How to get the “WINDOWS USB Driver” for your LG mobile

If you’re trying to update your LG mobile (I’m doing my LG Arena KM900) you will be taken to a page that tells you to install the WINDOWS USB Driver, whatever that is. At time of writing, that link doesn’t work. Don’t worry, just go ahead and click “Software Update” as there is the option to install the usb driver there. If you also need the PC Suite, I found a copy here....

October 3, 2011 · 1 min · matt

My next e-book

If you know me, you’ll know I just got back from a year galavanting around the world. I was given a Sony e-book as a present which I took with me, and soon became an essential item. It’s already showing its age compared to newer models but I’m not buying a new one until e-book manufacturers start adding features I actually want. I don’t want: A colour screen. Why would I?...

September 16, 2011 · 2 min · matt

How to print small photos (say, 4cm x 4cm)

If you have a photo you want to put into a small frame, you may struggle finding a print company that print photos smaller than 15cm x 10cm (6"x4"). The simple answer is to create add a white border to your jpeg and print that. Then you can just trim the edges off the print. I just tried this and it was harder than I would have liked. If you open your photo in some software and expand the canvas, you’ll find it will start eating lots of memory....

September 10, 2011 · 2 min · matt

Selecting Child Entities with GQL Queries

In Google App Engine, you can create owned one-to-many relationships between entities. The classic example you were taught at uni is that a Book owns a Chapter, which in turn, owns a Paragraph. For my site, stolencamerafinder, the example is that a camera Make owns a set of Models. If you want to query for the model directly in GQL (from the app engine dashboard for example) you can create the key by specifying the full parent chain:...

August 23, 2011 · 2 min · matt

Tips for better low-light wedding photos with a Canon DSLR.

I just got this in an email: A friend has asked me to take some of their wedding photos with their Canon 1000D. Had a play with it yesterday and I’m finding the flash a bit harsh. Is there a top tip to minimise this? Firstly, if you’re using the camera in the day near natural light, the camera will be fine and it’s all down to your artistic flair....

June 14, 2011 · 3 min · matt

How to update the lastmod date in your sitemap xml with Ant

Hmm, you want to add the “lastmod” node, but you’re too lazy to ever keep that up to date so you decide to update it with your Ant script whenever you deploy. Easy. So you’ve just written a valid sitemap.xml file for your website because Google said it was a good idea. Great. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url> <loc>http://www.stolencamerafinder.com/</loc> <lastmod>2011-04-21</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> </url> </urlset> First, you’ll need the jar for a third-party Ant task called XMLTask....

April 22, 2011 · 1 min · matt

How to detect browser support for File Api and drag and drop with javascript

Here’s a bit of info for you crazy HTML5 kids. You’ll need to include the handy Modernizr script for it to work. var browserIsSupported = !!window.FileReader && Modernizr.draganddrop;

April 17, 2011 · 1 min · matt

How to find out your Facebook User ID (uid)

Just look at the filename of your profile picture. The uid is in the middle. 186939_565140267_839650_n.jpg Er… That’s it. Bye.

April 17, 2011 · 1 min · matt

How to stop Google Chrome using your location when searching

When you use Chrome’s omnibar to search, Chrome will redirect you to search results based on when you are geographically. This is great when I’m at home because I see (more relevant) results from google.co.uk and not google.com. However, I’m travelling at the moment and getting my results from google.co.th is painful since most of the results are not in english. Close Chrome. Open the file Local State in notepad. Mine was in: C:\Users\matt\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Local State....

April 8, 2011 · 1 min · matt

Challenge Conclusion…

Back in April I challenged myself to run 5km in under 19 minutes and gain 1.5 stone by the last Bridge Inn 5km of the summer. Tonight was the night. Being too busy disorganised, I didn’t realise that tonight was the deadline until today. If I had realised I would probably have prepared a little better. Two days ago I ran my first Kymin Dash, a ~7 mile run but includes a decent hill....

July 28, 2010 · 3 min · matt