Rename mobile device in Windows 7

adminMicrosoft0 Comment
2 min. reading

I’m testing my mobile applications on various number of mobile devices with Windows Phone system on-board. And Windows 7’s creators are stupid enough to develop this feature in the way, that all Windows Phone-based devices are named Windows Phone. Eventually, I ended up with four different mobile phones listed in Devices and Printers section under Windows Phone name. I needed a way to rename each of them to display correct model.

This is possible in Windows 7 and this is fairly easy, though pretty nice hidden, so some may claim that renaming mobile device is not possible.

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Ultra-fast method of creating hyperlinks in Microsoft Word

adminMicrosoft0 Comment
3 min. reading

The most basic way of adding a “connector” from one part of Word document to another section, header or place is achieved by adding a bookmark followed by creating a hyperlink to that bookmark. This is a two-step process that involves using two different windows and a lot of typing and clicking.

There’s a much, much faster one-way method of achieving the same.

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Markdown formatting in block elements in WordPress

adminMarkdown, WordPress0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

Markdown formatter in WordPress (Jetpack’s one) by default does not format parts inside block elements:

<div style="margin-left: 50px">
Thus, _this_ will **not** work!
</div>

But, with addition of markdown="1" you can enable the magic:

<div style="margin-left: 50px" markdown="1">
And _this_ **will** work!
</div>

I love simple solutions!

Fix for Windows Update unable to find any update [updated]

adminMicrosoft0 Comment
5 min. reading

This has been reported to be happening after fresh install of Windows 7 SP 1. But, it happened to me on an old netbook with Windows installed three years a go or more as well. There were also reports, that fix shown in this article can help for Windows Vista SP2 not being able to install any new updates. I’m also pretty sure, that certain Microsoft downloads (even those offline) are affected by this problem, i.e. until you fix it, you won’t be able to install .NET Framework (for example) on freshly installed Windows 7 SP1.

Anyway, if at any point of time on any Windows you’ll notice, that Windows Update hasn’t updated any new updates for past few weeks or if searching for new updates in Windows Update hangs forever or you run into some weird problems with installing Microsoft tools then you should read this article, as you may find fix for your problem and many useful links here.

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Download Windows ISO images from Windows 10 page [updated]

adminMicrosoft2 Comments
5 min. reading

Currently the only official way of downloading Windows 7 ISO image is by visiting Windows 7 Disc Images website and providing valid license key. There is no official way to download these images, if you don’t have a key. Fortunately raymond.cc brought a nifty workaround, found by one of the Russian groups of net-freaks.

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Using arrow keys to quickly changing active window placement

adminMicrosoft0 Comment
2 min. reading

By a complete accident I have found a cool feature in Windows 7 (probably works in other versions as well), that allows you to use Windows and keyboard arrows to quickly change active window placement.

You can change horizontal placement (i.e. pick to which screen margin active windows sticks) as well as vertical placement (i.e. quickly maximize or minimize active window).

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Bringing Unison to QNAP TS-210

adminQNAP0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

My six years old QNAP TS-210 was key solution for my most important data backup back in 2012. That’s the moment, when I first time heard about Unison (webpage, Wikipedia). Its idea (a free, self-hosted alternative to Dropbox, limited in size only by free space on your device) caught my heart and I immediately felt in love with it.

Unfortunately, after struggling with it for over a few months I finally failed getting it back to QNAP and turned into some alternative solutions (Bittorrent Sync, Dropbox, OneDrive). However, someone did finally find a solution and answered my four years old post. This obligates me to share this knowledge. Have a good reading.

PhoneGap Build app and more languages in Windows Marketplace

adminCordova0 Comment
2 min. reading

When preparing an application for publication in Google Play, you can provide description and other details of your application in as many languages as you want, directly in Google Play Developer Console.

You won’t find anything similar in Windows Phone Dev Center. This is, because Windows Marketplace is the only market of “big three” platforms, that require you to declare supported languages inside your application before you’ll be able to create store impression for your application in different languages.

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Second life of burned-down DVDs (or CDs)

adminhardware, Microsoft0 Comment
9 min. reading

Default, system DVD burning program in Windows 7 is widely known for being very unstable and having burned-down (wasted, destroyed) DVDs ratio even as high as 20-30% (meaning, that you successfully burn only seven DVDs out of ten). If using more stable, dedicated software is not an option (for various reasons), you have to survive hell of using default burner. However, the fact, that DVD is burned-down doesn’t necessary mean, that you should recycle that DVD. In many case you can re-used in future.

This article started as a simple guide, on how you can re-use disk, that were damaged by native Windows burning software. But, since I was burning about 30 DVD DL files, when writing this text, I also included some tips and extra general information on burning disks and using UDF-formatted DVDs. So, this post may become useful even to those, who does not have any problems with disk burnout process under Windows.

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OneDrive troubleshooting on Windows 8.1

adminMicrosoft0 Comment
6 min. reading

I had a serious problems with OneDrive on Windows 8.1. I wasn’t able to access my folder or OneDrive settings (to at least login to OneDrive account and start syncing). I wasn’t evan able to start OneDrive or see its icon in file explorer. Ultimately, I gave up and “resolved” my problem by upgrading system to Windows 10. However, you may use this article as a kind of checklist to see, if you have checked everything, when resolving your problems with OneDrive under Windows 8.1.

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Mass modification of ID3 tags and MP3 filenames

adminDelphi and Free Pascal0 Comment
5 min. reading

I’m a puristic person and perfection maniac. Every of tens of thousands of MP3 files in my audiobook library must have a precisely filled up ID3 Tag and correct file name. For most operations on both tags and filenames, I’m using my own piece of software, written in Delphi years ago.

However, since it does not support operations on ID3Tagv2, I was forced to strip these tags manually, using “magical” key combination in Winamp (see below). But, for large set of files some batch program must be used. And here you’ll find short notice on some of them.

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Images in GitHub’s wikis

adminVCS0 Comment
3 min. reading

GitHub is the best place (known to me) for doing a not-too-much-demanding management or collaboration of not-too-big projects. It offers you (of course!) repository hosting, powered by simple, yet effective bug and issues management and wiki pages for help or guides for your project. And the only problem, that beginners usually face, is hosting images for that wikis. GitHub allows you to upload images to issues in issue tracker and does all the dirty work of hosting them for you. But, a bummer appears, when it comes to images in wikis, because Add image button in any wiki page editor allows you to enter URL only and there is no way to simply upload them to your wiki.

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Use custom ringtones in Microsoft Lumia phone

adminhardware, Microsoft0 Comment
2 min. reading

I’ve been struggling for hours to force my Microsoft Lumia 535 to display (and allow me to select) any .mp3 file as custom ringtone. Finally, this WindowsPhone.se answer solved my problems. However, there were some side notes and differences with my Lumia 535, that are not mentioned in this article, so I decided to write following post to further extend it.

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Remove default search engines in Opera

adminsoftware3 Comments
4 min. reading

This is a revised and updated version of this Super User answer on how to easily remove default search engines in Opera browser. By default they’re not editable or removable at all. Official statement is, that this feature was “forgotten”. But, we all know the facts, that Opera is being paid for keeping these default search available and making removal of them as hard as possible to the end user.

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Hide right sidebar in Adobe Acrobat Reader

adminsoftware0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

If you’re annoyed with Tools / Fill & Sign / Comment right sidebar in Adobe Acrobat Reader (it is pretty useless, but still occupies a lot of space), then you can hide it with a simple trick.

Press Ctrl+H or select View > Reader Mode to enable Reader Mode.

This will hide all extra stuff (all toolbars and sidebars) except actual document area. If you would like to bring left sidebar (with navigation panel etc.) back, then simply press that keyboard shortcut or select that menu option again, to disable Reader Mode. Left sidebar should return, while right sidebar should remain hidden.

Purge Windows of private data when disk formatting is not an option

adminMicrosoft0 Comment
6 min. reading

When I was hired by my previous employer, I was allowed to use office computer partially for private purposes, i.e. I was allowed to install Dropbox and use Google Chrome with my private account to sync all bookmarks and use password manager.

When I left this employer, to my surprise, I was refused to format system disk. And so, I have come with this short checklist or memo-like article of which steps should be undertaken or considered in similar situation.

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Fresh XAMPP installation — a step-by-step guide

admindev0 Comment
11 min. reading

This is more like my private memo, to have a clean check-list of steps I usually undertake, when installing fresh XAMPP for Windows installation. Most steps aren’t unique to my environment, so this article can also help others, that are stuck at some point. Note, that this is purely development environment-oriented installation guide, as XAMPP is not meant to be used as production server.

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Relative file paths and migrations in Yii1

adminYii0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

Watch out for relative file paths. When using them in any action, files lands in a folder (from that relative path) in root directory folder (where they’re is expected, at least according to me). But, when you use the very same path in a migration, then files will land in a folder in protected folder. I have just found this to my surprise.

To “fix” this, you need to add:

[php]dirname(__FILE__).’/../../’.[/php]

in front of your relative path (which makes it no longer relative, though).

Details on Yii forum.

Copy remote files with copy() function

adminPHP0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

Seven years old comment in PHP manual, which still shines like a real gem! You can use copy() function to easily (one-liner!) copy remote files, without doing messy fopen() stuff:

if(!@copy('http://someserver.com/somefile.zip','./somefile.zip'))
{
    $errors = error_get_last();
    
    echo "COPY ERROR: ".$errors['type'];
    echo "<br />\n".$errors['message'];
}
else echo "File copied from remote!";

steve a h, whoever you’re or were, I salute you!

Private repository with public issues on GitHub

adminVCS0 Comment
2 min. reading

On contrary to BitBucket, GitHub does not allow you to have private repository with public issues. But, you can setup a two different repositories — private for code hosting and public for issues (read more in GitHub Help). And, what is most important and what not everyone knows — GitHub’s commit message’s grammar parsing is powerful enough to handle crossed commits.

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