Handy Firefox keyboard shortcuts

Here is a list of some time-saving keyboard shortcuts for Firefox.

Firstly, the very handy URL-completion shortcuts:

If you type dooda in the address bar and then press
Control Enter it will convert it to www.dooda.com Alt Shift Enter it will convert it to www.dooda.net
Ctrl Shift Enter it will convert it to www.dooda.org

btw, to get to the address bar quickly, type Alt D

If you use tabs (why wouldn't you???), here are some more handy shortcuts:
Ctrl Tab Go to next tab (Ctrl Page Down does the same)
Shift Ctrl Tab Go to previous tab (Ctrl Page Up does the same)
Ctrl T Create a new tab
Ctrl N Create a new window
Ctrl F4 Close current tab
Ctrl Shift T Re-open the last-closed tab.

Enjoy!

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

Find out what is using up space on your hard disk

This neat, free utility, called DriveSpacio will show you what is taking up space on your hard disk.

It will also, optionally, hook into Windows Explorer so that you can simply right-click on a disk or folder and see what is taking up space there.

There is a standard installer for it, which hooks itself into Windows.

There is also a portable version that comes in a ZIP. Simply extract into a folder and run the EXE.

In the chart shown here, if you hover the mouse over the chart (away from the folders shown), you will get an up-arrow pointer. When you click during this, you will be taken up a folder level.




If you hover over the folder names, you will get an un-intrusive popup with info on that folder.
If you click on the folder name, it will zoom-in on that folder.

Also, while hovering over a folder, you can perform the following functions:
- Open Containing Folder
- Open Folder
- Delete Folder



Visit the author's web site for downloads and more screenshots.


As Mike pointed out, there is another app that is similar to this and which is open-source and has a little more eye-candy.


ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

still looking for my next DSLR

I think I am getting closer to choosing my first DSLR!

It will probably be the Canon EOS 50D!

You can find a review here and here.

btw, do you have any comments on this camera?

Some of the highlights are:

Sensor: 15MP CMOS, self-cleaning

Image sizes: 4752 x 3168, 3456 x 2304, 2353 x 1568

ISO: 100 - 3200, extendable to 6400 and 12800!!!

Continuous shooting: 6.3 fps

LCD monitor: 3" with 920k pixels and an anti-glare system that works.
The camera also uses the full LCD resolution during Live View and it does so at 30fps! (This is better than the Nikon D300, D700 and D3 cameras which only do it at 15fps).

Price: recommended approx US$1300, expected to be less than that...

As for a lens, I think this one would do just nicely:

It is a Tamron AF 28-300mm (35mm equivalent) f3.5-6.3 XR Di (IF) lens, costing AUS$529.

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

Scary roads!

I promise, I will never again complain about the quality of our roads!!!










































For some more, absolutely terrifying roads, visit this site

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome! 

Open source alternative to Visio

DIA is an open-source alternative to Visio. According to their web site,

• Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio', though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

Freeware utilities, programmer tools etc... lots!

I've just had a look at the NirSoft web site and found an amazing number of free and very useful utilities, programmer tools and all sorts of other goodies!
Here is a very small sample of what is there:

• Network Monitoring Tools
• SmartSniff: TCP/IP Sniffer - Capture TCP/IP packets on your network adapter and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers.
• CurrPorts: TCP/IP Connections Viewer - Freeware tool that displays the list of all currently opened TCP and UDP ports on your local computer.
• AdapterWatch - displays useful information about your network adapters: IP addresses, Hardware address, WINS servers, DNS servers, MTU value, Number of bytes received or sent, The current transfer speed, and more...

• Internet Related Utilities
  
  • IPNetInfo - Find all available information about an IP address: The owner of the IP address, the country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address, phone, fax, and email), and more.
  • IECookiesView: Cookies Viewer/Manager for IE - View/Delete/Modify the cookies that Internet Explorer stores on your computer. Read More >>
  • IEHistoryView - View/Delete the URLs that you visited in the last few days.
  • HTMLAsText (HTML To Text Converter) - Freeware utility that converts HTML files to text files.
  • WhoisThisDomain - Get information about a registered domain.
  • SiteShoter - Take a screenshot of a Web site.
  • WebVideoCap - Capture Flash video (.flv) and RTSP/MMS streams from Video Web sites.

There is a lot more there, go and have a look!

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!