Wacaom Graphite 4 driver for XP works with Vista

I found out that the latest Wacom XP driver works with Vista. This is great, because without the Wacom tablet support , the new OS means nothing to me.

Vista really seems more secure

I just forced to touched some of the Vista security setting because Zone Alarm couldn't be installed on the Vista, and Vista indeed comes with a firewall that allows blocking outbound traffic.

The Vista firewall seems pretty complicate to set up, so if I couldn't get what I need, I may soon give Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall Version 4.3.268 a try.

Vista makes me realized that a lot of my so called portable application is actually not as portable as I though. Quite some of them still require administration right to modify registry or retrieve system information to generate Hardware ID. For instance, Painter XI require administrator access (by setting the shortcut to run the app with Admin previlege) in order to generate the hardware ID to complete the activation process. Similarly FireWork MX 2oo4 requires something similar. So I guess I need to turn the admin access checkbox on for quite a lot legacy application.

On the bright side, though, that means intruder application will have more hardtime to get automatically executed on my machine.

Sucked into a Vista world

Sigh. I was already taking a save appraoch, leaving my all so working and faithful Windows XP partition hided and then created a brand new partition for Windows Vista RC1. But the result? The Windows XP was not bootable again no matter how hard I tried. I even tried using Windows XP recovery disc. Still no luck. So now I am assumed that the old Windows XP OS was dead, and I have to live with the Vista RC1 from now on until the RC2 or .... errr.. the final release.

In the meantime, I was trying to have some fun along the way. It's good that Areo worked on my currrent hardware, althought it's a bit sluggish, but hell at least it works. I encountered problem with Trillian which caused temperory disabling on Aero. By following the trick provided here, I was able to make Trillan 3 Pro working OK wiht Aero again. I actually tried turn off Aero, but I didn't see the system performance had any significant increase, so I turned it on again.

I found out that photo viewer doesn't scale up well for JPEG graphics. This is kind of lame comparing with the old Windows XP. Hope they got that one fixed before the final release.

I found that Vista RC1 is easier to config multiple audio devices. I have both internal sound card and a M-Audio Firewire Solo. Both worked pretty OK.

Divx thumbnail can really screw the system. So I have to turn on the "always show icon, never show thumbnail" file view option, or else the system crashes whenever I went to the Daily Show video collection directory.

More crazy comment later.

This afternoon I rearranged myself so that I have more space to do .... whatever I need to do. Along the process I found the warrenty of a 160Gb Hitachi 3.5 inch hard disk I brought back in 2004. The most interesting, if not shocking, thing was that I couldn't find any documentation about how long the warrenty period of that harddisk was. In fact I could even find that information on the dealer's web site! This is just simply bad.

Another observation: I spent HK$855 to buy that 160Gb Serial ATA harddisk. Today you can get a 250Gb Serial ATA harddisk for HK$570. Wow.

Solved a set of strange problem with my PC

I came back home from work last night and found the following ultra strange problem:

- Internet Explorer (6) stopped working properly. No matter what URL I entered (including Windows Update), it always brought up FireFox and loaded the URL there. And after I uninstalled FireFox (by deleting the Portable Firefox), the IE simply return a dialog box "Application not present".

- No sound found the system, even though everything indicates OK. No broken DLL, no broken hardware driver. Everything looks normal, but there was just NO SOUND coming out of the sound card. Even after I connected the Firewire Solo to my system, the Firewire Solo didn't play any sound at all.

- The wireless mouse got every irresponsive on double click. It worked only once in a while.

Well, all of the problem are now resolved, but all in some very strange way:

- I solved the IE problem by ... guess what, STARTING the IE 7 beta 2 Portable version! In fact, I just remembered that a day ago I accidentally started IE 7 beta 2 portable and I tried to stop it's execution in the middle. Maybe that messed by the IE registry setting or such. So, this one really is myself to blame.

- For the sound problem, I resolved it like this: I thought of an idea that maybe the sound driver is working, but something screwed up my system. So what I start VMWare with WinXP. Will to VMWare in WinXP got sound? So I started VMWare with WinXP and bam, I got sound! But amazingly, so it the hosting system a.k.a my desktop. Yep, so that's how the problem was solved. Still don't know exactly how that could happen.

- For the mouse problem, I simply throw away the thick paper which I used as a poorman's mousepad. And now my mouse runs pretty smooth.

All these problems anonyed me for a night, but so glad that they got all resovled.

One noon at Causeway Bay

I have not been Blogging on my Pocket PC for a long time solely because the writing experience was not as great as I expected it should be. I always think that my good old graffiti on a Plam OS does a much better job on precisely allowing me to dictate whatever is in my mind. But now that Palm OS is not gonna being a major platform again, I guess I . Just have to live with the fact that I need to adopt the new way.

I went to Causeway Bay to do some window shopping. Here's what I found out:

I tried out the Wacom tablet X display thing (which I forgot what the name of the device was ) and it was pretty Ok. But I also found out how slow Photoshop was even on a new Mac Pro simple became the application was not running in native mode.

The new ipod nano looked fine. Not something that was so great that I have to pour out money to buy it right away though. And I have not seen the new IPod Shuffle.

I also figured out something I hate hate about the Fujitsu Tablet PC: the backspace key was at a very odd position which will definitely create a lot of frustration for me.

The Mac Mini seems cool, literally. I touched a running Mac Mini in a store and it was pretty low heat generation.

Play .ts (High Definition TV file)

I got a Korean Pop video in .ts format, so I tried to find a way to watch it. I tried hdtvpump-setup-1.0.7.zip but somehow it didn't work on my home machine. And I tried Elecard MPEG-2 Decoder&Streaming Plug-in for WMP 3.4.60815.exe, and it worked pretty fine. On my office machine, I installed Elecard MPEG-2 Decoder&Streaming Plug-in for WMP 3.4.60815.exe and found that the playback was not smooth. However, when I use PocketDivXEncoder 0.3.60 to convert the .ts file content to Divx, the conversion of was completed without problem.

"Comic Book Creator" not a green app

Turbo C# Explorer not green friendly

Too shed. Turbo C# Explore is not green friendly, but JBuilder 2006 is.

Converting Flash video (.flv)

I was pretty happy yesterday when I found out that Total Video Converter 3.0.1 green version could convert Flash video (those YouTube and Google videos) into regular Divx and such. But then I found out that not all files was being converted sucessfully. I tried those failed videos with Riva .FLV Encoder. The video part was converted successfully, but the audio part was a bit ricky. The converted video can be played on PC with voice, but doesn't have sound when I played it using Pocket PC.

Guess I need to wait for the new version of Total Video Converter.

Instead of just reinstalling Oracle .Net Library, uninstall, reinstall the whole client

I need to reinstall Oracle client on a development machine because the Oracle .Net development programming Library was missing. But then again I was worry about Oracle creating another Oracle home when I just want to reinstall the .Net library. So finally I finally UNINSTALL the Oracle client, and then reinstall the Oracle client at the SAME PLACE (need to first rename or remove the old Oracle home directory tree).

During install, I chose Administrator option for installation, that includes all programming libraries.

It turned out working fine.

Look A6 Harddisk enclosure ran OK on all machine I tested

I am happying reporting that ALL the machine that I tested with (4 in my working environment) worked with my Look A6 OTS harddisk enclosure without a hitch. So it seems like the trick is simply by using the right cable. The good is that now I have a good 2.5 inch HD as my mobile backup solution. The bad thing is that I better find a spare cable at Golden in case my current one breaks down.

Still, glad to know that one of my old gear is back in action again.

A message that upset Gmail

Last night I checked my Gmail thru Firefox and found that the layout of the InBox list page was messed. It seems like one of the Chinese mail subject upset the list and thus gave me a huge white area.

The strange thing is that I checked the same page in the office, and it worked out fine! Maybe Google did something to fix it. I better check it again tonight when I get home.

Torturing the Look A6 OTS harddisk enclosure

I almost gave up on the Look A6 Harddisk enclosure and thinking of bringing it back to the store for repair, especially when the expiration day of the warranty is sometime next month. But then I found out by accident last night that maybe the reason why Look A6 didn't work was because I used to incorrect cable.

So far when I tested the enclosure, I used 2 separate cables, one for getting power form the USB port, and then other is the USB port to USB port cable. But then last night I tried using the ORIGINAL cable, which comes with two ports at one end to connect TWO USB ports (one for power and one for connection), and then there's only one USB plug at the other end. And the result seems pretty good.

Notice that both USB plugs for the computer has to be both connected directly to computer and cannot use any USB hub thing.

The result? I tried my home machine, and it WORKED. I tried one machine at work, and it WORKED so far (since it's still running).

I will do more test today, but seems like I don't have to bring it back to the store yet.

2006 MTV Video Award - Worthy Watching Videos

2006 MTV Video Award was over and I watched it on my Pocket PC. There is one huge question that I wanted to ask after watching the show: where in the freak world is the Best Breakthrough video award? This is guage of what I need to watch to sort of recap the technological and graphic design for the teen generation in the last year. And yet the award was totally missing from the show. Sure the MTV Music Award is more about a show and a platform for a lot of cross promotion for other media. Still, I was not happy. So I went to the mtv.com to check the result and found some clumsome Flash interview there to keep me from speed browsing to the target result that I really care. Not good for user experience.

Don't they realizze that not everyone cars those slugglish Flash effect?

(OK, after a while I found out the reason: it's for the damn commerical they tried to push. SCrew.)

And turns out they broke the Breakthrough video catageory into severals, like best special effect and such. No bigger. And finally YouTube to the rescure:

Worthy Watching videos:
- Gnarls Barkley - Crazy [Better version]
- Christina Aguilers - Ain't No Other Man
- Pussycat Dolls f/Snoop Dogg - BUttons
- Shakira f/Wyclef Jean - Hips Don't Lie
- Sean Paul - Temperature
- Angels & Airwaves - The Adventure
- Beck - Hell Yes
- Missy Elliott - We Run This
- Pearl Jam - Life Wasted
- U2 - Orginal of the Species
- The All-American Rejects - Move Along
- Prince - Black Sweat

problem activating the hibernate function

I had problem activating the hibernate function on my desktop computer. Searched the Net and I found this message, . Here's the quote:

The tech after listening to the problem and asking the 3 obvious questions: is it enabled in bios; can I hold the shift key and see hibernate; and select hibernate in the power options.

After answering those again, the tech then had us run 'msconfig'. We 'disable all' on 'Startup'; 'Services', 'boot'; 'WIN.INI'; and 'SYSTEM.INI'.

We restarted the computer and was able to 'enable hibernate' in the Power Options.

We ran 'msconfig' again and 'enabled all' on the 5 sections.

We restarted the computer and the hibernate works fine.

According to the tech's response from Microsoft:

Action: Hits hibernate button.

Result: A process is currently running that is preventing another process from going into hibernate.

Cause: Startup group items were preventing hibernate.

Resolution: Performed clean boot of the system by removing all startup group items. Now able to get into hibernate. Rechecking startup group items didn't have any effect on hibernate. It seems that it only affected it when hibernate was disabled.

Microsoft Intellimouse went crazy.

STrange, when the cord of my Microsoft Intellimouse lay across the Microsoft Wireless Keyboard with mouse, suddenly the keyboard and Mpise went crazy. :-I .

Firewire card and FireWire Cable

I am all into resurrecting old stuff, like putting some old gear into use only in a while.

This afternoon I bring out the two Firewire Enclosure and equippied them with one 8Gb and one 16Gb harddisk. Why? Because I need external backup storage. I realized that leave the files in my removable and internal harddisk of my desktop compute without backup is definitely a diaster to be happened. BUt then backup these files up to DVD disc is just not good an option since I need to break all my files into 4.5Gb a chuck. Plus I need to find a way that encourgaes me to backup more frequently. Using external harddisk seems to be a reasonable way.

Along the way I also found out a few more things about my Firewire gear.

- All 3 of the ports on my Firewire card seems to be working fine.
- Hotplugging these Firewire harddisks seems to work pretty well. I cannot say the same thing when the FireWire external sound card is included in the equation, though.
- Basically all the Firewire cable seems to work.
- Copy big chuck of files from one disk partition to another disk partition on the Firewire harddisk made up using a 4200rpm 2.5 inch harddisk doesn't seem a good idea at all. It will got overheat and discounted itslef as the result.

Apollo DVD to iPod 3.1.5 still haven't fix the audio problem

I was a bit disappointed this morning knowing that Apollo DVD to IPod 3.1.5 still haven't fix the audio ajustment problem, which it seems like no matter what I do to the audio ajustment setting, the result will still be the same.

Potential conflict between SyncToy and Dexpot

Today I found something really strange. I have Microsoft SyncToy running, and have Dexpot 1.4 running in the background. After I press ALT-2 to switch to second screen, and then press ALT-1 to switch back to screen 1. The SyncToy process was stopped. Maybe there's some conflict between the hoy key of SyncToy and Dexpot. At least I know that I cannot yse Dexpot when SyncToy is running.

Finally, the wireless mouse ran out the two 2500mAh rechargable battery

After more than a month the battery on my Microsoft wireless mouse of all tried up last night, while the same two batteries (exactly the same with same brand and same capacity: 2500 mAh) was still going strong. Since they are rechargable battery, there's no lost at all. I simply recharge it and that's it.

Piece of Garbage Look LK-A6 removable harddisk enclosure

Like almost 1.5 years ago I wrote about the Look LK-A6 OTG removable harddisk enclosure that I brought. Since then I found this little brat slowing behaving, which it took a few times of restarting in order to get it working either with a PC or in a standard aline mode. The situation, however, is getting worst and worst. And now it gets to a point that it cannot even work properly as a removable harddisk. I managed to had it working OK yesteday. In fact, once it starts working, it works pretty fine. The problem is that it takes too many trial and error before I can get it running properly. And I had no luck so far this morning.

And the I went to the so called support forum and found it sort of a ghost town. I also found no . Such a freaking rip off. And guess I need to buy another harddisk enclosure to engulf my 20Gb harddisk. Darn :< .

Strange SD card problem, but then maybe it's me to blame

The tiny trigger at the door of the battery comparment was acting up again, made my PDA halt once in a while. I spent some time last night to use some Scotch tape to pad the nod and it seems to be working OK now. But then I don't know how long it will survive.

And the timing couldn't be worse for this system halt happening yesterday when I was testing the newly brought KingMax 2Gb SD card. It halt the machine during the middle of copying some files from CF card to SD card, and thus corrupted one MP3 file. In fact this COULD be the reason why today when I was listening a bunch of random shuffled songs using iMusic Player on my Pocket PC, the system suddenly halted. And when I turned it back on, it was not the battery compartment lit problem. The software complain that the file no long exist. In fact, even the file system failed to recognize the card. I have to eject and reinsert the card again to make the system recognize the card.

Now I am still not sure if it's the problem of the card, or just a software issue when iMusic Player saw a corrupted file. I'll continue stress testing the gear with the iMusic Player and see how goes.

Golden Shopping Journal

4Gb SD card started to show up in stores at Golden Shopping Center. Ironically, most of them were not high brand name products from Toshiba or Kingston, but instead from PQI and KIngmax. They were usually selling at $680, which I think it's reasonable but not a bargin. I will consider getting one if the price drop lower than HK$500. I also need to figure out if my DELL Axim x50v Pocket PC can accept a 4Gb SD Card.

The official NDS Lite with official 12 month warrray was selling at HK$1120. They were in white color and were selling pretty well based on what I saw. There are also gray market ones with 18 months warrenty (but may require longer repair time since they will ship your NDSLite back to Japan to fix) with several different colors, selling at HK$1180. PassMe 3 mini is selling at HK$140.

I knew I would eventually get a 2Gb SD card for the HK$275 price range. But I surprised myself by getting a Kingmax one instead of the trusted Toshiba or the Kingston. It's all because of the "high speed" claim on the package. At first I was not really having much hope on this thing, and later found out that it indeed provide higher speed compare with the Toshiba Card:

For 800Mb worth of data (various file sizes)

Kingmax 2Gb
* copy from PC to CArd - 6 minutes
* copy from CArd to PC - Less than 1 minute

Toshiba Blue SD 1Gb
* Copy from PC to card - 9 minutes
* copy from CArd to PC - 4 minutes

I will constantly torture it before the 7 days exchange policy is over.

Speed for copying 2Gb of file from desktop DVDROM to notebook PC thru WiFI

I tested the WiFi speed by copying 2.08Gb of the Simpons video file form the DVDRom on my desktop to the notebook computer. Result? It takes a bit more than half an hour to have the copy complete.

WifI fun: webcam broadcast

I setup a wireless solution to broadcast scene from my home anywhere I want using:

- My Pentium III notebook computer
- A chessy IBM USB 1.1 Web cam
- WebcamXP software

Before I start the service, I had to:
- Make sure ZoneAlarm or other Firewall is off
- Make sure the I "puched a hole on the router" by go to the TP-LINK router config web page, select [Advance Setting]->[Forwardings]->[Virtual Server], for the port 8080 (which I used for broadcasting my webcam), set the following:

- Service Port: 8080
- IP address: 192.168.1.101 (That's the IP of the laptop)
- Potocol: All
- [x] Enable

Now I have a mobile webcam broadcast solution.

A sign that HK Music Industry is dead

I just walked by the TV and saw that EGG Singing Competition 2006 just started. After the show opening by all the candidates singing "supposed-to-be-harmony" with the song "Sing-A-Along", I turned off the TV. It's so great that with all the modern technology, the candidates still managed to sing flat in a oh-so-obvious way. This is one great reminder that the HK Music Industry is dead if they are the indication of the status and HK pop music culture.

All for x50v's lack lust WiFi support

Original I set my home WiFi network to use 152bit WEP preshared key (cannot use WPA because of my NDS). But then I realized that my DELL Axim x50v Pocket PC can only support 128bit WEP. So I have to set WEP so that all my WiFi gear can work on the same network.

Play PLaystation media files (.pmp) on PC

My experience was this: you can find almost everything on the Net if you dig deep enough.

I got some media piles in Playstation media format (.pmp), and was surprised that Strom Codec didn't handle it. I searched and searched and eventually came across a forum a saw that there's a DLL that I can download, registered and make any DirectDraw supported video player capable for playing .pmp file. I tried and it worked great with Media Player Classic. You can also find the file in this forum. (ffdshow may be required, but it's part of storm codec anyway)

My next step was to convert these .pmp so that I can play them on my Pocket PC. I tried PocketDivXEncoder 0.3.60 and it failed. But WinAVI MP4 Converter 3.1 and WinAVI Video Converter 7.6 worked OK. So I chose WinAVI MP4 Converter 3.1.

Converting VOB files (HD TV)

Strange, I use my main workplace desktop PC to convert HD TV (.VOB) content with all three of my tools (PocketDivXEncoder 0.3.60, WinAVI MP4 Converter 3.1 and WinAVI Video Converter 7.6) with zero problem what so ever. But I used to same tool on another machine and I got errors, like the PocketDivXEncoder 0.3.60 acted like it processed the file when it didn't, and WinAVI converts simply crash.

I guess maybe some HD TV codec was not installed on my other machines.

Vista Pre-RC1 on Virtual PC 2004. What is going on?

I was succesfully instead Microsoft Vista Pre-RC1 on Virual PC 2004 (Build 2006-08-20) at home. So I copied the file and tried to run in on my office machine. But then I got error message saying that the Virtual PC network driver was not working, and after Vista booted up, it hanged and stayed there. I'll try it on another machine and see how it goes, but .... kind of disappointed.

CityBus 962B, that slow last mile

I was pretty happy about the CityBus 962B starting to have fun day service. So today I take that bus to go to Central in order to pick up a free umberalla. Usually I take offf at the Shang Wan station and then use MTR for the rest of the journey. Today I chose to stay in the bus and planned to take off at Central. It was by doing so that made me realize how much traffic jam there was between Shang Wang and Central. I got stuck in the bus for pretty long time.

So I promised myself to not stay in the bus next time even if I want to go to Admirty. I rather take MTR for that last mile instead.

Great umbrella

Usually free stuffs are not good, but I went to China Bank to pick up a free foldable umberlla (because of rolling money into my MPF account), and like the umberlla I got. It's a bit heavy, but that's all because the umberall was made with strong material, which is essential for the windy Hong Kong weather.

Google Toolbar for FireFox

Usually I hate web browser toolbar because they usually associated with spyware and such, does nothing more than serving more more ads. But the Google Toolbar for Firefox does provide me features that I want to use, like spelling checking.

WiFi Router caused Port Forwarding failed?

I figured out this morning after turning off my TKLink WiFi Router, the uTorrent port forwarding error was fixed and bandwidth slughtly increaed. Gee I wonder the reason...