Ever wanted to do something cool with you Facebook profile? Here’s your chance. By making a custom profile picture for Facebook and tagging yourself on cropped pictures you can make your Facebook profile look like this.

There are some apps out there that will create the images for you and that will tag you in the right order so the pictures are shown on the banner of your Facebook profile. Most of them will however not give you the opportunity to keep a nice thumbnail picture. And they leave a message on your wall that they created the images, pretty creative huh?

That’s why it’s better to just do it yourself. It’s fun. I used Adobe Fireworks to do this (yeah, once upon a time I started using it and I’m still…). Of course Photoshop will do the trick too. Follow these steps to get you going:

1. Take a screenshot of your Facebook profile
2. Paste it in a layer and cut out the banner pictures and your profile picture. The profile picture can be pretty high. Make it high enough so there’s room for a regular Facebook profile picture.
3. Make slices for every piece. These are the dimensions that worked for me: profile picture 180×540 and the images in the Facebook banner 97×68 pixels.
4. Create a layer under the cut out Facebook screenshot and paste your picture.
5. Position your picture and export the slices.
6. Upload your profile picture to Facebook.
7. Upload the banner pictures to a new album.
8. Open last image of the album (the most right one) and tag yourself.
9. Now tag yourself on the banner images from right to left.
10. Have a look. Sweet!

If you have a nice picture laying around you’re done in half an hour of pure fun and creativity :).

When the S7-1200 has an IP adress assigned on the local network it can be accessed trought that address. I don’t think people who are able to program the PLC will have difficulties with that.

When the PLC needs to be accessible over a router making it possible to browse to the web interface from everywhere on the internet there are some settings in the router and the PLC that need to be correct.

On the router a NAT row needs to be added to forward port 80 and 443 to the PLC address. Port 80 is for the http pages port 443 is needed to access secure pages over https.

In the PLC it is absolutely required to set the router IP address. When this isn’t set the webserver the  S7-1200 PLC will be accessible over the local network but not over the router.

Don’t forget to change the password of the PLC. Allowing access to the PLc over internet can be usefull but also very dangerous when not secure.

Also it’s not recommended to enable the webserver on a S7-1200 PLC if it’s not necessary. A DOS (Denial Of Service) attack can make the PLC crash!

After wasting two evenings of trying to connect my Samsung Galaxy to my computer I finally got the USB connection with Samsung Kies working. The connection problem occurred out of the blue and only when trying to connect to Kies. Using the phone as mass storage device was no problem at all. When the cable is connected the phone says “connected” and Kies says “connecting…”. Waiting didn’t work…

After searching the internet and finding several solutions that worked for other people I succeeded in restoring the connection.

The solution that worked for me:

1. Take the SD card out of the Samsung Galaxy
2. Connect the phone using the USB cable
3. It will say something like can’t connect to Kies without SD card
4. Plug the SD card back into to Samsung Galaxy
5. Kies finds the phone…hooray!

After doing the above once my phone connects to my computer without a problem. If this procedure doesn’t work for you try something of the following:

Dial *#7284#. PhoneUtil will open. Set the USB mode to “MODEM” and back to “PDA”. Try to connect the phone…

Do a factory reset of the phone (you’ll find how to do this on http://www.google.com). Try to connect the phone…

Remove the phone using the “device manager” in windows. Disable the function to install drivers from windows update. Reinstall the Samsung drivers. Try to connect the phone…

Finally I can start developing applications for my phone again! The USB debugging didn’t work either…

Everyone who wants to make money online finds out that affiliate marketing is an easy way to earn some extra bucks. The problem most affiliate marketeers have to face is finding a good affiliate marketing niche. By focusing on a niche it is easier to optimize your website or blog for specific traffic from search engines. A good niche for affiliate marketing is a niche with a few competitors and a great revenue. If it’s possible to get 5 posts of your blog on the first page for a certain keyword in Google you’re on your way to earn some money.

How to find a good niche for affiliate marketing?

Finding a niche isn’t easy. You need to be able to write good articles on your blog. If you don’t know anything about the subject it will be very hard to write good content. Pick some subjects of your interest. Don’t pick one, but several subjects to get started. Begin with quantity, then select by quality. Starting with one topic could work but it’s a risk. After a month (at least) evaluate, adapt the sites, drop niches and experiment with new affiliate marketing niches.

That’s the best way to find profitable affiliate marketing niches!

Whoever worked with PCS7 knows that compiling a project can take a while. This is because PCS7 compilation is done in the database on the hard disk and not in the computer memory. This means a faster hard disk will decrease the compilation time of the PCS7 project.

A first possibility is the use a solid state disk in the engineering station. Read and write access to these disks is much faster than regular hard disks.

A second and even faster possibility is a RAM disk. A RAM disk is a virtual disk in the RAM memory of the engineering station. A part of the memory is reserved and formatted as a hard drive. When a PCS7 project is stored in the RAM memory it will be compiled in the RAM memory.

From now on you’ll only be able to drink 3 cups of coffee during compilation of your PCS7 project instead of 10!

Since this article is about a typical Belgian product (and its problems) I will write it in dutch.

Het Digicorder probleem
Veel digitale kijkers die gebruik maken van de Digicorder van Telenet ondervinden na enkele jaren problemen. Deze gaan van af en toe een melding dat de stekker uitgetrokken moet worden om alle functionaliteiten te herstellen tot het continu herstarten van de Digicorder. De garantietermijn van de Digicorder bedraagt 2 jaar en die garantietermijn blijkt net iets korter te zijn dan de levenstermijn ervan. Wat weinig mensen weten is dat je voor nog geen 3 euro de Digicorder zelf kan herstellen.

De oorzaak van de problemen

Hoewel je zou kunnen denken dat de oorzaak aan de software ligt is dit veelal niet het geval. De eerste firmware versies van de Digicorder waren niet de beste maar tegenwoordig is de software behoorlijk stabiel. Waar het dan wel fout loopt bij de Digicorder is de hardware.

Na het openschroeven van de Digicorder wordt het probleem meteen duidelijk. Zeven condensatoren die bol staan of zelfs uitgelopen zijn.

Overzicht digicorder

Bolle en lekkende elco

De oplossing

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There are several reasons to extend a VGA cable. A Media Center PC is a great tool to manage your music, movies, pictures etc. To avoid a noisy computer blowing in your ears while watching a movie a VGA extension cable could be a great help. Mounting your home theatre beamer on the ceiling is a good idea, but how to get there with the VGA signal? Extend it using cheap cat5 UTP cable!

Connect the cables as listed in the following table. Wire both connectors the same way.

The only drawback is the slightly notable ‘ghosting’ as a result of the difference in impedance with a regular VGA cable. With the extension I use (12m) the ghosting is only visible when showing black text on a whte background. But since the beamer is only used to watch movies, television and pictures I never had complaints about the quality. If you really want to improve the quality, an STP cable could be the solution.

Browser screenshot

Editing a WordPress theme could be easier than you thought. You can change the default theme without having to edit any php file.  All you’ll need to edit are some images and the CSS file. And believe me, basic things aren’t that difficult in CSS.

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