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Category Archives: software

Miranda IM automatic update script

28/08/2010 – 18:45

Found a useful script to auto-update Miranda IM. They really should create an update system for it. I modified the script to work on my system and with newer releases in 7zip format. chdir /D update c:\portable\gnu\wget.exe http://code.google.com/p/miranda/downloads/list -O data.txt type data.txt|findstr /i unicode.7z 1> data1.txt del data.txt ren data1.txt data.txt c:\portable\gnu\wget.exe –force-html -c -i [...]

By mojo | Also posted in Internet, windows | Comments (0)

Windows 7 Tweaks

16/08/2010 – 20:34

Finally got around to installing Windows 7 on my main machine. As usual there are a lot of tweaks that need to be made. The Start Menu has some nice features but I really don’t like the way the All Programs section works now. Fortunately you can bring back the old cascaded menu and keep [...]

By mojo | Also posted in windows | Comments (0)

Making the Umax PowerLook 2100XL scanner work on Windows 7

15/06/2010 – 14:56

I had an interesting challenge at work a few weeks ago. A customer wanted a new PC running Windows 7 but he needed to keep using his rather old A3 scanner, a Umax PowerLook 2100XL. Umax only provide Windows XP drivers and installing them on Windows 7 stops the system starting up. Something about the [...]

By mojo | Also posted in hardware, windows | Comments (10)

MAME and paddle controllers

03/05/2010 – 21:02

I just got a Sega Master System paddle controller working with the Retro Adapter. It works perfectly but there is a compatibility problem with some MAME games I had not anticipated. I tried to use it with Arkanoid. That game uses a spinner control which can rotate endlessly clockwise or anti-clockwise, unlike a paddle which [...]

By mojo | Also posted in Retro Adapter, electronics, hardware | Comments (0)

USB devices in VirtualBox

31/03/2010 – 23:15

Getting USB devices to connect to the guest OS in VirtualBox can be a bit tricky. I run it on Windows so it might work differently on Linux, but anyway… The key is to understand that in order for the device to be detected it has to be connected while the guest OS is running. [...]

By mojo | Also posted in windows | Comments (0)

MS Browser Ballot fails

24/02/2010 – 15:06

Just got the first XP machine with the Browser Ballot update on it. I clicked “next” and IE8 came up with a window asking me to choose my settings. I closed it and selected Firefox from the available options. Internet Explorer opened and downloaded Firefox. I installed it and the browser ballot window was still [...]

By mojo | Also posted in Internet, idiots | Comments (0)

Update to Thunderbird userContent.css

05/02/2010 – 19:03

My custom userContent.css has been updated. I found a fix for the few remaining stupid HTML mails that failed to display correctly due to using “font: inherit” which picks up the <body>’s text colour (off-white) which is unreadable against the white background. I’m still not entirely sure why the <body>’s font colour is being inherited [...]

By mojo | Also posted in Internet | Comments (0)

Thunderbird config

20/01/2010 – 18:32

I finally made the switch to Thunderbird. The Bat is okay but for some reason image loading in emails is really, really, really slow. There are many other minor issues… Although Thunderbird has it’s fair share too. To make it even halfway usable you need a long list of extensions, some of them experimental. SmartTemplate [...]

By mojo | Also posted in Internet | Comments (0)

Thunderbird modifications

15/10/2009 – 11:59

I finally decided to switch to Thunderbird. Having the gecko HTML engine is handy, and I have found ways to work around most of the annoyances. Add-ons: Attachment Reminder British English dictionary keyconfig Opening Words Quote Colours SmoothWheel (AMO) Note that Quote Colours does not work with 3b4 at the moment. Change the delete key [...]

By mojo | Comments (0)

Tabs Open Relative (Modified) reaches V1.0 and goes public

03/10/2009 – 19:00

A minor update to add about:config prefs if they do not already exist and the add-on is now public (so people can find it on the add-ons site): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13626 http://soft.world3.net