2005
Latest Skype has free video conferencing
04/12/05
In case you use Skype (free voice chat over the Internet) there is a new update released (2.0.0.43) under their beta testing that allows videochat on Windows. Although they do not have many details on what cameras it works with it does indeed work with my logitech ones.
There is a full screen option and windowed video too. Previously, I would use Skype to talk with my folks on the west coast but for showing video I had to throw something together in Macromedia's Flash Communication Server.
Although the quality is not as good as the AppleiChat (especially at full screen) the Skype video chat does run on Windows and hopefully soon on Linux and MacOSX too.
You can download the upgrade at the Skype website HERE. Assuming this works fine I wonder how much congestion this will make on the Internet for Christmas.
There is a full screen option and windowed video too. Previously, I would use Skype to talk with my folks on the west coast but for showing video I had to throw something together in Macromedia's Flash Communication Server.
Although the quality is not as good as the AppleiChat (especially at full screen) the Skype video chat does run on Windows and hopefully soon on Linux and MacOSX too.
You can download the upgrade at the Skype website HERE. Assuming this works fine I wonder how much congestion this will make on the Internet for Christmas.
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Favorite web management software (CMS)
28/11/05
While not having tried every brand of web site management software there are a few that I find to be my favorites.
Postnuke offers a secure and feature rich Content Management System but I have also found it to be a little difficult to administer and write templates for. That being said it has met my needs and I use it frequently.
WordPress is a great and simple blogging tool. Mix that with the possibility to email in your blog articles I like it, especially for its simplicty. There are however some areas that can get a little complex but there has always been a solution.
OSCommerce is a very dynamic E-Commerce solution but it also has a slow moving codebase with most interesting things happening in the Contributions/ add-ons. Very flexible.
phpBB is, overall the best solution. Easy to understand help forums, clean install and easy to understand administrative interface. Then again it doe not try to offer as many features as these other web site management tools and focuses exclusively on being a forums/ bulletin board type information solution.
Finally, more and more people are trying to get me to use Joomla (a recent spinoff from Mambo). While it looks nice from the adminitrative side and is the easiest to use for installing add-on solutions with, I am still too new to it to give much feedback. However, I do like what I see.
- Postnuke: Content Management System
- WordPress: blogging
- OSCommerce: E-commerce
- PHPBB: bulletin board/ forums
- and maybe soon Joomla: Content Management system
Postnuke offers a secure and feature rich Content Management System but I have also found it to be a little difficult to administer and write templates for. That being said it has met my needs and I use it frequently.
WordPress is a great and simple blogging tool. Mix that with the possibility to email in your blog articles I like it, especially for its simplicty. There are however some areas that can get a little complex but there has always been a solution.
OSCommerce is a very dynamic E-Commerce solution but it also has a slow moving codebase with most interesting things happening in the Contributions/ add-ons. Very flexible.
phpBB is, overall the best solution. Easy to understand help forums, clean install and easy to understand administrative interface. Then again it doe not try to offer as many features as these other web site management tools and focuses exclusively on being a forums/ bulletin board type information solution.
Finally, more and more people are trying to get me to use Joomla (a recent spinoff from Mambo). While it looks nice from the adminitrative side and is the easiest to use for installing add-on solutions with, I am still too new to it to give much feedback. However, I do like what I see.
Make quick photo contact sheets in XP
27/11/05 Filed in: Graphics
When my father-in-law gives me these CD's he bought while traveling and said he wanted to see the photos that were on them. I thought it would be no problem and happily agreed. To my dismay there turned out to be nearly 2000 photos in various folders and I was at a loss.
I remembered that with Windows XP there was a way to select a photo and then use the Photo Printing Wizard of Windows XP but I could not get it to work on the folders I had chosen. Everytime I clicked on a folder the list of wizard tasks on the left never offered the print tasks.
So, finally, I discover that a folder can be identified as a "Picture" folder by right clicking on the folder, choosing customize and then selecting "Pictures" or "Photo Album".
However the trick is to do this to the folder above the folder where the photos are. This means that if the photos are in /home/photosnew/printme you need to make the "photosnew" a "Picture" folder. Then you can select one or more other folders inside of it and see the print picture wizard.
Once that was done I selected all of the folders and used the printing wizard to make a contact sheet for all 2000 photos. It came to about 63 pages (35 photos per page) but it looked good and all of the photos had their file names on them.
Note, the Photo Printing Wizard of Windows XP did not search deep into my folders. For example, some photos were in /home/photosnew/printme/originals and I was in the photosnew directory when I selected the other folders (2 levels higher). I had to move the photos from /originals to /printme and then everything went fine.
I remembered that with Windows XP there was a way to select a photo and then use the Photo Printing Wizard of Windows XP but I could not get it to work on the folders I had chosen. Everytime I clicked on a folder the list of wizard tasks on the left never offered the print tasks.
So, finally, I discover that a folder can be identified as a "Picture" folder by right clicking on the folder, choosing customize and then selecting "Pictures" or "Photo Album".
However the trick is to do this to the folder above the folder where the photos are. This means that if the photos are in /home/photosnew/printme you need to make the "photosnew" a "Picture" folder. Then you can select one or more other folders inside of it and see the print picture wizard.
Once that was done I selected all of the folders and used the printing wizard to make a contact sheet for all 2000 photos. It came to about 63 pages (35 photos per page) but it looked good and all of the photos had their file names on them.
Note, the Photo Printing Wizard of Windows XP did not search deep into my folders. For example, some photos were in /home/photosnew/printme/originals and I was in the photosnew directory when I selected the other folders (2 levels higher). I had to move the photos from /originals to /printme and then everything went fine.
Creating a MS Word index
20/11/05 Filed in: Microsoft
Creating a MS Word index with a word frequency list.
Free Windows optimization tools
18/11/05 Filed in: Microsoft
Free tools for defragmenting, autologin, directory size, page file defragmentation and more.
Making Windows and MacOSX Icons
31/10/05 Filed in: Graphics
If you fall into one of those rare groups of people needing to make icons for both Windows and MacOSX the simplest solution I found was using the Axialis Icon Workshop. Not only can it save to both operating system formats it also has some nice image object tools to make fancy buttons really fast and starts at only $35usd.
While it is easy to convert icons between MacOSX/ Windows or to quickly make your own it seems horribly difficult to edit these icons later due to the lack of layer support. So, if you are only looking to make a few icons that cannot later be "tweaked" then this is not bad at $35. The included images also help to make it a very comfortable starter package for icon development.
There's a bunch of other stuff to do batch image conversions, a photoshop plugin, export packages for commercial sale or presentation but those are in the Corporate Edition which is $60usd.
While it is easy to convert icons between MacOSX/ Windows or to quickly make your own it seems horribly difficult to edit these icons later due to the lack of layer support. So, if you are only looking to make a few icons that cannot later be "tweaked" then this is not bad at $35. The included images also help to make it a very comfortable starter package for icon development.
There's a bunch of other stuff to do batch image conversions, a photoshop plugin, export packages for commercial sale or presentation but those are in the Corporate Edition which is $60usd.
Testing regular expressions
28/10/05
If you have ever struggled through making regular expressions when writing software these editors might help you out.
All free text editing packages allow you to enter in text and make Regular Expressions against it to see the output BEFORE you put it into your code!
All free text editing packages allow you to enter in text and make Regular Expressions against it to see the output BEFORE you put it into your code!
Inkscape Limitations
25/10/05 Filed in: Graphics
Well, at first I was simply amazed by what Inkscape .42 could do for vector graphics. Flowing text inside vector outlines, easy to use gradients, great text kerning, and runs in Windows, MacOSX and Linux!
But then I wanted to make a PDF of the work I'd done and wham, bang lotsa problems. I had to export to postscript for the PDF but Inkscape does not export gradients or alpha channels. Also the touted "Perfectly compliant SVG format file" seems to have problems opening in Batik and other SVG viewers, seemingly because of text flow issues. Even without the gradients the A4 PS export always ended up being too big in the PDF output and so became cropped.
Supposedly I can export the PDF using Scribus (linux only Desktop Publishing Software) but I have yet to try that. I guess I will have to find a Knoppix CDROM to give it a try.
All I could finally do was try exporting PNGs and making PDF's of those... which sorta worked but the PDF file size was way to big.
So, it is nice for editing SVG directly and saving nice PNG's, maybe for making icons, logos, widgets... but otherwise I was loosing too much time to show the work to clients.
But then I wanted to make a PDF of the work I'd done and wham, bang lotsa problems. I had to export to postscript for the PDF but Inkscape does not export gradients or alpha channels. Also the touted "Perfectly compliant SVG format file" seems to have problems opening in Batik and other SVG viewers, seemingly because of text flow issues. Even without the gradients the A4 PS export always ended up being too big in the PDF output and so became cropped.
Supposedly I can export the PDF using Scribus (linux only Desktop Publishing Software) but I have yet to try that. I guess I will have to find a Knoppix CDROM to give it a try.
All I could finally do was try exporting PNGs and making PDF's of those... which sorta worked but the PDF file size was way to big.
So, it is nice for editing SVG directly and saving nice PNG's, maybe for making icons, logos, widgets... but otherwise I was loosing too much time to show the work to clients.
Making pdf links with fop and docbook
03/10/05 Filed in: Writing
Wow, all weekend I tried to get any PDF links using FOP 20.5 XSL Stylesheets 1.69 and olink (I needed olink since I had broken my book into chapter.xml files). Links to within the same .xml orignal file worked but as soon as I tried to cross link to another section... no link.
All I wanted was clickable cross links in my PDF to other sections in a PDF document. It works great when you have one single XML document and link things with xref and link but as soon as you try and get fancy and break out the chapters into their own chapter.xml files and then put them together as a book things get nightmarish.
Once I had broken everything up into their own XML files I saw that my xrefs and links were not working any more, at least when they referred to something in one of the other files. Of course everything worked great with RenderX's XEP but that is expensive and I needed something in a free processor like Apache's FOP.
The best I could get was this error "FO processing failed: internal-destination or external-destination must be specified in basic-link" and that was after discovering I needed olinks and needed to make a text file to describe where the links were kept (olinkdb.xml). Ugh, what a pain.
Of course I had the syntax for that olinkdb.xml file all messed up and couldn't understand the whole olink idea to begin with. Finally I got the olinkdb file right... with some tests using RenderX's XEP Personal edition. Then thanks to Google I came across this newsgroup comment from 2 weeks ago and everything started to fall into place: HERE .
So, following Robert's suggestion to turn off insert.xref.page.number I suddenly found my olinks appearing
. No page numbers or named destinations but at least there are links. RenderX works great with this insert.xref.page.number activated but FOP just choked unless it was off.
Here is a summary of what I did. Note any directory paths to be sure files are in the right place.
Sorry if some of the above texts did not come out right. I'll try to clean them up again later. As I said, ugh.
All I wanted was clickable cross links in my PDF to other sections in a PDF document. It works great when you have one single XML document and link things with xref and link but as soon as you try and get fancy and break out the chapters into their own chapter.xml files and then put them together as a book things get nightmarish.
Once I had broken everything up into their own XML files I saw that my xrefs and links were not working any more, at least when they referred to something in one of the other files. Of course everything worked great with RenderX's XEP but that is expensive and I needed something in a free processor like Apache's FOP.
The best I could get was this error "FO processing failed: internal-destination or external-destination must be specified in basic-link" and that was after discovering I needed olinks and needed to make a text file to describe where the links were kept (olinkdb.xml). Ugh, what a pain.
Of course I had the syntax for that olinkdb.xml file all messed up and couldn't understand the whole olink idea to begin with. Finally I got the olinkdb file right... with some tests using RenderX's XEP Personal edition. Then thanks to Google I came across this newsgroup comment from 2 weeks ago and everything started to fall into place: HERE .
So, following Robert's suggestion to turn off insert.xref.page.number I suddenly found my olinks appearing
. No page numbers or named destinations but at least there are links. RenderX works great with this insert.xref.page.number activated but FOP just choked unless it was off.Here is a summary of what I did. Note any directory paths to be sure files are in the right place.
- make a customization xsl file with the following parameters:
< xsl :param name="fop.extensions" select="1"/>
< xsl :param name="insert.xref.page.number" select="0"/>
< xsl :param name="targets.filename" select="'C:/documents/targets.db'">
< xsl :param name="target.database.document" select="'file:/C:/documents/olinkdb.xml'">
< xsl :param name="collect.xref.targets" select="'yes'">
< xsl :param name="current.docid" select="'testbook'">
< xsl :param name="prefer.internal.olink" select="1">
< xsl :param name="insert.olink.pdf.frag" select="1">
Make an olinkdb.xml file (the targets.db will be autogenerated) like below
< ?xml version="1.0"?>
< !DOCTYPE targetset SYSTEM "file:/C:/docbook-xsl-1.69.0/common/targetdatabase.dtd" [
< !ENTITY book-targets SYSTEM "file:/C:/documents/targets.db">
]>
< targetset>
< targetsetinfo> Description of this target database document,
which is for the examples in olink doc. < /targetsetinfo>
< document targetdoc="testbook">&book-targets;< /document>
< /targetset>
Put my olinks in with only the targetptr set to the linkend name of someplace in one of the documents (without any targetdoc). These olinks could either be with preset text or empty (and becoming autofilled later.) NOTE - the auto filling seemed to have some problems if the linkends were placed on a title. All should be fine if linkends stay on sections and chapters.
compile my pdf from the main book.xml.
Sorry if some of the above texts did not come out right. I'll try to clean them up again later. As I said, ugh.
Comic book archives
16/09/05 Filed in: Books
Apparently there are archives of old comic books floating around the Internet with a file extension of .cbz or .cbr. These can be read with various programs, the most convenient seeming to be Jomic at http://jomic.sourceforge.net/ . You can open up these comic book archives in a laptop at full screen and see something about the same size as a real comic book. Pretty neat.
I unfortunately do not have a source on the Internet to get these archives so if anyone knows of some feel free to send me the address to list here
I unfortunately do not have a source on the Internet to get these archives so if anyone knows of some feel free to send me the address to list here
Skype is alive and well
12/09/05
If you have not checked out the latest Skype updates there are 2 big news worthy items. Number one is that the latest Windows beta of Skype allows you to redirect incoming calls to 1 or more phone numbers when your Skype account is offline. No more fancy Skype phones!
Number 2 is that Ebay has apparently agreed to buy Skype for $2.6 billion dollars! Reported here and here Wow, I did not realize how powerful ebay had become.
Number 2 is that Ebay has apparently agreed to buy Skype for $2.6 billion dollars! Reported here and here Wow, I did not realize how powerful ebay had become.
Evil hackers from Brazil
08/09/05
Argh, some hackers from Brazil almost got me kicked off my web server since they not only messed up the files but used the account to send SPAM email to people about their Paypal accounts. Argh! Definitely not nice.
Slowly things will get back online. Geesh, what a waste of everyone's time. Hacking I can live with... hoping that they are students and actually learned something, but sending out SPAM just seems stupid. Anyways, analysis is being made to hopefully get more information.
Slowly things will get back online. Geesh, what a waste of everyone's time. Hacking I can live with... hoping that they are students and actually learned something, but sending out SPAM just seems stupid. Anyways, analysis is being made to hopefully get more information.
Lightscribe CD labeling
03/09/05
Well, I finally cracked for a lightscribe CD/DVD burner. For those that don't know, lightscribe is a Hewlett Packard technology that allows you to flip the CD and use the CD burners laser's to write an image/ label to the CD. This saves from buying labels, running them through printers, and then possibly destabilizing your CD if the label is not put on correctly.
Well, all I can say is that it is ok. The CD's do look much better than the black/ white labels I was making before. However, a best quality image takes about 30 minutes to write to the CD cover and although they look great in bright to moderate light, a dimly lit place will not do them justice. I've also heard that the DVD's with lightscribe look a little blurry due to an extra layer of plastic on those.
And of course you do need to buy lightscribe supported blank CD/DVDs which are in general twice the price as your normal blank CD/DVD's. So, while they are better than what I was using and I did need something more than writing with a pen on the CD, they may not be for everyone.
Oh, if you do get a lightscribe drive, it is worth checking if there are any firmware updates for the CD drive or lightscribe printing engine updates for the computer. I had some strange banding issues where solid black should have been until I updated the lightscribe printing engine from HP's website.
Well, all I can say is that it is ok. The CD's do look much better than the black/ white labels I was making before. However, a best quality image takes about 30 minutes to write to the CD cover and although they look great in bright to moderate light, a dimly lit place will not do them justice. I've also heard that the DVD's with lightscribe look a little blurry due to an extra layer of plastic on those.
And of course you do need to buy lightscribe supported blank CD/DVDs which are in general twice the price as your normal blank CD/DVD's. So, while they are better than what I was using and I did need something more than writing with a pen on the CD, they may not be for everyone.
Oh, if you do get a lightscribe drive, it is worth checking if there are any firmware updates for the CD drive or lightscribe printing engine updates for the computer. I had some strange banding issues where solid black should have been until I updated the lightscribe printing engine from HP's website.
Joys of rebates
26/08/05 Filed in: Consumer
Rebates have always been annoying but only recently have I seen them become a severe loss of time. There are no guarantees that you will get your money back and then it will usually be in 2 months.
First there was buy.com that had problems printing my online receipt in time to submit a rebate. All requests for aid (and even sending a copy of their server error message) received no response.
I should have learned my lesson but not, I am out again to Compusa, tempted by their weekend ads to pick up some long awaited gadgets. Not only do I leave with 5 rebates to submit but a couple of products had 2 rebates each to get the advertised price.
To make matters worse, when I asked for price matching to their competitor across the street the response was:
"Oh look, there is a new rebate for the exact value you were asking for. I did not see that before. Well we cannot offer you a price matching if there are rebates at the same value." Interesting this rebate was never advertised anywhere and was good only for a week. In effect they are saying that "we will probably match the price... in two months time and after you do some paperwork/ photocopying/ pay for postage. If you don't get your money in 2 months come back and talk to us."
To their credit they did suggest that if I wanted the cheaper price now I could go across the street. My confidence was not improved seeing that most of the rebates were to be sent to post office boxes in different cities.
All of that being said, I have always received my rebates in the past but the amount of work for multiple rebate items and the use of rebates to say someone can match their competitors price is making me wonder if this is really worth the effort.
First there was buy.com that had problems printing my online receipt in time to submit a rebate. All requests for aid (and even sending a copy of their server error message) received no response.
I should have learned my lesson but not, I am out again to Compusa, tempted by their weekend ads to pick up some long awaited gadgets. Not only do I leave with 5 rebates to submit but a couple of products had 2 rebates each to get the advertised price.
To make matters worse, when I asked for price matching to their competitor across the street the response was:
"Oh look, there is a new rebate for the exact value you were asking for. I did not see that before. Well we cannot offer you a price matching if there are rebates at the same value." Interesting this rebate was never advertised anywhere and was good only for a week. In effect they are saying that "we will probably match the price... in two months time and after you do some paperwork/ photocopying/ pay for postage. If you don't get your money in 2 months come back and talk to us."
To their credit they did suggest that if I wanted the cheaper price now I could go across the street. My confidence was not improved seeing that most of the rebates were to be sent to post office boxes in different cities.
All of that being said, I have always received my rebates in the past but the amount of work for multiple rebate items and the use of rebates to say someone can match their competitors price is making me wonder if this is really worth the effort.
Gmail notifier resets winxp video resolution to 8 bit
12/08/05 Filed in: Consumer
For the longest time my winxp home (sp2) kept resetting the screen color to 8 bit after each reboot. Although this was a minor annoyance it was something I wanted to have fixed Using the msconfig windows utility I was able to see it was one of the software'sbeing loaded at startup that was causing this.
After disabling all likely candidates it actually turned out to be the gmail notifier that was doing this. Don't ask me how, it is only supposed to check the my email at google's gmail site. After uninstalling it all was well again.
Using the msconfig windows utility I was able to see it was one of the software'sbeing loaded at startup that was causing this. After disabling all likely candidates it actually turned out to be the gmail notifier that was doing this. Don't ask me how, it is only supposed to check the my email at google's gmail site. After uninstalling it all was well again.
Making DV tapes into DVD with subtitles is not so easy
31/07/05 Filed in: Video
Well, I've had a couple of PAL DV tapes from our wedding a few years back and I've kept telling people who didn't understand the french ceremony that I'd make an NTSC DVD with subtitles. Should be easy right? Everything is digital.
Well, 4 years later, after lots of casual attempts, I finally dug in, said it will be done, and cleaned about 20 gigs of space on my hard drive to get to work. Yes you can buy software that should help make DVD's but either they are easy and cannot make subtitles or they are hard, expensive, and say they can do everything if you read their manuals.
Complicating things was my 2ghz/1.5gb server at the other end of a Microsoft terminal services connection so I do not have an actual monitor on the machine making the video.
The source of any useful information turned out to be http://www.videohelp.com with lots of reviews, how tos, and links to everywhere under the sun. Here is a summary of what I did using free software. NOTE: CyberLink's Power Producer & NERO were included as OEM with my CDROM but I guess they cannot be considered free for everyone.
So, at the end, a quick test in VideoLAN seems to show everything in the right place though I really should go through to check that the subtitles are not too out of sync.
Anyways, it is a possible project but it really seems to take a long time, almost 9 hours not counting the numerous failed attempts with other softwares.
So, yes it can be done with enough harddrive space but with all of the testing (another hour to check the sync and then to test on a real NTSC player, not to mention making any changes to the subtitles after seeing them in action) it is not for the weak of heart.
Well, 4 years later, after lots of casual attempts, I finally dug in, said it will be done, and cleaned about 20 gigs of space on my hard drive to get to work. Yes you can buy software that should help make DVD's but either they are easy and cannot make subtitles or they are hard, expensive, and say they can do everything if you read their manuals.
Complicating things was my 2ghz/1.5gb server at the other end of a Microsoft terminal services connection so I do not have an actual monitor on the machine making the video.
The source of any useful information turned out to be http://www.videohelp.com with lots of reviews, how tos, and links to everywhere under the sun. Here is a summary of what I did using free software. NOTE: CyberLink's Power Producer & NERO were included as OEM with my CDROM but I guess they cannot be considered free for everyone.
* Power Producer quickly converted the PAL DV files to NTSC/DVD format in 2 hours
* Subtitle Workshop was used to make the subtitles and export them in ..SRT/SubRip format (3 hours to make the translations, and about 2 hours to enter the information)
* Subtitle Creator converted the .SRT directly to .SUP format (just a few seconds)
* VobEdit took the DVD filesystem created by Power Producer and deconstructed (demux) the video and audio components (about 15-20 minutes)
* DVDAuthorGUI reconstructed the video and audio components and integrated the .SUP format (about an hour but by then I was reading Orson Scott Card's Speaker For The Dead and was just occasionally checking the status)
* NERO to burn the DVD to a 4.7gb DVD disk.
So, at the end, a quick test in VideoLAN seems to show everything in the right place though I really should go through to check that the subtitles are not too out of sync.
Anyways, it is a possible project but it really seems to take a long time, almost 9 hours not counting the numerous failed attempts with other softwares.
So, yes it can be done with enough harddrive space but with all of the testing (another hour to check the sync and then to test on a real NTSC player, not to mention making any changes to the subtitles after seeing them in action) it is not for the weak of heart.
Free XSL-FO transformations for docbook
28/07/05 Filed in: Writing
Well, I've been working with Docbook for sometime and it's always a hassle to get things looking the way you want (for instance a PDF). There is a lot of support and documentation out there but it is still time-consuming to do what one would consider simple formatting in MS WORD.
Hopefully with the combination of RenderX's Free Personal Edition and XML Mind's FO Convertor it might be getting a bit easier.
Currently I've been using the Apache FOP FO processor and while things do get done there is a lot more formatting that I would like to see in my PDF documents. So far I have signed up and received my XEP personal key. I am hoping to give it a whirl sometime next month and put it to the test.
Hopefully with the combination of RenderX's Free Personal Edition and XML Mind's FO Convertor it might be getting a bit easier.
Currently I've been using the Apache FOP FO processor and while things do get done there is a lot more formatting that I would like to see in my PDF documents. So far I have signed up and received my XEP personal key. I am hoping to give it a whirl sometime next month and put it to the test.
U2 Vertigo concert in Zurich
25/07/05 Filed in: Fun
Now that was a concert! We got tickets by luck alone since the 45,000 were sold out in about an hour. After that we were hit by one downpour after another (the first waiting for tickets and the second waiting for the opening act of the band Feeder). But it was worth it 100%!
We just happened to see a friend at another entrance and asked why he was waiting there. "Well, you can get into the front section of the concert if you are among the first 4,000 people there" he said. By the time he was done we said what the heck, we had our binoculars just in case. So we followed him in and by the end of the concert we found ourselves one row behind the front of the stage and having a great time with a great crowd in front of a pretty darned cool band.
I loved the CoeXisT plug, even though it is a part of an ongoing trademark dispute it seems. Anyways, it was a great part of their songs and brought together a lot of energy. Then City Of Blinding Lights and of course Vertigo twice over. That was just too much fun.
We just happened to see a friend at another entrance and asked why he was waiting there. "Well, you can get into the front section of the concert if you are among the first 4,000 people there" he said. By the time he was done we said what the heck, we had our binoculars just in case. So we followed him in and by the end of the concert we found ourselves one row behind the front of the stage and having a great time with a great crowd in front of a pretty darned cool band.
I loved the CoeXisT plug, even though it is a part of an ongoing trademark dispute it seems. Anyways, it was a great part of their songs and brought together a lot of energy. Then City Of Blinding Lights and of course Vertigo twice over. That was just too much fun.
What to do when your cell phone is stolen?
17/07/05
So what do you do if your cell phone is stolen? Well, the first thing was to have the account blocked from use. Fortunately this was easy to do. As for the phone, so far nobody wants to help cover the expenses. When I contacted Swisscom (the service provider) they said that they would replace the SIM card for free but that I had to buy a new phone at full cost.
Now I am worried who might cover the loss by theft. When I asked Swisscom if there was any theft coverage they said no, I should contact my home insurance company. When I asked if they could at least print out the value of the cell-phone they said no, but that I could take a magazine of current phones and send that to the insurance company. I pointed out that my phone was not in the catalog but they said that was the best that they could do.
So now I am having to contact my home insurance company to see if they will cover a phone that I received as part of a 2 year service contract, the phone of course was received at next to no value (because the service contract should pay the cost. If they could have attached a value to the phone I could have used the automatic coverage of my credit card.
As for Swisscom, they end up coming out as the loosers as I was paying the value of the phone almost every month in call fees. Now they get nothing since I have no phone, only a SIM card. Somehow this makes economic sense to them. For me it would actually be cheaper to go to another provider and get a phone from them (assuming that nobody helps to cover the cost of the replacement.)
Now I am worried who might cover the loss by theft. When I asked Swisscom if there was any theft coverage they said no, I should contact my home insurance company. When I asked if they could at least print out the value of the cell-phone they said no, but that I could take a magazine of current phones and send that to the insurance company. I pointed out that my phone was not in the catalog but they said that was the best that they could do.
So now I am having to contact my home insurance company to see if they will cover a phone that I received as part of a 2 year service contract, the phone of course was received at next to no value (because the service contract should pay the cost. If they could have attached a value to the phone I could have used the automatic coverage of my credit card.
As for Swisscom, they end up coming out as the loosers as I was paying the value of the phone almost every month in call fees. Now they get nothing since I have no phone, only a SIM card. Somehow this makes economic sense to them. For me it would actually be cheaper to go to another provider and get a phone from them (assuming that nobody helps to cover the cost of the replacement.)
Evil Ink Jet Photo Printers
11/07/05 Filed in: Consumer
I do not know what to think of these inkjet printers. So far we've owned both an Epson and HP. Cost wise it does not seem to come out much cheaper than a good photo service... replacing a single ink cartridge is about 75% of the price I originally paid for the printer.
If I try to get maximum value for my letter sized photo paper by printing more than one image per page, I have to figure in the fun time of trimming those images out.
Trying those nifty red-eye correction pens on the ink-jet photos doesn't always work well with the inks either.
And finally, I am starting to see photos I had printed getting pretty faded after 8 months of hanging on the wall with some indirect sun. I did not realize that there were as many different qualities of ink-jet paper as there are colors in the rainbow. Cheaper papers fade quicker. So now I am buying the top of the line HP Premium Plus Glossy photo paper to see if it can hold an image for at least a year. Even that says I have to leave it dry for days before mounting it.
The only thing that they are clearly good for is saving a trip to the mailbox to order prints or for making lots of little changes with a photo program and seeing the changes immediately. This is definitiely a nice benefit but that's about the only real one we've seen.
If I try to get maximum value for my letter sized photo paper by printing more than one image per page, I have to figure in the fun time of trimming those images out.
Trying those nifty red-eye correction pens on the ink-jet photos doesn't always work well with the inks either.
And finally, I am starting to see photos I had printed getting pretty faded after 8 months of hanging on the wall with some indirect sun. I did not realize that there were as many different qualities of ink-jet paper as there are colors in the rainbow. Cheaper papers fade quicker. So now I am buying the top of the line HP Premium Plus Glossy photo paper to see if it can hold an image for at least a year. Even that says I have to leave it dry for days before mounting it.
The only thing that they are clearly good for is saving a trip to the mailbox to order prints or for making lots of little changes with a photo program and seeing the changes immediately. This is definitiely a nice benefit but that's about the only real one we've seen.
How to iChat with a USB webcam
09/07/05 Filed in: Apple
After spending a good amount of time trying to figure out MacOSX's iChat, a quick check on Google showed that it does not support USB webcams, even if you have the proper drivers for them (Logitech for instance).
Fortunately there is a low-priced solution with the aptly named iChatUSBCam from http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam/. This software allows iChat to use an existing USB webcam instead of those much more expensive firewire cameras. Also, they have a great list of suggestions where to find MacOSX drivers for many USB webcameras (you still need a USB webcam that will work with MacOSX).
The existing version 2.0.2 does not work with 10.4 MacOSX Tiger but there is a beta version that supposedly does. I don't know if it was us but using the original version 2.0.2 on out 10.3 MacOSX system we had problems making an iChat to a 10.4 MacOSX. After loading the beta version of iChatUSBCam the problem went away.
Don't forget to be sure your firewall will let the video through. Until we changed our firewall rules we could not accept an incoming call. Apple describes the needed changes here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93208 .
As a side note a PC user can also communicate with the iChat video client if they use a Windows XP computer and download the latest AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) software from http://www.aim.com/. The video quality will not be as good as between two MacOSX systems.
Fortunately there is a low-priced solution with the aptly named iChatUSBCam from http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam/. This software allows iChat to use an existing USB webcam instead of those much more expensive firewire cameras. Also, they have a great list of suggestions where to find MacOSX drivers for many USB webcameras (you still need a USB webcam that will work with MacOSX).
The existing version 2.0.2 does not work with 10.4 MacOSX Tiger but there is a beta version that supposedly does. I don't know if it was us but using the original version 2.0.2 on out 10.3 MacOSX system we had problems making an iChat to a 10.4 MacOSX. After loading the beta version of iChatUSBCam the problem went away.
Don't forget to be sure your firewall will let the video through. Until we changed our firewall rules we could not accept an incoming call. Apple describes the needed changes here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93208 .
As a side note a PC user can also communicate with the iChat video client if they use a Windows XP computer and download the latest AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) software from http://www.aim.com/. The video quality will not be as good as between two MacOSX systems.
Free Earth/Mars viewing program
08/07/05 Filed in: Fun
Google has released a great new version of the keyhole satellite viewer http://earth.google.com/ . If you have the minimum computer system below this is great fun to zoom into various addresses/ cities/ countries, to show kids how the world turns, or to search for Gilligan's Island. You can even get driving directions and then fly along the route!
Mars is included too but I don't know how accurate the driving instructions are.
Additional hint, if you go to Seattle don't turn on the Show Coffee Shops option. You might need more than the minimum system configuration to show all of the results
Minimum configuration:
* Operating system: Windows 2000, Windows XP
* CPU speed: IntelÔøΩ PentiumÔøΩ PIII 500 MHz
* System memory (RAM): 128MB
* 200MB hard-disk space
* 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 16MB VRAM
* 1024x768, 32-bit true color screen
* Network speed: 128 kbps ("Broadband/Cable Internet")
Mars is included too but I don't know how accurate the driving instructions are.
Additional hint, if you go to Seattle don't turn on the Show Coffee Shops option. You might need more than the minimum system configuration to show all of the results
Minimum configuration:
* Operating system: Windows 2000, Windows XP
* CPU speed: IntelÔøΩ PentiumÔøΩ PIII 500 MHz
* System memory (RAM): 128MB
* 200MB hard-disk space
* 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 16MB VRAM
* 1024x768, 32-bit true color screen
* Network speed: 128 kbps ("Broadband/Cable Internet")
The almost silent PC
07/07/05
Finally, my main desktop machine is pretty darned close to silent. We were having to turn it off during dinner just to make a nice meal. It took me forever to track down where all of the noises were coming from but here it is from loudest to most silent: generic power supply, Intel cpu cooler, video card fan and a couple of old hard drives. By the time it was done I had replaced all of the above with fairly quiet components.
So what did I use to quiet a standard 2ghz computer... Well, there is the Enermax AX(G)-FMA "Low-Noise" 300W Power Supply, Zalman CNPS-7000 CPU Cooler
, and I just replaced the video card and hard drive with okay-priced newer versions. It was a huge improvement. If you ever want to see, just try opening your computer and disconnecting the things mentioned above BEFORE powering it on. Now instead of a strong breeze it is a nice light hum.
So what did I use to quiet a standard 2ghz computer... Well, there is the Enermax AX(G)-FMA "Low-Noise" 300W Power Supply, Zalman CNPS-7000 CPU Cooler
, and I just replaced the video card and hard drive with okay-priced newer versions. It was a huge improvement. If you ever want to see, just try opening your computer and disconnecting the things mentioned above BEFORE powering it on. Now instead of a strong breeze it is a nice light hum.
Getting rid of MSN Messenger
06/07/05 Filed in: Microsoft
I had loaded this up once to check it out, only to find I couldn't get rid of it. It would always try connecting to the Internet, always take up memory and just sit there in my toolbar like a bad joke you just couldn't forget. Argh, well, fortunately these folks http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=288 had the simple steps needed to get rid of it. Very simple, very quick.
And if you're looking to get rid of that, maybe cidaemon.exe and cisvc.exe aren't needed either. They are the automatic indexing on your NTFS drives. Just right click on each of your NTFS drives, choose Properties, and in the General tab uncheck "Allow Indexing Service... .
And if you're looking to get rid of that, maybe cidaemon.exe and cisvc.exe aren't needed either. They are the automatic indexing on your NTFS drives. Just right click on each of your NTFS drives, choose Properties, and in the General tab uncheck "Allow Indexing Service... .
Lego Star Destroyer built before your eyes
05/07/05 Filed in: Fun
The people at http://www.adognamedfish.com/ spent 10 hours building a lego ship. Not only that but they left their webcam running to record the moment(s). I hoped they exercised a bit but the final product sure looks neat. I've never seen so many lego pieces.
Palm software on a PocketPC
24/06/05 Filed in: Mobile
Wow, I just came across this application for the PocketPC - http://www.styletap.com . It allows many PalmOS software written for PalmOS 5.2 or lower to be run on the PocketPC. Neato. And not too expensive either ($30).