How To’s

How to’s on how to fix things!

How to: Replace and/or Upgrade a Flowtron Starter Bulb

Emmanuel Contreras How To's, Random 0 Comment

Being in Wisconsin, mosquitos a merciless, they will suck all your blood. I bought a Flowtron mosquito repellent lamp off Amazon BK-15D 1/2 acre coverage, unfortunately we used it twice and it stopped working. Bought new bulbs and soon realized that it was the starter. I looked all over the internet and realized that the company was the only one who sold those types of starters anymore. They also weren’t returning my calls to get a new starter bulb or light bulb to see what the problem was.

Doing a bit of research I realized that I could upgrade the starter to use newer fluorescent starters, it would save money and hassle in the future, and hopefully last much longer.

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How to: Create a Magic Mirror 2 with Pi Zero W!

Emmanuel Contreras How To's 45 Comments

photo of magic mirror project

I’ve seen a lot of magic mirror projects and finally decided to make my own 🙂 I don’t spend much time looking in the mirror so I decided to make it instead an entry way mirror.  As I leave the house, I can see my calendar, what the weather should be like, and  motivational quotes. I relied heavily on the post below, just followed step by step, added missing steps, and took out some of the wordiness of the post. Will post pictures once I finish!

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How to: Sync iTunes with Android phone – doubleTwist

Emmanuel Contreras How To's, Random 0 Comment

Unlike most people, I still have a local library of music on my computer, and I don’t like streaming music over 3G/LTE because it uses precious data! Therefore I wanted to find a way to create playlists on my computer and put them on my phone. Unfortunately It wasn’t as straight forward as I hoped, manually copying and pasting music between devices was cumbersome and not idea. Until I found doubleTwist!

So here is my workflow :

  1. Install doubleTwist Sync on your Windows computer!
  2. Create a smart playlist in iTunes that aggregates all songs with 5 stars
  3. Inside doubleTwist ONLY sync this playlist to your phone.

Now whenever you want to add new songs to your Android device, go to itunes, 5 star any new songs you want to add, sync with doubleTwist!

 

How To: Ninja your Google Searches

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Google is great, but with a few tips it can be awesome!! These are the tips I found most helpful to memorize.

Noob Ninja

  • Ignore Spelling (google will correct you)
  • Only unique, descriptive keywords
  • Use quotes for exact match
    • “Pirates are awesome!” 
  • Case insensitive
    • Cats == cats
  • Ignore Special Characters
    • Wont be in the search: @#%^*()=[]\
  • Omit common words
    • a, the i
    • Put them in quotes if they are important: “a”, “the”, “i”

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How to: Install Arduino IDE Ubuntu

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I tried installing Arduino IDE from the repo’s through apt-get but realialized that the Arduino Yun was not listed. So I google some more and eventually installed the newest IDE and arduino Yun was finally listed.

Steps:

  1. Download Arduino IDE (file ending in .tar.xz)
  2. Extract the folder containing the files
  3. IMPORTANT: Move the folder containing the Arduino IDE files into the directory you want it to reside
    1. The installer will rely on this being the location of the Arduino IDE
  4.  In a terminal, cd into the directory containing the Arduino IDE
  5. Run the command $ sudo ./install

Note: When you run ./install, sometimes  desktop shortcut will be created but you wont be the owner (It will show up with an X and a lock) in that case run  $sudo chown <username> ~/Desktop/Arduino-IDE.desktop

How To: Disassemble Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard and make it wired

Emmanuel Contreras How To's 6 Comments

I could not find any tutorials on how to disassemble this keyboard so I thought I’d take pics along the way to disassembling mine. I also decided to make it wired (still with the dongle!!) because I realized that if you lose the dongle, there is no way to replace it and you need to spend another $70 on a new keyboard !!! So I decided to hide it in the body of the keyboard, and that way I will never risk losing it!

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Most useful shortcuts and Tweaks for macOS/Windows/Linux

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This is a list of my most used shortcuts and tweaks for the different operating systems, they can save you a lot of time and make your workflow much faster through the day.

SHORTCUTS

Show/Hide Program Windows

  • macOS ==> F3 (Expose Key)
  • Linux Gnome ==> command Key
  • Windows 10 ==> command + Tab

Lock Screen

  • macOS ==> option + cmd + power == > lock Screen
  • Linux ==> command + L
  • Windows 7/10 ==> command + L

Show Desktop

  • macOS ==> cmd + F3 (Expose)
  • Linux Gnome ==> command + D
  • Windows 10 ==> command + D

Copy or Move Dragged Icon

  • macOS==> Click and drag an icon, hold option/alt before releasing
  • Linux ==> Click and drag an icon, hold ctrl before releasing

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How To: Fix “The following application requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5: Intel® Rapid Storage Technology”

Emmanuel Contreras How To's 0 Comment

I got a startech 5.25 hot swap bay for my computer (Windows 7 on an MSI Z87-G41), hot swap wouldnt actually work. Saw that there was a new Intel® Rapid Storage Technology driver for my motherboard and decided to install it. Unfortunately I got the error “The following application requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5: Intel® Rapid Storage Technology” even though I had .NET 4.7 installed. After a while or looking I came across a post that helped me fix the problem.

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