Archive for Tips & Tricks

Share Hotel Wifi with a Router and Macbook

by mallycat · Comments (0)
21 Jan

A lot of hotels these days charge you “per device” to connect to the Internet.  For a while there, it was easy to take a travel router with you, plug the router into the hotel Ethernet and create your own network from there.  What I have found recently is that a lot more hotels are just using wifi – ie no Ethernet connection at all.  That complicates things a little, but there is a solution using a router and computer.  I used an Airport Express and a Macbook, but the same should work with any router and a Windows PC (although I have never done it with a Windows device).  This is how I got it to work.

1. I plugged in my Airport Express and did a hard reset.  You don’t need to do this if it is already configured.  I did this just to be sure that it was configured as I needed.

2. I then proceeded to configure my Airport Express to create my own new local network.  I connected to the Airport Express using the Airport Utility on my Mac.  Make sure you select “create a new network” so that you get your own local network to use.  Set up the SSID and passwords as you like.

3. Then I connected my Macbook to the Hotel Wifi using the Macbook wifi settings (don’t use the router yet).  Logged in at the login page and got my Internet access working on my Macbook.

4. The fourth step is that I set up my Macbook to share my Internet connection that has already been establised with my Macbook.  Normally you would share an incoming Ethernet connection over Wifi, but in this case you need to do the opposite.  Go to Systems Preferences\Sharing and configure Internet Sharing.  You need to “configure” the sharing before you turn it on with the check box.  So while the checkbox is NOT checked, select “Share your connection from ” and set it to “WIFI”.  This tells your Macbook that the incoming Internet Connection is coming via Wifi.

Then set “to computers with” and select Ethernet (what ever flavour you have on your Macbook  (I have “Thunderbolt Ethernet”).  This tells your Macbook to send the Internet Connection out through your Ethernet Port.  Once configured correctly, then turn it on with the checkbox.

airport

5.  The last step is to plug an Ethernet cable from your Macbook to the Airport Express.

The end result is that the Internet connection comes in from the Hotel wifi into your Macbook Wifi, and is then routed out through your Macbook Ethernet into the Airport Express Ethernet.  Your Airport Express then detects the incoming Ethernet as an open Internet connection which it then re-broadcasts over your own personal Wifi Network just as if the Internet were coming from your broadband provider.  You are then able to connect all of your mobile devices to your new local network over wifi.

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Categories : Tips & Tricks, Web

Microsoft Office Upload Center Corrupt

by mallycat · Comments (0)
19 Sep

I have had lots of issues with this stupid Microsoft Upload Center. I kept getting this error message
“The Microsoft Office Document Cache encountered a problem”. I would click to repair, but then I got this error message “This action cannot be completed because another application is using the Microsoft Office Document Cache”.

So on and so on, nothing worked. The I found this link

http://www.7tutorials.com/fix-problems-microsoft-office-document-cache-being-corrupted

Now unfortunately it didn’t fix my particular problem, but it did tell me what was wrong, and advised on a reinstall of O365 if I couldn’t fix it. I did the reinstall and now all is good.

Maybe this will help you some day too.

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Categories : Tips & Tricks
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Hide your eMail address from those Spam Bots

by mallycat · Comments (0)
17 Feb

I was doing some work tonight on a new website. In case you are not aware, the internet is full of Spam Bots. These are computers connected to the internet searching for anything that remotely resembles an email address. i.e. anything that looks like yourname@yourserviceprovider.com Now this is bad if you are building a website, because you want to make it easy for people to email you, but you don’t want Spam Bots scraping your email address and then sending you links to discount viagra!

I was aware that there are some coding techniques that help you create the email address using Java Script. What this means to you is that your email address will appear on the screen in human readable form, but it is not readable by a Spam Bot (we hope). When I was searching for some code to do this, I found this great website that generates the code for you.

http://www.mailtoencoder.com

Hope you find this useful when you build your websites.

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Categories : Software, Tips & Tricks, Web

Stream Spotify and Pandora from your iPhone to Pioneer A3 Speaker in Wireless Direct Mode

by mallycat · Comments (0)
04 Feb

xw-sma3-k_hero_gallery

I bought one of these speakers about a year ago. One thing I discovered shortly there after is that you cannot stream music from your iPhone on Spotify or Pandora when you are in wireless direct mode. Well that was what I thought, however there is a solution.

Wireless Direct Mode

The Pioneer A3 has the capability to create its own Wifi Network. So when you are out at the park having a picnic away from your home network, you can still Airplay to this speaker. You push the button on the speaker, it creates its own wifi network, and you connect to the dedicated network on your phone. The trouble is that once your phone is connected to the Pioneer Wifi Network, your 3/4G connection disappears – hence no streaming.

The Solution

The solution to this problem is actually quite easy.  You need to do the following.

1. Connect your iPhone to your speaker in Wifi Direct Mode
2. Once connected to the network and while still in “settings”, click on the “i” information bubble next to the wifi network you are now connected to.
3. Note the IP Address and Subnet Mask.  On my phone, they were 192.168.1.100 and 255.255.255.0 respectively
4. Click on “Static” and enter the IP address and the subnet mask that you saw on the DHCP screen into the static section.

That’s it.  You should now see the 3/4G symbol on the top of your phone and still be connected to the Pioneer A3.  Simply connect to Spotify or Pandora, then click Airplay, select your speaker and away you go.

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Categories : iPhone, Tips & Tricks, Uncategorized

Should I put my good knives in the dishwasher? – The definitive answer

by mallycat · Comments (0)
20 Jun

I purchased some good quality knives about 10 years ago.  I asked the sales woman if it was OK to put the knives in the dishwasher.  She said no, but her explanation as to “why” was far from convincing.  Anyway, we did what she said for a few years, and then one day I decided to do some reserach on the net (sick of washing knives you see).  What I found was far from clear.  Some people say yes, some people say no.  Long story short, I decided if the jury was out, I was going to do it.

After 3-4 years of washing my knives in the dishwasher every now and then (not every day), the results are in.

Below you can see a photo of a couple of my knives after they have been washed for a few years in the dish washer.  I only put them in occassionally, maybe once or twice a month when I wasn’t in the mood for washing anything.

 IMG_1249c

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a close up of one of the handles.  Note the damage to the rivets caused by the caustic soda in the dish washing powder.

IMG_1250c

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, there was a noticable dulling on the blades when they were put in the washer.

So there you have it – look no further.  You should not put good knives in the dishwasher because it corrodes the rivets and bluntens the edge on the kinves.

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Categories : Cooking, Tips & Tricks

How I record WebEx Conferences as video files

by mallycat · Comments (0)
17 Jun

I attend a lot of teleconferences that share a PC screen – ie there is visual content as well as audio content. Many times I want to record the call and the screen visuals so that I can share it with others after the fact. WebEx has a conference recording tool to do this, but personally I don’t like to use it. This is how I go about it.

  1. I connect to the telephone converence via Skype on my PC. This has the effect of getting the audio of the teleconference running through my PC.
  2. I use FastStoneCapture to record my PC screen while selecting the audio to record both my microphone and PC speakers. This is not free software but it does have a 30 day free trial, and it is well worth the investemnt to pay the $20 for a lifetime licence. I purchased this 6 years ago and the software keeps getting better every year.

The benefits of FastStoneCapture vs Webex recording are:

  1. It creates a very small WMV file that can be easily shared.
  2. You can specific a smaller region of the screen to record, hence making the video file even smaller.
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Categories : Software, Tips & Tricks, Video

Technology to Cook and Shop

by mallycat · Comments (0)
16 Jun

I love my iPad and iPhone. I wanted to share the great way that you can use these tools and apps to make cooking and shopping easier.

In Summary

1. Use RecipePad to store and share your recipes.
2. Use ImageToText to take photos of recipes from books and magazines so you can easily load them into RecipePad for future reference.
3. Use RecipePad to create your weekly shopping list
4. Use iCloud to share your shopping list with your family, so you and everyone in your family can add things to the same list from their iPhone.

In Detail

Use RecipePad to store and share your recipes.

This is a great little app to store your recipes.  It has a feature that allows you to past ingredents into the application, and it separates the ingredients into structure text.  This then means that you can create a shopping list direct from the app by clicking indiviudal ingredients or selecting them all.   It also allows you to send your favourite recipes to your friends and they can import them directly into the app. There is a free version that has ads, but I recommend paying the 99cents to get rid of those annoying advertisments.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/recipepad/id363233529?mt=8

Use ImageToText to take photos of recipes from books and magazines

iPhone Screenshot 1
This is an Optical Character Recongnition App for your iPhone. https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/image-to-text-ocr/id431757093?mt=8
Simply take a photo of your recipe with your iPhone, and the app will email you the text. It is not perfect, but you will find it is 99% accurate. I noticed it is not so good with fractions like 1/2 cup. But it is much better than typing it out yourself. Once your email arrives, cut and paste the ingredients into the ingredients section and the method into the steps section of the RecipePad app.

Use RecipePad to create your weekly shopping list

iPad Screenshot 1

Make sure you select “allow to access reminders” when installing the app. This will mean that RecipePad will be able to add ingredients to a special reminder list called “RecipePad Shopping List”. Open any recipe and click the shopping cart to select the items you need to buy. When you are selecting the items the list does not state the quantity, but don’t worry – they will be there in the list. Another good feature is that the shopping list also tells you which recipe each ingredient is for – very helpful.

Use iCloud to share your shopping list with your family

The final thing is to share your new shopping list with iCloud. Now there are 2 steps to do this. First of all, open reminders in your iPad.  You will see that there is a reminder list called “RecipePad Shopping List” however by default it is not in the iCloud section.  You can’t just move it, you have to delete it and recreate it under iCloud.    Make sure you create it with exactly the same name, and delete the orginal list.  The second thing you need to do is log into icloud.com on your PC.  Open reminders and find the shopping list.  You may need to wait a while until it syncs across.    You will see a little icon to the right of the shopping list when you hover your mouse to ther right.  Click that to invite your family members to share the shopping list.  Make sure you use the same email address that they use for their iTunes account.

That’s it – enjoy.

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Categories : Apps, Cooking, iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks

Script to launch Puffin Browser from Safari

by mallycat · Comments (0)
27 Nov

While browsing the net this week, I stumbled upon a new brower available in the Apple App Store called Puffin Browser.  What is really great about this browser is that it allows you to view Flash Webpages on your iOS device.

There is a free version and a paid version – the free version is a trial and has some limitations.

 

When I started using the browser, I quickly realised that what would be really great is to be able to browse in Safari as normal.  When you stumble on a Flash Website, to click a link and open the site in the Puffin Broswer.  So I wrote a small Javascript to do just that.  This is what you need to do.

  1. First of all, open this page in Safari on your iOS device.
  2. Click the arrow button next to the address bar and select “Bookmark”.
  3. Change the name of the bookmark to “Open in Puffin Browser”
  4. Click Save
  5. Select the line of code below and copy it.
  6. Click on bookmarks in the Safari Browser and find the bookmark you just created
  7. When you can see the bookmark on the screen, click the “edit” button
  8. Select the “Open in Puffin Browser” bookmark.  Select the second line (the one that starts http://mixednuts.net.au).
  9. Select All, then click Paste.

This is the line of code you need to copy (below)

javascript:window.location=Puffin://’+window.location.host+window.location.pathname+window.location.search+window.location.hash

Technically, the following should work to, but there seems to be a bug with Puffin that prevents it working.

javascript:window.location=Puffin://’+window.location.href

Hope you find this helpful.

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Categories : Apps, iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks, Web

Prevent Embarrasing Emails – give yourself a buffer before the email is sent.

by mallycat · Comments (0)
13 Oct

You are typing an email and you hit send.  In the split second between when you touch that send button and actually push it, you realise that you accidently have the wrong name in the address list.  But it is too late to stop it.  If that sounds familiar, then read on.

This has happened to me a few times.  Recently I did some reasearch and found there is a way to prefent this problem.  I have created a short video to show you how to set up a delay in sending emails in Outlook.  One you hit send, you can go into your Outbox and edit the email, then hit send again. 

There are a couple of things to note:

1.  This will apply to all emails.  Sometimes you want to send an email to someone immediately (eg when you are talking on the phone and they are waiting for it).  In this case, just turn off the rule.

2. In my experience, the delay is not exactly 60 seconds (mine can sometimes be 30 seconds).  If that doesn’t seem long enough to you, then just set it to 2 mins.

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Categories : Software, Tips & Tricks
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Enable Those Greyed Out Menus and CheckBoxes in Windows

by mallycat · Comments (0)
11 Sep

Ever had a check box on a windows dialog that you could not change because it is greyed out? I had just this thing the other day. Asking around on forums, someone shared this product with me.  http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Miscellaneous/Windows-Enabler.shtml

Basically it is a little application that will enable any menu or check box that has been disabled.

Read the instructions that comes with it and note the warnings well.

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Categories : Software, Tips & Tricks, Uncategorized
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