How to zoom more in MS Paint

I’ve just told you guys about how to make image trail in MS Paint. Here is another tip again. Do you know that you can zoom more in MS Paint than default. MS Paint default zoom is 8x, but you can zoom more than that. I’ve got this tip from one of the metacafe video. But I can’t find it again now.

Anyway, here is how you should do it.

If you press the white line as in the above picture, you’ll get your pic zoom more than 8x as in the following picture.

Before you start to complain me about these feature is useless compare to your Photoshop or whatever program, remember paint is very small, simple program just for very simple task. I’m just telling you this tip as a fun. Enjoy it!

How to check Firefox cache usuage

Hopefully, everyone knows how to adjust cache size in Firefox. In case, if you don’t know, I’ll let you know again.

• Go to Tools –>> Options
• And then go to Advanced tabs, Select Network.
• You will see cache size as shown below.

You can adjust to whatever the size you want. But one thing that made me confused is that what size is enough for me? 50 MB is more than enough? Or is that too small? Do I need to clear frequently? Blah, blah, blah!!!

Now I’ve got the solution. You can type in the address bar “about:cache”. It will show you how much cache space is used and how much free space left. For me, I am using only half of cache size. So I shouldn’t worry about cleaning up again and again. But it will all depend on your browsing habits. If you’re using very high speed internet, you might browse a ton of flash sites and videos, so maybe your cache may full. It is ok to leave your cache as it is, but if you assign more cache space, in case if you revisited the old video or flash page, you don’t have to download it twice.

Notepad bug in details

I have told you guys a brief explanation about how Bush Hid the facts notepad bug occurs.

It is because of IsTextUnicode function. This function is used to guess opening files are using which types of encoding (the traditional ANSI encoding or the Unicode encoding).

For a long sentences, it’s fine. But for a short word, it become pretty tricky. Let’s go into details.

To store “Hello” in notepad, it will convert to encoding. There are many types of encoding notepad support. Most encoding starts with their specific prefix to tell the program what types of encoding they are using. But the tricky things happen because Notepad also support encoding with NO prefixes, such as the traditional ANSI encoding (i.e., “plain ASCII”) and the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM.

Confused? See below Hello in different types of encoding.

48 65 6C 6C 6F This is the traditional ANSI encoding. (No prefix)

48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM. (No prefix)

FF FE 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with BOM. (FF FE is prefix)

FE FF 00 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F This is the Unicode (big-endian) encoding with BOM. Notice that this BOM is in the opposite order from the little-endian BOM. (FE FF is prefix)

EF BB BF 48 65 6C 6C 6F This is UTF-8 encoding. The first three bytes are the UTF-8 encoding of the BOM. (EF BB BF is prefix)

So there is still a chance that short word with traditional ASCII or Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM might start with EF BB BF, which is UTF-8 encoding prefix. Or maybe FF FE which is prefix for Unicode (little-endian) encoding with BOM.

When that happens, Notepad function IsTextUnicode might guess the wrong encoding as that prefix of other encoding. Remember no matter what encoding you saved with notepad, Notepad will try to guess again when you open the file.

But I don’t see this bug in Windows Vista anymore. So I think Microsoft guys have already developed improved IsTextUnicode function or make Notepad to open in saved file encoding.

Reference : MSDN blog

Paint can create ico files

I’m a big fan of MS Paint for its simplicity. And Paint is available in all Windows after all. But I didn’t realize that Paint can create ico files too.

Whenever I tried to save a file in paint, I drop down file types available and I’ve never seen .ico, so I thought I can’t save it. But you know, if you give file name with .ico, Paint create icon files for you.

You can use those icon files for your folders or even for favico. It’s cool!!

Hackatonish – Mac in a pc

I have been trying to run Mac on my PC. I have been reading about Mac good news here and there. Many people suggest that Mac is very superior to Windows, blah, blah, blah. So I thought I should give it a try.

But I don’t want to invest that much money for Mac hardware. That’s why now I’m into Hackatonish, which kernel has been patched to run Mac on non-Apple hardware. As of now, I have installed Jas MacOSX 10.4.8 in VMware. I have found out that Mac is quite suck though.

No, I’m not talking about performance, I know VMware is slow for every OS. But when I try to download Google Talk, with Mac version, I can’t talk, I can only type. What’s the point of having Google talk without having ability to talk? After that, I have downloaded attachment from my friend email and then when I tried to download Winrar, there’s no GUI support for Mac version. Geez!!

I pray it won’t end up like my linux experience.

Stay tuned for my updated Mac experience. I may install it on real pc soon.

Firefox shortcuts I frequently use

I love Firefox. It’s fast, sleek and secure. Right now, my main browser is Firefox. I can’t use IE to browse internet anymore. It’s too noisy. The reason Firefox keeps quiet is due to Adblock plus.

• Home Page Alt + Home
• Full Screen View F11
• Refresh Page F5
• Find / Find Again F3
• Add Bookmarks Ctrl + D
• Bookmarks Ctrl + B
• History Ctrl + H
• Page Source Ctrl + U
• Tab New Ctrl + T
• Tab Close Ctrl + W
• Window New Ctrl + N
• Window Close Alt + F4

This list is ordered by the frequency of my usage. Of course, I don’t have any statistics about my usage. So it’s just a guess.

Create self-extract zip file with Windows built-in tool

We all like the zip feature. Especially when I transfer a lot of .doc and .xls files, compression of zip save me a ton of space. But sometimes, I want to create exe to uncompress itself due to destination computer don’t have zip software install or I’m just too lazy to open WinZip.

What most people don’t know is that Windows has built-in tool to create self-extract compress files.

• Go to Start Menu –>> Run
• And then type iexpress.exe

You will see the following wizard.

• Click Next, then Choose “Create compressed files only (ActiveX installs)”
• Then Click Next, Add the files you want in your package.
• Then Click Next, click browse and choose the path you want and give any name you want to the package.
• Then Click Next, you can save the setting for creating your package. For now, select “Don’t save”.
• Then Click Next and your package is ready to distribute to anywhere you like.

It is quite amazing that Windows have provided such an amazing small program for free.

How to delete undeletable files

How many times have we been annoyed by that messages? Oh yeah, there are many alternatives of above such as :

• Cannot delete file: Access is denied
• There has been a sharing violation.
• The source or destination file may be in use.
• The file is in use by another program or user.
• Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

I’ve got two ways to solve this problem.

First way : If you’re not tech buddy, you should go to second way.

• Go to Start menu –>> Run –>> type cmd and press enter (this will open command prompt)
• After that press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up task manager
• Go to Process tab, find explorer.exe, then click End Process.
• Your Taskbar will disappear.

• Go back to the Command prompt you just left opened.
• Browse folder or file you want to delete.
• Delete file with del command and remove directory with rmdir command.
• After that, in the task manager, choose File –>> New Task (Run..)
• Then type explorer.exe.
• Your taskbar will appear again.

Second way : I recommend this. This is really easy. Just download and install Unlocker, which is very useful freeware especially for this purpose. After you installed the program, all you have to do is simply right click the folder or file and select Unlocker. You can do Delete, Rename, Move at your finger tips.

Frankly speaking, I really recommend you guys to follow Second way. I intend first method for those of you who just want to know workaround or who don’t wanna install any extra programs.

Microsoft BlueScreen Screen Saver

Microsoft has been famous and criticized for their BlueScreen of Death(BSOD). Most people of Windows 95, 98 era scariest nightmare is they saw BSOD.

But since Windows XP, Microsoft has greatly improved their OS and at Vista, I have been using for six months, I have never seen BSOD again.

As BSOD become a thing in the past, now Microsoft even made fun of it by releasing BlueScreen Screensaver. First time I know Microsoft has a sense of humor.

What’s this screensaver?

Bluescreen cycles between different Blue Screens and simulated boots every 15 seconds or so. Virtually all the information shown on Bluescreen’s BSOD and system start screen is obtained from your system configuration – its accuracy will fool even advanced NT developers. For example, the NT build number, processor revision, loaded drivers and addresses, disk drive characteristics, and memory size are all taken from the system Bluescreen is running on.

Use Bluescreen to amaze your friends and scare your enemies!

Adblock plus companion : Filterset G updater

I have shared with you guys about Firefox great plugin, adblock plus. I have enjoyed Adblock plus plugin so much that, I can’t browse without it anymore.

Now I have found a great companion called Adblock filterset.G Updater. That will automatically update the block list for Adblock plus. This tool is really cool.

If you want to notice a big change, visit bloggerwave.com before you installed that extension and after. It adds bloggerwave.com to the whitelist so you can see the option for advertiser to login. Go ahead and install that plugin, because it will update your list every 4 or 7 days.