Now that you've bought all that loot, get your rebates. Manufacturers lover ebates because 70% of the time, folks don't do the work to fill it in. Even when you do, about half of mine get rejected, so here is this seasons.
SkiWashington.Com. It is very hard to see all the resorts and to know where they are in terms of snow and so forth. Plus where the webcams are as well.
Also,there is a "powder alert"
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 for PC Downloads - RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Downloads - RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Demos. Seems like every game these days ships with a sea of bugs. RollerCoaster Tycoon in our case just crashes out of the box on a vanilla XP machine, hope one of these updates help.
In this case, it needs a 110MB (!!!) update. At least this application has an updater built-in, others just leave you to troll sitesl
Here is data on the rest of the games that I bought for the kids this Xmas:
Cerulean blue - overview. Calvin heard this and was wondering. A very cool shade.
And another great Calvinism that I just had to share. While riding mountain bikes down a trail, I said, Alex you are doing well as are you Calvin and he says,
Alex, he's a single track artist
Should be a bumper sticker :_)
illiminable Ogg Directshow Filters for Speex, Vorbis, Theora and FLAC. I use FLAC for lossless compression to archive music. Until now I've used winamp to playback FLAC files or dbPowerAmp to convert them back to WAV or MP3.
A strange thing is that Ogg has a set of DirectShow filters that will let any DirectShow capable player like Windows Media Player or BSPlayer playback not just Ogg formats like Vorbis, but also Flac. So, loading this gets rid of a reason to have winamp on my machine. Now I just need Musicmatch to do MP3 tagging and BSPlayer for Dvix and Xvid movie playback plus itunes for my ipods.
Interesting to note that FFDShow also claims to decode Flac as well in addition to a zillion other formats but I've not gotten that to work in either the 8-2004 buiild nor the latest 12-21-2005 build.
Here were some final picks:
San Diego Magazine has its readers choice and some of their favoriate are Hacienda de Vega 760-738-9804.
For Japanese, amazingly in the North County Mall is Onami. It is actually supposed to be a pretty good Japanese buffet.
Looking for a place to go out, well San Diego seems to be a sea of Carl's Jr's and King's Table, Costco hot dogs and other fast food places. Moreover, like LA, the traffic is so bad, you can't just go out, you've got to plan. Besices the San Diego local newspaper called the San Diego Reader and San Diego Restaurants seems like a good storted list of places to go. I particularly like their Top 20 list that shows where folks are really going.
What this and every big city site needs desparately is a Google Maps mashup. Judy's Book really did get this right. For big cities, traffic is so bad and street addresses are so meanlingless, you need some way to visually see where things are. So although you can get an Inland restaurant review, there isn't a map to tell you where things are. Good reviews though.
Some good tips for the North County Inland area:
REALtime FM MP3 Recordeing. When you load as many codecs as I do, it is often mysterious what is really going on, so there is a tool called graphedit from DirectX toolkit lets you find it.
You load the File Open and you can see what DirectX would actually load. You can load it from digital-digest.com and learn more about it. A super useful tool.that Chris has a good tutorial on.
Panning and Zooming on Photographs2. While you can create your own with a general purpose tool, About.com has some good advice about specific tools. These take a bunch of photos and does the Ken Burns thing, they then product video files that you can then stuff into a DVD.
The best way to achieve this effect is to use software specifically created for this purpose, such as Canopus' Imaginate and Ulead's CD and DVD PictureShow 3 Deluxe. Imaginate and Ulead are two of the best, with a truckload of prebuilt paths for panning and easy-to-use interfaces. Microsoft also offers the free Photo Story 3. (Thanks to Steve Miller in Middletown, New Jersey for clueing me in about Photo Story).
Learn to Pan/Crop in Sony Vegas. There is also a nice guide in the product, but this is a quick lesson in how to create movement in a bunch of stills.
Apparently there are products that do this automatically, so you don't have to set a crop and path for every photo according to Bill.
San Francisco Day Spas. A great list of spas in San Francisco.
VEGAS FAQ!. My latest problem. You can actually see the video which comes out as a .AVI, but Vegas (a.k.a. Video Explosion) can't read it. Here's the FAQ from a very useful Vegas site called vasst.com. Much more useful than the Sony site..
Why can't Vegas see the video from a file captured by a still camera? Audio plays, just not video. Most digital still cams use an MJPEG codec to compress the media. You'll need to install an MJPEG codec. Visit:
The Future of Music Weblog. Here's how to unlock your Sony notebook SIM so overseas you can use other data services:
1. Very IMPORTANT Before starting anything, make sure you have the ORIGINAL Cingular SIM inserted in your laptop. It will NOT unlock if you have your T-Mobile SIM inside during the unlocking phase.
2. Enable your wireless WAN. In Cingular’s Connection Manager, under network info, record the IMEI #.
3. Open Hyper Terminal (click on Start, All Programs, Accessories, Communications, Hyper Terminal)
4. Connect to COM4
5. Type AT and check if you get an OK echo.
6. If you do, call Sony’s customer service and request to speak with level 2 support
8. Make sure you tell them you want to unlock your laptop’s built-in EDGE modem and you need the NCQU number. (This is an eight digit number.)
9. Type “AT+CLCK=PN,0,xxxxxxxx” (no quotes) in Hyper Terminal, where the XXXXXXXX is your NCQU number and check if you get an OK echo from the terminal. Try it several times, if you don’t get an instant OK, but do not hang up. If it doesn’t work, check the IMEI and the NCQU with the CSR once again.
10. Close and Shut down Computer. Take out the Cingular SIM. Insert the T-Mobile SIM.
11. Open SMARTWI and open up the Cingular Connection Manager.
12. Click on “Profile,” Then look for the “ADD” button at the bottom of the window. Click on “Create Custom Profile”.
13. Fill these in:
Service Type: packet or cicuit
Dialed: *99***1# ( leave it like that )
Acess Point Name: (internet2.voicestream.com)
Username: (LEAVE BLANK)
Password: (LEAVE BLANK)
14. Click next. On IP Settings leave everything on Automatic. Click Next again.
15. In the “Profile Name” slot, Type in T-Mobile or whatever you want. Then Click “Finish”
16. You’re all set to Connect to T-Mobile Internet and avoid the frickin Cingular monthly $79.99 Ripoff to connect.
Sony eSupport - VGN-TX630P. It isn't obvious where to find it, but this is where you find the latest updated drivers. Probably the most importatn right now is the Wireless LAN update. It should fix lots of 2200BG problems.
I still have a problem with Cingular Connection Manager. After a while the low level driver hangs and then you lose the EDGE/GPRS connection. When you try to shutdown, the shutdown hangs.
While 99.99% of all folks will just use the built in ripping in iTunes or Windows, for the true geek, there are really only two ways to do it. Either use Exact Audio Copy or dbPowerAmp with Accuraterip and LAME. So its complicated, but worth it for accuracy.
Here's a quick guide for fellow geeks:
broadband � Forums � Security � Zone Alarm upgrade problem.... If you upgrade an old version, life is hell., In fact Zone Alarm locks up the internet. Instructions on how to clean it up.
Also Iggy has the details:
REBOOT.
To make sure that you can see the ZoneAlarm Plus/Pro system files, if they are still on your computer:
a. Right-click on Start, then left-click on Explore. When the Windows Explorer panel appears:
- In Windows 95, 98: Click View>Options (in Windows 98, this will be called "Folder Options"). Click the "View" tab, then click the "Show all files" radio button.
- In Windows ME, XP, 2000: Click Tools>Folder Options. Click the "View" tab, then click the "Show hidden files and folders" radio button.
b. Make sure you also UNcheck the box to "Hide Protected Operating System Files" if you have one.
c. When searching, be sure it searches ALL hidden files and folders.
d. Click OK.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Making modifications to system files may disable crucial functions of your Windows operating system. We strongly suggest re-enabling the "Hide files and folders" feature once all ZoneAlarm files have been removed.
Click on Start, then Search or Find, and select Files. Make sure that the location box is set to search your local hard drive (usually C :) or All Local Drives.
Type the following exactly - delete any folders found:
zonelabs
"zone labs"
"Internet logs"
Type the following exactly - delete any files found in \Windows or any subfolder below it, or in your \Temp folder):
vsconfig.xml
vsdata.dll
vsdata95.vxd
vsdatant.sys
vsmon.*
vsmonapi.dll
vsnetutils.dll
vspubapi.dll
zaplus.*
zapro.*
zlparser.dll
zonealarm.exe
zoneband.dll
vsutil.dll (please right-click, Properties -> Version to be sure it is a ZA file. Do NOT delete this file unless it is a Zone Labs file!)
Type the following exactly - delete any files found in any folder with "Programs" in the pathname):
zapro
zonealarm
"zonealarm pro"
PC Hell: How to Fix Problem with Limited or No Connectivity After Installing Windows XP SP2. I get this error quite a bit on my Wifi clients. This might be the hotfix that repairs it. Other folks have reported that installing the latest Intel Proset Wireless client helps.
_Wow, local search on google has sure gotten good. On A9 gets you the usual hash. You get a pseudo directory that is clearly SEOed but useless.
On the other hand with google, even though a9 buys from them, the query is much more useful. First, they have a structure local query that is much more accuragte. Gives you the top 10 shops and also addresses and phone numbers. The query results are better too. You go get a yellow pages, but Trek comes out muih closer to the top.
Net, net, it yields two bicycle stores in Escondido, with Google Maps doing a great job on both. The surprise is that the new Yahoo maps beta is simply awesome. Same idea, but much better. See below the difference between Google Maps and Yahoo Beta
By the way the two are a Performance Bicycle shop with a $150 24" kids bike Kids Bicycles @ Performance Bicycle
And there is a local bike shop called Hidden Valley Bike Shop as well.
OK, if you need to decode AC3 and other contnet, you can either download specific codec from xVid or for Free-Codecs.com :: Download AC3 Filter 1.02a test8 : AC3 Filter is a DirectShow filter for AC3 decoding.
However, most folks will be happier with FFDshow, this is a multiformat decoder includes video formats including Xvid, Dvix, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 as well as H.264
Also, for audio, it decodes AC3, DTS, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. So, its a good choice for general decoding and it means that any DirectShow capable player can do this. In a real sense FFDShow is the universal deocder.
It is open source and actually uses less CPU power than Xvid and Dvix codecs as well.
GoNOMAD--Destination Guide to San Diego California. A great pizza place and find in San Diego. Very close to authentic. Most amazing part is that they have 30 inch pizzas. Pasta's aren't bad either.
After working up an appetite wandering through Mission Beach, Luigi's is the perfect place to satisfy hunger. It's a small joint, but the pizza slices are more than a foot long. The atmosphere is relaxed, and the food is inexpensive.
This is a super annoying problem that comes up with most applications that access CDs. Many programs use a programming layer called the Adaptec Systems Programming Interface or ASPI. About 5 years ago, Adaptec and Microsoft had a fight about licensing and Microsoft took it out of Windows. As a result many programs continue to use this layer and then fail when it is not there.
As explained Answer, this is the case with Vegas 6.0 and Video Explosion Deluxe (which is really Vegas 4.0 OEMed). They make it very unclear how to fix and refer you to an old Adaptec driver that is made in 2002 with a broken setup.
Here is how to fix it. First if you have an nForce board, then you need to make sure to load the latest nForce motherboard drivers from nvidia. Just beware that the IDE drivers in particular are very unstable and can cause machines to crash as I've noted in other posts.
So if that break, just uninstall the nVidia IDE drivers.
cold case. Seems like scores on shows like Cold Case are great ways to ehar music. A great site there.
Sony Vegas 6 Pays Off. I've actually loved SolnicFolundry's early efforts and Vegas 6 doesn't get reviewed by the mainstream magazines, but perhaps it cuts the difference between hard to understand professional stuff like Adobe Premiere Elements and easier to use buy buggy programs from Ulead and Pinnacle.
In any case, for $130, you get the Platinum version that does HD and is based on Vegas 6, the %600 big brother.
. If you are lucky enough to have a high definition camcorder then you need a way to edit the video.
Pinnacle is the only consumer package I know that can handle that. $80 for Sutdio Plus and $100 with MediaSuite. The MediaSuite includes Jasc Paint Shop and also audio editing with Steinber WaveLab.
Most folks however report that stability is the real problem iwth Pinnacle. While simpler than Adobe Premiere, it just crashes more. What a tradeoff!
VideoHelp.com - DVD Player Compatibility List. Bill has a knock off KLH DVD-857. I don't have any idea what this is. But, the KLH Digital 1220 is actually a rebadged Apex 1100W, so I'm guesiing all KLH Digitals are really Apexs.
He uses it because it is region free and reads just about anything. Plus it coets $50. But, there he wants to run it from a Pronto Pro TSU-7000, so I either find the equivalence or start using the learning remote feature :-)
Phil found a great set of sites that let you out into the great ourdoors in San Diego.
San Diego Kayaking & Bike Tours in San Diego with Hike Bike Kayak San Diego (866) 425-2925. . They run a whole series of tours. 10% off for bicycling and hiking.
Ohter things that they have are: bike tours including the La Jolla Plunge that leds you decend 3.5 miles down La Jolla. There is also a coastal bike tour. They have custom tours as well. Full day rentals at $55. They rent both Gary Fisher mountain bikes and Feld road bikes. They have kayak rentals there too.
AnandTech: HP DX5150 – OEM plus AMD. A good review of a business system. Interesting to see how performance has really converged. If you upgrade the video card, then you have a very high performance machine.
They recommend the DX5150 X2 3800+ Smart Buy. This actually has a Athlon 3800+ X2 in it and is called SKU PZ635UA# ABA and it is just $950. Amazing when you consider the CPU alone costs $320 at retail. Yes, it has just a 80GB hard disk and a CD-RW/DVD drive, but you can get a 300GB hard drive for $125 and a very fast burner for $55, so it is still an amazing bargain.
Not a bad price and then you slap a new video card in.
King County Library System - Digital Books - OverDrive eMusic. How way cool. You can now check out digital music from the King County Library.
Just need a library card and then you can use OverDrive to get eMusic and Books. Mainly classical music, but some great ones.
Nero [Clean Tools]. There are many great tools that Nero has on their site. Here are some that clean up the registry completely.
I'm going through all the editing programs trying to find one that is easy and powerful
I'm going to surprise myself and say that while I like Sonic Foundry quite a lot, I'm surprised by how good the Microsoft Movie Maker actually is. Its based on an old version of Roxio, but it is surprisingly easy and powerful not to mention free in Windows XP. Best things are the scene detection and then the various title formats. Try the newspaper format as an example.
PCWorld.com - Adobe's New Moviemaking Powerhouse. Everyone seems to love Premiere, but in trying it, I have to agree with folks who say that, like most Adobe products, it is powerful, but hard to learn. Not bovious where to start.
Nero on our DFI LanParty nF4 Ultra D mysteriously has gotten confused about the maximum write speeds of both a Benq DW1640 and a Ricoh drives. It thinks the Benq only writes at 4x and the Ricoh at 2.4x. The main issue appears to be that it doesn't actually set the burn speed until after you have inserted the blank DVD. So you have to actually insert the blank first before you start Nero, otherwise, it makes the worse case assumption and uses the slowest speed.
There are some other potential first as well:
AnandTech: Asus A8R-MVP: Mainstream Rocket. There is a new king of overclocking. For the last year or so, DFI has made the fastest boards with the overclocking.
Now the value oriented A8R-MVP along with the ATI Crossfire X1800XT is just amazingly quick.
Or, if you have lots of dough, the DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR Expert at $210 is the board to get. It has amazing overclock if you have the right coolling. So some great choices here. Paired with an nVidia 7800GTX, it will scream.
Personally, the A8R-MVP makes some sense, but you have to get an ATI card for that to really rock, so on to that study.
Saratoga CA Day Spa, Los Gatos Day Spa, Consulting - Preston Wynne. Hey Peter told me that this was a great spa place in the South Bay. Check it out. Seems very nice!
Besplit is a utlity that cuts up an MP3 file intelligently, so it happens on blank spaces. I've been using MP3DirectCut to do a similar thing, so another option if you've got a big file that needs to be cut.
Another hat tip goes to Besweet Light. This is an easy to understand tool that uses Besweet underneath. It lets you simply transcode MP3 and others applications. You can fix just about anything. Take a 44Khz CD track and use it on a 48KHz DVD track and so forth.
EXTREME Overclocking - 1GB & 2GB ATP Secure Digital SD Memory Card Review - Page: 6 - Tweaking PC Hardware To The Max. Memory cards are all pretty much the same, but for $68 vs. $50 for a vanilla card, you get one that is about twice as fast on writing. 10MBps is 60x the normal speed.
These folks also make a 22MB (150x card), but the reviews on pricegrabber say it is unreliable on writes and corrupts. Too bad, it is the same price as the 60x card. Phoronix likes their test sample though so go figure.
Another choice is the Transcend 80x which seem to get good pricegrabber reviews and is $65 with a $10 rebate right now through the end of the year at zipzoomfly.
Philips 7FF1AW Digital Photo Display review - Engadget - www.engadget.com. Pete just got this for Mom and Dad. I have to say that for $250 I'm impressed. It is essentially the size of a 4×6 frame, but the display looks great and it takes just about any memory card including SD, MMC, Memory Stick or Compact Flash but not xD for all you power nerds.
You do need an external card since there is just 8MB of internal memory in the thing, but the display is nice and sharp.
So if you haven't gotten one for Christmas, its a great idea. I particularly like the fact that all it needs is a memory card, so it doesn't have to pretend to be a networked device with all that brain damage.
It makes the perfect gift for your parents, get a 1GB card, load it up with all your pictures, put it into the box and mail to them :P)
VAIO TX610P/B Notebook (Sony-VGNTX610PB) - PriceGrabber.com. Bill and Jon were asking me about laptops to buy, For the mobile road warrior, I have to say the new TX610 is pretty much the dream. About $2K, but the main thing is incredibly light at 2.7 pounds and the battery life is really six hours.
It is the smallest notebook I've found with a true DVD in it. So it isn't like the IBM X50 for instance that is smaller but doesn't have an optical drive
Digital Darkroom Forum: Can anyone brint borderless 8×10 on Canon i9900?.It is a ridiculous issue, but apparently, Canon doesn't let you set arbitrary sizes for your paper. So the very common 8×10 isn't supported, although 8.5×11 is. How wierd.
Here is how I do it with my Canon i9900 and Photoshop CS2, I just fake the Photoshop out into printing an 8×10 onto what it thinks is an 8-1/2×11 piece of paper.
The workaround from this helpful site is:
) Creat a 13×19 white (or transparent) document of appropriate color depth and resolution in your image editor
2) Select, copy and paste your 8×10 image into the 13×19 document, and align the image to the upper left-hand corner of the document
3) Load your i9900 printer with your 8×10 paper
4) Instruct your image editor / Canon i9900 printer driver to print the borderless 13×19 document with your preferred paper type and image quality settings (whatever you've determined is optimal for this stock)
I have an older S9000, but I've played similar tricks on it, successfully getting it to produce borderless prints on stock sizes not supported by the driver, but within the dimensions of other supported borderless stock sizes (4×6, 8.5×11 -- the only borderless print sizes it supports).
Had a great discussion with my buddies at Network Magic. We were talking about pages that really sing and work for downloading and trying.
It's interesting to see folks that are doing brochureware sites with lots of graphics vs. folks who are google or apple white space where less is more. Some good examples:"
Google Labs. My personal favori
Tim just told me about an ultracool wifi D-link camera. I've used these cameras before and they stink. John has used everything and he told me that is is great. What they say is great about it is that it swivles and rotates and it is actually easy to setup and it looks cool too.
It has this wierdo name Secure Wireless-G but check uit out.
Hatip to the folks at Network Magic
Now that I'm full bore doing digital pictures, the question is what should you use for editing. There are three tracks: a) getting professional software mainly from Adobe for hundreds of dollars, b) getting amateur stuff for dozens or c) living with freeware.
H2. Amateur Software
This prosumer software has gotten quite good, so it is probably the best compromise for most folks. Here sare some recommendations. You can try out most Adobe products, so don't be shy to try them first.
H2. Professional Software
Adobe seems to lead the pack here because it has so many plug-ins
Ok, for the turly adventuresome, go for it!
Red River Paper Color Profiles Home. Am using this paper now, it requires a particular ICC. This is a profile that will ensure that the printed color looks like what you see on the screen . As usual, it is a little complicated, download the profile for the paper you bought in my case Red River 68 lb. UltraPro Gloss and then since there
Musicmatch Jukebox - World's best music player. Well, I love Musicmatch and even though Yahoo has acquired it, it has served me faithfully.
It is the only one of the big players that did smart tagging right. That is, it lets you select the tags and make them accurate in batch. But alas, now that I have Chinese music, it has failed me.
Beware, the latest Musicmatch 10 doesn't support international and the older Musicmatch 9 for Simplified Chinese won't install on English Windows XP. Seems like those folks need to learn a little about Unicode. The main issue is that it converts all my Chinese tags in my MP3s to a alphabet soup. So sad.
I guess, I'll have to start using iTunes more, but that doesn't have this smart tagging thing. Or segregate music by Chinese vs English.
Well, it sure has been a busy year for cameras. We started with the tipover to digital just happening, but now the price points and the cameras make it a no brainer. Heck, we bought two digital cameras ourselves this year (Canon SD500 and Fuji F10) and for once I have to say that they are really good. The main issue remains the limited exposure latitude that these cameras have. They just won't take good pictures in scenes with lots of difference between light and dark. But nevertheless, we are taking more shots than ever. Here is the latest recommendations for stocking stuffers with thanks to the buying guide at imaging-resources.com. As a small aside, folks are in a megapixel battle, but it turns out with the small point-and-shoot cameras, the lens makes much more difference, so for instance, the Fuji has about 1400 lines or resolution but the Canon SD550 is about 1200 lines even though the Fuji is just 6megapixel and the Canon is 7megapixel. To confuse things even more, the cameras have builtin sharpening and other algorithms, so sharpness itself doesn't tell you if the image has good color, etc. so overall the Canon has better print quality than the Fuji, so read the reviews but here in price order are the cameras I would get:
The next hop down are the point and shoots. Personally, I like the ones that are as small as possible but with great quality. These cost more, but IMHO they are worth it. Most are $350-450 street. These four are very good cameras, but I would probably favor the Fuji F10 right now for general ease of use and low light use. Canon is a strong brand and good quality, the Casio has full manual control and the Sony is tiny.
And then there are the near misses: