BIOS update doesn't help the XP installation problem

I installed the lastest BIOS (2007-06) for X60t: 7juj07us. The new BIOS update supposed to resolve some system problem. It doesn't, though, make my XP installation got resolved though.

Installing Windows XP on Lenovo X60 Tablet: harder than it seems

I was underestimated the difficult of installing Windows XP on my Lenovo X60 Tablet, and almost got into a point of no return.

The journey started after I used Acronis Disk Director Suite to resize the harddisk partition and created a 30+ Gb primary partition for XP. Everything seems OK until after I booted up the Win XP SP2 VLK disc. I got a blue screen of death at the end of startup sequence of the setup. Being puzzled, I tried Windows XP SP1 edition, and found that although I could get the setup application to boot up, the setup application couldn't see my internal harddisk at all!

Interestingly, the Windows Vista DVD disc can bootup properly, and the setup sequence can see both of my harddisk partition without problem. But then, installing a clean Vista is not my goal today. I want XP instead.

Frustrated, I try to roll back by booting up the Acronis Disk Director I installed on a 1Gb SD card. Horror striked when I found out that I COULDN'T boot that thumb drive up!

Fortunately, I still have a bootable Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 disc (SA-611). And even for that I have to press [F11] fast enough to get the boot sequence into loading the CDR disc properly. Finally I got to Acronis Disk Director, set the startup back to the bigger partition, and then reboot. Result: back to the original setup. But it really was scary.

So what next? Seems like I cannot install XP unless I have the base station for X60, which comes with a DVD Burner drive. Will I do that? No way. I am not shelling out extra money just to roll back to XP. There's actually more incentive for me to have a clean Vista install. But for now I have other better things to do that doing such.

Ultimate tool to download Flash video file

My friend was asking how she can rip some of the audio from dance videos (in Flash format) on web pages. I attempted to use some web based site like vixy to detect the source of the video, but they are all video web site specific.

Then, a while ago, I found an ultimate tool that does the job perfectly.

The tool is called UUme FLV Spy 1.0.1.0 . I didn't download the 1.0.10 because I have problem accessing the site. Instead I downloaded the 1.0.0.0 version here. To me they seemed to work pretty much the same.

Here's the instruction of installation.

1. Download the software.
2. Expand the rar file.
3. Run FLVSpy.exe
4. In the text box, enter the Web URL of the page that embedded the Flash
5. Press the button, and the web page is being loading.
6. Read the web page, and click whatever button that start the Flash video.
7. The application will detect the Flash video, and list them out at the list box below.
8. Those are the video links, and downloading them will download the video.

And once you have the video, you can do whatever they want.

Finally found a good tool to do XML Diff

I need to find a way to do XML diff, and came across three solutions:

- Free tool from IBM - XMLDiff
- Altova XMLSpy 2007 Enterprise Edition - 30 days trial version
- Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Release 2 - 30 days trial version

I couldn't get the IBM Tool working, and I couldn't quicktime find a way to do diff in XMLSpy 2007. Stylus Studio 2007 XML on the other hand is so simply and easy to use. So I settled with this one.

Xenogear still rocks

I wasn't touched the Playstation game Xenogear for 6 years since ... well .. I was not in America and my Playstation console is in America (Duh). So today I gave it as try since this is fourth of July, and what better to celebrate this holiday by meeting from good old games.

And boy it is still a great game. I vaguely remember the spot were I left off 6 years ago, and yet the story still moved me. The control was actually not that good, and the graphic is definitely ancient compare with today's standard. Yet the game is still fun to play. I knew I was into the game when I totally forgot about time and space for about 2 hours after I sat down with the controller.

But this also means that everytime I play this game, I need to expect hours vanishing from my life. Oh joy :-m