Monthly Archives: July 2005

IPB 1.3 final to 2.0.4 trial upgrade

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I’ve decided to write about some of the little boring things I do on the computer. I probably make them sound much more interesting than they actually are, however.

So… I got a complaint from someone whose Invision Plus forum apparently has some corrupt tables, and so I downloaded his database and I’m converting it to work with the IPB 2.0.4 trial. I think the forum fits within the requirements… but then, I didn’t check (oops). Hopefully all goes well. I’m running the upgrade script now. It appears quite complex!

Last day of VBS 2005

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It’s over! Vacation Bible School has come to a close. And a fantastic end it was. I spent the afternoon doing so many things I can’t keep track of it all.

For VBS, though, I put together the schedule (which I’ve done every day), which only took a few minutes. Then came a real project — creating a video of the week from the stuff my mom captured over the last two days.

The result is something that I am proud of. It’s nice, looks well-organized, and is fun to watch. Of course, I have to give credit where due. Tony added a lot of enthusiasm to the start of the video. And everyone else in the video did great, too.

Wow!

At the last minute, we had some issues getting the video to work. Praise the Lord that I found what was wrong just in time…

The main church computer has issues playing back realtime video and/or sound. It skips and pauses, making it look terrible.

So I borrowed someone’s laptop to play the video. This involved plugging the system in and setting it up to work with the projector. The sound also had to be plugged into the headphone port.

In my post about the Mac mini detecting the monitor connected, I didn’t really mention the Windows equivalent. Well, in Windows, it detects whether there’s a monitor connected, too. You can’t enable the external monitor port if there was no monitor plugged in when Windows tried to detect it.

This was a problem because the laptop was already on when I connected it. There was no way to enable or switch to the external monitor.

I tried a few things. First, the easiest and fastest thing to do was put the system into hibernation. As I mentioned in my Mac mini post, the Mac detects the monitor when waking from sleep mode. Windows does not do this when coming out of hibernation.

Luckily, I tried something else, too, that is significantly faster than rebooting entirely. I logged out, and logged back in. This did the trick. I could then use the Fn key combo to switch to the external monitor.

Then, we had trouble getting the sound to work. This was just moments before the video was supposed to be played. There was no sound coming from the video. We checked many times that all volume controls were turned up and the sound was not muted. At just the last moment, I discovered that the mute button in Windows Media Player was enabled. Clicking that button did the trick, and the video played (mostly) flawlessly after that.

Documents is not accessible. Access is denied

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My Computer
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents is not accessible.
Access is denied.
OK

This error appears when attempting to access the Shared Documents folder (which appears to be renamed to “Documents”)

I recently had this problem on the main computer here at my home. This same problem prevented Adobe Acrobat 6.0 from working, and prevented a reinstall (or uninstall and install), as well.

I’ve finally found a fix. And it’s quite a simple one. Follow these steps.

1. Choose Start > Run, type %allusersprofile% in the Open box, and then click OK.

2. Right-click the Documents folder, and choose Properties.

3. Click the Sharing tab, and then unselect “Share This Folder on network” if it is selected. If it’s not selected, select it.

4. Apply. If you had to unselect the box in step 3, now select it again and Apply.

This causes the name of the folder to change to Shared Folder. This also allows Adobe Acrobat 6.0 to install.

Other helpful resources
support.microsoft.com
www.adobe.com

Using Internet Explorer is dangerous

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Today I got a virus on my computer. I don’t even remember the last time this happened.

Why? because when you click a link in Yahoo Desktop Search Beta, it opens in Internet Explorer.

Even without approving it or clicking anything other than a link, there are no further confirmation screens. Even I was surprised by this. You can get infected just by clicking a link — without clicking anything else. Without downloading or executing anything.

You’ve got to be careful what websites you visit when using IE. Not so with Firefox. Browsing with Firefox is the way the web should work.

So this is a reminder for anyone who uses Windows XP. If you haven’t yet gotten it, get Firefox. Now..

By the way, this is accurate as of the latest version of IE available (6.0.2900.2180 with SP2) at the time of this writing: July 25, 2005. I’m still working on getting rid of the adware (someone must be making a fortune from this). Using Firefox is still far safer.

AdSense Journal

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It’s about time that I posted in my AdSense journal. One thing I’ve noticed is that my posts tend to be a bit long and boring. I’ll make this one brief and to the point. Yesterday I added AdSense to GoogleHello.com. I don’t expect it to really go anywhere. But it does look nice.

I’m looking to expand. Surprisingly, intelliot.com now averages 1525 visits/day. It’s about time for the interesting, relevant ads to come back here. Maybe tomorrow.

Making things easier

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There is a lot of demand out there for people to take something that’s hard to access and make it easy.

For example, I created a script that checks the Google PageRank of a site. It’s nothing fancy. It’s all bits of code that I found using Google, and then packaged it together for easy digestion.

You can take something that’s free, make it easier to understand, and then sell it.

People are desperate for this type of thing. Take something that’s hard to use. Make it easy to use.

It takes someone who understands what’s being dealt with. But in the computer world, there are many such examples.

The clearest examples are the little PHP scripts I’ve made. Tomorrow I could spend all of half an hour to make a new one. It won’t be new or especially interesting. But it will be clear and easy to understand. It will be well-documented and easily digested by the masses.

It’s about reaching a wider audience. All they need is something easier to use. And they love it.

Intel Stinks, Again

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First, from Slashdot

In AMD’s recient anti-trust lawsuit AMD have examined the Intel compiler and found that it deliberatly runs code slower when it detects that the processor is an AMD. “To achieve this, Intel designed the compiler to compile code along several alternate code paths. … By design, the code paths were not created equally. If the program detects a “Genuine Intel” microprocessor, it executes a fully optimized code path and operates with the maximum efficiency. However, if the program detects an “Authentic AMD” microprocessor, it executes a different code path that will degrade the program’s performance or cause it to crash.”

Continue reading →

Hand it to the Chinese government

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Still, you have to hand it to them (Score:5, Interesting)
by typical (886006) on Tuesday July 12, @04:15AM (#13040161)
(Last Journal: Wednesday June 22, @09:54PM)
Despite all this, you really have to hand it to the Chinese government. Consider that:

* There is a legitimate concern that people reading articles critical of the government will cause enough upset to collapse the government.

* The number of people involved that you are trying to black out information to number in the billions.

* You can successfully convince a majority of these billions of people that it is in their own best interest to give up their own ability to decide what to read or say.

I mean, yes, it’s distasteful and all that, but beautifully executed. I don’t think *I* could sucker 1.3 billion people, no matter how hard I tried.

Actually, I was pretty impressed that they managed to push through their one-child policy as well — that had to be a hell of a tough sell.

GameCube vs Other Consoles

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Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
by BronxBomber (633404) on Tuesday July 12, @09:18AM (#13041362)
Among all the hype with all 3 consoles, I hope as much attention is being paid to game playability and fun factor.

The Genesis, NES, and TurboGraphx16 werent online (well, the Genesis was with XBand eventually), and some of the most innovative, playable games were released on those 3 platforms.

Super Mario Bros 3, Earthworm Jim, the original Metal Gear, Final Fantasy – a long laundry list of original titles.

Here we are now in the wireless age and I cant count how many shooter titles are on the Xbox, or generic RPG titles are available on the PS2. The GC clearly still holds rank with gameplay innovation, but interestingly they sit 3rd overall in the worldwide console battle.

Its kind of sad, really. The market seems to be more concerned with whether or not I can get on the net with yet ANOTHER device, instead of making games compelling enough for me to WANT to get online with it.