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Managing Minecraft with screen

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2011-01-30T22:16:22+01:00

Yes, a full screen is possible with graphic layout like your home computer, but then you are paying for that privilege since the graphic processing requires more RAM. So, assuming you are keeping the cloud server as small as possible, like a 1GB RAM instance on Rackspace, you will use SSH to access your server. ...This command detaches the Minecraft server process from your terminal and allows you to log off and do other things. ...Although nohup allows you to disconnect the Minecraft server from your ssh session (allowing you to log off while the server continues), you might get into a situation where you cannot stop the server cleanly. For example, normally you can just log in with the Minecraft client and issue stop as admin to shut down the server. If the client has just been upgraded however, when you try to connect to your server, the connection may fail because the server is still running an older version than the client. ...When you start the screen software, give the session a name so that you can go back to it like “screen -S minecraft”. ... Inside that virtual terminal you can issue your typical java startup commands for Minecraft and you can go back to that virtual session anytime, even from another computer. ...Get this, you can even share the control over a screen terminal with other users or display multiple screens at the same time! ...If you are scripting the startup and still want to use screen, use screen -d -m to start a screen terminal already detached.

Minecraft on the cloud

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2010-12-30T13:59:04+01:00

If you want to play minecraft on an external server, one way to do it is to use a cloud computer instance. I’ve used rackspace.com to host a small Ubuntu server instance using 1GB RAM. ...Below are the steps to create a new instance, assuming that you already have an account with them and have started an ubuntu instance (cloud computer) of 1GB RAM: ...This should start the server and you can close the ssh session. You can then log into your server as admin and add additional users, save the world, and other admin stuff. I also recommend installing htop, iptraf, and mc as well to see all of the processes and to kill the server in an emergency. ...Security still needs to be set up but this is the minimum to get you started. If you want to test more memory you can easily upgrade the server. You get 1 day to put it back to the way it was. However, I have not been able to downsize a server... if I started at 4GB for example, it did not seem possible to go to a 1GB server.

Windows black screen of death

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2010-12-13T23:23:34+01:00

Ever since my Windows Vista gave me a black screen of death I was at a loss of what to do with the information. This is the joyless state where the screen is black, you get a cursor and nothing else. The partition shows active and healthy in the Computer Storage Management but you cannot explore or otherwise access it. Booting from another Windows OS would always give me an error like “is not accessible Access is denied”. This not only blocked me out of getting to my files, but software that required activation, such as various Adobe software, could not be deactivated. I could not upgrade the OS to Windows 7 since that required being started from a running OS. I read somewhere that I could still access data using Windows XP... which indeed worked but I wanted to deactivate my software there before reinstalling it elsewhere. Finally, I was able to access data from Windows 7 by adding a new user “Everyone” and giving them full rights to everything on the partition. After waiting a few minutes as every file on the partition received the new access privileges I could indeed browse the drive and backup files. With MacOSX, whenever my older MacBook had a problem with a system update (more frequent than I would have liked) the OS CD would always reinstall everything that was necessary.

Muse better on CD than in concert

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2010-09-01T22:21:36+02:00

That was our opinion after going to the concert in Bern’s Stade de Suisse, Switzerland. You could only hear bass on most of the songs and at least 2 of the songs were just garbled noise... you could not even make out the rhythm. For the price we paid for those 2 tickets we could have bought the entire set of CDs. For any other purchase, failing to provide what was purchased would entail a refund, not the music concert industry apparently. If it was the Stade de Suisse’s fault, they should be forbidden to host shows until they can actually transmit sound for them. We had ben excited to hear the voices in person but like I said, there was either the bass guitar or noise. We’ll stick to their CDs which are excellent.

Dark side of Nespresso machines

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2010-08-15T23:28:28+02:00

They do make a nice cup of coffee but when descaling time comes around it leaves a little to be desired. This is a required experience because apparently your machine must be descaled “regularly” for your warranty to be good and they will not do it for you (I asked). ...How do they distribute this dangerous liquid... in a plastic sack with a tear off top. ...Second, you are supposed to reuse the liquid for a second pass for descaling. No mention of how to capture half a liter of hot descaling water under a water spout with space for an espresso cup. ...And fourth, there is no indication of how this becomes safe for people afterwards... is it somehow deactivated with the one pass through of normal water? ... There are rinse instructions but after all of those dangerous exposure warnings, I am worried. Unfortunately, after following their written instructions I missed the graphic image with the number 2, this apparently indicates that you should push a switch to the down position (and was not mentioned in the text). ... All I could do was pull the plug since there was no power switch and that put the machine in an unknown state when I restarted it. Not the most pleasant experience overall and since you cannot use safe liquids like vinegar for descaling the nespresso machine... be ready.

Update Captivate 1 now

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2010-05-28T01:53:01+02:00

Adobe is coming out with their new version of Captivate (version 5) in mid-June, 2010. It can only be upgraded from Captivate 3 and 4. So if you have version 1 or 2 your are out of luck... unless you order now version 4 for the same price and ask about getting a free upgrade to 5 when it comes out next month. It your last chance if you own one of those horrible older versions when Adobe first purchased Macromedia.

iPad arrives in Switzerland

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2010-05-27T00:28:35+02:00

A shame that many of my iPhone applications need to be repurchased to take advantage of the larger screen but apparently that is a developer choice and most are choosing to make their customers pay. ... • My MacBook running 10.6.3 is not new enough to charge it, it needs a USB port that has more voltage so I must plug it into the wall ... • I had to sync immediately with itunes to use it or else nothing would work • It takes a long time to sync, and I’ve only got the 16GB version, I cannot imagine a higher version • There was no way to know which of my apps had iPad versions so I had to search each one I wanted and see, most did have a separate version for the iPad only that I could purchase ... • My warranty is only for 1 year and I do not think that coves a battery replacement... no idea how much it will cost for the battery to be replaced. ... • Don’t know how easy it will be to use for someone with long fingernails. • no user accounts, I mean, if I enter in my email information I do not want my kids or anyone being able to dig through my things or delete the applications that I use. Not easy to even let just a guest use it since it is so customized for a single user. • I would have thought the calendar application was easier to use, like being able to drag and drop events or resize them

Security Update 2010-001 causes iLife to crash

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2010-02-19T22:41:01+01:00

After dutifully applying the MacOSX Security Update 2010-001 in January, I noticed that most of my applications (including my iLife applications like iPhoto, iTunes, and others) would always crash at startup with kernel errors. This was on my MacBook of nearly 3 years. Fortunately I still had support and after calling a couple of times to try some basic things, the technician finally said that there had been some reports on older MacBooks that have been upgraded from Tiger all the way up to Snow Leopard. The fix was to simply put in the Snow Leopard CDROM and reinstalling the MacOSX operating system. The installation keeps all of your original files and simply overwrites system files. Sure enough, that did it and after reapplying my System updates, my MacBook is working great. Everything worked again!

Annoying Camtasia 6 bugs

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-12-22T13:54:20+01:00

For the price Camtasia 6 Studio is a good webcast / podcast creation tool but it quickly becomes apparent that the Studio is a collection of add-ons to older versions, which makes for a confusing workflow and lots of extra time to make it do what I want. ... • For instance, while captions are nice you cannot copy out the captions to a text file for backup or external review. ...As soon as you save a production preset (logos, titles, and other features) many of those features become locked to further editing. • Small changes, such as correcting a misspelling in the About box requires redoing the entire production instead of giving an option to not overwrite parts that have not changed. • It is not obvious how to add a Picture in a Picture or change the time of a callout. ...There are numerous Camtasia options for publishing the final webcast but they are not clear when you would use what feature and what are the side effects. For example, Express Show is a nice all-in-one export option but you have to republish the whole webcast to make even the smallest changes. It is also very hard to customize as there is not a single FLA file to edit but many folders of small parts that must be combined with an open source tool... and a paid version of Adobe Flash to include certain components. If you need Flash to begin with I do not understand why the source is not provided as a single flash file. ...A GPL solution like flowplayer is well documented and can easily fill in the missing spots of the Camtasia flash player.

Camtasia 6 preset secrets

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-12-22T13:18:33+01:00

Camtasia 6 from TechSmith may be a nice tool to build webcasts but it still has many rough edges, especially for small changes and branding of the final webcast. One of my biggest problems was trying out different output options with their ExpressShow template. These production / output options are called presets and at different parts of the workflow, certain editing features is turned off and cannot be turned back on without making a new preset. Unfortunately, remaking a preset is difficult since it involves many windows and linked graphic files. It is not possible to just copy and paste the presets either due to the editing bug. Fortunately, after asking on the TechSmith forums a workaround is possible to reactivate certain settings without rebuilding everything from scratch. Start producing the video with the desired production preset and click next. Then click the back button and choose Custom Production Settings. Now all of the editing features are reactivated (such as viewer size, table of contents, or multiple files per heading). Just be sure that after producing to save this new preset under a new name.

Removing MacOSX software that constantly relaunch

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-09-26T18:48:16+02:00

Since I could never get PCNow to correctly run on my MacOSX laptop I have been trying to uninstall it. Apparently it is not as easy as it seems since it keeps appearing in my console logs as failed startup attempts. ...They simply referred me to an uninstaller I had already tried (and which would not run without Rosetta being installed). Pointing out that there were problems with their uninstaller caused all support email to stop coming to me so I figured I was on my own. ...9/26/09 6:53:38 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[140] (com.webex.asassist[11255]) posix_spawn("/tmp/webex/WBXASMuserSupportDaemon.app/Contents/Support/WBXASAssist.app/Contents/MacOS/WBXASAssist", ...): No such file or directory 9/26/09 6:53:38 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[140] (com.webex.taskwatcher[11254]) Exited with exit code: 1 9/26/09 6:53:38 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[140] (com.webex.taskwatcher) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds 9/26/09 6:53:38 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[140] (com.webex.asassist[11255]) Exited with exit code: 1 9/26/09 6:53:38 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[140] (com.webex.asassist) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds There was a script from the webex remote control that was still trying to start the software.

Slow mail & address book after Snow Leopard upgrade

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-09-17T11:57:07+02:00

After upgrading our Macbook to Snow Leopard we were surprised to see Mail, Contacts, and Skype being painfully slow to open. After searching through Google however, a quick fix was indeed available. The problem was all based in the Contacts application. There was a Smart Group in Address Book for all contacts that were not already assigned to a group. Simply deleting this Smart Group solved all of the start up problems. Apparently any application trying to get information from Address Book would get caught up in the molasses. Thanks to Apple for their forums in helping to solve this. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa? messageID=10064242&tstart=0

Add easy social networking to Outlook

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-08-22T17:25:54+02:00

A free (with an optional commercial version) plugin for Microsoft Outlook automatically consolidates your email by user and adds quick access to social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and others. This easy to install plugin is called Xobni. Once installed it can index our past and new emails to provide statistics, see connections, and automatically check major social networks to get additional information on any email sender. Personally, I tried it out, was amazed at being able to pull people’s photos from their Facebook site, and then finally uninstalled it since I really did not want to know everything about everyone. However, it was easy to install, stable, and did what it said it would so someone wanting a little more from their Outlook emails might find this plugin useful.

Best free iphone apps for kids

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-05-31T18:12:14+02:00

As observed from my kids use of our iPhone (always in airport mode of course when they are using it.) Following are the iphone applications that my kids have found the most interesting. Here are the top 5 but below are all of the rest that they like. • Disney Fairies Fly Lite (free) ... • Rolando Lite (free) ...Paper Toss (free) (latest version has ads which people say are real annoying) ...Disney Fairies Fly Lite (free) ...Rolando Lite (free) ...Labyrinth Lite Edition (free) but best if you make your own mazes ...iHusky Lite (free) (though later versions are getting more complex)

A nice home backup solution, DLINK DNS-323

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-05-12T13:54:37+02:00

The solution I finally picked was the DLINK DNS-323, with 3 1T SATA drives which, while having some problems it is very customizable. ... • supports 1 or 2 SATA drives (up to 1.5TB or 2.0TB with the recent beta firmware), ...Originally I wanted was to run RAID 1 between 2 drives and swap out the backup drive for remote storage. After seeing that the GUI interface for the RAID restore on the DNS-323 made it very easy to erase the backup drive I looked into the active hacking community for this device. Starting at the http://wiki.dns323.info/ site I found easy instructions to install the fun_plug linux hack that allows ssh, cron, rsync, smartmontools, subversion to easily make an rsync solution to the second drive. Now I have an automated rsync done to the backup drive each night and I can easily swap out the backup drives without worry of erasing the backup data. ... Rsync is about 5.5MB/s and otherwise copying to the samba diskshare from the local network is about 16MB/s. I have not used the FTP option but that is supposed to be about 12MB/s. So far I have been very happy with this device, even more so when I saw that DLINK has released the beta version in May of its upcoming firmware release. My MacOSX and Windows machines can easily reach the samba share and if there was any need for remote access I could ativate the FTP server.

Skype for iPhone is here

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-04-02T08:05:16+02:00

At long last the free Skype application is available for the iPhone. Now you can easily see who is online, chat with them and even make VOIP calls... if you are on WiFi connection. Overall it works as expected, after the small download from the AppStore you can quickly enter your account information and get access to your account and contacts. For long contact lists you can select a simple filter for all online users. However it quickly became apparent that this first version is of limited use since I had to have the application running to be aware of anything. I can easily send messages out but someone trying to reach me needs to hope that I have the application running and the iPhone turned on. Still better than nothing and an issue that will hopefully be resolved with the 3.0 firmware due out this summer. ... • the ability to store multiple accounts and switch between them • a smaller user list (or optional compressed version) ... • possibility to leave voice mail to contacts

WebEx PCNow remote access not convincing

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-04-02T07:40:45+02:00

While looking for a simple way to remote control both family PCs and Macs, I tried out the Cisco owned WebEx remote control software. ...Although it offers a nice web management interface, invitations by email, a low monthly fee (at least for the 2 concurrent computer version) the simplicity stops there. ...So I contacted their online help and waited and waited... kind of at a restaurant where the waiter is ignoring you (I think they must be poorly managing multiple help sessions) and after reminding the agent that I was still waiting they slowly started to help. Finally they could not find the login page either and recommended that I call their support line. Again, I tried to use the online help chat and again I found myself chatting things like “Hello, is anyone there?” ... Finally the agent did say that they were busy and asked me to wait... better at least than not answering at all. ...A few days later I was able to get access to the mac and tried the email invitation myself... only to find that the automatic installation advertised does not work for the MacOS. ...So, everything is installed, my web management panel is aglow with 2 green connected icons for my computers I can access and I feel all is well. However, a few days later the Mac user is complaining about problems with their Mac that started about the time I installed PCNow. ...I think the PC in their name should have given me a hint but I bought in to the marketing all over their site.

iPhone PPTP VPN on Swisscom 3g

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2009-01-15T07:39:58+01:00

If anyone has tried making a PPTP connection from their iPhone while in Switzerland, the chances are it is not working. Apparently Swisscom has a problem routing the PPTP data over their 3G network (the fast network). Currently you have to use a wireless hotspot to be able to make a PPTP connection somewhere. Swisscom does not say that the PPTP connections work fine on their older GSM network, though at that networks slower speed. So if you are on a Swisscom network and need PPTP VPN access to your home office or company network, turn off 3G before making the VPN connection.

Evil Ubuntu Samba bug

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-11-20T02:47:16+01:00

Apparently there is an evil bug in the Samba implementation of Ubuntu Server that can cause segmentation faults on all logon attempts. This will affect email, ssh, secured web logins and console logins. The only way to get back into the system is to physically reboot the machine and choose Recovery Mode as the boot option. Then choose the menu item “drop into root shell”. Now you are root on the machine. Finally issue the command “dpkg --purge libpam-smbpass” and then after a reboot you should be able to login correctly. One quick check to be sure this is the problem is to do all of the above except the dpkg command. As root you can go check out your logs. Try “tail /var/log/syslog” and see if you see a bunch of libpam-smbpass segfaults or “error 4 in pam_smbpass.so” messages. At least it is a quick fix if you are on site.

ebox problems on Ubuntu 8.10

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-11-17T00:59:44+01:00

Apparently the remote management will fail to install on the latest Ubuntu 8.10 image. This is too bad since it is the recommended remote management tool for Ubuntu 8.10. My only workaround was to add deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ebox/ubuntu intrepid main to /etc/apt/sources.list. This allows you to install the default package and addon modules but none of eBox will be able to be authenticated.

Home architecture software

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-11-12T08:17:24+01:00

It does work but they’ve gone through so many versions, changing so much that unless the latest version looked amazing was not going to spend more time with them. ...Better Home and Gardens had much nicer looking output that did not take too long to generate. 3d manipulation was relatively easy (though sometimes the mouse control would be limited as in zooming and only the keyboard could zoom closer). ...However my first post to their forums was deleted by the moderator and my second was also edited later by the moderator to delete any mention of the previous deletion. ... Additionally there are some graphic card issues, my older nvidia card was not powerful enough to preview bookcases in their item library for example so I had to upgrade my video card to something newer. ...Punch Design looks like it might do what I want but their website was so limited that I did not go much farther. I had hoped to see more examples of the interface in use but all they had were scanned images of their boxes which I could not zoom into to see details. ...Their Macintosh version interested me too but after reading the many bad experiences on Amazon.com that did not look like a winner either. Also, there are many references to it not being a single program but a whole bunch of programs that makes me hesitant as well. Also their graphic output, at least in their few examples) did not seem as smooth as Better Home and Gardens. 3D Architecte Expert CAD looks like it would do everything I would want... excepting that it is in French.

How to tell if you are in a black hole.

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-09-22T00:05:50+02:00

With everyone worried about being sucked into a black hole by CERN I tried to imagine what it might be like once we were there. ... 1 you cannot see the stars or they all seem redish or blueish (the earth got sucked into the black hole, maybe even the sun but it has not sucked everything in, yet) 2 you could have sworn that only yesterday your kids were just babies (event horizon effect if they were sucked in before you.) 3 you find yourself in a state of timeless tranquility (the black hole only sucked in time, not matter. ... 5 you seem to be reliving the same events, meetings that discuss the same topics, same sort of relationships over and over (we have fallen into a time loop) 6 suddenly your significant other seems to have a new personality, you seem to be in a really bad streak of bad luck, things you’ve planed out well don’t work (you are now in a parallel universe where things may have developed differently) 7 you have friends who eat a lot and do not gain weight, food you you used to like now tastes horrible, you swear that you weren’t going over 60mph but the officer still gives you a ticket for going 80mph (the earth is now in another universe where the laws of physics are different) 8 you suddenly find yourself forgetting things that just happened, maybe even dreaming about something that has not happened yet (time has reversed, you’ve forgotten yesterday because it has not happened yet.) 9 no matter how early you leave for work you are always late, you cannot seem to finish anything that you have started (time is warping) 10 your hair is a mess (selective spaghettification has occurred only on your hair, consider yourself lucky that the rest of you is not as messy, either that or you are still on the event horizon and should prepare yourself for the worst)

Converting Indesign to Scribus

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-09-01T07:40:58+02:00

Having recently had to convert an Indesign project to the ope source Scribus format I found the process a little time consuming but workable once I dug into the Scribus documentation. Sometimes the styles would be forgotten or incorrectly applied for text and adding CMYK text colors was a little complex but overall it worked well and I was able to create a Scribus version of my Indesign file. Some unavoidable problems came up when I found I had used some image manipulation of Indesign such as image shadows and text on a path. While the shadow simply had to be redone in Photoshop, the text on a path could optionally be done in the 1.3.5svn version (this version also supports reading Illustrator files natively). Since this only 1.3.3.12 is the current stable I also put the text on a path feature back into the photoshop file but that issue should be esolved when 1.3.5 is released as stable. ...Some other things that slowed me down but turned out to not be too difficult were: • changing text color to a CMYK value (must add a new color and use the edit text box) ... • selecting frames that have other frames partially above them (seems to be a bug, move other frames out of the way) • text wrapping around frames (it finally worked but it seemed to take some time for the wrapping to work) • relinking all linked files when the .sla file was moved (a bulk link option would be nice.)

Difficulties with Dell

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-07-27T15:05:30+02:00

Maybe some people link Dell to being easy and efficient but in almost every case I have found them to be unable to deliver in either of those two categories, except when receiving a laptop. When a laptop is concerned it has always arrived in good condition but then I was pretty much on my own. ...I soon found that it only worked with ink sold from Dell and that the ink was not listed anywhere for sale. I had tried to call in an order it directly but even when I reached a person they said that they could not sell it to me and that only a special sales representative could, however I could not get a direct number to this special person. They could only call me back within a few days... which they never did. ...You can not order it diirectly online, you can only fill out a form asking someone to contact you to discuss extending the warranty. ...Although their website says it is “usually shipping in 24hours” after waiting a week I logged back on to their website to check the status and the shipping date was a month away. After calling and reaching someone they kindly explaind that there has been a huge shortage on those batteries and that is why the shipment date is a month away. I asked why they said it would normaly ship in 24 hours when they new it was backordered for over a month and she said that she did not know why. After a month went by (when the site continued to say it would be available “normally in 24 hours”) I received an email saying that they were required by federal law to cancel my order unless I contated them.

Iphone 3G memory and software issues

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-07-23T08:23:00+02:00

Now that I’ve finally gotten my hands on my own iphone I thought I would give some of my negative comments (there are certainly a lot of positive marketing so good points should be easy to find.) ... • memory full, sometimes nothing will work or just certain things like audio books and certain applications and eventually it will reboot ... • no way to group applications aside from drag/drop buttons, I’ve got 5 pages of software already ... • if I have exchange calendar syncing activated I cannot also sync some of my icalenders ... • cannot send email from a different account... for example if I write it in one account I cannot move or send it from another ... • the app store does not have a way to see new applications quickly, only new featured applications or go to each category ... • and wierdest of all, it interferes with my logitech mouse, if it is touching the mouse cable the mouse will start to move around the screen on its own. I do not know how close it has to be but if it gets the signal to send a mouse click there will be problems. I do like that you can turn off all of the phone features (airplane mode) which is great if I want to let my kids look at it. ... Too bad we can’t load profiles... then I could have a work mode, fun mode, and kids mode with different features/applications activated for each

Is the world ready for the iPhone?

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-07-08T22:22:56+02:00

Although the Apple iPhone is coming out this Friday it seems that the overseas release might still have some hiccups, at least in Switzerland. Although pricing is available here in Switzerland, everyone only seems ready to move boxes. When I went to a local Swisscom vendor (Manor in Geneva) to ask about it they seemed to be thoroughly confused on all points except the release date. When I asked what the international network access charges would be they said that it was unknown. When I asked if it had bluetooth, they said yes but that it was a special bluetooth that may not work with existing bluetooth devices. ... I asked them to explain about the wireless hotspot access being free but that there was a download limit on the accounts. The free wireless hotspot access at Swisscom hotspots is apparently unlimited but the data download from the 3G networks is what is limited/ metered. They did not know, even after my service contract was up they did not know what would happen but it would not matter since after 2 years the phone would surely not be worth much compared to the phones available then. As a trick question I asked if it would work with my PC and they said they thought it would only work with a Mac system. They explained that there is a lot of secrecy around the release and so a lot of things were just unknown however they were happy to reserve one for me.

Puzzling puzzles from Hanayama Toys

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-05-27T08:21:37+02:00

If you are looking for some manual puzzles for a gift or to while away the time, and you come across puzzles from the Japanese company Hanayama, keep looking. I purchased their Cast Coaster puzzle with its worrisome difficulty level of 4 for something that would look nice on the bookcase and that the kids could try solving. It is disappointing on every level aside from it's being shiny. The puzzle is absolutely no challenge. You simply push on one point on the puzzle and the whole thing comes apart. I wasn't even trying, just running my fingers over the curves and voila, it was all apart. I can't imagine a difficulty level less then this but Hanayama offers 3 simpler levels! Then I thought maybe it was at least difficult to put back together. While looking it over I saw that it was cracked through from either a poor manufacturing process or poor quality control. So if you are looking for a good puzzle toy or something that won't be a risk for young kids (no pointy or easily broken parts) I suggest that you pass on Hanayama products.

PSYOPS and their amazing Cola commercial

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-05-27T08:13:12+02:00

Wow, now that's some advertisment... catchy tune, surreal landscape, cute characters, great story progression. I do not think I have ever watched a publicity 4 times just to catch new tidbits I'd missed. If you haven't seen their work check out http://www.trapcode.com/gallery/psyop_coke.mov or their main website at http://www.psyop.tv. They have done some great advertising work. Don’t forget to check out their amazing converse advertisement.

Fixing Exchange -4001 JET_errFileIOBeyondEOF

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-04-24T02:42:58+02:00

Although I still do not know the source of this error (essentially my exchange store stopped being able to mount) the fix was rather obvious. ... Microsoft said it was a problem in Exchange 2003 SP1 and Googling showed me many people who gave up and restored their last backup (which of course would be the best solution). ESEUTIL by itself kept throwing the same JET_errFileIOBeyondEOF error except for eseutil /k "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv.1.edb" This showed that my .edb data was fine but it stopped at the .stm file. ... 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 ...So I simply deleted my .stm file and rebuilt it with C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin>eseutil /p /createstm "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb". ... If your users are all Outlook clients it is probably not much used but if your users are IMAP/POP3 users then they may have a lot of information there which will be lost. ... Database: C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb ... 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 ... 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 ... 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Booting from a Windows 2003 raid partition

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-04-20T17:31:39+02:00

The software raid solutions of Windows 2003 is designed to only allow access to your mirrored data. ... Simply taking the good working drive and trying to boot from it will fail. You should be able to boot from a boot disk but not boot the mirrored drive itself. ...This can be fixed using your Windows Server CD and booting to the recovery console. There you can use the FIXMBR command to write a Master Boot Record to your mirrored drive. Using the Recovery Console will also verify if the mirrored drive has a working system as it will show up as a Windows installation and you will be asked for your Windows Admin password to get access to the console. ...I had simply wanted to move my Windows 2003 installation to a bigger disk so I always had a good backup to fall back on. Normally I would use Acronis workstation to clone my drive but for some reason it would just restart (when booting from the CDROM) everytime I tried to clone my Windows Server's dynamic disk partition. NOTE: If you are tying to simply duplicate your drive, be sure to not break the mirror with both drives connected. If you do so then one of the drives will receive a new drive letter and probably not be able to boot with it.

MacOSX online help can be dangerous

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-04-11T08:27:17+02:00

Usually, using a software package's help system is pretty safe. You can normally rest assured that your work is safe and untouched while you browse different help options. However with MacOSX, some of the help subjects under the main menu launch the menuitem you are researching. This means that if you have a bunch of text selected in Pages and search for how to do a Table of Contents, the first item that shows up will actually insert a Table of Contents where the text selection is... essentially overwriting your text if you are not careful. Fortunately, these autostart items are marked "Menu Items" in their heading to give you a hint that they are not in fact help text.

Swiss bookstore making big margin

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-04-09T18:09:22+02:00

Passing by a local Payot book store in Geneva I was about to purchase a paperback from the States when I took a second look at the price tag. An 8 USD book was selling for 15.80CHF. I remember in the past when the dollar was worth more that this was a common price but now that the dollar has dropped so much in value I was wondering where my savings was with this imported book. Seeing that I was paying almost twice the value of the book I finally put it back and called a friend in the States to order it for me. Even with shipping to Switzerland it would be cheaper than buying it at Payot.

Nikon Coolpix p50 does not impress

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-03-20T08:31:00+01:00

Below are a few of the problems that we have experienced. ... • the USB connection is USB 1 so it is horribly slow transferring images or video • instructions for "High ISO" setting say the pictures may come out grainy... yes they do, unusable • battery indicator only appears when the battery is about to fail... very useful. ... • you cannot use date stamping and the anti-shake feature at the same time • the anti-shake feature does not work on most of the photos ... • the video that it does is okay (well okay if you are used to 8mm film quality but that is fine for our home movies) So, in general, if you can avoid this camera, do so. If you receive it as a gift, just smile and thank the giver. We picked it up at our local Manor store where they refuse to let you try anything in advance, it is all by recommendation only.

Converting Wordpress to RapidWeaver blog

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-02-29T09:13:01+01:00

Since I have had a long time problem with access to my website (often failed database or webserver connections) I have decided to move everything from my old blog to RapidWeaver for the MacOSX. This allows me faster access to my blog. Since RapidWeaver can only import the Movable Type blog format I needed a way to convert the WordPress information. Fortunately a PHP script already exists to make this work - wp-export-mt.php. Simply downloading this to your WordPress root directory and then opening it in a web browser will allow you to convert all of your posts into a 1 page text file which uses the Movable Type format. After that you can simply use the import feature of RapidWeaver and voila, a working blog of all of your old posts. Note: I do not know how this works with comments but it worked great with the posts themselves.

iWeb 08 tested only for Safari

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-03-31T07:55:05+02:00

Assuming that iWeb 08 templates for MacOSX have not been pre-tested with major browsers will save you a lot of headaches. If your only visitors will be MacOSX Safari users than you are going to be okay. If you wish other browsers to view and print your website than be ready to do some grueling tests and dig into the source code. For example, using the Comic template and visiting the site with Internet Explorer 7 gives you graphics that are not correctly aligned, printing that does not work and in some cases jammed or inaccessible web pages. After may hours swimming through the source code and trying different things (not helped by my MacOSX Leopard upgrade making websharing disfunctional) I finally discovered that it was the shadows in this template that were causing all of the problems in their DIV containers. After deactivating shadows in the inspector for every object and text box for every page the site could suddenly print in Internet Explorer. There were a couple of objects (some arrows) that I could not disable the shadows for so I simply took screenshots and saved those objects as jpgs to replace the objects with shadows. So it is possible to have a compatible website with at least the Comic template but be prepared to test and test and test since it appears that Apple did not. Note, since I am not a Apple employee I cannot guarantee that tests were not made on other browsers but if they were they must have been subcontracted to Microsoft.

Palm software on a PocketPC

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-06-24T03:00:07+02:00

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).

Lego Star Destroyer built before your eyes

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-05T13:05:20+02:00

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.

Getting rid of MSN Messenger

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-06T01:52:45+02:00

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... .

The almost silent PC

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-07T02:52:13+02:00

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. ... 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.

Free Earth/Mars viewing program

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-08T17:21:49+02:00

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 :) ... * CPU speed: IntelÔøΩ PentiumÔøΩ PIII 500 MHz ... * 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 16MB VRAM ... * Network speed: 128 kbps ("Broadband/Cable Internet")

How to iChat with a USB webcam

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-09T17:35:49+02:00

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. ...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.

Evil Ink Jet Photo Printers

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-11T20:44:17+02:00

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. ... 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.

What to do when your cell phone is stolen?

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-17T14:43:52+02:00

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. ...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. ... 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.)

Free XSL-FO transformations for docbook

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-28T00:57:23+02:00

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.

U2 Vertigo concert in Zurich

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-25T00:57:38+02:00

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). ... ...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.

Making DV tapes into DVD with subtitles is not so easy

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-07-31T00:57:43+02:00

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. ...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. ... NOTE: CyberLink's Power Producer & NERO were included as OEM with my CDROM but I guess they cannot be considered free for everyone. ...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) ...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.

Gmail notifier resets winxp video resolution to 8 bit

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-08-12T08:50:23+02:00

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.

Joys of rebates

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-08-26T13:30:19+02:00

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. ...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: ...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. ...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.

Lightscribe CD labeling

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-09-03T01:03:31+02:00

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. ...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.

Evil hackers from Brazil

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-09-08T17:53:55+02:00

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.

Skype is alive and well

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-09-12T20:32:04+02:00

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.

Comic book archives

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-09-16T17:02:28+02:00

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 :)

Making pdf links with fop and docbook

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-10-03T03:33:52+02:00

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). ...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. ... Then thanks to Google I came across this newsgroup comment from 2 weeks ago and everything started to fall into place: HERE . ...Put my olinks in with only the targetptr set to the linkend name of someplace in one of the documents (without any targetdoc).

Inkscape Limitations

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-10-25T13:17:13+02:00

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.

Testing regular expressions

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-10-28T20:14:15+02:00

If you have ever struggled through making regular expressions when writing software these editors might help you out.

The Regex Coach

The Regulator

RegExpEditor

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!

Making Windows and MacOSX Icons

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-10-31T21:36:18+01:00

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.

Free Windows optimization tools

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-11-18T15:21:45+01:00

Free tools for defragmenting, autologin, directory size, page file defragmentation and more.

Creating a MS Word index

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-11-20T06:39:35+01:00

Creating a MS Word index with a word frequency list.

Make quick photo contact sheets in XP

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-11-27T19:51:27+01:00

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 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. ...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". ...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. ...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).

Favorite web management software (CMS)

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-11-28T04:40:07+01:00

While not having tried every brand of web site management software there are a few that I find to be my favorites. ...

Postnuke: Content Management System

...

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. ...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. ...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.

Latest Skype has free video conferencing

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2005-12-04T20:01:57+01:00

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.

In Paris With Baby

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-01-03T18:32:30+01:00

Fortunately some of the Metro stations had escalators but in almost every case there were stairs to climb and with a stroller that is not soo easy. ...Our baby seat could easily fit with any seatbelts so that was easy and it saved a lot of hassle getting from the Lyon train station to/ from the hotel. ...I finally headed out early one morning to wait for tickets to be sure that we could quickly get in (it was cold!) ...We luckily arrived when there were not many other guests so there was room for us but it would not have taken to many other visitors to fill up even that space. ... A tiny stroller would have been perfect and we almost went for getting one... if it had not been so cold (our big one had a lot of wind protection and warm stuff). ...Not only were we right at the door to unload everything, we were facing each other and so had extra floor space, and the glass doors, while opening for everyone passing through, made the trip much more relaxing. ...Luckily our stop got out on the other side of the train but even then the conductor was in such a hurry to be on time that he rushed us out, throwing my wifes hat and coat out before her to be sure she got out quickly. ...The only thing we really did not pack up with was water, it was just too heavy and well worth a visit to a grocery store whereever it might be. ...For example our hotel H√¥tel du Levant while being ideally located, also had a lot of little suprises. ...An unhappy suprise was to find out that this system would not allow you to turn off some of the lights in the room.. some were always on.

Printing to small photo paper

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-01-09T01:46:28+01:00

So, my father-in-law wanted to print the photos that we emailed him on his inkjet photo printer. I was stuck trying to explain to my father-in-law how to change the printer configuration so that he could print to 4x6 inch paper instead of a full page. It was just becoming complex using the Windows Photo Printing Wizard. Finally it came to me that I could simply create a second printer configuration in Windows that by default would use the 4x6 paper size. Then I simply named it something like HP photo SMALL". That worked great since he could pick the "SMALL" printer for the little photos and the other one was renamed "BIG" for anything else. Hope the simple solution helps someone else.

Quick 3d model tutorials

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-01-13T15:18:30+01:00

While looking for a convertor for VRML2 to anything useful (including textures) I came across Nendo at http://www.izware.com/nendo/. ¬† While it did not import my VRML as advertised I chanced upon their howto section and suddenly was immersed in a very good tutorial on making a 3d airplane from a cube. Very clean and easy to follow. ¬† There's about 20 other tutorials and if they are anything like the first then they are well worth it. ¬† The program is commercial for $49 but the tutorials can be seen in the free demo version. Well worth the looking at for a newbie to 3d models.

LCD panel fuzziness solved

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-01-24T19:39:45+01:00

Well, I just got a small acer fp553 15" LCD screen for a Windows server and was suprised to see vertical lines of fuzziness when I first powered it up. At first I thought it was a warped screen or some plastic covering but no, every so often their were simply lines of fuzzy characters. Before I packed it up and went back to the store I thought I would play with the Windows settings and sure enough, changing the monitor frequency from 60Hz to 70 or 75Hz cleared it up. I have no idea why this is but it saved a trip back to the store :)

Auto login to a user account on Windows XP

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-02-28T22:16:09+01:00

You can configure Windows XP to automate the logon process if your computer is not part of a domain. This is great if you want the computer to always boot to a defult account but still leave the other accounts active. ...

Click Start, click Run, and type control userpasswords2.

Clear the Users must enter a username and password to use this computer check box.

Click Apply.

Enter the user name and password you wish to automatically log on with, and then click OK.

Click OK again and you're all done.

...This feature allows other users to start your computer and use the account that you establish to automatically log on. Enabling auto logon makes your computer more convenient to use, but can pose a security risk. ...This tip and more is taken right from the Microsoft website at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/tips/default.mspx

An easy way to find your computer files

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-02-28T22:28:36+01:00

Often I've lost files here or there across different disk drives. ¬† It is a pain to organize everything perfectly and using the search feature of Windows is not always that easy. ¬† Well, a friend showed me the Google Desktop from http://desktop.google.com/. I was impressed how easy it was to use and integrate into the Windows toolbar. ¬† Now just by typing a few letters or words from a document I am presented with a list of documents to click on. ¬† I think that this is particularly ideal for people who don't keep up to date with the latest computer technologies... it is very simple. The installation requires indexing your documents (which can take a lot of time) but it sure seems to work a lot smoother than the integrated Microsoft search engine. ¬† Additionally you can tell the Google Desktop to index only certain types of documents to make it even faster.

Lightscribe label problems with TDK media

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-03-03T05:26:36+01:00

Well, since I couldn't find anymore Vebatim lightscribe media I thought I would try the TDK lightscribe CDRs that I found in its place. It looked the same but my Surething 4.x software would not accept it for labeling at all. ...The first error would always say that the disk was not a lightscribe disk, and the second error would simply say internal error from the software. ...I have a HP 640i DVD Writer with firmware CS30. ... I did dig up a couple of Verbatim disks and they would burn just fine but nothing doing for the TDK. ...Finally I thought to try reflashing the DVD drive with a different 640C firmware (it is confusing that there are multiple versions of firmware bearing similar names). This firmware said it was JS04 for the 640i revision C drive. ...Anyways, I loaded it in, rebooted the computer and suddenly Surething says I have a blank lightscribe disk waiting to be printed on. ... The only side effect so far is that after the normal 30 minutes to burn my label to the CD, the lightscribe label on the CDR comes out much lighter than it ever did when using the CS30 firmware. ... Using Verbatim lightscribe disks does not have this problem, under CS30 or the newer JS04 firmware.

George R.R. Martin's neverending story

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-03-08T09:43:41+01:00

In fact, I stopped after book 3 after seeing unanswered questions from book 1 still running and again seeing that the story just never seemed to move. ...I had the impression that all of the books could have been written at once and then were cut up by the publishers (which is probably not the case but it feels like it.) ...One, if you loose your place in the book and know only that you were going to start a chapter titled Ned, there are quite a few to choose from. ...At the end of the first book there was a preview included from the second book which was actually a cut down version of the actual chapter in about the middle of the next book. ...Maybe in the US this does not cause a problem but I was in Switzerland trying to buy the first half of book 3 and the commercial booksellers could not order the book because they could not understand the naming system. ...However, after all of this critiquing, I am now on book 4 (book 3 part 2) and will finish it but I really do not have much excitement to go on. I have a bunch of his books now that I cannot really recommend to friends since it is so long to get anywhere (book 1,807pgs, book 2 708pgs, book 3-pt1 603pgs, book 3-pt2 579). ...So, if you are looking to get lost in a well described medieval world and be suprised with some unexpected turn of events, this saga might be for you. ...You will get lost however and if you find yourself approaching the end of a book and wondering how things will close themselves up... well, they probably will not be closed by the time you finish and you might need to go 1 or 2 books further to see that issue resolved. ...I can't say it is all the authors fault and in fact I place more blame on the publishers for releasing the books in this way.

Moving XP Pro to a new motherboard/CPU

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-04-10T21:18:39+02:00

Since I have a 478 socket motherboard, upgrading to a 3GHz was just as expensive as getting a new 775 socket motherboard and a 3GHz processor. ... However, as soon as I'd swapped out all of the components I found that my good and stable XP PRO system was just rebooting and rebooting and rebooting. ...I tried adding and removing cards/ memory/ BIOS motherboard BIOS upgrade but nothing was fixing this and I was getting worried that I would need to reinstall all of my Windows XP operating system. Fortunately I found that there is special Repair Install feature of Windows XP that allows me to reconfigure the system for the new board while saving my previous software configurations. ...Part of the problem was that I was using a SATA boot drive and the first Windows XP install CD's do not support this. This means that to do anything with my Windows XP CD I need to have a floppy drive holding the SATA drivers. ...In the end I had a restored running system but I could not run any other updates and the system seemed to have a lot of problems. ... It might have been a problem with me adding a domain name where none existed before but if the sales person sells you on the new board be ready with a lot of transfer time. ...Acronis True Image Home is not bad (though my backup seemed to have become corrupted for one of the 2 computers I backed up... so I guess 50% success is better than nothing. ...Instructions for the Microsoft Repair Install itself are HERE:

Voyage Linux on my Soekris 4501

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-04-15T21:20:32+02:00

I finally found a few hours free to load a Debian Linux system onto a compact flash card. I chose voyage-linux for its customization options and rw filesystem. It was a little easier than I had expected since I was able to load the voyage install iso through vmware directly into a Compact Flash Card using and IDE adaptor. From there I just followed the voyage instructions. After that, it was simply a matter of configuring the prism and atheros wifi cards as clients to my network and running apt-get update. I've added in a few other useful softwares such as quagga, nano-tiny, ntpdate, iptraf, wavemon, iperf, whois, wondershaper, mc. ...I wanted to also install ntop but I am having problems getting it to run in the ro environment. I just need to get Captive Portal working now, and maybe look at the mesh version. Every so often I run out of memory when I try to use dselect but using mainly apt-get works great.

Realbasic programming

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-04-22T07:47:28+02:00

I liked the multi-platform potential (even though slashdot.com is talking about MacOSX offering native Windows XP apps one day soon) and the larger .exe files were not a big problem. ...Aside from crashing (blipping out of existance) now and then it has indeed allowed me to rapidly come up with some nice stuff. Not having seen .net I do like the IDE interface though it is a bit expensive to use SSL and I can only upgrade for 6 months before paying more money to get newer updates. ...For now I am bouncing off the forums and the 2 manuals to try to get the little things that I need and overall people are friendly and I am finding solutions. ...

Windows Functionality Suite

XMLPreferences (even though the download is .sit and so needs Stuffits file expander) ...main_page=product_info&products_id=46">Update Yourself at RBLibrary

...Most of these came from RBGarage which has a great list of useful modules and add-ons for Realbasic. ...The only down side so far is that much of the examples seem to have a mac focus and I am more interested in getting a Windows program running.

Skype video with DV Camera

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-04-23T00:36:28+02:00

Why would you want to... higher video resolution and low-light detection than a cheap webcamera. ... Even though other software can see the DV output Skype was not able to. ...Either of 2 free softwares will allow Skype to see the DV video stream. ...

SplitCam

TrackerCam

...Once either of these is installed you can link it to your camera and then tell skyp to use "virtual" cameras that have the same name as the software that you are using. ...Of the 2, Split cam seemed to show the biggest image, Trackrcam crashed if I tried to make the image too close to fullsize. ...Also, at least for me, the camera mode of our Sony Camera would time-out if let unused for too long (a few minutes). This of course can cause a problem when the video just drops out. Our solution is to be sure that the DV camera does not have a video tape inside.

New Skype Beta (v2.5) sends SMS!

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-05-05T05:00:13+02:00

Wow, I was just checking out the Skype web page and saw there was an option to send SMS messages to cell phones. It is only about 10 cents (US) too and at least for the 2 I sent they went fine. The user sees the sender as being your skype name and the messages are outgoing only, incoming is not yet supported. Optionally, you can "authenticate" your own cell phone number so that instead of your skype name, the SMS receiver would receive your actual cell phone number. This would allow them to simply click reply to send a message back to you. Here is the webpage to get the latest beta (for Windows only): http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/skype25beta.html

Experiences with KLM Switzerland

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-06-10T21:39:54+02:00

Already you have to pay .50 a minute just to talk with a reservation agent and after walking through their callcenter electronic guide for a few minutes, 2 out of 4 times I got through to an agent who simply hung up on me. ...However, after finding the flight that I wanted, the English speaker who answered said that I could only take the higher priced flights. ... He insisted that anything cheaper was an "Internet Special" and that I should buy it over the Internet if it looked cheaper there. ...Calling back again, but this time choosing the French speaker I arrived at a nice lady who offered at first the same price as the German/ English speaker fellow. However when I told her I wanted another connection she asked which flights I wanted and proceeded to make the reservation without a problem, for a nice 60CHF reservation fee. ...So, if you find a great price online but still feel more comfortable speaking to a person, simply print out what you want and ask specifically for the flights numbers as you saw on the Internet. Even better, if you go right to the Zurich or Geneva airport and pay directly, you can save the 60CHF phone reservation fee (and the 15+CHF for the numerous calls). ...That seemed to be the end of it but on returning to Geneva I unhappily found that my suitcase had a wheel ripped off and so I had to drag it to the train and up the hills of Neuchatel. The airport claims office said that I should take the luggage to a repair specialist and get a repair quote from them, then I could contact KLM about paying for it. ...So, as an end to the story, although KLM might have the cheapest online tickets for many connections, add a good 10% to the ticket price to get the real cost.

Joys of PayPal

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-06-08T21:39:42+02:00

Hmm, I thought that upgrading to a Business Account would only be a good thing but now I see that all received moneys will generate fees for PayPal. Previously, with a Personal account you could receive up to $500 free (though not from debit/ credit cards) which was a nice way to transfer money among friends and family. Once your account has become Business level however those previously free transfers now get a 2.9% fee added on them. PayPal did offer a workaround: if I wanted I could make a new Personal account along with the business account. Personally, I think they should notify you clearly when a previously free service becomes a fee based service but I guess that is how they keep in business.

Cool gift ideas

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2008-04-21T10:24:36+02:00

I thought I would list some of the cool shops for online neat stuff.

http://www.fatbraintoys.com/
http://www.rctoys.com
http://www.thinkgeek.com/
http://www.powerskip.de
http://www.physlink.com
http://www.fascinations.com/
http://www.timewarptoys.com/

Skype trying to release video on MacOSX

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-03T14:36:46+02:00

Skype has at last released a MacOSX version with "Video Preview" as they call it or "Video Chat" as others call it. We have been waiting for this integration since we have lots of networking issues with the integrated MacOSX iChat and would like to do video chat between Windows and MacOSX (as easily as possible). However, while we were able to receive the video fine on the Mac platform, each time we tried to activate our Logitech camera in the MacOSX Skype, the whole program crashed in a puff of smoke. Here is the link to try it yourself. HERE .

Looking for a design shop like CafePress

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-06T08:27:24+02:00

I have been wanting to take a look at some of the online design shops for making some customized items but I am having difficulties in tracking down the right company to work with. ...There are so many customer comments on: customer services, final quality, shipping time/costs, retaining copyrights, setup fees and such that it is evidently becoming a work in progress. ...Here are a list of the final shops that seem to be pretty well known. ...

CafePress (service issues, quality concerns & shipping time/cost) ...

Spreadshirt (only one with a European center) ...

CustomInk

Zazzle (possibly signing away image rights) ...

Embroidery Superstore

Queensboro Shirt Company (Cheap embroidery setup)

...I'll post more as soon as I decide which one to go with, at least for starters.

Vue 5 Esprit network rendering

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-09T06:01:00+02:00

I use the Vue 5 Esprit software for making 3d graphic images and animations. There is an add-on for network rendering that, when it works, drastically cuts the rendering time. ...Below are the test runs of rendercows (Vue's networking client) using the included 4Seasons.vue sample animation file set for 391 frames and 160x120 preview rendering. ...

If you do not have additional machines, you are better off not using rendercow

The rendercow seems to make good use of the hyperthreading already but there was still a small gain in speed when running x2 rendercows on a hyperthreading machine.

Even on a low speed network (yes it is a wireless 802.11g but actual signal strength probably is not allowing me more than 20mbps) benefits can be significant.

...That being said I do not find the rendercows in Vue 5 very network friendly or stable. For instance the status would be irregular: stopping an unused rendercow would always give an alert saying that it was in the process of rendering, from the main Vue 5 machine, some clients were not showing their idle status correctly, rebooting one of my rendercow clients caused the Vue 5 program to quit without warning, client manager only shows names of connected devices, not IP or port numbers used, no simple network check to see if the remote computer is available (they just appear magically if they were previously used, no pre-existing list of the expected rendercows.) ...Since the network rendering is sold in packs of 5 I can run one additional rendercow. When I get the chance I will have that one be on the other side of a VPN network.

Using Linux for Vue network rendering

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-10T04:51:42+02:00

I have run 4.22 Rendercows of the 3d software Vue Esprit using Wine on knoppix. I saved the Rendercows on USB pen drives and just boot the systems off of a Knoppix CD. The computers don't even have hard drives... just memory, CDROM and the oh so tasty CPU. This should make for cheapy rendercows. You should be able to boot those additional render cows using only the pen drive (if the motherboard supports it) or off of PXE bootable ethernet cards (ideal if the motherboard has these built-in). For under a grand you would be able to build an ok x4 RenderCowBarn (well I guess adding power supplies and cooling might make it a little more than a grand.)

Free HDRI images

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-12T20:36:27+02:00

This great 3d rendering option can really enhance the lighting in a rendered 3d scene but it needs those fancy HDR images to work right. ... ...

http://hdri.3dweave.com/

...

http://www.aversis.be/extra_hdri/00.htm

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/10152791/

... Once you've downloaded the images that you want you can use them in Vue 5 by going to the Atmosphere Editor and choosing the Environment Mapping Model. Then, under the effects tab you can double click on the big black square to load either an existing HDR image from Vue's install or to browse your hard drive to find other HDR images (i.e. the ones you downloaded.) Oh, and after you accept the image Vue will ask you if you want to "automatically setup your scene for image based lighting?" ... Add a nice metal sphere to your scene and see what things look like :)

D-Link is for Dead Link

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-16T07:58:02+02:00

I recently purchases an Airplus G DWL-G122 wireless USB adapter for my XP Pro machine and boy does that thing loose the connection a lot. It does not matter if the signal strengh is good or low, it just drops it for no good reason. I have a Dell laptop not far from it that has NEVER dropped the signal to the access point (and the D-Link device is closer to the AP!). Admittedly, it was the cheapest adapter for sale at Fust but I really thought it would be usable. It even had an extra cable to put the receiver closer to the AP and it is now sitting at chest level, around the corner from the AP. So unless my head is putting off a large amount of radio waves (possible) I cannot think of any other interference. An unhappy customer.

Making a family tree chart of everyone

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-18T08:13:08+02:00

I really thought this would be no big deal and that any software I used (currently Legacy 6) would allow me to make a chart of everyone in my family tree, even those distant cousins. ... You can pick someone and see their descendents or ancestors but you normally cannot pick more than one person and rarely can you see everyone. ...Legacy sells a $40 add-in software to allow you to see a chart of everyone (more than the cost of the Legacy Family Tree software). However I have found at least 2 softwares that can do this. Family Tree Maker 2006 and Genbox. Oh, and I just heard that Family Historian can do this too though I have not tried their demo. ...Since Family Tree Maker does not have a demo and seems to be associated with Ancestry.com (with whom I had a bad customer experience and later were the subject of a legal class action from others feeling the same way) I tried Genbox. Although it looks good and there were loads of configuration options, I do not know if I would want it as my main geneology storehouse. ...That being said their "Everyone" chart was wonderful and they even had a convergent chart where you could pick from 2 or more people and chart where the family lines converge. ...To make either work if you already have a geneology program, simply export your family tree to the generic Gedcom format and then reimport it into either of these 2 programs. Since Genbox has a 30 day demo anyone can quickly try it out to see if it meets their needs.

Installing vmware tools into Ubuntu guest

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-08-17T15:46:33+02:00

If you are using VMware to install multiple operating systems on your Windows XP machine like me you may have had some problems installing the VMware tools into the latest Ubuntu (6.06.1). I am using the 5.5.2 version of VMware but still the installation was not very smooth. ...Here is what I did after a fresh install of Ubuntu from the Desktop CD and booting the newly installed Ubuntu system. ...

extract VMwareTools-5.5.2-29772.tar.gz to the desktop (just right click on the file icon and choose "Extract to..."

...

I just selected all of the defaults to the many questions and using the newly installed gcc and linux-headers, the script built some additional support binaries.

...

the last step is to restart the graphic environment to use the VMware Tool enhancements. /etc/init.d/gdm restart should work.

...Note, if step 3 gives you an error like "Couldn't find package linux-headers-2.6.15-26-386" then you can use your Ubuntu Desktop CD to install those linux-headers. ...

you should receive a dialog box asking if you want to start the package manager, choose yes

search for and install the "linux-headers-2.6.15-26-386" (in this case you are installing it from the CD instead of from the Internet.

...¬† That last problem with the headers caused me some heartache until I found the solution add ":80" to the end of the domain name like "http://mysite.com:80" (assuming the webdavservice is on port 80). This tells webdav to use the old http login instead of requiring https.

make a registry change to enable the old Authentication as described number of attributes per XML element to 32. More information on that fix can be found here (KB888164). ...To make matters worse, there seem to be about 30 different versions of the WebDAV libraries floating about, changing based on the Windows software that you use. This site has a good list of the different versions and problems related to each of them. ...Anyways, at least the WebDAV client still works but it is not quite as easy to use as could be expected.

Airport Express extends a wireless network

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-10-22T08:04:45+02:00

Problem, one of my desktop systems has a bad wireless card and I want to skimp on buying a new wireless card. ...It seemed an easy fix, the Airport Express has an Ethernet interface and I could just make it a client of the main Trendnet Access Point and connect the Ethernet cable to the desktop's unused Ethernet interface. ...It appears that the Airport Express disables the Ethernet interface whenever it is a client of another Access Point. ... Normally extending the network is just to make the signal stronger because the two wireless devices work together using pretty much the same configuration. ...Apple's instruction manual only mentioned this working with other Apple products but since it used a process called WDS (Wireless Distribution System) which the Trendnet device also supported I figured it would be worth a try. ...I was getting worried about the Trendnet device because it's documented support for WDS was all of two lines of text in the manual saying it supported it. ...Although my device had next to nothing written about it and WDS, a TEW 450APB was clearly stated as NOT supporting WPA encryption over WDS links. ...

Apple Airport Express will deactivate its Ethernet port if it is used as a client to an Access Point

...

When making a WDS wireless extension make sure that the radio channel be manually configured as the same channel on both wireless devices (and possibly the SSID are configured to be the same too which the Apple manual said should be the case and so that is what I am using in my working setup)

...On th plus side, nNow my Airport Express not only extends the coverage of my wireless network but its Ethernet port shares the remote Internet connection with my desktop computer.

Online paid library with Safari Books Online

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2006-10-25T10:11:05+02:00

So it has now been two months since I have been a paying client of the Safari Books Online library and overall I have been a happy client. ...They have a wide selection of technical books for online reading. Although they have various subscriptions I use the $20 a month to read up to 10 books per month. For $30 you can read up to 20 books and for $40 those with too much time on their hands can read as much as they like. ...Personally I was only able to get through one 650 page book in a month though I did browse 3-4 others for some quick information. ...Reading the books is not difficult but you must be online because each time you turn the page you need to go back to their website. With some books there is the possibility to download PDF versions of a chapter in exchange for a token (they give you 5 of these free per month with the option to buy more). I have only tried this once but it was such low quality I could barely make out the screenshot graphics and the text formatting was horrendous. ...Aside from the PDF problems, there are many good features... searching for content in and through multiple books, ability to leave bookmarks to remember where you were, hide the navigation bar for full screen reading, and the possibility to zoom a page to whatever is comfortable. ...So, at the end of the day its cheaper than buying the book but if I do like the book I can usually buy it from them at a good discount.

FOP 0.93 improves PDF from XML !

shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-01-13T05:40:19+01:00

More information and the download can be found at http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/ Among the many changes and fixes are the following. ...Here is what I finally did after copying the fonts I wanted to the FOP directory. NOTE, with this release you can skip step one and go straight to step 2 if you are using a TTF font. ...

Correct font conversion process after copying the font files "something.ttf" to the directory where FOP is located. C:\downloads\fop-0.93>java -cp build\fop.jar;lib\avalon-framework-4.2.0.jar; lib\commons-logging-1.0.4.jar; lib\commons-io-1.1.jar org.apache.fop.fonts.apps. ...

Uncomment this in the userconfig.xml file in the fop directory "conf"; if you are using a TTF font you can also delete the "font metrics-url=" portion for each font as this will be generated automatically.

...

In the fonts.fo file located in the fop directory/examples/fo/basic, wherever you see font-family="Helvetica" change it to font-family="Arial".




	C:\downloads\fop-0.93>fop -c conf/userconfig.xml C:\downloads\fop-0.93\examples\fo\basic\fonts.fo fonts2.pdf


...PS, I have a package of tools for working with fop and xml docbook on Windows if anyone is interested.



Evil Adobe activation process for CS2 products
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-02-14T12:44:41+01:00
So, I upgraded my SATA PCI card in my Windows XP Pro computer and now all of my Adobe products are saying that they have become deactivated.    Instantly none would work and would offer me the chance to activate over the Internet.    The newest product that I had just purchased reactivated quickly but another, Indesign CS2 said there were too many activations and that I needed to call in to get a number change.


...The automated phone system kept saying my numbers were incorrect.    After 2 tries I decided to try the option to connect to a service agent, at which point the system hung up on me.


...I do not consider this a way to treat customers of their expensive products.  ...  I can only hope if I add memory to my computer or a newer firewire interface that everything will not break again.    At least they could add a warning that your Adobe programs will become deactivated if you change anything about your computer.    At the very least they can inform me of mow many activations I have left.

...I'm trying again but I'm just listening to "What a night" and other music from their phone service instead of finishing work for my clients.  


Even an ibook can start smoking.
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-04-11T01:21:15+02:00
After a couple of great years with our G3 ibook, one day the screen stayed black and soon smoke started coming out of it.    Hopefully the hard disk is okay but what really scared me is that this computer is often plugged in for long periods of time being charged.    I had assumed that it had been approved as a non-fire hazard but looking on Google there seems to be many other examples of ibooks burning up (along with other laptops).





How much of a fire hazard are these laptop computers?     Can I really leave them charging when noone is at home.    I can easily see where airlines would want to ban them if they are a fire hazard, I mean if smokers cannot light up who would want a lithium battery melt down ocurring in the seat next to them.


Upgrading 700Mhz ibook hard drive is hard!
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-04-15T13:42:51+02:00
This is incredibly hard to do.   With my Dell laptop it is 1 screw and a removable drawer.   With the ibook it is 20 pages of instructions and about 1.5-2 hours of work (PDF).   There were so many screws and thin metal panels that it would be pretty easy to mess up too.   Fortunately, since I was not planning on using the ibook again (I just wanted to extract the hard drive) it was a bit less stressful but I would not recommend doing this yourself.   Pay Apple to do it and be sure it is done right or upgrade your Mac.


Quick and simple 3d models with Google SketchUp
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-04-17T04:46:18+02:00
When I needed to make some simple 3d models of objects I started looking for some cheap (free) software to use.    I know there is blender, art of illusion, wings 3d and a few others but they really seemed a little bit much for my simple needs.    Then I came across the free SketchUp 6 software from Google.


...Although the interface was not always obvious on what it was doing or could do, I found everything I needed searching through their online help or by watching their training videos.    The only downside is that the free version can only export to the proprietary SKP or KMZ file format.


...Google does offer a free viewer software for Windows and supposedly the latest version of Blender can import the KMZ file and then export it into another format.     Otherwise you need to pay $100's for the Professional version of SketchUp to allow export in a few 3d formats (3ds, DWG, OBJ and more) or buy the Deep Exploration Standard Edition from Right Hemisphere.    Deep Exploration additionally allow you to export the native SketchUp format to MANY other 3d formats while allowing some okay 3d manipulation as well.    Unfortunately this also costs $100's.


...Regardless, I found the quick manipulation of objects in SketchUp to be easy to learn and useful for creating quick visualizations.


Lowering Macbook memory use
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-05-02T01:35:14+02:00
If you picked up a 10.4.x macbook with the 512mb thinking that it would be more than enough then you probably found your MacOSX running a little slower than expected.    This was the case for me and when I ran the Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor) I quickly saw that my system had about 8mb of free memory.  





Although the Activity Monitor will show you exactly what software is taking up your precious memory, here are the two things that I did to help.





1) disable all of my widgets


2) used the Font Book to deactivate all Asian fonts 





That helped me free up about 100mb of memory though I am sure a better solution would be to dish out the $$ and get some more memory.


Printing from MacOSX to WinXP shared printer
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-05-03T02:11:46+02:00
I have a HP laserjet 1100 being shared on my Windows XP SP2 machine and I wanted to use it from MacOSX 10.4.9 without doing anything fancy.    This apparently is a little harder than it would seem.    I finally found two solutions of which I preferred  the first (HPIJS).


	•	Install Foomatic/HPIJS


	•	Install Gutenprint


Once you have installed one of the two print engines above, you can use the standard Add Printer dialog of MacOSX 10.4.x and browse for the Windows XP machine in the correct workgroup, select the shared printer and choose the correct driver for it (the HP 1100 driver was installed with one of the above two print engines.)


...Personally, I found the Gutenprint drivers to have a little too much contrast and boxiness in them.    These problems did not happen with the HPIJS drivers.  ¬† Gutenprint had many more customization options so maybe enough test prints could give me a better result.


...In the standard print dialog, you might also need to manually set the Printer Features option to enable high resolution printing (and then save it as a preset to avoid setting it again.)


Cyberlink PowerProducer & PowerDirector limitations review
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-05-06T13:08:10+02:00
Being a paid user of PowerDirector 6 I thought I would state a few problems in hopes that people will be aware of them before they purchase the software.  (all of the support is done on a private email basis, so there are no public forums to see what other users are experiencing.


...	•	files are not upgradeable, this means that something you make in PowerDirector 5 will not be usable in PowerDirector 6


...This means that if you move one of your source files (for instance a video clip to another hard drive) the PowerProducer file is unreadable with no way to fix it (unless you remember what the files were and here they should go)


...For example, if you purchase DVD templates from them for PowerDirector 5 those templates will not be usable in version 6.


...	•	Sometimes a jpg photo file from your digital camera may be readable on your computer but it will not be readable by PowerDirector.


...However you can delete from your desktop the links like "Buy DivX for Windows" and are not obliged to buy this shareware to use the PowerDirector software.


...	•	Personally I had a lot of trouble burning the DVD directly from the software and would simply make the DVD folder and use NERO to burn the actual DVD.  

...This means that if you had a photo album with custom movement on it the only solution is to either manually write down everything you did to every picture and recreate it or as their technical support recommends, render everything out to video from the old version , uninstall the old version, and then import it into the latest version.


...Although there are no public forums (that would be a great way for users to help each other) they do respond rather quickly to technical support questions.  

...In my personal opinion, they do somethings well but with these above limitations (especially the first) they have a ways to go before becoming a solid video editing utility.


Airport Express just stopped working
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-07-01T02:32:45+02:00
In the morning it was working fine and in the afternoon no lights, no signal, nothing.   It just up and died after a good 2 years of service.   I have no clue but I think it is simply a rock now.   I was kinda hoping for a little longer lifespan to my apple product but it was also after about 2 years that our ibook started smoking.   Maybe that is the new Mac low-end lifespan with the Applecare being so expensive it is still cheaper than replacing the device after 2 years.





Fortunately we still have our Trendnet access point which has been going strong for the past few years.


Microsoft Vista not quite as stable as expected
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-10-10T10:56:53+02:00
Since upgrading from XP Pro to Vista I have lost count of the times that what I am working on freezes and a dialog appears saying that Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer or some other software has "stopped working".   The next step is to close every instance of that software and restart what I was doing.





On top of that, coming back from hibernation is messy, at least with Microsoft Outlook 2007.   The software simply jams.   I cannot even use the task manager to kill any instances but have to restart the whole computer to get access to my email.





What makes all of these problems even more evident is that whenever the new User Account Control appears, the entire screen blacks out like it is going to reboot making me nervous and start looking for the blue screen infos.   I would have thought that with all of the new graphical look, a message that can appear rather frequently could look a bit less stressful.


...So overall, I have not been impressed with the new stability of the Vista system though some of the new features are nice sticking with XP Pro seems to be the surest way to go for me.


Increasing virtual machine space in VMware fusion
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-10-21T02:59:56+02:00
Apparently this is not as easy as one would think.   I have my virtual Windows XP running in VMware's Fusion software for MacOSX and I had picked a virtual drive size that was too small.   There is apparently no easy way to simply enlarge the virtual drive.





Fortunately I also have Acronis's True Image Home software for making clones of your hard disk.   I simply created a new virtual drive of the size I wanted and used True Image to clone the old drive to the new drive, True Image will automatically resize the cloned drive to the size of the destination.   It went fast and smooth and I could simply delete the old virtual drive afterwards.


Outlook uses Internet Explorer to render HTML email
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-11-08T12:42:31+01:00
Well, maybe you know this already but at least the older versions of Outlook like 2000 use the web browser Internet Explorer (IE) to render the HTML emails.   So what?   Well, Outlook also takes the page margins as defined in IE and uses thoses when you try to print an HTML based email the header uses the Outlook margin settings and the email message uses the Internet Explorer margin settings.





If you have your IE margins set tozero then when you print your emails your printer will probably cut off the left side of your message (even if your print preview looks okay).   In that case you need to be sure that your Outlook and IE margins are configured the same.


Great Customer Service Apple!
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-11-05T10:01:25+01:00
I was eligible and registered for a low price MacOSX 10.5 Leopard upgrade because I had bought my Macbook in October.   The upgrade would probably be sent a few weeks after the Friday release date, I had thought.   I was still looking forward tothe new release and followed it on their website for the release.





Late on Friday I received an email from Apple saying that my MacOSX upgrade had shipped and that I should receive it in a couple of days.   Sure enough, I received it a few days later.   I did not expect such great coordinated service, especially considering that I live in Switzerland.   Way to go Apple!


Printing from Vista to Airport Extreme
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-11-13T12:50:00+01:00
Although Apple's Airport Extreme can share a printer it was not quite so easy to use from my Vista Business computer.   The instructions from Apple had me able to print only half a page to my USB HP Deskjet.   Then the print job would error out.   To make matters worse I could not delete the print job either.


...So, here's what worked for me and hopefully for anyone else with this problem.


	1	In your Printer Properties > Ports tab, disable "Enable bidirectional support".   This allowed me to delete the print jobs.


	2	In your Printer Properties > Advanced tab, disable "Enable advanced printing features".   This allowed me to print whole pages.


...I don't know if it will work for every printer but I can now print from my Vista computer.


Leopard and Airport Disks access problems
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-11-23T05:07:20+01:00
Of course the first thing I did with my Airport Extreme base station (7.2.1) was to try to share a USB hard drive over it.   What I found was that the shared disk drive would not automount on my new Leopard MacOSX system.   Fortunately after much searching I found my answer on the Apple Forums.   You basically had to remove the Airport utilities and reinstall them from the Airport Extreme Installation CDROM.


	1	In System preference > Acounts > Login Items, remove Airport Base Station Agent


...	3	On the hard disk Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices delete the Airport Base Station Agent and Apple80211Agent


	4	Reinstall the Airport Extreme software from the Install CDROM


	5	In System preference > Acounts > Login Items, add Airport Base Station Agent from its location in the hard disk Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices folder


After the next reboot the USB drive should auto-mount again.


Difficulty getting an Airport Extreme onto a WDS network
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-11-27T05:11:03+01:00
Since I already have a WDS network main station (trendnet) that I thought it would be easy to use the existing WEP hex password like I did with my Airport Express (simply take the hex password and add a "$" before it.)


...Unfortunately the new Airport Extreme only allows 13 characters in its WEP Transitional Security Network so I could not get all of the long string of hexadecimal characters in from my old password. 

...Finally I thought I would make the new Airport Extreme's WEP Transitional Security Network and then take that hexadecimal code and put this into the old Trendnet device.   My problem was that I could not find the hexadecimal equivalent of the password I typed into the AirPort Utility software.


...I finally found out how to retrieve this hexadecimal code from the 

Apple removes Heroes season from US store
shawngiese@bluewin.ch — 2007-12-08T14:18:46+01:00
Here I was, being a good iTunes user and buying episodes of Heroes as I had time to watch them.   Now, halfway through the season I went to download the next episode and received instead an error message.   Heroes is no longer available in the US store.   What's up with that?   No warning nothing.





Normally I have been pretty happy with Apple customer service but if they could have at least sent an email to those who have purchased some of the season I would have been happy to purchase the rest before the deadline.   Now I am halfway through the season and can't find where to get the rest of it to watch on a Mac.