Thursday 12 November 2009

The best presidential speech ever.... full version



Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww0EPKAZy-c

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTaXa-9mu1Y

Watch out political comedians, the President is gonna take your jobs! :)

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Free money? I was suprised by TopCashBack - it actually worked!

If you're thinking of changing your gas, electricity, mobile, Internet or telephone provider, or planning to make a big purchase (a big tv or a heft order of Christmas presents perhaps) then you should sign up to Top CashBack before you do it.

I did, as I was planning on changing my ISP and telephone provider to a cheaper combined package from Sky anyway. By switching over through Top CashBack I got £20 cash back after I'd switched, as well as saving ~£15 per month due to the cheaper package I'd changed to.

To be honest, I didn't think the promised cash back would actually materialise, but there's nothing to lose so I gave it a go. To my surprise, it did materialise, and is in my bank account right now.

If I changed my mobile phone provider and gas / electricity provider, I could save money on my bills and get something like £100 cash back too (unfortunately I'm locked in with Orange for a good 6 more months or so, alas, and my gas / electricity comes through key meters so the switch deals aren't so good...still worth considering though!).

It takes a while for the cash to come through, over a month for me, but that's fine. If you're planning to change providers anyway, you may as well do it through Top CashBack as you've got nothing to lose, and could get a nice bit of cash for doing what you would have done anyway!

I also got £1 cashback for signing up to get a free SIM card... I haven't used it yet, and probably won't, but being paid £1 to be given a free SIM card is quite nice :)

They often have offers for major online retailers, so before you make a purchase of Play.com or Argos or whatever, check TopCashBack first - you might get some money back, just by clicking through to Play or Argos via the TopCashBack link.

It's money for nothing, so if you want to earn cash back on your Christmas shopping, or want to switch to a cheaper provider for something and get paid to do it, sign up with Top CashBack.

Sign up through my link - http://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/Alltruism - and I'll get money too*, win-win!


I've made £26 so far, just by doing purchases or switchovers I was going to do anyway. That's not bad at all considering I probably spent less than 10 minutes of time signing up and using the Top Cashback site!

* well, I will get £1 when you get your first £5 back, but you'll probably get a lot more than £5 if you just switch one utility provider, so getting to the £5 threshold should be quick n easy :)

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Windows Mobile Shortcuts & HTC Touchflo 3D Internet Tab Browser

If you want to create a Start Menu short cut for a specific Java App (such as Opera Mini 5 Beta) on your Windows Mobile phone, first you need to go to

\Windows\appdb

and have a look for s#_suite files (with the # being a number). Each of these represents a particular Java App that you have installed - we can't see which is which at the moment, but that's ok - just note down the numbers.... I have three Java Apps installed, s0_suite, s1_suite and s2_suite (if you have removed apps, yours might not be sequential).

Now, using a decent file system browser that lets you edit file properties and see file extensions, such as Total Commander, go to:

\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Find the shortcut to your Java middleware (mine is called java.lnk), and create a copy of it. Rename it to what you want - e.g. Opera Mini.lnk.

Go to Properties, then to Shortcut. It will have something like "\Windows\jbed.exe" as the target (possibly followed by some parameters, which you should leave as they are.

We don't want this shortcut to just run the Java middleware though, we want it to load a particular Java app, so add the following to the end of the target field:

-run s#_

Where # is one of the numbers of the s#_suite files we looked at earlier.

Save the change (OK in Total Commander). Double tap the shortcut you've created (in this example, Opera Mini.lnk) to find out which of your Java apps it runs.

If it isn't the one you wanted, repeat the previous step with a different number (from the list of s#_suite files we saw earlier...three possible values to try in my case).

Work your way through all the possible values for # until your shortcut loads the right app.

My Opera Mini.lnk ended up with the following Target:

"\Windows\jbed.exe" -DFile.maxStorageSize=64M -run s1_

However, this shortcut will have the same icon as your Java program, which might not be what you want. As I'm creating my shortcut to point to Opera Mini, so I wanted the Opera icon.

To get that, just change the last bit from -run s1_ to -run s1_?\Windows\OperaL.exe,0

Or alternatively point it to a different program that you want to use the icon from.

You will then have a shortcut link in Start - Programs, with the name you gave it (Opera Mini in the example), which loads your chosen Java App.


Once you've got that, you can run it from there, or add it to the TouchFlo 3D programs tab if you want.

I created a shortcut for Opera Mini 5 Beta. This is a fast and capable browser. As I already have Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta installed, I decided I don't really need the Opera 9.5 that runs from the TouchFlo 3D Internet Tab.... I thought the faster Opera Mini would be a better option.

To change the browser loaded when you click the Internet icon in TouchFlo 3D's Internet tab, do the following:

Using a decent file system browser, like Total Commander, go to \Application Data\Manila.

Inside there will be a file called InternetPortal-en-US.xml (the US might be different, depending on your country). Go to properties and untick "Read Only".

Then edit the file (in Total Commander click the Pen & Paper icon at the bottom of the screen).
The second line in the file reads {InternetPortal}
You just need to insert the following as a new line after that (before the "IncludeUserFavorites" bit), only using angle brackets instead of curly brackets:

{BrowserExe}\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Opera Mini.lnk{/BrowserExe}
You can put whatever program (.exe or shortcut .lnk) in between the BrowserExe tags.

Save the file. Now when you go to your TouchFlo 3D Internet tab, your Internet icon will now load the program you selected - Opera Mini in the example above.

If it doesn't work you've probably pointed it to a non-existent file, so check it and try again.

If you can't get it to work, you can delete the whole line you added, and the Internet tab will then go back to its default (Opera).