Software Tricks

OverlayFrame – Easily Mark Your Live Streaming & Recording Area

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Why I created OverlayFrame

I recently started using OBS Studio to record and share only part of my screen during video calls. It’s an amazing free tool — you can learn more and download it here: https://obsproject.com.

This setup is especially useful for my large 43-inch 4K monitor. Sharing the entire 4K screen makes text too small for viewers, while sharing only one application window means constant switching when using multiple windows.

However, I ran into one problem — it’s difficult to know exactly which part of the screen is being captured or shared. I searched through OBS settings and online guides but couldn’t find a way to display a simple border marking the capture area.

That’s when I decided to create OverlayFrame — a lightweight tool that displays a configurable on-screen frame, clearly showing the exact area being recorded or streamed. You can easily adjust and save the frame’s position, size, color, and border thickness to match your workflow.

Example use case on 43-inch 4K monitor

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Free Upgrade to Windows 10, Still

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I recently purchased a second hand PC, that it came with Windows 7 preinstalled. I have already upgrade the OS in my laptop from Windows 8 to Windows 10 and I am quite used to Windows 10 features, especially the mouse scroll feature that doesn’t require the windows to be on focus. This feature is not available in Windows 7 which really bother me dealing with multi windows.

Microsoft did offer Windows 10 free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 user but I missed that window that ended on 29th July 2016. Searching for alternative way for Windows 10 free upgrade, it brought me to a few page saying that the free upgrade is still possible now (end Dec 2016) by accessing this page (link)

Windows 10 Upgrade Page

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Bluetooth Keyboard on Dual Boot Windows and Ubuntu

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I’ve recently started to use Apple Wireless (bluetooth) keyboard and it is really a very great keyboard (more info here). I felt like I can type faster and more accurate using this keyboard. The only downside of this keyboard is the lack of dedicated Delete key. To execute a Delete, I will need to press fn + delete key.

Other than that, the main problem of using Bluetooth keyboard and having dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 is that I will need to re-pair the bluetooth keyboard everytime I switch from one OS to another. The reason behind this is that the device actually create a unique key (store in both the OS and the Keyboard) every time it pair with an OS, but when the OS is being switch to another one, the unique key doesn’t match because the stored unique key on the keyboard is meant for the previous OS.

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Windows “Tricks Microsoft Can’t Explain” — Actually Explained

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An old chain email used to circulate claiming these were "tricks Microsoft can’t explain." They’re all real behaviours — and one popular claim is an outright hoax — but none of them are actually unexplained. Here’s what’s really going on with each.

1. You can’t name a folder "CON"

True, and it’s not a mystery. CON, along with PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1–COM9 and LPT1–LPT9, are reserved device names that Windows inherited from MS-DOS. The system treats them as hardware devices (CON = console), so it won’t let you use them as ordinary file or folder names. It’s documented behaviour, not a bug.

2. "Bush hid the facts" in Notepad

In old versions of Notepad, typing this phrase (or any 4-3-3-5 letter pattern) and reopening the file showed garbled characters. This was a flaw in the way Notepad auto-detected text encoding (the IsTextUnicode function) — it mistook the plain ASCII bytes for Unicode. It was a known bug and no longer happens in modern Windows.

3. =rand(200,99) in Microsoft Word

Typing =rand(200,99) and pressing Enter fills the document with text. Again, not magic — it’s a documented Word feature. =rand(p,s) inserts p paragraphs of s sentences of placeholder text, handy for testing page layouts.

4. The "Q33N" 9/11 flight number in Wingdings

A long-running chain email claims that a flight which hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 was numbered Q33N, and that if you type Q33N in Notepad or Word, increase the font size, and change the font to Wingdings, you see a plane, two documents, a skull, and a Star of David.

This is a hoax. None of the four aircraft involved in the September 11 attacks had the flight number Q33N — they were American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 175 and 93. The Wingdings symbols are simply that font’s normal glyphs for those letters; you can type almost any characters and get a row of pictures. It’s a coincidence dressed up as a hidden message, and it has been widely debunked. We’ve kept it here only to set the record straight.

Control iTunes using Multimedia Key on Your PC

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⚠️ Archived post. This article is from 2011 and is kept for historical reference. The product or service it describes has since been discontinued or significantly changed, so the steps and links below may no longer work.
I am not sure if you use iTunes as the MP3 player on your PC or Mac, but since my Windows Media Player loss all my MP3 libraries and failed to add new MP3 to it, I start using iTunes, and I am kind of love it over Windows Media Player. You can download iTunes for PC from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/. The print screen of my iTunes: image

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Run Multiple Dropbox on Your PC at The Same Time

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⚠️ Archived post. This article is from 2011 and is kept for historical reference. The product or service it describes has since been discontinued or significantly changed, so the steps and links below may no longer work.
Dropbox is an useful application that automatically sync your files on multiple PCs and even your handphone. More info about dropbox here. You can create your Dropbox account and get the Dropbox installer for free from http://www.dropbox.com. For free account user like me, you are only allowed to put maximum 2GB of file into your Dropbox. To get larger space, you can either pay for Pro account or you can run multiple 2GB free account on your PC. I will shows the step by step on how to have multiple Dropbox running on your PC at the same time. The first step is to visit http://nionsoftware.com/dbpahk/ and download the latest DropboxPortableAHK from the page, or you can get the download link at the end of this article.

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Drop all your important files into your Dropbox

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Do you bring your pendrive from home to work at the morning and bring that pendrive back from work to home everyday? Do you ever forgot to bring your pendrive or left your pendrive at office? Or do you ever loss your pendrive? You can now forget your pendrive and start using Dropbox. http://www.dropbox.com/Dropbox Logo

Dropbox is an application (or you can call it a service) that enable you to have a folder (default name “My Dropbox”) that you can access either from your Office PC or your Home PC, or any other PC you want. You can access files at your Office PC that you put to that folder at your Home PC. The “My Dropbox” folder will always be sync between all the PC you have or even your Iphone. One nice thing about Dropbox is you can create a free account with free storage up to 2GB http://www.dropbox.com/. The video below show detail information about the Dropbox:

Get a free account now: http://www.dropbox.com/

Easy method to send out exe file in your email or chat program

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Have you ever face problem trying to send out an exe file, either using email (Gmail, Yahoo Mail) or chat program (Google Talk, MSN Live Messenger)? Most of the email provider like Gmail, prevent the user to send out exe file, even if you zip the exe file.

image The “RED” message pop out after I click the Send button. “WebcamViewer V1.0.zip contains an executable file. For security reasons, Gmail does not allow you to send this type of file. Your message has been moved back to Drafts.”

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