Karun AB

Adding Search Engines

1. Custom Search Engine: Right click the address bar and click Edit search engine. Click add, fill in a name and a keyword followed by the search query.
   For adding the Messenger Plus Forum Search engine I used the name as “Messenger Plus! Forum Search” (doesn’t really matter what you use here), the keyword as “mpf” and the url as “http://msghelp.net/basicsearch.php?do=search&keywords=%s” where %s represents the search query entered. As a result of adding this, I can now search the MP!F simply by typing “mpf “. I love search shortcuts :)

 

2. Searching Google.com instead of your local (regional) google site: This is really a continuation of the previous tip but I just felt it was worthy of being here :P There is a fault (imo) with the default google search engine in Chrome. The keyword is set to “google.com”. Why type all that when you could simply use “g” ;) Also, if you have a look at the google search url in chrome, it uses a base query identifier to redirect to your local google. I just changed mine to “http://google.com/search?q=%s” because while posting google links (especially on irc) to have to remove my browser info every time and sometimes even my country tld in the google domain. This way, it makes it easier for me to paste links though I do realise that google might lose out on accurate statistics of its users because of this but I don’t think it’d mind a handful of users changing their queries when it has billions of searches everyday ;) I’ve also changed my wiki keyword to “w” and urbandictionary.com keyword to “ud“

 

3. Memory stats for nerds: Well I am a geek/nerd who likes his stats, memory or otherwise ;) Typing about:memory in your url bar ought to take you to some stats while you can do the same by clicking Shift+Esc for basic stats and then clicking “Stats for nerds“. The advanced stats also shows details of Chrome vs other browsers (which should be running at the same time). So you can run Chrome,  Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari at the same time and compare statistics if you wish ;) Having it update live would have been cooler but that might take up a lot of resources in itself :P Maybe it should auto refresh when someone’s watching but if you go switch to another tab/application or are idle you could stop refreshing it automatically. :)

 

4. Resizing Textboxes: You can now resize textboxes by holding down the left mouse button at the bottom right corner and dragging it. And here’s poor dt who wrote a ton of javascript to do the same in dtblog.

 

5. Check Loadtimes: Want to know what took the page so long to load? Do you want to know how long it took your javascript code to execute? Chrome is here to help! Right click anywhere on the page and select “Inspect Element”. Just move on over to the resources tab and analyse away :)

 

6. Detaching and reattaching tabs: Tired of having so many tabs in one single window? Want to sort tabs according to what kind of work you’re doing? Sure that’s possible! Drag a tab outside the tab area and drop it. Voila! Brand new chrome window. Each tab in Chrome is a new process anyway so it doesn’t really matter ;)

 

7. Private Browsing: You could need to browse privately either to not tell the world of your searches on medical histories, viewing porn (:P) or planning that secret trip for your significant other, who cares? Incognito to the rescue! Press ”Ctrl+Shift+N” or just click the new page icon followed by “New Incognito Window”. Incognito is basically opens a private browsing session for you where no traces of what you were doing show up thus maintaining full privacy.

 

8. Easter Eggs: Lets end with something fun! Hopefully most of you already know of the about:mozilla easter egg in Mozilla Firefox which pulls out a quote from The Book of Mozilla. Here’s one for Chrome that doesn’t work on Vista. Type in about:internets in the chrome window and you’ll see sspipes.scr run with the title “Don’t clog the tubes”. Doing so on Vista will show a gray tab with the title “The Tubes are Clogged!” since it doesn’t have sspipes.scr. If you don’t get why this screen saver was used, you should know that the Internet is a “Series of Tubes” ;) Don’t clog them with your p0rnz! :P

iPod 30GB (5.5 Generation; Black)

Every gadget I’ve owned to this day has been personalised. Its just something I have to do (if the hacks make the device better). I’ve done it so far with my i-Mate KJAM (custom ROMs for WM5 and WM6 and even cooking some up once in a while), my brother’s PSP and my computer (that counts too, doesn’t it? :P) among others.But when my brother came home last month, he exchanged the 2nd hand 30 GB iPod (5.5 Generation; Black) that he had.

I had always heard of the legend that is the iPod but never actually used it, believe it or not. I did like my Sony NW-A608 because of its size and battery life but after testing the iPod out for a few days, I decided to keep it because the 2GB Network walk man was no longer enough for me, it was when I got it 3 years ago but not any more.

Knowing that the iPod was so famous, searching for any softwares for it would be nearly impossible. Most content was replicated from one site to another. So I decided to go through most things out there and make a definitive list (for myself, if not anyone else :P). This post is not meant to only have info on iPod tools. This is a post to get the most out of your iPod and customise it in whatever way possible. So shall we get started?

First things first. You’d need a software to manage your connection with the iPod. There are quite a few out there that do the job quite well. This list would include foobar2000 and WinAmp. Despite using the latter as my daily mp3 player on my pc, I decided to go with (don’t frown..) iTunes :P I do know that iTunes has a reputation of being called “bloatware” but I use it for a different reason. I give you iArt. It took me a really long time to find an application which would go through the thousands of songs I have on my hard disk and add not only album art but also lyrics all with little or no human interaction if necessary. Yes, it can go through your entire iTunes library and add album art and lyrics in automatic mode :o Asking me to do those things manually is insane and anyone who knows me, knows full well that I organise my files perfectly and always have them ID3 tagged (even before last.fm came along :P). iArt will automatically go through your entire iTunes library (or selectively through playlists/song lists you want) and find album art/lyrics from various sources for you. You can select album arts and lyrics manually or set iArt to do them automatically for you. So get iTunes and iArt and you can be sure that the music on your iPod has album art and lyrics. In case you need a portable manager, you could use YamIpod.

Now that you’ve got music that’s well tagged with its art and lyrics, you can start thinking about how to make it look good because face it, you want your iPod to look hot. Never fear, iPod themes are here! All you need to do is download iPodWizard from its official website, then go to the iPodWizard forums and go over to the Themes subforum where you should select your iPod version. In my case, this was the 5th generation subforum. Now you can download the themes you want and apply them. Info on how to do so is available on the forum and their wiki as well but I’m going to write an article on that soon with my experiences in this field.

Till now, we’ve spoken about how handle your iPod with different managers and how to theme it. But what if you are tired of the way the in built firmware for the iPod works? You could always change it. RockBox, an Open Source Jukebox Firmware is an excellent alternative to the in built firmware for not only the iPod but a lot of other portable music players. If you’ve not checked it out already, I seriously suggest you do that now. It is pretty good and supports a wide range of file formats unlike the default firmware in iPod. It can even be themed among other things. Is your life dependent on the linux prompt? Well then Linux on iPod is for you! Why do it? Because you can ;) Now the question that everyone wants to ask, which one should I run? RockBox is pretty awesome but has a few issues and so does Linux on iPod (freezing while playing high bitrate songs and browsing through large file lists at the same time). Other than the pretty major issue of having videos to be in mp4s (though even RockBox doesn’t support xvid and there are a ton of videos out there, I just don’t wish to keep my TV shows, movies and Music Videos in formats that the iPod likes. I prefer them to be in xvid which is a standard for me) to work on the default iPod firmware, I find that it works the best. And with theme-ability (as talked about in the previous paragraph), things look well for it.
There is one thing I had hoped someone would have told me (which would have made me move to these alternate firmwares quicker for tests). Installing these firmwares (it seems) gives you a boot up option to select which firmware you want to load so you don’t lose your original iPod firmware.

If you’ve not thought of ever using your iPod as a hard disk, shame on you! You should slap yourself right now! I personally have a ton of portable applications that allow me to do almost everything I do on my home desktop on computers in college. I use portable versions of 7-Zip (for access to archives), Firefox (web browser), FireFTP (Firefox addon for FTP), Floola-win (portable iPod manager), Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlighting), Portable OSK (just in case ;)), pdfProducer, Pidgin (multi platform chat client), PlainEdit.NET (another text editor with syntax highlighting), PuTTY (ssh access to server), Autoruns, Process Explorer and uTorrent. If you have any suggestions for good portable applications or need help with (getting) any of the ones I have then do let me know :)

This was some of the more general things that you could do. The next few posts will contain information specific to certain feilds and which will talk in detail about iPod 5.5G based hacks. Now you could do it with other iPods but then you’d have to figure out equivalents or get me one of those iPods :P

I should officially be named the PPC hack king when it comes down to recovering them from positions where it seems they might be bricked :P

I installed a custom cooked WM6 ROM for my Wizard (I-Mate K-JAM) and then moved to a second custom ROM, which quite sadly, crashed. This time it got stuck in the IPL/SPL load screen so here is what you do when you’re in such a dilemma.

Remove your battery and then insert it again so now your device is off. Then press the power button + camera button and the phone will start off in boot loader mode. Then get an official ROM and install it. A custom one should too assuming it has the ability to talk to phones in the boot loader (which almost all of the ROMs should imo).

Have a good night ya’ll ;)

The term “Wizard” refers to the HTC Wizard which is a Windows Mobile sold by companies like I-Mate and O2.

Now the manual simply states that one should press the communications and voice buttons simultaneously and then press the reset key with your stylus. Well I can say honestly, that didn’t work for me.

Here is how you can really hard reset your HTC Wizard. I personally was using my I-Mate K-JAM. Before reading the following, make sure you read the warnings given below and the disclaimer while you’re at it.
1) Take your stylus and press and hold the reset key that you use for soft resetting. Don’t press the key. Hold it, as in keep it pressed.
2) Then press the voice and comm buttons simultaneously and keep them pressed.
3) You can let go of the (soft) reset key now. Wait for the confirmation message on the screen which will instruct you to press the send key (left soft key) to reset.

That’s it! You just successfully hard resetted your Windows Mobile 5.0 device.

Now you ask, why? Why would I want to hard reset my device? Hmm.. Maybe you’re selling off your device and don’t want to give the person any of your data. A hard reset puts everything back to the factory settings. Alternately, maybe you just forgot your phone password and can’t find a way in. You never know :P

Warning: Hard resetting leads to deleting of all data on the main memory in devices running on windows mobile 5.0 and even the data on the memory card for windows mobile 6.0
I didn’t risk it. I removed my mini-SD card while doing so :P

Disclaimer: Though this method does only what I told you it does (hard resets your devideAs usual, I am not responsible for any kind of harm, damage or loss that might arise out of using this information. Use it at your own risk

So finally I got bugged with UAC enough to switch it off a few weeks back. Not all of it though. Just the module for approval from an admin and the elevation without prompting. Here is how you can do it.

Click Start > Type “local” and enter (to open Local Security Policy) > Local Policies > Security Options > Browse down to the set of UAC controls.

Now I disabled the “User Account Control: Admin Approval Mode for the Built-in Administrator account” and set the “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” to “Elevate without prompting”

So far, everything is going quite smoothly. Then to disable the irritating red icon in your task bar open Windows Security Center (again start > type it out and select. Don’t you just love Windows Vista’s new search? ;)) then on the left side, select “Change the way Security Center alerts me.”
Now select “Don’t notify me and not show me the icon (not recommended)” I would have honestly liked an option saying, “Notify me (once) but don’t show me the icon.” Too bad we can’t do that.

And that is it. No more UAC asking you to accept every action you make. Yay for power users ;)

I had to reinstall vista once and so vista copied its already existing files into Windows.old like any other decent OS does. This was of course a move to help me keep the data I already had in C drive at that time.

Now that my work with it was done, I couldn’t delete it. UAC was constantly telling me I didn’t have the rights to do so. The sad part is that I am the administrator and those files aren’t of any use to me. I tried switching off UAC but that requires a reboot so I started searching for alternatives since Vista wouldn’t let me edit the rights directly either.

Thanks to Rotem for linking me to Tim Sneath’s MSDN blog which explains a method to reset rights over a folder.
The problem quite clearly is that Vista doesn’t remember which group holds rights to editing those folders/files.
The secret lies in two command-line utilities.

takeown is an old command which resets ownership of the mentioned file/folder while icacls is used to provide a group with the rights to that file/folder.

As Tim points out, you can create a batch file with the following two lines.

takeown /f %1 /r /d y
icacls %1 /grant administrators:F /t

It is imperative to note that the batch file needs to be run as an administrator. This can be done by right clicking the file and clicking on run as administrator.

You could also do what I did. Open command prompt in administrator mode (start > type “cmd” without quotes > right click > run as administrator), browse till the folder/file in question and then use the same two commands by substituting “%1″ with the name of the target file/folder.

Hopefully you were smart enough to figure out that you do need administrator rights to pull this off. So if you’re a script kiddie planning to pull off something on vista, this is not what you’re looking for.

So the next time you cannot delete a file in Windows Vista even though you have administrator rights, try using takeown and icacls ;)