I’ve written earlier why I decided to move my site to WordPress instead choosing Jekyll or keep updating my custom code. In this post I’ll go in to some details on how I moved to WordPress with the hope that others might have easier time.
Previously I’d decided to use dasBlog because it was fairly minimal and hackable. In the end I modified dasBlog in such a way that it would be hard to tell for normal users where my own code ended and dasBlog started.
After installing Windows 8 you might quickly find yourself at unease at doing few things the old way or “cornering” the mouse too much. The answer to your frustration is keyboard shortcuts! There are many but below are the ones that would save the day:
Windows + D Jump to Desktop mode Windows Switch between Start screen and last app Windows + Q Search Apps Windows + W Search Settings Windows + X A popup menu for power users� (Command Prompt, Control Panel, File Explorer, Computer Management etc) Alt + F4 Close app (Metro app doesn’t have close button) Windows + E Open explorer Windows + R The good old Run dialog Windows + C Open Charms bar (allows you to quickly go to Settings and Search options for the app) Page Up/Down Move around tiles on Start screen Ctrl+Shift+Esc Task Manager Windows + Tab Recent Metro apps Right Click on Tile Options for uninstall, pin, unpin, size etc Windows + Z or Right Click inside Metro App Show App specific bar (for example, open file, play button etc) Windows + .
We went to Mini Makers Faire in Seattle today and one of most surprising thing I learned was how abundant are the local
resources for hackers and makers! Reminded me of geek fairy tales of Homebrew Computer Club that you often hear. Here are some of the things
you want to check out if you are interested in making stuff and live in Seattle area:
Metrix Create: Space – I think this was the coolest thing I came to know about.
Just a note… if you have Tomato installed as firmware in the router and Comcast cable internet then try followings:
Disconnect cable modem and router and wait until their lights go off. For Comcast modem it takes fair bit of time because of internal battery. If Internet connection is still lost then connect your computer directly to cable modem. If this doesn’t work then you need to call Comcast at 1-800-COMCAST.
May be the silliest thing but how do you align address on the right side of a letter in Microsoft Word 2010? Select the text you need and then click on that little square in Ribbon bar:
Type amount of indentation you need. It’s typically 5” for letter size:
And you have right aligned address!
This is really frustrating if you didn’t knew. Intel likes to call many of their processors for “business class” systems “Xeon”. When they say Xeon it can mean anything from those dinosaurs based on Pentium II and the latest and greatest ones based on on Core i7. So when you see a system built with Xeon processor you really need to look up its exact subtle number and carefully study its specs to figure out what it really is.
Since about 3 years we used Groove to share calendar, notes and files within family – until I discovered a feature in OneNote called “Shared Notebooks”. The Shared Notebooks are just like any other OneNote notebooks with a difference that they get synced with other people! If someone added new note or modified a note you get it next time and vice a versa. On conflicts it created new pages and also you can take automated backups.
If you are in the market to look for Digital photo frames this note will hopefully save you some time. It’s really frustrating to buy one of this when selection is so large. This is very nice Christmas gift to your loved ones. I take lots of photographs but rarely have time to actually see them. So they are excellent gadget even if you want to buy for yourself!
One of the coolest feature in new frames is wireless connectivity to Internet.
This study basically says that if you have 50” TV and you are watching it at about 9’ of distance then 720p has all the resolution human eye with 20⁄20 vision can ever see!
Currently we use 80X40 screen through our Panasonic projector PT-AX100U. Now that’s equal to almost 4 of your tiny 50” screens so certainly 720p won’t be enough at our current viewing distance of 10’ (our current screen size is limited because of wall size and I think the projector is perfectly capable of going up to 100” diagonal).
Yes, this dearly missed shell context menu item is now available again in Windows Vista, thanks to Mark Russinovich. This little new utility is a new addition to Sysinternals toolset and can be downloaded here. Just run ShellRunAs /reg to register context menu for Shell “Run as different user”. This menu will then be available in Start menu items as well as Windows Explorer right clicks :).
This addictive program can easily keep you busy for rest of the weekend so be careful :). Phun is a physics simulator that even kids can use and its absolutely a delight. I watched the video and had to immediately download to give it a try. At first the interface might seem not as easy but after reading tutorial in main page and forums, you might be able to accomplish everything shown in video in less than 15 min of learning curve!
These are some of the best screensavers I’ve seen anywhere. Check out especially skyrocket which is extremely cool simulation of fireworks with randomly moving camera in 3D space and also Helios. Too bad I can’t use them because I’ve donated my free computer time to World Community Grid to compute protein folding :(.
Recently I observed how unequally I use my right and left hands. It’s not because I don’t type with my both hands but it’s because I use only the right hand in maneuvering and clicking the mouse. Considering the number of clicks I make per day, this huge lack of load-balancing is terrible! So I switched the mouse on left hand and it’s been great (reminds me the first time I hold the mouse) except that my mouse is curved so it’s comfortable only on right hand.
Any software that isn’t open source AND also isn’t evolving fast enough to keep up with their customers should be seen with the sign “Stay Away”. These things gets in to your computer in the name of easing up your tasks and it indeed appears so for a while until you just run of out its capacity and start spending most of the time in just managing it or dealing with information overload.
I thought I know everything there is to know about Google searching, until… I found there is an operator to search for synonyms and two words separated by a word and so on. Check out the Google Cheetsheet!
It appears that I’m often switching to Clusty for “hard to find” things - usually when Googles first page of results is just irrelevant. I think clustering is inevitable technology for search engines and really hope Google speeds up their effort for implementation.
In my recent quest to find new music, I bumped in to brand new DVD-A format on which many new demanding music albums are being delivered. It appears that this is definitely the next generation of music quality but there is very little or no information on many of its aspects. Here I’ll try to summarize what I found so far:
This format is capable of delivering very high quality multi-channel surround sound on your home theater system.
I use SharpReader to read my news (opml zip). This is a small free app that has amazingly survived like an unevolving little insect in an environment where new species with more beef keeps coming. But this thing is still not extinct. I run around to look for an option with more features and end up at using SharpReader again and again. I’m though more interested that it dies away for one reason - the author isn’t publishing source code and at the same time he doesn’t have time to improve it by himself.
This Task Manager for Windows rocks. Besides doing everything that you ever wanted from a thing called Task Manager (even showing open files for every process), it has one of the sweetest option that your application should provide: Replace Windows native [equivalent thing]! I just keep wishing if there had been free and with-source Calculators and Explorers and everything else Windows that I can just replace with a click like this and move on rather then waiting for a decade on Microsoft to improve their age old featureless apps.