Serif PagePlus, merging multiple documents (.ppp) together into one (single) document

Say you have two or more Serif PagePlus (*.ppp) files and want to merge them together into one file. You can accomplish this with the below steps

1. Open the first document in PagePlus (this will be your final merged document)

2. Go to the last page in the document

3. From menu option choose, Insert and then Publication

4. Select your second document and click Open

5. Select option "After the current page" and click OK

6. Repeat steps 2 to 5 as much as you need (ie; for all your rest of the docuuemnts that need merging)

7. Use File, Save As option to Save the new merged document to disk

Cordova add local notifications with default sound

1. add plugin Local-Notification
cordova plugin add https://github.com/katzer/cordova-plugin-local-notifications

2. To test a sample, In onDeviceReady, add below. This will show the notification after about a minute after you launch your app. You can close the app or minimize it (ie; go launch another app or go to home page)

        var date = new Date();

        date = new Date(date.getTime() + 1 * 60000) // add a minute from now

        cordova.plugins.notification.local.schedule({

            id: 1,

            title: "My Notification Title",

            message: "My Notification Body",

            at: date,

            sound: "res://platform_default"

        });

Android emulator add ringtone and notification sounds

The default android emulator do not come with any sounds, like ringtones or notification sounds. You can check this by going to the settings --> Sound option and see whats set for ringtone or notifications. By default, this will be set as None.

To add sounds locate mp3 file(s) you want to use and put it into a folder, for example create a  folder sounds and copy the file(s) there. you can download some from www.freesound.org if needed

Run the AVD (Android Virtual Device) manager and click edit on the AVD name you want to use. Make sure SD card option is selected and a size is provided.  About 100MB will be more than enough. Click OK to and close.

Now fire up the emulator ( by clicking start in AVD manager) and once its running, come to the command prompt. Assuming you have android tools in your path (ex: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\") , issue below command
adb devices

If all is well, it should show the emulator device details we are connecting to.
for example

C:\>"C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe" devices
List of devices attached
emulator-5554   device

Make a note of the below folders

SD-Card
/mnt/sdcard/alarms
/mnt/sdcard/notifications
/mnt/sdcard/ringtones

Form commands like below to copy the mp3 files to your emulator where sounds is the folder where you have stored your local copy of mp3 files to be copied

C:\Users\myname\Downloads>adb push sounds /mnt/sdcard/ringtones
push: sounds/ding.mp3 -> /mnt/sdcard/ringtones/ding.mp3
1 file pushed. 0 files skipped.
584 KB/s (24912 bytes in 0.041s)

C:\Users\myname\Downloads>adb push sounds /mnt/sdcard/notifications
push: sounds/ding.mp3 -> /mnt/sdcard/notifications/ding.mp3
1 file pushed. 0 files skipped.
619 KB/s (24912 bytes in 0.039s)

Now restart your emulator, and the sounds should show up in setting. You can select the appropriate sounds now!

You may even skip the SD card and directly copy to the system folders (I haven't tested this)
Android OS System
/system/media/audio/alarms
/system/media/audio/notifications
/system/media/audio/ringtones

Visual studio message - Your license has gone stale and must be updated

Running Visual Studio 2015 on Windows 2012 R2, and suddenly a popup came saying "Your license has gone stale and must be updated"

Clicking the update licence gave an error download of licence failed. Sign out and sign in also did not work. The only other option was to exit visual studio, and that's not very helpful at all.

After numerous google searches, figured that the issue is about UAC. To solve, I followed the below steps

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Search UAC
3. Click on Action Center, Change User Account Control Settings
4. Make a note of the current slider setting
5. Turn the slider all the way to the bottom (ie; Never notify option) and click OK
6. Go back to visual studio and check the update license, and voila, the licence updated
7. Revert UAC original setting by going back to UAC and apply the original value (Step 4)

Scania Truck Driving Simulator Brake and Accelerator switched in controller pedal

I got the Ferrari 458 Italia Racing Wheel for XBox360 and PC and hooked it up to my PC to play Scania Truck Driving Simulator

This may work for any steering wheel controller for this game

However, after starting the game, I found that the accelerator and brake are swapped. ie; Press the brake in the pedals and the truck go forward. Press the accelerator in the pedals and the truck will break and stop.. and press it further, it will go reverse!

To make it work, I had to make the following changes.

1. Run the game and create a profile
2. Start any game (example freeform driving) and then press escape to find options
3. Make sure Keyboard + controller is selected and in the controller selection, click and press your Brake and Accelerator to register under Acceleration Axis and Brake Axis. The both should register as Joystick Z axis.  Also you can notice that see that they work opposite
4. Now quit the game 
5. In windows go to the following location :- C:\Users\\Documents\SCANIA Truck Driving Simulator\profile\44696E. Note that 44696E may not be the profile you see.. if you have only one profile in the game, there is only one folder here. 
6. Inside this folder you can see file controls.sii
7. This is a text file, so open this file in your favorite text editor, example notepad
8. Locate the following lines in the file
• config_lines[124]: "mix aforward `normalize(sel(c_jcombined, -j_throttle?0, (-j_throttle?1 * -0.5 + 0.5)), c_throt_dz)`"
• config_lines[125]: "mix abackward `normalize(sel(c_jcombined, j_brake?0, (j_brake?1 * -0.5 + 0.5)), c_brake_dz)`"
9. Change -j_throttle to j_throttle and j_brake to -j_brake
• config_lines[124]: "mix aforward `normalize(sel(c_jcombined, j_throttle?0, (j_throttle?1 * -0.5 + 0.5)), c_throt_dz)`"
• config_lines[125]: "mix abackward `normalize(sel(c_jcombined, -j_brake?0, (j_brake?1 * -0.5 + 0.5)), c_brake_dz)`"
10. Save the file
11. Run the game again, and now the throttle and brake should be working as it should be!

Windows 8, 8.1, 10 File explorer crashes after some time or clicking on the desktop

Please try below as solution:

Control Panel ==> Appearance and Personalization ==> file explorer options ==> click 'Clear' button next to Clear File Explorer history


if you are in explorer, you can copuy paste below in the address bar
Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\File Explorer Options

IIS Unable to start debugging on the web server

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Microsoft Visual Studio
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Unable to start debugging on the web server. Could not start ASP.NET debugging. More information may be available by starting the project without debugging.

Click Help for more information.
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OK   Help  
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Solution: Please check to make sure the app pool you are debugging against is running. If its stopped, visual studio will give this error message