How to shutdown Windows 10 without applying updates

Although most of Windows 10 keeps getting better with every iteration, some things just never change. Windows Updates are one of those. They always want to download and install when we really don’t have the time or the battery power.

What’s worst, Microsoft have removed the graphical option to simply shutdown the system – and all we’re left with are two choices: “Update and shutdown”, or “Update and restart”.

What if all we want to do is to shutdown or restart WITHOUT applying those updates? Perhaps we’re out and about, running on an already near-depleted battery? Or we’re in a hurry and would like to leave the update for when we have more time, or a power outlet?

Fear not, there is a way to do these things – even if they don’t come up in the Start menu anymore.

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String Operations on Commodore Computers

Commodore BASIC has some interesting and simple string functions built in. Three of them are self explanatory: LEN, LEFT$ and RIGHT$. But others, like the mysterious MID$ and INSTR functions, are a little tricker, and I can never remember how they works. So here’s a quick recap on how they all work. LEN (A$) Returns … Read more

How to play sounds and music on the Commodore Plus/4

The Plus/4 has a total of two voices thanks to its integrated TED chip, which is also responsible for rendering text and graphics on screen. The first voice can play square waves, while the second one can generate either square wave sounds or white noise.

Let’s see how we can make him play a tune.

We can use some BASIC keywords to make the Plus/4 be all musical. First we need to turn up the volume by using the VOL command. We can set this to anything between 0 and 8.

VOL 8

Next we can use the SOUND command to make each channel play a note, like so:

SOUND 1,400,60

This will play a one-second long note on channel 1.

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How to turn off PayPal Notifications in the Facebook Messenger App on iOS

In this video I’ll show you how to switch off those super annoying PayPal notifications in the Facebook Messenger App in iOS on my iPhone 6s Plus. I’ve recorded this video on iOS 11 in March 2018. https://wpguru.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Switch-off-PayPal-Notifications-in-Facebook-Messenger-on-iOS.mp3Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:46 — 2.5MB)

How to add code to the header in WordPress

WordPress has a hook that lets us add arbitrary HTML code to the <header> tag of a website. Several plugins can be found that accomplish this, but it’s so easy to do that a plugin is often overkill. Here’s how you can execute an arbitrary PHP function using the wp_head hook: // write some text … Read more

How to show a list of all articles in WordPress

There’s a handy function in WordPress called wp_get_archives(). With it we can create a lot of useful output with just a few lines of code. To list all articles ever published on a site, we can do this: This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what … Read more

How to fix the “Occasional White Screen of Death” Error in WordPress

In this video I’ll show you how to fix an odd phenomenon I’d like to call “The Occasional White Screen of Death”. Here’s what happened:

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How to disable JetPack nag messages in the WordPress Admin interface

I really like WordPress, and I really like JetPack. I use the plugin on many client websites, who usually have their own WordPress.com  account, which is necessary to enable the plugin successfully. Most of them however choose not to sign up for a payment plan, which as of 2017 leads to (now rather annoyingly frequent) … Read more