Category Archives: how-tos

ASUS Q550LF 15″ laptop SSD upgrade

I’ve had this laptop for several years, and it’s started getting sluggish, so I thought I’d upgrade it to an SSD to speed it up. It’s a nice laptop, aluminum body, i7 processor, 8GB RAM (also on the upgrade list), 1TB HDD (which is what I swapped out today).

The biggest issue was it required a #4 torx screwdriver to get the back plate off. These things are tiny!

I had to buy a new set of precision screwdrivers to get a small enough screwdriver.

With the tiny screwdriver I was able to remove the 10 screws holding the back plate on.

The hard drive is in the bottom left. Four small philips screws hold it in.

At this point I realized I had to remove the battery in order to get enough play in the SATA ribbon to disconnect the hard drive. Three Phillips screws hold it in.

It’s kind of small.

With the battery out of the way, I can lift up the hard drive.

After carefully disconnecting it from the SATA ribbon, it will take removing four more Phillips screws to separate the drive from its caddy.

So many tiny screws.

Now I can put the SSD in the caddy and work backwards, attaching it with four screws.

Completing the steps in reverse order puts it back together again. I connect the SATA ribbon, use four screws to secure the drive in its caddy, three to put the battery back in, and finally back to the torx screwdriver to put the back plate back on.

I fire it up, and windows is decidedly much faster to boot up now :). Everything looks good to go!

I had previously cloned my hard drive to the SSD. I used a SATA-to-USB adapter cable and a flash drive with Clonezilla on it to do the clone. Maybe I’ll do a write-up on that process sometime.

To finish off, here’s a picture of my little “helpers” :). Hope that helps!

Opt-in to Amazon Live App Testing

You’ve been invited to test an app for the Amazon Appstore, but the developer has informed you that your Amazon Account is opted out of Amazon marketing communications so your invitation email never arrived.

Here’s how to opt back in to just the one category Amazon requires so you can proceed with the test.

Click on this link.

Expand the dropdown next to “Promotional Emails” in “Email Preferences”

Make sure “Amazon Appstore” is checked and click “update”.

Let your developer know and they’ll send you a new testing invite.

Solution originally found here.

Photoshop – find opacity of semi-transparent pixel

Ever had an image open in photoshop with semi-transparent pixels and you needed to know the alpha value of those semi-transparent pixels? Turns out photoshop can do it, it’s just hidden by default. To enable this feature, open the Info window, choose Panel Options and then set the Second Color Readout mode to Opacity. Now when you use the color dropper tool and mouse over a semi-transparent pixel it will show you the opacity as a percentage as well as the color.

Screenshot 2016-04-25 14.00.46

Solution found here, duplicated here for link rot protection.

Export vector graphics from Flash CC to Illustrator CC

If you’ve used Adobe creative suite/creative cloud programs for any length of time, you know they have some big quirks. One of the things that as always irked me was how difficult it is to get Flash vectors into Illustrator, even though the other way is as easy as copy/paste.

Flash CC 2014 added a new “export to SVG” option, which is great – Illustrator natively supports SVG! However, in my experience, Illustrator often crashes when opening said SVG file. In order to not crash Illustrator, here are some instructions (I’m using the CC 2014 versions of both Flash and Illustrator):

  1. Copy and paste the symbol you’re exporting into a new FLA (this removes unused symbols).
  2. go into every symbol in the library and delete all empty/hidden/guide/code layers.
  3. go to file > export image and choose SVG.
  4. open the SVG file in Illustrator – everything should be there!

I found the workaround here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1573625

Access iOS Simulator Logs directly

Sometimes I need to get NSLogs from an app running in the iOS simulator, but said simulator wasn’t launched through Xcode.

There’s a method listed in this stackoverflow post that works for me with Xcode 6.

In the simulator itself, you go to Debug > Open System Log… and it should open Console.app and come right up. If it doesn’t, you might need to try it more than once like I had to.

Screenshot 2015-09-28 20.41.55

If you want to access the log files directly on disk, it’s a bit convoluted. Direct quote from the stackoverflow page (in case link rot sets in):

In case you need it, this log is kept in Library/Logs/CoreSimulator/[device name]/system.log. To get [device name], go to Xcode, Window -> Devices and find the device that you are currently simulating. Look for the Identifier. Compare that against the folder names in Library/Logs/CoreSimulator and you should find a match.

Extract sounds and images from FLA in Flash CC with JSFL

Recently I learned that Flash CC dropped the ability to export WAV files! Dumb move by Adobe in my opinion, but what’s done is done.

After some Googling, I discovered this post on stackoverflow that contains a JSFL script to enable extracting sounds or images from the library of an FLA. It’s a few years old at this point, but I can confirm it still works for sounds as of Flash Pro CC 2014. If anyone has a more modern solution I’m all ears, but I’ll repost the code here in case that link ever breaks:

// Result of attempts to export will go to the output panel,
// so clear that first fl.outputPanel.clear();

// If bitmaps/audio in the library have been selected, export only
// those. Otherwise, export all bitmaps/audio in the library.

var lib;
if (fl.getDocumentDOM().library.getSelectedItems().length > 0) {
    lib = fl.getDocumentDOM().library.getSelectedItems(); 
} else { lib = fl.getDocumentDOM().library.items; } 

// Get destination directory for files 
var imageFileURLBase = fl.browseForFolderURL("Select a folder."); 
var imageFileURL; 

var totalItems = lib.length;
// Iterate through items and save bitmaps and 
// audio files to the selected directory.
for (var i = 0; i < totalItems; i++) 
{
    var libItem = lib[i];
    if (libItem.itemType == "bitmap" || libItem.itemType == "sound") 
    {
        // Check the audio files original Compression Type if "RAW" export only as a .wav file
        // Any other compression type then export as the libItem's name defines.
        if(libItem.itemType == "sound" && libItem.originalCompressionType == "RAW")
        {
            wavName = libItem.name.split('.')[0]+'.wav';
            imageFileURL = imageFileURLBase + "/" + wavName;
        } else {
            imageFileURL = imageFileURLBase + "/" + libItem.name;
        }
        var success = libItem.exportToFile(imageFileURL);
        fl.trace(imageFileURL + ": " + success);
    }
}

You'll need to save this to a file with a .jsfl extension, select any number of sounds or images from the library, and then go to Commands > Run Command in Flash Pro and navigate to the file. It'll ask you for an output directory and save the selected items there. If you don't select items in the library beforehand, it'll export all sounds and images found in the library.

To get the command to show up in the commands menu, put the file here:

Windows 7: boot drive\Users\username\AppData\Local\Adobe\Flash CC\language\Configuration\Commands

Windows Vista: boot drive\Users\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Flash CC\language\Configuration\Commands

Mac OS X: Macintosh HD/Users/userName/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CC/language/Configuration/Commands

filesystem data from here

Flash Builder 4.7 won’t reload SWC when it changes

According to this thread, Flash Builder will only notice when your library SWC changes if it’s in your project folder. Kind of sucks if you use the same SWC in multiple projects, like I do, but it appears to be the only option. Also, sometimes you need to clean the project to make the refresh happen.

Now, I’m not using the Flex framework, but also from the linked thread, if you use Flex you might be able to turn off a “global SWC cache.” I tried it for my plain-jane actionscript projects and it didn’t work.

Here’s the secondary method:

Find the .options file in the /Applications/Adobe Flash Builder 4.7/eclipse/plugins/com.adobe.flexbuilder.project_4.7.0.349722/ folder and look for a line like this:

# use a global swc cache across all projects when compiling with flex sdk 4 or higher
com.adobe.flexbuilder.project/useGlobalSwcCache=true

Try setting useGlobalSwcCache to false then restart Flash Builder and see if that helps.

NOTE: This may result in longer compile times in Flash Builder if your workspace includes Flash Library Projects since those generated SWCs will no longer be cached and instead will be rebuilt every time.

Again, I tried this secondary option, but it didn’t work for me (OSX 10.10.3 Yosemite), possibly because I don’t actually use Flex, and the comment in the config file specifically mentions Flex SDK.

Help! My computer is reading everything on screen to me!

If you are on a Windows machine running 8.1 (and maybe previous versions) and you accidentally press the windows key + enter, you’ll start up Narrator, an accessibility program that reads everything on the screen to you.

To turn it off, press caps lock+escape.

It doesn’t appear that you can turn off the keyboard shortcut :(.

Found here.

Mac OSX keyboard stuck in overwrite mode on Windows? Press 0

If you’re remoting in to a Windows box from a Mac, and using a (fullsize) Mac keyboard, you can accidentally get stuck in overwrite mode (instead of the normal insert mode) when entering text.

This happens because the Mac keyboard does not have a dedicated INSERT button like Windows keyboards do.

The solution is to press CLEAR on the OSX numberpad until you’re sure NUMLOCK is OFF (i.e. you press the numberpad buttons and the cursor moves instead of numbers appearing). Then, you can press the 0 key, which serves as an INSERT replacement (but only when NUMLOCK is off!), to get your cursor back to INSERT mode.

See here for more information about NUMLOCK on a Mac keyboard.

Mac OSX number pad not working in Windows? Press CLEAR

If you’re using a fullsize Mac keyboard, but remoting in to a Windows box, there’s no dedicated NUMLOCK button to turn NUMLOCK on and off. However, there is a CLEAR button which seems to serve the same purpose. If you get stuck with NUMLOCK off, you can press CLEAR to turn it back on. Sometimes you may have to press SHIFT + CLEAR instead.

Screenshot 2015-05-18 17.07.30

You’re welcome.

via OSXDaily