Here’s a neat tip to allow mailto links to open in Gmail (or any other application) rather than the usual default, which in most cases on Windows will be Outlook/Express.

Set Gmail as Your Default.… Read the rest

The above screenshot is from Firefox 3 and is displayed when you go to the about:config configuration page. I like to see a bit of humour in development. This one has different messages too so you can enjoy time and time again and never get tired!… Read the rest

Under normal circumstances I feel pretty well equipped to sort out most problems with a PC whether they are hardware or software related, however, this latest one has got me stumped. For the last couple of days the machine has started turning itself off without any warning whatsoever – no error message, no blue screen, just no power.  It is this sort of problem that is hardest to resolve – where do you start to look?

I have uninstalled anything I added recently but that doesn’t seem to be it.

I have checked the event logs but there is nothing … Read the rest

It seems that in Windows XP SP 3 the command MSTSC /CONSOLE, that allowed you to connect to the console session, has been removed and replaced with MSTSC /ADMIN. The same also applies to Vista SP1 and Windows 2008.

The reasons for this are outlined in the article below from the Microsoft Terminal Services team blog. I am repeating the details here to save you having to spend hours working out why you aren’t seeing what you might expect.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ts/archive/2007/12/17/changes-to-remote-administration-in-windows-server-2008.aspx

Thanks to Andy at Plus Development for the tip.… Read the rest

What must be one of THE most annoying features of Windows is that, post Windows Update, the constant reminders to reboot your PC. What is worse is that if you don’t do it then Windows will do it for you after five minutes. So if you have, say, popped off to make a cup of tea when you come back you will find your machine rebooted and that whatever you are in the middle of, such as burning a DVD, aborted.

This can all be incredibly frustrating as I found this morning. Fortunately there is a solution in the form … Read the rest

Having a clear out of some old books recently turned up the above bookmark given away with 80’s computer magazine Your Computer. The cover of the first edition, which I still have, is shown below featuring the then state of the art Sinclair ZX80, ZX81, BBC Micro and something I can’t identify right now. What’s interesting is what was considered jargon then. So, for example, we have “interface” that includes “A centronics or RS-232 interface [that] allows you to plug in most printers or disc drives”.

My particular favourite though is the advice on “an ordinary cassette recorder” … Read the rest

Oops! This is the message that is currently being displayed on all of the websites related to Peter Gabriel. AS you can see it seems that someone has stolen the servers his sites ran on from his ISP – not very secure it would seem. The Register is also reporting that the ISP is ultimately owned by the Carphone Warehouse so yet more bad publicity for them.… Read the rest

Here’s a great idea and a real life saver too – access to your BT home voicemail (1571 service) from any browser. As you can see from the image your messages are listed along with the number that made the call. You then have the opportunity to listen to the message or save it to your machine for archiving – something that could be useful.

One thing that the service doesn’t do is tell you when there is a message waiting. Clearly when I get home and I pick up the phone the interrupted tone lets me know that I … Read the rest

I wrote a while back about my love of WordPress but after my experiences this morning I am feeling a little less charitable. I am currently setting up a new site (spokenlikeageek.com) for which I had intended to use the latest build of WordPress (2.5). As part of this I wanted to transfer some existing entries from this blog and so I exported out all entries (the only option) and imported them into the new blog. This seemed to work well and, as an added bonus, also copied across all the files that had been uploaded as well. … Read the rest