Tips, tricks & tools

If you want to use a SATA (Serial ATA) drive as your Windows system drive, then you’ve probably already found out that the Windows XP install CD doesn’t contain any SATA drivers, which means it can’t see your SATA drive, and therefore can’t install Windows onto it – unless you make your own XP install disc…
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I recently found a really easy way to backup Blogger blogs in RSS format – which is useful if you want to then import the posts somewhere else.

All you need to do is visit the address below – if you’ve got more than 1000 posts, then change the number at the end:

http://YourBlogName.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

Then just save the source, and you’re done. If you want to save all your images, then have a look at the excellent Firefox plugin DownThemAll.

If you monetize your websites using Google AdSense, the last thing you want to do is accidently click your own ads. To completely disable AdSense on your PC, here’s what your should do.

1. Open your hosts file using Notepad. Depending on what version of Windows you’re using, it can be found here:

Windows 95 – C:windows
Windows 98 – C:\windows
Windows Me – C:\windows
Windows 2000 – C:windows\system32\drivers\etc
Windows XP – C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
Windows NT – C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc
Windows Vista – C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
Windows 7 – C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

2. Paste this at the bottom of the file:

127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com

3. Restart your browser – AdSense should be GONE!

It’s easy enough to backup the text content of a WordPress.com blog using Manage > Export to download it in XML format – this can easily be imported into any recent version of WordPress. But if you want to backup all the images you’ve uploaded to WordPress.com without downloading them one by one, download and install the excellent Firefox extension DownThemAll, then go to your WordPress blog’s Manage > Media Library page and set DownThemAll to download all your image links on the page.

If you’ve been lazy (like me) and let hundreds of pending links accumulate in your PHPLD directory, here’s a simple way to delete all the pending links in one go. Start up phpMyAdmin, go to the SQL page and run this this query:
DELETE FROM PLD_LINK WHERE STATUS = 1

If you want to approve all pending links, use this instead:
UPDATE PLD_LINK SET STATUS=2 WHERE STATUS=1

I’ve been playing around with the free visitor map widget from amung.us. It takes about 15 seconds to setup, and has several reasonably nice looking themes – go here and check it out.