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When I’m at work I tether my laptop to my mobile phone. Only having 1.5GB of data per month to use, this can get eaten up quickly with Dropbox and or SugarSync working, not to mention other things that use the data.

Dropbox has a manual “pause” button, but SugarSync doesn’t. Since I’ve changed it’s even harder to remember that things are syncing, so I looked for a way to kill it while I’m tethered.

Ok, seriously Logitech. I installed your terrible software to try and make my mouse buttons mappable, and that didn’t go so well. Why can’t I just set it to a key, or a key combo without having to learn your weird macro functions? Your old software was good, now… not so much.

And after I reboot, I get asked about a survey. I say no, because I don’t want to fill it out. Then you bug me again? How is this good interface design? I’ve got two dead mice from you (a G5, and now an Anywhere MX which drifts all over the place) and you’re bugging me about a survey?

Every day I make use of literally hundreds of interlinked projects which come under the banner of open source or free software.

I started writing this article on a phone powered by Android, in the Epistle editor, in the markdown format. The router I’m connected to is based on Linux, and I will post this onto my blog powered by WordPress. My house has at least twenty virtual machines running Ubuntu, on an ESXi host, providing a range of internal and quasi-external services with 99% of them being free software solutions. About the only software I pay for is games, operating systems and things that Atlassian sells (I’m falling more in love with them all the time!)

I had an issue with the sidebar of my OSX Finder window in Snow Leopard. Even though the old folders were there (and later removed) some shortcuts I had created wouldn’t go away.

Command-clicking and trying to remove it wouldn’t work, and dragging it away wouldn’t either. I finally got annoyed by them being there, so I started googling around a bit.

I found this discussion on the official Apple Support Community which led me to Command-Click and Dragging the items into the trash.

If you install an NVS300 supplied by HP it’ll disable the onboard SoundMAX hardware because there’s a sound device built into the video card.

I tried a lot of things, including nVidia’s downloadable drivers, HP’s drivers and a few other options but eventually found it was a BIOS setting issue.

• Go into the BIOS (F10 on startup)

• Scroll across to Advanced

• Select PCI Devices

• Once you’re in there, you’ll see the following:

• The trick is to press the Page Down key and you’ll get to see the second set of PCI Devices:

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So, you’re wanting to type some Latin notes quickly, but you’re sick of using the numeric keypad or you’re unable to because your laptop hates you. Here’s a good way to work around it, by having buttons to insert the text into the current point you are at in the document!

• Right click and Save-As on this link to download the file - this is all the magic code to make this work.
• Open Word 2003.
• From the main screen, press the key combination Alt-F11.
• Ensure you’re working on the Normal template, by double-clicking on Normal then Microsoft Word Objects then ThisDocument.
• Right click on the Normal title and click Import File…
• Select the file and click Open.
• This should import the file into a Module called Module1 or similar, double click on Modules then double click on the newly created module item.
• To rename it so we know what we’re dealing with, go down to the module properties (which should be in the bottom left) and click next to (Name).
• Delete what’s in the box and rename it to Macrons.
• Hit enter and it’ll update the name.
• Click on the Save icon in the top of the window to confirm the changes to the Normal template.
• Close the Microsoft Visual Basic window and you’ll be back in Word
• Click on View -> Toolbars -> Customize…
• Go to the Toolbars tab and create a new toolbar by clicking on New… and giving it a name. Ensure you’ve set Make toolbar available to: to Normal.dot.
• Change to the Commands tab.
• Scroll down in the left hand window and find Macros then click on it.

For each of the Commands in the right hand side which start with Normal.Macrons.:

If you’re like me and got excited after finally reading up on the Mass Effect Universe, you’ll likely have bought it cheap on Steam

I had a problem initially where it would crash on startup. I googled around a lot, and found not much. I tried:

• Verified the Game Cache Files
• Turned on Windows XP compatibility mode for any .exe I could find
• Tried all the different settings I could find while running MassEffectConfig.exe

I’m sure I tried a few other things, but none of it worked. As soon as I would run the game from Steam, the MassEffectLauncher.exe or MassEffect.exe it would crash straight away.

May I present… Gamer grub. I wasn’t sure what to expect when buying a packet from MilSims.. and I’m glad I didn’t set my expectations too high!

From the back of the pack:

15 browser tabs, 11 apps, voice chat and two games running. We couldn’t find a snack that could keep up… so, we made our own. Gamer Grub (R) is a delicious performance snack packed with essential vitamins and neurotransmitters to keep you focused and quick. Just ‘Tear N Tilt’ into a pack of Gamer Grub (R) to multi-task and game… no greasy fingers.

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So.. I’ve always said that I would buy myself  a banjo, and someone called me on that today. Ten minutes later, I’ve found a low-bid auction on eBay and now I’m counting down the days 🙂

So, I finally got to see the movie 127 Hours. I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while, but movie-time at home’s been scarce and convincing RMB to watch it with me even harder. After finishing the first season of Revenge - hopefully there will be a second - we were completely out of things to watch, so I just hit go on the first thing in the “Incoming” list.