Ask Owen

I’ve recently started using Pinterest and I’m really enjoying sharing my pics. Recently someone has been posting some unsavory pics and I’d like to stop following them. Haven’t figured out how to do that though. Any tips?

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I have a desktop PC on which I have installed both Windows XP and the Ubuntu operating system. Until recently Windows XP was set as the default operating system, starting automatically 10 seconds after the computer was switched on. Recently, though, I was invited to upgrade to Ubuntu 11, which I did, and now Ubuntu is set as the default operating system (again starting automatically after 10 seconds). I can select Windows XP but I want to reset the boot menu so that Windows XP is shown as the default operating system. How can I do this?

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Once upon a time, I typed in the wrong URL for a website and now IE9 keeps suggesting it to me from the moment I get past the ‘www’. bit. I’ve tried deleting my history, but it still won’t go away. Where is Internet Explorer getting these frozen-in-time website names from and how do I erase them?

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I’ve just gone to my website and found that it’s showing links to an unsavory site. I didn’t put them there and they weren’t there last week. Can you give me some pointers as to what I should be looking at?

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I’m writing a plugin for WordPress and I have a table with a AUTO_INCREMENT primary key field called ID. When a new row is inserted into the table, I’d like to get the ID value of the insertion. How do I do this?

I ran into this the other day and tried using is a method called mysql_insert_id which is the standard PHP way of doing this.It didn’t quite work though, as my queries were all going through the WordPress class $wpdb and I couldn’t guarantee that my query was the last thing that was being executed.

Well, it turns out that one can use the class varialbe $wpdb->insert_id which is updated with mysql_insert_id when your INSERT is completed. Now that’s easier than finding a Arai Signet-q when you’re really looking for one right?

Instead of getting broadband for my house, I decided instead to buy a 3G broadband dongle on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) contract for use with my laptop. This works reliably most of the time but sometimes the internet connection disappears. Is there anything I can do about it?

The intermittent reception on your 3G signal is possibly caused by external interference. As you’re probably aware, 3G broadband dongles use radio waves and, like any other kind of radio signal, reception can be affected by outside influences such as someone using a microwave oven or cordless phone nearby.

As such, unless there’s any particular frequency to it then there’s probably little hope of finding the cause. That said, if you’re sufficiently keen to resolve this annoyance, then we would suggest keeping a diary of the events for a week or two: if the connection dropouts occur at particular times of the day, then this may help isolate the culprit. You may be able to take it up with your telecoms provider and request their help to find out exactly what’s going on. 3G signals tend to vary from provider to provider (look at the indigo-3g results) and sometimes switching to another provider could also help alleviate the problem.

I’ve got a wifi network at home and would like to hook up my Xbox to my PC to play music. How do I do this?

I’ve looked up the instructions on how to do this and it seems quite straightforward. Here’s what you do (I’m assuming both your PC and your XBOX are on the network already and you’re using a pretty recent copy of Windows)

First of all you need to set up media sharing so that you can share music and other digital media with your Xbox 360. The following steps describe how to set up media sharing in Windows Media Player 11.

To set up media sharing in Windows Media Player 11

• In Windows Media Player 11, click the arrow below the Library tab, and then click Media Sharing.
• In the Media Sharing dialog box, select the Share my media check box, and then click OK.
• In the list below the Share my media to check box, click your Xbox 360 , click Allow, and then click OK.

Now to play music streamed from your computer on Xbox 360

• Using your Xbox 360 controller, select the media blade.
• Select music.
• Select Computer.
• On the Windows-based PC screen, select Yes, Continue.
• After a few moments, your computer with the shared media name should appear.
• Under Select your computer, select your computer and the shared media name.
• Find the music that you want to play, and then select Play.
• The music streams from your computer to your Xbox 360.

There you go, not terribly different and regardless whether your music collection contains latest hits or tracks used Acoustic Guitars you’ll be able to stream them to your heart’s content!

I was speaking to a developer friend of mine who told me he pulled some images out of a JAR file. What’s that and how do I pull stuff out of it?

The letters J.A.R. stand for Java ARchive and it’s really similar is structure to a standard ZIP file. In fact, most archiving software will open up this archive and show you the files that live inside it. If you really want to look inside it, I would recommend using 7-Zip which is a free archiving package.

Obviously JAR files are more useful it you actually want to execute them. In order to do this you need a JRE, a Java Runtime Environment which you can download for free too. Once your JRE is installed, all you need to do is double-click on your JAR file and the application will execute, whether it’s a dvd discount voucher application, a game or any other JAR file you may have downloaded.