I am very busy lately since I graduated with a new job. It turns out that you have very little free time after college. Trying to fit everything you want to do and everything you have to do is hard in the few hours after work, and then the weekends you are busy doing even more stuff.

I would say stay tuned .. but chances are I am the only one reading this. Plus that weird guy Tom who keeps reading my blog.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Stay tuned.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Symptoms

Viewing a folder in windows explorer with thumbnail previews turned on produces an error, crash, or illegal operation. Sometimes this is called a DEP (Data Execution Protection) error if Windows and your processor has that functionality. However, I have experienced DEP errors, illegal operations, as well as strange “unskinned” errors (like a low tech error box that does not do anything but put up an error, as explorer and the videos remain).

Solutions Tried and Failed

My first problem was Illegal Operations that caused Explorer to shut down. Now, if I remember correctly the first solution I tried was downloading updates to all my video codecs in the form of a codec pack. BAD IDEA. This made things much, much worse because the codecs started conflicting with each other. Remember the golden rule of codecs.

With codecs, less is more. Install only when you absolutely have to.

Frustrated, I turned to piracy. I had read people were having success with the Divx (at the time I had narrowed it down to a Divx problem) Pro versions. These are not free. So I downloaded the Divx that people recommended and for a while everything worked fine.

Suddenly, one day out of the blue, DEP errors galore. Opening any folder with videos. Thumbnails or clicking on the file and having it previewed in the left pane. DEP errors are more fun because you can drag the stupid things down to the taskbar and hide them away and they won’t even stop you from seeing the previews, thumbnails, or playing the movies most of the time. Needless to say, it was a major annoyance because once you click OK, explorer disappears and it mangles your taskbar, etc.

Reinstalled codecs. Updated codecs. Downloaded new codecs. Nothing worked. People on the boards all over the place felt my pain. One person had said the only thing that fixed it for him was downloading and installing ffdshow. This is a program to increase video fidelity by using post processing, but also has its own codecs. This worked, for a while.

This takes me to last week. I had to uninstall ffdshow because it was conflicting with a game, for one, and it was causing some weird things to happen in Zoom Player. Everything was fine with it gone for a while. Then I start getting weird errors that are “unskinned” and low tech like they were from Windows 95, just a textbox with gibberish and an OK. The errors don’t close anything down or limit what I do, they are majorly annoying because each video seemed to pop up 4 errors one after the other.

The Final Solution

At this point, I’m pissed, and I’m not going to take it anymore. I found the fix to unregister the dll that allows you to have video thumbnails, but this solution is unacceptable to me. A sacrifice in functionality is alright for some, but not me. I want to solve this thing.

I finally found someone who had a nice workaround. I knew it had to do with Divx and Xvid, and I had since removed all the Divx things from my computer and just used Xvid. I also cleaned off all the extra codecs I could. This is directly from Ogros at Digital Digest.

Download the latest build from www.koepi.org or wherever remove any previous installs of xvid then close all unnecessary applications start the install eg(with Koepi’s when it asks for language DO NOT PROCEED YET hit Ctrl+Alt+Del end task “explorer” then continue install WHEN FINISHED go back to task manager select “file” then “new task” type in “explorer” and you should be good to go.

the reason unistalling then reinstalling xvid doesn’t work very well is explorer will hold the xvid.ax in cache and even if you uninstall and reboot explorer will continue to load the old xvid.ax although running the installation when explorer is closed did update the “xvid.ax” to one which doe not conflict with media player 9.

Hopefully this works for you.

This worked for me. Hopefully it stays that way.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Unfortunately for me, my computer is quickly becoming a box of dead ends. The socket for my CPU is no longer developed (early AMD 64 socket), my hard drives are not SATA, and my graphics system is AGP. Of course AGP is being replaced by PCI-express, and both ATI and Nvidia have said they will not actively develop any more AGP cards. The last AGP card to hit the market is the Nvidia 7800 GS, and most said it was too expensive, but prices have dropped and unless you upgrade your entire computer this is the best bet to hold you over for another year or so. So I went for it.

I got the eVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclocked edition, being the fastest 7800 GS card on the market. Since I had an All In Wonder 9700 Pro before, I needed that TV tuner that I was accustomed to so I ended up ordering an ATI TV Wonder Elite because it is supposed to have great picture quality. This is where ATI drops the ball.

With the 9700 Pro AIW, it came bundled with the ATI Multimedia Center, which has its flaws, but overall has some nice features and was integrated and nicely packaged. However, it seems over the past year or two every release of the MMC has gotten worse. No matter, I thought, Im sure this fairly expensive TV tuner card had some nice software in it to actually watch TV on my PC.

Quite frankly the ATI TV Wonder Elite has the shittiest software I have ever seen bundled with hardware. Seriously, you can barely even watch TV on your PC with the scaled down, terrible piece of junk that is Cyberlinks PowerCinema 3.0 ATI Version. It is a step down from MMC circa 5 years ago. It didn’t even have a program guide when it was first released, and to fix that ATI simply bundled their Guide Plus+ program (that came with the AIW cards) later. By bundled I don’t mean integrated to make it a seamless product, I mean simply gave us Guide Plus+ to install with no connection what so ever to the TV. So I decided to uninstall that crap.

I went to the newest MMC, even though I thought it was a step backward from the last version. Besides, version 9.13 was the only one that apparently worked with the TV Wonder Elite. So I install it. First of all, you lose some features that you had in the previous MMC version (such as video soap). It is slower. It is bulkier. It makes your hard drive spin like its dying (time shifting is ALWAYS on, with NO WAY to turn it off). So its constantly copying TV to your hard drive and this slows down your TV, especially if you have any other program running. The guide through Guide Plus+ also apparently broke with 9.13 so that TV is no longer preview-able in the Guide window. This disconnects the guide with TV once again. Inexcusable.

Exhausting through the ATI line. I went commercial. I tried BeyondTV. This is alright I guess. Hmm, the guide isn’t working. What’s this? My hard drive is going crazy. Time shifting … great. A quick google, you cannot turn it off. Wonderful. Next!

SageTV is nice. It is also 80 bucks. Ouch. Again, I don’t think you can turn off time shifting. I don’t care about pausing live TV. Stop killing my hard drive, let me turn the stupid thing off.

ChrisTV. Wow this isn’t bad. Its a little cluttered, but there are many power user functions to clean up the image. It’s 50 bucks. Blah. There is no guide to speak of. The author says he is making a new version and you have to buy it when it comes out (no free upgrade). Not going to pay for a product at the virtual end of its life cycle. No thanks.

Cyberlink PowerCinema 4 is the full edition to the crap that ATI gave me. No guide offered AT ALL to USA users … what are they smoking?

So now that all the commercial applications are done, I moved on to open source freeware. The first I tried was GB-PVR. It didn’t seem to have the support for the hardware functionality of my card. I also have some trouble setting it up. I uninstalled it.

The final one is MediaPortal. I didn’t have much trouble setting it up, and it is actively being developed. Running it is another story. The configuration program sometimes hangs and does not shut down, ditto for the actual program. It does not work when you try to make it fullscreen from windowed mode. It has numerous bugs for me. For some reason it will not show some channels that I receive fine in other programs. The guide, while integrated, is a pain to set up (with xmltv) and I still haven’t gotten the times to show up correctly.

All in all I can thank ATI for all of this trouble that still hasn’t been sorted out. Why sell a product with some really crappy software and leave your customers hanging and looking for another solution? Oh wait, this is the company that releases buggier drivers every single release that get worse and worse. No wonder I switched to Nvidia.

On the bright side I do love my new video card. Nvidia also has a nice feature for LCD screens to make the graphics card adapt to a smaller resolution that looks nicer than when the LCD itself does it, and it also allows you to play in a lower resolution with a “box” around the area you aren’t using (like a letterbox) that does not degrade the quality. Nice.

Anyone know of any good TV solutions for the PC? I would love to know.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If you liked Survivor’s Quest, you will like Outbound Flight

I had been waiting for Timothy Zahn’s next book for a while, as I think he is probably the most gifted of the Star Wars authors. While Outbound Flight does indeed give us some clues to future developments and a solid background of Admiral Thrawn, it is not the tour de force that the Thrawn trilogy was, nor does it match the epicness of the Spectre/Visions duo logy. It is an enjoyable read, mostly along the lines of Survivor’s Quest, though a bit more involved in ways, and a bit less in others.

Outbound Flight was the main focus of Survivor’s Quest, so it is fitting that the book that explains the history of the Outbound Flight project would be very similar to that book in length and composition of story. With that said, Outbound flight includes all the characters that you met in Survivor’s Quest, as well as some new ones, and of course some old favorites (most notably Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker). Most of the characters not invented by Zahn act in the way you would expect them to act, with Obi-Wan’s righteousness and subtle direction and Anakin’s dangerous ambition coming out as clear as day.

However, as has been faulted to Zahn before, some of the characters seem perfect to the point of being flawed. This was always the complaint about Mara and Thrawn. People who disliked the Thrawn character because he was so calculating and seemed to know all the right moves will find more of the same in Outbound Flight, as Thrawn is clearly on the top of his game even pre-Clone Wars. We also meet a pre-super Car’das, who shows a clear talent for scheming and catches the eye of Thrawn, which was interesting. The C’baoth character is odd in that he is very much like his clone from the first trilogy. Although, because of events in Survivor’s Quest, I assumed C’baoth would be crossing into the darkside, I did not expect the seemingly indifferent attitude from the rest of the jedi cast in this one. I suppose the Jedi at this point are losing their powers to see the darkside in others (after all the Emperor is right under their noses), but the way C’baoth is acting it is quite obvious.

Apart from those character flaws, the book is written cohesively and follows a very good story line about the Outbound Flight project. There are, of course, more clues about the mysterious “threat” from outside the galaxy that was a major theme in the last duo logy and the reason why we remain conflicted about Thrawn’s goodness as a character. Is he fighting for power and gain, or does he fight to protect our galaxy from an unseen invader. You find in this book it may be the latter, and we find that the Emperor may agree.

I would definitely recommend that fans of Zahn’s work read this book, as well as anyone with an interest in Star Wars. However, if you have not yet read Zahn’s previous work, start with the Thrawn trilogy (Heir to the Empire, etc), then the Visions duo logy (Spectre of the Past, Visions of the Future), and then Survivor’s Quest. To get the most of this book, at least Survivor’s Quest should be required reading.

The biggest disappointment is that everyone is even more excited about a large magnum opus that Zahn seems to be building up to, but hasn’t got the energy to write. Who wants to read the book(s) where everyone from the previous books must work together in a conflicted and convoluted way to defend the known galaxy from these terrible invaders? Hell yeah. Zahn should no longer be concerned with keeping his books in line with all the mediocre Star Wars authors, as catering to their ridiculous plots and characters seems to bring his books down. Just continue on and create the masterpiece and we will enjoy it.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tired of SprintPCS dropping your calls????

Recently, due to a job change, I needed to switch cell-phone carriers. At the time, I was having a large number of calls dropped by SprintPCS, in addition to not having adequate coverage in the new areas I traveled for work. When I called SprintPCS to cancel, the customer service representative gave me one hell of a run around – she even threatened to not let me cancel my account – WTF? Finally, in a last-ditch effort to keep me from canceling, she told me how I could get credits for dropped calls and thus lower my bill. The procedure is easy – every time I had a call dropped, I simply needed to do the following :

* Call *2 on your SprintPCS phone (calls customer solutions)
* When greeted by “Claire” (their automated customer service system) and asked what you need help with, simply reply “Dropped Call Credit”
* Sprint will then credit your account 1 minute of airtime at the highest local rate, usually $0.50

The rep went on to tell me “this was permissible for up to 20 times per billing cycle.� Do the math and you will see that it will save you $10.00 per bill. Additionally, if you have a family share plan you can repeat this for each line, saving you an additional $10.00 per line during each billing cycle. The rep stated that even she “does this every month, regardless of whether or not she has had 20 dropped calls. It saves [her] $10.00 per month!�

I wish I had known about this sooner given the large number of dropped calls I have had with SprintPCS from day one…

Just thought that was interesting enough to post, I don’t have Sprint PCS to try it, but it seems legit. Might as well take advantage of a company so screwed up!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

1. I am not here to learn

Seems like a silly statement to make on it’s face, doesn’t it? But is most certainly true. I am not here to learn. I am here to get a degree, a piece of paper that says that I know what you think I should know in my degree field. If I were at college simply to learn, I wouldbe a moron for spending thousands of dollars for someone to tell me what to learn from (books) via teaching lessons that are almost always available for free someplace. No, I am here for the piece of paper, because unfortunately telling an employer that I know something without that piece of paper doesn’t work (if you believe that you go to college just to prepare for a life as a cog in the capitalist machine).

2. Participation grades only hurt students, they don’t help anyone

Yes that’s right. Let’s think about this for a second. There are students who never come to class and don’t do any work. These students fail anyway, the participation grade is just another category in their inevitable failure. There are students who never come to class, but learn on their own. These students do well on the tests and know everything they need to, and yet they are punished for it. There are students who always go to class, but just don’t understand anything (idiots). They do poor on the tests, but high on participation. They get average to poor grades. They are rewarded for ignorance and stupidity, and while going to class all the time, they still don’t understand. There are students who always go to class and do all the work. These students do well no matter what.

So, we have participation grades being no factor in people that don’t attend class and don’t do work (they fail anyway). Participation grades HURT people who don’t go to class, but learn on their own and get good test grades. Participation grades are no factor for people who go to class, do their work, and understand concepts (they do well anyway). Participation grades seem to be made for the idiots who will never fully understand a concept. They prop up bad grades of people who aren’t smart, and either do nothing for people that are smart or hurt those that are smart enough not to go to class. This hurts the dumbasses who don’t understand things by dragging them along at the bottom level of intelligence, and ultimately they just never grasp concepts, and just fly by with their participation grades and poor test scores.

3. In a discussion class, let us discuss

How many times have you been to a discussion class and the TA decides that discussion is just explaining what the book says, or verbally quizzing you about what you read.Hey retards , any idiot with a brain can recite what we read. In college we should be able to draw conclusions from what we read and create our own opinions. When an opinion is brought up in a poor class like this, it is immediately shot down by the idiot TA who thinks its too far off topic. What’s worse is that these classes are often highly participation based which violates the previous rule. Not only that but participation isn’t really participation, it is simply a tedious form of verbal testing.

That is all for now. Bottom line is that I do not need to go to school to learn, and by extension, I do not need to go to class to learn. Thousands of dollars is exchanged for that piece of paper at the end, as well as the facilities and personnel at my disposal, should I need them. That is all.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So, since I want to graduate sometime this decade, I am taking the one available writing intensive that was open, Colonial Latin America. Yes it sucks about as bad as you probably think. Not because of the subject matter, some of it is pretty interesting, but its because I have to read terrible books that were WRITTEN FOR EXPERTS IN THE FIELD. I am not an expert in Colonial Latin America. I know, it’s hard to admit it, but I will. When a book has 100 pages on how far a whisper carries in an ancient andes village and how that affected civilization you know that it was not written for a student. Especially when the book says, “You as an archaeologist,” which as I explained to my teacher is a telltale sign that THIS FUCKING BOOK WAS WRITTEN FOR AN ARCHAEOLOGIST.

So how many such “academic” books have I read since school started 4 weeks ago? THREE! Three terrible dry books. The worst part is I actually have to get up in front of class and explain them to the dwindling class. It took 45 minutes almost last time to explain that curse that they call a book. What made it even worse is that the VT, in all its RETARDEDNESS, has some nice special regulations for a certain parking lot close to the library. Instead of being free to everyone past 5 like every other freaking lot on campus, its specially restricted to grad students and faculty from 5-8. Oh joy. Nevermind that the sign is well before the turn into it from where you go to get to the library. Yes, this was the first time I have ever checked out a book, and no I was not aware of such stupid rules. Not only that but I had the privilege to catch the guy as he was ticketing me. After a nice pleasant conversation in which he stuttered and seemed afraid to even move, I established that he just wanted to leave because he was afraid I would pummel him.

In conclusion, fuck you Virginia Tech! When I graduate I am going to piss on the steps of your school, laugh, and then never donate money although I know you will constantly badger me for it. Take that!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It seems that the raise in the price of gas has caused some students to give up driving their cars to class. It was much much easier to find a parking spot today, and usually being a busy day (Tuesdays and Thursdays) yesterdays events are probably to blame. Instead of driving around the endless corridors of parking lots, avoiding assholes and women who can’t drive worth shit, looking for that one space that the other 100 people are looking for, I was able to find a spot within 1 minute of entering the parking lot. Quite an improvement from the normal day where I have to hold myself back from going into a suicidal rage when some dickhead decides to quickly steal the parking spot of the guy who I had been patiently waiting for to back up and out of.

Kudos to the gas prices and my improved parking situation. All you dumbasses driving shit cars and beaters who don’t have enough money to pay for gas, stay out of my parking lot. Maybe I will get less dings now.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.