Posts filed under ‘pc tips’
another reason why I love foobar2000
April 7th, 2008
I’ve been using foobar2000 as my media player for quite some time. It’s lightweight, highly customizable and uses little resource. Today while I was listening to some soothing music, I remembered back then I had a CD player that had a sleep function where you can set a timer to have it automatically turn off in 30 minutes. I thought would it be nice to do something like that with foobar since I leave my laptop on all the time by my bed. Sure enough, I didn’t have to look far, foobar’s got an awesome plugin foo_scheduler that does that and much more. It can perform many actions on a scheduled basis including, start, stop, lower volume, exit and even shutdown your computer. Alternatively this is the first thread I stumpled upon. It contains much valuable information for scheduling your computer.
laptop middle mouse button
February 24th, 2008
I’ve been complaining as long as I’ve been using a laptop that I miss a middle mouse button because I’m so used to using it on my regular mouse esp. to open pages in new tabs in Firefox.
I accidentally discovered today that at least on my laptop Dell Inspiron 6400, if you click on the left and right buttons simultaneously, it acts as a middle button click.
For example, I can click on any links in Firefox with both buttons to open them in new tabs.
where is IE7 refresh button?
December 18th, 2007
I can’t believe I googled on this. I thought IE7 took out the refresh button but in fact they just moved it. Moved it to the end of the address line. This also shows how little I used IE7 even tho I’ve been using Vista for over 9 months.
taskbar shuffle
November 1st, 2007
I used to use a free software called task arrange for windows XP to rearrange my buttons in the taskbar. But the software does not work in Vista. I found another software named taskbar shuffle today that allows you to drag the buttons around in your taskbar.
On top of that, it comes with two new features. If you love how middle button clicks close firefox tabs, you can now do the same to close buttons in the taskbar. You can also now easily rearrange the icons in your system tray if you wish 
Very awesome. I highly recommend it if you are looking for something similar.
change double click folders from open to explore
March 31st, 2007
i just figured out something cool by playing around. when you double click on folders in windows xp, it opens the folder. personally i like it to open the folder with the explore view. apparently it’s quite easy to change that.
- Select Folder Options from the Tools menu in My Computer or Explorer, and click the File Types tab.
- Select Folder file type
- Hit the Advanced button
- In the new selection, you will see a list of actions associated with it. Select explore and the Set Default button
- Save settings and exit out of all of the screens
- double click on a folder and see
shorten right click -> new list
March 31st, 2007
i’ve heard about tweak UI - a free microsoft powertool for a while but never tried it out. i did today and there are two things i was able to customize that made my day. first i was able to choose which application it will use to view source in internet explorer. i was able to use my favorite text editor instead of the crappy notepad. another thing i didn’t know it could customize is the right click -> new -> list.
you may change this by unselecting the ones you don’t want in the templates section under tweak UI
i originally installed it to get rid of the windows log on screen. like in windows xp even if you don’t set a password, it will still either show you the welcome screen or prompt you to enter your password whenever you turn it on. it annoys me. there is an autologon setting you may change with tweak UI but it doesn’t work well. it seems to be reset as soon as you choose to logout or i’m missing something i think i will go with solution one suggested here.
shortcut with folder tree
January 29th, 2007
i like shortcuts to folders to speed things up. i’ve always created shorcuts by right clicking on the folder -> create shortcut. a shortcut created that way will bring up the folder content but it will not give you a windows explorer view with the folder tree on the left i.e.
Windows explorer with folder tree
to create a shortcut with the folder tree do following:
- Right click an empty area of the desktop and choose New ->Then choose Shortcut from the list of options. A Create Shortcut dialogue box will appear.
- In the Command line box insert this line: %SystemRoot%\EXPLORER.EXE /n,/e,d:\
- Change the d:\ in the line above to the directory you wish to open. As an example if you had a folder named data in c:\ you would change the line to %SystemRoot%\EXPLORER.EXE /n,/e,c:\data
- Follow through the dialogue and give your shortcut a name. Once finished, if you double click on the shortcut created, it will bring up the appropriate folder with the windows explorer view.
new computer + firefox 2.0
December 3rd, 2006
after my new computer is put together, i finally downloaded firefox 2.0. i know i’m slow.
here are the specs for my new pc:
ASUS P5WD2 premium motherboard
P4 3.6 Ghz
1gb RAM with 800mb FSB
512mb graphics card
200gb harddrive
19 LDC monitor
hopefully that means i will be able to do some real computing & gaming now.
the first thing i learned about firefox 2.0 is that you may easily config the close button on the tabs/tab bar
- open a new tab and type about:config in the address bar and press enter
- In the filter field type browser.tabs.closeButtons
- Double-click on the entry and enter the corresponding number below:
- 0 ~ Display a close button on the active tab only
- 1 ~ Display a close button on each tab (default)
- 2 ~ Don’t display any close buttons
- 3 ~ Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)
- Click OK
- Close the about:config tab
here you may learn more about other setting you may change by editing the about:config entries.
config gaim for gtalk
December 30th, 2005
i knew you could do this but never tried. so i did it today and it works like charm.
If your like me and use GAIM as an IM client, then you might want to follow these instructions for setting up GAIM to use the GoogleTalk servers.
1. Click Accounts->Add (at the login screen)
2. Under the protocol dropdown choose “jabber”
3. Your screenname is everything before @gmail.com
4. Change server from jabber.org to gmail.com
5. Click show more options
6. Make sure “USE TLS if available” is checked.
7. Connect server should be “talk.google.com”?
8. Password is the same password that you use for gmail
Rock on!
media player classic
October 6th, 2005
media player class is the bomb. i’ve been using it for a while. i just learned today that it can also play real media files (originally can only be played by realplayer)
