Posts Categorized: Tech Tips

Wifi Signal Map at My Place

Today I used the free Ekahau HeatMapper on Windows to map out the wifi signal strengths here at the house. I took the resulting map into Photoshop and made, what I consider, a fairly nice map. (Note that it is not perfectly to scale, because I don’t have an actual floor plan to use as… Read more »

Dual-boot Windows Technical Preview (aka Windows 10) on a UEFI-Enable Computer

I’m really excited about the Windows Technical Preview (aka Windows 10) that was released today. I decided to forgo a virtual machine and dual-boot it on my laptop running Windows 8.1. My laptop is an Asus G55VW and the existing Windows 8.1 installation being setup in UEFI (with the requisite GPT partition scheme). I downloaded… Read more »

Google Search Tricks

Google is, in my opinion, the search engine that all other search engines aspire to be. You throw in almost any half-way coherent word or phrase and Google will try its best to show you everything it thinks relates to that phrase. The cool thing is that there are many ways to help Google find… Read more »

What to do if the iOS Message App is Stuck Upside Down

Recently, I ran into an issue with the iOS Message app being stuck upside down on an iPad. By that,  I mean it would not rotate to the right orientation and was facing 180 from the power button. The first thing I checked was the rotational lock, but that wasn’t enabled (and, besides, all other… Read more »

RaspBMC is Awesome Once You Get It Running

Last night, I finally got RaspBMC running on a 512MB Raspberry Pi, complete with Wifi capability! The setup is serving up episodes of Big Bang Theory ripped from my DVD collection (with more rips coming as soon as I get around to it). I love the Raspberry Pi Project. Furthermore, RaspBMC is definitely a killer app for… Read more »

Right click in the bottom left corner of Windows 8 for some awesome options

I really like Windows 8.  I’ve upgraded my desktop and my netbook (which I’m typing this post on) and it has made both machines run faster than Windows 7.  Windows 8’s designers thought of all sorts of little things that I absolutely love. My favorite is right-clicking in the bottom left corner of the screen… Read more »

Sending a Text Message to an Appalachian Wireless Customer Through Email

I just learned the coolest thing: You can send text messages to Appalachian Wireless customers using plain ol’ email. The email address to send the text to is: <tenDigitPhoneNumber>@awsms.com So, for example, if your Appalachian Wireless phone number was 606-272-5555, your texting email address would be: 6062725555@awsms.com I’m sure this is common knowledge to most… Read more »