Look for IT over here

What are these square barcodes you see on some websites, emails or even in print?

Well, using technology and a decent mobile phone with a camera (read: just about every phone these days!), activate the camera and take a photo of the ‘barcode’. Get your software to read it and tell you what it contains – whether it be a URL that your phone browser will take you to, a SMS or even a phone number.

The QR (Quick Response) code makes it easy to get this information without having the need for a pen or having to manually input the information into your phone.

Can you make you own? Yeah sure. Many websites are out there (just search for QR generator or similar). I used this one, and generated the code for this site:

Grab a reader for your type of phone (iPhone users can search on ‘QR app’ in iStore for example) and try it out with the image above.

I turned on one of my PCs the other day after plugging in another drive to check it. Obviously something went amiss as it would not boot up.

I was getting a msg ‘BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart’.

WTF?

Looks like the Master Boot Record (MBR) had become corrupt. Fortunately there was an easy fix for this:

Disclaimer: Proceed at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any loss of data caused by the actions below.

* Find your Windows CD and boot off this (as if you were to reinstall)
* Enter recovery mode (Option R from the main screen)
* You will be prompted for the admin password. Enter it.
* Type in ‘fixboot’
* Type in ‘fixmbr’
* Type in ‘exit’

The PC should now boot and startup as per normal.

Good Luck!

Garmin have released software called ‘Garmin Voice’ which allows you to program your own voice commands into your GPS. What better than using the preprogrammed voices than using your own. Thumbs up to Garmin for this initiative!

Garmin say the process should onlytake about 30 mins to programme all the phrases into you PC and upload them to your GPS.

The software is for Windows only and the list of compatible devices are as follows:

aera™ series
GPSMAP® 620 & 640
nüvi® 200-series
nüvi 205-series
nüvi 500-series
nüvi 700-series
nüvi 705-series
nüvi 800-series
nüvi 1200-series
nüvi 1300-series
nüvi 1400-series
nüvi 1600-series
nüvi 5000
z?mo® 660

Check it out and get it from here.

Ever received such an error whilst performing a upgrade (from within Wordpress)? It may not be as uncommon as you think.

Wordpress is a brilliant piece of software, and where it comes to light is from all the plugins it uses. Downside? Well, it does consume system resources on your server and an upgrade does require a bit for it to occur.

Fix to get through the upgrade without any issues? There are two:

1) – Change the memory limit in the wp-settings.php file from 32M to 64M. Use any old text editor to change the value (it’s located on line #13). This didn’t work for me as I think I needed to alaso adjust the php.ini file which I don’t have access to on my server where this site is hosted.

2) – Disable ALL your plugins before attempting the upgrade. I current use 11 (and have another 8 which aren’t being used so I took not which ones were currently active before performing a mass disable). This worked for me without a hitch.

Disclaimer: As always, take a backup of any files you are going to change before any editing is done just in case ……
I take no responsibilitly for any ill effects or problems which may occur using the instructions provided above.

Now you can view this site in Safari and it’s formatted to be easily readable on your iPhone.

The home page will look like this:

You can scroll down and even look at the posts by category.
Select a post, and it will load and look like:

Give it a go, and leave a message if you have any problems.