Taking a Break While Computing, Filemenu Tools, Air Hogs and R/C, Spyware

So here we go, a new year is almost here. I'm not much for New Year Resolutions, but I could stand to loose a little weight - especially after all the great foods, desserts, and candies I've eaten this Xmas. Wow. But I figure if I only indulge myself a few times a year - well, what's life without that?

The thing is I don't agonize over it, with me it's not a matter of health, I've just got a few extra pounds here and there. I guess what bugs me the most is other people; especially the rude ones. Since when did it become polite or accepted to go up to people you know and tell them they're fat? I'd have to consider that a fundamental character flaw, and usually a sign of the person's own insecurity and whatnot. Sometimes I think people are getting ruder and less polite.

Ah well. You know, when I was young I could drop weight in no time, if I felt I needed to. But, as I'm sure anyone reading this knows, when you get older it's much harder.

Fortunately I have lots of space to walk and hike in, and I find that with some internet, computer, and design problems and mental blocks can be overcome by simply getting outside and doing something else. With me, it's a sure way to get past pretty much anything along those lines.

And I have this problem a lot. I don't think of myself as an 'artitistc' person, so when I sit down to design a webpage or a CMS design or a graphic or logo for someone; I sometimes have a hard time whipping up a completely new idea. And I'm really aware of trying to make sure the websites I do for people aren't similar to each other, or generically alike. It's good for troubleshooting problems too, nothing like a little fresh perspective. And heck, it sure applies to other problems too, not just computer-related.

So I find that getting out and doing something completely is integral to what I do, and with a house this old there's always something to do in the maintenance and repair side, at the very least. Plus, it's always good to get up and exercise a bit once in a while anyway, for the body as well as the eyes and the mind.

There's times when I find that hours have went by and I haven't moved anything but my two hands.

Occasionally I will set my reminder program (Kana Reminder - http://www.kanasolution.com, nice free program that not only pops up reminds but can run programs on schedule, one-time as well as recurring) to remind me to get up and walk around and do other things, take a rest.




Here's a good time-saver and addition to Windows XP, and one that's not memory-resident (okay, so I have a lot of memory and processor power at present - but who wants twenty different programs running ALL the time when you don't need to?).

FileMenu Tools, which can be found on the website - http://www.lopesoft.com/ This program lets you customize the context menu you get when you right-click a file or folder in Eplorer or a file dialog, etc. You can customize (or delete) context items for filetypes, folders, and devices as well as customize your 'Send To' menu.

Kinda handy, but there are a lot of programs that do that; you may be saying. Like Fast Explorer and Shexview.

The difference is this program can also add it's own built-in and pre-made additional right-click context commands for various programs, folders, etc. The things that MS left out.

You can mix and match too, and even create your own context items.

For example - how many times have you wanted to be able to quickly copy a file path, or a filename, or have a quick find and replace right there on your right-click, or a batch filename renamer, or wanted to delete a locked file, or run a program with parameters, or wanted a military-grade file shredder? More options then I can list here.

You can do all this and more with this program, definitely worth checking out if you're a tweaker or a file system power user. And it gets called only when you right-click, so it's not memory resident.

Great program - FileMenu Tools from http://www.lopesoft.com/ Possibly might work on Vista, but I haven't specifically tested it.




I've always been interested in flying, as you know if you have read this blog before.

For Xmas my wife got me one of those Air Hogs r/c helicopters. You know the ones - very small, hard to destroy. They're what you might consider an entry level to larger r/c models or a way for a person to cheaply learn some of the dynamics of flying. Plus they're great fun, and a good toy for kids and adults. You can't really hurt much with them.

There are a lot of principles of flight involved, even if you can only fly it for five minutes before recharging.

Inside, there seem to be a lot of miniaturized electronics that wouldn't have been possible on a commercial scale a short time ago. Basically everything is on a chip in the tiny helicopter, outside of the receiver LED and the battery, and it's all controlled by IR instead of RF, unusual for remote control devices. Another improved technology. Pretty amazing if you consider it.

My niece's boyfriend got one of these last year, an earlier model. He's a very exuberant guy, very intelligent and interested in a great many things. If he didn't live quite such a long distance away we'd probably be great friends.
Anyway, he too is interested in flying. After playing around with the Air Hog for a bit, he bought himself a medium-sized helicopter (see pic above), r/c of course. It's another incredible piece of electronics, with many more of the same principles of flying a helicopter then the tiny r/c Air Hogs.
He's even added a wireless camera to it (see above), and done some aerial footage with it even. Here's a Photobucket.com folder of images and video from both my tiny Air Hog and his larger helo. http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g58/lectrichead/Helos/ (It was very windy so he didn't take his helicopter up very far.)

The technology is so impressive and the ideas behind it that the military even has or is experimenting with a backpack version of this with a terrain-following system.

Just like the space program; smaller and cheaper are the words of the day with unmanned units taking some of the place of humans. The possibilities are endless. Though there is no substitute for a real human, especially in space exploration...

I remember as a kid some of our ideas and schemes for adding cameras and video to flying objects, most specifically model rockets. There was a black and white (later color) nosecone that could be added to most standard-sized rocket tubes.

When I say 'we' - I meant my friend Pete. We've been literally friends since we were tiny kids. And both of us have had the same interests - technology, flying, airplanes, computers, science fiction. And that included attaching crap to something we could fly around, even better if it was a camera!

He has his pilot's license now, and we've went flying a number of times. There's nothing like flying in a small plane, versus a large one. And two dudes who have always been interested in flying, riding around in an airplane - nothing better.

I hope someday to be able to afford flying lessons. I'd have to say it is my first and one true love, over all my other interests. But it's a very expensive hobby, both flying in person as well as r/c.





I always figure the customer's always right.

No, wait - that's not true.

I make sure the customer gets what they want, even if I believe they are wrong. But I do gently let them know if I think they're wrong.

Like recently, a customer had a bad spyware problem. Many times with these hardy and tenacious pieces of spyware it may take a few passes, and the newer ones are getting much much worse.

But the person didn't want to wait or take any more time. Someone; friends, family, neighbor, whomever, suggested wiping the whole computer. The computer had no restore partition, so I was forced to start installing Windows XP from scratch and finding the appropriate drivers. Fortunately, in this case; Dell 's website allowed me to put in a number off the computer and find the specific devices that specific computer has, and download the drivers for it.

Dell's not one of my fav companies, that's for sure, but this sure is a nice feature and made the process much easier. Still, it was time-consuming to set everything back up.

And the worse thing is - without finding the initial problem and fixing it, and making sure it wasn't via a website they used, or a piece of software (that they probably will install again), or coming from another computer on their network - it might be all for nothing and the computer might be re-infected tomorrow

In an electronics class I took the teacher, a Mr. Docteur, a wily highly intelligent dude - always stressed that troubleshooting and finding the problem allows you to not only fix it, but prevent the same problem in the future, as well as learn from it.

Starting over, like re-installing Windows from a re-formatted harddrive, is the last resort in any situation. Especially when people aren't likely to keep backups and there may be another easier resolution to the problem.

Anyway, I've always tried to live by the troubleshooting idea rather then the "start from scratch" and I've found that it's always better to go in the direction, and keep the latter for the last resort. And there are plenty of times when "start from scratch" is the only way to do it.

But, as I said - the customer is always right. At least they think so until they lose something important...




Hope everyone reading this has a safe and happy New Year's. Don't drink and drive.

New Monitor, Simple Solutions when Troubleshooting DVD Players and Other Complex Systems, Hiding Your E-mail Address On Your Website, Interesting Website Usage Stats

Argh, been remiss here in posting, way too busy. Hmmm, I feel that I've said this before...

New Monitor

I just acquired a new 22 inch LCD widescreen monitor (the one on the right in the pic above). Very nice unit, large and bright.

But I wasn't supposed to have it until Xmas.

My wife ordered it from Staples and, well, they didn't package it in anything but it's original padded box, with a picture of it on the outside. Word to the wise; make sure it's gift packaged if it doesn't come re-packaged or if you're not sure.

Which meant the UPS guy handed it to me, and well - I knew what I was getting for Xmas at that point.

It's a great monitor, and after some custom resolution settings for my video card (so things aren't stretched - the video driver itself had no setting for this directly, though it's control panel also had a custom resolution setting) I was having a ball. But from looking at other people's stuff too many people have bought widescreen monitors (when their computers didn't come with them) and everything is super-stretched on the screen, but they don't notice it or don't care or can't figure out how to adjust it. Same with TV's...

I have now moved my 19 inch CRT to the side as the second monitor, replacing a 17 inch CRT. The 19 inch CRT looks huge, like a tank compared to a Porsche. And I need to take the base off the CRT to even both of them up vertically (the CRT's base has always been a bit high).

If you haven't tried a dual monitor set up give it a try. And you don't need two video cards either.

In the following pic is a bit of a comparison between the CRT (on the left) and the LCD (on the right). Much better color, much brighter more vibrant pics on the LCD. And this is after twenty minutes of tweaking of the CRT to try and make it comparable to the LCD display.

To be fair though - the trusty old 19 inch CRT spent a good portion of it's life in Korea (where it was made, BTW).

On a side note - the "STICKY" text was something a friend of mine was working on, and made a good comparison for simple colors.

Simple Solutions when Troubleshooting DVD Players, and Other Complex Systems

Sometimes, even in something complex and uber-complicated as computers and electronics; the simplest solution is the answer. And I think that's something a lot of us forget.

A good example.

We have a very nice LG DVD player; it upconverts for our HD TV, has lots of options, and even reads memory cards (which we've never used, like that USB port on our TV).

One day a crossed-out menu item started appearing in the top right corner of the screen. It was very intermittent and sometimes we could watch an entire movie and not see it appear. Other times it showed up all of the time, blinking on and off, popping up and disappearing.

Our first thought was that a button on a remote was being pressed, maybe by a remote buried under a magazine or book (after all, we have a large number of remotes).

Having eliminated that my second thought was a stuck button on the DVD. But it's not that old, and we never use the buttons on top of it. That can't possibly be it, we thought!

But it was the most logical assumption.

I tried a number of things, including cleaning the DVD, different connections (maybe a bad HDMI cable as it seemed to be related to the resolution), etc.

We even called the manufacturer's help line, tried a bunch of things.

Predictably one of the things seemed to work while we were on the phone, we thanked the Indian girl and not more then twenty seconds after hanging up the crossed-out menu item showed up again.

Of course, both my wife and I assumed that that was the end. Throw-away equipment nowadays.

A little further investigation using various menus showed that what seemed to be 'sticking' was something to do with the resolution switching, as previously suspected. While on the set up menu it would cycle through the available resolutions endlessly.

We checked the remote once again - nothing holding the button down, not even pointed at it, I dropped the batteries just to make sure.

Of course, there's a duplicate resolution-switching button on the top. But we had never actually touched it. I fiddled with it, thinking if it was sticking that bouncing it up and down might make it stop or at least point to it being the culprit. It didn't seem to make any difference.

Again - no, it can't be just a bad button, it has to be in the electronics. We started looking around for new DVD players, possibly a Blueray (still expensive!).

But coming from an electronics background - I decided that it was at least worth a try to mess with the button itself, mechanically and electrically. I held out near-zero hope that this was it.

Half an hour later, after disassembling the offending device, I had disconnected the suspect button using a soldering iron and desoldering tool carefully threaded between the electronics.

With the button hanging by one connection I half-assembled the player and gave it a try.

No crossed-out item in the corner. A couple DVD's later and still no problem. I desoldered the last connection on the resolution button, buttoned everything back up and tried yet another DVD. Still no problems.

So now it works fine, sans the resolution-switching button on the top. Not visible as I left actual the plastic cover that was on top of the button inside, and if I wanted to I could get another button to replace it but - again - we never use those buttons.

I'm sure that most people aren't going to have the resources nor the knowledge of soldering that I did in this case.

But it is a good demonstration that sometimes the simplest and most common sense explanation, even in extremely complex systems, shouldn't be discounted like we initially did.

Hiding Your E-mail Address On Your Website

One of the most important things nowadays when setting up and running a website is hiding your e-mail address from spammers, yet still allowing people to contact you. And hiding it both from automated harvesters as well as those in third-world countries who are hired to manually grab e-mail addresses off websites.

The latter is a method where a moderately motivated person can get your e-mail even if it's encrypted with a piece of JavaScript or similar method. Which previously was one of the best ways to hide your e-mail.

So nowadays it's much harder. The best way is to use a form for feedback, I think.

And let's face it - some visitors don't even have e-mail set up on your computers. They use web-based e-mail so when they click that "old-fashioned" e-mail link that normally opens a new e-mail message in your e-mail program - nothing happens or it opens an e-mail program that isn't even set up.

With forms your e-mail never appears anywhere readily accessible, and you can add additional fields, if needed, according to the uses of your website.

Works great, and highly recommended.

But, a real enterprising spammer might look at the source code of your form and get your e-mail off that. Very few of course, but it's still a possibility.

There's ways around this too, using CGI or PHP forms. But again, a quick look through the source code to find the PHP it's calling, and maybe a specialized program, will reveal your e-mail in it also. And again, there's more ways around that, but that's a subject for a different time maybe.

But a real simple way is to use a free form mail service instead of messing with it yourself.

Like this site - Email Me Form. It's easy and free, and works quite well. It also archives every form you get (and also can archive any spammer attacks, or mistakes by dumb users), has CAPTCHA as an option, and best of all even a spammer looking through the source code of the form page won't reveal your e-mail address, because it's not stored there. In fact, it's not stored anywhere on your site and can't be accessed through the emailform site.

The forms are nicely customizable and you don't even need to supply a page for your form if you don't want to - let them do it.

You can see a use of it at my Old Abandoned Buildings of Northern NY website, this one uses the form hosted at my site and processed through the Email Me Form site. Another example is the contact form that can be accessed at the bottom of my HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photo site - with the form hosted directly (a bit simple; this one) on the Email Me Form site and processed through there.

Great site, and if you don't like that one there's many more sites that will allow you to do this for free, or you can similarly keep it on your own site using various pieces of software and yet still hide your address.

Interesting Website Usage Stats

A stat counter is great for both seeing who is visiting your site, as well as targeting traffic via search engines and links.

I use the site StatCounter.com primarily, as they do an excellent job, though there are many nice free and paid services out there, as well as some great stuff you can host directly on your own site to do the same. Some will even show you real-time stats i.e. who's on your site right at that moment.

With this you can track individual IP's, where they are located, how long they stay on each page, what site they were on before your's and what site they go to afterwards, what OS and browser and resolution they are using, what keywords they used to find your site if they found it via a search engine, which search engine they used, the path they took through your site, and analyze keyword and site usage statistics as well as other points of data.

Invaluable for bumping your site up the search engines and tweaking Meta tags and keywords on your site.

Here's some interesting OS, browser, and resolution stats from one of my websites - my Jefferson County History site - during a certain time period. Just a side-note, not sure how visitors to my historical site compare to average visitors elsewhere.

270 54.00% MSIE 7.0 117 23.40% MSIE 6.0 70 14.00% Firefox 3.0.4 13 2.60% Firefox 2.0.0 8 1.60% Safari 1.2 8 1.60% Mozilla 5.0 5 1.00% 4 0.80% Firefox 3.0.3 2 0.40% MSIE 8.0 2 0.40% Chrome 0.2 1 0.20% MSIE 5.5

As you can see the various versions of IE still have the lion's share of visitors. No surprise here. The blank one is likely search spiders.

327 65.40 Windows XP 131 26.20 Windows Vista 16 3.20 Windows 2000 14 2.80 Unknown 8 1.60 Linux 2 0.40 Mac OS X 1 0.20 Windows 2003 1 0.20 Windows NT4.0

Nor surprising, I don't believe. XP continues to dominate even with new computers having Vista installed by default, for the most part.

212 43.89% 1024x768 139 28.78% 1280x1024 70 14.49% Unknown 29 6.00% 800x600 28 5.80% 1152x864 5 1.04% 1600x1200

A good 28 percent are using 1280x1024. Large screen monitors? Widescreen monitors? Do they like it that way or just never changed the default resolution?

	483 Enabled 17 Disabled

This one shows number of people who have JavaScript enabled and disabled. For security reasons some disable it, but so many websites use JavaScript for menus and other interactive pieces. I guess I'm surprised that even this small number of people have it disabled. It's a good example of why you should always provide alternative means of navigating your site.

Obama Wins

 

     My idea has been that Obama was the only choice, more a lesser of two evils.  As the election went on and I got to know Obama better, at least his public persona, my attitude changed.

    I also noticed some other things that I had never been aware of before.

    Personally, I've always prided myself on having friends and close acquaintances of various political attitudes (and differing ideas in general) even if I didn't believe in them.  Many times I wasn't even aware of some of my friend's political persuasions, believe it or not.  Sometimes you just can tell when certain subjects are to be avoided or aren't something you have in common.

    But with this election I became much more aware of differences in some of my friend's attitudes towards things.  It shouldn't matter and never has before, but during this last election sometimes it gave me some pause - even among some of my oldest friends.

    It was somewhat eye-opening.


    Anyway, for many years I've felt that America has been taking steps backwards.  More and larger splits between and among political divisions, more biases between people of different attitudes, religion, even in some cases people resorting to racism and bias that previously we had made inroads into.  Frankly, this "redneck" attitude and embracing of it that a candidate like Palin has brought out, has been coming to a head for a long time.

      There's nothing wrong with being a "redneck" I guess; until it starts involving the 'celebration' of racism, lack of education, intolerance, and pushing religion.  That's when you see the steps our country has made, and in fact what created and made this country great - go out the door.

    This certainly came up often with Palin (again, why did McCain pick her?) and the embracing of a certain attitude.  Like I said, this kinda brought it to a head in my mind; this backslide our country has started on, and this embracing of this attitude.


      I don't necessarily think that having an all Democratic Party government is a good idea either.  As someone said over and over, it's good to have checks and balances.

      But look what happened when we had a majority on the Repub side...  Gah.


    Well, anyway, when I saw Obama get elected, when so many people of all colors and ages and politics were hugging and congratulating each other - strangers most of them - I felt myself heartened.

    Maybe, just maybe, we can get back on track.  Not only with the economy, but with human evolution and improving the human condition.

    I kept thinking back to when many years ago.  There have been times in my life when I've made rude comments about certain peoples or ideas, unfairly, or laughed at other's jokes.  I haven't been the most tolerate person.

      But when it comes right down to it I like to think that I've always tried to be fair when it came to people one-on-one.

    I've had a few black and Hispanic friends, and stood up to certain of my friends who didn't like that and befriended or helped some people in the minority in certain situations; sometimes against and among people who I considered friends.

    I'm not the most liberal person, but fair is fair.  Some of my friends have had problems with me associating with people of various colors, or if a person was a GI, or was poor, or whatever.  Sometimes I've lost friends over it.


    Last night I also kept thinking about a person who's an acquaintance.  He's of the generation who are in there 50's now, and I remember one incident during one of the first times I met the guy.

    He ranted against those with ear rings, long hair, and tattoos.  Basically, he said that every one of THEM were pot smokers or would be perceived in that way no matter what.   He considered them lowlifes and druggies and didn't want anything to do with them, wouldn't hire one if they came to him for a job or anyway associate with them.

    It was basically one of the most backward, most biased things I'd personally witnessed.  He's not the sort of person I would normally be acquainted with or be around in general because of these attitudes and others, but because of circumstances I was and still occasionally am.

    And you can't argue with people like this, the ones who are way out there.  After all - with people like that why argue with them; you can't change their mind about anything when they have that much ignorance.  I whispered to my wife that I just wanted to stand up and pop him a good one, of course this accomplishes nothing.

      Believe me - I gave up hitting people because of conflicts many years ago.  Bad temper on my part and a very bad incident involving my temper taught me that more damage is done then is solved this way.

    Back to the subject, I kept thinking back to this particular person and this incident many times last night.  There's other ways...

    This wasn't a matter of racism that was involved, but it was a certain biased attitude that goes hand-in-hand with racism.  Or even by itself.

    After the election and what I saw, I kept thinking that maybe there's hope for the US, for the world and humankind - that if someone part-black could be overwhelmingly elected president of this country of racists and biased people maybe some things can change.

    That maybe the afore-mentioned person is a dinosaur and one day he and others like him will go the way of the dinosaur - dead and extinct, and that their offspring will shake their heads and not take the same attitude.

    I woke up this morning actually feeling good about the US, for the first time in many years.  It's not going to be a bed of roses, Obama and his staff and the Democrats are going to make a lot of mistakes.  Some things they may even make worse for awhile.

    But there's hope when there's someone trying to make some progress.

Chris Pirillo's Geeks! Site, Ning.com, The Obama Projector, Major Worm Patch, Forcing Drivers in XP

Chris Pirillo's Geeks! Site, Ning.com

If you have anything to do with computers you probably at least know of Chris Pirillo.  He's run a technical mailing list and site for many years now.

If you're a geek or would like to be one and want to share info on a social network specifically by a group of self-proclaimed geeks check out Chris Pirillo's "Geeks!" social network website. The whole thing is built using Ning.com's social network-building. 

Great site itself, and so is Chris' use of it - he's got a massive number of subscribers now.  And it's all free.  Embrace your geekdom.

Ning.com is worth checking out itself.  You can set up webboards, photo and video sharing, chatrooms, widgets of all kinds, etc.

I like the site, occasionally post there.  But I'm not a big fan of calling people (or myself) a geek - I like to think of myself as fairly well-rounded with many (sometimes too many) interests.

The Obama Projector

We have this holiday projector thing we got at a local super-store. 

It's just basically a metal cylinder mounted on a swiveling spiked leg to stick it into the ground. Inside the back is a strong halogen light and inside the front is a set-up to hold a round slide, with a lens at the front.  The whole front part can be slid up and down to focus the projection and make it larger/smaller. 

It came with all sorts of holiday-themed slides, which are round and inside a pair of cardboard frames.  As mentioned above they fit into the bottom part of the top section and springed legs hold them in place.

It works nice, projecting holiday figures onto any surface.   We haul it out once in a while and project a holiday slide onto the side of the garage.

I got it out last night with the idea of putting the Halloween slides into it, as Halloween is my favorite season.

But ever since we bought the machine I've been thinking that maybe I could make my own slides.  I could not only have my own custom holiday or special event slides but as an added bonus I could piss off neighbors by making a "Happy Xmas" slide instead of "Merry Christmas", etc.  You know how some people get so damned upset about using "Happy Holidays" instead of "Christmas"...

As usual I never had the time to experiment with making my own slides.  But last night I got the projector out, wanting to put in a Halloween slide.

Instead I decided to get a projector plastic flimsy out that can be printed on with a bubble jet printer.  Various of my customers and friends do it all the time, but I've never had much of a reason to do so before.

I found an Obama graphic from a blog I read, and edited it a bit and printed it.  It printed very nicely.  See above. The shot shows the original graphics, with a few mods.  The slides that came with the machine, and the slide I printed.

I cut the slide and at first made cardboard frames something like the original slides.  When I stuck it in the projector and gave it a try, projecting it on a wall in the house with the lights off to see what it looked like; I was amazed at how well it came out.

Eventually, after some tinkering, I took the cardboard frame off so that more of the picture would show through.  Which also worked well.





You'll notice the slides in the pic that came with the machine are very similar to slides from old-school slide projectors.  I'm sure anyone who was an adult in the 70's, or even 80's, has a bunch of these lying.  As a side-note, you can have slides printed or scanned, or buy your own set up to do it with dedicated equipment or using your existing scanner.  A down-and-dirty but surprisingly-good way is to just haul our your old slide projector and fire it up, and take pics with your digital camera.  Some messing around with your camera's setting should yield you some pretty god results.  And some post-editing helps too.  Of course, it's no substitute for doing it in a more 'professional' manner if needed.

Anyway, back to my outdoor slide projector project...

I set the device up outside and projected it on the side of our garage.  Wow, surprising how well it works.  A quick walk down the road confirmed that it could be seen for quite a distance.  I then moved it to the front of the garage, as the peak afforded a large projection surface.  This too worked, but couldn't be seen very well due to the angle of the garage versus the road.  See pics below.

 

In the first photo above I allowed the flash to go off to show it in proportion to the garage, in the second is just the slide itself on the garage siding.

Firstly, as you can probably see - the slide needs to be repositioned in the device.  An eyeballing problem, as the position in the device has to be guessed at since I didn't use a frame for the slide.

Secondly, it could be brighter.  Last year the original bulb blew and I have yet to find another 100 watt bulb, what is in it is a 50 watt which seems to be common.  The 100 watt - not so much.  Still looking.

I'm not a super big fan of Obama but, well, the alternative is laughable.  I really don't want to live in a four-year SNL sketch...  Not that we haven't for the last eight years already, and look where it's gotten us.

I'm sure my next slide will be "Congratulations President Obama".

Anyway...  Now that I know I can do it, and got a few of the techniques down I can print any custom one that I want.

Like I said - maybe an Xmas one.  Maybe celebrate some obscure holidays.  Or maybe celebrate a few "extinct" holidays like the Druid "Mabon" or "Gwyl Awst".  Or maybe for a few days project an "It's a boy" sign, then a few days later "It's a girl".  There's endless possibilities.  Something to make the neighbors scratch their heads.

 

Major Worm Patch

No, I haven't taken up fishing...  As you probably (should know) MS has shipped a special out-of-season (my phrase) patch for the Windows' systems.  Sheez...  Major anti-worm patch that stops a worm from exploiting a hole in the security system to execute code.  You can see the bulletin here.

My download worked fine for XP on all the computers here, but the Vista version of the download caused an error message on two computers running Vista.  Not sure why so far but likely having to do with the filename extension and disabled services.

Also, new GIMP out and, well, they actually listened to us users.  Isn't Open Source great?  It's kinda like the free market system, but no one gets rich off it.  Or something like that.

Forcing Drivers in XP


People occasionally ask me to install XP on their new computers that came with Vista.


Many times I convince them to stick with Vista unless they have a specific problem they can't solve and doesn't work in Vista.  Which, frankly, is increasing once again with the prevalence of Vista 64.


Sometimes it's a bugger to get some of the older or even current XP drivers to install in conjunction with other drivers previously installed.


Many times everything works fine, but once in a while I run across the problem where no matter how many things are uninstalled and no matter what order things are re-installed something doesn't take.  Sometimes going in and deleted the driver and registry entry, even both have been uninstalled; doesn't work.


In which case sometimes you just have to force it to install the driver even if Windows thinks it's not the correct one.  You know the routine - HAVE DISK, etc.  As long as you're absolutely sure it's the right one give it a try as a last resort.  


I find that even if the person wants ONLY XP on their computer it's best to partition it, install XP on the second partition, and make sure you have all the drivers you need first before deleting Vista.  

That way you can go back to Vista to check on the exact spec of a piece of hardware, or it's IRQ and other parameters if needed; and other comparisons.  Then once you have it all set up then you can reformat the harddrive and install XP as the primary.

Global Handwashing Day, Clipart Sites, Obama/McCain, Tweaks for Vista

As you may or may not have noticed my blog entries are getting further and further apart.  Sorry.

I find myself busier and busier but having less time, it seems without really gaining on much of anything.  Isn't that the way it is with everyone? ;)

 Global Handwashing Day

Today is Global Handwashing Day.  The U.N. says that a simple act of a kid washing their hands more often could save more then 3.5 children's lives in the world.  Okay, not such a big thing here in the US but I think most people don't do it often enough, let alone kids.

After I return from Watertown I always wash my hands thoroughly, as well as from customer's places.  Some people "dip", but a good hand-washing is more involved then that.

And how about those times when you see someone use the bathroom and not wash.  Gah, disgusting.  Hard to believe it still happens.

Keyboards and mice and remote controls are terribly dirty, same with your steering wheel.  A little scrub once in a while with some alcohol or the little hand-cleaning lotion you can buy is all that's needed.  Same with the faceplate and buttons on your phone (don't get it actually wet).

Obama/McCain

I like this the above thumb came out, some interesting juxtaposing color-wise, don't you think?

Anyway...I find myself very much disliking McCain after watching him very closely during the debates.

He seems always on edge, and on the very brink of losing his temper.  It seems to be consistent and continual.

Do we want someone who some Republicans had said was unwinnable during a previous run, because of his temper?

He's twitchy, yet frozen, on edge and I find myself not believing his sincerity.

McCain's like a number of people I know who project an air of holier-then-thou mentality, an air of I'm-older-then-you-so-I-know-better.  I don't like people like that because, frankly, they usually are the last people you want giving you advice or ideas and are somewhat distasteful to be around, let alone someone you want to be the prez.

McCain - I'd probably smile and nod if he told me the sky was blue and, at the earliest opportunity, go outside to make sure it still was...

Obama on the other hand is much more likable in my eyes.  Sure, he's still a politician but take away the politicking and I think I'd like the guy.  He's smart, open-minded, and he's learning in both his demeanor and knowledge in general.

I feel much better about our choices as time goes on - not that I still don't have a LOT of concern in general.

HDTV is great, especially with a big screen.  You can sit close to the TV and get a real feel for the demeanor of a candidate.  Every twitch, every glance, every eye flick is there for your interpretation.

Maybe it's just me, but with Obama's double-digit lead I think the issue will very soon be very moot.

Enough of my aimless wanderings about the candidates, especially when I didn't even mention the issues themselves.   But, I believe, character is very much important in any power position.  And what could be more powerful then president of the greatest country in the world?

Stock Photo Sites

It's always nice to have sock photos for websites, blog, etc.  Hey, don't just grab stuff off Google - that's stealing and copyright infringement.  Use a free clipart or stock photo site.  Like Cyclo.ps.

Cyclo.ps is an open source search engine for stock photo sites.  Of course, some aren't free or require a membership to download, but many area.  It's always good to check for copyrights or Creative Commons licensing info on any photos you use, especially if you're making money off putting it on a website .

Great resource.

I still like http://www.picapp.com/ and http://www.wpclipart.com/ myself.

Tweaks for Vista

MzUltimate Tweaker is an excellent free tweaking program, with lots of support programs.  Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.

Thoosje Vista Tweaker is a bit more limited but still very good, and also free.


Another good one which is pay is here, from a company called Yamicsoft.  You can get a shareware version from the site.

You'll also find many others, like Vispa.  A bit less user-friendly but still does a great job.

As always, be careful with these and don't even give them a try if you don't know what you are doing. 


Vista Quick Image Resizer


Some of us have gotten used to many of the tweaks in XP.  They're old hat and used all of the time.  You know the things, like MS Powertoy's Image Resizer.  Right-click on and image and you can quickly resize it to whatever you want to.  How many times have you received a 6 meg photo of something that someone should have resized on the other end with this program.

MS's tech employees haven't released or come up with any powertoys yet for Vista, but others have.

You can find a clone of the quick photo resizer for Vista here - http://www.powerhourgame.com/windows_vista_image_resizer_powertoy_prish_image_resizer.htm and another one here - http://www.vso-software.fr/products/image_resizer/download-image-resizer.php

The latter one does have an annoying pop-up but works well otherwise.  The first is my choice.  There are others also.

Replacing Notepad in Vista

It's very similar to the process in XP.

Get your favorite notepad replacement program, rename it to "NOTEPAD.EXE", search for all instances of Notepad in the Windows dir and sub-dirs and set the owner rights on them to admin, then copy your new NOTEPAD.EXE and replace the existing Windows ones (you may want to rename your old notepad to OLDNOTEPAD.EXE or something like that).

Depending on your flavor of Vista there may be a number of instances of Notepad in various places.  Do them all.

Make sure you are signed in on an admin account when you do this, and if you find that you can't change the rights on all of the notepad versions reboot and go into SAFE mode (press F8 when the computer is booting and select SAFE MODE), then change the owner rights from safe mode.

Of course, you can always just associate textfiles and other documents with a notepad or word processor.  But it's much better "coverage" of textfiles when just replacing it.  Also, if you are using something that has it's own install dir it may be much harder to just replace the existing one, as it must reside in the Windows dirs and sub-dirs.

I recommend Metapad for replacing Notepad, with Metapad set up to allow you to do more heavy-duty editing in Open Office's Writer and the freeware PSPad (with Metapad if you have loaded a file into it and want to do more advanced editing you use the Launch menu to open the existing file in your favorite heavier-duty editor).

Vista
I find myself having a love/hate relationship with Vista.

I love some of the new features; the history for the file management and open dialog, the built-in immediate search (with indexing turned off of course), and the speed of everyday use (with Aero and unnecessary services disabled), etc.

Sometimes when I got back to XP I think - "Wow, how primitive!".

Yet, the architecture of Vista is bloated and way too patched.  It's stable, but still very breakable.  And not always so good on some systems.  With the 4 gigs of mem it's very fast and stable.  Same with my laptop, despite the smaller memory but there's definitely more disk using on the laptop with the smaller amount of memory and a very slow shut-down and hibernate on the laptop.  Not so on the desktop.  So I normally still use XP on the laptop.  Maybe grab myself some more memory at some point.

And some common problems (one of which I ran into and finally solved) have never been addressed by MS nor resolved in Vista.

After partitioning and installing XP (and then re-installing Vista's boot and adding XP's boot entry) I could compare the speed of the two OS's.  Under normal use it seems to be the same.

But once you do things like rendering large high res photorealistic landscapes you start seeing some speed differences, in XP's favor.

For example - using Bryce 3D I rendered a small moderately complex model.  The differences between XP and Vista were consistently a half seconds difference, in XP's favor.  Larger renderings of the same model at higher rez started increasing this by a few seconds.

Not a lot of difference but a measurable amount, and incremental.

Watertown Dog Park, Firefox Memory Leaks, Google Chrome, Vista & HP

Congratulations to my niece and her husband for their new baby boy (and sympathy for the long hours of labor), named after my Dad.

Watertown Dog Park

A good example of why Jefferson County stays the same.  Some of the people of Watertown and Jefferson County were almost up in arms when a group of citizens wanted a dog park in Watertown.

I love this area; the land and landscape, the history, and most of the time the people.  But the ignorance and backwardness of some is disheartening, especially those who we rely on to govern and see further ahead then their own wallets.  

A moderator on a local webboard even closed the topic about the dog park at one point, after the city council refused to take it any further.  So further discussions were ended abruptly there on that webboard.

Fortunately there are those who are a bit more with the times and can see benefits beyond themselves.  Fort Drum now has a dog park for military people, as well as the SPCA (though only for members).

The old rednecks and staunch Old Guard/Good Old Boys of the local government always wonder why the young people leave here.  A dog park may be a small thing, but it's a reminder and maybe even a symbol of larger problems we have here.

Firefox Still Has Memory Leaks?  No!

What did you expect - they fixed Firefox up but third parties who make the addons that most of us use are under no obligation to do so.  Many of the addons hemorrhage memory like there's no limit, and sometimes the interactions between them are only making it worse.  If you find your memory consumption high in Firefox 3 try alternative addons.

Google Chrome

 

I've yet to be as impressed about Google Chrome as some people are.  It doesn't seem to be that significant in features or speed.  And Google's terms of use are scary at worse, questionable at best.  The German government even told people not to use it!  Not that that means a whole lot.

Sure, I know - the argument is that if you're not doing anything wrong with it why do you care if they know what you're surfing.  Same with their e-mail, online applications, etc.

Many down through history have thought similar.  And fervently regretted giving up their privacy.

Google is a bit scary in general.  They've far surpassed Microsoft in terms of the niggling feeling at the edge of my thoughts that whisper "World Domination" ;)

Vista and HP Computers

My new HP computer with Vista continues to perform well and impress me.  The occasional older program doesn't work in Vista of course, I guess I've run across four or five so far.

And some of the features they did away with is perplexing.  

Sound recorder is nearly useless.  I normally use Cool Edit for heavy duty sound projects but there's still a need for a simple sounded editor.  Fortunately you can just copy the old one out of XP and it works fine.  

You can do this with some other XP programs too, though if you are actually replacing a Windows Vista program instead of adding one, you will need administrator privileges.  Like for Notepad.

But the number-crunching ability of the computer, the 64-bit dual-core processor is impressive.  Rendering photorealistic objects is blazing and working with multiple graphics programs and websites is smooth and fun now. 

I ran into a bit of an issue yesterday.

One of the reasons I got this computer was the ability to make a recovery disk(s) from the recovery partition.  If the hard drive goes flooey two days after the year long warranty runs out I have an option; outside of buying a new copy of Vista or going back to XP.

So I went to the HP Recovery Disk Creator, only to find that it won't let me create a disk now.  It only allows one creation (easily hacked) but I hadn't even made one as yet!

Why?  Well, apparently you can't add a partition or mess around with the hard drive too much, as it detects size changes, etc.  And won't let you make the recovery copy.  I even tried setting the partitions back (overwriting my XP partition), no luck.  I tried hacking the config for it, making the sizes line up again.  No luck.

After doing some checking online it seems to be a common problem (a few years back HP got into some trouble for problems along these lines, if you remember).  

The only alternative is to back up everything, and use the recovery partition to set everything on the computer back to stock, build the recovery DVD's, and then restore everything again.  A huge PITA.  But I see no other way.  

Though I bet there's a way to hack the recovery disk creator to ignore the changes.  Ugh.

A few good links - if you miss the "Copy to" and "Move to" here's how to add them to Vista.

New Computer

New Computer

I haven't actually bought a new, non-laptop computer in many years.  

I usually make my computers out of a combination of parts I have, parts from current computers, and new parts.

But this time I wanted to just go out and buy one; a damn good one, and not screw around with it very much.


Of course, as things go - especially in the computer and Windows world - there's still a lot of screwing around to do.  At least for a perfectionist and power user like I.

The computer I found is an HP.  A good company, and pretty much always has been.  They sell a good range of computers falling under any price and level of features that you want to pay for.

I didn't want any crappy Gateway's or Dell's, no factory-built jobbers (I'd just build it myself), no refurbs, no cheapos (like eMachines - though they're a perfectly fine computer).



I perused online, then headed out to the great megacity of Watertown.  After trying to work through the semi-knowledge some of the guys at various computer stores have about the specific computers they sell (though the guy in Best Buy that I talked to knew a lot about computers and hardware/software - he wasn't familiar with any of the computers enough to tell me their specs without looking on the side of the box; which is of negligible help and that I could do myself).  I found a couple good ones at Best Buy, comparable in price and features to what I found online. I wrote the models down and headed home to look up the exact specs, and compare prices.


Only a few days later I'd settled on this one articular computer over all the others.  Best Buy had the best price for it too, surprisingly.


I also had to update my multiple USB 1.1 distribution boxes to 2.0.  And I threw in a new power strip while I was at it.


The little cutie who helped me out the second time around didn't maybe know that much about the computers but she was very very helpful and happy to do so.

That is; once I stopped staring at all of her fascinating piercings - and sure; I may have wondered a few times where else she may have had piercings...  But for the most part I kept my mind on the computers.

And yea - maybe at the end of it all she may have had a hard time actually getting the money out of my hands (a la the typical sitcom joke).  After all, I'm a cheap bastard and I was paying cash - nothing like seeing that much money leave my fingertips after holding and cuddling it lovingly in my sweaty, shaking hands.  Heh heh.

Better to give it to Best Buy and get something out of it rather then having Uncle Bush and his cronies get their greedy oil-stained mitts on it.



Anyway, it is 2.4 Ghz, 4 gig of RAM, dual-core, real Intel, Nvidia card with separate memory (if you want to do graphics applications, video editing, or heavy duty games make sure your video card isn't sharing mem with the computer - blah), Dolby Surround Sound card, lots of Firewire and USB and audio (front and back) and digital video ports, SATA drives (the specs mention it's IDE - strange), DVD writer with Lightscribe, lots of ports, expansion front and back, super quiet (compared to the relatively high decibels of my 'industrial fanned' bastard computer - a good computer and fairly fast and resource-filled but a bit slow when doing some of the work I've been doing), etc etc etc.  I won't bore you with any more specs.  


Suffice to say it's a pretty nice medium-range computer.


The hardest parts are 1) installing/copying stuff over from my old computer and backups and 2) figuring out which operating system I want to use.


The latter was the hardest.


On the one hand XP is well-established and frankly, I'm extremely familiar with it. It runs everything I want it to run.  But XP can't usually take advantage of even 4 gigs of RAM (this particular system combined with XP only uses 3.12 Gig of the available 4), and the availability of drivers can be extremely problematic; to say the least.  Sometimes a particular XP driver can't even be found for a newer system, or if it can it's severely out of date.  Or doesn't support all of the features.  

A good tip for finding drivers is to look at the manufacturer's website for other countries where XP hasn't been pushed out.



On the other hand Vista has come a long way with SP1 and the tweaks people have come up with.  It's modern, and does have some nice features.  And it o course takes advantage of newer software and hardware.  Plus the drivers are already there and installed.  Downsides - it's can still be annoying, lagged, and questionable.  It's big, bloated (like all Windows software).  And a few programs here and there won't run, older stuff.



I would either have to A) re-install a new OS and find sometimes-nearly-impossible-to-find drivers to work with it, THEN re-install all my stuff or B) optimize and hack Vista to make it work the way I want to.


I went back and forth for a few days.  As I knew would happen ; finding drivers for this brand new system running XP was hard-to-impossible for some of the devices.  I never did find one for the network card or SM Bus Controller.


At some point you have to re-evaluate things and how much time is going to be invovled and, indeed, whether you can do something and still have a few strands of hair left afterward (and I can't spare any).


I use Vista occasionally, for myself as well as customers; enough to know it annoys me.  But never have I used it exclusively and for long periods of time.


Despite previous efforts to force myself to use it and tweak it and learn everything about it I never could stomach it long enough.


This time (through what I believe is an extreme force of will ;) I sat down and started seriously using it (without the thought at the back of my mind that I really was going to go back to XP at some point).


As I said - SP1 has made it much better.  Combining a few simple things like turning off UAC, Indexing, and various other miscellanea makes living with it much easier.  Not to mention faster.  Turning off the Aero theme is even better, even though this computer ran very fast with everything mentioned above turned on.  I in fact turned off themes completely, not just switched to the classic theme.


I uninstalled and/or disabled a number of other things including a bunch of media desktop stuff, media sharing, little tray icons for this and that that manufacturers install, dumped Norton (actually this was the very first thing I did), put on my own anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software.  And did a little registry hacking.



I continued (and continue) to dive into optimizing the system, getting rid of things that aren't needed (like the many services).


Now the Vista system is (mind-blowingly surprising to me) very fast and compares very favorably to the speeds of Windows XP.  Things blaze, the graphics are fast and smooth (Flight Simulator 2004 is beautiful, gorgeous and realistic - in fact I find myself getting motion sick while flying occasionally).


It came with an HP keyboard and mouse (optical, but slightly cheap-feeling - the Logitech I've had for years is discolored from many years of finger-rubbing and button-clicking but it's solid and I can easily solder on new button switches when I [inevitably] wear one out once a year).  


I'm not a big fan of multimedia keyboards (nor wireless keyboards and mice - though they are great for presentations).  I tend to not use them, and people in general tend to not use the extra buttons after the initial fun of having them wears off.  But I find myself actually using some of the functions on this one. 

So far this has been a good computer and I've put it through it's paces.  We'll see how it goes.