Hack Windows Taskbar Thumbnail Size and Time

This is just another cool link to another two useful post to hack the taskbar thumbnail in Windows 7.

To go to Lifehacker post that explain how to change the size of thumbnail, click here.

And this is post from How-to Geek to change how much time delay the thumbnail will show up after the mouse hover to that Taskbar. I use it to change to show up instantly, though.

Adding Keyboard Language

In my daily life, I usually use more than one language. I can say I’ve been living in multilingual culture and I’m thankful for that. In my hometown, I mostly use Indonesian and some Chinese language with my friends and family while I use English in internet while now in Malaysia I mostly use English and Mandarin and listen to Cantonese (I can only speak little, and I mean really little Cantonese). It’s funny and quite entertaining and sometimes feels weird.

Anyway, the important part is I need more than one input option. I’ve been wanting to search for way for it, but laziness beats me. So, when I found post of How-To Geek that shows me how to do it, it’s like Heaven sent gift. My overflowing RSS feeds in Google Reader is worth it just because of some great posts like those.

Basically, in Windows Vista and 7, adding Asian keyboard language is really easy. You just have  to tinker with the Control Panel a little. This is how I add Chinese in Windows 7, but the basic idea for Vista and other language should be there.

Start > Control Panel > Change keyboards and other input methods > Change keyboards >

You should arrive in some place like in the screenshot. From there, click Add… and add language you want. For some shortcut to change language, go to Advanced Key Settings tab. As you can see from the image, I choose Chinese Simplified Quan Ping because in my opinion, it’s the easiest Chinese input to use.

In Windows XP, adding the Asian language is a little bit more complicated. Head to the full post of How-to Geek to see the full screenshot and How-to.

Happy Geek-ing!

Add Time Log to Notepad

I remember the time  when I had an internet connection which limit my usage to 15 hours (it doesn't as long time ago as it sounds, it’s just few months ago). If I use it more than that, I (well, to be exact, it’s my parent who have to pay) have to pay more. As I’m a good, kind-hearted, thoughtful, caring (insert all good characteristic here, haha!) child, I try to use it not more than 15 hours. So every time I browsed, I just type how much time I have used so I can limit my internet usage. But I have to type the date and time manually.

It turns out there’s a way to make notepad automatically add date and time.

1. Open Notepad 
2. Type .LOG 
3. Save and exit

It will look like something showed in picture above. See how easy is that? Next time you open the notepad, it will automatically type the date and time.

You can use it as handy diary if you want. I still don’t know what’s the use for me now but knowing there’s such a great easy hack kind of make me feel happy and sad at the same time. Happy because it’s great, sad because I don’t know about it when I need it, when I know it, I don’t need it anymore. Life is sure great.