Turbulent Sky

Middle-click/Cmd+click on a Link Doesn’t Open Tabs in Firefox 6.0.2

Peter Ridge — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:41:23 +0000

Last night, I updated to Firefox 6.0.2 and after it was finished installing, lo and behold the middle mouse button no longer opened links in new tabs. Using a middle click (Command+click on the Mac) on a link normally opens the destination in a background tab, but it just stopped working. However, I could still [...]

PuTTY and VI/VIM Cursor Keys Not Working in Insert Mode

Peter Ridge — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 22:31:09 +0000

When using PuTTY to SSH to a Linux server and edit files, I’ve encountered on several occasions where navigating in vim using the cursor (arrow) keys on the keyboard while in insert mode results in control characters and/or new lines being inserted. Here are a couple of ways to rectify the situation. Check if the [...]

Open a Custom Menu Link in a New Window

Peter Ridge — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 02:53:52 +0000

If you’re using custom menus in WordPress, you may have run into a time when you wanted a menu item to open in a new window or tab instead of the current one. In recent versions of WordPress, various options in the admin screens are hidden in a panel called Screen Options. The target of [...]

Missing Calendar Events after Android 2.2 Update on Samsung Epic

Peter Ridge — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:39:31 +0000

After upgrading the Samsung Epic 4G (SPH-D700) to Android 2.2 Froyo, did you find that all your synced Android calendar events disappeared? In my case, all the recurring calendar events were missing on the phone, but still appeared when I went to Google Calendar from my browser. Here are two ways to fix it. Clear [...]

Broken zcat on OS X

Peter Ridge — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:48:28 +0000

The zcat command line program in OS X has been broken for quite some time and is still that way in Snow Leopard. When trying to output the contents of a gzipped file, zcat appends .Z to the end of the file name that it’s given and outputs an error. The quick fix is to [...]

Sony BDP-BX57 BDP-S570 Blu-ray Player Can’t Connect to Internet over Wi-Fi

Peter Ridge — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:02:27 +0000

A lot of people are having problems connecting the Sony BDP-BX57 and BDP-S570 Blu-ray disc players to the Internet via Wi-Fi with encryption enabled (WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc.). I ran into this as well, but eventually got it working with a pretty easy fix. So, don’t return yours to Costco or BestBuy just yet. To [...]

Samsung Epic 4G Battery Life: Fixing Excessive Battery Consumption

Peter Ridge — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:54:33 +0000

The Samsung Epic 4G smartphone is known to consume a lot of power, but it's not normal. Here's how to get significantly better battery life from yours.

Linksys Router Doesn’t Connect to Ambit uBee U10C018 Cable Modem

Peter Ridge — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:40:23 +0000

I recently ran into a situation where a Linksys WRT-54G wasn’t able to get an IP address when connected to an Ambit/uBee U10C018 cable modem. This issue may also apply to other routers when used with the U10C018 cable modem. When a PC is connected directly to the modem, everything works fine and the Internet [...]

Button to Turn on Epic 4G Keyboard Backlight

Peter Ridge — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 02:47:52 +0000

Many reviews of the Samsung Epic 4G (SPH-D700) Android phone fault it for the backlighting of the four shortcut buttons at the bottom of the phone. When the keyboard backlight times out (six seconds, by default), those touch-sensitive shortcut buttons are no longer visible at all. The area becomes completely black. As a result, you [...]

Thunderbird Can’t Create Mailbox Node When Archiving Email Messages

Peter Ridge — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 03:24:43 +0000

For quite some time, I’ve been getting an error whenever I tried to archive an email message on an IMAP server for the first time during a Thunderbird session (i.e., archiving the first email after starting Thunderbird). All subsequent archiving operations would be error-free until I restarted Thunderbird. (Note: I’m using Thunderbird 3) After pressing [...]