Why I'm Not Using Alfred

The Good

I recently stumbled across Alfred which looks pretty cool but what really caught my eye was an additional Alfred workflow called Alfred Dev Doctor which gives you the ability to search a wide range of programming languages and frameworks documentation including, Rails, jQuery, PHP, Python and more.

Watch the video on the Alfred Dev Doctor website and you're probably itching to give it a go. It certainly seems like something I would use regularly as a developer.

Using a Domain as a Unique ID

Disclaimer: I've been thinking about this concept for a while and I personally think it's great (although riddled with flaws) so I wanted to share it. This is nothing like anything I've every written before and you probably need a bit of an imagination to enjoy it.

The concept is surely flawed in many ways but I want to discuss only the positives for now to stop this article dragging on. Maybe ill go into why it's a bad idea in another post.

c000135 Program can’t start %hs is missing from your computer – Windows 7

The Problem

Ok just a quick update regarding a problem I had today with AVG. The automatic AVG update completed and then begun to pester me about rebooting. When I finally rebooted my computer which is running Windows 7 ultimate it just switched of right before the Windows login screen. After attempting the Windows Startup repair with no luck I attempted to enter safemode, from their I could see the OS stalling at AVGIDSEH.sys meaning the next .sys file can not be loaded.

Cannot load mysqli extension - WAMP Server

I started work this morning and when I went to access phpMyAdmin which is installed as part of the WAMP package on a Windows 7 box I got the error "Cannot load mysqli extension". I wasn't sure at first what could have caused it but I figured the obvious thing to do was to replace the extensions so I downloaded the PHP binaries and replaced the mysql and mysqli extensions in the WAMP installation but that didn't help. After a few minutes of thinking I remembered I had installed Zend Server the Friday before for some testing. The error is caused because Zend installs another php.ini file.

IStockphoto Voucher, Discounts and Free Images

The other day the time came for me to bite the bullet and pay the rather expensive prices tagged on the images over at IStock. When I went to purchase my credit's I noticed the option to enter a coupon code and with little hope I figured a quick google was neccessary.

Much to my suprise and delight of course I came accross this site with a range of coupons for IStockPhoto, and the coupon code which gave me 20% of for a purchase of 50 credits or over.

Hope someone else benefits from this also.

Customising the Windows 7 Taskbar - Adding Custom Toolbars

Well if you’re anything like me then you would probably like links to regularly used folders either on your start menu near the Documents, Music and Pictures links or where the quick launch bar used to be which now only allows program links including explorer which opens the Libraries folder by default in Windows 7. You can if you wish pin folders to the Windows Explorer icon which become available in a menu when you right click windows explorer.

WAMP Server Problems, Yellow Symbol

If you have ever had a problem with your WAMP server where it will just not start and the icon in the windows notification area stays yellow then you will understand my frustration. After a bit of a search on google i still did not find the answer to my problem.

I started by checking the error logs from within WAMP and determined it was apache that was not starting, after finding apache in the Services under Adminstrative tools i was still unable to manually start apache. This is when i knew that another program must have also been using Port 80.