I Was Wrong

Five months ago I mentioned that I'd re-post my old Portuguese posts in English here, and also add the new ones as well.

I was wrong.

I didn't do any of it.

Meanwhile, you can access the auto-translated version at www.fimdeabril.com.

Bye for now.

Adobe Shockwave Flash plugin crashing since the last update: Solution

I'm currently using Firefox 13.0, and for about a month now the Adobe Shockwave Flah plugin has been crashing and freezing very often.

If you can't relate the name to the content, the Adobe Shockwave Flash plugin is that one used by sites like YouTube to display videos and animations in general.

Well, the solution is pretty simple: update it.

In Firefox you can check if all plug-ins are up to date by entering menu Tools ··> Add-Ons and clicking on  item Plug-Ins, and right at the top of the page there's a link to check all pluugins for versions and updates.

To udpdate Adobe Shockwave Flash directly from Adobe, simply visit address http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/  to download the most recent version.

Remember to close Firefox, Internet Explorer and any program that uses Flash, before updating.

Galaxy Ace: root in 5 minutes (or less)

I made a detailed step-by-step on how to root the Samsung Galaxy Ace, in just under five minutes. It should work with the Galaxy Ace running Android 2.3.3 / 2.3.4 (Gingerbread).

It's pretty straightforward:

1. Copy an update file (see below) on to the memory card;
2. Re-boot the phone in to recovery mode;
3. Apply the update.

Very simple.

I also show briefly what the Superuser app looks like and what you need to know to interact with it. Also very simple.

Once your phone is rooted, you may do some advanced things with it. For instance, remove or replace the sound that is played during boot and a lot more.

The file necessary for the update is this one here: AceGingerRoot.ZIP.

Check the step-by-step on the video below

Galaxy ace: replace or remove the sound that is played during boot

How to replace or remove completely the sound that is played when the Samsung Galaxy Ace phone is turned on. This method may be similar on other models.

You will need:

1. a rooted phone and
2. a file manager with root access.

The file manager I use is X-Plore, free at www.lonelycatgames.com or directly at Google Play. There are many others - all you need is one with root access.

How it's done:

1. Find which is the audio file that is played during boot.
2. Change the file's name, or replace it with another one with the desired sound (but always with the same name and file format as the original one).

Check the video below for the steps on how to do it.

Notes:

• The file to replace on the Galaxy Ace is in the OGG Vorbis format (extension OGG). If you want to use a file that is in another format (such as MP3), just convert it to OGG. One free application that will do this is Format Factory.

Automatically Download and Save the Lyrics for Your Song Database

In this step-by-step I will show how to use your computer to:

1. Search the Internet for the lyrics of the song that is playing
2. Save the lyrics of each song in to a text file, thus creating a lyrics database on your computer
3. Make Winamp play one a few seconds of each song, so that the search for the lyrics is faster (why play the whole song?)

You will need (all free):

•  Evil Lyrics: www.evillabs.sk
•  Winamp: www.winamp.com
•  Winamp Intro Plug-in: www.winamp.com/plugin/gen-intro/4039

Check the video below:

How it works:

• Evil Lyrics detects the artist and name of the song that is playing, and searched the Internet for the lyrics, and records the lyrics in to a text file.
• Winamp, with the Intro plug-in , plays only a few seconds of each song, thus making faster the process of downloading the lyrics for various songs (by not playing the whole song)

FAQ:

• May I use Windows Media Player or another player instead of Winamp?
• Yes, as long as:
• the player is compatible with Evil Lyrics
• if you want to make the process faster and play only a part of each song then the chose player will have to have the means to do this.

• Evil Lyrics does not detect the song name correctly
• Disable or remove other lyrics plug-ins that may be interferring with Evil Lyrics. This problem does happen in Winamp.

Hints:

• I strongly recommend to set Evil Lyrics to organize the lyrics in folders, starting with the first letter of the artist name: It will avoid problems by having too many (hundreds?) files in a single folder;
• Don't set the Intro plug-in to play a too short interval. If the interval between songs is too short, Evil Lyrics will complain that you are leeching the Internet and will block the search until it stops leeching. The interval of 45s works fine.
• Evil Lyrics can also search for chords and tablatures: add the work "chords" or "tablature" together with the song and artist name in Evil Lyrics
• To search and download the lyrics for a large database of songs:
• Make a playlist of the songs
• Let it play during the night, while you sleep comfortably.

Finance Spreadsheet

This article was originally published on the Portuguese version of this site.

OK, here is, finally, a copy of my finance spreadsheet. I revised my original sheet, made some improvements, added sample data, and started a help file.

Since the original spreadsheet is in Portuguese, so is this initial release. But I promise I'll upload an English one ASAP.

As well as the spreadsheet itself, there is also a helo file (very raw, still), as a ZIP file.

You can find both files here:

http://www.4shared.com/dir/AU_Ujmsa/Budget.html


If you want stay up to date as I release any changes, stay tuned to the link above. Or send me an e-mail (michael.fimdeabril AT mailnull.com) and I'll kindly add your address to a SPAM-less list.


Warning: the spreadsheet uses Pivot Tables and other fancy things. I strongly recommend that you read Excel's help file and familiarize yourself with them.

The spreadsheet was made in Excel 2007 but it should work OK with Excel 2003. I'll try later on.


Share and enjoy.

Fim de Abril in English

Finally, I decided to split my hints and tips in to different locations for English and for Portuguese.

I'll soon re-publish some older posts from Fim de Abril, and eventually post the new ones in English only here.