever so easy to lose cause their small, thin and comfortable to carry. This makes their old mp3 player bulky uncomfortable and not prefered as a portable data travel mate.

I recently had this same problem as a 128MB and 256MB mp3 player got replaced with a 2GB player. I still wanted to use the flash chip even though 1Gb thumb drives are $10 these days because it is just bad to waste good technology no matter how the new marketing adverts make you feel about new technology.

My solution was simple, a case mod that makes the player slim. Method, break open the case and remove it. The hard part for me was my lack of knowledge for electronics and i was fearing that removing certain components from the circuit board would break the connection and operation of the drive all together (i.e. series circuit) in my scenario i was able to remove the buttons and LCD screen.

Now the hard thinking part what things will be fit for making case? many ideas on the net such as Tic-Tac box etc. won't work on my player as the shape and size of the circuit board was larger than most usb thumb drive boards. After a bit of trying i decided to just wrap it in duct tape, it is thick and strong enough for protection and feels light but thickly padded. Doesn't look cool but compared to a Tic-Tac box i would say I've made it fairly thin.

Yeah, I think I've just about covered it all, now i just have my portable apps with me on the drive. Haven't used it in public so not sure if people would say cool, what is that or wow your so cheap.....

BartPE - Windows on USB

For recovery, troubleshooting or what ever reason sometimes it is helpful if not critical to have Windows work.

I tried to use BartPE to make a copy of Windows suitable for a USB drive but had some problems with the service pack version.

"i386\ntdll.dll is 5.1.2600.0 should be 5.1.2600.1106 or higher"

That is the message i got and i could fix the version with the BartPE in-built slipstream option. I had to use Auto streamer.

1. Insert Windows CD
2. Insert Windows SP pack CD
3. Run AutoStreamer
4. Windows CD should locate automatically else identify CD drive letter for software
5. For SP pack locate contents/fixes and choose one of the files (difficult part, can't just locate drive letter, for me at least)
6. Create ISO of both CDs combined (using AutoStreamer)
7. Mount ISO file with a virtual drive software OR burn to disc and insert the new disc
8. Open BartPE and use the new CD or virtual Cd drive and the rest should be easy and automated.

Just thought I'd publish a mention of my scenario as BartPE wasn't completely user friendly and easy to use. Hope I've solved some troubles and save some time for you, that is why i do post these tips, hopefully good karma will mean little trouble shooting for me.

This is a good FAQ with common problem messages

StatCounter

Easy to use online web hit counter service.
Does the job, has many functions and options than you will ever need and is free for the time being.
It even allows you to choose whether or not you want to display a counter and or their logo.

Another plus is that they have serviced a lot of [G]EC sites in the past.

http://www.statcounter.com/

How much extra RAM should you plan?

Usually when you upgrade or plan for RAM in a computer you always pack more than you usually need, so to cater for future use or to boost the occasional surge of RAM usage.

If your not using your computer for heavy work such as 3D or video processing, just average work, play and school I would recommend using Nero and burning a full DVD and then open up process explorer (Ctrl + Alt + Del) and have a look at how much RAM is being used if it is under how much physical RAM you have you should upgrade and also note how much RAM is being used cause you should have at least that much RAM for good performance.

Unlock PSD files

Cannot delete ????.psd: It is being used by another person or program.
I can't move my psd files. They are always busy or being used by some program.
My psd files are always busy.

Sound familiar? When i have thumbnails for psd enabled my psd files get locked up and i can't move them and sometimes its so bad the changes i make to my images can't be saved unless i save as and make a new file and delete the old one.

My solution is to download this wounderful program called Unlocker, it not only unlocks your files for you but tells you what programs are actually locking up access to your files and works great with this psd scenario, at least for me.

The program is call unlocker and is from Cedrick Collomb @ ccollomb.free.fr
The program is small, fast, free and has the benefits of paracetamol.

BTW in my case it was windows explorer locking my files, something to do with generating the preview thumbnails from the psd files i would imagine.

RAM Upgrade

I upgrade my machine from 512MB to add an extra 1GB but Windows only uses and detects 1.25GB which means one of my 256MB sticks aren't being used.

A friend suggests that maybe it has something to do with single and doudle sided RAm and the support for each with Motherboards. Maybe the Mobo only utilises a certain combination of each.

I'll try to fix it (if possible) and update on it.