Category Archives: pc tips

Windows 7 – middle click to close program

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I upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 Ultimate yesterday (Andy bought it as a student for $10). Since I’ve been using Vista for over a year, switching to Windows 7 really wasn’t that big of deal. Switching from XP to Vista was a lot more painful. A few things annoyed me however.

I have always used taskbar shuffle 64 bit. Normally I could middle click on the start bar to close a program. In Windows 7, if you middle click on a program, you open a new instance of it. That’s so dramatically different from what I am used to, very annoying. With taskbar shuffle 64 bit, if you middle click on the preview, it closes the program.

While browsing the forum of taskbar shuffle, I read this thread talking about Windows 7. One of the poster wrote this awesome taskbar tweaker. I may now disable the preview and middle click to close programs.

Version 1.1.1
Download 32 bit version
Download 64 bit version
credits to RaMMicHaeL.

In addition, I hate how the show desktop icon is now all the way to the right.

Eclipse CVS show history tags column stretched out

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Gosh, I managed to double click on the show history tags column one time viewing a file that has gazillion tags. That stretched the tags column out of its capacity. There seems to be no way at least in UI to get that back to normal size so I can see the columns to the right of the tags column. I searched around and finally found a way to fix that without having to create a new workspace.

eclipes show history tags column stretched out

To Fix It:

starting from your workspaces folder, where “ProjectName” is the workspace you are having problems with.

\Workspaces\ProjectName\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.team. cvs.ui\

open dialog_settings.xml

search for

"org.eclipse.team.internal.ccvs.ui.CVSHistoryTableProvider"

there is a tag in this section called “COL_TAGS.” That is the size of the tags column in the history view.

New year greeting = spyware?!

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I got THIS SUCKER last week at work. I haven’t gotten spyware in hmmm like 4 or 5 years. I was really embarrassed that I got it at work so I did not want to ask their IT support for help. I don’t have full admin rights on my work computer so I cannot do a restore. I swear I did not download anything suspicious. At least nothing I know of. I really still have no idea how I got it. So last Friday I was searching all over the place to find a solution. I finally got rid of it using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware free version. So if you see weird process like prunnet.exe running in your task manager and you get random popups in both IE and Firefox, you may want to try that free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

Sansa e250 read Chinese

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After having my Sansa e250 for over a year, I finally figured out how to read Chinese on it. I followed the instructions on this forum and it WORKED. Therefore I’m going to save the steps in case the forum thread is removed.

The complete guide of enable Asian Language support in Sandisk Sansa e200 series.

Warnings:

1. You have to change the language of your UI into Japanese/Simplified Chinese/Traditional Chinese to enable the correspondent language support.

2. Even though the guide works for most people using non-Rhapsody e200 series MP3 player, I like to warn you that changing the firmware could void your warranty or damage your machine. Please make sure you understand the whole procedure. I am not responsible to any damage caused by this manipulation.

3. If you are in Japan and wish to have the Japanese standard of FM frequency, you can change in the radio setting, instead of a firmware change.

4. The firmware tweak is only for non-Rhapsody models!! Double check your machine to make sure!!!

Procedures:

1. Download the 01.01.06p firmware from here.

2. Make sure your player’s USB mode is in MSC. You can go to “settings”->”USB mode” to change it.

3. Turn off the player then restart the player under “Recovery mode” by:

a. Putting your player on “hold”.
b. Pressing on the “record” key of the player while you turn on the player.
c. After the instrucion appears on your player, connect it to your computer.

4. The player will appear as a “16mb disk device” or something similar on your
computer.

5. Unzip Sku_P.zip.

6. Copy the .mi4 and .fnt file to the “16 MB system device”.

7. Disconnect the player, unlock the “hold”. The player will restart.

8. Change the player’s language setting into Japanese or Chinese, according to your need.

9. Now the tags with Asian fonts can be display correctly.

It should look like this (Simplified Chinese, with Chinese and Japanese song tags):

10. Make sure that your firmware is 01.01.06p now. Then go to the Sansa Firmware update page, download the firmware updater, and get the latest firmware.

another reason why I love foobar2000

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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

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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.

taskbar shuffle

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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

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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

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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.