Category: Uncategorized

Simple way to customize pushpins in Bing Maps for WP7

Having trouble finding a quick and simple way to customize and add images to pushpins? I came up with the following.

The stardard pushpin looks pretty bad, as you can see, it is just a black square with a pointing arrow.

The easiest way to get rid of it is to set the template of your pushpin to null.

Pushpin myPushpin = new Pushpin();
myPushpin.Template = null;
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How to get your PlayStation 3 to see your hard drive?

Running out of room to backup some of my stuff. I went to Best Buy to pick up a 2TB external hard drive but then I realized that hard drives nowadays have NTFS partitions on them. This was not always the case, it used to be drives were partitioned with FAT32. PS3s however are not able to read or even see NTFS drives. It might have something to do with the fact that Sony does not want to pay licensing fees to Microsoft. Sadly, Microsoft won’t make it easy for you to format your drive to FAT32. The only options you get from the GUI are NTFS or exFAT, and neither will work on a PS3.

If you go to the command line and do the following command (assuming I: is the drive you want to format) this will only format drives up to 32GB which is a limitation set up by Microsoft on Windows 7 rather than FAT32 itself.
format I: /fs:FAT32
After a little searching I found the solution to this dilemma in this little guy called fat32format that can format drives up to 2TB with no problems. I copied this file to my C: drive and I just typed:

fat32format I:

I was finally able to backup the 500GB drive in my PS3 to an external drive 🙂

For more info on this program check out  http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Open Websites and Emails from a Windows Phone 7 Silverlight App

First,  make sure to reference the Microsoft.Phone.Tasks Library

In your XAML you can add a HyperlinkButton with a click even like this:

<HyperlinkButton x:Name="Email" Content="email@domain.com" Click="Email_Click"/>

Then use the EmailComposeTask class to bring up the mail client.

private void Email_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
EmailComposeTask email = new EmailComposeTask();
email.To = "email@domain.com";
email.Subject = "Thanks";
email.Show();
}

In a similar manner, you instantiate WebBrowserTask to bring up the browser with the provided link

private void MyBlog_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
WebBrowserTask web = new WebBrowserTask();
web.URL = "http://chrisrios.com";
web.Show();
}

Continue reading “Open Websites and Emails from a Windows Phone 7 Silverlight App”

Signs you are becoming a WoW widow

 

By now most people have heard of the infamous World of Warcraft or WoW for short. The latest expansion pack to the game is called Cataclysm. If your husband has shown interest in playing this game, this is a very bad thing. Here is why, the game is incredibly addictive for many people. Specially if the person has problems with anxiety or depression, the game can provide a false sense of achievement by leveling. The game requires very little gaming skill other than being able to click buttons with a mouse which is the reason it is very easy to learn and pick up. Instead, the game does little to reward skill but rewards time that you have played instead. Granted, some skill might make things a bit faster.

The more time the player keep playing the game, your avatar starts gaining levels which makes you stronger against foes. However, there is no shortage of enemies as they endlessly re spawn or throw more difficult enemies that will probably require several players to beat. This starts escalating up to a point where you need dozens or more people to beat enemies. These players then need to arrange a time when players with enough time sunk into the game can play. This is where things start getting ugly. In WoW, these groups are called guilds, several of them meet 4 or more times a week for 2 or more hours. This could add up to the time you would spend in a part time job. The game can not be paused unless agreed by everybody in the group. Somebody hooked on the game will probably not leave the chair in a while.

I tried to explain what the game is in a nutshell avoiding lingo used by people that play it. If suddenly all your partner can talk about is WoW and all the words coming out of his mouth are raid, guild, crits, aoe, dkp, aggro, spec a warlock with nightfall. This is a bad sign. When they start saying my druid, my mage, my paladin without giggling. You got a problem.

If he starts making up excuses to not go out or work out, he is sick etc but he feels well enough to play on the computer. That is also bad. Eventually, it is going Continue reading “Signs you are becoming a WoW widow”

Can somebody please train personnel at tech stores?

advance, pander, shuffle

Some friends and I walk into a store that sells Nooks. I consider myself very tech sawy and I keep up with gadgets so I am not sure why one of my friends decides to ask the store dude about it instead of myself. They had two models on display, the Nook and the Nook Color. So the guy starts going off about how the nook color is much more advanced because you can fit 6000 (8GB) books rather 1500(2G) books on the original one. To what my friend replies that she can always take books out and put back in the ones she wants to read. So, I tell my friend that she doesn’t need to worry about it because if she EVER needs more than 1600 books she can always buy a cheap SD card that could easily triple the storage.

Then, the guy starts talking about how the color screen is so much better because it is easier to read. I can certainly see that device being better for children’s books and maybe magazines but not for reading books. So, I tell my friend that for reading books which is the main purpose of the e-reader, she will probably prefer the e-ink so that she could read outside and her eyes won’t get tired as much because of all the reflection in the color screen. The guy says that that is not really a problem when my friend’s husband points out that you can see all the store lights reflecting on the screen. At this point, with all the pandering, I am thinking this guy works on commission or something.
Continue reading “Can somebody please train personnel at tech stores?”