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Showing posts from 2013

Unbrick or Recover Xiaomi Redmi 10A and other MTK devices

Case: Your Redmi 10A (probably other MTK devices too) is not turning on and doesn't react to any button pressed nor cable connection. Requisites:   Dead phone USB Cable  You tried tons of tutorials to unbrick the phone and didn't work This image Willingness to even use Linux to fix it (it's not hard) Steps: Create a bootable USB using the image downloaded. Make sure your computer allows booting from USB. Boot the computer from the bootable USB. When booting, a list of options will be shown. Pick the first one: Boot Live system. Once the system is loaded, go to the right-upper corner to connect to Wi-Fi. Once you have internet, use the Firefox browser (click on the icon in the left-upper corner) and download the Linux version of this tool (SP Flash) and save it in the desktop. Unzip the tool downloaded. Download the fastboot version of the stock ROM . Unzip the ROM, to have the folder and files. Click on 'MTK' icon that is in the desktop. In the command line opene

Obtaining Computer Name From an IP Address

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In this world all the computers that are connected to a network have to be identified in some way, hence, the IP (Internet Protocol) address exists and gives each computer a unique identification number by which we can find them. However, when you work with a computer that is in a local network it's always necessary to get connected to it, what is more, sometimes you need to access to it without being physically there. Thanks to god that we have a mechanism to see our machine remotely, and this requires obviously the IP address or the computer name. Yes, a computer name, because remember that the IP address is composed by many numbers that are not easy to remember, even more, sometimes the name of the machine gives you a clue about what kind of computer is, for example, where I work a name beginning with "PE" means that the computer is located at Peru meanwhile starting with "CO" means that it's in Colombia. Perhaps it happened that you only hav

Making Excel VLOOKUP Function to Work

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I have seen many times that there are some scenarios where the Excel VLOOKUP function is not able to calculate the value we are looking for. For example, let's search the amount for the ID 16 according to a little table with this value. This is something really easy to do, we need only to use VLOOKUP function selecting the ID, the matrix and the column to be search. However, when you see the result of this function you notice that there's an error despite the values are fine. The reason of this error is that the searched ID value is stored as text, so you can convert it in number in this case because it's only one value, but what if it were a thousand of them?. To avoid worrying about format issues just embraces the key value in the VALUE function inside the VLOOKUP function. Once you use the function you are going to get the value that corresponds to the ID. Consider that this is an example where the

Changing Size of VirtualBox Disc

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Since I decided to use Linux , because I like it a lot, I knew that I'll need Windows anyway due to the fact that everyone (at most) uses it and considering also that my posts would have to be focused in this operating system (my readers use it). To overcome this situation I decided to install a virtual machine on my Linux ( Debian specifically) to avoid rebooting anytime I need to do something in Windows, to accomplish this purpose I installed VirtualBox and installed in it Windows 7. However, In some point there was need to get more disk space but I couldn't get it because when you define a virtual machine you specify a determined disk size. But, it can be done the following to increase the disk size using the tools provided by VirtualBox. First, increase the disk size by using a VirtualBox command created for this task. Remember that the virtual machine has to be turned off to be able to modify the virtual disk, once you are sure about this, go to the configu

Creating Scripts To Insert Data From Existing Tables

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When we work with systems is inevitable to work with data that is manipulated by these, and there are moments when you need to move data created by one application to another database, but it's not necessary to copy all the database to another one, maybe you require just to move all data for particular tables. For this task, SQL Server can help us by using the "Generate Scripts..." option that it's into Management Studio tool, you only have to right-click over the source database and go to "Tasks" menu and here locate the option said before.     You will see the introduction, just click "Next". As I said at the beginning in this opportunity we are going to select a group of tables and not all the database. Specify the media where this result is going to be published. But, in this case it is necessary to click on "Advanced" option to personalized the operation. As we want just the data, select "Data only" i

Using Calculated Fields in Dynamic Tables with Excel

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Honestly, I don't consider myself an expert in dynamic tables, although many people think that actually I am this is just because I know many tricks about Excel , however I don't use dynamic tables a lot and therefore there are things about this tables than I don't know. One day, when I was at work, a partner called me to watch his computer because he had a big doubt about something so he decided to ask me about it. He was managing a huge dynamic table that have a bigger simple table as data source, this dynamic table resumed all sales from region, but the problem was that he needed to show that resume not with the exact amount but rounded to thousands. At that moment I couldn't help him because I didn't know how to do it, but now I took a time for testing ways of doing that and I want to show you what could have done at that time. First at all create a simple table with few regions and sales value in 3 currencies.   With this information, select it a

Attaching Files to Microsoft Word

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Probably you already know, but I work with systems, I mean, I analyze the client requirements and specify the features a new software or piece of it will have, to do so it's well know that exists an standard document where an analyst have to explain in detail how the feature will behave when the user interacts with it. Many times, it's necessary to make references to other documents to get the specification clearer enough, and this is why I thought about attaching files instead of referencing them because the person who this document was address for couldn't access to our repository, so I tried to send a unique file containing all the information to avoid any problem. As I did this through Word I'll show you how to do it in it, probably you can do the same with the other Office applications. The first thing you have to do is to prepare the file that is going to be attached, once you got this file you are now able to use it inside a parent file. The next step

Inserting Comments on Microsoft Excel

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I've just got an Excel file one day when I was working really hard, the problem was that this file contained a lot of numbers with no labels, which I considered something really strange, but suddenly I realized that the description of each calculation was as a comment, so I decided to write about it. As you know very well, Microsoft Excel allows you to put comments on every cell, what it's very useful at the end when you want to explain something due to the fact that Excel it's not for writing long text. To do so, just go to the ribbon called "Review" and click on "New Comment" and then you can write anything you want in the tiny yellow space that appears. Well, that's ok but I don't want to be clicking all time in the same button to get a comment immediately. Yeah, you're right, this is why I have a little trick, just press "Shift" + "F2" keys to create a comment in one shot and also you can use it to edit

Changing Text Size in Microsoft Communicator or Lync

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Believe it or not, all these years that I've been working in a company showed me one particular problem that people usually ask me for a solution. The problem was that when working with Microsoft Lync (formerly Microsoft Communicator) suddenly the text chat changed its size to be smaller and almost illegible. I have always questioned how people do this, because I couldn't figure out what combinations are required to made text change its size, but it's quite easy to fix this.   First at all, this is usually the standard size in a chat window. After a mysterious combination of keys suddenly changes to this size. To fix this it is necessary to enable menu window, it is possible by pressing "Alt" key, after doing so you have to pick "View" and move the mouse over "IM Text Display Size" to select a bigger size, as you will see the size will be selected as the minimum possible. This is a configuration for a particular chat wind

Changing Disk Location in VirtualBox

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When we are looking for different kind of operating systems you can think on installing these on your computer, but sometimes you won't use it as usual as you really do with your always-used operating system. This is my case, I use Linux , Debian specifically, but I bear on mind that Windows will be necessary in some ocassions . Therefore, I decided to install a virtual machine so I won't need to switch between systems which is very annoying. For doing so It's necessary to have a virtualization software, an application that simulates a virtual PC, where you can install an operating system just like you'll do it on your real computer. As you should imagine there are many of these applications but I prefer VirtualBox for being free. When you install this software it will help you to configure your virtual machines (yes, you can have many) having as an important step the creation of a virtual disk to be used for the virtual PC, all is happiness when you use

Beginning Task Date Does Not Move in Project

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I don't know if you use Microsoft Project as I do, but I have seen many times the case I'll describe next. Imagine that you have this simple project schedule where all tasks depend each other.     Then, you realize that the subtask 2 is going to last 5 days indeed, so you make this fix and hope the task 3 to begin just when subtask 2 finishes. However, when you do this change the beginning date of task 3 doesn't move, only the final date moves, highlighting new dates.   Don't worry, it's not that your project has broken or something like that, the little detail here is that, although you have your tasks set to be automatically programmed, all tasks won't move its dates if there is progress recorded in them. That's why if you want to have this date moved you must go to task details and clear any percentage shown.   That's the way to do it, and you will see the task moving according to your changes.   So, you can now moving your da

Executing SQL Script from Command Line

Yes, It's more pretty your SQL Server Management Studio, because you can just go to "File" option, find there "Open" and click on "File..." to load a SQL file (.sql) to execute it without problems. But, have you ever tried to do so with a file create by this tool being large enough to freeze it literally when you open it? Well, in this case there's no way to execute that file through the tool. Therefore, here we are with a SQL Server command that will help us with this task. You just have to keep in mind the command: sqlcmd, simple right?. Let's say that we have a SQL server called "MY_SERVER" and my SQL instance "MY_INSTANCE" installed there. What I need now is to execute the following script "my_large_script.sql" located at "D:\Test". It's important to consider that this command use Windows authentication by default, so it's only required to put this line in any command prompt:

Inserting Rows o Columns in Excel Not Permitted

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I'm opening an Excel file and when I try to insert a new row or column I get a message error giving me a large text about how this is not possible. I have seen many people facing this message, although this gives the solution, sometimes it's hard to understand what this message is trying to say.     But, what's happening? Let me tell you that you' re using all the rows or columns of the file, yes, believe it or not you are having information (even blank space) at least at the last row or column allowed. So, when you want to add a new one, Excel tries to delete this row or column because it will be out of range with the new element inserted. The solution is going to the last column or row, to do so you can use this shortcut: Ctrl + Down arrow if you want to go to the last row or Ctrl + Right arrow to go to the last column, as shown in the images.         Then, you just have to select the entire row or column and delete, the next step is to save the file to t