ImgBurn works

Just tried the portable application ImgBurn at work by burning an Visual Studio 2008 DVD iso into a Immation DVD+R disc at 2x speed. It worked.

Syncing everywhere with my iPod

Previously I had some bad experience with syncing music on both machine with one machine doing manual sync and one machine automatically sync. It was a mess and I will never do that again.

But then today I found out that as long as I perform different category of syncing on each machine, I can actually sync my music and video on my desktop Windows PC, and then sync Calendar and Contact List on my Mac OSX. It worked flawless without problem AS LONG AS I make sure that different machine has different sync item configured. I also turned off the autosync on my Mac while leaving autosync ON on my desktop PC.

So now I have the lastest Calendar and Contact List on my iPod and also the latest music from my desktop. In fact, the contact list was actually came from my Nokia 5300 mobile phone. So I have contact entered in mobile phone, sync to Mac, and finally reaches my iPod. Funky.

Smart Playlist in iTune

I spent sometime to play with Smart Playlist, and found it pretty amazing. You can reference another playlist in a smart playlist, and it helps you to organize your iTune library is a new way.

iTune Shared Library works pretty well

I am pretty happy to find out that Shared Library works pretty well with on my home network.  Now I have my Mac OSX playing music in my iTune Library shared by my desktop PC.  This is actually good for Apple, because now I have much more incentive to keep putting things in my iTune Library.

Sigh, still no wireless for my X60T

I was a bit happy to find out that the cheap USB wireless network adapter Trendnet TEW-424UB that I brought during Thanksgiving has a OSX driver at here (also mentioned in the forum) . I tried the driver on my OSX 10.5.1. The installation was success, and no fatal error after reboot, but the system still can't recognize the USB network adapter. Sigh, guess I need to live with wire for a while.

Also it was pretty much confirmed that Sleep will not work on my machine. So I better not make the OSX sleep no matter what.

Problem and Solution of burning DVDR discs with wicked file name

I was in the process of preserving some CDR discs that I burned back in 90s. Some of those discs (especially those Memorex CDR disc) started to fail, and I even saw one of the having the data layer peeled off. That was pretty horrible.

So I spent almost 2 days copying files from these disc to my harddisk, and remove useless files and folders using XYplorer and Empty Folder Nuker. Both software are excellent and critical for my file clean up process.

And finally I turned tens of CDR discs into 5 DVDRs. Along the way, I encountered a strange problem with Nero 7: Nero kept telling me " Error while creating ISO or Joliet file names" after I clicked [burn] button WITHOUT telling me what file has problem. After being frustrated for a while, I figured out a solution. I used the portable software Infra Recorder Portable to attempt burning the disc in a DVDRW. Infra Recorder encountered the errors, and display them on the screen. It turns out that there are 3 files with ambiguous filenames. So I fixed them, and now Nero can burn the files without problem.

Also, ONE single directory with crazy names caused the Nero went haywire. I had to using step by step elimination to figure that out and then correct the filename to something normal. After then burning was processed properly.

Side Effect of Universial Time

After I set up Windows XP on my laptop to use Universial Time, I found out a strange side effect: the system clock will seems messed up after I waked up the machine from hibernation or Sleep Mode. A reboot, however, will eventually solve the problem.

My Mac OSX adventure continues

Last night I installed 10.4.8, and found that the OS looked old after I used Leopard for a few days. Besides, the sound was not working, and I didn't any advantage staying with 10.4, so I use Acronis TrueImage 10 (Under WinXP) to roll back to partition to 10.5.1 . Back the way, Acronis TrueImage is totally awesome. Now I can be more advantageous on trying out new OS, knowing that I have a realizable way to roll back to previous version.

Another thing is that I found a consistent way to make sound working on Leopard: shut down the machine cleanly. Wait for a few seconds, and bootup the machine to OSX. All when the power adapter is NOT plugged in. I don't understand why, but as long as the pattern works consistent, I don't care.

The WiFi driver for Leopard on my X60T is not ready yet, and a lot of people online are also waiting. Also, the Tablet driver seems to have issue deal to the fact that I am having a multitouch screen. Guess I just have to be patient and let the hacker community to sort things out.

On the bright side, I got the time issue resolved, and the answer is actually very simple: simply force Windows XP to use Universial time. That way the XP time will be the same as the time on OSX. To do that, I followed the following instruction found at the Insanelymac web site:

• Use RegEdit to open the key HKEYLocalMachine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\
• Create a strings key called: RealTimeIsUniversal, and then put "1" as the value.
• Reboot.

From now on, XP will use Universal Time. Awesome.

About Time Machine

To setup Time Machine properly, you need to have a WHOLE external USB harddisk dedicated for Time Machine. You can't just give a partition to time machine. It won't work and OSX will force you to reformat the whole harddisk.

Strange, but seems consistent ...

I was enjoying Apple OSX Lepoard on my X60T these days. In the same time, I was a bit frustrated by the fact that Sound doesn't seem to work consistantly. In fact, I thought sometimes they were not being initialized at all.

I tried all kind of combination of rebooting, make sure sound is all the way up and then totally shutdown XP and boot back to OSX. Still the same problem.
Sigh.

蘋果經驗

自從前天在手提電腦上裝上 Mac OSX 10.5.1 ，我從新體驗到為甚麼蘋果的用戶為何如此瘋狂地維護蘋果的產品。如果你用過產品如 Picasa 和 Yahoo Widget，你會發覺他們承繼了蘋果經驗，令你愛上了使用電腦。

甚麼是蘋果經驗？那是一種將漂亮介面和實用功能結合，將你在日常生活中習慣使用工具模或，溶入你的電腦使用中體驗中。

有趣的是，很多公司盡力翻抄蘋果的用戶體驗，經過年復一年，依然無功而回，那是由於用戶體驗是一種微妙的藝術，正如一些設計大師所說，好的設計在於留意細節。一些輕微的音效提示，淡出效果，或者適當的陰影，造出既美麗又實用的介面。

Darwin_boot

I kept forgetting to install bootloader using Darwin_boot on the MacOSX Installed partition, which is very critical because otherwise the MacOSX won't boot.

How to put subtitlte (.srt) in your iPod video file

The answer of how to put subtitlte (.srt) in the divx/xvid video that you want to convert to iPod Classic viewable format is actually very simply: just use Videora iPod Classic Converter. In my VMWare machine (WinXP), it automatically recognize the .srt file with the same name in the directory, and put the subtitle in the converted video.

Note that some codec package may need to be first in place in order to make this work. I know that because the Videora didn't work on my barebone WinXP desktop OS.

Got OSX 10.5 running on Lenovo X60T

I was so glad this morning that I finally got Mac OSX 10.5 running on my Lenovo ThinkPad X60T in a dual boot fashion (Windows XP and Mac OSX 10.5). Some stuff that I learned along the way:

• Having the Vista OS bootloader causing me hell of problem. Eventually I had to load the XP boot partition I saved using Acronis TrueImage 10 Home edition in order to get rid of the Vista OS bootloader.
• Acronis OS Selector works very well AS LONG AS you have bootloader installed in your OSX partition. To install it, boot up OSX installation disc. And then on the menu bar, select [Tools][..Boot... ] (darn it I forgot the exact spelling ... sorry :-P). It's a command prompt tool but it's very easy to understand and use.
• The disc utility of OSX 10.5 installation disk is much better than previous versions. For instance, I can pick my existing Vista partition, erase it and turn it into a Mac OS bootable partition.

My next step will be figuring out how to make it work with my Tablet screen.

Strange airbrush problem with Artrage 2.5

I was pretty happy with Artrage 2.5 except the Airbrush feature. Somehow it didn't work with the stylus pressing on the screen, but worked when I press the mouse button. So I have to leave the stylus slightly in the air and press the mouse button. The feeling is actually pretty for it really feels like I am airbrushing something. Maybe that's the intent (I haven't read the manual yet and probably never will :-E ).

Finding real Tablet PC native application

Not all the graphic application recognize the digitizer on Tablet PC, and Wacom already released a driver to support those applications that do not recognize the digitizer. Unfortunately, that driver has problem running on my Tablet PC under XP, so I can't use it.

That means I can only get pressure sensitivity from application that recognize the Tablet PC digitizer natively. To my surprise, even brand name application failed to support Tablet PC native. The following are those that DO NOT support:

• Painter X
• Flash CS3
• FlipBook

The following are those that DO support Tablet PC natively:

• ArtRage 2.5
• Alias Sketchbook Pro 2

Vista is hanging on my Lenovo X60T again

After happily running for a day, the Vista OS was freezing on my Lenovo TabletPC X60T again. Since I am getting totally sick and tired of mess with it again, I will continue staying with XP until someone I got really nothing else to do. And then I will restore the system default image.

Vista still hang up with no one reason ....

I am still puzzling about why the Vista on my ThinkPad x60t hangs out in a random fashion. I tried installing Vista SP1 RC, chipset driver, but I still encountered the problem.

My latest trick was going to the C:\SWTOOLS\OSFIXES\VISTA" and turn on the following three registry setting:

• ENBDIPM
• FPIRMON
• USBPMON

Let's see if that solves the problem.

Problem Wacom driver

Yesterday I mentioned that an additional Wacom driver solved them pressure sensitive problem. But somehow the system reported a Wacom driver problem everytime when it rebooted, although functionally I saw no problem at all.

Don't burn UDF disc using USB based DVD Recorder?

Once again I had problem buring UDF disc (with files bigger than 2.1Gb) using my USB based DVD Recorder. The recording session died in the middle (like half of the disc). So I guess it's a no no to burn big files using external disc recorder. I realized this pattern for a while already, but never really understand the pattern.

Vista mess - 2

The Vista on my laptop wasn't too stable. Sometimes the machine with just hang up. Honesty I was not too concern about it since I don't want to use Vista on that laptop anyway. It's still strange that the OS hanged in such a strange way.

Vista mess - 1

For some strange reason, the Vista on my desktop was gone! Well, it's not a big deal I got S.M.A.R.T. error message on the partition where the Vista OS was located. I was thinking was swapping out that drive anyway. So may it's really about time to turn that hard disk into real Junk zone.

eBooks all gone from my iPod. What the xxxx!

I was pretty shocked today when I was on the street trying to find some audiobook to listen to, but found out that all the eBooks were gone! It turns out that I sync my eBooks on my Vista OS, but forgot to copy those iTune meta data back to the XP, which is current major OS. So I had to spent some time reorganize my iTune library.

Add Tablet awareness to non-Tablet PC application

Last night I realized that some of the graphic application didn't recognize the pressure sensitive screen of my Tablet PC, like Photoshop and such. The simple solution to solve the problem is going to the Wacom's web site to download a driver. Now all my graphic application aware of the pressure sensitivity of the screen.

HyperSonic 2 and Sonar 7

I was trying to setup Hypersonic in order to use it with Sonar 7 Producer Edition. I found out the following interesting things:

• HyperSonic 1 does NOT work with Sonar 7.
  
• HyperSonic 2 works with Sonar 7 as long as you use it as a DirectX Instrument instead of a VST plug in. So to avoid myself from accidentally using the VST version (which will cause the application to crash), I have to get into the Calkwalk Plug-in Manager, select VST Instruments under "Plug in Categories", then select HyperSonic, and disable to plug in by clicking "Exclude Plug-in" button.
• Hypersonic Rewire also seems to not working, and gave me a blue screen of death. But then maybe I just don't know how to use it properly.

Playing DVD movie through home network aint' bad

I have a directory full of DVD video files exposed from my desktop, and I use VLC Portable of my laptop to direct play those DVD directories through WiFi network. Result: it ain't bad. There were a few skip frames, but in general they played pretty well. This sure works better than sitting on my bed and then watch played on the 20 inch monitor across the home.

Setting up Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 on Lenovo X60T: Success Story

With the awesome guidence provided by this web site, I was able to get Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 installed on my machine. I am now happily running the XP OS on Lenovo X60T. Life is good.

But it was much less than nice and simple 48 hours ago. In fact, I learned a LOT about installing WinXP Tablet PC edition on my machine by making all the wrong moves. This is why it is critical for me to document all my finding here.



Installation Disc and Product ID

First of all, you cannot just use regular Windows XP installation disc on your Tablet PC. You will your XP installed, but you will lost all the Tablet capability, which is totally SUCK! Thus you need to get the Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 CD set. It's a two CD set, and I got mine form my office MSDN Subscription.

Second, you cannot just use reguar Windows XP product ID. You need to explictly use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Product ID. Otherwise you won't get all the Tablet capability. Once again I used the product ID provided by MSDN Subscription.

There also seems to be some minor problem with the media that I have. I got the message:

"An error has been encountered that prevents Setup from continuing.
Once of the components that Windows needs to continue setup could not be installed.
Manifest Parse Error: Invalid at the top level of the docuyment."

And then in the log I saw:

"Error: SXS.DLL: Syntax errpr ...."

Instead of wasting time to solve it, I moved on by:

• pull out the non-VLK Tablet PC Disc 1
• Put in the VLK TAblet PC Disc 1
• reboot the machine.
• Let the setup to restart. After the "Installing Devices" portion of the installation stop accessing the CDROM (the disc kind of spin down), I swapped back in the non-VLK Tablet PC Disc 1, can continue the installation.
• It will stuck in the middel and ask for the file "G:\cmpnents\tabletPC\i386\zh-CHTkb.dl_". Go ahead and skip this file since it seems to work even without this file.
• The rest of the process should be very straight process.

The installation went thru smooth after then.

Next I meed to install Traditional Chinese handrecognition feature. You can click here to download Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 Recognizer Pack. This pack adds a lot of hand recognize feature to your Tablet PC, including Traditional Chinese, which is what I need the most.

You will spend a lot of time going back and fore the Lenovo x60T Driver support page . So ... get used to it.


AFter install XP, I tried installation Vista so that I can do dual boot and pick whatever OS I see fit at the moment.

To get a clean dual boot Vista, I did the following:

• Boot up the system using the Vista installation disc.
• Pick a primary partition to be used for installing Vista OS. I picked an existing primary partition, choose format, and continue the installation using that partition.

After the installation, the primary partition you picked became the C: Drive, which is exactly what I want.

However, I couldn't have the On Screen key (Fn and the function key) display working. The Fn key worked as expected, but there's no visual cue on the screen. I tried installing different versions of the driver and still get it working. So for now I'll just forget it ... since I have a life to live.

On the plus side, most of the driver has been installed after Vista installation was completed.

Media Center 2005 not for me

Guess Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 really needs special hardware. I tried to install it on my DELL Dimension 9200, thinking that "Hmmm ... if Vista Ultimate with Media Center support works great on my machine, maybe XP media center will work". Well no. The installation failed in the middle, claiming that something is missing.

Oh whatever.

At least I got XP Installed on my Lenovo Tablet PC

I still don't get the Firewire Solo working with my desktop machine, but at least I figured out how to install XP on Tablet PC.

The most important trick is actually the most simply one, and it was so strange that after searching and searching for months, the answer was found in this Japanese web site. Here's the simple procedure to prevent the blue screen of death with "0x0000007B" message:

• During bootup of Lenovo x60t, press [F1] to get to the BIOS Setup Utility
• Select [Config]
• Select [Serial ATA (SATA)]
• The default value is ... something (sorry, forgot), but you need to choose the other one, "Compatibility".

That's it. Once you reboot using your external USB CDRom Driver, you won't see blue screen of death. You can now continue doing XP installation.

Some tidbit I learned along the way:

• You need to first Install XP and then Install Vista in order to enable dual boot between XP and Vista. I learned it the hard way because my machine was preloaded Vista, and even though I was able to install XP, once I re-enabled Vista, the XP installation vanished, and I found no way to make them coexist with each other. So I have to first install XP, and then install Vista by wiping out the old installation.
  
  
• Sometimes the machine will kind of hanging in the beginning of the boot up.
  
  
• Even after XP was successfully installed, I still couldn't switch back the SATA setting from Compatible mode to the "A..." mode. Well, more test undergoing ...
  
  
• The Windows XP Tablet 2005 VLK disc that I downloaded from MSDN Subscription site asking for a VLK key. And later I found out that regular WinXP VLK key would work. Seems like "Tablet version" isn't any specifically at all.

Installing XP on Lenovo X60T, a new attempt

With an urge to run XP on my Tablet PC so that I can run some music software that only works with XP, I stomped across this post and found some new hope. Seems like using Windows XP Media edition 2005 and/or Windows XP Tablet PC 2005 are ways to go. And since I got the MSDN subscription from the company I work with, I was like, why not giving it a try.

People also suggested connecting Lenovo's XP downgrade service, but it will cost me US$50, makes me very hesitate to do so unless I really run out of solution.

FireWire Solo totally hates my Desktop PC

I have this desktop PC Dell Dimension 9200 with QudaCode CPU at 2.4GHz, 4Gb of RAM. I added a Firewire card (VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller) so that I can use my M-Audio Firewire Solo. That's when the horror started.

I found out that the audio playback was great on the Firewire Solo. I use HyperSonic 1.0 VST plug in with ASIO driver, and it was a totally awesome experience. But when I used it to record vocal, problem happened.

Here's the problem report I filed to M-audio:



I was a happy Firewire Solo user until recently brought a Dell Dimension 9200 Quadcore desktop computer. I got horrible cracking sound when I recorded voice from a dynamic microphone. I don't think it's the hardware problem since I use the Firewire Solo on my laptop (Lenovo x60t Tablet PC) and it was all working well. I enclosed a sample file so you can hear what kind of cracking sound I got. I tried doing recording on Audacity, Sonar 6 and Pro Tool M-Powered under both XP and Vista and it got the same problem. I was very frustrated and I don't know what could be the problem. I tried different length of Fireware cables and the problem still exist. Also my desktop OS s are actually very clean. Nothing much else is running. Can a bad firewire card be the problem, but then, how come playback has no problem, while the recording part is some troublesome.

Please give me some hints... this is SO irritating....

Here's the Firewire solo Driver I am running on XP.



Here's the fact the narrowed down from trial and error and by deduction:

• The Firewire Solo hardware itself has no problem because it works perfectly fine with my Tablet PC laptop.
• It's NOT the Firewire cable problem because I used the same cable as I used to connect to the Tablet PC. It's a 6 pin to 4 pin cable by the way. I also tried 6 pin to 6 pin long cable (2 feet) and short cable (1 feet). I got the exact same result.
• It has nothing to do with Stepspeed setting on my desktop because I tried turning it on and off, and in both case I got the same result.
  
• It has nothing to do with the operating system, because I just tried installing a clean XP system with absolutely nothing both the latest XP driver from M-Audio. I got the same result.
• I tried putting the firewire card in different PCI slots. Again, same result.
• It has nothing to do with other device interfering, since I tried unplug all the USB devices and have only the mouse and the keyboard connected. I got the same result.
  

So now the only one option that I can think of is try out another PCI Firewire card. There's nothing on the CPU that I can remove anyway.

Sigh.