All posts by at-admin

What sleeping position helps relieve pressure after an appendectomy?

Health

Although not a wonderful sleeping position for everyone, sleeping flat on your back or with a pillow under your knees will put the least amount of pressure on your abdomen.

If you do need to move to keep from getting stiff you might find that placing a pillow under your right side might help (this puts the right side slightly elevated).  If it’s done the other direction it can sometimes put more pressure on the lower right quadrant which is what you want to avoid.

If your surgery was a laparoscopy without complications you’ll likely feel better within 2 weeks although some people will be sore for longer.  Always stay in contact with your doctor if you have knew or persistent pain that isn’t healing.  In rare cases the stump of the appendix that is left behind can become inflamed will mimic all of the effects of full blown appendicitis (which is exactly what it is, just on the stump).

Why does my cod turn brown after desalinating?

food,

The code turning brown is more an action of oxidation and less an action of the desalinating.  When the fish is exposed without skin to oxygen is will face oxidation which will brown things (the same as fruit, salads, etc.).  To slow the oxidation process you can apply lemons to the fish or the water you’re using in the desalination process.

For more Q/A on cooking visit our friends at Cut & Dried.

RocketDock not saving settings on Windows 11

RocketDock,

RocketDock although not having been updated for quite a long time still works on Windows 11.  One of the long time popular plugins for it is the stacks plugin which allows you to show a stack of files from a folder (the folder contain anything, shortcuts, programs, etc).

In Windows 11 RocketDock does not have the proper permissions to save it’s settings files out.  Being from circa 2007 it attempts to store it’s INI files in it’s program files folder and not somewhere where the user would have permissions like the appdata folder.

The fix is to give your user account full control permissions to the following folder:

  • C:\Program Files (x86)\RocketDock

To change the folder permissions you can do the following:

  • Open Windows Explorer
  • Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\RocketDock
  • Right click on the folder and goto properties
  • Click on the security tab
  • Click the ‘Edit’ button.
  • Click the ‘Add’ button and add your user account by name into the ‘Group or user names’ box.
  • Select ‘Allow’ for ‘Full Control’
  • Click ‘Ok’ to close all of the dialogs.

This will fix both saving the settings from RocketDock as well as the settings from the Stacks plugin.

iOS: Contact displaying as “Name Buddy”

ios, , , , ,

An issue can occur in iOS where text messages stop sending to a contact and their display name will displayed as “Name Buddy” (even if you correctly choose them and their name displayed when selecting the recipient).  Additionally, if they have no contact photo you also won’t see their first and last initial in the avatar circle.

Many articles will suggest that logging out of your iCloud account, rebooting and logging back in will fix the issue but that isn’t always the case.

The Fix: The quickest fix with the least amount of risk is deleting the contact for that individual and then creating a new one for them.

Although fix applies to many iOS versions it was last tested on iOS 15.2.

How do I use xargs with a function in bash?

linux, ,

Question: How do I use xargs with a function that I’ve defined in bash?

Answer:

The following example uses the export and runs in a new process which is why the export f switch is needed.


doEcho() {
  echo $1
}

export -f doEcho
echo You echo | xargs -d' ' -t -n1 -P2 bash -c 'doEcho "$@"' _

Note: This function works in bash and will not work in zsh.

In Ubuntu how can I use a shell alias that hasn’t taken effect yet

linux, ,

Question: In Ubuntu how can I use a shell alias that hasn’t taken effect yet?

Answer: After creating an alias during a session the alias doesn’t take effect often until you logout and log back in, an action which triggers a reparse of the alias file. You can immediately execute your new alias though with the eval command. Here is a brief example that will create a ‘test’ alias and map it to ‘ls’ to show you the current directory:


alias test=ls;eval test

How do I brew a sweeter beer?

beer, ,

To increase sweetness without nullifying the yeast you will need to add non-fermentable sugars to the wort. To add sweetness and some body in an extract brew, lactose is the usual adjunct: 1/8 to 3/8 pound in a 5 gallon batch. Lactose is non-fermentable and can be used to increase the sweetness either by adding at boil time or at bottling time.

I can barely hear the call on my iPhone, is my speaker broken?

apple, , ,

Symptom: You can barely hear the audio when making a phone call but the quality is fine when using the speaker phone.  Turning the volume all the way up has no effect.

Fix: iOS during an update likely enabled the noise cancellation setting.  Although this can be useful, it has a habit of making phone calls very difficult to hear when you use the phone with it up to your ear.  Disabling this setting immediately returns phone call volume back to normal.  This setting is located at:

Settings –> Accessibility Phone > Noise Cancellation

In MRI’s, what does pixel shift mean?

science, ,

Question: In MRI’s, what does pixel shift mean?

Answer: A pixel shift, or chemical shift is the signal intensity change in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that results from the differences in the resonant frequencies of moving protons. By observing differences in resonant frequencies of lipid and water, fatty elements within tissue can be confirmed with dedicated chemical shift MRI pulse sequences. Alternatively, the the shift on images obtained with standard MRI pulse sequences may corroborate the diagnosis of lesions with substantial fatty elements. Chemical shift can aid in the diagnosis of lipid-containing lesions of the brain (teratoma, lipoma, and dermoid) or the body (focal fat within the liver, angiomyolipoma and adrenal adenoma). In addition, chemical shift can be implemented to make visceral margins significantly more distinguised from the surrounding tissue.

How can I create a shortcut to start a command prompt as an administrator?

windows,
  • Right click on the desktop or a folder in Explorer and choose “New->Shortcut”
  • Enter “cmd” (without quotes) as the location of the item.
  • Give any name you like
  • Right click on the shortcut icon you created, choose “Properties” and then choose “Advanced”
  • On the “Advanced Properties” dialog choose “Run as Administrator” and then click “OK”
  • Click “OK” again on the properties dialog.

Although this is tagged for Windows 11, it should work for all supported Windows versions.