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When you’ve got to shut down your PC as soon as possible and don’t want to worry about updates right away, Windows 7 seems to love forcing you to wait until updates have been done before shutting down. The shutdown button turns into an update and shutdown button instead, which isn’t helpful at all.
I have found that there is a way to shutdown without installing updates first. It’s just not in the start menu:
- Close all programs if you haven’t already.
- Press Alt + F4.
- Choose the option for shutting down without installing updates and click OK.
There are apparently other ways to change what Windows does but when you just need a quick solution to get your computer off without worrying about waiting for updates, this is my favourite way to do it.
I’ve recently updated my blog post about measuring path lengths in Google Earth as the old tool I’d used disappeared.
For some reason, this blog won’t let me add the following information to my previous post about paths in Google Earth so I’ve had to add a continuation here in this new post.
Using that data in Google Earth
Remember that question in my other post which asked if you wanted to update the KML Path file? As I said above, if you click “Yes, update” it updates the path you have stored in the clipboard with your path’s distance. Below explains how to use that in Google Earth
- After the distance is shown, you can go back into Google Earth and go to Edit > Paste:
This pastes in the newly updated path
- Once you’ve pasted in the path, it’ll appear under your places in Google Earth (the same area your other paths appear in). It appears under the name “KmlFile”. You’ll likely need to expand it out by pressing the + icon next to the “KmlFile” path. As you’ll see, when you expand the view of the path the distance is now visible:
The new path under "KmlFile"
Extra bonus info – using KML files
Alternatively using the Google Earth Path Measurer you can save the text you copied into a file using Notepad or another simple text editing program and save it as a .kml file. From there you click the “Calculate Distance from KML Path File” button instead of the “Calculate Distance from clipboard” button and the same process occurs using the file rather than your clipboard.
The measured path that is updated is instead stored in this .kml file rather than the clipboard and you go to File > Open to open the file rather than pasting the path in.
Many who know me well will know of my strange fascination with zombies. Today I had the urge to go on a search for zombie themed wallpaper on DeviantART. Thought I’d share the best of the bunch that I found for other zombie enthusiasts 
Zombie X-ing
Nice, simple and effective! It’s my current wallpaper.
http://nuked-whale.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-X-ing-119854207
Zombie Wallpaper
Much darker of a feel but really cool!
http://nintendorevolution.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Wallpaper-95179629
Knock knock zombie apocalypse
Great concept!
http://sharpjet.deviantart.com/art/Knock-knock-zombie-apocalypse-141570547
Zombie Warning
Little disappointed it’s only available in 1024×768 but otherwise absolutely love it!
http://psylentnight.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Warning-74882436
Survival Tracking Guide
Not totally zombie based but I thought it was hilarious.
http://beti-88.deviantart.com/art/Survival-Tracking-Guide-165350460
Dead is the New Alive
Love the colours and textures in this one.
http://asylumactas.deviantart.com/art/Dead-is-the-New-Alive-170303083
Zombie Apocalypse
Love the detail and textures in this one!
http://rubenz87.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Apocalypse-156160207
Zombie Love
Zombies totally need love too.
http://lunaqueen333.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Love-154134935
I’m sure i’m not the first to come across this issue but it had me confused for a little while! The background image on my music blog was not fading correctly into the background colour of the site. This issue only seemed to occur on Firefox (and not every Firefox either…).
The explanation is here! According to Firefox’s documentation, it appears there is a “color management” feature which renders these images differently. For some reason this has been set to be the default option from Firefox 3.5. So on Firefox, my background image and the background colour were not matching up.
To change this setting back in Firefox:
- Type in about:config into the address bar
- Find “gfx.color_management.mode”
- Change the value from 2 to 0.
- Restart Firefox
Before:
With the gfx.color_management.mode still set to 2 (click to see full image)
After:
With the gfx.color_management.mode set to 0 (click to see full image)
How do I fix images so that they display correctly in Firefox 3.5+?
It looks like it might be a PNG issue in Firefox. After a bit of Googling, I came across the following steps:
- Download TweakPNG from here: http://entropymine.com/jason/tweakpng/
- Run it and open your image
- Delete the lines which start with gAMA, cHRM, iCCP and sRGB (these seem to be the chunks of colour profiles which mess up in Firefox)
- Save and replace your image on your site.
Wondering where to go to disable Flash in your browser? I thought I’d put together this list as a bit of a reference both for myself and for anyone else who needs it
Firefox 3
Tools > Add-ons > Find Shockwave Flash and click Disable
IE6
Tools > Manage Add-ons > Find Shockwave Flash Object > Click the Disable radio button on the bottom left
Then refresh any pages you are viewing (Press Ctrl + F5 if it doesn’t appear to have disabled Flash).
IE7
Tools > Manage Add-ons > Enable or Disable Add-ons > Find Shockwave Flash Object > Click the Disable radio button on the bottom left
Then refresh any pages you are viewing if IE7 doesn’t do this for you (Press Ctrl + F5 if it still doesn’t appear to have disabled Flash).
IE8
Tools > Manage Add-ons > Make sure the “Toolbars and Extensions” button is selected on the left > Find Shockwave Flash Object > Click the Disable button on the bottom right
Then refresh any pages you are viewing (Press Ctrl + F5 if it doesn’t appear to have disabled Flash).
Chrome
Go to chrome://plugins/ in your address bar
Find Shockwave Flash and click the Disable link underneath it (the item should go grey).
After this it seems like you need to close any tabs you want flash to be disabled in and then go to the site again in a new tab.
Opera
It seems like in Opera if you’re wanting to keep things simple, you can only disable all plugins, not just one:
Tools > Quick Preferences > Untick “Enable Plugins”
Refresh the page if the effects don’t take effect straight away.
You can disable a certain plugin using the plugin ignore file if it’s something you want to make permanent. To do that go to opera:config#Network|PluginIgnoreFile in your address bar. Find the file on your filesystem that it shows you and open it in notepad or something along those lines to edit it.
Safari for Windows
It seems like in Safari (just like Opera) if you’re wanting to keep things simple, you can only disable all plugins, not just one:
Edit > Preferences > Security tab > Untick “Enable Plugins”
Ever wanted to change the way your favourite website looked? Sick of Facebook being blue? Sick of the one part of a site you use being so small on the page while all that other stuff you never look at takes up all your window space? Want to play hilarious pranks on your friends by changing the way sites appear to them? If so, read on.
What you’ll need
To change styles on websites using Firefox, you’ll need the following:
- Firefox (duh.)
- Stylish – The Firefox extension which makes all of this possible
- Either a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS
- A basic knowledge of finding elements on a website (do you know what a div is?). I use the Firebug extension for Firefox to find which styles are on different elements I want to change.
Once you have the above prerequisites you can move onto the steps below. If you don’t know HTML or CSS and can’t be bothered learning, you can always use other people’s ready made styles.
How to restyle a website your way!
In my example, we’re going to be changing the boring blue bar on the top of Facebook.
- Go to the website you’d like to change in Firefox.
- Get to the page on the site with the element you’d like to change (e.g. if you’re looking to change the blue bar in facebook, login first so that you can see the blue bar).
- Find the
icon at the bottom right of your Firefox window. - Click on it, go to “Write New Style”, then to “For thesiteyouwanttochange.com”. Click that.
- A new window will open which is where you can put your CSS styles. You insert them in the space between @-moz-document domain(“facebook.com”) { and } as i’ve highlighted in the screenshot below:
- So basically, you find what you want to change on the site and put those styles in there. You can click the “Preview” button to see the results. If styles aren’t appearing, try using !important after them to ensure they override the website’s styles. The styles I used for my Facebook example will be at the end of this post
- When you’re done. Click Save.
- You might need to make your own images (if you’re that dedicated to your changes), for example I had to create my own Facebook coloured images so that they’d match the new coloured background:
- From this point on, as long as you have Stylish enabled on your Firefox, you’ll have your new style in use instead:
Click for the full image
My sample Facebook bar change code
With my styling changes, I basically went through the elements in Facebook’s top bar and changed the background colours, border colours and link colours. I also had to change the images used in things like the Facebook logo and buttons. The code I used to change the Facebook top bar’s colour was:
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("facebook.com") {
#blueBar {background-color: #ff6600 !important;}
#pageLogo a {background: url('http://www.patrickcatanzariti.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/facebookicons.png') no-repeat -21px 0 #ff6600 !important;}
#jewelCase .jewel {border: none !important;}
.jewelToggler {background-image: url('http://www.patrickcatanzariti.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/facebookicons.png') !important;}
#jewelRequest:hover, #jewelRequest:focus, #jewelRequest:active, #jewelMail:hover, #jewelMail:focus, #jewelMail:active, #jewelNotif:hover, #jewelNotif:focus, #jewelNotif:active {background-color: #ff6600 !important;}
#headNavOut {background-color: #eeeeee !important; border-color: #b3b3b3 !important;}
#pageNav a {color: #aaaaaa !important;}
.uiSearchInput, #navSearch .uiTypeahead, #navSearch .uiTypeahead .wrap {border-color: #b3b3b3 !important;}
#pageNav a:hover, #pageNav a:focus, #pageNav a:active {background-color: #ccc !important;}
}
Using other people’s styles instead
You don’t need to make your own styles if you don’t want to. You can also go to http://userstyles.org/ and download styles other people have made.
Well then Mr Patrick, have you made any styles for userstyles.org yet?
Funny you should mention that. I’ve made a simplified style for Omegle (the bulky interface annoys me). You can find that here: http://userstyles.org/styles/35854.
My user page on userstyles.org is here – http://userstyles.org/users/59925, if I make any future styles, they’ll appear here
Apologies for the slightly lousy quality of my images, I was using Paint Shop Pro for the screenshots and I think the compression settings were a bit lousy…
About five years ago I found a pretty interesting and different interest – lucid dreaming. After watching Inception, my friends and I got onto the topic of lucid dreaming. After a pretty interesting discussion, they were quite interested in trying it out. I thought that while I could just send them a few links to various sources I used, it would be a lot more useful if I wrote up a summary for them as a bit of a beginners’ run down on the basics. Then I thought it would be a lot more useful if I put it on my blog so that others might also find use out of it. I’m also hoping that writing about it might get me back into it as well so I can start to do it again too! Also, if you haven’t seen Inception – you really need to… it was amazing.
What is lucid dreaming?
Lucid dreaming is dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming.
What is the point of it?
If you can learn to identify when you are dreaming, you can learn to gain a greater sense of clarity and control in your dreams. Imagine a world where everything is completely under your control, you can do whatever you want with no limits and no worries about consequences in real life. You can fly, fight a tiger, eat your favourite foods while gaining no weight, relax on a beach in the sun, meet the girl/guy of your dreams (literally), live out your favourite movie/TV show/book, blow up a mountain using your thoughts, make it rain chocolate, travel back in time, float around space – you can do almost anything. Not only can you do anything but it will feel totally real. Sometimes emotions and senses can even be more vivid in a dream than in reality. It is an amazing experience.
It can help with nightmares (realise you’re in a dream, take control and there’s no nightmare anymore) and you can even use lucid dreams to practice something you’re not so good at (try public speaking, try mentally preparing yourself for a stressful moment by living it out first in your dreams).
How do I do it?
For people who don’t become lucid in their dreams naturally, it takes a lot of practice and focus. When I started lucid dreaming, it took me a few weeks before I finally had one. Even then, they were very short and took time to learn to control. After a few months I lost focus with it all and stopped having them altogether. It takes a lot of work but it’s worth it!
Start a dream journal – Write down and record details your dreams somewhere, get in the habit of remembering as many dreams as you can (what’s the point of lucid dreaming if you don’t remember it in the morning?).
Find yourself some dream signs – Look through your dream journal, are there any common themes? Do you find yourself in the same place in many dreams? Do you see the same person? A common object? These are good dream signs. Keep a record of these and start to focus on whenever these things appear in your life.
Learn to do reality checks – A reality check is something you can do to find out whether you are dreaming or not. Any time you see your dream sign or for any reason think you might be dreaming, you do this reality check. My favourites are:
- Holding your nose and trying to breathe – if you can still breathe through your nose, you’re dreaming!
- Look at technology – have a look at your computer, your phone, your alarm clock, are they working like they usually would? Technology often doesn’t work as it does in reality when you’re dreaming.
- Reread something – look at your alarm clock or a book, look away and then reread it. Has the time/text on the page changed? If so, you’re dreaming!
Stay focused – keep thinking about lucid dreaming, remember to do reality checks, keep reading about it and studying it – keep the idea of lucid dreaming in your mind.
Be prepared – when you do have a lucid dream, what do you plan to do? Have an idea in mind so you’re focused and ready to give it a go.
Learn to stabilise your dreams – it’s likely that in your first few dreams, you’ll be so excited or surprised when you find out you’re dreaming that you wake up. You’ve got to learn to stay in the dream and get things clearer. A few techniques for this are:
- Spin around – not sure how this works but it does! Spin around on the spot and the dream can get clearer. You can use this technique to go somewhere else as well.
- Rub your hands together – focus on the feeling of your hands rubbing together and you’ll be drawn back into the dream
There’s so much to learn and so much to say on this topic but I’ll leave it there for now to keep things simple! A few good sites to read if you are interested are:
- Dream Views – http://www.dreamviews.com/ (has a great forum)
- The Lucidity Institute – http://lucidity.com/ (great articles here!)
- Lucid Dreaming FAQ by the Lucidity Institute – http://lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html
- LD4all – http://www.ld4all.com/guide.html (not a huge fan of the site but it could be helpful)
Loved this highlights reel… especially Grant Hill’s shot from over halfway!!!
I was on Softpedia.com, a software download website, to get an ISO image burner so I could burn a Linux (Ubuntu for those interested) DVD. When I went to download this program I was completely amazed by the awful ads surrounding the download pages. They all seemed to decide to also have a big “Download” button within them to fool you into clicking them instead of your actual download.
My question is – why wouldn’t Softpedia control what advertisements appear on these pages? Wouldn’t these ads negatively affect the user experience on the site? I clicked on one at first while not really paying much attention. I didn’t start the download because I saw the filename and knew it wasn’t right but other less careful or less tech savvy users would be totally confused by this.
Nice and confusingly, the advertisement's download button is bigger than Softpedia's actual download button
Even more confusingly, there are now two download buttons which aren't related to Softpedia at all surrounding the text links the user is supposed to click on.
Surely as a download website, you’d ensure these sorts of advertisements aren’t on your site. I just felt like I had to rant about that. Rant finished
Just to avoid cramming absolutely everything in this one blog (which already seems to jump from topic to topic each post), I’ve made a new music blog for the musical journey I’m embarking on. I’ve decided to start a bit of an experiment and listen to as many random albums and bands that I can. Just to get a bit of a break from mainstream music and broaden my musical horizons. I also thought it would be fun to blog about what I listen to and share the random thoughts that go through my mind!
It did also gave me a chance to put together a new blog design and play around a bit . Not totally happy with the design at the moment but hopefully I’ll find a way to adjust it a bit over time.
The blog is here: http://www.patrickcatanzariti.com/musicvacancy/
Any music suggestions (and I mean ANYTHING) are totally welcome. Send me an email or tweet at me.