JOKE

Q: What's the difference between a woman and a computer?
A: Women don't take 3 1/2'' floppies.

JOKE

Liquor in the front, Poker in the back!

HOWTO: VMware Player Ubuntu 8.10 Keyboard mapping issues

Found a bug when trying to run Ubuntu 8.10 via VMware player on a Windows machine.

In Ubuntu, click system, preferences, keyboard.
Under layouts tab, select your keyboard model. It doesn't have to exact. When in doubt, select logitech.
Under selected layouts, add new keyboard layout.
Select layout based on country. I tried Canada, but it still didn't work, so I had to go with US...damn!
Anyways, select USA, no variants necessary and then add.
You may have to restart ubuntu, but it should work right away!

cheers,

HOWTO: Windows Explorer does not automatically refresh

Windows explorer doesn't refresh the file list when you move, create, or delete files/folders?
Here is a simple hotfix that will resolve that issue. Pretty easy, just adding a new DWORD in the registry.

Follow these steps:

1. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
2. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
3. Type NoSimpleNetIDList, and then press ENTER.
4. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
5. Type 1, and then click OK.

Here is the site microsoft support site. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823291

cheers,

HOWTO: Windows Server 2003 CTRL+ALT+DEL Login

Windows Server 2003 comes with a feature where you will have to CTRL+ALT+DEL to login. This can be annoying if you want the server to sit without any I/O's. Here is a solution:

http://www.visualwin.com/Disable-C-A-D/

The microsoft solution to enable autologin:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324737

cheers,

HOWTO: Version Control for the Solo Programmer

many solo programmers would love version control. instead of copying and pasting folder, renaming folders with time-stamps or description of what you did. here is a easier, efficient, how industry does it way...

download tortoiseSVN. great subversion control tool.
download here: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

next, to run version control locally (ie. local on your machine, no servers required),
go here: http://www.schapendonk.org/blog/2008/01/local-version-control-with-just-tortoisesvn/

here it will show you how easy it is to run version control locally

cheers,

HOWTO: Java conversions

Always need to convert one type to another? Hard to find it in the java api? Well, here is a quick "cheat-sheet" that will help you convert common types from one to another.

http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-0004.html

cheers,