Favourite Hour

Samsung P2350

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:42:00 +0000

Got a new LCD monitor, the Samsung SyncMaster P2350. What a magnificent screen!

First of all, to work with a screen resolution of 1920x1080 is simply great. The amount of space you have makes it really easy to place multiple application in such a way that they are always visible. For example, you can have your browser, IM, Gadgets visible together.

Second, the screen is just great in all other aspects, such as color, sharpness, etc. It’s just great to look at!

Now, playing games on this is something else. Unfortunately, I can’t play Crysis Warhead in full resolution because the FPS is too low, but even with a lower resolution, with the screen size, and it being wide, it's a whole new level of experience.

I still need to check it out with FSX. It should be equally great.

Also checked out some HD video (only 720p) which looked great. I need to get a sample of Full HD content (I hope my machine can handle it).

Where am I?

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:31:00 +0000

No, the blog isn’t dead. I’ve been lucky enough to be busy with a lot of things. To name a few, iPod Touch, which is simply a great piece of device. A minor thing called work has also kept me busy.

BTW, got an invite to Wave. Sorry, haven’t received invites to share. Nothing to talk about though. The few friends that I have there don’t seem to be using it much themselves.

Google Wave Invite Needed

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:45:00 +0000

I wasn’t one of the lucky ones to get an invite (insert sad face here). However, there is still hope, as the lucky ones get a chance to invite 8 people! What do they do with such invites? Some probably invite their friends, others share them freely within their online community (e.g. Lifehacker).

Oh, and others sell them on ebay! That’s right, currently I see 7 people selling on ebay, with prices reaching up to $100. That’s really not so nice…

So anyway, if you have an invite to send me, I would be happy to receive one at this address:

And if you want to receive an invite, feel free to comment, and hopefully someone nice will come along and share their invite.

BTW, this brings back memories of the Gmail invites. I got mine in return for a postcard (actually 2 postcards, as 2 people sent me an invite).

Picasa 3.5 People Name Tagging

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 03:48:00 +0000

One of the most cool features of Picasa 3.5 is the name tagging feature. What Picasa does is go through all of your pictures, identify faces, tries to group them into similar faces, and lets you name the faces, so that later you can find pictures of specific people easily. As this is something that I used to do manually, using the labels, it is going to save me a lot of time in the future.

I’ve been playing with Picasa 3.5 for a couple of days now, and I’m very impressed with how easy it is to find and tag a large number of faces. I already have 4000 labeled pictures of my son, 3000 of my daughter, and a few thousand of various relatives.

The way it works is very nice. You start identifying people. As you identify more pictures for a certain person, Picasa “learns” this and suggests more pictures of the same person. So, for example, if I identified 300 pictures of my son, I already had 800 suggestions for other pictures of my son. You still have to go through these suggestions manually, as there are misses, but this is done very quickly.

Even today, after I think that most pictures of my son and daughter were identified, when I go through the Unnamed list (of 18,000 faces!), I sometimes find pictures of them, identify them, and afterwards Picasa suggests more pictures of them.

So currently I still have to go through 18,000 faces, to ignore the ones that I don’t care to tag. There are were funny moments too, where I have found faces of statues, a drawing on a shirt, people from scanned DVD covers, a sphinx, and so on. This part is going to take some time to complete. There is no quick way to do this, and the pictures are not grouped in high numbers (usually 2 pictures per thumbnail).

There are other new features too, such as integrated geo-tagging, and Adjust Date and Time, which I believe is new, but so far, People Tagging is the best reason, at least for me, to upgrade to the new version.

Internet Explorer Market Share Decline

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:45:00 +0000

While checking my humble blog’s statistics, it was very interesting to see how Microsoft IE’s market share declined over the last few months.

At the beginning of the year, the IE visits on my site were at about 50%. Let’s take June for example.

July showed a rather huge decline of about 10%, which went mostly to Firefox.

August had an interesting results – an exact tie (what are the chances of that!).

And now we are in September, and although the month isn’t over yet, I wanted to check the status of this contest. As you can see, currently Firefox has taken the lead. However, Firefox has taken only some of the IE market share, and the other browsers have enjoyed this decline as well.

I know this isn’t an exact science. I don’t have too many visitors, and the sample data in each month is different (luckily I get more visitors these last few months), but still it is saying something.

WeGame - Beware of Spam

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:43:00 +0000

Just got a message from wegame.com saying "itai sent you a photo. Want to see the photo?"
As much as I love photos, it seemed to be a little suspicious, so I've searched "wegame" on the web and found some interesting stuff. First of all, if you just search for "wegame" you get their official site, and a few other, safe looking sites. However, if you search for "wegame spam" you get a few more interesting sites. I have not investigated this very thoroughly, but as far as I understand, in order to see the photo you need to sign up, and as part of this process, you may end up emailing everyone on your address book that you have sent them a photo. I don't know how it's done. Perhaps you give them your user name and password for your email, or they may do this in another way.

The main point is that if you get an email from wegame.com, don't click on any link, even if it's from someone you know.

If I'm completely wrong, please let me know.

Cannot Access Amazon Due To Anti-virus

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:04:00 +0000

For the last two days, I cannot access amazon.com due to this warning:

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 for Windows Workstations claims that the site is infected with “HEUR:Trojan.Script.Generic”.

That’s annoying.

Adding Pictures to the Windows Desktop Backgrounds in Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:27:00 +0000

If you like the default Windows 7 backgrounds, but you want to add more pictures to that collection, here is a simple solution:

The Windows Desktop Backgrounds are located in the folder C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper. You can simply create a new folder and place your images under it. Here is an example for a new “Chipset” folder:

The folder in Windows Explorer

The new pictures in the default Windows Desktop Backgrounds

Upgrading from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:41:00 +0000

So, the time has come to upgrade to the final version of Windows 7. Out of the box, you cannot upgrade from RC to RTM. There is a simple hack that enables you to do so, but I decided I wanted a clean install. I still needed to retain my files and settings, and I needed to install Windows on the same hard disk, as the second hard disk contains Vista.

So, I decided to use Easy Transfer to make the transition. I ran Easy Transfer on Win7 RC. I’ve selected all the files and folders that I needed to retain, including program settings. The results was an 8GB file, which I saved on the second hard disk. Afterwards I booted using the Windows 7 RTM install DVD. I ran setup and chose the custom installation. I formatted the Win7 partition, and made a clean install on that partition.

After Windows 7 RTM was installed I ran Easy Transfer. I selected the Easy Transfer file which was created from the RC version, and after a few minutes all of my files and settings were back.

Now I still need to install of my applications. I’ve installed most of them already, and I still need to move files from my Vista installation (which wasn’t used at all since Win7 RC) to Windows 7.

That was an easy transfer!

Wii Internet Channel is now free

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:50:00 +0000

I’ve just purchased the Nintendo Wii two days ago, and was disappointed that the Internet Channel provided was only a demo video, and that the real channel isn’t free. Today I was surprised to see that the Internet Channel is now free! Thanks, Nintendo!

As for my Wii experience, my shoulder is sore. I guess I better switch hands.

Windows 7, Total Commander, Slow Network File Copy

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:47:00 +0000

I’ve upgraded to Windows 7 at work, and found out that Total Commander is really slow in network copy operations. When copying or unzipping any amount of files it frequently pauses and makes it impossible to work like this. After finding the usual advises from Vista, and seeing they are not working (Windows copy is OK, BTW), I tried something else. I’ve paused my Antivirus software, which is the new Kaspersky version for Windows 7. Total Commander started working correctly immediately. After playing with the Kaspersky settings a bit, it appears that Proactive Defense is causing this problem. The settings inside Proactive Defense don’t matter. If it’s activated, Total Commander pauses during copy operations.

Use Easy Transfer To Migrate Settings to Windows 7 [Windows 7]

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:47:00 +0000

The article below is from Lifehacker. I've already used Easy Transfer at work, to migrate from Vista to Windows 7 through the network, which was quite easy. Now I need to migrate from Win7 RC to Win7 RTM at home, on one machine which is dual boot between Vista and Win7 RC. this is going to be a bit more tricky!

Easy Transfer Migrates XP Settings to Windows 7 [Windows 7]: "

Windows 7 only allows you to upgrade directly from Vista, so if you are looking to switch from XP you are out of luck. Thankfully the built-in Easy Transfer tool makes the upgrade process much easier.

Over at the How-To Geek site (my home away from Lifehacker), blogger Mysticgeek has put together a full guide to using Windows Easy Transfer to move all of your files and settings from your XP computer to your new Windows 7 PC—though the tool can be used from Vista, or even if you decided to dual-boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista.

The principles are simple: just run the Easy Transfer wizard (included on the Windows 7 disc) on the computer you want to migrate settings from, choose everything you want to transfer, and save the Easy Transfer backup file to a drive. Once you've installed Windows 7, you can run the Easy Transfer wizard to restore all of the settings from the backup file to your new computer. The tool only packages documents, settings, and things like wallpaper—so you'll have to reinstall your applications—but it works surprisingly well for helping migrate your settings.

Hit the link for the full walk-through, or check out our guide to upgrading to the Windows 7 RC, or how to upgrade the Windows 7 RC to the final RTM release.

Migrate XP to Windows 7 with Easy Transfer and a USB Drive [How-To Geek]

No Recording Device on Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:54:00 +0000

A while back I wrote that Windows 7 didn’t detect the rear microphone input. Yesterday I tried the front microphone input, and found out that it didn’t work either, so I decided to get to the bottom of this, and was able to solve the issue. Here is the solution:

The problem was with the default Microsoft IDT High Definition Audio driver, which was obviously not compatible with my on board sound device (Intel® Desktop Boards with IDT audio). The Intel driver on the other hand, was only compatible up to Vista. I have tried to install it before, and it has broken the audio functionality on my machine. However, the breakthrough came after I found some advise on the web on how to install it anyhow.

I take no responsibility for the following steps, and they are provided “As is”, without any warranty whatsoever. They worked for me, but they may not work for others, and may cause problems.

1) Download the latest Intel IDT Audio driver. I downloaded mine from here. There is a list of motherboards that this driver supports, so read the list carefully to see if your motherboard is there.

2) After that, run the file that you downloaded (AUD_allOS_D20001.0x_PV_IDTGUI_v105_Legacy.exe). It will extract to a location of your choice, and then start to run setup. Cancel the setup.

3) Go to the extracted folder, and then down to WDM and Vista. Find the two inf files, one is for 32bit, and the other for 64bit.

4) The following advice was found here, though I didn’t follow it to the word. I’ll tell you what I did, but I’m still giving credit to this post, as this was it.

I opened STWRT.INF. If you have a 64bit OS, you should open this: STWRT64.INF.

Went to the section [IDT.NTx86]. It has a lot of lines that look like this:

%ST.DeviceDesc%=STHDA,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_8384&DEV_7680&SUBSYS_80860202

I modified them by removing the &SUBSYS_xxxxxx part, so that it will look like this:

%ST.DeviceDesc%=STHDA,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_8384&DEV_7680

I did it for all the lines (used Excel to do this quickly).

5) I went back to the main extracted folder, right clicked Setup.exe, selected Properties, and set the compatibility mode to Vista Service Pack 2. I’m not sure it is needed, but I did this anyway.

6) I ran Setup, it asked me some questions, including if I was sure I wanted to install this driver. I approved all questions, and it took a long time, but finally it was complete, and I restarted Windows 7.

End result: the audio is working, the front microphone is working. The rear microphone input is recognized, but not working yet. I will try and solve it later, but at least I have a microphone now!

Fedora on Virtualbox

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:37:00 +0000

So, after my past experience with OpenSUSE I've decided to give Fedora a try. Installation went fine. After experiencing issues with Guest Additions on OpenSUSE, I've searched in advance for a solution, and found one. The solution worked, but after boot my screen got corrupted. I found a solution to that as well (lower the Display Memory in VB to 64MB).

So, I have a working Fedora now, with the optimal screen resolution (1280x1024), so I can actually try it. I'm still in opinion that if you don't have minimal experience in Linux commands, it's almost impossible to get this to work. There is no replacement for Windows in this aspect.

I would like to see more eye-candy though. I've tried activation Desktop Effects, but got only a white screen. I'm installing KDE now, hoping for a nicer GUI. I will update on that later.

Update 1: Fedora didn’t fail my expectations, and not in a good way. I’ve installed KDE using the official instructions in the Fedora KDE page. I’ve restarted the VM and got a beautiful KDE login screen. Entered my login details… and got a black screen… Back to Google to try and fix this.

Update 2: After another restart, KDE works. Very nice looking, although a bit slow now. Will need to increase the memory in VB.

Update 3: Here is a screenshot of the nice desktop:

I Killed OpenSUSE 11.1

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:04:00 +0000

I like to try Linux distributions from time to time. This time I tried OpenSUSE 11.1 on VirtualBox.

Setup went fine:

Installed correctly, but the resolution was low – 1024 X 768. After a quick search on the internet I found out that all I need to do is install Guest Additions. So I tried, got error messages, installed more software, the virtual harddisk got close to 5GB, installed more software, and finally the VM died… How I love Linux! Now I’m looking for a new distribution to break.

Bing Translator Available for Hebrew

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Bing Translator supports Hebrew, but it is so embarrassingly bad. Check out this example:

Some of the highlights:

Chinese characters.
English gibberish (not even a transliteration of Hebrew).
Embarrassing translations (Nurse is translated as Nuisance).

Hope they do better…

Update:

I tried to translate another web site and got this interesting result:

The name of the reporter, Michal Henig, was translated as Linda Smith! I'm sure she would be happy.

Montana is on the map

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:10:00 +0000

Finally, Montana is on the map!

After years of being MIA, I had two visits from Montana, one on June 18th, and the other on July 6th. Now I’m satisfied!

Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:39:00 +0000

Oh my god, what a cool feature! Just read about a very useful Windows 7 feature in How-To-Geek. Problem Steps Recorder (activate by Start->Run->psr.exe) records whatever you are doing into a zipped MHT file. The MHT contains screenshots of every step you have taken, with descriptions. Here are a few examples (without the screenshots):

Problem Step 1: (06/07/2009 20:20:02) User left click on "Minimize (push button)" in "Google Reader (334) - Windows Internet Explorer"

Problem Step 2: (06/07/2009 20:20:04) User left click in "Calculator"

Problem Step 3: (06/07/2009 20:20:05) User left click on "9 (push button)" in "Calculator"

There is also additional information for each step. Here is an example for Step 2:

Problem Step 2: User left click in "Calculator"
Program: Windows Calculator, 6.1.7100.0 (winmain_win7rc.090421-1700), Microsoft Corporation, CALC.EXE, CALC.EXE
UI Elements: #32770, CalcFrame, Calculator, CalcFrame

Now, why am I so excited about it? Well, as part of my job I sometimes have to troubleshoot issues that other people have. The best way to do this is to remote connect to their computer, but that’s not always possible. Seeing screenshots is the next best thing, but they don’t always know how to do this. With PSR, all I have to do is instruct them to run the program, and click on the big red record button, stop recording, and send a zip file. That’s a big help. Wonder if it can be ported out of Windows 7.

Lost Season 2 Finale Rewatch

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:25:00 +0000

Saw it yesterday, and it was less intensive then I remember. My wife, who watches Lost for the first time, also said it’s not as intensive as the Season 1 finale.

However, no doubt that the number one statement (or rather understatement) of Lost belongs to these episodes:

John to Eko: “I was wrong”.

How To Share QuickTime Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:54:00 +0000

Sorry, no answers here, only frustration. I’ve recently switched my stills camera from Canon to Panasonic. I’m very happy with the the Panasonic (FZ28) when it comes to pictures, but less impressed with the video feature.

The main issue is the video format. Canon saves videos as AVIs, and it is really easy to edit them with Movie Maker to create a WMV files. WMV files are usually small enough to share, and can be viewed on any machine with Windows.

Panasonic however save the movie as MOV (QuickTime). First problem, the videos are very large. Even when saving as a MP4, they are still large. Second problem, they require QuickTime.

I’ve tried various methods to convert the MP4 to WMV, but the best that I was able to produce was twice the size of the MP4, which is already big.

So, I thought I can share on an online video site and embed on my site. However, I would like to keep them private. YouTube offers private videos, but you have to explicitly share them with people, and that’s no good. MSN Videos however enables to share as Hidden, which is good (they won’t come up in search results, but you can link directly to them), but my MP4 files are uploaded in a second, thus not really uploaded at all, and I have no idea why.

So, I’m frustrated now…

Microsoft Word Crash on Startup

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:49:00 +0000

A relative of mine had this problem a couple of times, so I thought I’d better document it.

When he’s starting MS Word, he gets this message:

"Buffer overrun detected!
A buffer overrun has been detected which has corrupted the program's internal state."

Word crashes afterwards.

The solution is simple. It appears the custom dictionary is corrupted. Renaming it solves the problem.

The file is located here:

C:\Document and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\proof\

Rename custom.dic to custom.old, and the problem will be solved (hopefully).

You can also try to recover your custom dictionary by opening it in Notepad, and removing whatever garbage you find at the end of the file.

Windows 7 – No Rear Microphone Input Detected

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:15:00 +0000

Still trying to figure out the last issues I have with Windows 7. The most urgent issue is that the audio driver doesn’t recognize the rear microphone input, where my microphone is plugged. Obviously, this is a driver issue. I have an Intel board with IDT audio, so I tried checking Intel’s website. There is no audio driver for Windows 7, so I tried the one for Vista. The installation hanged for 10 minutes, and then I got a message that the installation failed. However, I could finally see the rear microphone input in the Recording Devices tab! Hurray! But wait a minute… No sound is coming out… No sound is coming in. Had to roll back to undo the IDT driver installation. Good thing there was a System Restore point close enough.

So now I’ve subscribed to my board’s RSS feed on the Intel website, waiting for an updated audio driver. For now I’ll have to plug the microphone in the front.

Update: The solution is here.

No Images in Gmail in IE8

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:55:00 +0000

I’ve been facing an annoying situation for quite some time. When checking Gmail on Internet Explorer 8 and clicking an email with images, I get this warning message:

As a positive person I automatically click on Yes, and when I try to display the images, they are not shown. So finally I’ve had some time to check this out, and it appears that it may be worth the while to actually read the message rather than automatically click on Yes.

I’m using an HTTPS connection to Gmail. This message actually says that the webpage has content that isn’t available via HTTPS (the linked images), and if you click Yes, that content won’t be delivered.

So if you want to see these images, better click on No.

Thanks for HTTPWatch.

Google Street View zoom feature

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:19:00 +0000

Just found out a real cool new zoom feature in Google Street View. One in Street View, you get a kind of “zoom box” which enables you to zoom to specific spots, and there are multiple zoom levels, unlike the usual two levels. It also enables you to jump quickly to areas which are more far than the current location. If I recall correctly, previously you were able only to jump to the next picture, using the arrows on the road.

Update: just found out it’s called “Pancake”.

Windows 7 low memory footprint + Windows Live Writer bug

noreply@blogger.com (Adi) — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:54:00 +0000

Here is my memory usage now:

With Vista I was at 50% without doing anything.

And here is something I’ve noticed in the newly installed Windows Live Writer:

I do have an idea about why it happens…