Archive for March, 2008


Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Path:  Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System Restore

If you’re trying to find help for setting up a restore point for Windows XP through their help system - don’t bother with logic.  Most search terms you try will not yield helpful results.  Here’s an illogical but effective way to find help for how to set or activate restore points.  (Just remember the magic word WIZARD)

Go to the Window’s Help and Support under the Start Menu and type "Restore Wizard" and you’ll get the instructions and location for setting a restore point.

Often, setting a system restore point  means you’re already in the middle of some nerve racking situation so don’t type "System Restore", "Set Restore Point" or any other logical phrase that occurs to you.  If you try this obvious approach to the answer, MS will reward your search with lists and more lists of jumps to long winded and unhelpful articles about what a restore point is or why one would want a restore point but not a link or jump to anything that will even remotely help you SET A RESTORE POINT.

Never mind that Microsoft’s help file should help . . go to Google - type in the nature of your problem and quickly find a painless solution.






Monday, March 24th, 2008

To raise an entire vertical Spry menu up go to the style sheet and find the ul.MenuBarVertical css rule.  Change the margin from 0 to margin -9px,0,0,0 or whatever distance works to position your Spry menu in the correct vertical postion.






Monday, March 24th, 2008

Some help files appear in super tiny, small fonts that are hardly legible.  This appears to be caused by the help file’s use of Internet Explorer’s (IE) style settings. 

To fix the problem, go to IE’s Tools menu and select the bottom option, Internet Options, go to the General tab and then to the Accessiblity button at the bottom of the tab.  A dialog box opens and at the bottom is a space for a user style sheet.  Click the check box and use a style sheet you’ve defined with font-sizes set at least to medium.  Mine is called Ichoosetosee.css (name it anything you want) and looks like this:

/* CSS Document */
li {
    font-size: medium;
}

body {
    color: #000000;
    background-color: #FFFFFF;
    margin: 5px;
    font-family: sans-serif;
    font-size: medium;
}

p {
    font-size: medium;
    color: #000000;
    font-style: normal;
}
table {
    font-size: medium;
    color: #000000;
}

h1 {
    font-size: 18px;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-align: center;
}

h2 {
    font-size: large;
    color: #000000;
    font-weight: normal;
}

h3 {
    font-size: 12px;
}

hr {
    height: 3px;
    width: 704px;
}
hr.short {

    height: 1px;
    width: 675px;
}

a:link {
    color: #006666;
    font-weight: normal;
    text-decoration: none;
}
a:visited {
    color: #2B0055;
    text-decoration: none;
    font-weight: normal;
}
a:hover {
    font-weight: normal;
    color: #6635A8;
    text-decoration: none;

}
a:active {
    font-weight: normal;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #CC99FF;
}






Thursday, March 13th, 2008

I’m getting hits on a regular basis on a blog about my art, videography and music experiments from Performance Systems International Inc. (PSI).  They don’t come in on a search but are direct traffic with identical stats on each visit.  Who are they and what do they want?

Speculation on various blogs states PSI may be associated with MediaDefender "a notorious anti piracy gang who have worked for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies." (Ref)  This particular post goes on to say that they "just launched their very own video upload service called ‘miivi.com’. The sole purpose of the site is to trap people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so."  Ugly.

If it is in fact these snoopers visiting my blog my guess is that it’s because I have my own, self created, me as artist MP3s with  metadata on my blog. 

Chasing down MP3 users by scanning websites for MP3s seems futile and like a stupid waste of time.  I resent that by merely using MP3 technology, my site’s been targeted for snooping.






Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Some of the best WordPress plug-ins I’ve checked out are from Lester Chan or GamerZ.

You can visit his website here or check out his plugins at WordPress’s site here.

His installation and usage instructions are always clear, easy to follow and thourough. I’ve never had a problem installing or using one of his plugins. The concepts behind the plugins are well thought out and GamerZ usually includes many ways to tweak the plugins to look the way you want them to. I’ve installed and checked out wp-print, wp-postratings, wp-polls, and wp-email.