For this to work you need to run cmd as an administrator. In cmd prompt enter powercfg –energy . As you can see from the above screenshot you’ll notice it sits for 60 seconds and when finished produces a report. This report outlines any problems.

A friend of mine reminded me about God Mode in Windows 7. If you’ve not heard of it or tried it before just follow these steps: Go to : Computer –> C Drive On Root –> Right Click new folder Call the folder - GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} When you hit Enter you should see the following: Open up the new GodMode folder and you’re confronted with alot of options. Amazing what you forget.

For people who use Gmail as their email provider there are a couple of features that can as the title suggests “protect yourself from yourself”. I am going to cover 2 features you may or may not of used or even heard of, Mail Goggles and Undo Send. Feature 1 – Mail Goggles Within mail settings go to labs and search for Mail Goggles: Once enabled, depending on the time of day will confront you with a maths problem. To be able to send an email you will need to answer the questions correctly. Feature 2 – Undo Send As before within mail settings go...

I was setting up my Gmail account to read another email address when I saw a setting for keyboard shortcuts.  I am a big fan of shortcuts that can be shown from previous posts on this matter. Any process that results in producing an outcome in less steps through a simple combination of keys is a big yes, yes in my book. It’s just the matter of knowing if there is such a combination. Back to the main part of this blog post, Gmail shortcuts. ...

I was looking through my router setup options and it occurred to me that I could make my network more secure by changing a couple of settings. Most routers sent from ISP’s are all preconfigured to be secure so that no Tom, Dick or Harry can connect and use your internet connection. Disable SSID If they don’t know it exists how can they connect?  Within my routers options there is a setting that enables me to turn off my SSID from being broadcasted. Disable this option and  If anyone wants to connect to my wireless they not...

Since my last post back to basics – Windows Shortcuts I have discovered some more shortcuts. Windows key + Shift+Left/Right – Have dual monitors? Select window and press the shortcut to move it from one screen to another. Alt+Shift+Num Lock – Turn on mouse keys Alt+Windows key+Enter – Launch windows media centre Shift * 5 – Turns on sticky keys Ctrl+Shift+Esc – Close Programs

There are always times when you’re in the middle of doing something and then you realise that there maybe a quicker way to do it.  Windows users should be aware of the following: Function Keys F1 – Help F2 – Select an item like a file,folder, or desktop shortcut hit F2 and you’ll get the option to rename that item. F5 – Refresh a web page or a file listing on a window. F10 – Open menu options. ...

A simple but very effective tip in helping secure access to your email account. Within settings of your email account there is the following section under the 1st tab “general” called “browser connection”.  Make sure it’s always set at https like below: Check out Google’s page on the matter. Bt Vault Alternatives to bt vault Back solutions

Signup for a lot of newsletters?  Well there is a way to individualise each newsletter just by adjusting your email address.  Say your email is mrjohnsmith@gmail.com and you fancy signing up for bt vault or another file back up service, you could just signup using mrjohnsmith+backups@gmail.com. Another example would be if you were signing up for web hosting you could use mrjohnsmith+hosting@gmail.com. What now? You could easily create a filter based on any of the above addresses and organise your inbox.

Well carrying on from my previous post on Increasing the size of the address bar I thought I would share another little hint. If like me you have many bookmarks then getting to them quicker can be easier by assigning keywords. Open up FireFox go to bookmarks, organise bookmarks you’ll get a screen like below. Notice the highlighted keyword for subtexts project site. Whenever I type subtext into the address bar hit enter i am taken to it’s projects home. Simple and straight forward. Enjoy.

If you ever need to increase the size of text in the address bar within FireFox it’s very easy to do.  Before picture: The below directory location may only applicable to Windows 7 but am sure if you hunt around on other operating systems you’ll find what you need. The AppData directory is a hidden folder so you will have to navigate to it manually. Will be something like : C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\160agnxl.default\chrome Within this directory you’ll see a file called “userChrome-example.css”. If you open it up with an editor and add the following line:   #urlbar {font-size:26px !important; height:45px !important;} Save this file as “userChrome.css” and...

Myself and Simone have been in discussions about creating a jQuery plugin for many months now.  With real life, time on both parts hasn’t been on our side. Simone has co-authored a MVC book entitled “Beginning ASP.NET MVC”. I’ve been busy with work, getting fit, holidays, and other projects (more details coming soon). We've both now managed to make a start on the plugin which resulted in me looking at unit testing frameworks for JavaScript. I was quite surprised to find the amount I did hence this short and sweet post. List of JavaScript testing frameworks QUnit -...

We all take our computer, laptop for granted.   We turn them on, we do what ever it is we want to do and then turn it off.  What would happen if it didn't turn back on?  What would happen if the hard drive decided to call it a day or a nasty virus wipes everything? Realisation sets in you remember that you have photo's/iTunes albums on there that you don't have another copy of. It's all happened to us at some point, just depends on the extent of the damage.  Unfortunately I learned the hard way many years ago,...

After installing Visual Studio 2008 on my laptop and having some spare time I decided to look at the ASP.NET MVC framework.  The framework is an architectural pattern based on model-view-controller.  I'm not going to re-invent the wheel and go into more detail about the framework as there are quite a few good articles dedicated to the subject.  Where can I get it ASP.Net 3.5 Extensions Preview ASP.NET MVC Introduction to the framework What is the MVC pattern (Wiki) Scott Guthries - ASP.NET MVC Framework ...