Hotspot Shield and other stuff

Seems this is a double-post day so enjoy it.
First of all .. a little something about myself : I love to watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Two very interesting, funny and most of the times intelligent shows that relax and entertain me. Since I don't have Comedy Central here, I used to download the shows off torrents, but then I discovered I could watch whole episodes on Comedy Central's website. Which was excellent. Well, 2 days ago they introduced a new commercial thingy, from which they make some money, but it also means that you can't watch the show unless you live in specific regions aka the US and Canada. The way they check your location is via your IP. So thanks to someone's comment I tried Hotspot Shield a little program that creates a VPN and basically masks your IP and protects in/out-going data. By using this tiny little program you can now watch those shows and browse more securely.

Second because Vista SP2 was released to manufacturing yesterday, Windows Update now features a new update ..for the updater itself. It's exactly the same thing that happened before the release of SP1, so as to have a smoother install when the service pack gets here. So go ahead and install that . The update is KB955430.

Adobe Flash

A few days ago I installed the Adobe CS3 because I needed to work on some projects. Unfortunately ..ever since I reinstalled Windows, for some reason Flash CS3 doesn't work any longer on Vista. Don't ask me why ..it was working perfectly before. So I got myself Flash CS4 and installed it. Well the program itself worked without a hitch .. but after installing it I noticed that certain Flash dependent apps ( such as Yahoo Messenger) went haywire, because each of these apps were primarily searching for " flash.ocx" ( the global flash plug-in file), but the new file was flash10a.ocx ( due to the version change). So I kept getting errors and reduced functionality because of this.
One simple solution is to go to C:/Windows/System32/Macromed/Flash find the flash%n.ocx file ( replace %n by whatever version of flash you have ..9a/9b/10a/10b- if older it should simply look like flash.ocx and you shouldn't be reading this post). Create a copy of the file ..and simply rename it to flash.ocx This should work in most cases and get you back to normal.
For some reason ( most likely because of some older registries ) this didn't work for me so I had to reinstall Y Mess for everything to get back to normal. ( when I reinstalled it actually updated the flash plug-in from flas10a.ocx to flash10b.ocx)
Cheers, and enjoy the long weekend everyone.

Vista SP2 RTM

Vista Service Pack 2 was released to manufacturing today/yesterday. It's not a very big deal, as I said the OS doesn't desperately need it anymore ( as was the case before SP1).  It was on the way we all knew and it's the next step. It includes all updates released after SP1, some security fixes and a few compatibility issues that were addressed, and it will be  released to the general public in Q2 ( meaning May or June).

Here are some of the key benefits of Windows Vista SP2: ( taken directly of the Windows Team's Blog )

• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches
• Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology
• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration
• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.
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Browsers

I'm really pissed right now, for half an hour I've been trying to get to different sites and I have to use all possible browsers that exist each for a particular thing.  And i'm sick of it .

A good simple, good design and ergonomic browser is just something that doesn't exist and never will !!!!! Firefox looks like shit, I personally hate it + I can't even download it right now cause it doesn't f-ing work! Opera works like shit! Internet Explorer IS shit! And Chrome still needs some work put into it for my liking. Safari doesn't even count. I prefer text browsers rather than Safari. I prefer trying to get to a site via Command Prompt rather than Safari. I prefer physically going to the server and printing out a carbon copy of the page's source code rather than using Safari.

So I guess I'll just have to revisit THE LIST of less popular browsers and one out of there..

God damn it!

Windows 7 RC

Besides buying laptops, installing Windows and remaking the blog template there hasn't been too much going on. But the highlights are that we finally have a date for Windows Seven Release Candidate 1 and that is: 30th April for MSDN and TechNet  and May 5th for everybody else.

For all you haters, ignorants or just unsure and concerned people out there that believe Win 7 will be crap and you're still in love with your XP and your apps the people at MS actually did something useful :Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC. 

It's a mod for win seven that will allow you to install XP apps via Virtual PC and then run them in Seven. Check the link for more info.

Oh and on the lighter side of things the Yahoo Mess team did a little tinkering around and now you profile can show your updates from multiple social sites such as Last.fm and YouTube and Tweeter directly in YMess. Check out this post for more info.

Blog Template

You may be wondering why the blog looks somewhat different. Well I was in the mood to play around with the coding, and I actually had a few different ideas that would have looked nice. The first one was to get the background back, a little blue stripe on the edges of the screen ( like we have now). For that I had to change the background color and the sizes of the different wrappers. I've tried to optimize the site for 1024 screen resolution, so the original wrapper was 1024 pixels. I changed that to about 900 and the site looked weird. I tried changing the main and sidebar wrapper to make them smaller ..but it still looked weird so I reverted back to the original  sizes.

Google has the following thing written next to the editor view : You may want to save your template before editing it. Guess why? So tings don't go horribly wrong as they did for me. When I went back to the original wrapper sizes something got screwy because the site ( regardless of any changes that I tried) was about 20 pixels more than it should be, thus going off screen, thus creating horizontal scroll bar that looked and felt like s%$t. I tinkered around some more ( I swear I did know what I was doing!) but somehow the sidebar got screwed all together.

Now this is the thing that I truly and honestly completely hate about technology. When things don't work without any reason. It's like you give the command : print 1 and your PC without any possible explanation prints 2. I always get extremely pissed when stuff like this happens, and it's probably my weak point when dealing with tech stuff. 

It was at that point that I almost threw my monitor out the window, but I managed to calm myself. And I began anew, with a new template modifying it from the basic aspect, and I finally got to what you can see now. There were more changes that were supposed to happen, but technology hates me and for some reason I couldn't change the header sizes and a few more other things. 

 Anyway it doesn't look too bad ( I got rid of the header that annoyed you so much) and I hope you like it.

Don't worry!

Don't worry - we're from the internets. It's going to be alright. :-)

People will mock me and say that I'm melodramatic .. but this is for everyone that sacrificed at least a little bit for freedom.

AW-GA800BT

Instead of doing something decent, such as studying for my exams today I decided to tinker around with a little wifi card that a friend of mine brought around a few weeks ago. Now this is a dangerous business, tinkering around with your computer like i do every week.  You may end up burning your motherboard ( like i almost did), frying your CPU ( like i almost did), breaking you GPU ( guess what goes in this parenthesis), reseting some important CMOS or BIOS settings and oh so many many more things can go wrong, not because you don't know what you're doing but rather  because things tend to go wrong. But if you're lucky and things DON'T go horribly wrong then you'll end up with something nice plus a feeling of achievement.

The wifi card in question is a AW-GA800BT usually found directly soldered onto Asus motherboards. But this was a standalone card. Its technical specs have a big 50 font, saying the card is based on USB 2.0 which is all fine and dandy if USB only had 5 wires instead of 4. But hey I completely ignored that...it wouldn't be the first time something worked with only half the wires plugged into it.

So I took an old USB cable, cut it to pieces and directly connected it to the board via the 4 circuits that it had on one corner and the big "USB" sign written next to them. Then connected it to the PC. Guess what ..well that didn't work.  The next thing that I tried was to stick it into a USB port onto the motherboard via it's correct pins. Well that WOULD have worked if only USB had 5 wires instead of 4.  The problem with it is that the card needed two power cables. The classic 5V usb one, plus another 3.3V that I don't have.  I decided to take a old HD LED cable..because of it's easy connectors and cut it, connect it to the board and stick it onto another USB port's 5V wire. Originally I also added a diode thingy (that I took out of an old walkie-talkie) to drop the voltage from 5V down to 3.5 V. But for some reason when I redid the wiring the voltage went down to 2V which was less that I needed. So I took out the diode and used the 5V thing and luckily it didn't burn the card, it doesn't overheat and works just perfectly now.

To do all of this I had to use Google Translate , and translate this whole forum into English so I could understand something. Anyway thanks to everybody on the forum, and I really hope they don't mind I use their pics for explanatory reasons.

This is the old walkie-talkie and next to it is the card itself.

This is the card, and the old LED wire, connected to the 3V socket.

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This is the wiring on the card, that's how you have to connect it. Original picture is found on the forum I mentioned above.

Again one more picture with the wiring

This is the end result, and I know it looks ghastly but it actually works perfectly it it's not that screwed up. You have one small cable that you connect on the motherboard to a 5V usb pin, and another wire that goes into any classical USB jack ( the kind in which you fit your flash drives)and that's it. Anyway hope this helps someone, it was quite fun to do. Cheers

Early Morning

      Most people like to wake up to the smell of coffee, read a newspaper, check out the news online, perhaps stretch a little, maybe even have sex and that's a great way to start the day. But for me ..honestly speaking there's nothing better than a panic attack and a great feeling of dread, to get you out of bed.

      Besides waking up with a headache ( as usual) today I also woke up to find that my PC was not working. On turning it on it would simply stand by, with both fans at max power and do nothing.  My first thought was that there might be something wrong the the CPU ..in which case I was screwed. But after about 30 seconds the motherboard ( Asus P5KC) beeped. One long beep followed by 3 short ones. That was a decent sign for me, so I got out my handy "Beep codes and you" manual ( i'm kidding I got the mb's manual) and found out that one long beep followed by 3 shorter ones means there is no VGA input. So the video card was to blame( nVidia Geforce 8800 GTS 512). Now this may have also screwed me, because upon adding the second fan to my GPU aka ..opening it up I had lost my warranty. I checked the connections, the wires and everything because it's easy to dislodge the board out of it's proper place, but there was nothing wrong.  I then proceeded to taking it out, and putting it back in. Fortunately that worked and everything came back to normal...almost. Because after I booted Windows i quickly got a BSOD, but it seems it only was a one-time event. Now I'm off to have my coffee. Cheers

iPhone Bug

This is probably the weirdest thing that ever happened to me on a phone, not just on a iPhone.

Today I was sitting next to a friend, both of us with iPhones. I was using the new Yahoo Messenger app while he was streaming radio over 3G. Meanwhile another person, outside of the building, with another iPhone sent HIM an SMS message. Now here comes the weird part: I received the message, and it displayed it with the contact info from my friend's phone. And I didn't even have that person's number on my cell!

Most people would jump and say it was addressed wrong or that I was using the other phone, but I wasn't and it wasn't. When the 3rd person came by, we all checked the addressing ( which was a reply to an earlier message), the numbers and everything.  When I checked my SMS app, the message was gone, it was never saved, nor opened, only displayed. Everything was correct, but I got the info/sms and my friend didn't receive anything. 

We then proceeded to test the phones in different scenarios to try and recreate the bug but we couldn't. I checked around the net for anything related to this but it seems this is the first ever.

PS: here's some info on the phones: all of them are 3g phones, my friend's and the 3rd person's being jailbreaked while mine is legitimate.

 If anyone hears anything about this I'd appreciate a reply or something. Cheers

Yahoooo Messenger

     As some of you may know Yahoo announced a few days ago they would be launching a new app for the iPhone, the Messenger app. Well today was that day and the app is out. You can find it on the AppStore, but right now it's only available on the US Store. So I decided to check it out.

    The first thing you must remember is that YAHOO! is NOT THE SAME THING as YAHOO! MESSENGER. I had no idea there were two apps flying around, both official yahoo stuff. The first one "Yahoo!" would actually be cute if it wasn't utter crap. It's an app designed to give you all your yahoo stuff, such as e-mails, news, messenger, flickr, etc all in one app. The idea is nice, the design is actually very nice but the implementation is very bad. The app is slow, refreshes all the time and  I actually made it crash twice by pressing two buttons on the screen at the same time. You don't get any notifications on new messages and well ..it's simply useless. The only thing it would be good at ( in my opinion) is for reading the news but of course you can do that via Safari or any of other 1000 news related apps.

    The second app, and the one I was originally looking for is Yahoo!Messenger. Their icons are the same except the Messenger one has a yellow smiley on it. Well this app is great. Though a friend of mine complained it was sluggish, I didn't experience any problems with it. The design is great, simple and direct, you can change your status, you can even host a link, you can send pictures ( tried it and it worked great) either from your library or by taking a pic right there. Aaaa it still has a few more features but I don't remember them right now. Anyway it really is excellent, supersedes Palringo and OneConnect and especially Fring.

 If you want a full list of features, and some more info you can visit the Y! Messenger Blog. Oh and I also embedded the presentation video for the app. Cheers