Windows Live Writer Screenshot

The interface is really easy to use, the Preview tab shows accurate output and I love the fact I can still edit the source code to put my “special tweaks” to the site.

• Turning on the Zune by holding down the back button
• Hard restarting the Zune by holding down the two buttons while depressing the navigation pad
• When I called tech support they told me to connect the Zune for 20 minutes, unplug it and plug it immediately back in for 2-3 hours.

None of the above worked for me.

What ended up working was letting the 4GB Zune player completely drain itself, since the screen was on draining the battery.

Once the battery was drained, I plugged it into the USB connector and the player restarted.

My Zune Back Up And Running

1. AVG antivirus – antivirus software is the first thing I put on after applying all the Microsoft patches. I believe the statistic is that it only takes 15 minutes for a PC to get hacked without antivirus and a firewall.
2. Firefox – I love this web browser even though it uses more resources than Internet Explorer. Here are the add-ons that I install every time now.
   • Delicious Bookmarks
   • Flashblock
   • Web Developer
3. 7-Zip – I receive all kinds of compressed formats from people. This has no problems dealing with formats like RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
4. AVS DVD Player – Nothing is worse than thinking Windows Media Player will play your dvd and coming up with that missing codec error.
   • This little gem plays a dvd from a folder too.
   • During the setup I choose Do not associate for the File Associations. I would suggest this unless you want AVS as your default player for all the formats listed.
   • The only down side to this software is that it installs all the other non-free shareware products. Sometimes there is a price for free.
5. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) – First off you’ve gotta love the name! This is handy if you need a program similar to photoshop to resize and crop pictures from your digital camera.

1. Open a File Browser
2. Make sure the Side Pane is viewable. If not then select View->Side Pane or hit F9
3. The Places, not Tree, History, …, needs to be selected in the Side Pane.
4. Just drag the folder to the Side Pane where you want it to be added to Places

Removal of an item is done by right clicking on the item and choosing Remove.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Make sure the “universe” repository is activated before using the Synaptic Package Manager or Add/Remove software.

Once installed it’s just a matter of selecting File->Open Directory or Ctrl-E.

Open Folder for VLC

Downloading the player from Adobe was the first step. [Adobe Home] Choose the .tar.gz download, usually Option 1.

I’m command line lazy so I used the File Browser to unpack the tarball.

Open a terminal and move to the directory where the download was unpacked.

Run the installation package as root with the sudo command.
sudo ./flashplayer-installer

Enter the path for the Firefox installation folder when prompted.
/usr/lib/firefox

Repeat the process for any other browsers that need the Flash player installed.

Back up anything you want to keep. Never trust any partitioning software to maintain your data.

The solution I found was to use qtpartedon a bootable KnoppixLinux distribution.

First thing is to download and create a Knoppix CD to boot from. If you don’t have software to burn the .iso to disk, just Google free windows burning software.

Once the disk is burned, restart the computer and boot to the CD.

Follow the instructions on the splash page to start Knoppix.

After Knoppix has started, start qtparted by choosing the Knoppix icon->System->qtparted.

Starting Qtparted

When Qtparted starts there will be a listing of drives in the left.

Listing Of Drives

hda should be the primary hard drive, assuming there is one hard drive in the system. The drive name can vary depending on the system. Once the correct drive is chosen, the details window will show a partition of Type NTFS with a Windows icon next to it.

hda Selected With NTFS Partition

Select the NTFS partition, right-click on it, choose Re-size. The re-size window will come up allowing changes to be made either by dragging the right side of the bar representing the partition or manually entering the sizes.

Options For Re-sizing The Partition

The details screen will show the changes after sizing the partition and selecting OK.

Showing Resized Partition

The changes must be committed to take affect. This is done by choosing File -> Commit.

Commit Finished

Shut down Knoppix. Remove the Knoppix disk. Restart the PC. Once Windows starts up it might want to run Scandisk. After that was done, use the Windows Disk Management to verify the free partition space.

Windows Disk Management Showing Free Space

Solution:

1. Create a registry entry to allow the server address to be changed from http to https.
   1. Run regedit
   2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Synchrologic \ Client
   3. Create a DWORD entry in Client
      1. Name: ShowAdvancedButton
      2. Value: 1

2. Start the User Setup Process, and keep clicking next till you get to the page where the Verizon Username / Password and Lotus Notes information is inputted. An Advanced button is now accessible.
3. Click the Advanced button. This will bring up the server URI that the initial synchronization will be done with. If there is no ‘http://’ in front of the address, add ‘https://’. Otherwise change the ‘http://’ to ‘https://’. Select OK.
4. After the necessary Username / Password and Notes configuration is done, select Next. This will start the initial user synchronization. The synchronization should take considerably less time.

Explanation:

What I got from the Nokia rep, the program was created by Nokia, was that this is a common problem with certain gateways and firewalls, especially Checkpoint. There is some type of bottleneck that occurs, and an error is sent. When using https instead of http, there are fewer checks that need to be done at the firewall / gateway. This allows the large initial push to get through. After that the server is changed back to http. Don’t bother trying to configure the default server to https for regular synchronization. As soon as it runs it changes the setting to http.

1. Go went to Adobe.com and downloaded the .tar.gz version, instead of the .rpm one.
2. Using the File Browser, navigate to where the download exists. If the download location preferences have not been changed in Firefox the default location is the desktop.
3. Double clicking on the AdobeReader_enu-(followed version info).tar.gz file will automatically launch File Roller (if your using Gnome) or something similar.
4. Extract the AdobeReader folder to someplace that can be easily remembered.
   Tip: clicking on the pencil and paper icon in the upper left portion of the File Browser will change the path between text and button based location bar.

   
   Paper and Pencil Icon That
   Changes the Location Bar

5. Open a shell by going to Application ->System Tools->Konsole
6. Use the su command and type in the root password to change to that user.
7. Change directories to the location of the uncompressed AdobeReader folder.  ex: cd /home/yourHome/downloads/AdobeReader
8. Run the install file by typing sh INSTALL
9. A series of questions like the End User License and where to install the program will be asked.  I chose the default by pressing Enter when asked where to install.
10. After the browser install is done, the installation will ask if you want to do a manual install.  I chose no for this.  I didn’t see a need for it.

It seems a bit lengthy, but it was relatively easy.  The only problem that might be encountered is the INSTALL file is not executable.  This is fixed by doing a chmod 755 filename.

Because I don’t use Linux as my primary operating system, shame on me , I needed to install it on my Windows machine.

1. Go to the GIMP for Windows site and download the latest stable version of GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment and GIMP for Windows. I find if you choose to “Select a different mirror” and choose “Auto select” the downloads tend to be faster.
2. The downloaded files are zipped and will need to be extracted. Where doesn’t matter as long as you remember where you put them. I use WinRAR, but Windows comes with an unzipping tool built in.

   

3. Install GTK+ 2 first. The installation has the usual acceptance of the license agreement, selecting destination location (I usually keep the default).

   

   I want to have translations into local languages, no particular reason. Otherwise uncheck the Translations option.

   

   The ready to install screen will come up describing what is being installed. Choose “Install”. Finish the installation by choosing “Finish”.

4. Time for GIMP. Open the extracted GIMP setup executable. The installation is similar to GTK+ 2 in that there is the accepting the license agreement and selecting where to do the installation.

   

   Again, I am doing the full installation because it only takes up 32 MB of drive space, which is nothing really. The only component I would consider optional is the Translation.

   

   Because I have other programs I prefer to use for viewing files I chose not to associate any file types. If GIMP is going to be the primary graphics editing and viewing programs, then either “Select All” or individual image file types from the list. Worldstart lists some image file types as well as their strengths and weaknesses if your interested.

   

   • When it comes to “Select Start Menu Folder”, I go with the default.
   • Lastly before the installation page, the “Select Additional Tasks” screen offers to put an icon on the desktop and quick launch areas. Personally I like an uncluttered screen. I unchecked these.
   • Select “Install” on the “Ready to Install” screen.

   

   The GIMP installation is done. Start GIMPin’.