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Showing posts from March, 2009

Future of the HDD with label MUSIC

The MUSIC is 300 GB (279 GiB) and it is losing its free space rapidly. 64.9 GiB left. When MUSIC reaches 15% free space, I will buy another 1000 GB HDD and label it Music0001. There are two DVDs already with Music0001 and Music0002. I will move them to Archives. The current Music album will only have Music Video DVDs. Current MUSIC drive will act as DUMP. The current DUMP will become Archive0148.

Cat-unfriendly casings

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Think twice before you are going to buy a casing like this:

First HDD being burnt using HDD Burner

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Content so far, as catalogued using CD Bank Cataloguer. Application name is quite a misnomer. It can catalog CDs, DVDs, and also HDDs. Continuing from the old naming schemeTV0097 is the first HDD being burnt.

HDD Burner

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Got my USB Disk Dock with eSATA today for $49. I like to call it a HDD Burner as I will be using HDDs similar to DVDRs.   Now you can hook up a dirt-cheap SATA disk drive to your PC or Mac by simply plugging it into this USB docking station that works just like an iPod dock. Until now, if you wanted to add a bare hard drive to your computer, you either had to put it in some sort of enclosure, or open up your PC and install it next to the other drives in there. The USB Disk Dock couldn’t be simpler, accommodating 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA disks that you simply plug into the unit. Now features eSATA connectivity for super fast data transfer. The package includes 1 x eSATA cable and 1 x USB2.0 cable.

Gmail Date/Time in ISO 8601 standard

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First step is to enable this in Gmail > Settings > Labs Once you enable that in, the next time you load Settings, you are going to see: Choose yyyy-mm—dd and HH:ss and you are set.

Vista Media Center and Music Video playback after Vista Codec Pack

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Configuration Windows Vista 64-bit Vista Codec Pack + x64 Components Fixes Setup new user account MPEG2 decoder changed from Disabled to libavcodec Playback Tests Armin van Buuren - Sound of Goodbye 2008.mpg Armin Van Buuren feat. Sharon Den Adel - In And Out Of Love.mkv Armin van Buuren - Burned with Desire.avi Armin van Buuren feat. Jaren - Unforgivable.mpg Conclusion With a bit of tinkering every video played fine. Need to test Windows 7 x64.

Vista Media Center and Music Video playback

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Configuration Windows Vista 64-bit CoreAVC 1.8.5 AC3Filter Playback Tests Armin van Buuren - Sound of Goodbye 2008.mpg Video ID                               : 224 (0xE0) Format                           : MPEG Video Format version                   : Version 2 Format profile                   : Main@Main Format settings, Matrix          : Default Duration                         : 3mn 20s Bit rate mode                    : Variable Bit rate                         : 3 826 Kbps Nominal bit rate                 : 7 700 Kbps Width                            : 720 pixels Height                           : 576 pixels Display aspect ratio             : 16/9 Frame rate                       : 25.000 fps Standard                         : PAL Colorimetry                      : 4:2:0 Scan type                        : Interlaced Scan order                       : Top Field First Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.369 Audio ID                               : 160 (0xA0) Format        

HTPC Screen Freezes without watching TV

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Disappointingly my initial assumption bites the dust. TV Tuner may be not be the faulty device after all. This happened in Windows Vista 32-bit after watching a local video file. My options: Remove TV Tuner completely from the Casing and run for a few days Run Windows 7 build 7022 for a few days to see if same thing happens

Install Windows Updates before Restart?

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Why is this not possible? I have not seen this possible in Windows XP, Vista or even in 7. I have to shut down in order to install Windows Updates. Choosing Restart makes the “install updates” option disappear. What gives?

AC3Filter SPDIF settings for HTPC

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Contrary to my initial belief, MPEG Audio does not need to be passed through SPDIF to the Amplifier. DTS and AC3 if enough. I had to untick MPEG Audio in order to get a music video sound working.

Better sort MsgPlus Chat Log sub folders

Save the following to a .reg file and import to Registry. Install MsgPlus afterwards. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePatchouMessenger Plus! LiveDefaultSettingsPreferences] "LogsDateDirFormat"="yyyyMM" "ChatLogTimeStampFormat"="HH:mm:ss" Every new account loaded in WLM will automatically inherit these settings in MsgPlus. ChatLogTimeStampFormat is not required for this change but I included that anyway to enforce ISO-8601 usage.

ZScreen & Greenshot

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I believe we should both get together and release one killer app for us – for our users. Google shows both ZScreen and Greenshot has an equal userbase. An amalgamation would be very attractive.