Don't Cross The Streams

Review of "Star Trek" [Warning: The entire plotline is revealed]

2009-06-20T23:11:00.005-04:00

Well you asked for it, and so I was compelled to deliver.

Following my pre-review of Transformers:RotF, some of my biggest fans have strongly suggested I write a review of the new Star Trek film, the sole reason being that its script was also written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the same pair that have raped Transformers. Believe me their dirty fingerprints show in Star Trek as well.

Warning: There are plenty of spoilers here, so stop reading now if you want the story to be a surprise.

Here is the plotline, after we piece it back together linearly. In the future, a star goes supernova, threatening to destroy Romulus, home of the Romulans. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) tries to save the planet using Star Trek's latest deus ex machina "red matter", which apparently can create black holes out of nowhere with a single drop. The intent is to put a black hole where the star used to be, sucking back the star explosion. The only problem is, he arrives too late. He creates the black hole anyway, just as a Romulan mining ship returns from another part of the galaxy. It seems that he missed with where the black hole was supposed to be, and both get pulled into the it and spit into the past. Since this is accidental time travel they both arrive at different points in time.

The Romulan mining ship arrives first, and tries to capture a Starfleet ship to find Spock since they want revenge for his failure to save Romulus. When they find out that they are far in the past, they try to destroy the ship to keep their presence a secret. By this time, Kirk's father is in command of the ship, Kirk's mother is in labour with him, and the ship is being evacuated. Kirk's dad sacrifices himself so the evacuees (including his wife and newborn son, Kirk) can escape.

Jump 25 years later and we see the Original Cast of Star Trek as twentysomethings joining Starfleet. By this time Nimoy-Spock has come through the time warp and is captured by the Romulan mining ship.

The mining ship drills a hole to the center of Vulcan, and creates a black hole in its center, destroying it and killing all but a few thousand Vulcans. It then moves on to do the same to Earth and then every planet that is part of the Federation.

The rest of the movie is peppered with action sequences and lines from the Original Series, and ultimately ends with a large mass of red matter splashing on the mining ship and creating a black hole in it, destroying it (we think).

As a whole the movie was enjoyable, but I would have liked it more if it was not a reboot. They have wiped out almost every bit of Star Trek media ever created, except for the series Enterprise, which, as I understand, sucked so bad that it caused the need for a reboot to begin with.

There's a paradox in there so big, I can taste it.

Please note, that I am not assuming this. In fact, the characters practically break the fourth wall in an extended conversation to make it clear to the audience that we are dealing with the same Star Trek reality, but with a massively altered timeline (think of Back to the Future Part II's explanation of alternate timelines, this is EXACTLY the same thing). Many sources will incorrectly say this movie is an alternate reality, but Paramount is not going back to the old storylines, so it is an alternate timeline whose starting point is set so far into the past as to be practically irreversible.

That was a tremendous waste, given the incredible amount of time, money, love, and effort that has been put into Star Trek by fans and Paramount alike. All apparently caused by two lousy movies and a failed series. Considering The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager were essentially money spinners, so saying that rebooting the ENTIRE francise was heavy handed is really understating the matter.

Rebooting Batman did not have nearly the same impact. The Batman reboot only scrubbed the four movies, and left all canon material in tact.

Also destroying Vulcan was clearly the idea of Orci and Kurtzman, who have a history of shitting on the things fans hold beautiful and sacred. (Next up, KITT from Knight Rider is going to be a Le Car). I'm actually surprised Michael Bay was not associated with this movie at all!

A perfect example of this lack of respect for the source material is in the reference to Admiral Jonathan Archer, who would be 141 years old at the time. Orci justifies such a blunder as "...Admiral Archer is a reference to the Archer we all know and love, and yes he would be over 100, which is a likely life expectancy in a futuristic space faring race of humans." Now I know the Bones appeared in The Next Generation as being over 100 years old, but it seems to be implied that such life expectancy is not at all common and defiantly did not exist in Kirk's youth.

I think JJ Abrams had to use all of his powers to keep this movie recognizable as a Star Trek film.

If this was, instead, a prequel, I would have said the movie was excellent, but as with any Star Trek movie, I have technical squabbles with it.

Ignoring the actual mechanics of red matter, the movie plays pretty fast and free with creating a bunch of black holes while ignoring the massive, awesome power that they possess. This is primarily seen when the mining ship obsessively has to create a black hole at the center of each doomed planet.

For Christ's sake, this is a black hole! Accuracy is a moot point! A few thousand kilometers of distance are not going to make any difference! Just shoot the red matter drop at the surface and move on, the end result will still be the same. No need to waste hours of in-movie time just to dig a hole.

It's like swatting a fly with an atomic bomb; you don't actually have to squash the fly with it directly. Remember, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades and black holes.

Secondly, it doesn't seem that the destruction of Romulus was going to be prevented anyway. You see, if you are close enough to a supernova that it threatens your planet, then you are too close to a black hole at the same location. Maybe Romulus would have had more time to be evacuated and re-located but that's really about it.

Thirdly, a star doesn't just go nova. And one would assume that in a future where black holes can be created at will (and humans live to over 140 years old), the technology to monitor nearby stars for stability would exist and therefore warn of impending star explosions.

Finally, for a mining ship, the Romulan ship had some heavy firepower. Yet, for some strange reason, no famous Romulan cloaking technology (which by this time could also fire while cloaked). There may be some undisclosed explanation for this, perhaps they don't use cloaking technology in non-military crafts. This is really left up to the imagination.

Overall, one thumb up. It would have been two, but Orci and Kurtzman and this reboot obsession really left a foul taste in my mouth.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Pre-Review for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-06-07T20:54:00.004-04:00

Hello Stream Crossers,

It's Soundwave again, I know it has been many weeks since my last posting, but I'm back with a pre-review of the new Transformers movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Between what I have read on Wikipedia, and the two trailers, I am not liking what I am seeing.

My main issue with this whole series is, as I stated before, it is being created by a group of people who have no love of the original series. Considering three short seasons in the 80's created such a bond with these characters that exists strongly to this day, I thought they could have paid a better homage to it.

Case in point. Roberto Orci was against the Dinobots stating "I couldn't see why a Transformer would feel the need to disguise himself in front of a bunch of lizards. Movie-wise, I mean." This is just more of his stupidity from the first movie. As any Transformers Fan knows, the Dinobots weren't designed for disguise. They were designed for battle, and are the strongest mele fighters the Autobots have. They were stupid in the cartoon, but all of the comic incarnations depicted them as an elite special ops team.

Anyhow, back to the movie's "plot". According to various sources, Sam (Spike) is going to college, but his girlfriend is not. Somehow in the last few years, Optimus Prime's shard of the AllSpark has become a few shards, one of which ends up in Sam's laundry. While inspecting it, Sam is blasted with energy that allows him to see Cybertronian symbols. It is not revealed if he can read the symbols, but he does begin obsessively carving them everywhere. It is eventually revealed that these Cybertronian symbols are found in Egyptian ruins. The Decepticons then pursue Sam (again!) to somehow get at the information in his head. Maybe they'll project a light through his head onto a screen, just like in Wild Wild West?

I seem to remember this scenario forming a major part of Smallville (the season with Christopher Reeve) with Kryptonian symbols forming part of Native American mythology, ancient Native ruins covered in these symbols, Clark learning to read the symbols from an energy blast from said symbols, and his heat vision seemingly going berzerk and burning Kryptonian symbols into his barn. Now I'm no English major, but I think this is called "plagerism". Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, I think DC and Warner Brothers want to have with you in the principal's office.

There are a whole wack of new Transformers in this movie, which I guess means that most will be dead before they have a chance to say anything. Although if they are a Decepticon, they may not actually say anything anyways.

Among the new transformers is a being called the Fallen, who was one of the original 13 Transformers. He first appeared in Dreamwave's 'War Within' series. Now Dreamwave didn't last long as a comic publisher, so if you don't remember seeing or hearing of the Fallen, you are not alone. Apparently, he was involved with Megatron becoming evil and the Decepticon insignia is supposedly based on his face.

They have introduced Soundwave and Ravage. I think Soundwave is a satellite, and is once again voiced by Frank Welker (oh hells yeah!) Hopefully they bring back the old monotone voice, but since Michael Bay is a retard who knows nothing of the original series, they probably won't. Ravage does actually look cool with the exception of having one eye.

Another blast from the past is Devastator, who is actually made up of Decepticons who transform into construction equipment. I'm not sure if they are actually called the Costructicons, but I'm sure they are not since Orci and Kurtzman are idiots. It doesn't matter anyway, because he looks UGLY. Kind of like a crippled ape that can't stand up. Nothing like the magnificent killing machine from the 80's.

Maybe I should be thankful the Dinobots are not in the film. That leaves five less beloved characters to be desecrated by Michael Bay.

So I am predicting another conceptual disaster, and am not planning on seeing the movie in the theater. Maybe I'll rent it later. I'm sure it's going to make gobs of money, followed closely by a third movie, so they don't need my money anyway.

So hopefully, I will be posting more frequently from now on. I'll be talking to you all real soon.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Funniest Paper Clips Yet

2009-03-27T20:33:00.008-04:00

Found this on my internet travels today. Funny how an innocent paper clip initially shaped as a bone, becomes a bone of a different sort when flipped over!

Want your own box to entertain your friends and embarrass co-workers? Look no further.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

PSP: Pandora's Battery (Version 2) How to load a custom firmware on your Sony PSP

2009-03-08T18:47:00.005-04:00

Hello Stream Crossers!

I am back today to revisit the subject of updating your PSP to run custom firmware. The original instructions needed to be done in Windows only, and required really old custom firmwares to run. This version copies all the software to the PSP and runs it there, so any Operating System can be used. Also, the updated software runs on firmware 3.xx and newer, no need to install 1.50 kernels!

First we will review a bit of information, history, and terminology regarding PSP Firmware Flashing.

First off, a PSP with Official Firmware cannot be flashed, simply because software must be run on the PSP that a) makes the memory stick bootable, and b) modifies the battery's serial number (more on this later). Thus you always need a PSP with custom firmware to start the modification process. Somewhat like Agent Smith in The Matrix.

The primary leader in this work it a programmer named Dark Alex, aka DAX. I am not sure where he is located, but I know for sure he is from a Spanish speaking country.

The first generation of PSP's were the 1000 model, depending on where you live, the last digit will not be a 0, but another number. Similarly, the next two generations were OFFICIALLY named PSP 2000 and PSP 3000.

The PSP 2000 was improved in terms of its energy efficiency, and was significantly thinner and lighter than its predacessor, the PSP 1000. It was marketed as the "PSP SLIM" in some countries, "PSP LITE" in others. Thus, gamers began referring to the first generation as the "PSP PHAT" (pronounced FAT).

So far, the PSP 3000 does not have any cool nicknames.

All official games and software for the PSP have a special "signature" code in them to verify that the game is permitted to be executed. The very first model of the PSP 1000 was released with firmware 1.50 (also referred to as the 1.50 kernel). This had a flaw in it that allowed ANY software to be executed on the PSP. SONY quickly issued a fix for this. Certain games also carried the same flaws. Some programmers were able to extract the 1.50 kernel and use it in their modification procedures.

Pandora's Battery? JigKick? WTF? When you mess up the internal software in the PSP to the point that it no longer turns on (called BRICKING) you usually have to send it back to SONY for repairs. SONY has special battery modules that will cause the PSP to boot off a special memory stick and reprogram the PSP.

A "Pandora's Battery" or "JigKick" is a battery whose serial number has been changed to 0xffffffff and works the same as the official SONY repair batteries. A "Magic Memory Stick" (aka MMS) is a memory stick made bootable by a piece of software called Despertar Del Cementerio, which is Spanish for "wake from the cemetary" as it can restore a bricked PSP without sending it to SONY for repair.

HACKABILITY

Thus far, ALL PSP 1000 models can have their firmwares upgraded. ALL PSP 1000 models can make a Pandora's Battery. This is optimal however, since the SLIM batteries are thinner than the originals, and only work in PSP SLIMs (they don't make electrical contact in PHAT PSPs). An original battery will work in all PSP's (the thinner models need a special cover to hold it in place, however).

MOST PSP 2000 models can have their firmwares upgraded. The last version with the TA-088 motherboards are NOT hackable, sorry. NONE of the PSP 2000 models can make a Pandora's Battery.

NONE of the PSP 3000 models are hackable, thus they cannot make a Pandora's Battery.

Now let's get started. I will be making reference to the 'root' or 'root directory' of the memory stick. This is the top level of the memory stick's file system. The first time you double click on it's icon, you are brought to the root of the memory stick.

To perform this, you need the following files. Please note the filename may be strang when you save it, depending on what the sources saved it as originally. You can rename the downloaded files to help you keep track of what is what.

a "Phat" (1st Generation) PSP with custom firmware 3.XX or greater (AKA, THE SOURCE PSP)

a PSP without custom firmware (AKA, THE TARGET PSP)

a genuine SONY PHAT battery. A knockoff will not work.

a Memory Stick Pro Duo. Minimum 256 MiB, maximum 2 GiB. Some say only a genuine SONY Memory Stick will work. I am not sure how accurate this is.

the PSP A/C adaptor

Winrar for extracting the files (all OS's supported)

Official PSP Firmware 1.50

Official PSP Firmware 3.40

Official PSP Firmware 3.80

Official PSP Firmware 4.01

Official PSP Firmware 5.00

Custom Firmware 5.00 M33-6

Despertar del Cementerio - version 8

Pandora Installer for 3.xx Revision 4b

Step 1: Backup your memory stick, get the firmwares

Charge your battery until it is 100%. You cannot run out of power during the process of writing the firmware.

Copy everything you want to keep on you memory stick to your hard drive as we will be formatting the card during this tutorial to make it bootable.

Download all the software to your computer.

Download all the firmwares to your computer. Extract them one by one and rename them as 150.PBP, 340.PBP, 380.PBP, 410.PBP and 500.PBP. Make an extra of 150.PBP and rename it as UPDATE.PBP

Step 2: Format Your Memory Stick

Using any PSP go to Settings > System Settings > Format Memory Stick

This will erase all data, and create fresh folders for you to use.

Step 3: Copy the Needed Software to the Memory Stick

Put your memory stick and fully charged battery in to the SOURCE PSP. Connect the PSP to the computer via USB so it appears as a drive.

Use WinRAR to open the Pandora Installer archive and extract the entire folder "pan3xx" to the PSP\GAME folder on the Memory Stick.

Use WinRAR to open the Despertar del Cementerio archive and extract the entire folder "dc8" to the PSP\GAME folder on the Memory Stick.

Use WinRAR to open the Custom Firmware 5.00 M33-6 archive and extract the entire folder "UPDATE" to the PSP\GAME folder on the Memory Stick

Copy UPDATE.PBP, 150.PBP, 340.PBP, 380.PBP, 410.PBP and 500.PBP to the root of the Memory Stick.

Also copy 500.PBP to the PSP\GAME\UPDATE folder.

Now disconnect the PSP from your computer.

Step 4: Create a Magic Memory Stick

If you are using a custom theme, you need to change it back to the default theme before proceeding.

On the PSP, under GAMES > MEMEORY STICK, run "Despertar del Cementerio v8". This will copy files to the Memory Stick to make it bootable for re-flashing your PSP. A long extraction process will follow.

The final step asks you to select a button to be used to boot to DC8, press and hold the DOWN direction button. (any direction is ok, I used DOWN, so the instructions will use that. If you used a different direction button, substitute it in when I say DOWN).

Once complete it will bring you back to the main screen.

You now have what is known as a "Magic Memory Stick".

Step 5: Create Padora's Battery

Remember, if your SOURCE PSP is a PSP Slim and the TARGET PSP is a Phat PSP, put the Phat PSP battery in before doing this step. Why? It will work with both batteries but the Slim battery only fits properly into a PSP Slim, it simply will not make proper electrical contact in a PSP Phat. Thus, Step 8 will not work.

The Phat PSP battery will make proper electrical contact in both kinds of devices.

If both the SOURCE and TARGET PSP's are Slim, then you are OK.

Under GAMES > MEMEORY STICK, run Pandora Installer.

Press X on the Welcome Screen to go to the Main Menu.

On the Main Menu, move the selection arrow down to "Battery options..." and press X.

This will let you create a Pandora's Battery from a normal battery, or create a normal battery from a Pandora's Battery.

First go to "dump battery serial to file" and press X to back up your original serial number. Follow the on screen instructions if there are any.

Now go to "make battery Pandora" and press X, follow the on screen instructions if there are any.

Now go to "back to mainmenu...." and press X, then "Quit" on the Main Menu and press X.

You now have what is known as a "JigKick Battery".

Step 6: Flash to the Custom Firmware.

Fully power down the TARGET PSP and disconnect the AC power if it is attached.

Now remove the battery and Memory Stick from the TARGET PSP.

Now remove the Pandora's Battery and Magic Memory Stick from the TARGET PSP.

Put the "Magic Memory Stick" into the TARGET PSP first, before the battery.

Now press and hold the DOWN direction button and put the Pandora's Battery into the TARGET PSP. The unit will turn on automatically, go into service mode, and boot from the Memory Stick (that is why the Memory Stick had to go in first).

You will now be presented with seven options. Highlight "Install 5.00 M33" and press X.

The install process will take up to 10 minutes (thus the battery must be FULLY charged). Put the TARGET PSP down and let it run through. It will either restart on its own or prompt you to press a key to reboot it or shutdown. Press X to reboot.

Congratulations, you have firmware 5.00 M33-4! One more step to go!

Step 7: Upgrade to 5.00 M33-6

After the unit restarts, go to GAMES > MEMORY STICK.

Run the "PSP Update ver 5.00". Some text will display. Press X to continue.

More text will appear, and you will be returned to the main PSP screen.

When it is complete, CONGRATULATIONS!!! You now have a fully modified PSP running custom firmware.

Step 8: Switch the battery back to normal

If you have other batteries, and wish to keep this in Pandora Mode, then skip this step.

Otherwise power down the PSP, remove the Pandora's Battery and connect the A/C Adaptor and plug it in.

Now power on the PSP. When it is fully started, put the Pandora's Battery back in. Since the PSP if fully on, it won't go into Service Mode.

Go to GAMES > MEMEORY STICK, and run Pandora Installer and go back to "Battery options...". If you backed up your battery in Step 5, select "set battery serial from file" and press X. This will rewrite the original serial number to the battery.

If you did not back up the serial, select "make battery normal" and press the X button to write a generic serial number instead.

Now your battery will function as normal.

Step 9: Prepare to play copied games

Keep the Memory Stick (and Pandora's Battery, if you didn't switch it back) in a safe place if you intend to unlock more PSP's otherwise go to SETTINGS > SYSTEM SETTINGS > FORMAT MEMORY STICK. Then copy your backed up files from Step 1 back onto the card.

Press SELECT. An on screen menu will appear. Highlight "UMD ISO MODE" and press the right direction key until "M33 driver" appears. Then highlight "EXIT" and press "X".

Copied PSP games have an *.iso or *.cso file name. Simply create an ISO folder in the root of the Memory Stick and save the games there.

They will appear under GAMES > MEMORY STICK
If the system can't see any games in the ISO directory, copy the entire contents of the Memory Stick to a temporary folder and format the Memory Stick, then copy your stuff back to the Memory Stick again.

Well that's it. Its alot of work, but is definately worth every minute.

Until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Studio Tax 2008 Announcement!

2009-02-05T20:30:00.002-05:00

Hi there Stream Crossers,

This is my annual announcement that the 2008 Edition, Netfile Certified version of Studio Tax is now available. Download it here > STUDIOTAX.COM

If you're reading this blog right now, and you're Canadian, and you normally do your own taxes, then you should be downloading this software right now. I have personally used it for the last three years, and it works perfectly.

Use NETFILE, and get your income tax refund in two weeks! Its all for free, no signup, nothing. Just download and install. It will generate either a paper result for mailing, or a .TAX file for subission via Revenue Canada's website.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

XKCD makes custom comic for DCTS

2009-01-08T21:21:00.008-05:00

I just really wanted to thank the fine creator of XKCD for drawing up the following custom comic for this site:

Here is another fine, fine comic on their site. It's read to the tune of the Discovery Channel Commercial:

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Build a Digital Photo Display

2008-12-19T20:12:00.002-05:00

Hi Everyone,

Here is my latest project, building a digital picture display. It's really just an LCD screen hooked up to a tiny PC running linux. But the cool thing is that this PC has VESA compliant mounting holes that allow you to screw it right to the back of your screen as a single unit.

Note that if you are in Canada and order from the links below, shipping is outrageous. Probably because of duty, since the product is made in the east Asia. I had to have it shipped to a friend's place in Buffalo, NY, and then drove down to pick it up.

I have not mounted the assembly into a picture frame, but I might in the future as it would be pretty easy.

Here is what you will need to put this together:

eBOX-2300 200MHz VESA PC or eBOX-4300 500MHz VESA PC

An LCD screen, mounting holes it the back must be 100 mm apart (17 inch screens and up, usually)

A compact flash (CF) card 256 MiB or greater (the install alone is 156 MB, your pictures will take up the rest of the space). I recommend using a SanDisk brand. I went for a cheap brand and it had problems booting off the card later. The SanDisk card worked very well.

For the setup, you will require the following:

A desktop or laptop PC with a CD burner and the ability to boot from CD

A blank CD-R or CD-RW

A download of the latest Puppy Linux iso (use bittorrent to download it to save them bandwidth, and to get the highest download speed)

A copy of GQView for Puppy Linux

A USB mouse

A PS/2 keyboard (a USB keyboard will work, but you won't be able to access the bios settings because the USB ports are not activated in time)

A flashcard reader

Step 1 - Preparing the Compact Flash Card

First burn the Puppy Linux iso to the CD.

Connect the flashcard reader and insert the Compact Flash card.

Create a "Pictures" folder and an "Install" folder on the Compact Flash card.

Download GQView for Puppy Linux and save it to the "Install" directory on the card.

Now reboot the computer, and start the BIOS configuration.

Configure the BIOS to boot up off the CD (consult your motherboard's manual to find out how), save the configuration and reboot again.

If all goes well, you should see a screenful of pink text. Don't do anything, the whole process continue until you are prompted to select your keyboard.

Then you will be prompted to select a video display setup. Select XOrg.

When you are prompted to select a resolution, consult the monitor's manual and select its native resolution. The ebox PC's have a maximum resolution that they support, so take that into consideration as well.

Step 2 - Install Puppy Linux to a Flash Drive

Connect the USB card reader to the computer and insert the CF card.

Go to Menu (bottom left corner) > Setup > Universal Installer

Select 'USB Flash Drive' in the window that pops up and click OK.

In the next window select the 'Generic USB CF Reader', if you don't see this, use the drive that shows a disk size (see example screenshot). The drive name will show as sdX, where X is another lowercase letter, make note of it. Click OK.

Now select 'Install Puppy to sdX1' (the little dog icon near the top of the window and click OK.

An install verification check will pop up, click OK.

You will be asked where the files are, click CD.

It will ask you to insert the CD, but it will already be installed so click OK. If you have multiple disk drives, you may be prompted to insert the disk again. Switch the CD to another drive and click OK.

You will be asked about the Master Boot Record (MBR) just select 'default DO NOTHING' and click OK.

On the following screen, select 'default JUST KEEP GOING' and click OK.

You will then be presented with a final sanity check in an orange screen. Just press the ENTER key.

You will then be asked if you want to wipe all files, just press ENTER to say NO, do not press any other key.

You will be asked if you want to add the 'pfix=copy' boot parameter. Just hit enter for NO.

Then wait until the installer is finished. The CD will eject. Remove the CD, close the drive, and reboot by going to Menu > Shutdown > Reboot computer.

When prompted to save to file, select NO, we will revisit this later.

On reboot, the computer should boot puppy linux off of the CF drive. If it doesn't, you may need to tweak your compact flash card.

Select the keyboard as before. This time, select Xvesa from the video Wizard, it will look crappy, but will work better with the ebox PC later.

On the desktop, select 800 x 600 x 24 for the video mode and click OK.

Now reboot again as in Step 14.

As it reboots, you will be prompted to create a pup_save.2fs file. Select save. This file saves all the changes we have made including installed files and setting changes. I wouldn't bother creating a customized name, just save using the default one.

When asked about encryption, use Normal, which is no encryption. Encryption adds extra work to the boot up time, which is not needed.

When asked for the size of the pup_save.2fs file, select 64 MiB if you are using a CF card less than 1 GiB, use 128 MiB if it is over 1 GiB.

Then click Save and the reboot will complete. You won't be prompted for keyboard/mouse/screen settings as they have been saved in the pup_save file on the card.

Step 3 - Install and configure slideshow software

Now when working with desktop icons, a single click will launch them, double clicking will start two copies of the program so click slowly.

Click on the USB icon at the bottom of the screen, it will have a yellow or green dot on it.

Now click on the 'Install' folder, this is where we saved GQview before we started.

Click on the gqview-2.0.4.pet file.

On the install verification screen click the INSTALL PACKAGE button.

The success screen requests you restart the window manager. This is so the program will show up in the program list.

Click Menu > Shutdown > Restart JWM

Now launch GQview, go to Menu > Graphic > GQview image viewer

GQview will launch. Now on the menubar click on Edit > Preferences.

Under the STARTUP heading place a check in the box Change to folder and type /mnt/home/Pictures in the box below it.

At the bottom under SLIDE SHOW, adjust the display time of each picture. At the default 15 seconds, you will run through 40 pictures in 10 minutes.

Place a check in the box next to REPEAT, this will cause the slideshow to start over again after the last picture. If you want to randomize the pictures, check the RANDOM box.

Now click on the IMAGE tab.

Under ZOOM, leave the QUALITY at Bilinear. Make sure TWO PASS ZOOMING and ALLOW ENLARGEMENT OF IMAGE FOR ZOOM TO FIT are checked.

Under WHEN NEW IMAGE IS SELECTED, click on Fit image to window.

Under APPEARANCE, make sure Black Background is checked.

Under CONVENIENCE, make sure Refresh on file change and Preload next image are checked. The Auto rotate option is only needed if you have images that are wide that should be displayed tall, I have not tried this option so I am not sure as to its accuracy.

Now click on the ADVANCED tab.

Under FULL SCREEN, in the Location drop down menu, select Active screen. I am not sure how important this is since we will be using only one screen.

Check Stay above other windows and Smooth image flip.

Then check Disable screen saver, and click on OK at the bottom of the window.
Exit GQview by clicking on the X in the top right corner.

Step 4 - Prepare the desktop for optimal slideshow performance

At the top of the Desktop, click on the icon labelled edit.

Click on the OPEN icon, and an OPEN FILE window will appear.

In the bottom left corner type /root/.jwmrc and click OPEN.

Scroll down near the bottom of the document until you see <startupcommand> and </startupcommand>. Any command entered between these two tags will be launched at when the computer starts up.

Put the cursor to the right of <startupcommand> and hit enter to create a line between them and type gqview -f -s

Now click on the SAVE icon and then the CLOSE icon.

Now close the edit program.

Now go to Menu > Desktop > pupX set properties of X

Go to the Screensaver tab and uncheck Enable screen saver. Then click OK.

Now go to Menu > Desktop > JWM Configuration and click on the button beside Tray management.

Now click on the Virtual Desktops button.

Change the number of desktops to 1. Then click on OK and then OK on the next window.

Back on the Tray Configuration Options window click on the button for Tray Autohide Option.

Turn on Autohide, then click OK and OK on the next window.

Now click OK on the Tray Configuration Options.

On the original JWM Configuration Manager window, there is a green button to restart the window manager, click it. Then exit.

Go to Menu > Setup > Mouse/Keyboard Wizard

Click on Choose type of mouse.

Select USB mouse and check Auto-hide mouse cursor when not moving and click OK. Close the original Mouse/Keyboard Wizard window as well.

Now before we shutdown and transfer the CF card to the eBox pc, we have to change one item so the OS thinks it is booting up on and IDE drive.

Click on the edit icon again on the desktop. Click on OPEN.

In the box to the bottom right type /mnt/home/syslinux.cfg

Change pmedia=usbflash to pmedia=ide. Then click SAVE and then CLOSE, then close the window.

Shutdown by going to Menu > Shutdown > Power-off computer.

Step 5 - Assemble the display

Assembly is easy, the ebox PC will have come with proper screws that will fit through the PC case an attach to the mounting holes on the back of the screen. While you can mount it in any direction, it is less stressful on the cables if the box is mounted with the CF drive facing up. This way the cables hang straight down. (see the pics below).

Don't forget to copy pictures to the Pictures folder on the card.

Now attach the PC power cable, the display power cable, and connect the video cable to both the PC and the display. Remember to flip the power switch on the back of the PC before pressing the power button on the front. If you did everything correctly, you should be seeing a slideshow of your pictures when the PC boots up.

Since I used the 2300 model, I wasn't able to add background music because the PC is not powerful enough. The 4300 model is a much more powerful model and should be able to handle pics, music, and video. Other media players can be started at boot time by adding the correct command line arguements between <StartupCommand></StartupCommand>, each on its own seperate line, of course.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Create Your Own Medical USB Key

2008-11-05T17:12:00.006-05:00

The Medic Alert bracelet is a life saving device. It gives paramedics life saving information when they need it the most... when you are unable to communicate it to them in person.

Once you are at the hospital, if you're still unconscious, who will communicate who to contact?  Who your doctor is?  Your insurance information?  A Medic Alert Bracelet is too small to communicate all that information.

Here is where the Medical USB drive shines.  It gives the hospital as much information as you wish to give them, at a time when you are stabilized and your caregivers can deal with more information.

I have seen these products on the internet for as much as $60.  While they provide you with a nice layout, a more basic version can be had for much less... free.

Just download this file, and unzip it directly to an unused USB key.  You can now find a use for that old, 32 MiB USB drive, since the total size of the files is less that 300 KiB.  Just make sure it still works, you don't want it to fail on you in your time of need.

Now edit the file medical_info.txt, to include any information you want the medical team to have.  Don't skimp, there's lots of space, since it is a simple text file.

Don't change the name of the file, or the executable will not work.

When the USB Drive is plugged it, Windows 2000 will auto-launch a pop up window with all of the contents of medical_info.txt with the option to print it to the default printer.

Windows XP and Vista, will pop up a window asking what to do with the drive.  The executable file will present itself with a medical inisgnia, right at the top of the list.

You may also want to give it a distinctive colour scheme so that it is obvious to the paramedics that it has important info on it.  Also, you should wear it on your neck, not bury it in a purse or jacket pocket.  After all, your Medic Alert bracelet is on you 24-7.

¸.•* *•.¸.•* *•.¸.•* *•.¸.•* *•.¸.•* *•.¸.•* *•.¸.•* *•

Remember, this does not replace a Medic Alert bracelet!

The Medical USB drive is a compliment to it!

The EMTs do *not* have time to read a USB drive when

they arrive on site!

*•.¸ ¸.•*•.¸ ¸.•*•.¸ ¸.•*•.¸ ¸.•*•.¸ ¸.•*•.¸ ¸.•*•.¸ ¸.

The origial version of this file used Notepad to open the text file, but thanks to Daily Cup of Tech, I was able to refine the whole design into something alot more sleeker.

Update (2008-11-11): Thanks to Jim, who posted a comment for a fixed size window with scroll bars, I have updated the executable.  It now opens a 600 x 500 window with vertical or horizontal scrollbars if your text is too wide or too long.  This prevents the window from overtaking the screen. If you have already downloaded the file, just download the file again for the new version.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Announcing the Debut of Tech Talk on RadioFreeG

2008-10-20T00:20:00.009-04:00

Hello everyone,

Just announcing a new internet radio segment that I am working on.

I have been approached by RadioFreeG, himself to produce short tech themed segment on his show to discuss relevent issues or helpful information.

The first episode is available here. In it, I expose how Apple gives iPhone application developers the shaft after they pay Apple to be a developer, and spend weeks and months of their own time to develop an application, only to find they are not allowed to compete with Apple's application.

I also discuss how Google's Android phone OS will trump the iPhone and all of its bullshit.

Take a listen and then come back to leave your feedback, or request future topics.

UPDATED - October 21

A few articles to highlight the differences between Google and Apple:

Podcaster rejeceted because it duplicates iTunes functionality

Google Opens Up Android Codebase

Apple to iPhone Developers: Don’t Compete With Us?

Full Review of the T-Mobile G1 Android Device

Apple Censors App Store Rejection Notices

Apple Allows Lotus On iPhone (After Banning Competitor)

Why the Kill Switch Makes Sense for Android, and Not for iPhone

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Wii: Play Dii Vii Dii's

2008-09-28T21:10:00.005-04:00

WARNING! As of November 17, 2008, Nintendo has released version 3.4 of their System Software.
This release kills the Twilight Hack, and may possibly remove any unauthorized software.

Additionally Nintendo has revised their privacy policy granting themselves permission to install or unistall software on your Wii without your consent!

It is strongly suggested that you disconnect your Wii from the internet until a solution has been found.

The update is voluntary now, but clearly it won't be for long.

More information here: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/System_Menu_3.4

Today we investigate tuning your Wii into a DVD player! Hard to believe, but its true!

First, you must have the Homebrew Channel (aka HBC) installed on your Wii. If you don't, go back to my last post to find out how.

Now the easiest way to get the software you need is to install the Homebrew Browser. To use this option, you must have your Wii hooked up to a wireless network. Go to the main site CodeMii to download the latest version.

http://www.codemii.com/

http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_apps/Homebrew_Browser

Using a card reader, extract the files to a directory in the "apps" folder of you SD card that you used in the setup of the Homebrew Channel. Now simply put the SD card back into the Wii. Now, go to the Homebrew Channel and the Homebrew Browser should be ready to launch. Here are the controls:

A Button = Click Button
B Button = Cancel Download
D Pad Left/Right = Change category
Minus/Plus Button = Previous or Next 6 homebrew applications
Home Button = Return to loader

All software that is downloaded in the Homebrew Browser is ready to go right away, and can be uninstalled via the Homebrew Browser as well.

Now, back to playing DVD's. Search through the applications under Utilities and download "DVDx Installer v1.0" and "MPlayer libdvd Edition".

Now return to the Homebrew Channel and run "DVDx Installer v1.0". This installs required files on the Wii to read DVD's. Follow the installer's instructions based on if your Wii has had a MOD chip installed or not. Once the installer exits, you don't need to run "DVDx Installer v1.0" again, unless you wish to remove the installation. Simply deleting it through the Homebrew Browser does not uninstall the files it installed.

Now simply run the MPlayer program, and put a DVD in the slot.

See this page for a summary of controls.

Now get out there and watch some DVD's. Don't forget to explore the other software titles available via the Homebrew Channel.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Wii: Run Homebrew on Your Wii!

2008-08-15T19:46:00.009-04:00

A copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
An empty SD Card
A Card Reader
WinRAR to extract the files (download here)
The Twilight Hack (download here)
The Homebrew Channel (download here)

Amazon.com Widgets

Now follow these steps:

Unzip the Twilight Hack to the SD Card. You can delete the README file.
In the private folder are three file paths: /private/wii/title/rzdp/data.bin, /private/wii/title/rzdj/data.bin, /private/wii/title/rzde/data.bin
Keep one of the paths, and delete the others. If you are in Europe or Australia, keep /private/wii/title/rzdp/data.bin. If you are in Japan, keep /private/wii/title/rzdj/data.bin. If you are in Canada or the US, keep /private/wii/title/rzde/data.bin
Extract the Homebrew Channel rar file to your desktop. In the resulting folder you will find a file named "boot.dol" copy this to the root of the SD card (the root of the card is the first level of files you see when you double click on its icon in "My Computer"). You can delete the folder from your desktop.
Now, if you have a Zelda game in progress, save a copy to a different SD card as we will need to delete the copy on the Wii.
Put your SD card with the Twilight Hack into the Wii.
If you have never played the game before, then start the game and go through the process of starting a game. You don't have to actually play it, you can cancel during the opening cinematics.
Now go into the saved game section of the Wii, and delete the Zelda save file.
Now switch to the SD Card and copy the Twilight Hack to the Wii.
Once complete, exit back to the main Channel screen.
Start playing Zelda. You should see a saved game that has almost all the hearts. Select it. If you are in Canada/US there will be two saved games. Pick the first one, if it doesn't work then restart the game and try the other one.
When the game starts, you will see a person. Walk up to him and talk to him, the game will proptly crash and you will see text on the screen.
Follow all the instructions, and the Hombrew Channel installer will run, then the Wii will reset.
When you get back to the channel screen, you will see The Homebrew Channel.
To run homebrew, create a folder in the root of the SD Card titled "apps". You can now create seperate folders in the apps folder for each piece of software. To find Wii software, go to the Wiibrew Wiki.

If you've saved the software correctly, just run the Homebrew Channel as you would any other channel, you will then get a list of programs that are on the SD Card. Click on the program to run it.

Once the Homebrew Channel is installed, you can delete the Twilight Hack from your Wii, and either copy your saved game back, or start a new Zelda game.

In a future post, I will introduce you to several interesting pieces of software, including a Super Nintendo Emulator!!!!

Until next time, get a Wii and keep having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Building Your Own Hammock

2008-08-03T21:04:00.006-04:00

Ahhhhh! Swaying gracefully in the breeze on your own rope hammock. It's a relaxing picture isn't it? Heck, the Skipper and Gilligan slept in them every day for the 16 years that they were stuck on that island.

But look on the internet, and a good-quality rope hammock will run you over $200! Plus shipping and handling!

But right here, right now, I've resurrected a set of hammock making instructions from my now-defunct first website.

It is a scan from the book "Hammock: How to Make Your Own and Lie in It" by Denison Andrews. It was first published in 1978 and is since out of print. So here is a scan of the chapter "The Twin Oaks Hammock" it works great, I've built two of them myself.

One of these days I'll track down a full copy of the book again, and get the missing pages. Until then, here is the chapter in PDF and MS Word formats.

I truly swear that it is as comfortable and fun as it looks on Gilligan's Island!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Extract Audio from Video

2008-07-28T21:53:00.003-04:00

Did you ever watch a YouTube video and think "I wish I could download that song"?

Well now you can. In fact, if you can download the video, chances are you can get the song from it.

First, you need the audio extraction software.

Go to AOA Media and download AoA Audio Extractor, it's freeware, so you don't have to pay for it. If any other software catches your eye, by all means purchase it. In the meantime we will move on.

Install "AoA Audio Extractor".

The software will convert AVI, MPEG, MPG, DAT, FLV (Flash Video), WMV/ASF, MOV, MP4, 3GP to MP3, WAV, and AC3.

Now get your video. If it is from YouTube, go HERE to download it. Copy the exact address of the YouTube video you want the audio from, and paste it into the box and hit "Get Video". The video will download as "get_video". You should add ".flv" to the end before saving.

Then run AoA Audio Extractor to extract the audio.

Voila! Done!

Further audio editing can be achieved with Audacity.

Here are a few jingles I was able to capture from YouTube, as an example.

Mini-Wheats Vanilla Commercial
Mini-Wheats Strawberry Commercial
Mini-Wheats Cinnamon Commercial

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Press Release: Soundwave Joins Cast of "T & M's Voices"!

2008-06-18T19:28:00.005-04:00

For Immediate Release:

This week marks the announcement that Soundwave has joined the cast of "T & M's Voices" radio show as a fill-in co-host, while long-time beloved co-host Tit-o is off on assignment.

While Episode 8 served as an introduction to the popular blogger for the show's loyal listeners, the upcoming episodes will get back to the business of producing high quality, entertaining, and thought provoking internet radio episodes.

Soundwave brings his knowledge of cutting-edge recording technology with him to a show that is renown across the internet for its high calibre interviews with world leaders.

"We are really glad to bring Soundwave on board during this slow time, while Tit-o is out of the studio for an unknown amount of time," co-host Magnum was quoted as saying, "We are excited to bring a new element to the Show. We have already begun experimenting with new recording techniques that were just not possible a short while ago. We will be breaking new ground on many fronts in the upcoming months."

Soundwave also shares the show's excitement and optimistic outlook for the show in the following months.

"This will be a new challenge for me. Writing a blog is pretty simple when you get multiple chances to review what you've written, but on a radio show you've only got one shot. Once something's said, its out there... you can't deny it or take it back. We are going to do some big things, just get ready!"

Fans of both sites can catch Soundwave's premier episode on the show right now, just follow the link:

Season 3, Episode 8: Inside Mission Control

"T & M's Voices" is a production of the CSAL Radio Podcast Network, a subsidiary of ShureShot Media Inc.

"Don't Cross the Streams" is an independent blog published regularly on a monthly basis.

"Bringing you the Truth, with talent on loan from God" copyright ©2006, Shureshot Media Inc.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Make Your Pictures POP!

2008-06-07T16:47:00.008-04:00

I have been working very hard to bring you the coolest web technologies to help bring some pizazz to your websites. I try to beta test code on this site, and then bring a tutorial to you on how to make it work.

Today I bring you the coolest javascript code that I have seen in a long time, HIGHSLIDE.

For a full description of what HIGHSLIDE can do, visit the site at the hotlink above. Here is but a taste of what this amazing script can do. Below is an array of images. Click on one, it should blow up over the site (if it takes you to a new page to view the image, then you are being blocked from my repository). You should also be able to click and drag the pictures around. Now press the left and right arrow keys, you should be progressing through the images. Now click on several images, they should all expand. Click on the expanded images to shrink them back.

How do you implement this awesome code into your own site? Well follow the instructions below.

1) Get a content repository.

You need a file host that will allow you to create folders and subfolders that are referenced in the file's URL's. Googlepages will not work. The javascript files assume everything is in a given hierarchy and you need to create folders. I use http://www.fileave.com/ and so far it is working out very well.

2) Download the latest HIGHSLIDE files.

Get the latest HIGHSLIDE files and save them to the desktop and extract them with winzip. This will give you a folder with several subfolders and files. The HTML files and Flash.swf are part of the examples and can be deleted if you want to, or you can double click on index.html for demos. All you need to keep is the highslide folder and the subfolders and files.

3) Upload the folders and files to the repository

Create a highslide folder in the root of the repository and keep the folder structure the same as it appears in the desktop folder.

4) Paste the following code into your page

Paste this code in the <head></head> section of your site. For Blogger, I have had the most success putting it immediately after the <head> tag.

<!-- 
    1 ) Reference to the file containing the javascript. 
    This file must be located on your server. 
-->

<script src='<url to your repository>/highslide/highslide.js' type='text/javascript'/>

<!-- 
    2) Optionally override the settings defined at the top
    of the highslide.js file. The parameter hs.graphicsDir is important!
-->

<script type='text/javascript'>    
    hs.graphicsDir = '<url to your repository>/highslide/graphics/'
    hs.allowSizeReduction = false;
</script>

<!-- 
    3) These CSS-styles are necessary for the script to work. You may also put
    them in an external CSS-file. See the webpage for documentation.
-->

<style type='text/css'>
* {
    font-family: Verdana, Helvetica;
    font-size: 10pt;
}
.highslide {
 cursor: url(<url to your repository>/highslide/graphics/zoomin.cur), pointer;
    outline: none;
}
.highslide-active-anchor img {
 visibility: hidden;
}
.highslide img {
 border: 2px solid gray;
}
.highslide:hover img {
 border: 2px solid silver;
}

.highslide-wrapper {
 background: white;
}
.highslide-image {
    border-bottom: 1px solid white;
}
.highslide-image-blur {
}
.highslide-caption {
    display: none;
    
    border-bottom: 1px solid white;
    font-family: Verdana, Helvetica;
    font-size: 10pt;
    padding: 5px;
    background-color: silver;
}
.highslide-loading {
    display: block;
 color: black;
 font-size: 8pt;
 font-family: sans-serif;
 font-weight: bold;
    text-decoration: none;
 padding: 2px;
 border: 1px solid black;
    background-color: white;
    
    padding-left: 22px;
    background-image: url(<url to your repository>/highslide/graphics/loader.white.gif);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: 3px 1px;
}

a.highslide-credits,
a.highslide-credits i {
    padding: 2px;
    color: silver;
    text-decoration: none;
 font-size: 10px;
}
a.highslide-credits:hover,
a.highslide-credits:hover i {
    color: white;
    background-color: gray;
}
a.highslide-full-expand {
 background: url(<url to your repository>/highslide/graphics/fullexpand.gif) no-repeat;
 display: block;
 margin: 0 10px 10px 0;
 width: 34px;
 height: 34px;
}

/* These must always be last */
.highslide-display-block {
    display: block;
}
.highslide-display-none {
    display: none;
}
</style>

Replace the with the actual URL to your repository.

5) Add your images

Add your images with the following code:

<a href="large-image.jpg" class="highslide" onclick="return hs.expand(this)">
    <img src="thumbnail.jpg" alt="Highslide JS"
        title="Click to enlarge" height="100" width="100" />
</a>

And Voila! your images should be ready to jump out of the page!

If you review the example pages and the website, it will help you to develop other cool things that you can do with this code!

So, if you have a particularly cool implementation on HIGHSLIDE that you want to show off to the world, post a comment to this article with your URL so other Stream Crossers can enjoy your site as well.

Until next time, this is Soundwave signing off!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Project Guttenberg A Bastion of Literature

2008-04-28T20:36:00.020-04:00

Of all the sites I have come across on the web, few are as near and dear to my heart as Project Gutenberg (Wikipedia Entry). For those of you who have not heard of this website, it is a collection of free, downloadable text files of public domain works. The project was started on one of the 15 computer systems in the US that would eventually become the initial internet network. The first etext was the US Declaration of Independence.

Just to note, Gutenberg Canada is http://www.gutenberg.ca/, the address in Wikipedia is wrong (for now).

All documents are available, at the very least, in plain text format. HTML is also available, as well as in PLUCKER format for use with the PLUCKER reader on Palm and Windows Mobile Devices (I'm looking at *YOU* Big V.). PDF's tend to be rarer since they require more specialized software to be able to read them.

As a result of sister Gutenberg projects in other countries, more documents have been made available as a result of differing copyright laws (such as George Orwell novels at Project Gutenberg Australia). The wealth of excellent documents to read is HUGE, and growing at a rate of 50 texts per week.

Now all this boils down to: How do I actually READ all of this fantastic content?

While it is probably not cost effective to print out a full book on your printer and reading it off of a computer screen is not comfortable, but you might be able to snag a cheap, used mobile computer off of eBay. This somewhat harkens back to my last post regarding eBooks. If you're knocking off three or more books a month on the bus, then it might be a good investment. Especially since you can recharge the mobile device at work and have a full charge for the bus ride/train ride/carpool back home.

Here are a few options for reading books on various mobile devices:

Windows Moblie

Windows Mobile devices all have mini Office Suites, so reading text files is no problem. You can also download PLUCKER if you want to read nicely formatted text instead of the regularly formatted stuff. Or you can download Acrobat Reader for Windows Mobile, if you want to read PDF's.

Palm

While the Palm OS, doesn't come with all the software that Windows Mobile devices do, it is easily reconciled. First of all, DataViz makes an office suite for Palm OS handhelds which handles doc, rtf, txt, and even PDF files.

Adobe also makes a PDF Reader for Palms. The document is reformatted on your PC desktop, and then transferred to your palm.

Palm Fiction is an excellent text file reader, that is geared toward ebooks, I highly recommend it. (a better description is here).

If you want to edit txt files on your palm while you read them, then CardTXT is the application for you.

PSP

May 13, 2008: I have removed the link to PSP eBook Creator as it has not been developed in over 2 years. eBook to Images is actively being developed and was last updated in March of 2008. In addition, eBook to Images supports screen dimensions of more readers than just the PSP, offers PNG format for better quality and smaller file sizes, and supports more input files than just text.

Now as unbelievable as it may seem, the PSP is truly a multifunctional work of art. For those of you who do not have a modified PSP (see THIS post), then eBook to Images is for you. What it does is take a text file and format it to the PSP screen and then outputs it hundreds of BMP/JPEG/PNG images which you can upload to your PHOTOS directory on your memory stick and view natively on the PSP's photo viewer (I recommend PNG for better quality and smaller file sizes).

You do need to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (link on the download page above).

The only downside is that a small text file winds up becoming many megs of pictures, depending on the length of the original file and the font size you are using.

One gotcha, is that it ignores single line breaks because most ebooks are word limited to 72 characters by hitting enter. Paragraphs are separated by double line brakes, so those are kept. So if you have a list of items that only have a single line break to separate them, they are going to wind up as one long line.

But it is such an ingenious idea, I had to give it a mention.

If you do have a modified PSP, then you can run this piece of homebrew called Bookr. Bookr is hombrew software that supports Text and PDF files natively on your PSP. Although the last version came out in 2006, it is highly functional. You can change the zoom or font size, bookmark your place, and change the viewing colours. It is truly a great book reading software for the PSP platform.

More installation instructions for Bookr.

PC

I know that I said it is not practical to read a book on a computer, but this program really jumped out at me. Tom's EText Reader
actually LOOKS like a book. Mind you, I had to download a copy of unzip32.dll and save it to C:\windows\system32\, but it looks nice, runs without installation, and lets you customize the view.

Well that pretty much rounds up another informative posting. Hopefully you will be able to squeeze some personal reading into your busy days.

Until next time, this is Soundwave on board the Nemesis bidding you farewell.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

A Library in Your Pocket, the eBook

2008-04-22T22:19:00.007-04:00

I'm telling you stream crossers, I am a rather avid reader. Maybe not as much in recent years as I used to in University, but I still enjoy a good book.

I remember getting on the subway and having a solid 30-40 minutes of reading, both ways. I would pour through Dragonlance novels in two weeks, if not faster. Alas, once I started driving to work, my reading time evaporated (I work too far to take the bus).

Currently I am reading the Harry Potter series off of my Palm Tungsten E. The text is perfectly readable, and with the right piece of software, I can actually correct the book as I go along. However, the screen is rather small, and the battery life leaves something to be desired. I think I can get about 1-1/2 hours of reading on a full charge.

I decided to go about looking for new alternatives, and what I discovered was encouraging in features and disappointing in prices at the same time.

Almost all current ebooks use what is known as e-Ink, as their screen. It is a technology developed at MIT that uses small spheres packed with white and black pigments to display items on screen. The two pigments have a positive or a negative charge. Electrodes under each sphere generate a charge to push one pigment up and pull the other down, changing the colour of the sphere. (see photo below)

Reading-wise, this material really simulates paper. Since it is not backlit, you do need proper lighting to read it in the dark or poor lighting conditions (ie. a book light) just like a real book.

The advantage of this is that power is only consumed to change the display, allowing you to read at your leisure. Power consumption is measured by page turns, not hours.

Another thing I found is that most support PDF and plain text documents... and, of course, their own personal proprietary format for selling you books.

This didn't interest me very much, as there are enough books available out there on Project Gutenberg that I didn't need to buy books anyway. More on that site in my next posting.

Most ebooks also had memory card slots built in so you could load your favourite ebooks on your own without installing fancy software.

Three devices that repeatedly jumped out at me were the following:

The Sony Reader
The Amazon Kindle
The iRex iLiad

There are others, but these are the big boys of the ebook world.

The best (and most expensive) is the iRex iLiad. It boasts the biggest screen (8.1 inch diagonal), Wi-Fi and wired lan, USB port, touch sensitivity (only works with the included stylus), and Compact Flash storage slot. It also has an MMC slot, but it won't work with SD cards. This device is almost a laptop, but not quite. Since it has a heart of Linux, it can run software specifically written for it. It supports the following formats PDF / HTML / TXT / JPG / BMP/ PNG / PRC (Mobipocket). It has a headphone jack, but its website doesn't specify what audio formats it supports. Book reading is just one of its uses since it has a touch screen, but at $700, if you are just looking for a book reading device, look elsewhere.

Then there is the Amazon Kindle. It is a smaller, more dedicated device with a 6 inch screen. This device has a keyboard built in. It also has a USB port and an SD card slot. It does not have Wi-Fi connectivity, but a built in cellular modem, which probably requires a subscription service. Since it is highly tied into Amazon's book sales business, its file support is pretty piss poor. It supports only text, HTML, unprotected Mobipocket. PDF is not fully supported. Other formats are only supported through conversion to the reader's native AZW format. It also supports MP3's and Audible's audio book format (.aa). At $400, I would have expected better file support.

Finally there is the SONY Reader. Normally, I loath SONY, but then they pull shit like this and make a device I just LOOOOOOOOVE! SONY's device has the same size screen as the Kindle, but without a keyboard, so the overall device is smaller. It supports Memory Stick Pro Duo (of course) and SD Cards (wow, surprise to me!). It has no Wi-Fi or lan connection. Books are transferred via USB to the device or memory card. You may be able to use a card reader to put books onto the card, I don't know yet. It supports PDF, TXT, RTF and its own BBeB format. DOC format only supported by conversion to RTF by the SONY software, but you have to have Microsoft Office installed first. It also supports JPEG, GIF (not animated), PNG, and BMP (all images displayed in greyscale). It maily supports Windows, but the latest model can be mounted as a drive in Mac OSX and Linux to transfer files. The Canadian website even has PDF instructions on how to produce optimally sized PDF's using various word processors. It also supports MP3 and unprotected AAC files for audio books or listening to music while you read. At $300 it is the least expensive of the three, but it is still pricey.

Personally, my recommendation is to stay with a regular book for now. $300 is crazy, and the others are off their rocker! I'm hoping that SONY will eventually knock the price to about $150, but I would probably be elected President of the World before that happens. Before the price goes down, they'll just add a new feature and keep the price at $300. So I'm predicting that at least for the time being, I won't be getting an ebook. I'm not some loony, early adopter. I'm not going to pay a premium just to have the price drop in six months *cough* iPhone *cough* Losers *cough* Ahem...

So this is Soundwave on board the Nemesis, signing off for now!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Simple Request to all Stream Crossers

2008-03-22T01:54:00.002-04:00

Hello Stream Crossers!

For a blog of my small size, I do eventually get my share of comments. I love each and every one of them. So far they have all been positive, but I think I would even appreciate constructive negative ones.

However, I have been noticing a lack of originality when posting. Simply put, many are just posting as "Anonymous". While that is ok, it would be nice to see a little personality and pizazz in you handles.

Of course, you do not need to use your real name. Nor do you even have to sign up for a Blogger account. Blogger lets you use any name you want, without having to commit or submit any personal information.

So send that feedback, post a comment, and come up with a good name to post by. After all you are human, and your post name should reflect your humanity and personality.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

PSP: UMD Ripping How to Copy Your UMD Game to Your PC

2008-03-08T01:32:00.006-05:00

Well Stream Crossers, I think that I have touched on a new source of inspiration: PSP Hacking.

Today I will be teaching you how to rip your UMD games to your hard drive as a backup or for playing off of your Memory Stick.

Why would you want to do that? First of all, reading the Memory Stick is much more energy efficient than spinning a disk and firing a laser, so your battery life goes up. Secondly, it helps you to prevent damage to your games by leaving them in their boxes, safe and sound.

Edited 2009-02-07: "USB Special System Storage" is no longer used since the fuctionality to mount the UMD as a drive in Windows is now built in to the firmware.

So here we go:

1) Fully shutdown your PSP by holding the power button in the off position. Then turn it back on.

2) Hold down the L & R buttons as it powers up. You will be presented with a screen with white and red writing.

3) Go to "Configuration" and press X.

4) Under "Use VshMenu" make sure it is Enabled. If not, press the down arrow until this line is highlighted red, and press X.

5) Now go to "Back" and press X.

6) On the main screen, select "Exit" and press X. Your PSP will start up as normal.

7) Now put in the "UMD" you want to rip into your PSP.

8) Press the select button to bring up the "M33 VSH MENU".

9) Now go down to "UMD DEVICE" and press right to change "Memory Stick" to "UMD Disc".

10) Press SELECT to close the menu.

11) Now connect the PSP to your computer, and start the USB Connection.

12) Now go to "My Computer" and open up the PSP drive.

13) Now you should see your game.

14) Now copy your game to anywhere you want on your Computer. - (E.x. "Desktop")

15) Now your rip is being made.

16) When it is done, disconnect your PSP, then press the select button to bring up the "M33 VSH MENU" and switch "UMD Disc" back to "Memory Stick".

Please note that this is a 100% copy of the game. It may come out to be very huge. I'm sure that there are programs out there that will allow you to remove content and compress the file down to something much smaller. Be careful, if you remove too many components from the game, it may no longer function.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

PSP: Pandora's Battery How to load a custom firmware on your Sony PSP

2008-03-02T02:19:00.019-05:00

These instructions are quite old. Click here for more up to date instructions that work on any Operating System!

While I am no fan of Sony, I have to admit that the PSP has amazing potential. But only a fraction of that potential can be realized out of the box.

My brother purchased a PSP (the original black "Phat" as opposed to the current thin "Slim" version) and it wasn't long before realizing that building a decent library of games would cost a small fortune. So I searched the far reaches of the internet to amass the knowledge that I am going to divulge to you right here.

In order to convert the PSP's internal operating system (the 'firmware') you must start with a PSP that already has its firmware updated to 'custom firmware'. This 'custom firmware' is a patched version of Sony's official firmware that unlocks many of the restrictions of the offical version. This includes playing copies of games off the Memory Stick.

To flash the firmware to custom firmware we are going to perform a trick known as Pandora's Battery. The battery's serial number will be temporarily rewritten in order to put the PSP into service mode. Then it boots off of the memory stick and initializes the rewriting.

To perform this, you need the following:

a "Phat" (1st Generation) PSP with custom firmware 3.71 or greater (AKA, THE SOURCE PSP)

a PSP without custom firmware (AKA, THE TARGET PSP)

a genuine SONY battery. A knockoff will not work.

a Memory Stick Pro Duo. Minimum 256 MiB, maximum 2 GiB. Some say only a genuine SONY Memory Stick will work. I am not sure how accurate this is.

the PSP A/C adaptor

Winrar for extracting the files

Microsoft .net 2.0

Pandora's Ultimate Magic Stick Installer

Official PSP Firmware 1.50

Official PSP Firmware 3.40

Official PSP Firmware 3.80

Official PSP Firmware 3.90

Custom Firmware 3.90 M33-2

Despertar del Cementerio - version 4

Step 1: Backup your memory stick, get the firmwares, install the 1.50 kernel in the SOURCE.(Revised March 7)

Charge your battery until it is 100%. You cannot run out of power during the process of writing the firmware.

Copy everything you want to keep on you memory stick to your hard drive as we will be formatting the card during this tutorial to make it bootable.

Download all the software to your "My Documents" folder.
Download all the firmwares to your "My Documents" folder. Extract them one by one and rename them as 150.PBP, 340.PBP, 380.PBP, and 390.PBP.

Download the 1.5 Kernel Addon for your version of the Custom Firmware. Connect the SOURCE PSP to the computer in USB mode. Uncompress the contents to /PSP/GAME, then disconnect the PSP and run the 1.50 kernel installer.

Step 2: Install Microsoft .net 2.0

Pandora's GUI will not install or run without it.

Step 3: Install Pandora's GUI

Following the Ultimate Pandora link above will get you the file "14885_Pandora_sUltimateMagicStickv2.rar". Double click on it and double click on "Pandoras_GUI_v1.5.rar" in the new window that opens. Then copy the "Pandoras_GUI_v1.5" folder to your desktop.

Go into the folder and double click on "Setup Pandora's GUI.msi" to install the software. When complete, an icon will appear on your desktop.

Step 4: Prep your Memory Stick with Pandora's GUI

Put your memory stick and fully charged battery in to the SOURCE PSP. Connect the PSP to the computer via USB so it appears as a drive.

Double click Pandora's GUI to run it. It will start on the "Pandoras Battery" tab.

Click on "Load local file" and locate 150.PBP, and hit OPEN.

Under PSP Memorycard, change this to match the drive letter of your PSP while connected to the computer. Use "My Computer" to verify the letter. Change the target folder to PSP/GAME150.

Click on "Format My PSP" when done, disconnect your PSP, remove the card, hold the power button on off until it shuts down. Don't shut down Pandora's GUI.

Put the card back in, power up the PSP, and connect it via USB again. Go back to Pandora's GUI and click on "Copy Files".

When done, disconnect your PSP, remove the card, hold the power button on off until it shuts down.GUI. Put the card back in and power up the PSP.

On your PSP go to GAMES > MEMEORY STICK. You will see four items, "Pandora's Battery Creator", "Pandora's Battery Firm. Installer", and two corrupt files. This is OK, don't delete anything.

Go to the installer and press X to run it. When complete it will bring you back to the main PSP Screen.

Reconnect your PSP in USB mode. In Pandora's GUI, click on "Write IPL".

When complete, close Pandora's GUI. Keep the PSP connected in USB mode.

Step 5: Copy the additional files and folders to the memory stick

Copy 150.PBP, 340.PBP, 380.PBP to the root of the Memory Stick.

Double click on "despertar_cementerio4.rar" and copy the "despertar_cementerio" folder to your memory stick in PSP > GAME.

Double click "390m33_2.rar" and copy the UPDATE folder to your memory stick in PSP > GAME. Copy the 390.PBP firmware to your memory stick in PSP > GAME > UPDATE.

Step 6: Create a "Magic Memory Stick"

Disconnect your PSP. Under GAMES > MEMEORY STICK, run "Despertar del Cementerio". Once complete it will bring you back to the main screen.

Step 7: Create Padora's Battery

Remember, if your SOURCE PSP is a PSP Slim and the TARGET PSP is a Phat PSP, put the Phat PSP battery in before doing this step. Why? It will work with both batteries but the Slim battery only fits properly into a PSP Slim, it simply will not make proper electrical contact in a PSP Phat. Thus, Step 8 will not work.

The Phat PSP battery will make proper electrical contact in both kinds of devices.

If both the SOURCE and TARGET PSP's are Slim, then you are OK.

Under GAMES > MEMEORY STICK, run Pandora's Battery Creator.

When the select screen comes up, press triangle to backup your battery info. This is important so we can restore it later. The program will exit.

Run Pandora's Battery Creator but this time press "X" to rewrite the battery's serial number. The program will exit when done.

You now have what is known as a "JigKick Battery".

Step 8: Flash to the 3.80 Custom Firmware.

Now remove the battery and Memory Stick from the TARGET PSP.

Put the "Magic Memory Stick" into the TARGET PSP first, before the battery.

Now put the Pandora's Battery into the TARGET PSP. The unit will turn on automatically, go into service mode, and boot from the Memory Stick (that is why the Memory Stick had to go in first).

You will now be presented with four options. Simply press "X" to install 3.80 M33, the custom firmware. The install process will take up to 10 minutes. Put the TARGET PSP down and let it run through. It will either restart on its own or prompt you to press a key. Press the key it asks for.

Step 9: Upgrade to 3.90 M33-2

After the unit restarts, go to GAMES > MEMORY STICK.

Run the "PSP Update ver 3.90". Some text will display and then the official Sony Installer will begin. This is OK. Follow the on-screen prompts and let it install the update.

When it is complete, CONGRATULATIONS!!! You now have a fully modified PSP running custom firmware.

Step 10: Switch the battery back to normal

If you have other batteries, and wish to keep this in Pandora Mode, then skip this step.

Otherwise power down the PSP, remove the Pandora's Battery and connect the A/C Adaptor and plug it in.

Now power on the PSP. When it is fully started, put the Pandora's Battery back in. Since the PSP if fully on, it won't go into Service Mode.

Go to GAMES > MEMEORY STICK, and run Pandora's Battery Creator. If you backed up your battery in Step 7, press the L + R buttons at the same time. This will rewrite the original serial number to the battery.

If you did not back up the serial, press the square button to write a generic serial number instead.

Now your battery will function as normal.

Step 11: Prepare to play copied games

Keep the Memory Stick in a safe place if you intend to unlock more PSP's otherwise go to SETTINGS > SYSTEM SETTINGS > FORMAT MEMORY STICK. Then copy your backed up files from Step 1 back onto the card.

Press SELECT. An on screen menu will appear. Highlight "UMD ISO MODE" and press the right direction key until "M33 driver" appears. Then highlight "EXIT" and press "X".

Copied PSP games have an *.iso or *.cso file name. Simply create an ISO folder in the root of the Memory Stick and save the games there.

They will appear under GAMES > MEMORY STICK
If the system can't see any games in the ISO directory, copy the entire contents of the Memory Stick to a temporary folder and format the Memory Stick, then copy your stuff back to the Memory Stick again.

Well that's it. Its alot of work, but is definately worth every minute.

Until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Studio Tax 2007 Announcement!

2008-02-18T20:17:00.004-05:00

Hi there Stream Crossers,

This is my annual announcement that the latest Netfile Certified version of Studio Tax is now available. Download it here > STUDIOTAX.COM

If you're reading this blog right now, and you're Canadian, and you normally do your own taxes, then you should be downloading this software right now. I have personally used it for the last two years, and it works perfectly.

Use NETFILE, and get your income tax refund in two weeks! Its all for free, no signup, nothing. Just download and install. It will generate either a paper result for mailing, or a .TAX file for subission via Revenue Canada's website.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

An Online Comic You Can Be Proud to Read

2008-02-05T23:39:00.009-05:00

Now I love comics. They're a ray of laughter in my dismal day.

I have already introduced you all to Lil' Formers, but today I present to you...

PENNY ARCADE!!!!

The comic outlines the ongoing adventures of Gabe and Tycho who spend their days playing video games. They are joined by an assortment of characters including their wives, Fruit Fucker (a perverted little juicer), their DIVX player, and their MAC loving neighbour ~~Carlo~~, er... I mean Charles.

Mainly, it is a gaming comic overall, but not all of the comics are games focused, nor do you actually have to be a gamer to appreciate the humour. It even comes with its own Firefox Extension called PennyPacker so you can leave comments, mark favourites and other cool things.

Here I present to you some of my fave strips. If you like what you read below, I would encourage you to read their nine part ARMAGEDDON SAGA (has nothing to do with Bruce Willis) as it includes almost all the regular cast.

Until next time, this is Soundwave saying, "Keep on having fun!"

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Happy New Year 2008!

2008-01-01T18:15:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to say Happy New Year to all my loyal readers!

I can't believe how fast this year just flew by.

I even completely missed my one year anniversary.

I remain committed to posting quality articles.

Until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

(HDTV Primer Part 2) HDTV's Demystified

2007-12-12T23:06:00.003-05:00

Frank's 2000 Inch TV

Ahhhh... Non one can write songs like that wordsmith, Weird Al!

As the advent of HD television, I am finding greater and greater semi-information coming from the cable companies, the TV companies, and the big box electronic stores.

This post's theme is going to explain exactly what the heck all the TV terms mean. 720i? What the heck is that?

Have no fear friends, I am here to help. If you are a regular reader here, then you know that I am constantly waging an information war against those who would spread lies about new TV technology.

First off, what is High Definition (HD) TV? It is, quite literally, pictures and video that are highly defined. When describing pictures, one uses the term "pixel" a clumsy contraction of the words "picture element". A pixel is, in reality, simply a dot on your screen. This dot has three colour components, red, blue and green. Depending how these colours are brightened or dimmed, gives the pixel an overall colour. Combine a whole bunch of pixels, and you get a picture. Change the colour of the pixels in a controlled manner, and you brain interprets it as movement.

A screen's picture quality is defined by its "resolution" or quite literally, how many pixels it has on its surface. The more pixels, the better the picture.

This is where HD comes in. TV's sold in North America throughout the 70's, 80's, 90's, and early 2000's were what was known as Standard Definiton (SD), 640x480 and multiples there of, also called NTSC (National Television System Committee). This meant that they had pictures that were 640 pixels wide by 480 pixels high.

Larger SD TV's used larger dimensions, but always in the ratio of 3 pixels wide, to two pixels high.

HD content uses a much higher number of pixels to define pictures, so it does indeed look better when displaying high definition content.

HD resolutions use a ratio of 16 pixels wide by 9 pixels high. Official HD resolutions are: HD 720 (1280x720), and HD 1080 (1920x1080). Technically, EDTV 480 (854x480), is not high enough to actually call it High Definition (and is not part of the HD Standard), so it is referred to as Enhanced Definition.

Here is a comparison of various resolutions in scale:

While many TV's rightly claim that they are HD displays, they are not all HD 1080. Make sure you read ALL the numbers, not just the price. There is a reason that giant *HDTV* is so cheap!

Another thing you have to know about is the "scan".

Dear God, more TV lingo? Yes, the "scan" was a term from the days when all TV's were Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT) in which a beam of electrons "painted" the picture on the screen, one line at a time from the top, 60 times per second.

Progressive Scan (PS) means that every line is painted on every scan. This gives the best picture as every line is utilized on the screen in every pass. However the delivery method of the media requires a high bandwidth since more information needs to be delivered. This is indicated as a p such as 720p or 1080p.

Interlaced Scan (IS) means that on the first scan, lines 1, 3, 5... etc. of a frame are painted, then on the next scan lines 2, 4, 6... etc. of the next frame are painted. The benefit is that half the bandwidth is needed at the sacrifice of picture quality, known as "combing". Additionally, IS has a "flickering" effect. Even though you may not be able to see the flicker with your eyes, it is known to cause eye strain and headaches after continuous use. This is indicated as an i such as 720i or 1080i.

If a TV can display progressive scan, it can display interlaced, but not the other way around.

Here is an example comparison between PS and IS. The fourth picture is how non-scanning TV's such as DLP, LCD, and Plasma display interlaced video.

Please note that the flicker shown for IS is exaggerated for demonstration purposes. It really is not that obvious.

This is an example of "combing". This is caused because the odd and even lines are displaying two different frames, so the picture does not line up properly. You can see that the source video was being transmitted by satellite, where bandwidth is a premium, hence the use of interlaced broadcast.

Current TV's use "comb filters" to try clean up the picture, but no filter can replace progressive scanning.

Now finally there is the display technology. While CRT is really the king of picture quality, they are very heavy, very thick, use alot of lead in the construction, and are limited to a one meter (diagonal) screen sizes. Newer TV's are thinner and lighter, saving money on shipping, and saving your back.

The first is Digital Light Processing (DLP) this uses a grid of tiny mirrors to project coloured light onto the screen. Each mirror represents one pixel. Cheaper models use a single DLP chip and a rapidly spinning colour wheel (red/blue/green) to project the picture. Higher quality images are obtained using three DLP chips, each with its own dedicated light beam (again red/blue/green).

While not as thin as LCD or plasma, DLP's are cheaper and more easily repaired when the light source burns out. They are also lighter and immune to "burn in".

DLP may also create eyestrain, are susceptible to the silk screen (ie. the screen surface is noticeable) effect and the screen door effect (ie. the pixels are spaced too far apart, showing a black, grid-like pattern). They may also be vulnerable to vibration, so if you have kids jumping around by the TV alot, the mirrors may be affected.

A Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) creates a picture by using liquid-crystal gels that react to electricity. The back of the display is evenly lit by the backlight and brightens the coloured liquid crystal cells. The cells can then be darkened by applying various voltages to the individual cells. Each gel cell only produces one colour (blue/green/red) so three cells, one of each colour, are grouped together in a pixel.

LCD displays are very thin, but don't produce true black, since they can never be truly opaque. LCD's are also vulnerable to dead pixels, where cells no longer respond to the voltages applied, thus becoming "stuck" on one colour. While negligible around the edge, it is very noticeable in the center area. Cheap models are also susceptible to screen door effect, blurring, and ghosting.

Finally Plasma displays work like millions of neon lights to produce colours in a grid pattern to produce a picture. Each cell contains a gas that is excited by electricity. The cell is coated by a special coating called a phosphor. The excited gas causes the phosphor to display its colour. Each phosphor can only display one colour, (blue/green/red), so three different phosphors are grouped together in each pixel. Plasma displays also have a backlight, to help brighten the image.

While giving a better picture than LCD, Plasma displays are way more expensive than either LCD or DLP and consume much more power. They do produce black better than LCD, but they are vulnerable to screen burn. Screen burn occurs when a single picture is displayed on the screen for a long period of time (such as pausing a movie while the TV is on and forgetting about it for a few hours. This damages the screen, causing that image to lightly be displayed permanently.

Also, LCD and Plasma TV's are not easily repairable. Hence, when it dies, you need to buy a new one. DLP's can be repaired depending on which component dies.

Do here is the big question, which would I choose?

My preference is the DLP, 1080p display. Failing that, I would go with an LCD, 1080p. I just can't justify spending tonnes of money on a plasma screen. I mean, its only television.

Now if they ever come out with SED screens... well, that's another story altogether.

I hope this little article has helped you sort out the quagmire that the big box stores have hoped to drown you in. Now you can go out and make an informed choice as an educated consumer.

Until next time, this is Soundwave saying, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Expose your Folder Sizes!

2007-12-03T19:56:00.000-05:00

Ever try to clean out a hard drive or USB drive to make more room, but you couldn't find out which folders were taking up all of the space? That always used to frustrate me during my clean-out efforts, but no longer.

I found a new piece of freeware called "Folder Size" that lets you add an extra column to the Details View of Windows Explorer so that you can see not only the size of the files, but the size of the folders as well.

Just surf on over to this page, Folder Size, to download it. Instructions on installation and use are here.

Unfortunately, according to the author, Folder Size does not yet support Microsoft Vista because of some of the internals are ~~screwed up~~... um, I mean "improved".

I have personally installed it on every Windows XP computer that I have administrator access to since it is such a useful feature!

Until next time everyone, keep on cleaning out those hard drives, and keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Oh my God! That's Cla-a-a-a-sic!

2007-11-17T12:46:00.000-05:00

Promotional fee paid by the folks mentioned at above. Follow a link and help out "Don't Cross the Streams".

Greetings everyone,

For the longest time, I had been mulling over creating a collection of relatively popular classical music. Not "classical music" in the strictest definition. This refers to music composed between 1730 – 1820.

But I was looking for all instrumental pieces, for orchestra, preferably written before 1950. Yes, quite broad (it includes some opera pieces as well).

My search was really slow, since I rarely know the actual name of the piece that I was thinking of.

Then I stumbled across Kick Ass Classical, and the searching blasted off! The site has streaming audio clips of almost one hundred familiar "classical" tunes. This site is sweet and a highly recommended site for springboard from in search of completing your own collections. You'd be surprised at how many you will recognize.

Suddenly I was armed with titles and composers with which to search. The following sites were extremely fruitful:

http://www.downloading-music.org/: A very good site for finding music file links.
Tom.com: This site is in an Asian font, but it handles English titles.
Classic Cat: Another site that links you to audio files of classical performances.

Now, Classical music may not be as hip or as cool as some of the stuff played on the internet radio show CLIMAX RADIO, but it is excellent background music when you want to relax or are doing chores.

Note to Mr. Magnum and RadioFreeG, don't worry, I won't be submitting any Classical pieces to the show.

Another great resource that goes without saying, is bittorrent. Through this I found "The Classic Experience", "Classic Experience II", and "Classic Experience III". I'm still looking for "Classic Experience IV", so if anyone locates the file, post a link in the comments section of this post.

I've pretty much completed my collection, I've downloaded pretty much every piece recommended by Kick Ass Classical, and I must admit, its a pretty well-rounded collection.

So until next time, keep those Classical ears open, and keep on having fun!

To whet you appetite, I've posted the following YouTube video entitled "Cannon Rock".

Enjoy!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

♫ New Radio Show Promos! ♬

2007-11-05T19:13:00.000-05:00

And now I present, new audio spots by Climax Radio, and T & M's Voices!

Play Promo

Play Promo

When you're listening to these guys, you can't help but keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

CDs, Introduce Yourselves!!!

2007-10-28T21:11:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone,

Its been some time since my last computer factoid was posted.

Today we are going to discuss "CD Text".

Since September 1996, it has been part of the Audio CD Standard to add the CD artist, CD title, Track Title, and Track Artist data to audio CDs so that more accurate information can be displayed than "Track 01".

Some of you with car audio systems with advanced displays may have noticed this. Many of you probably have several music CDs with this capability, but don't know. CD burning software has had the option to add CD Text to the CD burning project for years, though it is usually an unchecked option.

Now you may be asking yourself "Shenanigans Soundwave! How can such cool features be walking among us, without anyone realizing they exist?"

I give you but one answer "Windows Media Player (including WMP 11) does not support the feature, regardless of the fact that it has been part of the standard for over 10 years!"

For this very reason, the majority of the people out there do not know of this very cool feature. But no longer! Stream Crossers, I give you the fruits of my latest internet search, a plugin that adds CD Text capability to Windows Media Player: WMPCDText.

The only little glitch that I ran into is that the first time you play a given CD with CD Text, the title won't be displayed until the second time you play it. Other than than, it worked flawlessly for me.

Download it here: WMPCDText

Official Announcement

If you want to test it out, I know for a fact that Our Lady Peace, Happiness is Not a Fish That You Can Catch, has the feature. There are others, I just don't know of a list of all discs that feature CD Text support.

More reading on CD Text:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text
http://web.ncf.ca/aa571/cdtext.htm

So until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Edge's "Ongoing History of New Music" in Your Pocket

2007-08-20T19:44:00.003-04:00

If you're from Toronto, you know 102.1 the Edge as a famous local radio station dedicated to new music.

You'll also know that the station manager has a weekly show called The Ongoing History of New Music. A great show, but at almost an hour long, you usually can't listen to it in one sitting. They offer a stream off of their website (above) and a random podcast, but no real way download the shows you want to listen to to your mp3 player.

Or is there?

Well Stream Crossers, I, Soundwave, have cracked the code! Their internet site actually streams mp3's, which means that somewhere out there in www-land is a pile of Edge radio shows, just waiting to be listened to. But how?

1) Go to The Ongoing History of New Music and find the show you want to hear.

2) Click on it and a new window will open and the show will soon start playing. Right click on the page, and click on "Show Source". If you didn't get that option, you clicked on a flash portion, try again somewhere else.

3) A window with the source code will pop up. Somewhere on the site you will see a code like this: OHNM0559_01

4) That code represents the episode and segment (ie show0559, segment 1). Every episode has 4 segments.

5) Now in your browser, type in http://bstreamcorus.streamtheworld.com/OHNM/OHNM0546_01.mp3 (replace the code with that of the episode you want). Hit enter and save the segment to disk.

6) Now do this three more times, changing the _01 to _02,_03, and _04. Repeat with each episode you want.

Update (2008-11-18): If you are following steps 5 & 6 and Quicktime is playing the mp3 in the browser and won't let you download the file, here are some options:

1) Disable Quicktime from playing mp3's. If you are using Firefox 3, go to Tools > Options, then click on Applications. Here you can specify what happens with particular file types. Look for mp3 under content type and change the Action to Save or Always ask. If part of the Content Type is hidden because the column is too narrow, just hover the mouse over it and a small pop up will appear with the full text.

This option can be reversed afterwards.

2) Install the "Down them all" extension. Then after restarting Firefox, go to Tools > Manager. Then click on Add URL's and paste the mp3 link into the pop-up box. Don't forget to add the target folder as well.

The extension can also be uninstalled when you are finished if you want.

3) If the above doesn't work, open Quicktime, then go to Edit > Preferences > Quicktime Preferences. Go to the Browser tab, and uncheck "Play movies automatically". This works in Firefox and IE.

4) Also, you can stop Quicktime from loading in the background at boot time (in Windows) by going to Start > Run. Then type msconfig and click OK. The System Configuration Utility will pop up. Go to the Startup tab and uncheck the entry for QTTask. Then click OK. You may need to reboot for this to work.

If you have Firefox, you can use DownThemAll, and the Make Numbered List bookmarklet to download them all at the same time.

1) Install DownThemAll and set up the "Make Numbered List" bookmarklet.

2) Now follow the steps above up to and including step 5. Don't save the file, cancel the save prompt.

3) Now click on the "Make Numbered List" bookmarklet. This will bring up a new page. Set the 01 to cycle from 1 to 4 (check the Pad with Zeros checkbox). This will generate a series of unique links for each segment. You can even cycle the show number if you wish so it will generate a series of shows with all four segments linked.

4) Use DownThemAll to download all the files at once without having to click and save each one individually.

Enjoying history was never so entertaining!

Until next time, keep listening and keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Truly a disappointment to behold

2007-08-06T00:41:00.001-04:00

Well everyone, the time has come to follow up my pre-review of Transformers with my actual one, having seen it two days ago.

Please be warned that I will be speaking freely of my criticisms and the following review contains major spoilers.

I have never been so disappointed in seeing a film in my entire life. Everyone I know really loved it, and thought I of all people should go see it. Being the huge Transformers fan that I am, I had to see it, despite my reservations. So I did. And I hated it. Really, I was on the verge of tears. Everything was wrong, it was so far removed from what made them popular, it was a crime.

My number one complaint about this film is the same thing that sandbagged most of the G1 episodes, TOO MANY HUMANS. Anyone that knows me, knows that the humans ruined every episode that they were in. They got in the way, had to be protected, and basically crippled the Autobots from being able to fight properly. Truly, the best fight sequences in the cartoons had no humans in them at all.

So it was in this movie. I don't understand why the military would think it was a good idea to locate the final confrontation in the middle of the city, but I know it was a stupid one. The Autobots spent so much time trying not to step on the humans that they looked like ballerinas, and spent much of their battle time losing their balance. In fact, ten minutes into the final battle sequence, I'm wondering why the fuck anyone is still out in the middle of the street? Did it not occur to anyone to get the hell out of the way of the giant killer robots?

A consequence of the transformers low screen time was the fact that they had no lines, and thus no personality. The Decepticons suffered much more from this than the Autobots. While Optimus hogged the lion's share of the lines while he waxed poetic, the balance of the lines were simply trash talking during the fight sequence. Megatron came in second but he couldn't put three words together without adding in a growl. In fact, only two of the Decepticons actually say anything at all (Frenzy doesn't count as he only sounded like a gremlin, and wasn't speaking English at all).

Personality-wise, the Autobots were identical to their G1 cartoon counterparts. At least in theory. Without any real dialogue, they were just big bots. I would have liked Ironhide to at least have a southern accent.

Really, the Decepticons were always the more popular group in the 80's, even though they wanted all humans dead. Why? The absence of moral hinderance frees the character to develop very memorable personality traits such as Starscream's desire for leadership, Soundwave's teamwork amongst his cassettes, and the Insecticons' constant treachery. The Autobots were always going on and on about "blah blah blah honour, blah blah blah protect the humans, blah blah blah ..." Boooooooring!

The only thing that was done right in this film was getting Peter Cullen back to voice Optimus Prime. For the ten lines of dialogue that Megatron had, there was no reason to replace Frank Welker with Hugo Weaving. The original G1 voice would have easily fit with Megatron's new form. I've heard clips of Megatron from the video game (voiced by Welker) and they sound fine.

While we're on the subject of talking, Prime's mouth looked horrible. He looked like a talking ape. All the promotional footage showed Prime with his faceplate, but there was not a single frame of footage in the film with Optimus using his faceplate. He really looked bad.

Also, would it have hurt anyone to actually have the Autobots kill a Decepticon? Isn't that what they're there for? After Prime decapitates Bonecrusher (who is in the movie, literally, less than 60 seconds before he dies) all the other Decepticons are killed by humans. I thought THEY were supposed to be defending US! Shit if it weren't for the humans, Megatron would have shredded all of those pussy Autobots, single handedly! Why did the Autobots even bother showing up? We seemed to have the situation under control.

Overall, this film was a failure despite its financial success. I place all of the blame on Michael Bay as he is a failure as a director and as a human being. It was sloppy.

If my hands weren't tied by the unalterable fetters of the law, then I would invoke the tradition of our illustrious forebears, reach back to a purer, sterner justice, and have you BURNED AT THE STAKE! Michael Bay, you fucking suck!

Let's begin with the fact that the tank calls himself Devestator (as do the credits) while the toy is called Brawl. It seems that Bay lost control of the film and forgot the names of his characters. The character's real name is Brawl, Devestator was only a working name. What self respecting director does that? And what kind of director lets that error into the theatres?

Then the action. Things don't start to heat up until there are 30 minutes left in the movie. Then Decepticons start appearing from everywhere. Hell do I know what was happening. There wasn't a single wide shot anywhere to be found in that entire sequence. Nor did it occur to actually keep the camera still, or even move it in the same direction as the action. So everything is whipping all over the place and millions of dollars of supposedly fantastic CGI effects are flushed down the toilet as you can't make out what the fuck is going on. Robots are dying, but since the Decepticons are all the same colour (black) you can't make out who anyone is.

Also, Bay was so focused on keeping mass and volume constant, that certain popular characters were left out, and the ones left in look like they were assembled on Junkyard Wars. Meanwhile at the climax of the film, Bay has a 30 metre tall, metal cube condense into a smaller cube the size of a basketball, and just as light. Where the mass went to, I don't know, but Sam was able to run all over the city and up forty flights of stairs with it. Michael Bay, you are a total hypocrite.

Finally, Optimus Prime fights like a total PUSSY! He gets totally manhandled by Megatron. Remember his fight scene in the 1986 movie? Well forget it. If it wasn't for the humans' airstrike, Megatron would have ripped apart Prime like he did Jazz (interestingly enough, however, Jazz, the only Autobot to actually die in the movie, was the one voiced by an African American actor) and eventually every other Autobot in the movie.

Finally, I have one piece of advice to Mr. Bay. When making a movie, you only use a joke once and that's it. Transformers has two urination jokes (both times calling it "lubricating"), and twice uses the phrase "more than meets the eye" the old catchphrase of the original G1 series. The jokes were stupid to begin with, the second time around they aren't even worth hearing. Go back to director's school.

From what I understand, two sequels are greenlit, the next one will feature Soundwave, the Constructicons, and the Dinobots. I shudder to think how shitty they'll look. Apparently they wanted to save Soundwave for the sequel when they had more money, so they could "do Soundwave right". After seeing this movie, that doesn't hold any meaning to me anymore.

I hate you Michael Bay, I wish I could hate you to death.

Until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

E-mail Text Messaging!

2007-07-08T14:39:00.000-04:00

Did you know that you can e-mail a cellphone that has text messaging capability? Its true.

Most, if not all cell phone companies don't charge for incoming messages. So as long as your recipient does not reply, then he/she will not see any charges.

Simply use the following format as the e-mail address:

phonenumber@domainname

The phone number is the 10 digit number with no spaces or dashes.

For a list of domain names look here, http://www.notepage.net/smtp.htm

That's it for now, until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Wii would like to kick Sony's ass

2007-06-12T01:08:00.000-04:00

Well, excuse me if I can't wipe this smile off of my face today, but it seems that SONY will finally be lowering prices on its PS3.

Why? Well, in a word... NINTENDO. While SONY was standing on the shoulders of giants, namely the Playstation and Playstation 2, Nintendo went back to the drawing board, designed a new slingshot, and fired its killing blow.

They decided that they would focus on non-gamers, and young children. Two demographics that don't focus on graphics and processing horsepower. It seems now, however, they are pulling in everyone in between.

Now it is no surprise that I loath SONY. But it hasn't always been that way. Back when they were *just* and electronics company, SONY was focused on making the best products possible, with features that their consumers wanted and demanded. And they thrived.

Unfortunately SONY's turn to the Dark Side™, once they got into the music and movie business. Talk about selling your soul to two devils! You see, unfortunately, the features desired most by consumers are not in the best interests of the music and movie industry. Portability of the content is what we want, Digital Rights Management (rights of the movie companies, not yours) are what we get. Blu-ray is SONY's master plan incarnate, or "inplastic" as the case would be. I'm surprised Blu-ray disk players don't count how many people are in the room, and start shooting people if there are too many.

Anyhow, back to Nintendo. The following are my reasons why the Nintendo Wii has made the PS3 its bitch, ordered from most important to least.

Wireless, motion sensing controllers

By now you know that the Wii's controllers can detect where you're pointing it and where you move it, and how fast you move it. The curiosity on how this functions is enough to drive sales.

People, this is not simply "thinking outside the box", this is thinking outside of Euclidean geometry.

Now normally, I am against wireless remotes because I hate dealing with batteries in things that don't need them. Normal controllers don't need batteries because you're not usually going to play them more than 10 feet away from the console. In this situation, wireless it the only way to go, otherwise you'd be yanking the console onto the floor every 5 seconds.

Low price

The PS3 costs $600 US, the Xbox 360 is $400 US, the Wii is $250 US. Which one are parents going to buy for young children? Which one will entice non-gamers to try something new?

It seems that SONY is now realizing that "This generation has shown that consumers are far more price sensitive than previously thought". Noooooo... I was so looking forward to selling my car to buy one of these. Maybe if I stop eating meat I can afford a game.

Now SONY is contemplating a $100 price cut.

Real-life, yet comical, mayhem and destruction

SONY has to deal with "My kid beat up a hooker after playing Grand Theft Auto". Nintendo has to deal with "I smashed a window on that home run when the controller slipped out of my hand". You can't even read that without smirking. There's a whole website dedicated to Wii Controller Mishaps. You can actually buy a shield to protect your TV now.

Only one version, at one price, for everyone

There is only one Wii. Not the expensive Wii with all the features, and the cheap Wii, with minimal features. This isn't Goldilocks and the three bears here. No one wants to be burdened with the stigma of having to own the crappy version. The Wii was designed for inclusiveness and team play, not dividing people between rich/poor boundary lines.

I think SONY just launched the 20 GiB PS3 just to convince themselves that everyone WANTS to give them all their money and justify the expensive price. They conveniently leave out the fact that the 20 GiB PS3 has almost none of the features of the expensive one.

Never take a hit on anything

It is well known that Nintendo does not have other divisions to allow it to lose money on its hardware. Despite the $600 price tag, SONY loses money on each PS3 that it sells. The Wii was designed to profit from every sale, despite its low price, from the beginning. You gotta respect that.

Just to end on a high note, here's a video with a song ridiculing the PS3. I like it, despite the fact that it seems to be pro-XBox. The music is really great.

So, until next time, buy a Wii, and keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

US Mint 50 State Quarters Checklist

2007-06-11T23:21:00.005-04:00

Although I am based in Canada, I travel frequently to the United States. One of the things that has fascinated me here is their 50 State Quarters program by the US Mint. Yes, I know the Canadian mint did the same thing years before. I already have all of those provincial quarters, so I was looking for a new coin to collect.

Anyhow, I have looked high and low for an official checklist of quarters, but I could not find one. So I made one up myself. It is available here. Click on the checklist icon to download it. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader. It checks in at about 4 MiB.

I would have linked to the original Word Document, but at 16.5 MiB, it is just too big.

Version 1.4
Updated on 2009-03-14

updated the 2009 U.S. Territories coin images with new, hi-resolution images.
added release date for the first 2009 coin

Version 1.3
Updated on 2008-08-16

fixed year typo on the 2007 coin page (it read 2006, thanks Anonymous)
added new coin images for 2008 coins
added release dates for additional 2008 coins
added coin images for 2009 coins
added statehood dates

Version 1.2
Updated on 2008-01-06

added new coin images for 2007 & 2008 coins

Version 1.1
Updated on 2007-06-12

added new coin images for released coins
added 2008 coin images
added table for possible 2009 program extension
added version control and title page
cleaned-up layout

Version 1.0

Initial Release

This list is current as of the date of release, and will be updated regularly (at least every time a new quarter is released). The list is aligned to the right so that you can hole punch the page.

I don't know why some of the images don't look good, they were fine before the PDF conversion. Hopefully I can remedy that in future updates.

One more thing, the two columns marked D and P indicate the Denver and Philadelphia mints, respectively, where the quarters are minted. The D or P appears on the lower right of the heads side, behind Washington's ponytail. Every quarter has a D and P version.

Should be useful for all you coin collectors actively collecting these coins.

Until next time, keep on having fun.

The Coolest Shuttle Picture You'll See Today

2007-05-28T21:45:00.000-04:00

In keeping with RadioFreeG's space themed radio show, I present to you the coolest shuttle picture you'll see today.

See that little speck on the left along the centreline? Clicking on the picture will open up a super-size version of the photograph, scroll to the middle left and you will see a silhouette of the space shuttle undocking from the International Space Station, with the sun in the background.

This photo was taken in a cow pasture in France, after tracking the paths of the two objects for weeks.

Look up, and keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Lock-Down Your Wireless Network

2007-05-24T16:41:00.000-04:00

Well everyone, its been sometime since my last post here at DCTS. I've been racking my brains trying to come up with an interesting and useful post for everyone. Finally my girlfriend suggested writing about wireless network security.

Now the first thing to know is that no wireless router is impenetrable. Our main goal is to apply enough layers of challenge to logging on to your network that any potential attacker will move on to other targets.

Now make you get a router, not a hub or a switch. Routers have more advanced data flow control, giving everyone on the network faster access. Routers also have better security features.

Once you've purchased your router of choice, it is normally configured through your web browser. You type the IP address of the router where the web page would go and you surf to your router. Your router's manual will show you how to do this.

1) Change Your Default Router Password

One of the first things an intruder will do once on your network is to lock you out of your own router. All routers have known default passwords, the first thing you must do is change it to something that is not easy to guess and is at least 8 characters long or longer if possible.

2) Enable WPA or WPA2 Encryption

Always enable WPA or WPA2 encryption. WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access, and it is an encryption mechanism so that if someone tries to snoop in on your data flow, they won't be able to tell what is going through. WPA2 is an advanced, more secure form of WPA at the expense of compatibility with older wireless devices. Enable WPA2 initially then downgrade to WPA if you can't connect. Never use WEP, an old encryption method that is no longer considered secure. Windows XP SP2, Vista, Mac OS X, and most current Linux distributions all support WPA and WPA2.

If the router does not support WPA encryption, don't buy it (or return it).

These options will usually appear as WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK. PSK stands for Pre-Shared Key. Essentially you need a password to be given to you before you can log on to a WPA/WPA2 protected network. You can select passwords up to 64 characters. It is advisable to use all 64 characters.

I use this site for my passwords. The second set of characters entitled "63 random printable ASCII characters" is the most secure. Copy this to a text file and save it in a secure location. You may want to edit the password and remove any question marks, spaces, and O's and zeros, and L's and capital I's (O's and zeros tend to look the same, as do lower case L's and capital I's).

Only wireless devices need the password to connect, computers using network cables do not.

3) Change and Hide Your SSID

Your SSID (Service Set Identifier) is essentially the name you want to call your network. Make it something unique, but nothing that can identify you directly, otherwise an intruder will be able to move closer to your house to get a stronger signal. "Frank's Pad" is a poor choice, while "Sticks and Stones" is a better choice.

You can also "Disable SSID Broadcast" so that if a wireless device is scanning for available networks, yours won't show up on the list. Note however, that there are devices that can see your network even if you turn off the SSID Broadcast, so this option alone will not help you.

I have found in the past that I have to turn on SSID Broadcast when connecting a wireless device for the first time. Afterwards, that same device will still be able to connect after the broadcasting has been disabled again.

4) Enable MAC Address Filtering

All network devices have a MAC address, essentially this is the device's unique name, desktops only have one unless they have more than one Ethernet port. Laptops that have an ethernet and wireless connectivity will have two MAC addresses. To find out what yours is got to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt
A black window will appear, type ipconfig /all and hit enter. The item listed as you Physical Address is your MAC address (I don't know why they changed the name).

Your router can be setup to only allow specific MAC addresses to connect to the network. This option will affect all devices connecting to your network, not just the wireless ones, but it is highly recommended.

5) Limit the IP Range

Every computer on your network is given and IP address, that is how the router directs data flowing to different devices. Most routers will let you limit how many IP addresses can be assigned at once. Determine how many computers need to be connected to your network at one time and set it at that. In my house it is not unusual for all 5 computers to connect to the network, so my system only has a range of 5.

This has two-fold benefits. First, an intruder won't be able to get on if all the IP addresses are in use. Secondly, if someone in your house can't connect to the network while everyone else can, it's a warning sign that someone is on your network who shouldn't be.

6) Static IP Addresses

In what may be considered overkill, I assigned each MAC address its own unique IP address, so that even if all other security layers worked around, they system won't assign it an IP address preventing it from communicating with the network. Not all routers offer this feature.

After all this work, remember to export your settings to a file. Save this file with the password from before. This way if your router gets reset by a power out or something, you won't have to spend the tedious time getting everything back to its iron-clad state. Believe me, nothing makes you question security like entering 10 MAC addresses in by hand 20 times! All you have to do is get the router to import the file you saved and BOOM, your router is back to secure.

Now yes, this will make it difficult to add new devices to your network, but that is the point. You don't want to make it easy for *ANYONE* to connect to the network. Convenience is sacrificed for security.

UPDATE (2007-06-11) - Regarding Magnum's question in the comments area in regards to whether the multiple layers of security will affect connection speeds. Excellent question. I do not believe that the security here will affect your connection speed. You see, the security is only invoked once you attempt to connect to the network. After evaluating your computer against all the security requirements, then you will be assigned an IP address. Once you get an IP address, your hand has been stamped, so to speak. Until you disconnect your connection should not be re-evaluated.

Remember, a secure network is like an onion, they both have layers. Now parfaits also have layers. Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "Hell no, I don't like no parfait"? Parfaits are delicious. Sorry... slipped into the wrong movie.

So surf safe, and keep on having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

When Directors Shit on Our Childhood Dreams

2007-04-10T19:00:00.002-04:00

SOUNDWAVE's NOTE (2007-08-06) : Read my full review for the film here.

When George Lucas keeps revising Star Wars to continually keep up with his ever changing Original Vision^TM, fans complained that he was ruining a film they enjoyed from childhood. They should count themselves lucky that they had almost 20 good years before he decided to make Greedo shoot first.

Countless childhood television shows and video games wound up in the crapper when making the transition to the big screen. Remember the He-man movie? Sadly, I do.

Unfortunately this travesty is going to be repeated with the most sacred of institutions, Transformers. The perpetrator? Michael Bay (and to a lesser extent, Steven Spielberg).

To be honest, no one that I knew was more in love with the idea of a CGI/live action movie of the Transformers than myself. Unfortunately, the more I read about this project, the more I became concerned that another wonderful idea was going in the wrong direction.

First off, here is a quote from Wikipedia regarding Michael Bay's involvement:

Michael Bay was negotiated with to direct, but turned it down as a "stupid toy movie". Realising he had been wrong as a teenager at Lucasfilm regarding Raiders of the Lost Ark' box office potential, he was put through "Transformers school", and in April 2005 he confirmed he was directing the film.

What the FUCK! Any director who has to be educated about the Transformers should not be a choice to direct! Look at Superman Returns, Spider-man, and X-men (1 and 2). These directors were HUGE fans of the original series and characters. Their movies are highly faithful to the original concepts and were well received (Spidey's organic web shooters caused issues, but I really blame Stan Lee for coming up with a stupid idea to begin with). Ghostrider's star Nicolas Cage is himself a big fan of the character and even helped write the film. This is what we need.

How about this one for Mr. Spielberg:

Spielberg himself had come to know the franchise via the toys and cartoons that his children loved.

Everyone, go call your dad and ask him who the leader of the Autobots was. Enough said.

Above all here is a fan-fucking-tastic (emphasis on fan-fucking, because that's all they're doing with this movie) expanation why the Arc was removed from the film (the Autobots space shuttle that crashed into the volcano):

In another design development Roberto Orci cut the Autobot's Ark spaceship which John Rogers originally included, saying "Why would aliens who moonlight as vehicles need other vehicles to travel inside?"

Orci, you dumb fuck, the Arc is a space vehicle, not an airplane. Everyone understands that for travel around earth, they move under their own power. How the hell is a robot the size of a car supposed to travel between solar systems?!?!?!?!? My brain is beginning to hurt.

Now lets really bring on the hurt. No one looks anything like their '80's counterpart. Prime, Bumblebee, Jazz, Ironhide, and Ratchet are all new vehicles (marketing tie-ins) and their robot states look like... well I think you need to see the horror for yourself. Get a tissue, or a box.

Optimus Prime Robot Mode

Optimus Prime Vehicle Mode

Megatron Robot Mode

Megatron Vechicle Mode

Full Set of Images Here for other characters

The Decepticons are even worse, Megatron looks like crap, so does Starscream. Soundwave is nowhere to be found, and the other Decepticons are all but made up.

As an additional kick in the balls regarding Megatron, Peter Cullen is reprising his role as Prime, but Frank Welker was turned down to reprise his role as Megatron in favour of Hugo Weaving. For those who don't know, Frank Welker is a voice acting god, having played thousands of cartoon voices. It would have been awesome to have the original voices AT LEAST. Monkeys at the controls I tell you, monkeys at the controls.

What is Bay's response to this criticism? 1) He wanted to make it realistic, 2) It's a reboot of the series. He looooooves to hide behind those stupid excuses.

Michael's addiction to realism is why characters like Soundwave are not in the movie and Prime's vehicle mode has changed, because he is trying to be mass constant. Great. I'm glad he's trying to be realistic about sentient, shape-shifting robots from a fictional planet. Mr. Bay, please watch Mario Bros. That is a lesson on making things "realistic". (Nintendo really should have stepped in on the scriptwriting on that one)

Secondly, reboots refer to existing franchises like James Bond and Batman that seem to be going downhill. Transformers had one cartoon movie, 20 years ago. That is not a franchise, it doesn't get REBOOTED.

There are glaring other changes, such as the whole point of the trek to earth is not for energy to fuel their war, but for the ALLSPARK? What the hell is that?

Mr. Bay please let me inform you of something, regardless of what Steven tells you, these characters exist and do not need to be created or "updated". As if he knows what the fuck he's doing nowadays anyhow. Haley Joel Osment as Harry Potter? Give me a break. At least Harry Potter has JK Rowling to defend it. Transformers has no one. Only millions of fans screaming in disgust, but no one is listening.

Michael Bay, please take your seat next to Joel Schumacher in the line of "Directors whos should be banned from filming". Psst! Hollywood... I think Michael Bay is a communist! Pass it on!

Despite this harsh criticism, I am at odds as to whether or not I will see this film in theatres. One side says to protest, but the other is dying of curiosity. Its like a train wreck, you don't want to look, but you can't turn away.

I'm hoping that I didn't bring you all down too much. To make it up to you and to cheer you up, here's a gallery of Lil' Formers, really funny single-frame Transformers comics, as kids!

Actually here's the homepage for Lil' Formers: Lilformers.com

Also, check out this one:

Look closely at Wreck-Gar's gift. First one to explain the joke as a comment to this article gets a shout out on the next blog entry!

Well that's all for now. If I do watch the movie, I'll post a review. Until next time, keep having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Stop CD's Auto-Launching (P.S. Fuck You SONY)

2007-03-14T14:02:00.000-04:00

Some of you may remember back in 2005 the big hoopla regarding the Sony Root Kit. In an effort to fight piracy, some Sony CD's included software that intercepted all interaction with the CD drive.

It all starts like this, you put your music CD into the CD drive of your computer, a prompt to install audio software will appear. However, by this point, the hidden software has already been installed without your permission. The software is normally undetectable because of various cloaking patches that it installs in Windows. Currently there is no know way to remove it without messing up your system. Antivirus programs are only able to remove the cloaking ability. Deleting the executable itself will disable your CD ROM drives.

As a result of this, I have come to the decision that SONY has no respect for the boundaries of your property. They invade your computer, putting your data and security at risk.

I will never buy another SONY product as long as I live. Fuck SONY. They don't care about their customers anymore, just their bottom line.

Your first line of defense is to stop CD's from launching everytime you put a CD in the drive. Some of you may recall my USB Stick post that U3 devices do the same thing by pretending to be CD's. This is originally thought of to be a convenience, but in light of the SONY fiasco, I will teach you how to turn it off.

First, download and install Tweak UI from Microsoft, here is the link to the XP version.

Run the program from START > Powertoys for Windows XP > Tweak UI

In the window that pops up, click on the + sign next to "My Computer". You will see AutoPlay in the list that appears. Click the + next to AutoPlay and select "Drives".

On the right hand side, you will be presented with a list of drives. A red question mark indicates that a drive does not exist.

Un-check the box next to your CD or DVD drive(s). Don't worry, this will not disable them, nor will it prevent you from installing software off of a CD. This just prevents Windows from arbitrarily installing software from a CD before you even know what's going on.

Now just click OK and close the window. A reboot of the system may be in order to get the new settings to kick in.

In the future if you really want the software to run, just right-click on the icon and select AUTOPLAY.

Now go out there, and keep on having fun (and stay away from SONY).

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Here Comes the Sun

2007-03-14T12:30:00.000-04:00

Summertime is fast approaching, and this year I was really interested in purchasing a solar power supply for use with various portable electronic gadgets. Between Magnum's annual Canada Day picnic, and Tito's annual Luau, there does seem to be a need for portable, clean electrical power. Big V usually has a battery powered assembly for musical entertainment, so I felt perhaps I could augment his setup with a little AC/DC from the sky!

The only problem being that I know squat about electricity other than "don't stick metal things in the electrical outlet". So the research was rather slow going.

Many of the items seemed to be distributed by Asian companies, which did not bode well for their reliability. Slogging through many poorly translated manuals only helped reinforce this perception (honestly, couldn't they hire someone to check the grammar?).

Finally I found the device I was looking for, the Brunton SolarPort 4.4. It is made in the US, but there is a Canadian distributor in BC. Boy was I happy. I read the product specs and found that it had some handy features:

Clam Shell design - The unit unfolds like a book to expose its solar panels

Built in Cigarette-lighter Socket - If you have a car charger, just plug it directly into the device.

Built in USB Outlet - use your device's USB cord to charge your iPod, PalmPilot, mp3 Player, or anything else that charges via USB.

Standard Power Adapter Plugs - the device includes standard power adapter plugs to charge or power other devices like CD players as if they were using AC power.

AA and AAA Battery charger included - The package also includes a second unit that attaches to the panel portion that charges AA and AAA NiCad and NiMH batteries.

12V and 6V switchable - what this means, I don't know. It sounded good, but I'm a Chem, not an Elec, so what do I know.

Multi-Unit Co-operation - link multiple units together to add additional power. Not sure how useful that is, since I'm only planning on buying one. I guess if one of my buddies likes it so much that they buy one for themselves, then we can take advantage of this feature.

The main product page is at Brunton.com and the Canadian distributor is Modern Outpost. I really am looking forward to buying this baby, but I'll probably wait until closer to summer time when I can give it a good run-through with full sunshine.

When this happens, I will definitely post a follow-up review to fully describe this product.

Until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Everything Old is New Again

2007-03-12T15:18:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone, time to lay out on the internet what is on my mind.

Today's topic, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. What once was the rightful successor to the NES Legacy, the SNES went head to head with the other 16 bit system, the Sega Genesis.

Recently, I have rediscovered the joys of SNES gaming with the use of a USB controller, and a nice emulation software called ZSNES. I find this software easy to use and works well with the Logitech Rumblepad 2 controller that I bought. Although the Rumblpad 2 is a clone of a Playstation controller, the button positioning is similar enough to offer no trouble.

Installation is a non-issue, just unzip and run and play.

Another great feature is that it can run games full throttle on a Pentium II, so older computer owners out there can rejoice.

"Play what?" you might ask, well Game ROMs, which are copies of game cartriges. It is however illegal to download ROMs that you do not own, and that 24-hour use idea that is floating around the net is poppycock.

However, if the idea of breaking international copyright law amuses you, then head on over to http://www.rom-world.com/ and get your fill of games that you always wanted, but your parents wouldn't buy for you. Just unzip the roms to the same directory, and relive the good ol' days.

Until next time, keep on having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

(HDTV Primer Part 1) HDTV's - The true picture

2007-03-07T19:12:00.001-05:00

I keep reading/hearing/seeing stories regarding hi-def TV's and how great they are, and by and large they are quite worthy pieces of technology, however, I am here to break down the hype surrounding them.

Now just to get this out of the way, I do not own a high def TV, nor is this article supposed to discourage you from buying one. I am a huge TV junkie and I do love watching television. I just don't want you to be suckered into paying too much for something you may not need or finding out later that a great picture needs more than just and expensive screen.

My first issue: DIGITAL. This seems to be the new buzzword of media presentation, digital. What does it mean? As far as I can tell, it means that the data is broken down into 1's and 0's in an electronic format. This is not synonymous with high quality. Digital signals CAN be high quality, but that is because the content is of high quality not because digital is inherently good quality. Old movies are not going to become super crisp and sharp just because they are digital.

The next detail, picture quality, is my most divisive issue. Is it worth the extra money? As RadioFreeG stated in his latest podcast, if you think you can just plug in your existing cable feeds and get hi-def picture, you are sorely mistaken.

Yes, existing feeds will look better since the screen is a higher quality, but its not hi-def. No, my friend, hi-def needs a hi-def signal to take advantage of your new screen. The only way to get that signal is with a digital receiver box, which you have to rent from your television provider. On top of that the free content is minuscule. To get HD content, you have to pay extra for that too.

Additionally, movies on disk will suffer from much the same problem. DVD's will look better, but they are not HD content, so you won't get super sharp whatever. To get HD content, first you need a Blue-Ray disk or HD-DVD disks. Then you need a Blue-Ray disk or HD-DVD disk player. Then you need the digital cables to transfer the protected content to the TV, lest you syphon the signal and make illegal copies of it.

In fact every path to get HD content requires an unbroken chain of content, HD compliant equipment, and finally the TV set. The TV is the last step in the chain, so why is that the first thing they try to sell you?

In a word, money.

You see, my objection isn't the selling of the TV's, its the ridiculous investment that they don't tell you about when you're buying the TV's. If you know that there's strings attached to your purchase ahead of time, you can do one of three things, 1) put off the purchase and live with what you have until it dies, 2) Mortgage the house and buy everything in one fell swoop and enjoy a super picture with surround sound in your own home theatre, or 3) realize you just want a huge screen TV or that you want to watch widescreen movies without letter-boxing and make a purchase without disappointment.

I prefer Option 3, but really any of these solutions is acceptable, provided they are made by an informed mind.

I know several people who went with option 2, maybe not the extreme as I described it, but they have their HD signal and TV and the picture is so amazing that they swear they will never go back. Again, never having experienced full HD quality, I cannot fault their logic.

However I will offer this. Standard definition to Hi-Def is not comparable to the shift from black and white to colour, or from silent films to "talkies". Those were major paradigm shifts. HD-TV is not. Wider screen and an improvement in picture quality? Not a major "revolution" in my books.

Personally, I'll hold off on an HDTV for as long as humanly possible. Why? Because in the not too distant future all stations will be broadcasting in HD for free, not just the premium channels. When that happens, the HD tuners will be built into the TV's much like cable TV tuners are now, so I won't have to rent one.

I work hard for my money, like most of your out there, I'm sure. While I do want to get some entertainment and enjoyment from my hard work, there comes a line that we have to draw to tell the media and content providers that "enough is enough, I don't want to give you any more of my money". Again, this message is reiterated in RadioFreeG's latest podcast. How much content are you willing to pay for? It is one thing if it was free, then give me all you've got. But, if I have to pay and pay and pay for entertainment, then I have to sit down and decide how much do I need, how much do I want to spend, and how much do I want to save for a rainy day?

Just a small thing to think about.

Until next time, keep on having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Studio Tax Announcement!

2007-03-05T16:06:00.001-05:00

Some of you may remember my earlier posting about free Canadian tax software.

Well, for those of you still interested, StudioTax 2006 is now NETFile Certified!

That's right, you can now electronically file you Canadian Income Tax for free. In addition, they have removed the limit to how many returns you can file for your family.

Till next time, keep on having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

☭ Kiss my ASCII...

2007-02-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

I'd be lying if I told everyone that I wasn't expecting a huge commotion over my little musical notes. As I've always said, "Its the little things that count, you can sit on top of a mountain, but you can't sit on top of a pin"

What does that mean? Nevermind... let's get back to the point ➽ funky characters.

Just cut along the dotted line and keep for quick reference ✄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄
This is real easy, whenever you want to insert a funky symbol into text, click on

START > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map

Now, at the top of the new window, you can select any font that is installed on your system.

For maximum compatibility, stick with Arial, Courier, Times New Roman, and Arial Unicode MS.

The first three all share the same font set, the glyphs are just customized for the particular font style. However they are just a fraction of the many thousands of glyphs specified in the ASCII standard.

Arial Unicode MS, however, has ⒶⓁⓁ of them. Scroll down the list and pick a glyph that suits your fancy. There are also Zodiac, Middle-Eastern glyphs, and Asian glyphs as well.

It also has a full compliment of musical glyphs: ♩♪♫♬♭♮♯

Just click on the glyph you want and press select. Then press copy.

Now paste it anywhere in the text that you want! Easy!

Now get out there and start publishing with PIZAZZ!

Keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

♫Will the real "Slim SD" Please Stand Up?♫

2007-02-14T23:02:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone, yes it's time for another posting.

I have noticed that in my zeal for multimedia entertainment, I have been straying from useful Howto posts. No more. Here is another useful (hopefully) tip.

Ever notice when using a multi-purpose card reader that it always takes several tries to actually find it in the swarm of drives that appears in "My Computer"?

♫One of These Things is Not Like the Other...♫

There are two ways to ID your memory card.

1) Name It

Once you have found your card, right click on its icon in "My Computer" and select "Rename". Enter a new name and press ENTER. That's it, from now on, when you put your media device in any computer, the drive's name will appear.

2) Photo ID

There is more work to this step, but it's worth it.

First surf the net for the icon you want to have appear on your drive. If you can't find one, use icon sofware (such as Easy Icon or Microangelo) to create it. When saving it, give it a simple name, with no spaces, and the extension .ico . Save this icon to the root (not in a subfolder) on your media device. For this example we will call it myicon.ico

Now double click on your drive in "My Computer". Right click in a white area and go to
New > Text Document.

Double click on the file. Enter the following text:

[AUTORUN]
icon=\myicon.ico

Change myicon.ico to whatever you named your icon. Now save and close the text file.

Rename the text file (as before) to autorun.inf

Disconnect your drive safely, and remove it. Now go into "My Computer" and re-connect your media device.

You will find that the icon you saved to the device will now appear as its icon.

This technique can be used on ANY storage media, not just memory cards.

Go on and try it out, and remember to keep on having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Get Down Mr. Mini-Wheats!

2007-02-10T21:47:00.000-05:00

As my multi-media addiction continues to worsen, I provide you with more gifts of multi-media, now with video.

Many of you may not have seen the first video before, but if you listen to 102.2 the Edge in Toronto, you may have heard it on the radio.

Before you press play, I must warn you... you'll probably be playing this at least 10 times before you can tear yourself away.

Now that that is out of the way, turn up the volume, clear some floorspace for dancing, and press PLAY!

While we're on the subject of great jingles, below is the famous "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" commercial. The story of this jingle is interesting, and the commercial itself is regarded as the single most popular advertising campaign of all time. Read more about it here. Some of you younger people may not have seen the commercial, but you may recognize the jingle, which was later written into a full length song. Enjoy!

P.S. If you look up, look waaaaaay up, you'll notice that the quote at the top of this page has a little blue arrow. This blue arrow will play the quote, along with the supporting dialog from the movie Ghostbusters. This, my friends, was the inspiration for this page (at least its namesake, anyway).

Until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Of Tags and Chipmunks

2007-02-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

Wow! Now that was incredible! My first multimedia post on DCTS and my inbox was deluged with a flood, nay, TORRENT of people asking how I was able to integrate such a tiny, effective little mp3 player into my site.

I was being jostled! JOSTLED, I tell you!

Well my friends, you asked so I shall tell you. Its very simple, the player is PLAYTAGGER by del.ici.us

All you have to do is paste the following code once, anywhere, into your blog's HTML:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://images.del.icio.us/static/js/playtagger.js">
</script>

and that's all. Remove the </script> if you're getting HTML errors. Now, any hyperlinks that point to mp3 files will automatically be prepended with a blue arrow. Click on the arrow to play, and it changes to a red square and the word "playing". Click on the square to stop, click on the word "playing" to pause.

It does have one limitation, the mp3 must be encoded at 11025 Hz, 22050 Hz, or 44100 Hz. Anything else will sound like the chipmunks.

Here are some more music samples, old TVOntario themesongs, graciously provided by TVO Kids' Shows.

Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings

Dr. Snuggles

Readalong

A Bear Called Jeremy

Fables of the Green Forest

and OTHERS...

Enjoy everyone. As always, keep having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes... (all appologies to Mr. Bowie)

2007-02-05T23:30:00.000-05:00

Hello Stream Crossers!

Some of you may have noticed some slight formatting changes on this BLOG. First of all, the page uses the full width of the window, so you don't have to scroll as much in a full-size window.

Secondly, if you are in Internet Explorer, the boxes have square corners. The rounded corners are now generated vis CSS3, so if you're browsing with Firefox, you should see beautifully rounded corners.

Also, today we will be throwing some shout-outs to other sites of the CREW Family of Blogs. Along with this, we will be beta testing our new integrated MP3 playing software. Please leave feedback about it in the comments section.

First off is "T & M's Voices". A well-rounded radio show, hosted by Tito and Magnum. When they aren't interviewing the elusive celebrity, they invite us into their inner sanctums and share with us the goings-on in their lives. Very funny, very well produced, and extremely well performed. They are a founding member of the CREW Family! Oh, and they have a pod-cast for you to subscribe to. Full instructions are on their site.

Just to whet your appetite for their show, I have linked to their interview with George Bush, Sr. from episode 12 I am not in the business of pirating their transmission, only the first one's free, for the latest episode (#15 as of the date of this posting), please follow the link above to their website.

Episode 12: Talking to the Bush

(Note 2007-02-06: Due to a limitation, this clip sounds like the chipmunks. Don't worry, I've fed back to Magnum, hopefully he will rectify the situation

Second, another founding member of the CREW Family, RadioFreeG and his self-titled radio show. Side-kicked by Super Producer Mummbles, together they serve up a heaping helping of introspectives on every day life and the forces that influence our perception of the world.

As well, RadioFreeG has a pod cast on his site. Here is but a taste of the smorgas-board of contemplation offered by RadioFreeG on his infamous "One Shots" broadcast:

RadioFreeG-Episode7-PoetrySlam

Last, but never, ever least is Leaky Brainpan, a blog run by another founding member of the CREW Family. Insights and behind-the-scenes looks at snapshots of life in the Canadian Armed Forces. Truly a modern classic if I've ever read one.

And that's it. Wow, two postings in a week. I hope that will satisfy some of my CRITICS... hope to be able to keep this up.

I will be back soon with some more computer improvement tips, as well I will be sending out methods for you yourself to add a funky music player to your blog as well.

Until next time, this is Soundwave saying, Keep having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

The Long and the Short of USB Storage

2007-01-31T01:02:00.000-05:00

Key Drives, Memory Sticks, Flash Drives, whatever you want to call them, are the new floppy. Quick, simple to use they are by far the superior portable medium.

However, which one should you buy? Here is a short list of things you should look for when purchasing USB Flash Memory drives (in no particular order):

Physical Shape -> Grab the plug of a USB device. That plug is a standard size. Try to buy a drive that has the same width and thickness as that plug. This will ensure that the drive plays nice in tightly packed areas. Larger drives may crowd other plugs or you may have to unplug stuff just to plug in your drive.
Storage Capacity -> If you can afford it, get a minimum of 1 GB. 4 GB is a bit much, if you're moving lots of files or really big ones, get an external hard drive.
Get High Speed USB (also called USB 2.0) -> Make sure the drive supports high speed transfer. Simply saying "compatible" doesn't mean much. USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 work together by design, the only issue is that you only get the high speed transfer rates when a high speed drive is plugged into a high speed socket. The speed difference is like night and day!
Brand and Quality -> Stay away from no-name brand flash memory, especially if what you are storing on them is important. SanDisk and Verbatim are two good companies that I have used, but there are others. Since flash memory can only be written/erased 1 meeellion times (pinky to mouth) higher quality drives will distribute writing over the entire flash "area" so the drive ages equally. Higher quality drives last longer due to higher quality components and manufacturing.
Moving Parts -> If you plan to be using the drive quite a bit, use a solid drive that utilizes a removable cap. New drives feature an extendable USB plug, but after a few hundred extensions/retractions the locking mechanism may wear out.
U3 preinstalled software -> I bought a drive that has U3 installed on it. U3 is a system of installing software right on the drive so that you can run the software right off the drive no matter which computer you are using it on (only software from the U3 site can be installed). It has its own version of the "Start Menu" that launches when you insert the drive. I does this by exploiting the fact that all Windows computers automatically launch software on CDs upon insertion (horribly insecure, I will tackle this issue in a later post). The drive is actually two drives, part of it pretends to be a CD, the rest is the actual storage drive. I would avoid U3 if you can, otherwise the drive manufacturer may provide software to remove the U3 installation (I know SanDisk does).

While we are on the subject of storage, I had to get this little tidbit of information off of my chest. Ever notice that the storage capacity reported by the Operating system is less that what is on the box?

This is because the box is dividing by powers of 10 but should be dividing by powers of 2. Confused? Let me explain.

Computers do math with 1's and 0's, therefore everything is a power of 2. Thus a kilobyte is not 1000 bytes, it is 1024 bytes. Dividing by 1000 gives a bigger number than dividing by 1024 (about 8% when comparing gigabytes).

This brings me to my next issue kilo-, mega-, and giga- are SI (metric) prefixes and should not be used with computer units. The following table shows the proper terms compared with convensional terms:

Quantities of bytes
SI prefixes			Binary prefixes
Name (Symbol)	Standard SI	Alternate Use	Name (Symbol)	Value
kilobyte (kB)	10³	2¹⁰	kibibyte (KiB)	2¹⁰
megabyte (MB)	10⁶	2²⁰	mebibyte (MiB)	2²⁰
gigabyte (GB)	10⁹	2³⁰	gibibyte (GiB)	2³⁰
terabyte (TB)	10¹²	2⁴⁰	tebibyte (TiB)	2⁴⁰
petabyte (PB)	10¹⁵	2⁵⁰	pebibyte (PiB)	2⁵⁰
exabyte (EB)	10¹⁸	2⁶⁰	exbibyte (EiB)	2⁶⁰
zettabyte (ZB)	10²¹	2⁷⁰	zebibyte (ZiB)	2⁷⁰
yottabyte (YB)	10²⁴	2⁸⁰	yobibyte (YiB)	2⁸⁰

Here is a table comparing reported vs actual size:

Name	Bin ÷ Dec	Dec ÷ Bin	Example	Percentage difference
kilobyte : kibibyte	1.024	0.976	100 kB ≅ 97.6 KiB	+2.4% or −2.3%
megabyte : mebibyte	1.049	0.954	100 MB ≅ 95.4 MiB	+4.9% or −4.6%
gigabyte : gibibyte	1.074	0.931	100 GB ≅ 93.1 GiB	+7.4% or −6.9%
terabyte : tebibyte	1.100	0.909	100 TB ≅ 90.9 TiB	+10% or −9.1%
petabyte : pebibyte	1.126	0.888	100 PB ≅ 88.8 PiB	+12.6% or −11.2%
exabyte : exbibyte	1.153	0.867	100 EB ≅ 86.7 EiB	+15.3% or −13.3%
zettabyte : zebibyte	1.181	0.847	100 ZB ≅ 84.7 ZiB	+18.1% or −15.3%
yottabyte : yobibyte	1.209	0.827	100 YB ≅ 82.7 YiB	+20.9% or −17.3%

Now I know that is quite a bit to absorb, you may want to ponder it for a few days. Until next time, keep having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Zune Owners Get NEW Finger In The Eye

2007-01-20T15:27:00.000-05:00

If you are not familiar with the Zune, then count yourself lucky. The Zune is Microsoft's new portable music player. From that standpoint, it does do that, however you can get other players that can do that for alot less.

The Zune's claim to fame is that it has WiFi that allows you to "squirt" (honest to God, that is the term they use) a song to another Zune and that person can play it up to 3 times in 3 days.

That is the only thing they used the WiFi for. What a waste of potential.

As if that is not enough, here is the latest "Fuck You" from Microsoft to Zune owners, if you buy songs from the Zune music site that are owned by Sony or Universal, the "squirting" feature is disabled. Yes that sucks, but one would say "Well don't buy those songs" which is good advice IF THEY TOLD YOU AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE!

No, the only way someone finds out that they can't loan a song to someone is after they purchased the song and they try to "squirt" it. On top of that Sony and Universal make up about 40-50% of the music available on the Zune music store website.

It's almost poetic justice for someone stupid enough to fall victim to Microsoft. As P T Barnum once said "There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him"

For the full article click here.

I now understand why the Zune is the only music player that offers BROWN as a colour option: the Zune is a piece of shit.

Until next time, keep on having fun (and stay away from those Zunes).

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Free Canadian Tax Software

2007-01-05T20:34:00.001-05:00

Given that the new year is upon us, we should start thinking about Income Tax,

There are tonnes of software out there that will prepare your taxes for you, but they all want money from you. Some have free trials (who wants to do their taxes five times?) others are free for low incomes, for the rest of us cheapos, there is the handy-dandy pen and calculator.

Until now that is.

Here are three FREE (as in beer) pieces of software for preparing your taxes in Canada. I have personally used the first two options myself. They are completely free, uncrippled, freeware options. The third I discovered during my searches, so I have no experience with it.

1) Peel Technologies, MyTAX

Technically, this isn't software, its the Canadian tax forms in Microsoft Excel format. Very easy to use, and perfectly legal and acceptable. I've personally used these forms, and I had no problem with Revenue Canada.

Other Office Suites might be able to open the files, making this solution cross-platform.

Method of submittal for MyTAX is strictly mail only, Netfile is not supported.

2) BHOK IT Consulting, StudioTax

This is actual tax preparation software. You just install it (Windows only), launch it, and create your returns. A simple series of questions covers the basic tax issues. For more complicated returns, just click on the needed form an fill it in.

StudioTax is fully Netfile certified (v. 2006 is currently undergoing the CRA Certification Process) so you can file through the NETFILE homepage. Get your returns faster (no mailing, save trees!), with less chance of error since they don't have to type anything in (woo-hoo!).

StudioTax will still let you print out the tax forms if you still prefer to send paper.

I used this last year, and I'm planning on using it again this year as well.

3) Phanku Software Corp., eTaxCanada

Again, I have not used this software (Windows only), so I can't vouch for it. It seems to be free and it claims to be NETFILE Certified.

If anyone has used this software, please post a comment reviewing it. Others will be glad you did.

Well, that's is for now. Until next time, keep having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Happy New Year!!!

2007-01-05T20:23:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year Stream Crossers!

This Christmas I finally decided to buy a new computer. Now normally I would have built one from scratch, but I was feeling especially lazy, so I bought an Apton from MDG.

It wasn't bad, and the 22 inch, high def, widescreen monitor definitely made it all worthwhile.

I did have a dead pixel problem with the first monitor, the second one was snowy, the third one burnt down, fell over, and sank into the swamp (just kidding). No the third one, that stayed up and so far is working really well.

Other than that, I spent the time with family and friends, drank champagne, and attended a really *interesting* Christmas party.

Well until next time, keep having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Hey! Leggo my mp3's!!!

2006-12-17T03:26:00.000-05:00

Attention Stream Crossers with iPods,

Is your iPod being a bit of a hog with your mp3's? While I know that there are many pieces of software out there that will allow you to transfer your songs back to your PC, they all need to be installed on your PC.

That's why iDump is such a cool tool. It is a simple executable file (ie no installation required, just click and run) that can even be run from your iPod.

Just click on the link above, download the "Executable Only" and save it anywhere you want. If you didn't save it to your iPod, it even has an option in the menu to copy itself to your iPod! What could be easier?

Until next time, keep having fun

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

Two Tools for Managing Your Music

2006-12-15T20:52:00.000-05:00

Hey Stream Crossers,

Like many music aficionados, collection is quite large. Also, since it is an amalgamation between several collections in my house, there is a significant degree of duplication. Add to that a great deal of missing tags, and poorly structured naming convensions, you have a recipe for a mess.

By this point, manual organization is out of the question. Software, and plenty of it, must be employed to manage this beast.

ID3-TagIT is a great free package for managing tags and file names. It has internet naming look up, but it is still quite rough. It manages bot v1 and v2 tags and lets you scrounge every last bit of information form the music files before having to look it up on the internet.

Media Monkey is a fantastic piece of software that really lets you get up to your elbows in managing you music. It also has an internet look up function. It uses Amazon.com as its source, which is great since you can also get the album art. unfortunately Amazon only has the actual disk's publication date, so you wind up with results stating that the Beatles' White Album was released in 2001. What the *&%^%$% ?

Another cool feature is that Media Monkey will suggest files that appear to be duplicates. It won't actually delete anything automatically, you have to hit the delete button for that to happen. The fact that MM "sees through" the file structure is a very powerful feature.

All in all, both these tools are good to have on your computer, but if you could have only one, Media Monkey is the choice since the last release of ID3-TagIT was in July 2005, rather old in software circles (its not like the software is so perfect that it can halt future releases).

With conventional recordings, where the entire album is released by one band or artist, I will create a directory for the band/artist and a sub folder for the album itself. If the CD is a compilation with various artists, I'll just create a folder for the album itself, unless I want to group the albums together such as with Christmas albums.

As for file naming conventions, my rule is pretty strict: - - . Again, if the CD is multi-artist, I'll go with - - . The track number is mandatory and always double digits (otherwise tracks 10, 11, and 12 show up before 1, 2, and 3). This way tracks order in the way they should appear on the CD, since someoverlap occurs on some tracks.

With these simple rules, you too can have a neatly organized music library.

Until next time, keep having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

What's in your Firefox?

2006-12-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

Hey Stream Crossers,

One of the best features of Firefox is their Extensions feature (now under the "Add-ons" family). Basically it lets anyone create new, original features for Firefox. Users can then add whatever functionality they want ala-carte.

Most extensions are hosted at Mozilla Extensions, these extensions have been reviewed by Mozilla and are considered trustworthy, but not necessarily bug free. Some extension creators host their own files, and that's great you just have to put that site into you approved list (this prevents unwanted sites from sneaking stuff on your computer). You are prompted the first time you try to install an extension from a new site. Note: Mozilla's site is pre-approved, so you won't get prompted.

Additonally the "xpi" file can be saved to wherever you want and tinkered with. The file itself is simply a ZIP file (as are the "jar" files inside) and pretty much everything inside is a text file or an image file, so no fancy de/compilers or software needed, Notepad is all you need.

Here is a list of my favourite extensions that I commonly use, in order of preference:

Note: (Button) indicates that the extension lets you put a button on the toolbar, just right click on an empty spot in the toolbar and select "Customize".

Down Them All : (Button) Are there a bunch of pictures you want to save but clicking on each one individually is a pain? Are there a bunch of files you need to download, but each individual one has to be saved by hand? Not anymore with this link. Truly a strong showcase to the power of extensions.

text/plain : Ever come across an address that you couldn't click on but had to copy and paste it in your address bar? No more! Now just highlight the address, right click and select how you want to open the address. Simple!

Tab Mix Plus : Lets you adjust the behaviour of your tabs. I used to use Tabbroswer Extensions, but it became horribly bug filled. Tab Mix Plus, while less featureful, is much more stable and more pleasant to use.

Yahoo and GMail notifiers : (Button) Automated mail checking and login. Pretty self-explanatory.

Four Fark Extensions : Visit the link for a graphic explanation on what these extensions do. Mainly used for viewing and posting onto Fark.com.

Slashdotter : Tweaks the viewing of Slashdot.org.

IE Tab : (Button) Some pages only look good in Internet Explorer. This extension lets you use IE's rendering engine while still in Mozilla. You need IE installed separately for this to work (Windows only).

User Agent Switcher : (Button) Website only allowing "Particular" web browsers access? Temporarily masquerade as another browser and go anywhere you want.

Chrome Edit Plus : Editing userChrome.css lets you make some customizations. Finding it and editing it is troublesome. This extension makes it easy to edit userChrome.css. Future posts will teach you how to edit this file using Chrome Edit Plus to get some really useful stuff!

And there you have it, my favourite extensions. Mind you, I haven't used all the extensions out there. These are just the ones that fit my needs. Future extensions will be updated in a future posting.

Until then, keep having fun.

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

First Post!

2006-12-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

Well now,

I am a bit overwhelmed, this being my first post to my new blog and everything. I wish I could think of something profound to say like my pal Gino, or something really catchy like Sal. Unfortunately I don't have any cool war stories like Paul.

So what do I have to offer? Glad you asked.

My advanced technological point of view allows me a highly innovative position to help others with gratuitous technical information and instruction. In otherwords, computers are my game, and from time to time I will try to post some interesting HOWTO's on getting cool stuffdone on you computer.

A little more about me. I am a Chemical Engineer, and I work at Undersriters' Laboratories of Canada. A nice little test lab where I deal with large scale fire testing. Yes, that's right, FULL SCALE FIRE TESTING!!! Need a wall tested for fire resistance and loading? I'm your man. Got some plastic that needs to go into a home? Who you gonna call? Me, that's who. If you've got the cash, I have a furnace for you.

In the mean time, if you have a Samsung a460, a640, or a900, follow the links (below, right) to learn how to add your own ringtones. I've tried all of them, so I know they work.

So, until the next post, keep having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"