Friday, December 28, 2012

Google Drive Crop Drawing

While there is no actual cropping tool, this is achieved by



  1. putting the image on the top left of the canvas then click and

  2. drag the bottom right hand corner of the canvas until the canvas is the same size as the image.


Actually quite simple really !!!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Link to virtualmv.com

This is a holding blog ( to stop someone else using virtualmv) go to http://www.virtualmv.com to get to my working blog

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Windows 8:shut down

To shut Windows 8 down, just move the mouse cursor to the bottom right corner of the screen, click the Settings icon - or just hold down the Windows key and press I - and you'll see a power button. Click this and choose 'Shut Down' or 'Restart'. Some of the tricks available in previous versions of Windows still apply. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, for instance, click the power button in the bottom right-hand corner and you'll be presented with the same 'Shut Down' and 'Restart' options. And if you're on the desktop, press Alt+F4 and you'll be able to choose 'Shut Down', 'Restart', 'Sign Out' or 'Switch User' options. From Paradigm PCs

Monday, November 5, 2012

Handbrake DVD rip

Some Open Source software that (apparently) allows DVD ripping. As far as I know it is ok to burn a personal backup copy. I read somewhere that it works with VLC but haven't had time to play around with them yet.


http://www.winxdvd.com/resource/handbrake-windows-tutorial.htm

Monday, September 3, 2012

Some Music Software

 


If you are into writing/ playing with music, check this out


It is free, almost writes it for you, will play back to you etc


http://musink.net


Sunday, August 12, 2012

Domain Name cloaking using frames

Learn't something the other day. We have a wordpress web site on hostable.com and the Domain Name is with Freeparking.


We have been having trouble with the url displaying in the browser. So you get "http://mydomain.com/" no matter what page is displayed - this is pretty useless if you want to bookmark a page.


Lots of web searching revealed that Freeparking cloak your site in a 100% frame - which is VERY bad form as search engines tend to ignore any frame based sites (we couldn't figure out why the site rated so poorley).


So the actual page HTML looks like


<frameset rows="100%,*">


<frame name="top" src="http://xxxx.12345.a.hostable.me/wordpress/" noresize="noresize" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" />
<noframes> 
   <body>
   <p><i>This document uses a frameset.</i></p>    
   <p><a href="http://xxxx.12345.a.hostable.me/wordpress/">Click Here</a> to view the page.</p>
   </body>
</noframes>
</frameset>


Ok.. so off to Freeparking Help desk .. and their response


 


Subject: [WebFarm/Freeparking #1400011] URL Redirection - xxxx.co.nz


 Hi ,  There's no good answer to that unfortunately. Cloaked wont show much in the way of filenames, or anything else, as you mentioned. You can really only cloak it or not cloak it.  -- Regards, Chris



So the choice is either show xxxx.co.nz on all pages or  forget the domain and wind up with urls like http://xxxx.12345.a.hostable.me/wordpress/be-involved/ .. so whats the point of the domain name???


There does not appear to be away around this apart from:



  1. Host the site with freeparking or

  2. register the domain name with someone else (though check if they also do cloaking the same way - I have been told godaddy does the same)


Any ideas welcome....


13-Aug: Suggestion from Inga - does require certain conditions to be met before this will work.  http://www.thesitewizard.com/apache/frame-blocking-anti-clickjacking.shtml


 



Wordpress hacking: Bat Boy and Mr. DJh

Grr!@###$


What a damn nuisance  looks like there is a way to hack your WordPress web site. My research shows it as The Bat Boy or in my case Mr. DJh (see below)


Bat Boy Hack on WordPress


It does 2 things



  1. Changes your admin login & email account in the users table and (this means you can't log in as admin)

  2. Changes index.php code for the theme (which is what shows on the page)


Anyway this is how to fix it:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESp_rceZ_gw


UNFORTUNATELY, in my case the admin user was unchanged (but I still can't log in) but one of the index.php files in the template was changed (you can see by the edit date on the server) though cleverly in code: starts like


? echo(stripslashes(base64_decode('PGh0bWw+ ..... 


Renaming the folder killed the site so the hack is in there somewhere and this was the only program with a different date that I could find.


At this stage I can either find the index.php file (which is pretty old) or reinstall Wordpress and import the main blog (which I will probably do as it was only my backup anyway). 


I am guessing a flaw was found in one of the versions of WordPress and subsequently fixed by the WordPress people, however (as in my case) this was my backup blog and was quite old - so probably had the flaw still, and so wide open for the hack. My more recent one was left alone (so far) - this one. Can anyone confirm this???


So the Moral is "Keep up with updates" - yes I should know that!!!!

Thursday, May 31, 2012

PC Mouse Bike

PC Mouse BikeBit of a hard case Bike Mouse that records your typing speed by making the mouse go faster. A while ago I bought a a USB PC Mouse Bike. Searched the web for some drivers, but eventually found them on an old Hard Disk Drive.


For others looking for the drivers here they are:  mouse bike installation.zip


And I have it working on a Windows 7 machine. This is what I did:


Don't plug in the mouse and run set-up.


Then plug in the bike mouse. The drivers will try to install through Windows Update (the USB Bridge one will fail) Had to go to Control Panel > Device Manager > then locate the device with the error (USB bridge I think) . Click on Driver > Update Driver > Browse my Computer and get Windows to search the Driver Folder in the Mouse Bike Installation folder.


Run "Launch Mouse Bike" from the desktop and all going well the mouse should fire up.


If you open up Notepad the counter will show the Words per minute...


Enjoy!!

Friday, May 25, 2012

iPhone vs Android

Whenever people talk about mobile phones nowadays they tend to start a debate about Android and iPhone. Which is better? You could probably answer that if you had any idea what Android actually is. It's understandable that even now, you might still be in the dark, maybe because you are resistant to change, or just aren't that tech savvy.


Obviously the next time you go online or into a bricks and mortar store (e.g. NZ: Telecom , Vodafone , 2degrees , or England: o2 http://www.o2.co.uk ) to check out phones, you will want to be in the know about the different phones that operate using Android.


Android aka Google's operating system for mobile phones and tablets, runs in a similar way to the Microsoft Windows operating system, or Apple's iOS. It is the fastest growing operating system today, with around 500,000 Android devices being activated each year. Basically they are a real threat to Apples iOS.


Android has had several different upgrades in the last few years, and amusingly they like to name the new versions after some form of dessert. For example; Android 4.0 (October, 2011) was named Ice Cream Sandwich. Each version has brand new improvements that tempt more users in. For example, better quality screens, cameras, smoother button navigation etc. One problem however is that the phone manufacturers customise Android to their device, this means that you may not be able to upgrade to a later Android OS unless your phone manufacturer provides a customised upgrade (This is not the case for Apple iOS).
The standard layout of an Android phone has a series of Home screens, which have short-cuts to launch the different apps on your phone. They can also have widgets for displaying social network updates and give you access to music etc.


The great thing about Android, is that manufacturers don't have to pay Google to use it. This is possibly why it has become such a success, because it is adaptable for different types of phone and tablet. Also, developers have much more freedom in distributing their applicaions as they do not have to be distributed through a central store as is the case with the iPhone. This generally means there are more Android apps however the downside is that the apps may not be quality tested and can cause problems with your phone. It is always good to do a web search to check the experience of other users.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Task manager in Windows 7/Vista now Ctrl+Shift+Esc

The old ctrl+Alt+Del has been changed to Ctrl+Shift+Esc (who knows why??)


 


You can also right click on the task bar and select task manager

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Three True Job Interview Questions

 


Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only Three True Job Interview Questions


1. Can you do the job?
2. Will you love the job?
3. Can we tolerate working with you?


http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-executive-recruiters-agree-there-are-only-three-key-job-interview-questions/

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Free Programming

 


Codecademy is an easy way to learn how to code. It's interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends for free


http://www.codecademy.com/