Hijinks Inc.

Category: Tips

  • Enable Google’s New Image Search

    Enable Google’s New Image Search

    Don’t want to wait for Google’s rollout of their new image search to reach you? Then don’t.

    Just use this link from the Official Google Blog to enable access on your account:
    Enable New Google Image Search

    New Google Image Search

  • Quick Tip: Pinning Tabs in Chrome

    Did you know if you right-click on a tab in Chrome (cross platform) you have an option to permanently place a tab in the tab bar? I’ve been using Chrome as my default browser for the last few months and while I’d seen the option before I’d never actually looked into it.

    This really comes in handy for websites you normally load/visit each time you open Chrome, and while I’m a big fan of starting fresh each time I open my browser there are certain sites I open every time, like Google Mail, Google Analytics, etc. so pinning is a nice time saver.

    Pinning is pretty self explanatory, on any platform (Windows, OS X, Linux) just right click the tab you’d like to pin and select Pin Tab.

    Right click on any tab and select "Pin Tab"
    You’ll now get a nice shrunk down tab for that website added to the far left side of the tab bar.

    Pinned Tabs

    And if you decide you’d like to remove a pinned tab, just right click on it and select Unpin Tab.

    Unpin Tab

  • Why your iPod won’t charge (and what to do about it)

    Why your iPod won’t charge (and what to do about it)

    Show of hands if you’ve seen this message on your iPhone or iPod touch:

    “Charging is not supported with this accessory”

    Why not?  The music and video still works… why wouldn’t charging be supported?  It upset me too.  I tried connecting it to an older Alpine stereo and it flashed me the error.

    The short and sweet of it?  Previous to the 3G iPhone and 2G iPod touch, the pin-out configuration of the connection used a FireWire standard for the location of the charging pin.  The newest generation switched to using a USB pin-out standard, and low and behold, the charging pin is different!

    Enter the Scosche passPORT charging adapter.  The $20 adapter (Apple actually sells it, as well as many other retailers) switches the charging pin-out, but allows the rest of the data stream to pass-through.  However, there are limitations… this from Scosche’s website:

    “The charging adapter is specifically designed to fix the charging error associated with several iPod and iPhone accessories. If the accessory you are intending to use does not initially support the audio or video functionality of the iPod or iPhone , the charging adapter will not enable these features.”

    What bothers me is there had to be some poor tech from Scosche who took this call:

    Customer: “Hi, I’ve got a problem.”

    Tech: “What can I help you with?”

    Customer: “Well, I bought your charging adapter for my iPod touch, but I can’t see the video on my TV!”

    Tech: “Are you connecting your iPod to your home theater system?”

    Customer: “No, I’ve got it connected to a wall-mount charging adapter.”

    Tech: “Great, now we need a disclaimer…”

  • Repairing Your Grub Bootloader

    Last week a friend of mind tried to install Windows XP on his system after installing Ubuntu, and of course the result was that he lost his bootloader.

    Don’t panic though, just boot off your Live CD and open up a Terminal window.

    Then execute these commands:

    sudo grub

    root (hd0,0)

    setup (hd0)

    Close out the Terminal and reboot, and you’re good to go! Just don’t forget to eject your Live CD. This should apply to any Linux distro that uses the Grub bootloader.

  • DOS Tips: Part 1

    Back in May I started a series of posts about how to better take advantage of the Terminal in OS X, now months later without my MacBook Pro, I’ve resorted to DOS. I suppose it is only fair that DOS gets a series of its own.

    [1] net user administrator /random
    Who knew Windows XP had a random password generator built in? Just make sure and write it down, or else you’ll be in big trouble next time you try and login.

    [2] label C: new drive name here
    Sure you could just rename the volume from My Computer, but this is more fun. Swap out C: for whatever drive letter is attached to the volume you’d like to rename and you’re good to go.

    [3] cls
    Clears the screen. Simple, yet handy.

    [4] dir
    Displays a list of files in the current directory.

    [5] rd directoryname
    The RD command lets you remove entire directories, just replace the directoryname variable with the name of the directory you’d like to nuke and fire away.