Testing

Prevent Gallery to display the photos in certain folder

My children likes to play with my phone, they like to see what are the photos inside with Gallery. Problem is - sometime friends just sent me some photos via Whatsapp which are not really suitable for the viewing of children,

So I need a way to prevent these photos to be displayed in the Gallery. I know the location of these folder in my phone but how do I instruct Gallery not to display them?

A quick research from Google recommend two methods:

1. Put a dot in-front of the folder you want to hide. For example - .Test
2. Put a file with name of .nomedia on the folder where you want to hide.


Below just want to share my experience on implementing these two methods.


Method 1
The folder can be renamed via the File manager inside the phone. Alternatively you can download some 3rd party tool to do this.

Lastly you can connect the phone to your laptop and rename from Windows Explorer.

The result was actually instant. The moment you put a dot in-front of the folder, Gallery will not show it.

Note that it is also hidden from File Manager in the phone as well as from Windows Explorer on the PC.

On the PC, even if you configure to show hidden files, still it wont show.

You can configure to view the hidden file from the phone's File Manager.

If you change your mind by deleting the dot, Gallery will not show the folder back. This is especially true for external card installed on the phone. This is because Galley will not rescan the folder. You can remove and reinsert the card to initiate the scan.

Or you can rename the folder to something else and then rename it back to the original so that Gallery will think this is a new folder and will scan the content.

Method 2 

My first question on this : how do I create a .nomedia file? To be honest, I don't really know how to create a blank file in the phone. 

Some article mentioned there is utility from Play store what can help you to create the file. I tried with that method but I don't like it. 

Later I discovered the easiest way is : there are actually .nomedia files already exist inside the phone. Check you phone whether you can see folder with the name of Android. If you do, just copy and paste the file to folder you want.

Else do a search and I am sure you can see plenty of result. 

If you change you mind, just delete the file from the folder. 

PureSlim Kitkat R1 -First Impression

It took me a few days to study and finally upgraded my cell (Sony Xperia Ion) from the Jellybean to Pureslim KitKat R1, a customized ROM.

Before I forget, just like jot down some problems I have encountered while using this new version.

Cannot choose song as ring tone

We always know how boring the built-in ring tone. At the beginning, I cannot choose a song in my cell as a ring tone - simply just no button available for me to choose. 

Somehow this was resolved by installing ES File Explorer, then suddenly there is a pop out screen for me to choose the song.

Cannot see the expansion storage

Due to some unknown reason, the built-in File Manager cannot see my additional memory card - sd1. All it shows was just the native card - sd0.

Again, ES File Explorer came to the rescue.

Battery icon not showing percentage used

The original battery was a circle which show no info at all. I had to pull down the status bar each time in order to see the battery percentage.

Later I found a way :  Settings -> Interface -> Status Bar -> Battery Status Style, change it to Icon Portrait. Also need to click Show Battery status percent on the next line.

Default program

Need to install back the default program like Facebook and Youtube

Calculator

This calculator is a bit weird. Initially I cannot find the percentage button. Realized later you have swipe to the next screen to get that, then swipe back to the left to continue on calculation.

For example, if I want to find out 1000x20%. First of all, I need to key in "100 x 20" on the first screen, then swipe to the right hand screen to click on the "%" button, swipe it back to click the "=".

No Chinese input language

Surprisingly I couldn't find Chinese language in the keyboard input. Have to download a third party program from Google play for that.

Pending task

1. Do not know how to do screen shot
2. Failed to get the "Cast screen" to work.(This is the major reason I upgraded to this version).
3. Suddenly cannot connect to Smart TV with HDMI cable. There was no problem before the upgrade. 

Command prompt tips

When you are already in command prompt, you want switch to another folder. However the path for another folder is really too cumbersome to type.
For example, you want to switch to: "C:\Windows\System32\en-US\Licenses\_Default\Enterprise"
Here are some quick tips:

Method 1  Paste the folder path into command prompt

1. At the command prompt, type: "C:\> cd "  and stop there.

2. Open the folder from Windows Explorer

3. Click and hold on the yellow folder in title bar,  drag it to the command prompt window
4. The path would appear automatically in the command prompt window.


Method 2  Use tap repeatedly in the command prompt window
On the command prompt window, just press tap repeatedly, windows will show you all the folder within. Just release when you see the folder you want.
It is is just like ALT+tab in the GUI.

Method 3  Open Command Window Here
Open the path from Windows Explorer. Press Shift and Right Mouse Click on the folder, you will see there something with the name of "Open Command Prompt Here". Just click then you will be at the path you want in Command Prompt.

WhatsApp emticon for iPhone

Been using WhatsApp on iPhone for a while. One of the biggest complaint was that WhatsApp for iPhone is different from WhatsApp for Android where there is no emoticon icon. I can't really express my feeling.

Then only I realized there is actually a built-in keyboard in iPhone where you can just type emticon. Go to Settings -> Keyboards -> Add New Keyboard.... -> choose Emoji.

When you want to type emoticon, just switch keyboard to Emoji and you are done.

Windows 2012 - WIFI and audio

This is the scenario - I just setup Windows 2012 on a laptop, HP EliteBook 840. This laptop was designed to run Windows 7 / 8.
Now the first problem after setup is that I saw many unknown devices under Device Manager. Furthermore the WIFI and audio is not working.

Now the unknown device obviously is because of the drivers. So I went to the HP web page and try to get some drivers from there. The problem is HP provided only Win 7 / 8 drivers for this laptop, there is no Windows Server OS drivers.

So I guess HP just think that no one will be using the this laptop for Windows Server installation, so they don't bother to provide it.

Alright, alright, not too difficult. At least those Windows 7/8 drivers can still run under Windows server 2012.

Next I found out that there was only wired connection available, I cannot see any WIFI connection. So initially I thought it's the driver problem again. So I installed the WIFI driver downloaded from HP page. Now after installation, I can see the WIFI adapter is functioning properly. However still I cannot see any WIFI connection.

So does Microsoft disabled the WIFI dunction purposely because they thought it doesn't make sense to have WIFI connection on server?

After some search from Google, I found out that we have to install the "Wireless LAN Service" in order to use the WIFI function in Windows 2012.

I did the installation and yet WIFI still not working. 

Finally I had to re install the WIFI driver, then only the problem can be resolved. 

Another issue is that the audio in Windows 2012 won't work even though I have installed the driver. It seems like we have to enable the audio to get the sound.

Damn! 

Zoomed photos

Probably I haven't seen many zoom effect, I was pretty impressed by the zoom result from Canon Powershot SX700.

The red circle on the left photo is where I did the zoom. The right photo is the result of the zoom.

Anyway, I need to find out how to see what is the zoom factor of the right photo. Plus I also want to find out how a zoomed video looks like.

Viewing shared folders in Windows 2008 /2012

In Windows 2003 server, when we right-mouse-click on the My Computer, it opens the Computer Management. From there you click on "Shared Folders" -> Shares, you will be able to see what are the shared folders in the server.

In Windows 2008, things changed. When we did a right-mouse-click on the My Computer, it opens Server Manager instead. From there we have to click Roles -> File Services -> Share and Storage Management, then only we can see the list of shared folders. Furthermore the display speed is slower as compared to Windows 2003.

A faster way to do this is from Command Prompt:

c:\> start compmgmt

Or

c:\> start storagemgmt

This will bring us to Share and Storage Management directly.

Personally I feel that the display of shared folders in Computer Management is faster than Share and Storage Management. 

Cut mp3 to ringtone

Sometime instead of the whole song, I just want the certain part of a song to be my ring tone. iTunes has an awkward way to achieve this and the seems like the result is only supported in iPhone.
I used a freeware MP3 Knife last time - an simple and excellent software. Latest version is 3.6 so far.
However now I noticed that there is even a free online version for this purpose: http://mp3cut.net.

Steps are pretty simple:

1. Upload your mp3
2. Decide where you wan to start and stop with the indicator
3. Cut and download back to your PC.