Turning off the beep on a Dell Latitude D620

1. Right-click on "My Computer", then click "Manage"
2. Click on "Device Manager"
3. Click on "View > Show hidden Devices"
4. Click on "Non-Plug and Play Drivers". Then right-click on "Beep" and choose "disable".
5. Restart

Source: yorkspace.com - see the comments

Filter for WinMerge

A lot of web development tools like Dreamweaver and FrontPage like to create annoying files and folders throughout a build. I'm sure they're useful to somebody, but they just get in the way when you're doing a comparison of two builds.

I thought I'd share a basic filter I've made for WinMerge, which makes it ignore any junk files created by Dreamweaver, FrontPage and Windows.

Folders ignored:

• _vti_cnf
• _notes

Files ignored:

• Thumbs.db
• _vti_cnf
• dwsync.xml

I'll probably add more files to this list as I discover them, but for now please feel free to download the filter. If you have any suggestions, please add a comment to this post.

Using SysInternals Process Monitor to troubleshoot permissions problems

I recently found a good use for Process Monitor which I hadn't thought of before:

If you ever have problems with software not working and you suspect it may be a permissions issue, run Process Monitor while the software is running and look for any ACCESS DENIED messages in the Result column. It's much easier than guessing the permissions you need to set.

Note: Process Monitor is an enhanced replacement for Filemon and Regmon but Filemon would still do the job.

jQuery and SWFObject

If you have any problems with jQuery and SWFObject conflicting, put the SWFObject code in the $(document).ready event handler.

Thanks Home Delivery Network

Another quality delivery, straight to my door bin.

Not the nice clean recycling bin though, the black bin full of cat poo and rotting food.

ASP.NET debugging in Firefox - resources not loading

For a while I've had trouble with Firefox when using a local IIS 5 install to test/debug an ASP.NET application. Some of the images and other resources weren't loading, almost as if a limit had been hit. It would also show a login dialog box.

The solution is to go to about:config in Firefox and make sure that network.http.keep-alive is set to true.

The reason I'd set it to false in the past was so I could test a load balanced cluster.

Update: I’ve since found that the fix above doesn’t always work.

Something else which almost fixes this problem is to disable HTTP keep-alives via the site properties in IIS. Unfortunately this has the side effect of stopping debugging working in Visual Studio 2003.

 

Can't execute code from a freed script

Another good reason to hate Internet Explorer 6 and it's hopeless error messages.

If you ever get the JavaScript (or should that be JScript) error "Can't execute code from a freed script" - try moving any meta tags in the head so that they're before your script tags.

Source: CodeThat

Globalisation/Globalization and Charity IT Resources

While tidying my bookmarks today, I found a load of sites I'd used for my MSc. I thought I might as well post them here before I delete them as it took me a while to collect them all and they may be useful for somebody somewhere.

• How many internet and PC users are there in the world?
• Design will save the world
• Optimal Web Design (Psychology)
• A framework for effective commercial Web application development
• World Language Statistics
• Omniglot - a guide to abjads, alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems
• Microsoft pays dear for insults through ignorance
• Global digital divide 'narrowing'
• Application Development in the 'Global Village'
• The "anyone can be provincial!" page
• Microsoft pays dear for insults through ignorance
• Problems with the current Localization Framework in ASP.NET and what's coming in ASP.NET 2.0
• Punycode - Wikipedia
• Global By Design: Taking The Web Worldwide
• Localisation of UI with .Net
• What not-for-profit organizations need to know about free software
• CompassPoint | ASP Guide (PDF)
• ebase® - Community Relationship Management for Nonprofits
• Specialist Software for Voluntary Sector
• SocialSoftware.org
• Creating multilingual websites
• The revenge of geography
• ISO 646 (Good old ASCII)
• Website globalization resources: articles and links
• IT 4 Communities - Case Studies
• Vivid Orange
• Office of the e-Envoy
• nfpSynergy
• Journal article on Civic and Community Technology
• Making the Net Work Toolkit
• Preponderate
• ItrainOnline
• E-mint Home Page
• The Technology Trap Diagram
• ICT Hub Knowledgebase
• CITRA
• Omega Alpha Limited

You might also like to find out more about my Msc Dissertation.

Unsubscribing from the XBox Newsletter... can it be done?

I have an XBox. Before the XBox 360 was around I signed up to the email newsletter which was fine... up until the launch of the XBox 360. Since then, all the newsletter contains is news about the XBox 360, which I don't care about as I don't have one. No problem, I thought, I'll just unsubscribe...

Unfortunately, I've still yet not been able to work out how! The footer of the newsletter says:

If you prefer not to receive future promotional e-mails of this type from Xbox.com, please update your contact preferences in My Account. Please be aware that it may take up to 10 days before your preference is reflected in our system. One or more messages may still be sent.

This must be about the 4th time I've received the newsletter, tried find a simple and clear way of unsubscribing and given up. The closest thing I can get to unsubscribing is changing the email address to spam@spam.com, I can't leave it blank because it's a required field.

I can't believe that it's this difficult, and if it really is impossible to unsubscribe (I'll find out in a month's time) then Microsoft are doing something seriously wrong and might even be breaking some email marketing laws.

Update, December 2nd 2006: Microsoft have changed the way the unsubscribe works. Rather than having to log in, you can now just click on a single link to unsubscribe - "If you prefer not to receive future promotional e-mails of this type from Xbox Europe, please click here to unsubscribe." Finally!

An odd quiz and a new video

A Sunday spent at home resulted in two RUCC related projects being completed. First up is the catchily titled RUCC 'Back of Head' Quiz where you have to identify people based only on a small black and white photo of the back of their head. I also finally got round to creating a short video from the RUCC Spring Dart Trip 2006.