Want to get rid of “Set as Desktop Wallpaper” item?
Then follow these simple steps:
regedit and hit Entersetdesktopwallpaper and hit Entersetdesktopwallpaper entriesIn fairly new (two weeks old) Windows 11 24H2 it took 12 iterations, so twelve image file types had this annoying entry in their context menu.
If you consider translating your software, cloud service or game into Hingi language, you have two options:
The first option incurs some more costs due to the needs of hiring special translator and sometimes due to the need of adjusting currently used font to support all 48 Devanagari alphabet‘s characters.
I did some short research, both public and private, to see, if supporting natural Hindi language supports additional expenses from our app’s budget. And I want to share with my findings.
Read More “Translating software to Hindi language”In the original version this article was discussing how to load HEIC files in IrfanView under Windows 11. In order to convert them to a bit more natural, a bit less Apple formats like .png.
Previously I was doing such conversion on my PC using CopyTrans HEIC Codec. At the beginning of 2024 however, CopyTrans’ management hit their heads really hard and figured out that it will be so cool to start distributing their software in the way that it leaves an unbelievable mess on user’s computer (including creating icons and shortcuts everywhere, adding dozens of right-click menu items and even creating some fake disk available in This PC window).
Seeing this, I did the only thing I could do. I have flushed CopyTrans crap in the toilet and started using fabulous Convertio — HEIC Converter. Now, I am doing all the HEIC → JPEG conversion in the cloud.
Hit the button below, if you however wish to do such conversion the old-skull way, on your PC, with having fun of installing all the crap that CopyTrans HEIC Codec brings together with it.
Read More “Convert HEIC images into JPG or PNG [updated]”I personally adore KeePass! But… mainly not for being my private Fort Knox and my single source of all passwords. As I can have the same with every browser’s password manager. What is an absolutely fabulous feature of KeePass, is its powerful auto-type mechanism.
Not only, this is easier and more convenient, but — the most important — it is by far, much, much more safe (see details later into this article)!
Now, the biggest problem is that I also have and I am also using password manager in my browser (similarly beloved Microsoft Edge; screw you Google!). And when I press Ctrl+U to open corresponding URL in a browser, I have login field already prefilled. Usually with an incorrect login, as I have a lot of account saved for every web service in my password manager.
Fortunately, there’s a solution even for this.
Read More “KeePass’ auto-type feature vs. browser’s password manager”It is very surprising that it is so hard to find actual PayPal exchange rates.
If you search the net for this query, you’ll find a bunch of useless results. With the one pointing you directly to PayPal page titled “Where can I find PayPal’s currency calculator and exchange rates?“. It tells you to go to Wallet and click Currency Calculator. This is completely pointless page, not updated for many years (shame, PayPal!). Currency calculator is gone and no longer available in the Wallet for years.
Finally, I have found a webpage that can do the actual currency conversion using PayPal exchange rates!
Read More “PayPal exchange rates”…is COMPLETELY NOT PROFITABLE AT ALL.
Don’t you ever, never consider this, unless you don’t have a better option to loose your money!
I have managed to dig out 2.21 USD:
While spending… 260 USD for this:
It cost me hundred times more than I actually earned!
Installing and using SonarQube Community Edition to debug your PHP code its fairly easy. But in involves a number of steps, spread among few docs, so I decided to write myself this little memo to compile one single step-by-step flow for this.
I assume that I’ll be using SonarQube to check quality of my PHP project (though SonarQube supports dozens of languages). This project is stored locally and directly accessible (this article does not cover dealing with repositories or embedding SonarQube into your release pipelines).
I am using XAMPP to host my PHP projects locally, but that part doesn’t play any significant role here.
Read More “Use SonarQube to debug PHP code”I am more a tech writer than a programmer. In every app or service that I use (except PhpStorm) I am get used to the fact that I have to click only one time in order to see some error or problem proposed solutions. This works like that in Word and in dozens of other places.
Being get used to this for past 10+ years, it drives me crazy that in PhpStorm this operations always requires two clicks be default. I.e. you have:
There is no way to change it AFAIK, but I found a nice way to make using of this feature a bit easier.
Read More “Show errors in PhpStorm with one click”Imagine yourself situation, in which you strictly told Windows 11 that you don’t want it to go to sleep under no circumstances, no matter what happens, as long as it is wall-connected and not battery-powered:
And suddenly you realize that 60 seconds after you lock your Windows with Win+L, it goes to sleep anyway.
What now, Bill? Stand back…
Read More “Help! My computer goes to sleep 1 minute after I lock it!”In Word version prior Word 365 all you needed to do in order to customize Normal.dot template (i.e. change macros, styles, keyboard shortcuts) was:
This thing is one of many simple and obvious things that Microsoft made really difficult in Word 365.
If you have such file (personal template) that you have been using for years (like I do) and if you try to open it in Word 365 to add some new modification and then you save it then you will find that everything you changed (now and earlier) will be lost. For some stupid reason known only to Microsoft freaks.
Here is how to have modified Normal.dotm with all your settings in Word 365.
Read More “Normal.dot Word 365 template with macros and settings”Windows 11 finally introduces nearly full, system-wide support for black / dark user interface. It’s Microsoft, so you can’t except 100% success (Properties-like, delete confirmation and other system dialogs are still terribly and painfully white), but still.
Then the question comes: what about websites? Everything is so (peacefully to your eyes) dark… until you open your web browser and navigate to a first website.
The answer is: Night Eye browser extension.
They offer you a three months long free test period, but believe me or not, you only need just a few days (or sometimes even a couple of hours) to fall in love so deeply that you simply can’t imagine life without it!
Read More “Your eyes are tired? Night Eye to the rescue!”If, after installing Windows 10 or 11 and some languages, when you press Win+Space you see some additional keyboard language (the one that does not belongs to any installed language):
Then the solution is as simple as:
After that pressing Win+Space should reveal only languages and keyboard layouts that you have actually installed in your system.
You cannot change which items will be installed along with Office 365 when you are running a regular installation file. But you can use Office Deployment Tool along with customized configuration file to install only these components that you really need.
This article is a copy of this guide updated for Office 356 Home Premium.
Read More “Install selected Office 365 components”PuTTY stores all sessions in Windows Registry, not in a file, so if you want to export these and import on some other computer or account then follow these steps (source):
regedit /E "C:\Trash\PuTTY Settings.reg" HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham
Adjust path after /E switch to match your expectations.
Execute the following (instead of above):
regedit /E "C:\Trash\PuTTY Sessions.reg" HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions
if you wish to export just sessions, not the entire configuration of PuTTY.
Double click exported .reg file in order to import sessions or settings on a new computer.
Source: How to Export and Import Putty Settings (by TechEarl -May 27, 2018)
As explained in the previous article, the example given in Yii 2 Guide about turning regular MVC apps into RESTful one is of a low quality, as it mixes certain things (refer to the previous article for details).
This article deals with this problem and show how to enable REST in Yii 2 Advanced Project Template by adding REST UserController directly to frontend application in that template and thus allowing to server User model through RESTful approach.
Read More “The quickest way to add RestAPI to your Yii 2 app. Part 2”Since Microsoft is Microsoft and the software produced by this company may surprise you in many ways, it may happen that the ideas given in the previous article turn out to be not enough. And file size of your PowerPoint presentation will still be too big.
In this case a more brutal method is needed.
Since every Microsoft Office document is in fact a .zip archive, we will try to reduce file size by direct modification or manipulation of the content of this file.
Read More “Reducing PowerPoint presentation’s file size using brute-force method”Whether you want to say “no!” to Putin’s war or you just want to block Russian hackers from attacking your website, the solution is as easy as:
Sure, this is not the ultimate solution. Use of proxy servers, Tor networks, botnets and other techniques for spoofing actual IP address will get them through your “so called firewall”. Also, IP address assigmnets changes often, so Country IP Blocks database might already be out-dated (if fact, it is). But, hey!, it’s always something. As good for the start as anything else. And surely better than doing nothing.
Read More “Block all traffic from Russia to coming your site”Office 365 off-line apps brings new start-up behavior of showing a summary screen instead of starting with an empty document open. If you like the “old” behavior then there’s a very easy way to achieve this:
Restart app to see the effect.
I don’t generally do testing and my knowledge in this area is minimal, so here’s a short memo on this topic.
Read More “Testing rigor — test stages and types”Multi-rename tool in Total Commander is fantastic (when you know how to use it) and it saved my ass (before manually renaming many files) in many scenarios, including some very specific or even weird ones.
This scenario is one of such.
I had dates written directly as a part of filename, i.e.: Document name (DD-MM-YYYY).jpg, but (as shown) starting with day and ending with year. I had to reverse them, but only dates, keeping the rest of file untouched — i.e. Document name (YYYY-MM-DD).jpg.
At first, I thought that this time I will be forced to do this manually. But, I recalled multi-rename tool’s documentation and its small part about backward characters counting (i.e. from end of filename).
Read More “Reverse dates in filenames using Total Commander’s multi-rename tool”A more like memo for myself. In this article:
And in addition: some cool stuff like auto-load session, restart session, duplicate session etc.
Read More “Make PuTTY a little bit more friendly”I have a chat with a HR guy from Switzerland. He gave me some wages for the IT (May 2021; post-COVID!):
Most likely gross, but still… Swiss IT is doing good. Really, good…
Ever since Windows exists there was a very handy Alt+Tab combination to quickly switch between open applications. Nowadays, when people are using many screens for single computer it might be less often used, but still is very familiar and handy.
Not for so long time, but still for quite long, Microsoft is doing everything to make that simple, obvious and easy to understand combination work as wrong as possible in their products, so from time to time you may run into a really weird behaviour. For example:
Fortunately these inconsistencies and workflow breakers exists only in certain Microsoft products and are easy to fix.
Read More “Various wako problems with Alt+Tab and Microsoft products”The IT world grows, big data becomes your everyday’s pal. Whether you are a developer or project manager, you need to store more and more data each and every day. Getting a good quality and reliable solution becomes a bit challenge. To help you with that I wanted to tell you a bit about MEGA service.
I found it by a complete coincidence (I am not getting paid for this post!) — a friend has shared a file with me. I dug into details and found it interesting. In my opinion MEGA is far better than most file sharing services and can challenge even well known cloud storage options like Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive.
So, what makes MEGA that unique? In short: command-line tool, NAS support, mobile apps, browser’s extensions and many more.
Read More “MEGA — file sharing and cloud storage far above average”There are million of guides in the Internet on how to correct this stupid default behavior that happens in Microsoft Edge nearly every time and in Google Chrome from time to time. But all these solutions requires you to read through long block of text or watch 2-3 minutes long video while solution is actually ultra-fast.
regedit > hit EnterComputer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/jpeg to address bar > hit Enter.jpg > hit EnterAnd… you’re done! Restart Edge to see the effects. No more .jpg files saved with stupid .jfif extension.