Shared notes of a writer and software developer
The Short Answer When ClipChamp exports an MP4 file, it saves it with high quality and minimal compression, but the files are often about ten times bigger than they really need to be. After exporting from ClipChamp, use Handbrake to shrink them: Background I recently fell in love with ClipChamp for its easy-to-learn editing capabilities. … Read more
The following very short story was written by ChatGPT 4, inspired by a conversation about creativity and the unknowable. As was its retelling, below. In the dim glow of twilight, nestled between the silken folds of an ancient library’s forgotten corner, I stumbled upon an object of peculiar allure—a lantern, small and unassuming, crafted from … Read more
The Short Answer But I Don’t Have a “Completed” Smart-List! If you don’t see a Completed list in the navigation section on the left side, like this: … then you’ll need to enable the Completed smart-list: Why Isn’t There An Easier Way? No kidding! There are so many UX problems here. Isn’t There a Better … Read more
I’m a lazy blogger. I adopted postach.io as my blogging platform years ago because it allowed me to write a post in Evernote, tag it as “published”, and move on. Behind the scenes, Evernote would sync that post to its own server, and a hook from postach.io would pull it across to their blogging platform. … Read more
Short Answer How Can I Tell If OpenComm Headset Is On? Turning the Headset Off Background When I do a web search for “how to connect shokz opencomm”, the only instructions, search results point me to a brief video. I prefer text instructions, so I can visually skip around to the topics I need. The … Read more
The Short Answer Restart the “Host Network Service” Windows service. How to Restart Host Network Service This can be done in a couple of ways. It’s quite easy to restart the service via the Windows UI. From Windows Start menu, choose Services, scroll to Host Network Service, right-click and choose “Restart” from the context menu … Read more
The Short Answer: Use the SetDefaultBrowser tool made by Christoph Kolbicz. Run it once with no command-line options to see your browsers. Then run something like SetDefaultBrowser.exe HKLM FIREFOX.EXE to switch to Firefox, or SetDefaultBrowser.exe HKLM “Google Chrome” to switch to Chrome. The output of the first call, with no parameters, will tell you exactly what parameters you’ll need to pass in for … Read more
The Problem Excel often shows the “Personal.xlsb is locked for editing” dialog when the application launches — even though you don’t have any other workbooks open. Best Fix (Advanced Users Only): Disable Preview Handler For Excel I’m including this solution… but this is only recommended for advanced Windows users. You should only use this approach … Read more
Once you’ve done all the initial configuration to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic from your Android device through Charles, as described here and here, you might find yourself wanting to quickly enable and disable this network proxy on your device. Manually adding and removing proxy settings via Android’s built-in wifi config UI is time-consuming and slightly cumbersome. Wouldn’t … Read more
The Short Answer: If you have a string with a space in it that should not be broken up when wrapping text, replace the space character with a Unicode non-breaking space: ‘\u00A0’. This character is rendered as a space, but is not treated by line-breaker logic as a word-break. The Longer Version I was just working … Read more