Add a mute button to your system tray

So you're working... jammmin' to some Zeppelin... and the phone rings. You then proceed to fumble around your systray with your volume control attempting to open it to mute. I'm not one to critique another UI engineer's flow but... DUDE! REALLY!? WHERE THE HELL IS THE DAMN MUTE BUTTON IN THE SYSTRAY!?

Get ready to go around your ass to get to your elbow. Ready?

1. Download NirCmd
2. Download BeTrayed!
3. Assuming you installed NirCmd in your Program Files directory, create a shortcut on your desktop to: "C:\Program Files\nircmd\nircmd.exe" mutesysvolume 2
4. Create a new txt document with the following as the body:

  C:
  cd C:\Program Files\JohnnyFoster.com\BeTrayed!
  start BeTrayed "C:\Program Files\nircmd\nircmd.exe" mutesysvolume 2
  Y:
  exit
  cls

5. Save the file as MUTE_SYSTRAY.cmd
6. Create a shortcut to MUTE_SYSTRAY.cmd in your Start -> All Programs -> Startup folder

Double click to toggle your sound.

Nice.

TODO: Find volume control UI designer. Yell.

"Mila's Tools" on the Apple Web Apps homepage

Let me tell you something... if you've built yourself a simple iPhone Web App... and you'd like to get a few hundred users REAL QUICK... SUBMIT YOUR APP TO THE APPLE WEB APPS DIRECTORY. Run. Don't walk. Run to the Apple Web Apps site and do it now.

I about fell out of my chair after submitting my app late one night only to wake up to 100s of new users. Upon checking the directory, there it was... right on the Apple Web Apps home page as a "Staff Pick" - "Mila's Tools", my new iPhone Unit Conversion App.

Pure awesomeness, drenched in awesome juice.

Error Number: 1413 (0x80070585)

PROBLEM: Immediately after installing Zend server, upon testing you are faced with:


FastCGI Error

The FastCGI Handler was unable to process the request.
Error Details:

Could not find entry for "php" on site 1 in [Types] section.
Error Number: 1413 (0x80070585).
Error Description: Invalid index.
HTTP Error 500 - Server Error.
Internet Information Services (IIS)


SOLUTION: Add the following to the end of C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\fcgiext.ini


[Types]
php=PHP

[PHP]
ExePath=C:\Program Files\Zend\ZendServer\bin\php-cgi.exe

EnvironmentVars=PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS:1000
IdleTimeout=1500
ActivityTimeout=3000
RequestTimeout=1500


REFACTORING: A day in the life

I put this video up months ago and just realized I never blogged about it! How'd that happen!? If you're an engineer, this butting-my-head-up-against-the-wall moment is for you.

So, without further ado... I bring to you... "Refactoring: A day in the life." [dat-do-do]



P.S. Turn up the volume. [Really. Turn it up.]

 

iPhone Unit Conversion Calculator

So, I dove into jQuery and jQTouch development for the iPhone and all I know is, I can't wait to do it again.

Wow, wow, wow... talk about easy-peasy-Japanese. I could not have been more impressed. The functionality of the unit conversion calculator in-and-of-itself is nothing to write home about BUT, that which comes with employing jQuery + jQTouch most certainly is.

Wowsers. Yep. That's all I got. Wowsers.

The iPhone app includes four conversion calculators - a length converter, liquid converter, temperature converter, and time converter. From your iPhone, check out the converter here: iPhone Unit Conversion Calculator.

Don't forget to add it as a full screen app by hitting the + sign. :)

 

Amazon API "Tags" Response Group

PROBLEM: Amazon API is not returning "Tags" even when "Tags" response group is specified in the request URL.

SOLUTION: Add the "Version" parameter to your request.

EXAMPLE: http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?AWSAccessKeyId=...&Version=2009-10-01

For valid "Version" values, keep your eyes on the API's release notes.

NOTE: By default, the API will return the top 5 tags. To have more returned or to page through tags, check out the TagPage and TagsPerPage parameters in the ItemLookup documentation.