Little Discoveries

[boxman2000]

The middle mouse button opens links in a new tab, I really don't know how I missed that

MW

And the middle mouse button closes tabs in FireFox, annoyingly after trying it on this page!

Alt and Print Screen highlights the live window rather than the entire screen. Oldy but amazing how many people don't know about it.

That you can get away with buying large screen TV's for £20 by putting them through on self service checkouts as button mushrooms.

 

[InvaderGIR]

And the middle mouse button closes tabs in FireFox, annoyingly after trying it on this page!

It also starts a new instance of any pinned apps on your task bar in Windows 7 and will close any you middle click on in the aero peak...have fun.

 

[Redz]

My girlfriend 7 year old thinks I'm a genius!

They are so easily impressed at that age.

 

[Energizer Bunny]

That 'F2' will put whatever is highlighted, editable. I.e. a file name/field in excel

Genius!

The middle mouse button opens links in a new tab, I really don't know how I missed that

Mega genius!

Alt and Print Screen highlights the live window rather than the entire screen.

Mmmmmmmonster genius!

How did I miss all these?

Now, do I have anything to add? Hmmm, F4 repeating whatever your last command was in MS programmes. Can there be a human being alive who doesn't already know that one?

 

[sehcure]

I found my penis last night, does that count as a little discovery?

 

[Belmit]

Learning that I had been tying my shoelaces the wrong way round all my life and correcting it has literally changed my life as they never come undone anymore.

Same. Thirty years of doing it wrong and all I needed to change was right-over-left instead of left-over-right at the start, so it was a reef knot rather than a granny knot. No more infuriating double knots required.

 

[King Damager]

That you can pinch apart the touch keyboard on ios 5 to split it rather than having to press and hold the split button... Also found five finger close apps the other day, and remembered the four finger swipe.

The keyboard one is most used, but still all were nice..

kd

 

[gillywibble]

Learning that I had been tying my shoelaces the wrong way round all my life and correcting it has literally changed my life as they never come undone anymore.

Please explain.

 

[RomanNose]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDA

 

[Disco Boy]

That you can pinch apart the touch keyboard on ios 5 to split it rather than having to press and hold the split button... Also found five finger close apps the other day, and remembered the four finger swipe.

The keyboard one is most used, but still all were nice..

kd

Didn't know that you could split the kb. Thanks.

I'll share another recent discovery... the unix join command. Saves a lot of hassle merging files that have a common key! Despite my example, it's best to ensure that both files are sorted by the common key first to avoid any unpredictable behaviour.

EG:

$ cat file1
John,3841
Dave,3692
Harry,3102

$ cat file2
John,Accounts
Dave,Support
Harry,Sales

$ join -t "," -j1 1 -j2 1 -o 1.1 1.2 2.2 file1 file2

(so join with comma as delimiter, join on field 1 of file 1 and field 1 of file 2, then output file1.field1, file1.field2, file2.field2 - and the input files are file1 and file2)

Dave,3692,Support
Harry,3102,Sales
John,3841,Accounts

It's very fast and I use it in some scripts to merge some rather large output tables. The method I was using before I discovered this was a fair bit slower.

This is really useful. Thanks.

 

[Siliconslave]

That you can pinch apart the touch keyboard on ios 5 to split it rather than having to press and hold the split button... Also found five finger close apps the other day, and remembered the four finger swipe.

The keyboard one is most used, but still all were nice..

kd

if you split the keyboard by touch it sits lower on the screen rather randomly, but its a much nicer position.

Shoe laces wise if the loops point up and down rather that side to side your doing it wrong - when your tieing the bows together you need to change the side that goes under around...

 

[Curio]

Alt and Print Screen highlights the live window rather than the entire screen. Oldy but amazing how many people don't know about it.

You, sir, are a god among men. How have I been using Windows since 1993 and not discovered this?

I found that middle mouse button trick for opening something in a new tab a while back - I just can't get myself to use it for some reason. Just always right click the link and do it there....can't stop myself.

 

[Kazz]

My shoe laces are tied "correctly" for the first time in over 29 years!

*claps like a seal*

 

[Castiel]

I found my penis last night, does that count as a little discovery?

I think that counts on an assumption based on very little evidence.....

 

[D.P.]

'Git bisect' blew my mind when it was shown to me last week.

If you have some units tests in your code base that can output success or failure then you can write a short script that runs these tests checking for success and git bisect will do a binary search through all previous revisions to find the revision which broke your code (i.e where the bug was introduced).

 

[D.P.]

I'll share another recent discovery... the unix join command. Saves a lot of hassle merging files that have a common key! Despite my example, it's best to ensure that both files are sorted by the common key first to avoid any unpredictable behaviour.

EG:

$ cat file1
John,3841
Dave,3692
Harry,3102

$ cat file2
John,Accounts
Dave,Support
Harry,Sales

$ join -t "," -j1 1 -j2 1 -o 1.1 1.2 2.2 file1 file2

(so join with comma as delimiter, join on field 1 of file 1 and field 1 of file 2, then output file1.field1, file1.field2, file2.field2 - and the input files are file1 and file2)

Dave,3692,Support
Harry,3102,Sales
John,3841,Accounts

It's very fast and I use it in some scripts to merge some rather large output tables. The method I was using before I discovered this was a fair bit slower.

thats handy.

 

[gillywibble]

My shoe laces are tied "correctly" for the first time in over 29 years!

*claps like a seal*

Same here, brilliant

 

[Cosimo]

My shoe laces are tied "correctly" for the first time in over 29 years!

*claps like a seal*

What makes you think they are?

 

[The Halk]

Hold down control when you click a link and it'll open in a new tab without focus.

 

[PistolPete]

I recently learnt that Windows + L locks your PC....and has done since Windows XP.

No more CTRL+ALT+DEL, ENTER for me!!!