Georgi.Budinov.com » Common

Hard drive lost memory headaches on an old XP machine

Georgi Budinov — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:27:00 +0000

Hello, it’s been a long time since my last post. I have been really busy … doing a lot of stuff … so you can expect some new stuff from me right away but please be patient. Now straight to the problem:

I have a old laptop (actually 3 years old Dell Inspiron 1520, well guarantee just dropped ) and I had problems with it for the last few months. I have partitioned the 140GB hard drive like C: – 20GB and D: – 120GB. That was decision some time ago so don’t judge me for that please. 6 months ago I noticed I am running low on C so I started trying optimize stuff, actually for that time I did a lot of tweaks like switching off hybernation, moving page file to D, reinstalling programs from C: to D: … and so on. Tried DSKCHK with no success. Tried defragmenting it – again no success because of the low free space – less than 15%. Yesterday I got really pissed with this and downloaded a piece of software – WinDirStat and started checking where are the biggest files on C: … finally I concluded that I have used actually like 5 GB of memory, have 2 GB free and the rest is missing. Then I thought ok … what is left … system restore problem ?

Noo … I turned it off 6 months ago, it is not that. But then I tried turning it on, lowering the size of system restore, restarting the laptop, turning it of and guess what … 14GB free space. WTF!? For some reason last time when I have turned it off the laptop didn’t restarted normally and these 10GB have been held in the ‘System Volume Information’ folder.

Bookmark It

YouTube’s policy for inappropriate content and the embed function

Georgi Budinov — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:05:22 +0000

Recently I noticed something in the way YouTube manages the videos flagged as inappropriate by some users. You know such videos you want to watch but you must be logged in. This way you accept and confirm you are older than 18 years. On my facebook profile I had a post with such a video – it is embed of the video as you know. And guess what – everyone can play it. It doesn’t matter it you are logged in or not. Here is the example:

The YouTube video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJvIWGMe61E

Try this html code for the embed:

And what I am thinking is : Is this a bug or feature ?

Bookmark It

Yet another case for lawer’s opinion on UniCredit Bulbank’s queue

Georgi Budinov — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:01:05 +0000

Today I was waiting for around 45 minutes in order to get to the cashier to pay my rent for the apartment.While waiting on the queue I had to be a witness of a conversation between the operator and a customer. They argued on the following situation:

The customer had gone the EasyPay cash desk and forgot his credit card there.
The EasyPay operator gave a call to the bank about the lost card.
The bank blocked the credit card and called the customer
He got to the EasyPay office and got back the card.
The bank opeator on the cash desk wanted 2BGN tax in order to activate the credit card
The customer went mad (he stated that he never called the bank to block the card and it is their fault and he should’t be paying. He also said that he will raise a case against the bank)

At the end the cash desk operator paid the tax of 2 BGN but the customer gave her 5 BGN to ‘buy a coffee’.

What do you think? Which one is the right side?

Bookmark It

Happy programmer’s day to all!

Georgi Budinov — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:53:25 +0000

Happy programmer’s day to all of us coding all the day and drinking beer. Cheers! Should we count the 128th day of the year for another programmer’s day ? Here in Bulgaria it is not a holiday at all but anyway

+ 1 vote from me!

Bookmark It

PayPal and its account optional setting

Georgi Budinov — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:27:30 +0000

I had played with PayPal’s integration in a few online stores but never got to this stupid situation. For those that are not aware, the ‘Account Optional Setting’ allows the customers of an online store to pay directly, supplying the credit/debit/prepaid card information. This is really really awesome feature, because creating PayPal account is actually not enough to make a payment. Customers must verify their cards through PayPal which is done by moving through some steps including:

PayPal charges your account for 1.50 US Dollars or Euro … actually I am not very sure
Then you go to your bank account provider and ask for the description in the transaction. Should be 4 or 5 digit number which you need in the next step
Go to your PayPal account and supply that to verify

That is it! Then you can make payments through your PayPal Account. Isn’t this too much to buy a pair of shoes ?

Here comes the Account Optional Setting which allows all of this to be skipped. The bad news are that merchant accounts from specific countries have this option available. On the other hand this is not mentioned anywhere in the docs!!! You get to know that when you start searching for the option. I found a list of countries that have this feature enabled in some forums … don’t know if it is updated:

Australia
Belgium
Canada
France
Hong Kong
Netherlands
United Kingdom
United States

Bookmark It

Megalan Ltd. surprises me with own iptv

Georgi Budinov — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:18:30 +0000

Hi all, these days a friend of mine told me that Megalan Ltd. have released streams with iptv. Several channels with digital quality and options for subtitles and audio in Bulgarian. Some months ago iptv.com shut down all megalan ‘s users and I was very upset – I really used that instead of paying to cable operators for tv. That was a period of watching online tv from the sites of the television operators directly, where available of course.
So I downloaded the allChanels playlist and played for while to setup the VLC player and all is fine Megalan … Really thank you.

Bookmark It

Summer vacation ends

Georgi Budinov — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:24:13 +0000

I was on a holiday these days, so I haven’t written anything for some time. I was at Sunny beach for a week, had a great time and relax to the limits. Now back to work

I want to share something that came to my mind two days ago. I saw taxi car – station wagon, and from the car got out 6 people excluding the driver! It is really funny to see two fat english or swedish girls getting out from the trunk. I remember the time when I was in Portsmouth for 3 months – they had taxi cars 5 and 6 seated, some of them really cool looking with colored lights inside and good music. Really nice idea and I am wondering is there such a taxi company in Bulgaria- I think no! This is really cool – Have you ever come up with 5 or 6 people looking for a taxi and wondering how to split ?

Bookmark It

MTel month taxes issues

Georgi Budinov — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:41:56 +0000

Today I paid my mobile phone bills and I was surprised with a slightly bigger amount that what I was expecting. So that I tried to find out what is happening. My provider is MTel. So I noticed that my motnhly tax for the service MTel Comfort 500 is 26.50 BGN but it should be 15.90 BGN or something like that. It is no big deal but the question is why … So I called the operator and they explained to me that this was because the previous month the tax wasn’t included. Why? Because the mobile phone has been prevented from working because of unpaid bills. What an explanation I would say. I looked at my previous bill – they were right! WTF ? They can’t add the tax to the bill when the phone is blocked. I simply cannot believe this.

Месечна такса М-Тел Комфорт

26.50

Bookmark It

Failure accessing your mail at yahoo?

Georgi Budinov — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:25:48 +0000

Today is one of those days I need to have more luck in doing simple stuff like accessing mail account and checking mail at yahoo. Yes, yahoo mail is not working today. Trying accessing it and you get something like:

Sorry, the page you requested was not found.

I am really upset. I was making registation, (an important one, not for me. I never would use yahoo) and couldn’t finish the process because of activation feature through email. I suppose I am not the only one experiencing this. Yesterday it was ok but WTF … That is why I do not use yahoo!

Bookmark It

Automated fixed phone line call ?

Georgi Budinov — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:31:39 +0000

All of you hate those SMS messages that you recieve when you forgot to pay your bill. The mobile operators usually do that to remind you politely to pay it. Ok that is fine. I was thinking what could be done by the fixed phone line operators to achieve the same effect. OK I understood it yesterday at the office. We have a fixed line there and someone has forgotten to pay the bill (happens to everyone). So the phone rings, you pick up and some automated call operator is telling you to pay the bill … WTF? They already make advertisement by sms messages. I wonder when they will start doing it this way on the fixed line. Actually I don’t know for how long the VIVACOM operator is doing this but it is something new for me … I was stunned …. no comment

Bookmark It