TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

In my case, this is a conflict between BeyondTV and Windows Media Player. WMP is playing a video file.  DivX, WMV, it doesn't seem to matter. BeyondTV begins to "Showsqueeze" a file to DivX format. WMP throws "An audio device was disconnected or reconfigured" error. Once identified, the error is perfectly reproducible.  Simply set BeyondTV to auto-squeeze without any time limits, start recording any show, then stop it anytime.  Manual or automatic recording, doesn't matter.  A few seconds after stopping, Beyond will queue up the Showsqueeze and start the DivX conversion, at which exact moment WMP will stop doing what it is doing and puke the above error. I am guessing that BeyondTV and WMP both "want" the DivX codec at the same time.  But I don't know for sure.  All I know is it seems to be unique to me. The error does NOT happen if Beyond compresses shows to WMV format.  Just DivX seems to set it off.  (Of course, nobody wants a ...

Credit to "Geoff" for this post - read it for a summary of the error.  Seems I'm not the only one who runs into strange errors. Naturally, this error is a real bitch.  Windows fails to tell you WHICH audio device changed, making it a trial-and-error approach to debugging.  I hate that, as they could have easily mentioned which device was causing the offense. Plus it takes about an hour to re-create the error, making troubleshooting very slow. For my part, here is what did NOT fix the error: 1.  Disabling Windows driver signing enforcement.  My Hauppage WinTV-PVR-150 cards were listed as "Sound" devices in Device Manager, making them (possibly) "audio" devices to Windows.  They had yellow exclamation points in Device Manager only because the drivers are not signed for Windows 7.  So they worked, but they could have run into some kind of driver checking BS that caused the error sporiadically. However, turning off the driver checking using the ...

My old PVR having given up - and, admittedly, rather behind the times when it came to video formats - it is time for a new one. I heard about Plex on Lifehacker, and it sounded worth a try.  I prefer to keep my PVR (recording) and media center playback software separate right now, so the fact that Plex does not record TV was not an issue. Plus, it's free.  Why not? I have found a few things that I do not like.  Note that I am not criticizing - well, maybe I am, a little - but free software is free, and you can't complain, really, or it wouldn't exist.  This information is here to help other people decide if Plex is right for them. Here's a few things that I have learned so far: 1.  You need a dedicated folder for your media library. Why?  Plex has no "exclude" function.  The developers don't seem to think it worthwhile.  ( "Can you explain why you want this?" is a pretty amazing comment to me.) Given there are a near-infinite numbe...

[Update 2]:  As of 2015, just forget about AndroidScreencast and go with Teamviewer . It (mostly) just works. Original post below. ---------------------- I can't get it to work. [Update]:  Just figured out the latest Android update broke my root access, so I can't chmod the device properly.  Will have to wait until a new upgrade rom is available, I guess. You can try the instructions here, but they are (at best) incomplete.  Useful links below, you have to put all the pieces together yourself. Notes: The Android SDK landing page has changed.  What you want to get is the SDK installer executable file.  Click "Download for Other Platforms" to see the Windows .exe file, which is what you want.  Don't use the "Download Package" button you see first - clock "Download for Other Platforms", look for "SDK Tools Only", Windows EXE file. When you install, do yourself a favor and put the installation in an easy-to-find directory....

My new 2012 Vaio Z was putting out a ridiculously low output on the headphone jack.  Not enough to notice until I took a plane trip, when I realized I couldn't actually hear most of my movies - even at 100% volume. (This is with some Sony noise-cancelling headphones, which have always worked well for the past 50 hours of flying time.) Anyway, the instructions most helpfully provided by Antriksh Yadav about how to boost the volume on the Vaio E series helped quite a bit.   On my Z, the Dolby enhancements were switched off for some idiotic reason.  Turning Dolby on boosted the headphones output by at least 50%.  Selecting "Movie" mode gave the midrange a bit of boost, good for dialogue. The studio quality made no difference, the disable all sound effects was already unchecked, and there are no equalization settings on my Z as there are on the E.  But the Dolby tip alone was enough to raise my headphone audio from useless to usable. If this isn't en...

Like the title says.  This is on a Vaio Z series (3rd generation, 2012). Before anyone things I'm an idiot and simply don't know how to do it: it works with Internet Explorer fine.  AND the fingerprint login to Windows 7 x64 works fine as well.  But not with Firefox. What doesn't happen is that TrueSuite does not prompt to remember a password when you log in to a web page.  In IE, you get a message asking "do you want TrueSuite to remember this password" or something like that.  With Firefox, nada. I tried disabling Firefox's buit-in password manager, which I had temporarily enabled.  Didn't help. Nothing mentioned on either Sony's site or Authentec's site, so I must be the only one.  I'm betting I'll have to do a video to prove it to Sony. [Edit]:  The fingerprint login sure is handy.  I had almost forgotten how much I missed it when I had to give up my old Lifebook.

Spotted this little tidbit on WIND's Twitter account, concerning the Galaxy S III and why ordinary mortals cannot buy it from WIND:

WIND has extended their $200 service credit for new customers buying the Samsung Galaxy S III. I guess I'll have to wait until August to get my SGSIII, since I STILL can't buy one.

So much for being first.  He bought it because his Bell contract was up.  He doesn't even really know what it is. Thanks a ton, WIND.  Get off your asses already.

Update:  Per their Facebook post, Hidden Trails has shut down as  of April 2018. If there is one thing I hate, it is going somewhere and not knowing where to go.  Or, specifically, where to park . In this case, the destination was "Hidden Trail Adventures", an ATV tour company operating out of the Ghost Waiparous area of Alberta.  A google of the name yields their website, along with a crappy map.  Not much help if you have never been there before. Google Maps has nada on their actual operating location.  Satellite is no help - there is no detail to the imagery in the Ghost area.  You can make out a few parking areas but not which is which. Street View works, but the data was collected either before Hidden Trail set up shop or sometime when they were not on-site - probably the former, as none of the relevant signage is shown in Street View. They do give good directions but that is not much help if you want to use a satnav to assist you. ...

You type in a path and file name into Acrobat, you get this: Apparently, this is because Acrobat is too "stupid" to append the ".pdf" to your information. For example, if you type "C:\Temp\MyPDF", you get the error. If you type "C:\Temp\MyPDF.pdf" instead, no error. Am I the only one who thinks this is stupid?

I've been using the same router in my system since - gasp - 2004!  It was a Xincom, and it's big claim to fame back then was it supported dual WAN inputs. This was a big deal when internet bandwidth was hard to come by.  The easiest way of getting more bandwidth was to sign up with more than one ISP.  I did just that, and bought hardware to match. However, I dropped the dual internet connections a long time ago, and pretty much ignored the poor thing until it died last night.  It's been a fantastic piece of kit, having outlasted nearly every other piece of hardware I've ever bought.  Including the second Linksys WRT54G that I had for both wireless and backup purposes, which also turned out to be busted. The failure was weird, too - it got Alzheimers.  Stopped remembering it's own password, as well as all of the other settings, and usually (but not always) forgot to answer the door when you came round to knock.  I suspect the EEPROM/Flash memory f...

Having upgraded the hardware, the software must follow, sooner or later.  The old Photoshop Elements wouldn't run on my shiny new SSD-equipped Core i7-2600K Win7 x64 machine.  Eventually it was time to upgrade, once PSE10 went on sale for Xmas. I liked Elements for the tagging and organization, but always hated it for it's slowness.  On my 'old' Latitude notebook, it would take at least 10 seconds to flip between full-screen photos - something Irfanview could do in milliseconds.  Tagging, importing, and all that was OK, but not being able to view the pictures to rate them quickly was a ball-breaker.  It got so unbearable that I stopped putting new photos in, figuring I'd fix it all on the new workstation. So I got Elements 10 installed, and it found and imported the old catalog (after performing some kind of 'conversion' that it never explained).  Unfortunately, it mangled the links to over half of my 10,000 photo collection, forcing me to the dreaded ...

So today I receive an email from My Cable Mart , a cable vendor in the USA that I used some years ago.  I used them because I needed long HDMI cables (50') and they were one of the only places that had them at a reasonable price. The email was punting a 15% off sale they are having.  It's been a long time since the last promo email - I can't even remember when that was - so either this is something unusual or times are tough (or both). Looking back, I paid $105 ($USD) for a 50' HDMI cable back in 2007 - same cable is now $102, with a much better exchange rate.  A quick check shows Future Shop selling them - finally - at $200 now, for their "house brand" no-name cable. I have nothing against no-name cables.  I love them.  They work, and you don't pay for all the marketing and other bullshit.  But it's pretty plain that the markup on cables is still huge. And why not?  When I worked in retail, we sold camera filters worth $1 to people for $15-$30...

Somewhere along the path of Firefox upgrades, my FireFTP menu item got lost.  It is no longer in the Tools menu where I expected it to be. The solution was simpler than I thought.  It got moved under Tools/Web Developer.  Why anyone thinks it belongs there is beyond me, but there it is.

Bug kudos to Ben Hirashima   for saving (at least some) of my sanity with Android. Like most other Android phones, the X10i provides for a pattern password.  And, like most, it doesn't allow you to disable the regular "swipe to unlock" screen.  This forces the user into having two lock screens - an incredibly dumb move that The inconvenience made me remember my Palm days, where I could activate and unlock my Treo in seemingly no time at all.  Granted, it wasn't the same - the Treo had no password protection - but I didn't need it then and I wonder if I need it now.  Everything is encrypted in Note Everything Pro anyway. It was getting to the point where I was going to turn off the password.  It took so long to unlock the phone, start apps, and do anything that any speedup was welcome. Even worse was the common occurrence of turning off the phone, just to remember - after the screen went dark - that I forgot to jot something down.  Then you hav...

Android is full of little tricks.  The latest one involved email notifications. I recently set up a new email account for server error messages, and wanted a "special" ring tone associated with that email account.  It's important that I know right away if my servers have problems, whereas I really couldn't care less about knowing precisely when email arrives to my other accounts. Naturally, I couldn't find a decent notification message in the pre-installed list on my X10i. So I downloaded a new ringtone, learning via Google that you had to put it into a directory called "ringtones" - even the all-lowercase is mandatory - for the phone to see it. Well, it didn't.  Or, to be more precise, it did see the new ringtone as a ringtone, but it still did not show up in the ring tone list for email .  Lovely separation, that.  One wonders exactly how many ring tones a person might need to have before it would be confusing enough to be worthwhile main...

When specifying my latest workstation, I lost a lot of sleep over the video card. First, I wanted a multi-monitor setup - 3 monitors, to be exact.  I had a dual-monitor setup and wanted to upgrade. Second, I wanted a Solidworks-capable video card.  That means a "workstation" class card.  SW does not screw around, and although it is not the most graphics-intensive program in the world, it's up there. Third, I needed (not wanted) something that would run Altium 2006 and Altium Summer '09 flawlessly. And therein lay the problem.  Altium, in their infinite wisdom, recommends a list of obsolete gaming-class video cards, last updated 2010.  They have never tested a workstation-class card like a Firepro or Quadro - or, at least, never said they did.  Most of the cards on their 'good' list don't even exist any more. Altium even goes so far as to recommend gaming cards over pro cards, as well as saying bad things about OpenGL-based cards. This contrast...

Today I decided I'd like to watch a bit of film on my brand-spankin' new workstation.  I haven't even so much as popped a DVD in the drive yet. I try it and Windows Media Player has no sound.  Probably doesn't understand AC3.  I could have tried to hack in the codec, but I'm rather partial to WinDVD anyway. After buying (gasp!) and installing WinDVD Pro 2010, I fire it up.  Looks good!  Lots of nice logos. Until I get about three seconds into my movie, only to see "Your display environment does not support protected content playback."  WTF!?! So it turns out that the "new" players simply do not like multimonitor setups.  Apparently, without HDMI to "properly" protect the digital signal, it can't "guarantee" that my triple monitor setup isn't some kind of surrogate for a devious copy-protection bypass mechanism. So I've gone and sprung for a beautiful triple monitor setup, with requisite massive (and expen...

For whatever reason, Adobe Acrobat will not properly repaint the screen when resizing internal windows.  It 'sticks' the image at the previous window size. The only fix I've found so far is to show or hide a secondary pane, such as the bookmarks.  This forces Acrobat to repaint the screen to the new scaling. This problem may be unique to my FirePro 8800 triple monitor setup, or it might be a W7 thing, I'm not sure.  Acrobat is not the only program having this problem, but it is by far the worst. [Addition]:  You can quickly force a refresh with F4.