Sublime Text 2 opens “instant file search” instead of printing left square bracket in Windows

This problem only appears on certain keyboards and languages where left and right square brackets are placed on letters F and G. Even if you have similar problem with different keyboard or key binding /letters you can still use this solution.

I was using Sublime Text 2, which is really fantastic editor, on Windows 7 and encountered a weird problem. When I pressed AltGr+F Sublime Editor 2 didnt print “[” (left square bracket) – it opened Instant File Search tool instead.

The reason for this is that Windows sees AltGr as Ctrl+Alt, and therefore AltGr+F will be understood as Ctrl+Alt+F, which is a default keymap for Instant File Search tool.

To fix this you need to override the default Ctrl+Alt+F shortcut so it will insert the desired character by inputting that shortcut in user key-bindings.

Do this:
1. Select “Preferences > Key Bindings – User” in Sublime Text 2 menu
2. Paste the following code there:

[
{ "keys": ["ctrl+alt+f"], "command": "insert", "args": {"characters": "["} }
]

If your Key Bindings – User file is not empty then just add the code without the square brackets (line 1 and 3) and dont forget to add comma at the end or at the begging of the line.

Small font of command window (cmd) on Windows 7

Every now and then when I start the command prompt on Windows 7 (Click on Start and type cmd) it opens in a very  small window. The font and command prompt (cmd.exe) are so small that it is unreadable. To fix this follow these simple steps:

1. Right click anywhere in the  top bar (or left click on that small thumbnail in top left) of the small command prompt window and select  “Properties”.

Command prompt properties

2. Click the Font tab and simply select the font size you like and click OK . I use 7 x 12 font size and Raster Fonts.

font properties command prompt

Fix the “no connection” in your Google Play / Market with date change

There are several reasons why you can get “No connection / Retry” error message in your Google Play or Market. Some are really a connection, wifi or 3G related and some aren’t. There is another reason that might give you this message and it is not really related to connection. This happened to me when I had Samsung Spica.  Wifi was on but I still got the “No connection / Retry” message. After trying nearly every “hack” solution, reinstalling Spicagenmod, downgrading Google Play to Market  etc I still got the same error. I only realized that the solution is much simpler after I opened Opera Mini that gave me this error :

Connection Failed : Verification of server certificate failed. Please check the date setting in your device

I went straight to Settings -> Date & Time  and it was set to year 2005! The reason why this happened is because Spica battery was really old and every time I turned the phone off the date reset itself to 2005. I changed date back to correct date and everything started working instantly – Google Play / Market and Opera. I wish I knew this before I spent few hours with every other fix possible.

As I mentioned there are many reasons why you can get “No connection / Retry”. If this doesn’t solve your problem then unfortunately it’s something different.

Stop WordPress Asking For FTP details When You Install / Upgrade Plugins

When you want to install or upgrade a plugin, WordPress will most probably display this message:

Connection Information

To perform the requested action, WordPress needs to access your web server. Please enter your FTP credentials to proceed. If you do not remember your credentials, you should contact your web host.

If you are on shared hosting you might not have this problem but if you are on a VPS or Dedicated server you will most probably get asked to supply FTP credentials every time you want to install or upgrade plugin or even WordPress. This can become an annoyance if you install plugins a lot so this is one of the first things I always fix when I install new WordPress site.

Here is how to solve it: open your wp-config.php file (by default it can be found in your root WordPress directory) with text editor and simply add your ftp login information near the bottom of the wp-config.php file (just above the /** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */ comment for example):

//*add your FTP credentials*
define('FTP_HOST', 'host_IP_or_FTP_url');
define('FTP_USER', 'FTP_username');
define('FTP_PASS', 'FTP_password');
//*If you like and can use a SSL connection set this to true*
define('FTP_SSL', true);

After you do this your won’t be asked for FTP credentials anymore. There are other solutions like settings permission with chown via shell or installing suPHP on your server but this one seems to be the easiest.

If the above fails for whatever reason you can comment the above code and try adding the following code in the wp-config.php file,somewhere at the top:

define( 'FS_METHOD', 'direct' );
define( 'FS_CHMOD_DIR', 0777 );
define( 'FS_CHMOD_FILE', 0777 );

This forces files to be writable by the server. You should only use this if adding FTP credentials method fails.