1n73r.net

Two tools to make documenting easier

Snipping tool is a part of Windows Vista and is used for screen capturing.  And it actually works really well! If you don’t have it installed you can add it by going to Computer then click on “Uninstall or change a program”.

Then click on “Turn Windows features on or off” on the left side.

Just check the box for Tablet PC optional components and you are done.

Once you have it installed just go to the start menu and search for “snipping”. It should be the first result. One thing I found out you cannot do is take a screenshot of the snipping tool while it is open.  You will still have to use your PrtScn button for that.

The second little tool isn’t really for documentation as it is for quick answers while in Firefox. If you go into the little search bar at the top and search for “miles in Kilometers” and don’t hit enter you will see your answer right there in the suggestion area.

Pretty neat.

Let me know if there are any easy/free tools that you have overlooked for years that you now use everyday in the comments.

MacBook Air Size

Since the MacBook Air was announced I kept thinking it was just retarded. Sure the machine is thin, but that isn’t going to help you too much when you need something small that will fit on your lap. The footprint of the machine is what is going to help you use the machine in tight spaces (that and losing your gut). When we got a MBA in for testing I quickly had to take some pictures of it compared to our current small travel machine the Sory Vaio tx770p.

Here is a quick comparison of the two spec wise.

Notice the Vaio is lighter, smaller, has better battery life, and better screen resolution.  Oh lets not mention it is 3 years old! Apple engineers don’t look so smart after all. And just for a nail in the coffin the Vaio has a DVD burner built in and a replaceable battery.

And here are a couple of pictures so you can see my point.

I can hopefully have more on this issue when we get more small laptops in.

Crowd Surfing

Just to give you guys a warning when going crowd surfing. Make sure you land on your feet.

Buying a Nas part II

The Linkstation was not satifying what I needed. So I turned to the internet to see what I could do about the problems I was having. I found a site called Nas-central which happened to have a ton of info about hacking the Buffalo NAS devices. The site had so much information it wasn’t well organized so I spent a good amount of time just figuring out what I could do with the Linkstation. I started my search by finding out more about what the Linkstation has out of the box, and then what I could do with it. It turns out the Linkstation runs a Buffalo modified version of Linux and because of that it is pretty easily hacked with a few utilities.

The first thing was to figure out what operating system I wanted to run on the Linkstation. I found a few main options. Most people would either hack the standard firmware, install a modified buffalo firmware called jtymod, install a more open version of the buffalo firmware called openlink, or install a full replacement with a build of debian linux called freelink. All three options had very good merits, but for my needs I tried to just wanted to get a better DLNA server installed so I decided to modify the current buffalo firmware using acp_commander.

The next thing I needed to decide was what DLNA server I was going to install. I had no idea there were so many DLNA servers out there. The main options I found were mediatomb, ushare, FUPPES, and twonky. I was already pretty familiar with mediatomb because I was using that on my desktop for sharing media. I was familiar enough with it to know I wanted to look for something else. While ushare and FUPPES seemed pretty limited in their options they had one big advantage over twonky.  They are free whereas twonky costs $30. I really liked the features of twonky 4.4.4 so I installed the 30 day trial and gave it a test drive with my PS3. I was very impressed. Not only did twonky have a great web interface to configure everything you could want, but it also worked right away in Windows Media player 11. As soon as twonky scanned all of my media I was able to play almost everything on my PS3 without problems.  I had a couple of problems with videos cutting out but quickly realized that the wireless network was not able to keep up with the high bit rates of some of my videos. It turns out that with twonky installed and the default DLNA server turned off a lot of the hard drive noise was gone as well.

So I got a replacement DLNA server installed and fixed the problem with the drive being loud. But I wasn’t finished. The default firmware still gave me very limited samba settings and required all of my folders to be ordered in a fassion that only my grandma would do if she had 200 GB of divx files. So next I need to installed Freelink.

Buying a NAS Part I

I have been looking for a network attached storage (NAS) device for some time because keeping everything on my desktop was not the best solution. Here is what I needed my NAS to do:

1. Connect to the wired network without adapters. Wireless would be nice but lets face it.  With media files you really want it on a wired network no matter what.
2. Be quiet and use low power.  Not silent desktop kinda quiet (see refrigerator), more like the wife will forget it is behind the couch kinda quiet. I have free computers that I could easly put FreeNAS on and just have it sit somewhere but that would not be quiet enough and would draw more power than a dedicated device.
3. Lots of storage! 400 gb of usable storage was my minimum and having expandability through USB would be a plus.  RAID 1 was also a desire but was out of the question for my price range.  Manual backups would have to suffice for now.
4. SAMBA server and DLNA server built in. I have used XBMC for about four years to stream my media to my TV and it uses samba to stream all of it’s content.  I have just recently started using my PS3 for these tasks because it plays all the codecs I need and it is easy!! I don’t have to explain to someone how to search the network or share a folder on their computer. This has been a life saver for my setup because I don’t need to worry when a folder changes.  The DLNA server just scans it and shares the media exactly the same as it was.
5. This was probably my biggest opsticle…I needed the solution to be under $300. I know that this may seem like a lot, and when I was first looking I thought I wouldn’t have any problems finding what I needed. It turns out there wern’t as many available options as I first thought.

I had been looking at the Buffalo Terrastation for a little while because it came with 4 drives and had everything I wanted, minus quietness, but the system started at $700 and quickly climbed in price from there. I had also been looking at the Terrastations lower priced cousin the Linkstation Pro‘s but they did not support DLNA and were quite expensive when I was looking.

I was at Fry’s one weekend and saw the Netgear Sc101 for $40. Wow, $40 for a two drive NAS enclosure how could I go wrong? The device only supported IDE drives but I wasn’t too worried because I had a few 200 GB IDE drives that I could use in this to get the storage I wanted.  I also figured that I could find some way to mod it, or follow directions online to mod it, to get some of the missing features to work. I brought the Netgear home and put in my two drives. I open up the manual to see how I can map the drive in Ubuntu and quickly find that the hard drive can only be used in Windows because it loads a proprietary driver into windows to mount the drive locally. So back in the box it goes and sits for another week until I am able to go back to Fry’s to return it.

I returned the Netgear and waited for the next weekend to see what new deals would spring up the following weekend. I went back the next Saturday and saw that they had the Linkstation Live 500 for $170. There was only 1 left on the shelf and I didn’t know much about it but I saw on the box that it supported DLNA so I bought it on the spot and brought it home with much anticipation of how awsome it was going to be. I open up the box and plug it into a local switch and start a disk format.  The drive already showed it was formatted but if this is going to be my main storage device I want to make sure everything is as clean as can be. The format seemed to be taking a little while (hours) so I just let it run through the night.  In the morning the format was still not done and I was getting worried. I let the format run while I was at work and when I got home I was greated with a nice “the drive is not formatted error” in the web interface.  I upgraded the firmware to the current one on Buffalo’s website, 2.10, and started another format.  This time it went much faster ~30 min. and I was ready to transfer everything over.  I started with everything on my desktop because my hard drive had 20mb left of free space and ubuntu was starting to complain.

Once I got most everything copied over from my desktop, 1 day of transfering, I enabled the DLNA sever and tested it with my PS3. I was very disapointed! I could see the server but couldn’t see/play any of the files. The drive also seemed pretty loud. So far this was not a good solution for what I wanted…

Motorstorm

Funny thing about Motorstorm…

It doesn’t seem to care that you have been cheating on it with Rock Band.

It will still pound your ass to the dirt the next time you pick up the controller to start up where you left off.

On a side note, what do you think of the new theme? I think I like it but it is a bit confusing to pull down the little thing at the top to get to more options.

Rock Band redux

Another morning with a little extra time, and another Rock Band related post. This time all the work has been done by a friend and my wife. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Let christian music ringtonesfree real music ringtones sprintphone ringtones sprintcell free phone ringtones verizoncell free phone ringtones tracfone,download free motorola ringtones tracfone,free tracfone ringtonesmuch music ringtonesctu free ringtonesdisney free mobile ringtonesnickelback ringtones rockstar,free nickelback ringtones,nickelback ringtonesfree t mobile ringtonesfree motorola ringtones tracfonedownload ringtones for samsung phone,banana download phone ringtones,download ringtones to phonefree ringtones for nokia phonecell onto phone ringtonestrac phone ringtonesnextel phone software for ringtones,nextel ringtones software,nextel i830 ringtones softwarenokia 3360 ringtones,nokia tracfone ringtones,nokia ringtonesfree mp3 ringtones convertercellular phone ringtones,ringtones for prepaid cellular phone,cellular info phone remember ringtones verizondownload new ringtones freecell motorola phone q ringtones,motorola q ringtones smartphone,motorola q ringtonesfind free here ringtones totally,totally free ringtones,totally free hifi ringtonescaller download hotlink ringtonesfree verizon real music ringtonesringtones for prepaid verizon wireless phone,ringtones for verizon wireless phoneinfo pcs remember ringtones sprint,sprint pcs ringtonesfree music real ringtones sprintfree sprint christian ringtones,free christian music ringtones,free christian ringtonesfree real ringtones verizonringtones for verizon wireless get it now,verizon get it now ringtonesfree latest bollywood ringtonesnextel ringtones programfree gospel info remember ringtones,free gospel ringtones,free gospel mp3 ringtonescricket free phone ringtonesgold mp3 ringtones,3.16 gold mp3 ringtonesbollywood download free ringtonesboost free ringtones,free ringtones for boost phone,free boost mobil ringtonesdownload free u.s cellular ringtones,free u.s cellular ringtones100 mobile ringtones virginfree phone ringtones verizon,free verizon ringtones,download free phone ringtones verizonyahoo ringtones free downloadmoney tree payday loanadvance cash loan payday wiredonline payday loan instant approvalfax free loan paydayez money payday loan,ez loan paydaybad credit payday personal loan,payday loan fast for bad credit,bad credit payday loanhour loan online paydayaafes payday loanfee loan low payday me know if you have any fun Rock Band pictures in the comments.

Strip Rock Band

I woke up a bit early today so I thought I would run this by…well…myself to see what I think.

Strip Rock Band is played similarly to strip poker in that the loser must relinquish an article of clothing after each round. Here are the other rules that I have come up with to make this more of a game.

1. Each player must play the song on expert mode.

2. The loser is the first person to fail out of the song without being saved.

3. The loser must remove a article of clothing and gets to pick the next song.

4. The loser also gets to pick which instrument they would like to play next. If the loser of the round selects your instrument to play you must swap them instruments.

5. Bass cannot be played twice in a row.  The Bass player must play guitar every other turn. Likewise the guitar must play bass every other turn.

6. You cannot play the same instrument more than 2 times in a row.  After you have played a instrument twice someone else must pick your next instrument. You then have to swap instruments with whoever was playing the chosen instrument.

7. If you save someone you get to put a piece of clothing back on. If you are already fully clothed then you do NOT get brownie points or credit toward losing a round. All re-clothing is done after the round is over.

8. If no one fails in a song, the person with the lowest percentage is “the loser”. They do not need to remove any clothing but they still must pick the next song and swap instruments with someone.

If you are playing this with only 3 or 2 people than you can only have that many instruments. You cannot have a open instrument.

Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions for additional rules.

Windows tools

So I thought I would clean out a few more pinned articles in my bloglines before I went to bed. By a few, I mean 9. Lets just get started with this.

The first one is real simple. This is how you can easily disable Aero before running a program. In many cases you would want to do this before running a 3D intensive game. All you have to do is find the shortcut, right click and go to properties, click the compatability tab and check the box that says “Disable desktop composition”. That is it. Aero will disable itself next time you launch the shortcut and enable itself when the program is done.

The next tip it two-fold. First there is a quick tip on how to backup your DVD’s with 1 click. Sure that 1 click is going to take you a few hours to complete, but all you have to do is click once. The second part is a bit more involved but shows you how to backup your DVD’s and play them easily on a PS3. Sure you could always put the DVD in the PS3 and play it but who wants to get up? This uses a great tool, which I have yet to use, called PS3 Video 9.

Next up is another two parter and this is all about extracting things you never knew you could extract out of Windows. If you want to use a icon that a certain program uses. You can use IconsExtract or if you want to extract all the drivers you are using, to save as a backup, you can use DriverMax.

One of the last useful updates I have is a visual tweaker for Vista. It is called Vista Visual Master and has a lot of very useful tools. It gave me the ability to use custom themes again after I installed SP1 and that is worth a download itself.

Here are a few that most people probably won’t find very useful but I am going to give them a try for various reasons.

To remove passwords from Excel documents you can either buy a tool called Excel Password Remover or you can run one of many macros that will remove the password for free. I want to link to the full article so you can see all the comments with the macro options.

The last two I have are random but I know I will need them one day. First is a way to disable cached domain logins in Windows. This also may work to increase the number of logins available when off the domain but I need to test with that. To do it all you have to do is open the registry and find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Once you find that just change the cashedlogonscount to whatever value you want. Note that 0 disables this ability.

This last one will come in real handy when making my classroom images. A tool called CleanHandler will clean up those autoplay options that pop up in Windows when a cd/usb stick are plugged in.

I feel pretty good after that update so I will leave you with that.

Make Ubuntu better with brainstorming

It has been a while since my last update but I have been really busy with lots of stuff. Here is a quick update I have for now.

I will start with saying that the Ubuntu developers saw it fit to ask its users for good ideas to put into the operating system. The best way to do this of course is to put it online and let people come and suggest whatever they want. Well brainstorm.ubuntu.com was launched last week and let me tell you there are a lot of great ideas on there. I actually think I learned more by looking at the ideas that were posted and going through the comments to see what people said you can do right now to fix it than if I had just gone to the Ubuntu forums and searched for hours and hours.

That being said here are a couple of things I found that make Ubuntu a little better in my opinion.

First is the fix for when Ubuntu has to scan your hard drive at boot time (every 30th time a volume is mounted). This is very annoying to say the least. Especially if you have more than one hard drive in your computer. My computer is scanning itself once every eight times I turn on my machine. That not only slows down productivity but it also just makes me not want to use my desktop. Some people say you can easily turn off the scan but I am a bit too paranoid for that. So I found a couple quick fixes to make scanning more manageable. The first one, the one I am currently using, is called AutoFsck. All AutoFsck does is it warns you when you go to shut down your computer that Ubuntu will want to scan at next boot. It then prompts you if you want to restart now, have the scan run, and then have the computer shut itself off.  Or you can choose just to let the scan run as it normally would. While restarting and scanning seems to waste even more time than scanning at startup, it still makes it easier because if I am shutting down my computer, chances are I am done using it and it can stay on scanning as long as it needs to. The second tool is called Bonager. This one works a little different by letting you know how many mounts you have left before a scan will be forced and if you want to you can schedule the scan for the next boot.

The second thing I found is called Gnome Control Center. It is actually really old and as far as I know is installed by default but isn’t configured to show up in the menu. To enable it you can go to the Ubuntu preferences and find the main menu option. When it comes up select System on the left and then check the Control Center box. You can remove Administration and Preferences to make the menu smaller and more usable. The Gnome CC lets you manage everything that was in the other two lists in a single window. In my opinion this is far better and makes things easier to find. The find feature helps for that too.

That is all I got for right now. I have a few things I am working on but nothing to post here. I am looking forward to the April release of Ubuntu 8.04 and am excited to see what the Mythbuntu team does for that release.

Until I have some more news let me know if you find any other helpful tips from brainstorm.ubuntu.com