If you want to delete a single item / entry (or URL) from:

• Firefox’s Address Bar History
• Firefox’s Search Bar (on the top right)
• Firefox’s Text Field Auto-complete (within any web page)

…Simply start typing as you normally would, when it start to give auto-complete suggestions you can use the arrow keys to highlight the entry to you want to delete. Once highlighted, press the delete key and it will delete the single entry. (If for some reason that doesn’t work try Shift+Delete, but you shouldn’t need to)

Now you can clear out the 50 misspellings of your email address you have to see every time a form is filled out.

Start off by opening your functions.php within your WordPress theme folder:
(wp-content\themes\themename\functions.php)
If you don’t have a one, you can create a new file and call it functions.php.

Next copy the following code into your functions.php, save and then upload the file. Watch out for the PHP tags when copying the code, you’ll most likely only need them if you’re starting a blank document.

<?php
// Title Trimmer (Version 3)
// Sam Morris - 12.28.2009
// www.smor.tv
function title_trimmer($title , $maxLength)
{
	$titleLength = strlen($title); // get the amount of characters in the title
	// start conditional
		if ($titleLength > $maxLength) // if the title length is over the max length, then we start the trimming process.
			{
				$trimmedTitle = substr_replace($title,"",$maxLength);
				echo $trimmedTitle;
				//echo $trimmedTitle . "..."; //use this instead of the line above if you prefer having a ... after your trimmed titles.
			}
		else
			{
				echo $title;
			}
}
?>

WordPress has many built in functions, but the functions.php is where you can place your own custom functions. When your theme’s templates are loaded, so will the functions.php allowing you to use your own functions throughout your theme. Open the template that needs the title trimming, or if you just want to try it out you can open single.php (for posts) or page.php (for pages).

find the_title, which is what most themes will use by default. When you find it, you can replace it will the following code. The title trimming function has 2 arguments, the first is what should be trimmed and the second argument is the maximum length of characters. In my example I’m trimming the WordPress title down to a maximum of 10 characters.

<?php title_trimmer(get_the_title() , 10); ?>

Save, upload, and then create a test page or post to see the title trimming in action.

Today I noticed that Windows Explorer in Windows 7 uses around 200-300MB of ram when idle, and as I’m writing this is currently using 1300-1700MB of RAM for reasons unknown to me. I’m not sure why this is, but on top of the fact that it’s using a ton of RAM, it’s roughtly10% less responsive than Windows XP.

To sum it all up…If you upgrade to Windows 7 from Windows XP X64, in my opinion you’re not getting a better or faster operating system. The primary benefit that you’re getting is an operating system that’s supported by Microsoft, as well as all other main stream developers and will be for years to come. For example, installing iTunes on Windows 7 doesn’t take hours on end like it does with Windows XP X64, which is nice…I’m sure I’ll have some more posts complaining about Windows 7 shortly…

Note: This article focuses on the HTC Hero, but should work just as well for the HTC Eris.

The HTC Hero can play a variety of video codecs and formats, but there’s one far better than the rest. That would be the x264 codec, which is the open-source version of the h.264 codec. According to the HTC Hero’s specs it’s able to play x264 mpeg4s (.mp4), so I wasn’t going to settle for anything less. Finding the correct settings turned out to be a close to impossible task, but after some testing I figured it out. My goal was to create a profile in handbrake that could output a video, which would play perfectly smooth, have good quality, and wouldn’t take up too much space.

As for those who don’t know what handbrake is…it’s a open-source application used for encoding and transcoding video into other formats. In my case, going from a DVD to a format that would work on my HTC Hero. handbrake is free, simple, and it isn’t trashy like so many other video converters. It also runs on PC, Mac, and Linux, so it should work on your machine. You can download handbrake from http://handbrake.fr.

Moving on, here’s the end results of my handbrake profile settings. (for creating my x264 HTC Hero videos)

Handbrake Profile Settings

 

Here’s the same results as above, but in a text based version:

Output Settings

• Format: MP4 File
• Large file size: unchecked
• Web optimized: unchecked
• iPod 5G support: unchecked

Picture Settings

Crop

• Crop: Custom
• Top: 0
• Right: 0
• bottom: 0
• left: 0

Size

• Width/Height: 480 x 272 (note – this is for widescreen videos, if your video isn’t widescreen 480 x 320 may work better)
• Anamorphic: None

Filters

• Detelecine: unchecked
• Decomb: unchecked
• Deinterlace: None
• Denoise: None
• Deblock: Off

Video

Video

• Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
• Framerate (FPS): 24 (note – 15 works fine for most videos too, try both and see which you prefer)

Advanced Encoding Settings

• Grayscale Encoding: unchecked
• 2-Pass Encoding: checked
• Turbo first Pass: checked

Quality

• Target Size (MB): leave blank
• Avg Bitrate (kbps): 384 (note – feel free to play with this setting, but as a warning the hero sees my videos at 536kbps when I specify 384kbps in handbrake.)
• Constant Quality: 0%

Audio & Subtitles

Audio Tracks

• 1: Automatic (or choose english)
• Audio Codec: AAC
• Mixdown: Stereo (if you’re going to be using the phone’s speaker you can choose mono)
• Samplerate (kHz): 44.1
• Bitrate (Kbps): 160
• DRC: 1

Subtitles

• Subtitles: None

Chapters

Chapter Markers

• Create chapter markers: unchecked

Advanced

Advanced H.264 Options

• Reference Frames: 2
• Mixed References: unchecked
• B-Frames: 0
• Motion Estimation Method: Uneven Multi-Hexagon
• Motion Estimation Range: Default (16)
• Subpixel Motion Estimation: Default (16)
• Analysis: Default
• 8×8 DCT: unchecked
• Deblocking: Default (0) x Default (0)
• No Fast-P-Skip: unchecked
• No DCT-Decimate: unchecked
• CABAC Entropy Coding: unchecked (note – having this turned on will result in solid green screen when trying to playback video)

Query Editor

Query Editor

• Click the Generate Query button and your command line should look simular to the following (except the file names and paths will be different).

-i “D:\VIDEO_TS” -t 1 -c 1-21 -o “B:\Hero Video\super_troopers.mp4″ -f mp4 -w 480 -l 272 –crop 0:0:0:0 -e x264 -b 384 -2 -T -r 24 -a 1 -E faac -B 160 -R 44.1 -6 stereo -D 1 -x ref=2:me=umh:cabac=0:bframes=0 -C 8 -v

This profile was created on version 0.93 of handbrake, I plan on doing some more in depth tests when I have the time. If anyone discovers improvements for these settings please let me know!

1. Find page.php in your template directory, which can be found at: /wp-content/themes/yourthemename/page.php.
2. Make a copy of the page.php and call it thumb.php.
3. Open up thumb.php and add the following code at the very top of the document. This is the code for creating a Custom WordPress Template.

   <?php
   /*
   Template Name: Thumbnails
   */
   ?>

4. After uploading your new template into the same folder as page.php (/wp-content/themes/yourthemename/), you should make sure it shows up. Create a new page in WordPress and on the right under Template you should see “Thumbnails” in the dropdown. Assuming it’s showing, create a new page using the template and then go back to thumb.php in your editor.
5. Next we’ll add the thumbnail code, which will need to be placed in the loop. The placement will depend on how your theme is programmed, but a good place to start would be below the_title() or above the_content() (search for these in your template). To explain this code, what we’re doing is nothing too different from standard HTML. First a div is created for styling and placement, then a link so the thumbnails will link to the article, and finally the thumbnail itself. Notice that the image src is going to be set by a post meta value of thumb. (which will correspond to a custom field of thumb when creating posts). All of this code is then put in a conditional statement, which tells WordPress to only show the thumbnail code if the post has one defined (otherwise we would get empty divs and broken images).

   <?php if (get_post_meta($post->ID, "thumb", true) != "") : ?>
    <div>
    <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark">
    <img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "thumb", true); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>" />
    </a>
    </div>
   <?php endif;?>
   

6. Save and upload the template again, then create a few test posts and give each a custom field with a name of thumb (which is what we used in the code). Define an image for the value such as http://www.site.com/wp-content/uploads/year/month/image.jpg. Publish your posts and then go to the new page you created using the Thumbnail template. You should see a list of posts, each with the thumbnail you defined.
7. Lastly, if you’re looking for a more automated way of doing this you can use WP Post Thumbnail, which is great for client’s or WordPress users that have limited computer knowledge. It will allow them to upload an image while creating a post, and then resize / crop it (meaning no photoshop or external editor is needed). If you do use this plugin the code will be the same, but the name of your customs fields may be different. The plugin uses a file named wppt.xml to configure the name of the post meta and thumbnail size, etc. This file needs to reside in your theme’s directory NOT the plugin’s directory.
8. How you style your thumbnail class is up to you, but I highly recommend having a fixed width/height with a hidden overflow (overflow: hidden;). This way when a client decides to use a 10 megapixel 3872 x 2592 image as a thumbnail (which does happen), it will get cut off rather than destroying the layout of the site.

Skype Voicemail Options

Of course one of the issues with Google Voice,  are voicemail issues. Not so much with Google Voice itself, but having many phone systems that all have their own built in voicemail services. When I first setup Skype I realized that having voicemail turned on would be problematic, so I unchecked the button labeled “Send unanswered calls to voicemail”. Unfortunately what I did not realized is the voicemail settings are part of the application and don’t effect your Skype account.

A few days ago I was having trouble getting an expected call from a client. None of my 2 phones connected to Google Voice or Skype rang, but a few minutes later voice mails started coming in. Although I was getting no type of notification from Skype that I was getting a call or had a new voicemail, email notifications were being sent to me (Skype notifications, not GV). I noticed Skype froze up and the icon was still showing, but the programing wasn’t responding. After restarting it I got both missed calls and voicemail notifications within Skype.

I have my primary computer turned on all the time so it took me a while before I noticed this issue, but your incoming Google Voice calls will go straight to Skype voicemail if…

• You have Skype turned off
• The computer running Skype is turned off
• Skype has crashed
• Your internet is down or not connected

Of course there’s other phones that will have the same issue… If a cell phone is off it may send calls straight to voicemail, bypassing GV. The problem with Skype is there’s a lot more potential for something to go wrong, like what happened in my case when the program crashed.  I contacted their support asking if I could disable voicemail, so I’ll report back what they say.

Update: After talking with Skype support they said the voicemail issue is being worked on…It sounds like there is no way to completely disable voicemail from within Skype. I wrote back and asked if I can cancel my voicemail subscription (which is included with SkypeIn) without canceling my other services, but since the voicemail is included they won’t let you cancel it.