Adobe Flash CS3 is not green app

A bit disappointed, but just like Flash 8, Adobe Flash CS3 (a.k.a. Flash 9) is not a portable friendly.

Some limitation on Nokia 5300

I knew that Nokia 5300 is not perfect. So I wasn't too surprise when I figured out the following: Nokia 5300 cannot support text file that is .... errr... long... In fact even a 1K file will chock it. Well, that's the end of any possibility of using it as a eBook reader.

Sigh... I think QuicKey does not work with Vista...

Or at least that's why experience. I tried several times and didn't get it working. So for now, I am pretty much giving up and using it.

Using QuicKeys on Vista

To use QuicKeys on Vista, you have to set QuicKey Engine and Editor to run as Administrator:

- Go to C:\Program Files\Startly\QuicKeys
- right click on QkEngine.exe and QkEditor.exe, select Compatibility tab, and check the "Run as Administrator" check box.

Beware that Quickey will try to call mother ship throught the Net, and Vista will block it by the Firewall.

Media Player Classic and bookmark

Darn, I cannot believe that I didn't recognize this: I can save bookmark with exact time in Media Player Classic. Duh :-P

Media Bookmarking, what a nice thing ...

It's always great to see that software developer write software that really improves your life and cater to a better user experience in daily life situation. The following two are examples that discovered.

First it's the Windows Media Player 11. I was not a big fan of Windows Media Player for so long due to all the DRM issue associated to it. But recently I found out that it allows me to play DVD files on my harddisk as if it's an actually DVD by simply loading the VIDEO_TS.VOB file. I have all the DVD feautures available for me. Not only that, but it allows me to continue from the place I left off previous (when I close the media player window). This is a great thing, consider the pain I need to go through by skilling all the Trailers that the DVD movie manufacturer shuffled on each DVD.

Another great software is CDisplay. For me Tablet PC user, the applicaiton provides several nice feature for viewing either .cbr files or JPEG based comics files, including:

- Japanese comics mode (allow me to read a page from right to left while click the forward button)
- Support Tablet buttons
- Bookmark!

The bookmarking feature is the most fantastic one. To see how to take advantage of it, consider that you have a comics book in a directory, and your file name includes the number of page and in proper order. You can then read your comics page by page, and before you need to quit the application to do other stuff, simply bookmark the page. Next time you can continue your reading form the bookmark point. The steps go something like this:

- Open CDisplay
- right click to open the menu
- Select open files
- Select the directory of comics page files, and SELECT ALL files, then click [Open] button.
- Start reading by pressing left or right button.
- Bookmark the page before you quit.

I wish more media players or graphic views support bookmarking, as I am such a flip-flop person, always jumping form one spot to another spot.

How to backup my Nokia 5300 phone without polluting my primary OS

It's pretty hard to maintain a responsive and usable Windows operating system. Every time you install new driver and such in the operating system, it can potentially render the OS into useless due to some unconceivable driver conflict. That's why I always try to avoid install application directly in my primary operating system, and instead install these software in a VMWare OS.

This turns out to be a perfect way to let my new Nokia 5300 connect to my computer, and conduct the following tasks:

- Backup the phone memory
- Synchronize Outlook with my phone
- Update phone directory

Before I can do this, I need to first install Nokia PC Suite on my desktop. Once done, with VMWare still in focus, I can connect my phone to my PC using regular USB cable. The VMWare OS will pickup the existence of the phone and start setting up drivers. It will take a while for the first time but eventually all drivers will be setup and I will be ready to have some fun.

And then for daily synchronization, as long as I do the following, the whole process will be smooth:
- Make sure that VMWare is in FOCUS (at least until the VMWare OS recognize the Nokia 5300)
- Connect Nokia 5300 through USB Cable
- VMWare will pickup the existence of the phone. And that's it.

Got the battery icon back

My battery icon disappeared. I was a bit pissed that my battery icon disappeared. I mean, I removed the Lenovo battery indicator thing. But why does the regular power indicator disappeared too?

And then I figured out the simple way to get the icon back:

- Right click on taskbar to bring back the Taskbar and Start Meny Properties window.
- Click Notification Area tab
- Check and make sure that the "Power" checkbox has been checked.


I also found out the running .wmv file yields much better performance running on Windows Media Player 11 than on Media PLayer Classic. At least I no longer see pause very 10 seconds or so.

Obssess with getting rid of the harddisk clicking sound

It all started when I found out that there's a slightly video juggling when playing back a GotBeMobile.com podcast video. I realized that:

- The machine was running at power saving mode
- The harddisk was making some click sound, mostly because of parking harddisk head under power saving, when the slowdown happens.

I remembered that I changed something at the Power Saving setting on the Graphic chip performance setting under the Intel integrated graphic chip setting. So I set it to the original setting, which was Maximum. It didn't resolve the harddisk parking problem.

Then I uninstalled the application "Rescure and Recover" by Lenovo. It didn't resolve the problem neither.

Then I read this article , made me a bit worry, but then realized that others experienced the same as mine.

I then uninstalled Maintainace Manager. That also didn't help.

Well, I finally accepted the fact that it's just part of the life of using this laptop. If I want no click, I better keep the harddisk running.

Cursor Rescurred!

Once again, problem resolved by intelligent guessing!

It started a few days ago when I found that within a VMWare OS (a Windows Server 2003 OS), somehow the cursor DISAPPEARED whenever the cursor move into a huge text editing area, like the NotePad editing area, or the text editor in Visual Studio .Net 2005. It frustrated me a few days until I found out a solution a while ago:

- Under Control Panel, select Mouse.
- Inside Mouse properties, Choose [Pointers] tab, and then select the Scheme "Windows Black (system scheme).

Problem solved.

Some ThinkPad Lenovo X60 Tablet stuff

Well, I just realized that in order to shutdown my my Lenovo X60T, I need to hold the power button for about 1 second. If I just press the power button and then release, it would be like nothing was happened. I think this is a feature really by design.

There's another thing I don't quite understand: how come the Hibernation setting suddenly not available from the power management setting. In fact, the setting used to be Hibernation became BLANK this morning after a reboot after a system update last night. Well, I sort of know that "sleep" in Vista is like a better version of Hibernation, but I don't understand why the feature started disappearing all of the sudden. Well, at least I know that I can press [Fn][F12] to force hibernation.

By the way, I am testing my machine and see how much battery life I get after turning off WiFi, with brightness set to about 30 - 40%, and then simply use my machine regular like how I will use in daily life without internet access. Well, the test has to be halted because just after less than an hour of the test, I already have a need to get online again. Man, it's just hard to not staying online.

I am also trying to figure out if there's anyway to keep the screen from change the orientation by itself. I mean, the feature is good most of the time, but there are also times when I don't want the screen orientation to be change, such as when I use Sketchbook Pro, and I want to rotate the screen so that I can sketch on something at a strange angle. At situation like that, I want the screen orientation to stay steady all the time.

And then after searching and searching, I found the solution:

- Click the Tablet Tool button. It's at the bottom of the screen, with the toolbox button.
- Click the Setting button
- On the Tablet Shortcut Menu, uncheck the Enable Active Rotate checkbox.

And that's all.

Why couldn't Vista understood my "dog"?

I spent some time to try out the speech recognition and text-speech feature of Windows Vista (and also Microsoft Office 2007), and I found out that:

- Among all Microsoft Office 2007 applications, only Excel can support text to speech feaure. I mean, WHY? Why not Microsoft Word?

- The Vista speech recognition kept failing to recognize my word "dog", and I still don't know whether I should blame Microsoft or my accent.

- The voice recognition ability is far from practical for daily life. It's a nice gimmick though, and it gives me one more thing to show off when I am in front of a Vista computer.

Also, something totally UNRELATED: I have problem downloading the Circuit City email to my thunderbird off line email repository. Maybe later I need sometime to sort this thing out.

Hell, the audio capture of my ThinkPad x60t is back

The hell that I didn't realize my ThinkPad has a pretty good build in microphone. It didn't seem to be work when I first brought it, but it is working pretty OK now. I tried OneNote and Audacity, and they both working fine.

By the way, I have hard time finding a Microsoft webcast that does a good job to convince people to use OneNote. The truth is that by not demonstrating Outlook with Tablet PC, they made OneNote much less appealing than it should be. Shame on them, and shame on the fact that the product may die because of that.

Removing Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager

I didn't know why my x60t came with Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, and why this crappy application kept asking me to register. So I finally uninstalled it 30 minutes, and all is well come that time on.

Installing Acronis Disk Director Suite v10.0.2160

If you want to upgrade your Acronis Disk Director Suite to the latest v10.0.2160, don't think of downloading the trial version and then enter your version 10 serial number. The trial version really is a trial, and there's no way to upgrade from trial to the full version.

So register, and then you will be able to download the new upgrade version.

A stupid way to hide Tablet PC Input Panel

I found a way to hide the Tablet PC Input Panel on Vista when playing Windows Media Player 11 in full screen mode. Before finding this trick, the hanlde of Input Panel always exist on the screen even when I play video using Windows Media Player in full screen. (Media Player Classic) does not thave that problem.

The track is to activate the panel as a floating window. Then the handle will no longer be displayed when I display the video in full screen mode.

VMWare Workstation 6 works much better than VMWare Server 1.03 regarding to sharing files locally

I was using VMWare Server 1.03, and I was frustrated by the horrible performance when I copy files from my VMWare host machine to the VMWare virtual machine through regular Windows file sharing. I shared a folder in my virtual machine using the regular Windows fashion, and under Vista I could reference it using IP address. The problem, however, was that it took FOREVER to copy just a few hundred Kilobytes of file, and it even failed to copy files bigger than 4Mb!

Finally I uninstalled VMWare Server 1.03, and installed VMWare Workstation. And then I use the VMWare share feature to share file. This proved to be a MUCH BETTER approach . The performance issue of copying files was totally resolved. In fact, I can even drag and drop files on a VMWare virtual machine Window.

No wonder one is paid product, while the other one is a freeware!

VLC Media Player does not work for my Vista

I don't know why, but when tried to play DVD files on the VLC Media Player I installed on my Vista a while ago, the video screen just freeze while to audio track continue playing. Eventually I was so frustrated that I un-installed VLC Media Player, and get back to Windows Media Player instead. Sigh.

Resolved volumn problem when playing DVD files on Windows Media Player 11 under Vista

I was a bit frustrated yesterday when trying to play DVD files on Windows Media Player 11 under Vista. The volume level seems to be lower than usual. After some investigation, I finally figured out that the reason. The DVD audio decoding was done by DVD AC3Filter, and there's some setting that I need to modify.

In order to increase the overall volume level, I did this:

1. Click [Tools][Options...] to get the option screen.
2. On Option window, Click [DVD] tab and then click [Advanced...] button.
3. Adjust Master level in Gain setting.
3. Click [Apply]

And that should do the magic.

Awesome Philips DVD-R Disc

I recently brought 200 Philips DVD-R Disc from Circuit City. They were US$10.99 for 50, which is a pretty good price (except the Fry's in-store deal of $12 for 100 DVD-R after $10 mail in rebate). But the most important thing is that it works with my external Pioneer A-10 DVD Writer. Not only that, I can use the disc on Wii!! Both GameCube and Wii games work equally work. At first I was worry about not able to find Mitsubishi disc in America, as so far only Mitsubishi disc worked persistently on my Wii. But now I can use this Philip DVD-R as substitution. Awesome! In fact, after I backed up my harddisks, I already used up half barrel of the 50 disc I brought. I just LOVE burning DVD disc :-E .

Finding the right set of guitar string

I have a Epiphone DR-500MNS and I am looking for a right set of guitar string. I brought a set of Light Ployweb for it, but it feels a little bit too light. Maybe next time I should try medium.

Ready to buy a new LCD for use with my Tablet PC

After testing with a CRT monitor, I found out that I can extend the desktop of my x60t with an external monitor, which gives me 1600 x 1200 with 75 Hz refresh rate. Now the question becomes what LCD monitor to buy.

Awesome Paper Mario

I played Paper Mario the first time today and it was hooked. I played 2 hours and it was totally fun.

My first 24 hours with Nokia 5300

I received two awesome products which I ordered just a few days ago. First it was the 1Gb memory for my Lenovo X60T. It effectively turned my slow machine into a comfortable working environment. Since it's just ... well .. memory, there's nothing much else to say about.

As for the phone Nokia 5300, I have a lot to say.

First, the things I DO NOT like about the T-Mobile edition of Nokia 5300 that I got:

- Ugly T-Mobile branding
- NOT ABLE to display and process Traditional Chinese character
- Force me to plug the headphone in order to listen to radio

On the other hand, there's a lot of like about the 5300. The internal speaker is just loud and nice. Audio and even Video playback are pretty decent. I tried putting some Java games I downloaded form the Net and they worked very well. So that means I can the following content myself:

- Wallpaper
- Music
- Java games
- Video files

Speaking of converting video file, I found an important trick to minimize the audio out-of-sync problem when using WinAVI MP4 Converter 3.1 (so far the best tool to do conversion) to convert .3gp file. The trick is to alter the screen size slightly. I set the width and height to 99% and then convert.

The time need to convert video to .3gp format is very fast. This will definitely encourage me to put more video on my phone to watch.

When I get time I will try:
- Creating my own Ring tone
- Use Nokia PC Suite to sync between the phone and the PC

Low cost digital piano

I recently went to Guitar Center (at San Francisco) and found that the cost of digital piano is down to a very reasonable point:

DGx-620 $699.99
Willams encore $399.99
Casio CDP100 $399.99

Someday I will get one.... some day :-P

Battery Life of my new Lenovo X60T

Gee, I just realized that I haven't written any blog for a while. Maybe it's because I don't have any new gadget for a while. Well, here I am, back to the gadget world with my new ThinkPad x60t Tablet PC Edition.

At this moment, my biggest concern is battery life, and I'll will do some real life test here by using my ThinkPad as if what I will use regularly. Here's the situation:

- WiFi turned on
- Screen bright at 3 out of 7
- Web browsing and IMing

I started my battery test at 11:00 am. Let's see how much hours this baby can provides me with the using of 8 cell battery.

P.S.: got the result --> 4 hours. Well. Not super, but respectable.