The Greyhound
Completely taken by surprise, this experimental shot was taken with my zoom lens to its max power. The bus is at least 1 kilometre away from the balcony of my apartment. Some post-work of course.
Visit deviantART to download the 1920×1200 resolution.
Almost Paradise
Here’s a shot taken at the new Southport Broadwater Parklands with some post-work. I really like how it turned out.
Visit deviantART to download the 1920×1080 resolution.
Resize an off-screen window
Tip of the day: To resize/reset an application window in Mac OS X, hold down the Option key while clicking on the Zoom button (Green circle button).
Dell Studio 15: Annoying function keys
With my new Dell Studio 15 laptop, there are a couple of really annoying things. One of them is the function key feature which is turned on by default. This means that instead of having your normal F1, F2, F3 … keys, each of them is assigned a special function which controls video output mode, wireless on/off, battery status, screen brightness, volumn controls and etc. For some users, this feature may be beneficial but for me, I couldn’t stand it especially I need the precious ALT+F4 shortcut to close running applications.
I did a bit of research and found that you can turn this feature off in BIOS (which is also annoying). Why the hell couldn’t they make some sort of utility program in Windows to do this? Anyway, here are the instructions to do the job.
- Make sure the laptop is off and turn it on.
- At the boot screen press F2 to enter the BIOS. (You will see this option towards the lower right corner)
- Once in BIOS, use the right arrow key to navigate to the “Advanced” settings.
- Use the down arrow key to scroll down to “Function Key Behavior”.
- Press the minus key (-) to set the option to “Function Key First”. You will notice that it is set to “Multimedia Key First” by default.
- Press F10 to save and exit the BIOS.
- Your machine will automatically boot and load Windows. Once you’re in, you will notice the function key is switched off now.
Note: I also noticed that the brightness/volume indicators do not appear if you are running the laptop on battery. It only shows up whilst the laptop is plugged in to the power. You will notice that it’s no longer the case once you turned the function key off. Anyway, hope this helps.
Dell Studio 15: dead pixel on arrival
I recently purchased a Studio laptop from Dell’s website and there is a dead pixel on the screen when I unpacked and turned on the unit. I called up Dell support and was quite disappointed when I heard their warranty policy on dead pixel. Apparently, I need to have a minimum of 5 dead pixels in order to lodge a warranty claim with their product.
This is a very bad move coming from a reputable brand (or at least I thought it was). It’s like selling cars and having a disclaimer that says: “Oh, by the way, it is possible that the vehicle may be delivered with mal-functioning wheels. However, this is normal and we expect our customers to be OK with it. Unless you find that 3 or more of the 4 wheels are faulty on delivery, we will not replace your vehicle under any circumstances.”