Archive for July, 2006

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Reinstalling Windows XP Easily


2006
07.05

Reinstalling is a pain and I need to do that now. I have a 75GB system drive that I want to replace with a 750GB (woo hoo!) drive, but I don’t want lose all the installation stuff. So how can I do this?

You need something called the Bart PE

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Ack Windows Geniune Advantage Failure


2006
07.05

PC Hell: Windows Genuine Advantage Problems and Fixes. Ack one of my PCs has been infected with geniune advantage problem. I can’t seem to fix it other than reinstalling which wipes out the entire installation as I think this is a version I got from the Microsoft Company Store. Interesting, this isn’t something that is well documented on the web.

If you have a geniune version, how do you fix the Genuine Advantage nag?

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New Cingular Phones


2006
07.05

Wireless Advisor has some great forums with previews. Kind of like Howards Forums

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Home Movie DVDs to iPod Video


2006
07.05

OK, I need to get a bunch of my home movies from their DVD .VOB format back into a long .MPG file so that I can make H.264 files for iPod Video. As usual, there are a zillion formats and it is hard to figure out the easiest way to do it. Here is the hairbrained way that I found:

  • Engadget has a tutorial on this. First you use DVDx whcih lets you convert a DVD’s .VOB files. This does require you to understand various settings

An easy way that results in no loss when you go from DVD to MPEG2 is to:

  • VOB Merge . It turns out that DVDs had for a long time a 1GB file limit, so .VOBs are limited to that. You use VOBMerge to do the equivalent of a binary concatenate. You literally copy all the VOB files together. In DOS, it would be like _copy /b file1.vob+file2.vob file”
  • Videora. If you just have the raw .VOB that has the MPEG2 stream, then here’s an easy way, this freeware utility takes a .MPEG2 file and converts into the very efficient .H264 format that iPod Video uses.
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Shooting Fireworks


2006
07.04

!New York Institute of Photography – Fireworks Photography – Tips for Great Fireworks Photographs from NYIP. Happy 4th of July, here are some tips on shooting fireworks. The basics are that you need a tripod and you need to be able to take a long exposure.

With digital cameras, you need a tripod, a cable release and if you have a dSLR, mirror lockup, to prevent shaking. They are set so you need 1-3 seconds to achieve an aperture and ISO:

ISO SETTINGAPERTURE RANGE
ISO  50 Æ’/5.6 to 11
ISO 100 Æ’/8 to 16
ISO 200 Æ’/11 to 22