Archive for the 'Technology' Category

iPhone 3g Home Button Fixed – Kudos to Apple

Published on September 23, 2009 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

open iphoneAbout a month ago I noticed that the Home button was getting less and less responsive. The problem was intermittent, but it was getting more and more frequent.

I would sometimes have to hit the Home button two or three times before it would register. A friend told me that he thought that the issue may not be the home button, but the iPhone software itself. He explained that since he upgraded to the iPhone 3.0 OS that he had experienced some lag and slowness and had also noticed that when he hits the Home button that it may take an extra second to respond.

I performed my own trials to test this possibility and found that the phone didn’t respond at all. I also later updated to 3.1 which fixes most of the lagging issues, but it didn’t resolve my problem.

I decided to head over to the Apple Store to let them have a look. As usual, the place was a complete zoo with people falling all over themselves in there. I find it weird that the store is always so full of people since I never actually see anyone buying anything.

mac geniusI headed over to the tech support line to talk to a “mac genius” (are they really that full of themselves to come up with that title?). There are lots of people on line and nobody in sight tending to any of them. I finally see a woman in an apple tshirt over by a table with a computer on it. I walk over and briefly explain the problem with my iPhone. She looks at me with pity in her eyes and explains that “there are no more reservations available to see a mac genius today” then then motioned to the Continue reading ‘iPhone 3g Home Button Fixed – Kudos to Apple’

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How do I take a screen shot or picture of my iPhone screen?

Published on May 19, 2009 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , .

While trying to explain to distant friends how to do something on their iPhones or to show them what an application looks like, I always wished there was a way to take a picture or screen capture of my iPhone screen and send it to them.

screenshotNormally if I was on a computer I would just hit the Prt Scr button and paste it into an email.

Well, lo and behold, the iPhone doesn’t come with an instruction manual and there are many things it doesn’t do that it should, but there IS a way to take screen shots.

When you’re on the screen you want to take a picture of, just press the round main button and the power button (top right) at the same time and let go of them together.

The screen will quickly flash white and the iPhone will make a camera sound. Now go into the “Photos” app and look in “Camera Roll” There you’ll see the screenshot. From there you can forward it by email, or hook up your sync cable and copy it to your computer.

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How to beat Tap Defense on the iPhone

Published on May 15, 2009 in Technology. 1 Comment Tags: .

tapdefenseWhile there are different strategies for different maps, the one strategy that I’ve found to work regardless is you must manage your gold early in the game and raise your interest rates so that you’ll have enough gold in the later levels to buy upgraded towers.

  • - My Tap Defense strategy is pretty simple. Use Arrow Towers with no upgrades as much as possible early in the game. Do not spend gold on more expensive towers like canons and water in the early levels.
  • - One Cannon Tower costs about the same as two Arrow Towers. For about the first half of the game, having more arrow towers is just as effective and in many cases more effective than having only a few Cannon or more expensive towers.

  • - Do not build more towers than you realistically think you’ll need to beat the level. It’s very easy to want to throw in an extra tower for good measure, but every gold piece you can save in the early Tap Defense levels
  • - Upgrade your interest rate! It may be more fun to research new towers, but they won’t help you beat the game if you can’t afford to upgrade them later. I use all of my Halos except the last two on level 43 to upgrade interest.
  • - Don’t spend a lot of gold building fancy towers just trying to beat the bosses. You won’t lose much by letting a Devil or Hellbat get through, but you will completely mess up your chances of beating the game if you spend ¾ of your money trying to build expensive towers to stop them. The bosses are usually two to three times more powerful than the creatures in the levels before and immediately after them. Save your gold!
  • - Place your towers strategically. Anywhere there is a corner on the path or a U shaped turn, should be the first place you put your towers. Those should also be the places that get upgraded towers later in the game as they can shoot at the enemy for the longest amount of time.

Below are screenshots and brief descriptions of each level as I went through a game to show you how to beat it. It’s not a perfect game on my part, but I just wanted Continue reading ‘How to beat Tap Defense on the iPhone’

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Change Vista’s Power Button To Shutdown, Not Sleep

Published on December 28, 2008 in Technology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

If you’re here, it is most likely because you are like I used to be, annoyed that Windows Vista’s Start menu power button puts the computer to sleep instead of turning it off.

Well, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll change it so in two clicks you can power off your computer.

First off, you’ll notice that the power button currently is brown and when you hover your mouse over it, it tells you that it will put your PC to sleep.

Vista\'s Power Button set to Sleep Mode

 

Now, let’s change it:

Click Start and then click in the Search/Run box. Now type POWER OPTIONS like in the picture below and hit ENTER:

Continue reading ‘Change Vista’s Power Button To Shutdown, Not Sleep’

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Lost: Gold Ring in yard

Published on December 3, 2008 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , .

My wife’s parents are visiting for the holidays. The other day they were out in the yard raking leaves and weeding. Yesterday, my wifes mother was in a panic saying that she’d lost her engagement ring and thinks she may have lost it while doing the yardwork.

Both she and my wife are upset as she’s had this ring for over 40 years. My wife has always loved the ring and was supposed to inherit it.

So of course, the first question is: where is the last place you saw it? Luckily, the day before the yard work was Thanksgiving and we had taken pictures. We pulled up the pictures on the computer and sure enough, her mom was wearing the ring Thursday night. Well at least that means that we know when she last had it and that it is likely that it could have been lost in the yard.

Next, we panic as I took several garbage bags from the yardwork to the curb just that morning and if the ring was in there, it is definitely gone. I go out in the back yard and happily notice that there are several bags of leaves in the side yard that I hadn’t seen that morning. Continue reading ‘Lost: Gold Ring in yard’

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Configuring Globalscape SFTP Behind an ISA Firewall

Published on July 25, 2008 in Technology. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

I was having some trouble trying to get FTP over SSL on a Globalscape SFTP (Secure FTP) server working behind an ISA Firewall. Once I got it working, I figured  I’d post the configuration to hopefully help you avoid the headache of figuring it out on your own.

On the ISA server I created two new rules to open the correct ports. Continue reading ‘Configuring Globalscape SFTP Behind an ISA Firewall’

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WordPress K2 – How To Move Title Text Up or Down

Published on July 18, 2008 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , .

k2In the WordPress K2 Theme, the title text is automatically placed on the left hand side about halfway down the header. This works beautifully if you have the plain blue background that comes enabled by default with the K2 them, but can cause problems if you decide to use the custom header image option. This basically lets you use a picture as the header.

If the picture has light and dark colors that the title text will overlay on, you can find yourself in a situation where part of the title text is unreadable because the color of the text blends in with the color of the picture.

Another scenario could simply be that the text covers part of the image that you want visible.

In either case, you can move the K2 theme header text up or down by adjusting the value in the file below. Continue reading ‘WordPress K2 – How To Move Title Text Up or Down’

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Vosky Call Center (or as I call it – The Skype Box)

Published on February 24, 2008 in Technology. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Vosky Call CenterThis box is amazing. Make skype like your home phone and more. 

I have now purchased four of these for everyone in my family. I have two installed in Europe and two installed here in the USA. The basic functionality is that it lets you use your home phone to talk on skype.

When you get a skype call, your home phone rings. It works simultaneously with a land line as well. You can have skype and your land line connected at the same time. When you get a skype call your phone will ring differently than when a landline call comes in. It also acts like call waiting. If you’re on a skype call and you get a regular call, you’ll hear beeps just like call waiting and can flip between the two calls. It works with answering machines too. Incoming calls will ring the same number of times as your landline calls and your answering machine will pick up and they can leave a message just like a regular call. Continue reading ‘Vosky Call Center (or as I call it – The Skype Box)’

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How can I wipe erased data off of a hard drive or folder??

Published on February 24, 2008 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

When you delete a file from your hard drive, the file itself is not actually deleted. Instead, windows deleted the reference to the file from the computer’s “table of contents”. This tells the computer that the space on the hard drive taken by that file is now available and can be overwritten.

Here’s the catch: the file you *thought* you deleted, is still actually there until your computer decides to actually overwrite that space. You could potentially have data you deleted months ago still sitting on your hard drive and easily retrievable.

Cipher.exe Running
Continue reading ‘How can I wipe erased data off of a hard drive or folder??’

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SDHC Flash Card Reader Annoyances

Published on December 28, 2007 in Technology. 21 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I’m a techie… I’ve come to expect certain things when it comes to technology. Specifically, backwards compatibility.

 In the old days, you pretty much expected that when you got a new gadget or piece of software, that it would be painful, if not impossible to make it work with your old technology. Nowadays, it’s pretty much the opposite. New wireless networking hardware almost always works with what’s existing. The new version of USB works with the old. The new versions of software generally work with the old.

This is why I’m currently rather annoyed with the next generation of the SD flash memory cards called SDHC or Secure Digital High Capacity. I got a new Canon Rebel T2i digital camera for Christmas. To go with it I bought two Kingston 8gb SDHC cards from Amazon as they were on sale for about $15 a piece.

I popped my new cards in my camera and took a bunch of Christmas pictures. All went well until I tried to take the card and pop it into the built in card reader on my new Dell Dimension 9200 computer with a 19-in-1 TEAC media card reader. My pc started acting buggy and wouldn’t read the card. Continue reading ‘SDHC Flash Card Reader Annoyances’

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