Fixed: BSODs Caused by garmnusb.sys in Windows 7

Posted by in Guides

Since Windows 7 was released, I have had intermittent BSODs when plugging my Garmin Forerunner 305 into its USB cradle. The cause of the issue was always garmnusb.sys. A little searching shows that many users are experiencing the same issue. No one had a solution that worked consistently. Sure, you could connect the Forerunner before booting the PC, but that’s quite inconvenient.

A few weeks back, out of curiosity, I tried clicking on the “Update Driver” button for the device within Device Manager. To my surprise, a new driver was available.  Garmin released version 2.3.1.0 of the driver back in April.

Since updating to 2.3.1.0, I have not experienced any BSODs on my system. Going from crashing every other time I connected my Forerunner to zero BSODs is a great improvement. Unfortunately, this is something Garmin should have had fixed three years ago, before Windows 7 was released.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

A New Settings Page

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

The most noticeable change in the next version of Breadcrumb NavXT (4.2.0) will be the reorganized settings page (preview screen shot above). Since the introduction and subsequent inclusion of tabular (the code that gives the settings page its tabs), each custom taxonomy and post type has had it’s own tab. This will no longer be the case where there are just 4 tabs, “General”, “Post Types”, “Taxonomies”, and “Miscellaneous”.

This reorganization, while causing the content per a tab to be greater, keeps the tab list from growing with every new custom post type and taxonomy added to a site. Additionally, it allows greater distinction between settings for custom taxonomies and custom post types. Previously, there were instances where CPTs and custom taxonomies had the same name in their tabs and it was not clear which was which without entering that tab.

Keep tabs on Breadcrumb NavXT 4.2.0 development over at GitHub.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Specifying a Preferred Category Hierarchy

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

As part of the best practises for organizing your WordPress site so that Breadcrumb NavXT’s output is what you expect, having a post be a member of multiple category hierarchies is something you should not do. While it still isn’t something you should do, there is a way to specify which category hierarchy is more important for a specific post.

The idea is that the order of the categories being returned by get_the_terms() can be modifed so that the more important category hierarchy is output first. This takes advantage of Breadcrumb NavXT’s behaviour of choosing the first category (term) hierarchy it finds for a post.

This is where Order Bender comes in. Order Bender gives you a nice post meta box to select the primary category for a post, and will modify the output order of get_the_terms() accordingly. Simple as that.

Installation is quite easy:

  1. Download the Master branch zip archive from GitHub
  2. In your WordPress Dashboard navigate to the plugin uploader (Plugins > Add New > Upload)
  3. Upload the zip archive
  4. Activate and enjoy!

You can keep up with day to day development via the Order Bender’s GitHub Repository.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

HP ProLiant MicroServer Screw Location

Posted by in Reviews > Hardware

After unpacking my ProLiant MicroServer (it will replace Atomtux as the Atom 330 just isn’t cutting it anymore speed wise), I was expecting to see a packet of screws for the hard drive bays (has a 4x cold swappable 3.5″ SATA HDD bays). Alas, there was no packet. After a little searching, I found the screws, along with a wrench for them. They are attached to the door covering the hard drive caddies.

There are 16 screws attached to the door for hard drives, and 4 for an optical drive (to be placed in the 5.25″ bay). Yes, there are 4 extra hard drive screws (one bay comes populated with a 250GB Seagate hard drive).

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Make Firefox Use Dolphin for “Open Containing Folder”

Posted by in Guides

In KDE 4, Konqueror has been replaced for the most part by Dolphin for all folder/directory viewing. However, by default Firefox will end up opening Konqueror if you right click on a downloaded item and select “Open Containing Folder”. It would be nice if Firefox would open the containing folder for downloads in Dolphin. There is a simple way of achieving this, and no command line work is required!

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