Author: Alex
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Heart, music, diamonds and other cool symbols on Facebook and other things
Ever wondered how to get those cool little symbols in wall posts, status updates, messages etc… on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…? This kind of thing: ☼ ☻☺ ♪ ♫ ♥ Well…. you can either copy them off this page, or use the key sequence next to them: To get these to work: You will need…
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iPhone replacing “Xx” with “Fx” – FIXED In OS 3.0
At last! The “feature” that replaced Xx with Fx has been fixed in OS 3.0! Another thing I have noticed is with “lol” – Before the OS 3.0 update, if I typed lol, it would change it to UPPERCASE. Now, however, it leaves it as i typed it.
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Show line numbers in Visual Studio 2008
I recently reset my settings in Visual Studio which, irritatingly, made my line numbers disappear. To re-instate the line numbers, there is a simple process: Click: Tools > Options > Text Editor > All Languages > General On the right, under Display section, check Line numbers (see below) Click Ok.
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Reset IDE settings in Visual Studio 2008
I recently acquired a PC at my new job where there was an existing installation of Visual Studio. This was fine, however it was set up for a VB.net developer. Whilst I do use VB.net, I didn’t want my VS set up this way. I wanted to re-instate that lovely screen you see when you…
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Use Notepad2 instead of original Notepad in Windows Vista
Notepad2 is my favourite text editor. Eventually, I’ll get round to writing a post all about it. Until then, you can read the Wikipedia page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad2 You can download Notepad2 from http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html Step 1) Find c:\windows\notepad.exe and c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe (use Windows Explorer) Change the owner of both files to “Administrators” In case you are unsure……
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iPhone – No folder management support for Exchange
One big thing for me with regards to the iPhone Microsoft Exchange integration is the inability to create and manage folders. I am one of those people that religiously file emails away once dealt with – for example, I have an "eBay" folder, with "buying" and "selling" sub folders for all the emails relating to…
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Facebook Usernames
In the last couple of weeks, Facebook has finally started supporting usernames… So instead of giving people long urls, with your user id (a long number) you will now be able to give: www.facebook.com/alexjamesbrown (like the way MySpace did it from the outset) To get yours, go to: www.facebook.com/username
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How to stop your new Facebook friend additions being posted to your wall
By default, when you accept a friend request, or someone accepts your friend request, a “story” is published to your wall. To stop this, you can edit your privacy settings. 1) First, hover over settings, in the top right menu (next to the search box) Click “Privacy Settings” 2) On the Privacy Settings page, click…
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iPhone replacing “Xx” with “Fx”
Every time I text my girlfriend, and put two x’s at the end like this: Xx My iPhone feels it necessary to replace it with “Fx” Apparently the software learns what you want after a certain amour of corrections, however after literally hundreds, my iPhone still does it!!
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C# WordPress Wrapper
Ok, I’ve barely finished this as a stable release, but I thought I’d post this up any way…. A little open source project I’m working on – Joe Blogs. In a nutshell, it allows easy communication to your WordPress (or other blog) via an xml-rpc interface. Big thanks to the work by Charles Cook at…
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TinyURL API
The popular url shortening service, TinyUrl has an API. This is probably the most simple API I’ve come across: http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=http://www.alexjamesbrown.com (obviously, you can replace http://www.alexjamesbrown.com with any URL)
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String.EndsWithAny and StartsWithAny Extension Method
It frustrated me that while String provides the StartsWith and EndWith method, it doesn’t provide an EndWithAny. So, if I wanted to see if a particular string started or ended with any specified string, I would have to create my own method to return a true or false. Whilst this is fine, it’s a little…
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Base checksum mismatch – A solution for TortoiseSVN users.
I recently had the misfortune to get a Base Checksum Mismatch error, when I tried to check in files to my repository. The problem occurs when the files svn data has become corrupted. There are many solutions to this problem, but here’s how I solved it simply (I only had 2 files that had this…
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Copying tables across databases with SQL Server
So, you’ve got a requirement to move or copy a table from one database to the other? Including data? Use SELECT INTO. For example, we have a database called “MyDatabase” We also have another database – “MyNewDatabase” MyDatabase contains the table “Customers” – with a bunch of data that we want to preserve. You need…
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Windows Azure – Firefox & “Port Restricted for Security Reasons”
I’ve been starting to delve into the world of Windows Azure this week. After getting the Azure Samples loaded, I tried running one of them (just by hitting F5 in VS) and, as Firefox is my default browser, got a “Port Restricted For Security Reasons” error. Of course, it worked fine in IE Here is…
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Fix for Mail Enable – %1 is not a valid Win32 application.
As mentioned in a previous post, I am in the middle of changing my hosting, from a reseller account, to my own VPS. After working closely with eHosting support, I’ve managed to beat into submission the large majority of the features required. One thing however, was the installation of MailEnable Standard (the free one) It…
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Email Scam – Winning coupon number 76.47.49.12
I thought this kind of email had fizzled out, but, apparently i’ve won 750m euros. Anyway, for the sake of google, the originating email address was eustakevan@virgilio.it Winning coupon number 76.47.49.12 Dear Sir/madam, We are pleased to inform you that, you have won the sum of €750,000.00 Euros from EU Lottery board held on the…
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Currency Display In C#
In classic ASP we had FormatCurrency to take a value (number) and display it as a formatted currency. In C#, how do we achieve the same? To map a SQL 205 Money datatype to a C# class property, I use Decimal Data Type – which gives you the precision you need. A simple .ToString() on…
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eBay Scam – [email protected]
I’d like to take this opportunity to let others know what happened. This guy won an eBay auction I had going for my mother. He paid promptly by PayPal, and requested I post it as cheap as possible to Hungary. 3 days after i marked his item as dispatched, he filed a dispute with PayPal.…
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Session_Start event not firing
I’ve been scratching my head about this one for sometime… As I’m sure your aware (or you wouldn’t be reading this) in the Global.asax file, we have the following method: protected void Session_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { } Placing a breakpoint on this method, I attached the debugger, ran up my application, and the breakpoint…
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Another Car Scam – Thomas Freeman – [email protected]
I just received another car scam attempt: Thomas Freeman – thomas_freeman1962@yahoo.com I’ve pasted the email below, word for word, and in same font. Dear sir/MaI am responding to your advert on auto trader advert site regarding to the car you wish to sell. I am very much interested in buying your above advert subject. I…
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Using Microsoft OneNote Across Multiple PC’s using Amazon S3
Technorati Tags: OneNote,Amazon S3,Microsoft Office,Cloud I love Microsoft OneNote, and use it on a daily basis to record any ideas I have, things I find on the Internet etc… The issue is, that, whilst using it at home is great, I sometimes also have "brain waves" when I’m out and about on my laptop, or…
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Selling Car Fraud
I’ve started this category to make people aware of various means of scamming car owners, when selling their vehicles. The general idea is this: Someone will contact you, after seeing your advert. They will seem interested, and sometimes ask for more pictures etc… After some “haggling” they will aggree to buy your car at your…
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Trimming in SQL Server
If you have imported a large amount of data, or had some rogue users, helpfully putting a space at the beginning and / or end of a string, then this simple update will clear that out: UPDATE TableName SET ColumnName = RTRIM(ColumnName) Of course, if you only want to select the data, you could also:…