... but the clip you selected isn't available from your location.

Complete and utter bullshit.  This happens ALL THE TIME.  US TV stations post their clips online and, traditionally, being a Canadian I can't watch them.  Even though we see the actual television shows on the same US (syndicated) channels that US viewers do, and at the same time.  And now I'm in Thailand.  And have access to a US proxy server.  But I'm STILL getting this message when I try to watch the Battlestar Galactica Webisodes.  WTF??  GeoLocation is cool and all, but there's no reason for it to be limited in this respect.  IT'S THE INTERNET FOR GOD'S SAKE!  If I email the right person and say "Hey man, can you use some sort of cool software to grab that flash video and send it to me or post it somewhere so I can watch it?" it'll be done in a flash.  But why?  Why can't SciFi.com just remove their Geo-shit and let me watch these webisodes?  I've been looking forward to it all day, my internet is finally not crawling along like a snail, and I get hit with the above shitty message. Bull-Shit.

</rant>

P.S. If you're "the right person" and have somehow acquired these clips and posted them somewhere that my current country of residence is not taken into consideration, please email me some links so I can watch them.  Thanks.

In continuing the Favorite Tools series, I present you with my favorite tools for photo and image management.

Picasa

Link: http://picasaweb.google.com/

What can I say about Picasa?  Frankly, it rocks.  Being the Google fanboy that I am, it's only natural that I'd appreciate this tool.  In a nutshell, it organizes all of the photos and images in your My Documents folder and all subfolders.  It allows you to create albums and upload those albums to Picasa Web, your personal online photo album from Google.  It lets you link your Picasa albums with Blogger, GeoTag your photos, create screensavers, export your pictures to HTML pages for use on other sites and adjust image quality/attributes.  The viewer included with version 3 is quite slick and just fun to use.  And there's even a Facebook plugin that lets you bulk upload images directly into a Facebook album with a single click.  And really, I'm sure I've only scraped the surface, especially with the gamut of plugins available for extensible architectures like this.

AutoStitch

Link: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

One of the best tools I've ever come across.  You basically take a bunch of pictures, and as long as there's some overlap this app will stitch them together to form a massive panorama.  Can be used for taking 360 degree panoramas, or even complete spheres if the desire arises.  And far better than equivalent pay-for apps that supposedly do the same thing.

GIMP

Link: http://www.gimp.org/

No, not some dude in a leather mask.  GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program.  It's basically a free version of Photoshop.  Sure, it may not do quite as much as Photoshop, but unless you're an uber-skilled professional graphics guru, do you really need that much power?  I sure don't.  Also, it's WAY easier to use.  Far more intuitive, IMHO.  I've used it for all of the Dos Gringos imagery and marketing materials, and plan to continue using it for a lot more.  Great free tool.

Basically, with these three tools in your image arsenal, you really don't need anything else.

In the last year or two I've become a huge fan of open-source and other free software.  Actually, I was always a fan, but it's only been recently (at least IMHO) that this stuff has really started to compete with the (really expensive) pay software, or bloated MS native offerings (Windows Media Player anyone?).  I was going to post all of my favorite tools in one post, but there's just too many of them and I don't want to sit writing this post for hours.  So I've broken it up into multiple categories:  Music & Video, Photo & Image Management, Internet, Mobility, Developer, and System.  So, without further adieu, here's my top picks for Music & Video tools.

Music & Video

Media Player Classic Homecinema

Link:  http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

My go-to media player.  Far more lightweight than Windows Media Player (WMP).  On my Vista64 install, WMP uses 20mb of memory, while Media Player Classic (MPC) uses just 4mb.  It supports DVD playback natively and without any licensing cost.  It natively supports DivX, Xvid, H.264, DTS/AC3 and a slew of other codecs and formats.  It has native support for subtitles, including a built-in lookup which references opensubtitles.org (I've even managed to get it to properly display Thai subtitles).  It supports custom channel mapping for up to 18 input and 18 output (speaker) channels.  It suppors on-the-fly volume normalizing or boost.  It even has a built-in web server for performing automation-type functions using a web browser or other web-based application.  There are both 32 and 64 bit versions available.  I use this application for all video playback and most audio playback.  Basically, I have all media filetypes associated with MPC, but on the occasions that I want more granular music control or the ability to use visualizations, I use MediaMonkey.

Note that I do combine MPC with some variation (usually Full or Standard) of the K-Lite Codec Pack.

MediaMonkey

Link:  http://www.mediamonkey.com/

MediaMonkey is the shiznit as far as music library management goes.  It's extremely robust with a ton of useful (and not so useful) features.  I realize that virtually all music playback software are feature-rich these days, and in the end it comes down to personal preference.  However I'll outline a few of the key features of MediaMonkey that make it my choice.

The user interface is very flexible.  Being a power user, I prefer a lot of information displayed, and even when maximized there's information that MediaMonkey is capable of displaying that I just don't have room for.  It can convert between formats (OGG, MP3, Flac, etc.) and does so quickly and quietly.  It can play Winamp Visualizations, which above all I covet (have you seen MilkDrop?  Ryan Geiss is a genius).  It does crazy shit with organizing, renaming, grabbing info and album art, and generally just keeping your music library in tip-top shape.  Oh, and I can control it with my phone over Bluetooth using Salling Clicker.  I'd go on, but it would take a post unto itself, if not many posts, to delve deeply into MediaMonkey's features.  Download it.  Try it.  Love it.

Note that even though I use MPC as my default MP3 and other music filetypes player, when I want to queue up a bunch of tracks and kick back MediaMonkey is all I consider.  The only reason I don't have it as my default player is the time it takes to launch as compared with MPC.  If I just want to double-click an mp3 or wav file, I want it to play immediately, not load up my whole music library.

MP3Gain

Link:  http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

A very lightweight app that does one thing and does it well.  It normalizes a set of MP3s so that they all play back at roughly the same volume.  In the bar I own we use USB keys to play music, and having to adjust the volume between tracks because of differences in the way they were encoded just isn't an option.  Passing all the tracks through MP3Gain before copying them to the USB key makes a world of difference.

Note that MediaMonkey can do the same thing, but in my experience MP3Gain just does it better.

Audacity

Link:  http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Nothing too fancy here (well, there is, but not that I use).  Basically a music file editor and recorder.  Cuts, inserts, etc.  Handy for fixing broken tracks, cutting out weird silences or creating custom tracks for use as ringtones or the like.  I also use it for recording the audio from web sources such as YouTube that don't offer the audio track as an option for downloading.  It does a lot more than this, but I'm a pretty basic user on this one.

In trying to upload the Dos Gringos website to the webserver over RDP today I became extremely frustrated.  Suffice it to say that internet connections from Thailand to the US aren't the most reliable in the world.  Combine that with the retarded overhead that copying files through RDP's Explorer interface introduce and you're in for a world of hurt.  Timeouts, failures, and just general headache inducing crap.  So I thought to myself, "Self, there must be a better way.  What about Robocopy?  It's never failed you in the past."  And you know what?  My self was right.  After a bit of googling I found this excellent post on how to backup your files using Remote Desktop.  I'm gonna quote the author here as he succinctly describes what I was going through:

I hate using explorer to copy a large number of files. Why? Because most of the time it will fail half way through the copy - with no way to resume.

His post goes into much more detail than mine does, but if you want the Reader's Digest version, here it is...

Use \\tsclient\ to reference the drives that are mapped over RDP.  So if you're copying C:\Temp you'd use \\tsclient\c\temp.  That's it.  Thanks Steve!

For your reference, these are the other switches I use:
/mir /r:1 /np /log:"filename.log" /tee

If I had large files that I was copying I'd also use /zb.  Hope this helps someone out there.

Along the lines of the last post, I seem to be in geek mode lately.  Today it was the internet at Dos.  Seems there were two wireless access points which both had DHCP servers configured on them.  Given that configuration, I'm surprised we didn't run into more issues, but today issues started rearing their ugly heads.  I quickly determined that the dual DHCP servers were the problem, but since we didn't have ANY usernames or passwords I was hesitant to try to fix the situation.  However, since the only people in here using the 'net were staff, I figured we could handle some downtime so I did a factory reset on the DSL gateway.  And, lo and behold, we lost internet (shocking, I know).  But at least I was able to get into the device and manage it after 4 months of procrastinating (again, shocking, I know).  So then it came down to calling our internet provider, CAT, and obtaining the PPPoE login info.  Got one of the girls here to do the initial call and get someone that spoke English on the phone, then passed it over to me.  After about 10 or 15 mins of me going "I'm sorry... could you repeat that?" I was finally able to get the correct username and password, and BAM! ... Internet!  I then proceeded to disconnect the second access point since it's not really needed (and I can use it at my place) and set up wireless security.  So now we have all the usernames/passwords, internet is stable, and I'm the man!  Oh, and I had to un-run a 30+ foot CAT5 cable which was a sweaty pain in the ass.  But I feel like I accomplished something... even if it was something that would've taken about 10 mins in Canada and took about an hour here... but hey, that's life in Thailand :)

I guess you can take the guy out of the geek, but you can't take the geek out of the guy... or something like that.

It seems that tech is just a part of me that I can't escape, nor do I want to.  I've been helping some people out lately with web development, consulting and some Google optimization.  No tricks, just straight up good content and assistance in helping their sites gain viewership.  Check out my newly added Portfolio link at the top to see what I've been working on lately.  I didn't necessarily design the sites listed there, but I had a hand in their creation, content, formatting or just generally providing advice/consultation.  Or I just told them how to fix the problems they were experiencing, cuz I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean, S-M-A-R-T!

---

UPDATE: On the heels of this post, Gregg referred to me via IM as an "Electronic Stylist".  I like it, and think I'm gonna coin it.  Thanks Gregg!

• Dos Gringos Mexican Restaurant, Bar & Guesthouse in Phuket, Thailand
• Dos Gringos Halloween Party Flyer
  
  
• Dos Gringos 9-Ball Poster
  
  
• PPO Brokers - Medical Insurance Brokerage representing the top PPO carriers in Nevada, Colorado and Illinois
• Epic Charters - Luxury Catamaran Yacht Charter in Phuket, Thailand
• Boat Charter Phuket - Direct-to-Owner Boat Charters in Phuket, Thailand
• Phuket Marine Plywood - We supply the BEST quality marine plywood in Phuket
• Vonage Local Long Distance - Make long distance calls at Vonage rates using your cell phone
  

Just an interesting little statistic.  Since I got my digital camera (went with the Panasonic DMC-TZ3 for those of you wondering, mostly due to cost) I've taken 752 pictures with it.  May 6th is the first date that I started offloading, so we're looking at just over 4 months.  Since I got my cameraphone I've taken 342 pictures with it.  August 12th is the first date that I start offloading here, so we're looking at just over 1 month.

I think this says something about the value of having a good cameraphone.  I'd also be willing to bet that the majority of my cameraphone pics were taken at nighttime and required a flash.  Which would have been impossible with an HTC (at 3x the cost) or other, shittier cameraphone.  Thanks Nokia and Carl Zeiss!

Would you believe it, I'm 2 for 2 with good tech support this week.  Just now I was having a problem with my Usenet account.  As an aside, Internet here's been really flaky lately.  I believe in a totally non-technical way that it has something to do with the rain - for some reason whenever it rains here the Internet slows down to a crawl, and it's DSL, not satellite, which doesn't make any sense at all, but from an observational perspective this is the conclusion I've drawn.  At any rate, my newsreader was telling me that I'd exceeded my maximum connections.  Since I've given my account info to a few friends I figured it was just other people maxing out my connections, so I logged into my account management page and changed my password (to you friends that are using my account, just email me and I'll give you the new password).  But even after doing that it was still giving me the same error.  So I went to open a support ticket with UseNetServer.com, and on their support page they had a Live Chat option which was currently showing Online.  So I figured I'd use that option since it was bound to be faster than back and forth emails.  About 2 mins after I posted my question a support tech pinged me back.  He asked me a couple questions, had me change a couple of options, and BAM! my client connected properly and all was good.  Total support time about 5 mins.

I love the Internet.  And I love good tech support :)

The other day I was downloading some stuff off the interweb as I normally do.  Now, I'm usually pretty smart about what I download, the sources I get stuff from, and whether or not I run/open things that might seem a little sketchy.  In other words, I don't use protection.  As you can see here, I have antivirus installed, but the on-access protection is disabled cuz it chews up valuable CPU resources.  At any rate, I had downloaded a big (700mb - can you guess what it was?) series of RAR files.  I opened one of the them and inside it had another RAR file (which was password protected), a README, and an executable called something like RarPasswordGenerator.exe.  The README told me to run the password generator to generate a password for the internal RAR file. 

Immediately red flags went up.  Why would someone package a file within a file, NOT provide the password for the internal file, but include a password generator for it?  So, I carefully extracted the password generator file, right-clicked it and scanned it.  Came back clean.  I actually did this a second time, since I didn't think it possible that this file could be clean, but it appeared to be.  So, I decided to run it.  Immediately Vista's UAC popped it's head up and said something along the lines of "Setup_15382.exe has just been launched.  Are you sure you want to run this file?".  More suspicion, since that's not the name of the file that I actually clicked, so I told Vista to Cancel.  I scanned the file a 3rd time and again it came back clean.  Since I really wanted what was in the internal RAR file (and since I was a little more than tempted in having a RAR password cracker), I decided to go for it.  Ran it again, and this time I told Vista to Allow.  Ho-lee shitballs, was that a mistake.  Immediately my HDD started grinding, explorer crashed and restarted, shortcuts to porn sites started appearing on my desktop, and my machine generally went into chaos.  I'm not going to get into the details of everything that happened (mostly cuz I was freaking out and don't remember the specifics), but suffice it to say that I hit Shutdown as quickly as possible.  What I really should have done was flip the switch on my wireless right away, but I didn't think of that until about a minute later when my machine was in the shutdown phase.  I rebooted to Safe Mode (without Networking) and proceeded to run a full virus scan.  This went on for about 8 hours.  Then I rebooted to normal mode (with my networking physically shut off) and immediately Windows Defender started freaking out.  I let it do it's thing, cleaned up my Run registry keys (which had had about 20 weird looking exe's inserted into them), and killed said processes manually.  I then ran another full scan (Thorough, Include Archive Files) while at the same time running a full Windows Defender scan.  This took about 10 hours.  I then made sure that my antivirus was set for everything enabled at startup and rebooted.  I then ran another scan (Normal, No Archive Files).  After this I carefully enabled my networking (I'm not sure how you "carefully" slide a switch, but if it's possible I did it).  Downloaded Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and proceeded to run a full scan with that.  All in all the scans and effort took the better part of a day and all told there were over 30 pieces of shit that had been installed on my machine, from worms to trojans to god knows what else.  But, here I am 2 days later with my antivirus on-access protection enabled and so far everything seems good.  Though I did borrow an external HDD from one of the guys here in case I want to back my shit up and just blow my machine away.  Which might be a good idea, but which will also take a long time and is not something I really want to do.  Though given the current weather conditions it may not be such a bad idea.

Moral of this story... always use protection.  Especially in Thailand.

I love these guys.

I've been sitting on my Vonage router (figuratively, not literally) for a month or two now.  But today Santino was moving out of the frat house so I figured I'd finally take advantage of his setup (i.e. long CAT-5 cable and physical telephone handset) to make sure my router was working and that I could receive voicemail.  Well, it turned out that there was some sort of problem and I needed to get on the phone with tech support.  No worries though.  Vonage tech support is some of the best I've ever encountered.  Sure, they dumb shit down a little too much for me, but that's ok ("Look in the lower left-hand corner of your screen.  Do you see the button labelled 'Start'?  Ok, click that").  I've been on the giving end of support and I know that unless you're sure of the level of competence on the other end of the phone, you have to err on the side of caution.  At any rate, after about 30 mins of router resets and the Vonage dude doing shit on his end I was able to connect and get a dial tone.  So, for all my friends and family, my old Toronto number is now up and running again (you know, the Number of the Beast).  I won't actually be answering it right now as I don't have a long ethernet cable nor a handset, but it does go to voicemail which gets emailed to me immediately.  And within the next month I'm moving out of the frat house so will likely set up a genuine office.  Then all I need is some work to make me feel like I'm actually contributing to society.  Or something like that.

Also, I know it's been awhile since my last post.  There's been some movin' and shakin' going on that I'll be posting about shortly, but don't want to jinx it by talking about it prematurely.  Oh, and for those of you that were worried about me and the gf, crisis averted and we're all cool now.  Thanks for caring :)

Yesterday, even though my cheque still hadn't cleared, I decided to treat myself to some new toys.  Nothing too major, but I think I'm having tech withdrawal and I couldn't just sit around and NOT spend money on some new tech toy for myself.  At the top of my list were a new cell phone and a basic set of speakers with a sub.  As my loyal readers know I lost my cell phone awhile ago and have been using some POS ancient Nokia from the Pre-Cambrian era.  And as for the speakers/sub, well I just can't handle listening to electronica on my laptop speakers anymore and figure since I'm gonna be here awhile I may as well enjoy my music in the comfort of my room.  So today I was supposed to help one of the girls that works here - Ying - shop for a new phone for herself, and in the process I bought some toys.

First item on my list was a cell phone.  The mall we went to - Central Festival - was cell phone heaven.  They had pretty much everything that's on the market right now.  Problem is that my current dreamphone isn't supposed to arrive until October, so I decided to go a little lower end.  I don't want buyer's regret a few months from now.  So after doing extensive research into both feature sets and prices I settled upon the Nokia 6500 Slide.  A buddy of mine has one and even though it's sitting in his desk drawer he wouldn't part with it and let me buy it from him cheap.  The camera is rated very highly, and performs to my expectations.  After years with HTC phones it's refreshing to have a camera that not only captures great in normal light, but also has an amazing flash that works great on night time shots.  The music player is acceptable, and Nokia PC Suite has progressed a long way since I last used it.  It's actually functional.  Though I'm not using Outlook right now, and as I recall Outlook integration was one of the biggest issues facing its former versions.  I installed an alpha version of MobiReader which I've had great success with on Windows Mobile (MobiReader that is - not this alpha version).  However this alpha version does have some hoops to jump through.  It's not a native Symbian S40 app, it's a J2ME app.  It does work ok, but it definitely seems rough around the edges and crashed on me once with an application error.  But it lets me read books on my phone which makes me a happy camper.

This phone cost me 10090 THB, which equals about $320 CAD.  I checked out Expansys Singapore and Expansys UK to see what they were charging, and they were 539.99 SGD ~= 13000 THB and 209.99 GHB ~= 13650 THB respectively.  Admittedly Expansys isn't the most cost-effective way to buy a phone, but at least it gives me an idea of market prices.  At any rate, I seem to have gotten a good deal.  And I bought a 4GB microSD card for 1100 THB ~= $35 CAD.

The second and much lesser toy that I purchased is a set of computer speakers which included a sub.  They're from some company called Edifier, which I've never heard of.  But they have decent sound and they cost 990 THB ~= $32 CAD.  They sounded good in the store, and admittedly the next model up sounded slightly better, but they were twice as much.  $32 is easy to justify.  $60 is a little more challenging, especially for something that may be a short-term gain, as who knows when I'm moving out of Dos (as in Gringos, not as in boy or command interpreter).

At the end of the day, Ying didn't even buy a phone.  But I did, so the trip was definitely worthwhile.  And as of today my cheque is finally cleared!  Yee haw!  Though apparently it's Mother's Day in Thailand today which means finding alcohol is going to be a challenge.  A lot of places aren't selling it and a lot of restaurants aren't serving it.  But I'm sure there'll be some around somewhere.  Just not sure if I'm up for partying today for some reason.  Very groggy.  Must be new toy hangover.

I've been trying to figure out how to do this for awhile now since the on-access scanner really slows down my laptop. Stuff on the 'net points to disabling services, removing the Run registry key via MSCONFIG, etc. All of those answers are bunk. The correct way to do this is as follows:

1. Right-click the avast! system tray icon () and select On-Access Protection Control from the popup menu.
   
2. Click the Details button in the bottom of the window that appears.
3. Click the Terminate button under Provider Actions.
4. Click Yes when the Persist the changes? dialog box appears.
5. Select the next item under Installed Providers and repeat steps 3 and 4.
   
6. Repeat step 5 for each of the Installed Providers, or whichever ones you don't want running on startup.

The advantage to doing this as opposed to disabling avast! completely is that you still get the startup scan and you're still able to scan files on-demand. I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out, but it is what it is. Hopefully it helps some people out there.

I own this domain. I bought it soon after the whole .mobi TLD bullshit occurred, which is really just an ICANN money grab, but whatever. It was the only way I could get a gutenberg domain. But I never did anything with it. And now it's coming up for renewal. Is it worth it to renew? The .mobi domains are pretty pricey - about $35/year. If only my last name was not shared with that printing press dude. And, for that matter, Project Gutenberg.

Anyway, should I renew and hold onto this crappy domain or just let it go?

Perusing Google Analytics and felt like sharing some interesting stats. Note that these are for the last 6 months of blog time.

Outlook Signature Location in Vista has 1017 unique views, only slightly less than the root site with 1319. This indicates to me that (a) Microsoft should have documented this better and (b) too many people are using Vista, likely against their will. Which leads to the next interesting stat...

I Fucking Hate Vista is my 12th most popular page with 143 unique views. What's interesting about this one though is some of the search terms people have used to find it. There's the obvious ones, such as "i hate vista" and "i fucking hate vista" (second and first most popular search terms respectively), but then there's the creative ones, such as "fuck vista in the ass" and "god i hate vista" as well as various combinations of the above with anywhere from 4 to 26 exclamation marks. This really leads me to question how much people hate other OSes, and whether or not a blog post entitled "I Fucking Hate OSX" or "I Fucking Hate XP" or "I Fucking Hate Linux" would garner as many hits. Let's test...

"fucking hate vista" (in quotes) returns 650 results
"fucking hate osx" returns 0 results (though after this post gets indexed it's gonna return 1!)
"fucking hate xp" returns 24 results
"fucking hate linux" returns 59 results

Microsoft, I hope you're (though am sure you're not) reading this. Not only do people actually despise your latest OS, but they take the time to write about their hatred and post it on the intarweb. Maybe, just maybe, you should take this as a sign.

Hmm... didn't intend this to turn into another Vista bashing post, but what the hell... it is what it is.

Due to some SEO that has been requested of me I did a little analytics poking into the Search Engine Wars. I've really never given any thought to MSN or Yahoo as far as my blog is concerned, believing that they are dinosaurs in the 21st century world of the Goog. But in my exploring I realized that MSN doesn't even know I exist, and Yahoo doesn't seem to care that I exist. For example, searching for dosboy.ca on MSN brings up some pages that reference this blog, but it has never actually indexed the blog itself. Searching for dosboy.ca on Yahoo brings up the blog and it has been indexed, however searching for outlook signature vista or outlook signature location vista never returns any reference to my blog, whereas on Google either of those search criterias puts me as this post as the first hit.

Upon checking Google Analytics in the last month I've had 769 hits from Google, with the next highest being 15 hits from Yahoo. Obviously Yahoo thinks less of me than Google does, but this is a massive discrepancy. And it begs the question which is the title of this post... who is not using Google? And why not? According to this comScore press release, Google holds 61.5% of the search market with Yahoo at 20.9% and Microsoft at 9.2%. I'm actually surprised that Google isn't higher. At any rate, when it comes to SEO, is it really worthwhile to target anyone other than Google? Google has the market cornered on relevance, and though there's about 40% of the population not using Google, is it really worth trying to drive them to your site to buy your product? After all, if they're not using Google do you really want them as customers?

Who could possibly imagine that Vista is such a piece of shit? I mean, it's not like this is Microsoft's first foray into OS development. But it sure seems like it is. For the record, DOS was far more stable and predictable. Anyway, without further adieu, on to my latest Vista issues.

Telnet
It seems that, by default, the Telnet client is not installed. That is, telnet.exe. Why MS would choose not to include this 211 kB executable in the default install (when they've included it in every version of Windows prior, including 95) is beyond me. But for those of you who need this and don't know how to install it, here's what you do.

Disappearing System Tray Icons
Booted up my machine the other day and for some reason the Volume and Wireless icons didn't appear in my System Tray. I'd seen this before, but another reboot always fixed it. This time however no matter how many times I rebooted they just wouldn't appear. I'm not going to go into the specifics of the issue as they're documented here, but the fix follows.

1. Run regedit.exe
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \TrayNotify
3. Delete the IconStreams and PastIconStreams values
4. Reboot

Now, I'm no n00b when it comes to editing the registry, but having to edit it for this seems like a HUGE oversight on the part of MS. Utterly ridiculous.


Folder View FUBAR
This has got to be one of the most frustrating aspects of Vista. Vista just seems to randomly change folder views on me. I don't even know how to explain it. I'll set a folder to Tile view, and I'll go back in later and it'll be List. Or I'll set it to Details with default columns and I'll go back in later and it's changed the columns to music-type (i.e. Artist, Album, Track #, etc.) - not very useful when i'm browsing a folder containing no music files. It truly seems random. I've found this quite detailed list of fixes that can be applied to prevent Vista from doing this. And trust me, this fix list appears quite comprehensive. However as a dumb user, I want Vista's "intelligence" to work for me. If I have a folder of music files I want Vista to display music-related columns (well, ok, I don't really, but a truly dumb user might). Then there's the folders of mixed content. If I have a video file, a music file and an image file all in one folder, what folder type does Vista think this is? Cuz I guarantee no matter what it chooses it'll be wrong. So DON'T CHOOSE ANYTHING. Just use the default. If I as the user want to change the view I'll do so. I don't want my OS trying to outsmart me. Cuz I've yet to meet an OS that can. Suffice it to say that I haven't actually implemented the list of fixes above, mostly because I keep hoping that eventually Vista will settle on a folder view for each of my folders which is actually correct. Or MS will issue a fix. Also, I'm lazy. And a dumb user. Really though, I can't stress the dumb user bit enough. If my mom was using Vista (god forbid) and her folder views switched on her all the time she'd be lost, and most likely think that she'd done something wrong. And there's no way in hell she'd go through the fix list above, let alone even think to do so or even search for such fixes. We're not talking power user scenarios here. We're talking simple folder views. I never had any such problem under XP, but then XP never tried to outsmart me. In fact, I used to sort of get off on stuff like this. Problem solving and troubleshooting new OS "features" for deployment and such. But this issue is just fucked. It's unpredictable, which is never a good thing when supporting a mass deployment. Thank god I'm just a hack now and not actually an IT specialist. Cuz I'd hate to have to support this in the field, especially on a mass scale of hundreds or thousands of machines.

It seems that all of this purging of material goods has caught up with me. I feel an overwhelming desire to get a new phone. It's funny what tech lust will do to you (or me anyway) though. Initially I had the following requirements for a new phone:

• Good quality camera with flash
• MP3 playback
• External storage
• Ebook reader
• GSM

Also I'd like to keep it under $300, preferrably under $200. So I started searching and researching and googling and forum posting and price checking. And though I can find phones that meet those requirements and come in around the $250-$300 mark, I stumbled across the following uber-geeky device today that has me drooling.

That's right folks. It's a Watch Phone with integrated camera. It seems there's actually quite a few of these on the market right now (at least if you're willing to order from some sketchy Chinese online retailer). But seriously, isn't this just the sexiest geek watch you've ever seen? 1.5" touchscreen when you flip it open. Plays MP3s and MP4s. Built in Bluetooth and includes a Bluetooth stereo headset. Ebook reader. 1.3 MP camera. Ok, so it's definitely lacking in the camera department, but if I might be so bold as to justify this purchase, it would be one less thing that I had to "carry" (assuming wearing on my wrist doesn't constitute carrying), so I would probably bring my camera out more often. And it's just so damn sexy (in an obviously geeky and non-sexual way). Sure, there are some that are less obviously geeky and look more like a sporty Timex or Casio, but none of them have a physical dialpad. And dialing a number on a 1.5" screen using a stylus would suck, or so I believe. Actually, there is one other model with an integrated dialpad, but it's more expensive. And honestly I think it looks like a calculator watch from the 80's, only with futuristic styling.


At least the M350 (or U200i as it's referred to elsewhere on the 'net) looks relatively normal when it's closed.


So anyway, now I have to decide if geeking up a bit is worth it, or if I should just stick with my crappy Nokia. Cuz really, am I gonna read an ebook on a 1.5" screen? Actually, I probably would, but I'm weird that way. At the end of the day it's really just an excuse to geek it up a bit and live a dream that I've had ever since I was a child, that of having a wrist communicator. Worst case scenario it's useless and I'm out $170. Best case scenario I can read some books on it without somehow destroying my vision and it's a decent quality phone.

Assuming I don't go this route I'll probably end up with a Sony Ericsson K800i or K810i. 3.2 MP CyberShot (so decent quality) camera being the draw there. But that'll cost me more and amuse me less. Function or flash... What is a recovering geek to choose?

I just learned something new about Vista 64 (and maybe 32 - not sure). In addition to the common HKLM\...\Run and HKCU\...\Run registry keys, there's a new one that they've introduced that had all kinds of startup crap hiding under it. This key is HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Just take a peek in there and look at all the crapware! So in total there now seem to be 3 different Run registry keys.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. For those of you that do, does anyone know of any other new Vista startup keys that might have speed crippling apps forced upon me?

I've been geeking out a bit lately, trying to make my laptop a little more usable and streamlined. Spent a little time tweaking my music collection which I may detail in another post. But this one's about email, calendaring and contacts.

Since losing my phone I've been jonesing for a bit of fat client email action and some sort of calendaring. Yesterday I set up Thunderbird to give it a shot since I'm on an anti-MS kick right now and for the foreseeable future. Set it up, following Google's very precise and very useful instructions, then once I was all done I realized that it had no calendaring functionality. This was about to be a deal breaker for me, and I started researching how to sync Outlook calendar with Google calendar. I already knew that OggSync existed, but wanted to see if anything new had come about since I last did research. Well, turns out Google has released their own Outlook calendar sync (called Google Calendar Sync), which is nice (I much prefer native Googleware to 3rd party apps). This also brought up the issue of contacts. Doing some research there turned up some interesting information that Google recently released a Contacts Data API. This led me to believe that there might be hope after all. However before I went down the Outlook Contacts <-> Google Contacts road, at the behest of a friend (who talks like that?), I took another look at Thunderbird to see if there were add-ons that could help the cause. So, after a bit of research and downloading, here's how you make Thunderbird purr like Outlook. Well, I guess purr isn't really the right word cuz Outlook tends to clunk... but you get the idea.

1. Install Thunderbird and configure it according to Google's instructions here.
2. Download and install Lightning, Thunderbird's calendaring add-on.
3. Download and install the Provider for Google Calendar.
4. Create a new calendar in Thunderbird:
   a. Click the Calendar button in the lower left corner of the Thunderbird screen.
   b. Click Calendar > New Calendar.
   c. Click On the Network > Next.
   d. Open your Google Calendar.
   e. Click Settings > Calendar > {Select the calendar you want to add to Thunderbird}.
   f. Scroll down until you see Private Address.
   g. Right-click the iCal button () and select Copy Link Location (Firefox) or Copy Shortcut (Internet Explorer).
   h. Flip back to Thunderbird and the Create New Calendar dialog box. Under Format select Google Calendar, and paste the copied URL into the Location field. Click Next.
   i. Give the calendar a name, select a color for new entries and decide whether or not to enable Alarms (these options can all be changed after the fact). Click Next.
   j. Enter your Gmail email address and password.

Voila. You now have your Thunderbird calendar sync'ing with your Gmail calendar. One more thing I did was to change the calendar refresh period from 30 mins to 10 mins (Tools > Options > Lightning > General > Refresh Settings). Another thing to check is the timezones. Make sure that both Thunderbird and Google Calendar are set to the same timezone, or your meeting times will appear off in one of them (this happened to me since my Google Calendar was still set to Toronto time).

Now to configure your contacts:

1. Download and install Zindus.
2. In Thunderbird, click Tools > Zindus.
3. Under the Server Settings tab, select Google as your server type and enter your Gmail address and password. Click Test Connection to Server and make sure everything's correct.
4. Under the Preferences tab, make sure that Auto Sync is enabled and select Personal Address Book to sync your Google contacts with, then click Sync Now.

Voila! Your Gmail contacts are now sync'ed with Thunderbird and should remain so in the future.

I suppose if you're a tasks user there may be some way to sync those as well, but I've had enough bad experiences with Outlook tasks over the years that I'm not too keen on them right now.

The other area this may be weak is when it comes to device synchronization. But since I no longer have a useful device to synchronize this isn't a concern for me. Perhaps in the future if I get another WinMo or other smartphone device I'll figure out how to add it to the mix.