Solving the Orange UK Android hotspot internet connection problem

UPDATE 07/11/11: I can now confirm that this solution definitely works with both the HTC Desire (original) and the new HTC Sensation on the Orange UK network.

One of the things I was most looking forward to with the Android 2.2 update was the ability to create a wi-fi hotspot using your phone, or tethering as it’s more commonly known. Extremely handy when travelling on trains in the UK as very few of them have broadband facilities available. So it was one of the first features that I tried out after my phone upgraded itself, but was immediately disappointed to find that although my laptop connected to the hotspot easily, there was no internet connection available.

I searched long and hard for a solution to this and it soon became immediately apparent that this is an issue specifically for HTC phones on the UK Orange network.

Luckily the solution is easy, but don’t be surprised if you have to repeat the following steps after each Orange update – annoyingly it does occasionally reset to the default settings. This should get you up and running though…(in theory!)…

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Google Chrome, Flash Debugger and Tracing in the browser

Yesterday I was trying to test a fullscreen button on a video player and realised that I couldn’t unless it was inside a browser window. Unfortunately this meant that I would have no way to view traced results, so I installed Vizzy, a browser app that allows you to view flash traces whilst viewing your flash in a browser.

I’ve known about Vizzy for a while, but I’ve previously had no real need for it and when I’ve tried to install it in the past it didn’t seem to work with Chrome (my current browser of choice) so it was uninstalled pretty quickly. But this time I had no choice but to get it working – and as it turns out, the solution was pretty simple… More

King of the Shortcuts (FlashDevelop)

I’ve been using FlashDevelop for a while now. As Actionscript editors go it’s great, but it’s also 100% free which sweetens the deal even more. It does everything I need it to; creates projects, organises files and code hints comprehensively. In a word, it rocks.

But yesterday I was introduced to something in FlashDevelop that I’d never seen before. The king of all shortcuts:

CTRL - SHIFT - 1

How I’ve lived without this shortcut before I don’t know. I feel like a fool for not discovering it earlier. It does absolutely everything…

• Place your cursor next to a class variable, hit the king and you get a little pop-up menu offering to create you getters and setters.
• Written a variable inside a function and now want to make it into a class variable? Place your cursor, hit the king and you’ll be offered to “Promote to class member”. It will then declare the variable at the top and correct your function accordingly.
• Need a new function? Type the function name, press the king, “Generate function”. Done.
• Need a new class? Type the name, king, “create class”, done.

This shortcut literally does absolutely everything from declaring variables to generating functions. I keep discovering even more things all the time. It’s such a timesaver. Truly the ultimate multi-purpose shortcut.

Fixing the Windows 7 64bit Preview Pane for PDFs

I installed Windows 7 64bit edition a few weeks ago and I’m loving it. But one of the things that’s been bugging me for ages is that the “Preview Pane” doesn’t recognise PDFs, even with a full version of Adobe Acrobat installed. As I have a quite a lot of PDFs on my hard drive I sometimes have to plough through them all individually to find the one that I want…but if the preview pane was working properly my working life would be a heck of a lot more efficient.

But now I’ve found the fix…and it’s an easy one… More