Especially if you’re like me who just fires up Media Player, set it to shuffle (because I got really tired of sorting all those MP3s) and just click on skip when you don’t like the song.  The Mini Player was really useful for me for this since it just sits on the Task Bar and I don’t have to switch to any window or do any extra clicks.

So imagine my surprise when I upgraded to Media Player 12 and found out that they took this away   Luckily enough, all I really needed from the Mini Media Player was the skip and back and found out that this was made available at the Taskbar Preview of the Windows Media Player   So voila!  Not exactly the same but suits my needs just fine.

All you need to do is:

1.  Hover on the Media Player Thumbnail on your Taskbar

2.  You’ll see the Back, Pause, Forward controls as well as the Preview of Media Player

3.  The controls work in the Thumbnail so click away!

Now, if this still does not suit your needs are really want the old Mini Player back without having to downgrade to Windows Media Player 11, then you can follow this article from BlogsDNA on Get Back Windows Media Player 12 Mini Toolbar on Windows 7 Taskbar

Did this help you?

I’ve had several friends who’s done cold turkey with their smoking and it looks like it works.  So in several instances I’ve done the same, not just with food but with almost any habit that I wanted to change.  But based on the results, whenever I take the deprivation route, the habit comes back, and it does so  with a vengeance.

Now looking at the opposite, when I unconsciously indulge and embrace something, I eventually get tired of it and voila!  The craving goes away.  Right now, am just too chicken to try that consciously for fear that I go into the deep end and not able to go back.

Have you tried indulgence to get rid of a habit?  Did it work?

I treasure times when I have enough space to hear myself think.  To connect with the deepest thoughts inside my head, and on good days to actually pour it out on paper. To see the monkey brain play and eventually get tired and stop.  To write down the thoughts and reveal messages before my eyes.  To come to a point when there’s actually nothing…

At the end of the day, I just wanted to remind everyone to be mindful of what you want to yell into the bullhorn because when you use social media, people will definitely hear about it.

Still skeptical about this?  Here’s a number of cases where instead of helping, social media became a nightmare for these companies:

1.  When Nestle threatened to delete posts of Greenpeace supporters at their Facebook Page.  More details here.

2.  When director Kevin Smith got booted out of a Southwest flight for being overweight.  More details here.

3.  When at the height of the Egyptian uprising @KennethCole tweeted “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo –KC”.  More details here.

4.  When an employee got fired and agency New Media Strategies lost the Chrysler account because of this tweet.  More details here.

5.  And more recently, when the Redner Group lost its biggest client just because of ONE tweet.  More details here.

Do you know of any other cases when social media went south?  Would be great if you can share because we can all learn from the experience.

But when your mouse goes right and your cursor goes left to your extended monitor, well… that’s throwing a monkey wrench into your productivity.  Luckily though, its easy enough to change that

Using Windows 7:

1. Right-click on your Desktop
2. Choose Screen Resolution (with your extended monitor, you should see them labeled 1 and 2)
3. Click on monitor 2
4. Drag it to the left side
5. And voila!

Simple lang, noh?

First off, the Windows Phone 7.  I know that a lot of people are saying its late in the game but for what’s worth, its sort of a new player because of its revamped platform so we can’t really say how its going to play.  Even Crunch Gear back in 2007 predicted the failure of the iPhone saying that “Digg will likely be full of horror stories from the poor saps who camped out at their local AT&T store, only to find their purchase was buggier than a camp cabin”

And look where its at now? With that, I want to give this one a chance, I just wish Santa will drop it on my lap

Nope, am not a gamer, but I am super excited about the Xbox 360 Kinect!   I remember when Minority Report came out and the notion of a machine interpreting your body language was just science fiction.  Well its science fiction no longer   What I think will be amazing is when this technology leaves the realm of gaming and leaps into the world of everyday use.  So Santa, I don’t mind if its in a heavy box, you can also drop this one on my lap

My last post swimming with the sharks, literally was done back in May.  I already had several articles written after that but it was all forever stuck in Draft.  Now thanks to a tweet from @mistygirlph and an article from @adamsconsulting , my dear posts finally saw daylight, and my blog is having a second chance at life

After reading Diana’s article on Get Inspired to Update Your Blog! I took her advise, I set aside some time and finally got this back on track.

So for your reading pleasure, here’s 3 additional old “new” posts from Closet Techie

girl on girl, in the ring that is

i don’t want to save in My Documents!

no frog for me so ostrich and balut it is

Thanks Misty and Diana!

Being hit hard and being able to hit back, definitely a first for me. So when people ask me, why the hell did I do it? I guess my only answer is because I could

Backtrack a bit. Was really getting a bit bored by the usual. Already had a roster of activities under my belt and it just came to a point where I’ve “been there done that” We were told by our good friend Dale that he does Muay Thai at this gym, not your usual gym though with pretty boy trainers in their neat uniforms. The coaches were all real fighters who have joined actual Muay Thai competitions -buff strong and no-nonsense. And so began what started out as just a way to release excess adrenalin and ended with me inside a ring at the Makati Coliseum. I wish I could say I beat the crap out of my rival but lets just say I did a Gina Carano when she fought Cyborg

Not a believer in coincidences, it was actually great material for a lot of learning. One of which is that working horribly hard doesn’t always guarantee victory. I gotta admit, the loss stung a bit. I kept thinking, after all that hard training and doing all the “right” things it still leads to this? But then again though, my thing is nothing compared to the Olympians who’ve worked hard all their life and didn’t get to stand on the podium. And hell yeah, it does happen. The question is what do you do with it? Do you wallow and spiral down, or do you bounce back and move on. Now that’s one good lesson to learn.

I also learned that temper can really be blinding. I really did underestimate the raw power of the primitive brain. Its ability to just short circuit everything and have a single minded mission to protect its host. After the fight, people kept  asking why I continued to attack even if I was being pounded back? All I can think about at that time is darn it, I’ve got to hit back! No sense at all of what was needed to be done and that was to step back, think, and then play the game.

I’ve also learned grace under defeat. I’ve always admired fighters that talk to each other after the fight. I kept thinking how they can do that when they were just beating up each other a minute ago. But in this experience I found myself recognizing that I faced a fighter that was stronger, that was better than I was, and surprisingly enough -I felt admiration instead of aversion.

So what did this all mean? Was it just about getting a kick out of it? For it to have some meaning, I had to really dig in. What was it about this experience that hit the spot. So after a lot of reflection, I did find really good nuggets and whether you can connect it or not, for me it was about control… But then again, that’s another story

The good news though is that there is a way to change the default folder.  And all you have to do is (using Windows 7)…

1. Click on the Start button
2. Right click on Documents
3. Click on Include a folder… then choose the folder you want your file saved in, this will then appear under Library locations
4. Now click on the your chosen folder then click on Set save location

That’s it!

As an added bonus, if you want to see the contents of the folder as the first item in your Documents list, just click on your chosen folder and drag it to the top of the list.  Ta-da!