Millions of numbers, numbers for me…

When was the last time you did something completley useless?

Go buy a number for free!

Setting the default browser for Adobe AIR

Now I’m quite an AIR fan so far, all applications I use on a daily basis run stable and look smooth. The one thing that has been annoying me is that whenever I click a link in an AIR application such as Twhirl or Snackr, it would always open the link in Internet Explorer instead of Firefox which is set as my default browser.

Apparently this is only an issue under Vista and also here and can be quickly resolved with the following steps:

• Go to “Start” -> “Default Programs” -> “Set Program Access and Computer Defaults”
• Expand the Custom section and select the option next to the application you want to set as the system-wide default browser (for example Firefox), and then click OK.

Suddenly the links will open in the correct browser. The next version of AIR should also get rid of this little bug…

Data Menu not available (grayed out) in Excel 2007…

Just a quick one, I was playing around with endless Excel sheets yesterday and wanted to perform some filtering but for some strange reason all items in the quick access toolbar under “Data” were not available to me. They were simply greyed out all the time.

After a relatively short but frustrating search for a reason I noticed that it said [Group] up in the title bar after the file name.

Now group mode is very useful when you are editing several worksheets at once, all changes you make to one worksheet are made to all others in the group as well, but certain functions, such as all “Data” tools are disabled.

So, how to turn off group mode? Simple, just right-click any of the sheet tabs in the bottom of the screen that are in the group and choose “Ungroup Sheets” from the context menu. You will notice which sheets are grouped because their tabs at the bottom of the screen will all be white.

Once you ungrouped the sheets all your tools are back at your command.

Solutions to all Aurora Feint tower puzzles…

Just a small update, if you are looking for the sollutions to all Aurora Feint II Tower Puzzles check this blog post.
Below you will find the solutions to all original Tower Puzzles in the very first Version of AF.

Since I’ve been playing this game rather excessivley lately I thought I’d share the solutions to the Tower puzzles with you, since some of them can be rather annyoing. So here we go:

Wind 1 – Eastern Breeze: 1 move

Swap the middle fire and wind marbles and you’re done.

Wind 2 – Western Breeze: 3 moves

Tilt right, swap top row water and shadow marbles, tilt left.

Wind 3 – Southern Breeze: 4 moves

Swap bottom row earth and fire, swap bottom row earth and water, swap bottom row earth and wind, move right earth over to the other two.

Wind 4 – Northern Breeze: 2 moves

Move top wind marble left, move water marble right.

Water 1 – Summer Rain: 1 move

Swap middle fire and water marbles.

Water 2 – Winter Rain: 2 moves

Tilt right, swap middle fire and water marbles.

Water 3 – Spring Rain: 2 moves

Move the bottom left water marble one to the left and then swap the two top earth and wind marbles. (Thanks to Joseph for the screenshot…)

Water 4 – Fall Rain: 2 moves

Just move the top Water tile over to the right by 2 fields.

Earth 1 – Natural Growth: 1 move

Move top shadow marble one field to the left.

Earth 2 – Sand Storm: 2 moves

Swap bottom row earth and fire marbles, move remaining top wind marble to the right.

Earth 3 – Majestic Mountain: 2 moves

Tilt right then swap bottom earth and fire marbles.

Earth 4 – Rolling Hills: 4 moves

Swap top middle earth and fire, tilt right, tilt left, swap remaining earth and fire marble.

Shadow 1 – Moon Shadow: 3 moves

Tilt right, swap wind and shadow marbles, swap fire and water marble.

Shadow 2 – Shooting Star: 1 move

Swap middle water and fire marble.

Shadow 3 – Black Nothingness: 3 moves

Bottom water marble left. Bottom earth marble left. Top fire marble right.

Shadow 4 – Silver Moon: 4 moves

Tilt up (turning away from you), tilt left, swap middle water and shadow tile, move remaining top water tile to the right.

Fire 1 – Wild Fire: 2 moves

Swap 1st left water with fire tile, swap 2nd left water with fire tile.

Fire 2 – Volcanic Ash: 4 moves

Tilt left, “drop” the 2 fire marble on the bottom one, and tilt right

Fire 3 – Scorching Flame: 3 moves

Move the leftmost water tile one field to the right, then swap the leftmost earth tile with the water tile next to it, tilt right to finish.

Fire 4 – Original Molten Lava: 2 moves

There are apparently two methods to solve this one:

Method 1:
Hold the iPhone/iPod in upright position with the screen facing away from you.
Turn it upside down and turn your device counter-clockwise JUST when the blocks reach the bottom.
This method requires perfect timing and quite some luck ;)

Method 2:
When you start the level, hold your phone upside down.
When the marbles start falling, press the “menu” button to pause the game.
Then rotate the phone to the right (top part will be to the right).
Un-pause the game and its done.

After about 30+ tries I got method 2 to work for me, frustrating but it works eventually…

UPDATED: Fire 4 – Molten Lava in the new Version: 2 moves

Tilt up, tilt right, done. The new version is pretty simple…

Creating a ringtone for your iPhone

Okay a few people have asked how you can create your own personal ringtone for the iPhone, so here we go:

1. You will need a 20 to 30 second piece of music you want to use as a ringtone. Now there are a couple of ways to get this 30 second clip, for instance you could use a free mp3 editor such as audacity, or even simpler you could do it directly in iTunes as follows.
2. Open iTunes and select the title you would like to use as your ringtone. After you have selected the title press Apple + I (or on PCs Ctrl + I), this will bring up the information window. Once there head to the “Options”-tab.
3. Here you can fill out the fields “Start at:” and “Stop at:” to define the start and end of your 30 second ring-tone. For instance if you want to use the first 30 seconds of a song enter “0:00″ for start and “0:30″ for stop. 30 seconds is the maximum you can use for a ringtone. Click “Ok” to exit the “Information” dialog.
4. Next you need to convert this mp3 into an AAC, either by going to the menu “Advanced” -> “Convert selection to AAC” or by right-clicking the track and and then choosing the option “Convert selected to AAC”. This will create a second file with the same title but only for the 30 second clip you selected in step 3.
5. Drag this clip onto your desktop and change its file extension from “.m4a” to “.m4r”. This will change it to a ringtone file.
6. Double click the file to automatically add it to your music library, it should now appear under the heading “Ringtones”.
7. Now just sync your iPhone and enjoy your personal homemade ringtone…