Walker News

Activate Facebook Timeline

Walker — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:29:08 +0000

Facebook Timeline has been around quite some time, but activation isn’t automatically pushed to all user profiles.

If you have no idea what is that, go watch the video and sample page on Introducing Timeline, and if you buy the idea, there is a green button called “Get Timeline” (bottom-right). So, just click it to activate Facebook Timeline on your profile.

After activation, you’ll see a new presentation for your FB profile. To me, the cover photo feature is simply eye-catching! Besides, it’s darn easy to tell (the world) what I’ve done in this month of last year via timeline next to cover photo, sharing apps activities like what music am listening to (a similar feature exists in Windows Live Messenger/MSN).

Want to have it now? Go get it!

Chinese Calendar For Windows 7 and Windows 8

Walker — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:11:11 +0000

For people who are searching Chinese calendar for Windows, I would recommend them to try Microsoft Chinese Date & Time, a good old freeware made for Windows XP but also works perfectly on Windows 7 and even the latest Windows 8 (tested on Developer Preview edition).

Besides displaying Chinese lunisolar calendar system (农历; pinyin: nónglì) alongside the Gregorian date, this freeware also features four configurable clocks for displaying current time in other time zones with reference to system time. If the two additional clocks of Windows Vista/7/8 is not sufficient, you could top up another 4 clocks from this freeware!

The screenshot shows today is the fifth day of Chinese New Year 2012, the year of Dragon. You can certainly find out the Gregorian date of Qingming Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Winter Solstice Festival, Solar term (节气; pinyin: jiéqì), etc.

How To Check DB2 Table Size?

Walker — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:32:07 +0000

For IBM DB2 v9.x users who would like to find out the total physical disk space used by a table, you can get the estimated table size from SysIbmAdm.AdminTabInfo administrative view.

Besides, DBA can also retrieve logical size of table from AdminTabInfo. For detail information, please refer to IBM DB2 9.7 LUW official guide.

This guide is tested on both DB2 9.7 and DB2 9.1 installed on Redhat Enterprise Linux 5.7.

For example, the following SQL SELECT statement is used to display physical size of each table in a database, sorted in ascending order (run it at Linux/Windows command prompt as DB2 CLI command):

db2 "SELECT SUBSTR(TabSchema,1,15), SUBSTR(TabName,1,15), TabType, (Data_Object_P_Size + Index_Object_P_Size + Long_Object_P_Size + Lob_Object_P_Size + Xml_Object_P_Size) as Total_P_Size FROM SysIbmAdm.AdminTabInfo ORDER BY Total_P_Size"

If you only interested in checking table size of particular table or schema, just use WHERE clause to get specific result.

How To Hard Reset Android Tablets?

Walker — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:13:36 +0000

For those who own a tablet running Android 3.x (a.k.a. Honeycomb) and for some reasons would like to hard reset the Android tablet during boot-up, here is an official video guide from Acer Support team.

The video reference is based on Acer Iconia Tab A500/501, but this well-known secret of performing press-and-hold “Volume Up” key when power on tablet to activate hard reset process should be applicable to other Android tablets running Honeycomb version.

NOTE: Make sure you’ve backup the data on the tablet prior to hard reset, as the process wipe off all user data, including installed application, while restoring the Android settings to factory default.

For better visibility, change the video streaming mode from 360p to 720p (HD) or 1080p (Full HD) in full-screen view:

1. Press and hold down both the volume+ key and power button.

2. When the tablet vibrates, release ONLY the power button (i.e. keep the volume+ button pressed and hold).

3. Immediately after release power button, slide the Screen Rotation Lock switch to the right then left.

4. Now, you should see the black screen showing “Erasing userdata…” then followed by “Erasing cache…”. Job done.

How To Configure Android 3.2.1 Proxy Setting?

Walker — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:51:11 +0000

As you may know, Android 3.1 supports HTTP proxy for each connected wireless access point. If your goal is to save bandwidth or reduce data usage by having web browsing on tablets to go through proxy server, then this built-in proxy feature is there to help.

Here, the guide is made with reference to Acer Iconia Tab A500 running Android 3.2.1 (a.k.a. Honeycomb):

1. Click on the time display at bottom-right corner followed by Settings icon.

2. Click Settings from the overlay menu. Make sure the tablet is already connected to Wi-Fi access point (AP) and then only click “Wi-Fi settings”.

3. Perform tap-and-hold on the connected Wi-Fi AP until you see the “modify network” option pops up and then click on it. You should see “connected” on the first AP displayed in “Wi-Fi Networks” section, if the Android tablet is connecting to the wireless network.

4. There you’ll see option to set HTTP proxy setting for Android web browsing.

How To Find New Facebook Personalized Upload Email Address?

Walker — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:22:45 +0000

The previous trick for finding your Facebook personalized upload email address is not applicable now. In fact, its name has also changed to “personal publishing address”.

As its name says, Facebook personal publishing address allows one to post photo or video on the Wall without logging in Facebook. If you’re interested in this feature, find yours personalized email address from Facebook Mobile Web:

1. Browse to m.facebook.com and log in to your account.

Note, HTTPS secured connection is not currently available on Facebook mobile site even you’ve enabled “secure browsing” in your account settings.

2. Click the upload photo link:

3. There you’ll see your unique personal publishing address:

With reference to official guide about Facebook personalized upload email address.

Direct Download Windows 8 Developer Preview ISO Image Files

Walker — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:11:31 +0000

For everyone who is interested to install and use Windows 8, now you can directly download official ISO image file of Windows 8 Developer Preview version (a pre-beta version) from Microsoft website.

NOTE: This Windows 8 Developer Preview version is not suitable for normal users or used in production environment, as it includes prerelease software that may contain bugs and security risks.

For those who are curious to see how Windows 8 looks like without installing the Windows Developer Preview version, here is one of the video presented by Steven Sinofsky:

For testers, developers, advanced users, people who desperately want to have their hands on Windows 8, you can certainly download the official Windows Developer Preview ISO image files for installing on Intel/AMD platform (Windows 8 can also run on ARM processor platform but this version is not available yet in this collection):

Windows Developer Preview with developer tools (English) (64-bit) (4.8GB)
SHA-1: 6FE9352FB59F6D0789AF35D1001BD4E4E81E42AF

Windows Developer Preview (English) (64-bit) (3.6GB)
SHA-1: 79DBF235FD49F5C1C8F8C04E24BDE6E1D04DA1E9

Windows Developer Preview English (32-bit) (x86) (2.8 GB)
SHA-1: 4E0698BBABE01ED27582C9FC16AD21C4422913CC

The minimum system requirement to install Windows 8 is similar to Windows 7:

1GHz CPU (64-bit CPU is required to install 64-bit Windows 8)
1GB RAM (for 32-bit) or 2GB (if 64-bit Windows is installed)
16GB free hard disk space (for 32-bit) or 20GB (for 64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0
Touchscreen monitor that supports multi-touch (optional if not testing Windows 8 touchscreen user interface)