ADTC (Computer)

How to clean up your Blogger Reading list and stop following old blogs you no longer want to follow: If you tried to stop following blogs using the gear icon next to the Reading list in your Blogger home page, you will now get this error: We are unable to load your FriendConnect data at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again shortly. There is no need to try again shortly, because FriendConnect was partially shut down in 2011 and this broke its integration with the Reading List feature of Blogger. Fortunately, there is another way to clean up your reading list and remove those antique blogs you no longer care about: Go to Google Friend Connect http://www.google.com/friendconnect/user/overview Click on one of the Settings links next to the blogs. A pop-up will appear. If it asks to sign-in, sign in with your Google account. If you had to sign in, the pop-up will close. Click on the Settings link again to re-open the pop-up. On the left side, click on ...

The experience of setting up a local Oracle Express Edition database is not a straight-forward as it should be. The following is supposed to outline what could go wrong and how to go about it the right way. It also includes importing a DMP file (a dump) from another system. First of all, download the installer from Oracle website . You will need to sign-in to download - the account creation is free. Be sure to choose the correct bit as per your computer (x64 or x86). Extract the download and install XE by running DISK1\setup.exe (and feel nostalgic of the floppy disk era) . During installation, you will need to choose a new password. There will also be some details displayed after you enter the new password, such as folders and ports. Be sure to save both password and details in a text file for future reference. I saved it as C:\oraclexe\details.txt . Save password only if it's generic and you are likely to forget. The installation will take a while, but usually, no rest...

WhatsApp Web has expanded to Mozilla Firefox, and possibly other browsers too. iPhone and iPad users are still out of luck, as Apple's technical restrictions made it difficult for the Web client to work with iOS version of WhatsApp. When WhatsApp Web was launched, it was only available for Google Chrome. WhatsApp Web took advantage of Chrome's push notification system, citing it as ideal for the product (ref) . However, it is now available on Firefox as well, a browser that still remains popular among many, despite all the recent flak it received. Many Chrome users had switched back to their old favorite Firefox after Chrome unveiled a new "security update" that essentially destroyed their ability to have custom add-ons - Chrome was now locked to work only with add-ons approved on the Chrome Web Store. A lot of such users will be happy to finally get rid of Chrome altogether, if they had still been running Chrome to use WhatsApp Web. That being said, I found tha...

Skip to the end for instructions. I had been trying to install Windows 10 Pro Technical Preview onto a VHD, as I have Windows 7 Ultimate and can run an operating system from VHD (this feature is apparently limited to Enterprise and Ultimate editions). While I had successfully managed to install it on a virtual machine in Oracle VirtualBox, I was dissatisfied with the sluggish performance of a VM. At the same time, I also did not want to dedicate a real hard disk partition for the sole purpose of installing Windows 10 TP. Hence the decision to install into a VHD, which is a very neat solution that lets me keep Windows 10 TP separate from my real hard disk partitions and still enjoy the full native speeds of my real hardware. I had previously installed Windows 8 RC successfully into a VHD so I knew what I was up against. Or so I thought. As soon as I booted up the setup disk (the ISO I had downloaded) and clicked on Install Now, I received this very unhelpful error asking for de...

The power button on my phone (GT-I9305) was jammed, and my phone entered a constant state of boot loops. It keeps trying to turn on, but keeps restarting because the phone thinks the power button is held down. I was able to follow the instructions in the following video, although I used a clear aftershave splash from Gillette instead of 90% pure alcohol cleaning solution. The splash is also alcohol (percentage unknown) and it was the closest alternative within my arm's reach. It fixed the problem temporarily, and I was determined not to touch the power button. But the next day I pressed the power button out of habit to turn the screen off (oh, don't we all love it when habits work against your willpower). Sure enough, the button jammed again and the phone went in to boot loops. I was able to shake and hammer the phone on my hand to unstuck the power button again (if that doesn't work, try the above video again; but I was at work and didn't have access to the to...

The convenience of 'Quick Print' comes at a great cost (both to yourself and the environment). If you ever accidentally hit that shortcut, the document is immediately sent to the default printer. If your default printer happens to be a physical printer that's connected to your network or your computer directly, there goes valuable paper and ink churning out pages and pages of a document you never wanted to print, and you probably will trash or shred anyway. Indeed, I had once been working on a Java source code file in Eclipse and I accidentally clicked the Print button in the toolbar. (Why a source code editor would even need a Print button is beyond me.) The entire 1596 lines of source code got sent to the printer and I couldn't even stop it from printing half way. That ended up on 33 pages, and consequently 33 sheets of paper. Now I have this stack of paper on my desk with one particular version of the source code, all printed and 'set in stone'. Since i...

Recently switched back to Firefox. I am happy to break away from the Big Brother dictatorship of Google Chrome and use any extension I want (not Brother-Approved Extensions). I found a strange space between the Identity icon* and the URL text of the address bar. It was about an inch wide.  * Usually appears as a lock, sometimes expands to show the identity name, coloring in red or green depending on validation status. This occurs on computers with a finger print reader hardware installed. Firefox picks up the finger print authentication plugin (which however is not used by any Firefox built-in feature, though I'm not sure about Master Password), but it sets all plugins to "Ask to Activate" by default. This causes the fingerprint reader plugin to remain disabled at start-up, causing the weird bug. To solve the problem in Firefox 30.0: Click Menu (three stacked bars) > Add-ons. Click Plugins on the left side of Add-ons Manager. Find the plugin related to y...