Looking at Alternative ISPs

We’ve had a few issues with our TPG internet connection lately mainly related to congestion in the evenings which is when we tend to use our internet connection most. I’ve reset and tweaked our ADSL modem numerous times in an effort to fix things up which has been an interesting exercise to say the least. …

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Create Quick Launch Headers Without Hyperlinks in Sharepoint

Perhaps one of the most confusing things for Sharepoint newbies is adding headings to the quick launch bar but end up being forced to provide a URL for the heading. You may not necessarily want the heading to point anywhere but to just be a heading. However, there is a simple fix for this problem. …

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Grab a Copy of the Windows RT 8.0 Recovery Image

A short, sweet tip for original Surface owners out there. If you’ve ended up with a bricked Surface RT tablet after attempting an upgrade to Windows RT 8.1 then you might have wondered what to do to get it working again. Well, Microsoft has released the recovery image for Windows RT 8.0 which you can …

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Keeping Tabs on Australian Fires

At present, in Australia fires are tracked on a state and territory level which makes it hard to get a consolidated view at a national level to see what is going on. This might not be a big deal if your family, friends and properties are largely located in one state or territory but if …

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Extracting Text from PDF Documents

Here’s a quick tip if you’ve needed to extract text from a PDF document. PDF files might not be easy to convert but if the PDF is of reasonably good quality (particularly if it is a scan of a hard copy). When you’ve got a hard copy and you’ve lost the electronic copy then you’re …

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How to Upgrade to Windows 8 and Windows RT 8.1

With Windows 8.1 upon us I thought I would do a video on how to upgrade your Windows RT device (such as a Microsoft Surface RT) to Windows RT 8.1. It’s not a difficult process but it does take some time given the limited processing power in RT devices. The upgrade process for both Windows …

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Apple iPhone 5S Unboxing

Well, it was time for my wife to upgrade her smartphone which saw the iPhone 4S replaced with the iPhone 5S. The replacement was somewhat of a necessity given a very annoying quirk with the iPhonewhere the volume would turn down by itself (both music and phone calls) which was a constant annoyance. Apparently, the …

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Use the Rain Radar to Approximately Track Bushfires

Tracking Bushfires on the BOM Radar

With the recent bushfires in New South Wales it isn’t surprising that a good number of people have been hitting up the Rural Fire Service website to find out what is going on. Unfortunately, the demand has been so high that the RFS website has buckled under the strain leaving its Twitter account to pick …

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Windows 8.1 Ready to Download via Windows Store

Just a quick update. If you’ve got Windows 8 on one or more of your computers you can now upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free by checking the Windows Store app on your computer. You should see something similar to this: Just click on that big purple rectangle and you’ll get to the download screen: …

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Meeting Request Error 0x80070057-00000000-00000000 In Microsoft Outlook

An obscure tip but one that I found worked this week. A colleague at work was attempting to send a meeting request but repeatedly received errors from our Microsoft Exchange server for one of the recipients. Everything seemed fine and the contacts were correctly populated from the contacts cache. Sending the request met with no …

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