Remove Tabs From Adobe Photoshop CS4
I’m just going to cut to the chase: The tabs in Photoshop SUCK. This is coming from the guy who wants tabs everywhere. In explorer/file browser, my browser, my text editor…can you imagine how easy the universe would be to navigate if all the planets were simply tabs? Want to go to Mars? Just CTRL + Tab over to it. Simple right?
With all of this love for tabs, I am completely dumbfounded by the use of tabs in Photoshop. I really tried to like it, but it’s just not intuitive and it’s mind blowing that this was made the default for such an amazing product. Here’s how to turn them off, and actually start getting some work done again.
Go to ‘Edit’ –> ‘Preferences’ –> ‘Interface’
Now uncheck the ‘Open Documents as Tabs’ option
VirtualBox VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED (rc=-1908) Error
I recently installed the updated kernel in Ubuntu 8.10. Everything seemed to go fine until I tried to open my Windows XP Virtual Machine inside of VirtualBox. I initially got an error that said ‘Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Windows XP’. This error was immediately followed by another error dialogue box with the error:
VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED (rc=-1908)
There’s two ways to fix this. I would try the first method first, and the second only it that didn’t work.
Method 1 – Simple Command
Simply open a terminal window and type ‘sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup‘. This will take a little bit of time, but once it’s done, you should be able to open your virtual machines like normal. If for some reason this doesn’t work, try the second method below.
Method 2 – Uninstall/Reinstall
Go to ‘System’ –> ‘Administration’ –> ‘Synaptic Package Manager’ and search for ‘virtualbox’. Uninstall whatever is installed. Once it’s removed, reinstall it.
Connect Ubuntu 8.10 to a Windows 7 Share
So I’ve been playing around with Windows 7 today. Figured I’d throw a quick tutorial on how to connect an Ubuntu machine to a Windows 7 share. Quick note, I’m running the first beta of Windows 7, build 7000. Since the network stack has changed very little from Vista, I’m assuming this will work the exact same way once Windows 7 actually ships.
Setup Windows 7 Share Folder
- Create a new folder wherever you want your share to be. I’m going to put mine on the desktop. Easiest way is to right click and choose ‘New’ –> ‘Folder’
- Name your share. This is going to be where you will connect, so I would recommend not using any weird characters or spaces. I’m calling mine ‘myshare’
- Now we need to enable sharing on this folder. Right click the folder and choose ‘Properties’
Installing TrueCrypt 5.1a & 6.1a On Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 or 9.04
TrueCrypt was finally made available for Linux with the release of version 5.1a. Here’s how to install it.
**Update**
I have been made aware by Onopoc in the comments section that this same tutorial will work with TrueCrypt 6.1a as well. Simply change the name of the file in the respective spots where the exact file name is used
Installing TrueCrypt
- Open a terminal window and type: ‘wget http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads/truecrypt-5.1a-ubuntu-x86.tar.gz’
- Once that is done, type: ‘tar zxvf truecrypt-5.1a-ubuntu-x86.tar.gz’
- Now go to ‘Places‘ –> ‘Home Folder‘ and look for a file called
‘truecrypt-5.1a-setup-ubuntu-x86‘ and double click on it
- You should get a dialog box asking you what you want to do with it. Choose ‘Run in Terminal‘
- You should now see another dialog box with the option to ‘Install TrueCrypt‘ at the bottom. Choose this.
Encrypting Thumb Drives With TrueCrypt
Last week I wrote a post on how to encrypt entire hard drives with TrueCrypt. We all know how easy it is to have your laptop lost or stolen and how important it is to protect sensitive data. However, something that is even easier to lose and often has just as sensitive data on it is thumb drives. I know personally I’ve lost a couple of them over time.
Today we’re going to learn how to encrypt these drives to keep them from prying eyes.
Setting Up
Just a few things to get you prepared for the encryption process.
- Grab TrueCrypt if you don’t already have it.
- Make sure your thumb drive is plugged in and move everything on it to your desktop. This is important because TrueCrypt is going to format the drive during the encryption process.
- Open the main TrueCrypt window
Using Truecrypt to Encrypt Your Entire Hard Drive
If you’re as paranoid as I am, you more than likely appreciate the advancements that the TrueCrypt team has made with version 5.0. For me, the greatest thing they did was making whole disk encryption dead simple. Here’s how you do it.
Getting Started
- First you will need to visit the TrueCrypt site and download and install it on your system. I’m going to be using Windows XP for my demonstration, but they have since released very good and stable version for Mac OSX and Linux.
- Next, go ahead and open the main window by clicking on the TrueCrypt logo in the system tray. The window should look like this
Setting Up the Encryption Settings
- Click the the ‘Create Volume ‘ button
- On the next window, choose the radio button next to ‘Encrypt the system partition or entire system drive ‘
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error With CD/DVD Player
Image from Wikipedia
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UPDATE: After all this, the drive stopped working several days later. I reformatted the machine, swapped cd drives…only to find out that the SATA cable went out on me. Once I replaced that, everything worked perfectly. (I would still follow the instructions below to get rid of the annoying DISCover.exe Runtime Error.
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I’ve been getting a Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error from a file called DISCover.exe sometimes when I would boot my computer. It didn’t happen all the time and I wasn’t sure exactly what the issue was. I didn’t have any program installed on my machine called DISCover and nothing was running in my system tray.
Whenever I would get this error, my CD/DVD drive would no longer show up on my computer. Very, very annoying.
I did some Googling and kept coming up with the same answer: Upgrade Visual C++ Runtime Libraries. I did this with exactly zero results.
Creating the Ultimate Productivity Workstation
So you want to build a workstation that rivals Bill Gates’ without spending your entire technology budget for the year, in one day. Here’s how I did it.
What you’ll End Up With
9 Desktops
3 Monitors
1 Obscenely Productive Workstation
Hardware Used
1 Dell Optiplex (with Windows XP)
2 Dell 19″ Flat Panel Monitors
1 Dell Latitude Laptop (with Windows XP)
1 Logitech Revolution Wireless Mouse
1 Worn out wrist rest
Software Used
Dexpot
Synergy
Firefox
Groupwise (insert your email client)
Dreamweaver
Photoshop
Pandora’s Box (for entertainment:)
Pownce (with all this productivity, I need something anti-productive)
Snitter (see above)
Pidgin
Yahoo! Widgets
ObjectDock
Let’s Get Started
First thing you are going to want to do is setup your dual monitors on your desktop. I’m going to be using Windows XP for everything I do today.
- Shut your machine down and plug both monitors in
