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One last thing…

OK, make that two last things about the ongoing conversion of the site from FrontPage to WordPress:

1) I am moving items from the old site to the new one in the order that best suits me – from easiest to hardest. I also like to move them in groups. I’m not bothering to copy the timestamps from the old articles, so WordPress treats each “old” post as “new” and posts it on the front page. This means two things: at times, you may see nothing but recipes or “Geek Stuff” entries on the front page. Know that this site has much more to offer than just recipes or Windows tips; I’m just copying them over in a batch, so that’s all that there is on the front page at the moment. Secondly, you may see something that seems out of place. You might see posts on the front page dated today saying that I’m excited “about the Steelers being in the Super Bowl next week” or “going to see the brand new Matrix Reloaded movie this Friday”. Let me assure you that neither are your eyes playing tricks on you, nor am I hopelessly crazy. I’m just copying some old stuff to the new layout and the post was originally written a couple of years ago!

2) At this point, the entire old site is still online (look for the “Old Site” link on the front page under “Links”). However, in the next few days I will begin deleting old pages that have been moved to the new site, and I will probably create a new page in WordPress that has a clickable index of all the old pages that I’m not going to transfer to the new site. In other words, I’m going to move all of the old pages to a directory on the server called “old” and will have an index page where you can click a link to read the page in the “original” FrontPage format. Why? Well, look: an article about converting DVDs to MPEG-1 movies made a fair amount of sense back in 1998, but it’s old hat today. Why should I spend half an hour converting it to WordPress when no one is going to read it anyway? And some articles (while recent) are simply too time consuming to convert to WordPress. My “list of 62 great 80s films” article is only a couple of months old, but all of the links and tables would make it a pain to convert over. Unless I can find an easy way to strip that page’s HTML into something more WordPress-friendly, I’m just going to create a page in WP that has links to all of these types of articles. You follow me?

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USB Drives Not Assigned A Drive Letter

When you attach a USB mass-storage device to a computer running Windows XP or Windows Vista, the operating system assigns the device a drive letter – usually the first available letter. However, Windows reserves that drive letter for the USB device until your next reboot. So if you have a single hard drive (C:) and a CD\DVD drive (D:), and you attach a USB flash drive, Windows will assign the drive the first available letter (E:), but if you remove the flash drive and attach a USB hard drive, Windows will assign the drive the next available letter, which would be F: in this case. Windows won’t “give up” the flash drive’s E: until your next reboot.

This is all fine and dandy, unless your next available drive letter is a mapped network drive. Using the previous configuration as an example, let’s say that you have a network share mapped as F: on your system. You attach the flash drive, which gets assigned the letter E:. But then you attach the USB hard drive and… you don’t get a drive letter! Windows will show that the device is connected to your computer, but the device simply never shows up in Windows Explorer.

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Time Warner’s DVR: how I made it to Engadget!

Time Warner Cable updated the firmware on their SA-8300HD DVR boxes on 10/26/05 at around 3:55am. I know because I was watching TV when the box turned off and a bunch of hex numbers ran across the front panel of the DVR. After it rebooted, I was curious, so I looked into the settings menu. Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

TWC DVR funny!

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REVIEW: VoiceEclipse VoIP Service

What: Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone service
Where: http://www.voiceeclipse.com
How Much: $19.95/month

When I moved from Atlanta to Charlotte, I wanted to be able to keep in touch with family and friends as much as possible. To that end, Lisa and I signed up for MCI’s “The Neighborhood” plan, which gave us unlimited local and long distance calling for around $49.99 a month. This worked well for us for a couple of years, but two problems cropped up which made the plan less attractive: for starters, I simply lost touch with many of my Atlanta friends, which made the plan seems less necessary. Also, MCI raised the monthly fee, so that with taxes one month of “The Neighborhood” ended up costing around $76.

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REVIEW: Uniden CLX475 Phone System

What: A multiple handset phone system from Uniden
Where: Many vendors (We bought it from Sam’s Club)
How Much: around $169 (see below for more information)

Uniden phonesLisa and I recently switched from a traditional phone service to voice over IP (VoIP) provider VoiceEclipse (see my review of the service here). One significant change with switching over to VoIP is that (for the most part), you’re stuck with a single phone jack – which is located on the back of the device the VoIP company sends you that connects to your router or cable modem. While it’s certainly possible to rewire your house for VoIP service, it’s simply a task that most folks don’t have the expertise or confidence to do. So the easy answer for this is a multi-headset phone. Although I was eager to volunteer my services, I don’t think that Lisa really wanted me monkeying around with the telephone cabling.

Now, multi-headset phones have (of course) been around for a while. But it’s only within the past year or so that they’ve actually become affordable in my opinion. But regardless of the model you choose, the phones all offer the same benefit: you can use multiple handsets from a single “base”, which means that you only need a single phone jack to use them anywhere throughout the house – which is prefect for VoIP.

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How To Use Google

I can’t believe that it’s taken me this long to write this! You see, one thing I noticed over and over when doing desktop support is that most people don’t know how to use Google! It’s not their fault – after all, it’s not as if there’s a “Google Class” or anything. But I’d see people get frustrated because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. Now and then I’d try to teach them a thing or two, but since most third-party desktop support is metered, most employers don’t care to pay $85/hour to have their employees schooled on how to use a search engine. Which is a shame, because more and more people are using the Internet at work – and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, the Internet is useless!

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Random Tips

Longtime Ars Technica member Emkorial recently posted a thread in the Ars Lounge entitled “Giving Back: little tips you’re discovered to make life. work or projects easier”. In it, he posited the following advice:

How to perfectly install a power strip – or any device where there are 2 mounting holes – onto a vertical surface:

1. Take power strip. Turn it over.
2. Tear off a piece of masking tape the length of the strip. Apply it to the back of the strip.
3. Using a pencil\pen\poking instrument of choice, poke a hole through the tape where the two mounting holes are.
4. Remove tape from back of power strip and apply tape to mounting surface.
5. Screw in mounting screws where the holes on the tape are.

Viola! Perfectly aligned and spaced mounting screws, with no guesswork involved.

He then asked for other Ars readers to contribute their own tips… and behold, a slew of helpful tips came forth. What follows are a load of random tips that will hopefully make your life a little easier. The tips are divided into two sections: my own tips and tips from other Ars readers.

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My Favorite Things!

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings,
These are a few of my favorite things!

Sometimes when I have trouble falling asleep, I’ll lie in bed and make lists. Lists of anything. My “Top 10 Favorite Movies”… “Top 10 Favorite Italian Restaurants”… “Top 10 Favorite Office Supply Retailers”… “Top 10 Favorite Belgians”… anything. As I’ve been having a lot of trouble falling asleep lately, I’ve found that I’m doing this often. But rather than just letting them slip away into the mists of dreamland, I decided to put them together on a web page. As best as I can, I’ve tried remembering the lists and copying them down as soon as I get up. After awhile, the lists started to become an interesting read… sort of like those emails you get from friends where you’re supposed to fill in crap like this and forward it on to other people. I never forward those things, but as a sort of act of contrition for that, I present you with a “small” list of some of my favorite things! There’s also some of my “least favorite things” and some other funny stuff mixed in there. Lastly, please note that anything in a list is listed in order of preference, unless otherwise noted.

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The Cure or Mr Rogers?

Do you remember MTV’s Remote Control??? It was a game show hosted by Ken Ober (with occasional guest Adam Sandler!) that featured categories like “Dead or Canadian” – where contestants were given a list of celebrities and had to guess whether each was… well, dead or Canadian.

In the spirit of Remote Control, I’m pleased to announce my very own version! Below are several lyrics to songs by either the British band The Cure or from Public Television’s favorite “man in the neighborhood”. See if you can guess which artist wrote which lyrics. The answers are after the jump – NO PEEKING!!

 

#1

I think you’re a special person
And I like your ins and outsides.
Everybody’s fancy.
Everybody’s fine.
Your body’s fancy and so is mine.

#2

You know those things I said
All those things that made you cry
I didn’t really mean that stuff
I didn’t really mean that stuff
All I ever really mean
When I scream and shout the way I do
Is I don’t know
I really don’t
I’m just the same as you.

#3

I love it all
These games we play
I close my eyes
You run away
I’m sure I asked you to stay
But now you’re gone.

#4

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish.
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there’s something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.

#5

I can go far away, or dream anything,
Or wear a scary costume or act like a king.
I can change all my names
And find a place to hide.
I can do almost anything, but
I’m still myself,
I’m still myself,
I’m still myself inside.

#6

Nothing ever puts me out
Nothing ever pulls me in
Nothing ever makes me want to jump
And nothing makes me want to begin
Nothing ever gets me down
Nothing ever gets me uptight
And nothing ever makes me run around
And nothing makes me feel I might

#7

It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair–
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you–
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys–
They’re just beside you.

#8

I never felt like this with anyone before
You only have to smile and I’m dizzy
You make the world go round
A thousand times an hour
Just touch my head
And send me spinning.

#9

Let’s think of something to do while we’re waiting
While we’re waiting for something new to do.
Let’s try to think up a song while we’re waiting
That’s liberating and will be true to you.

#10

If you’ve got an hour,
Now’s the time to share it.
If you’ve got a flower,
Wear it.
This is just the day.

#11

Oh you know how it is
Wake up feeling blue
And everything that could be wrong is
Including you.
Black clouds and rain and pain in your head
And all you want to do is stay in bed.

#12

Please don’t think it’s funny
When you want an extra kiss.
There are lots and lots of people
Who sometimes feel like this.

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Making Icons The Easy Way

Icons used to be something of a black art in the Windows world. Few graphics programs like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop handled the ICO format natively, so one was typically forced to use specialist software like Microangelo to create icons. And while using Microangelo wasn’t especially difficult, it was “different” enough that many people downloaded a demo, installed it, spent 10 minutes playing with it and then decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

Those days are gone though, thanks to a free Photoshop plug-in from Telegraphics. All you need to do is download the plug-in and install it per the instructions for your operating system and software (the plug-in works in most other programs that support Photoshop plug-ins, such as AfterEffects, Corel PhotoPaint, Paint Shop Pro, etc.).

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