Tired of all that GSM buzz coming from your cellphone when all you wan to do is listen to music? The guys at MacLife have re-uncovered a simple fix that involves parts that you probably have laying around in your spaghetti drawer. Just grab some ferrite beads — the same ones that often ship with TVs and USB cables — and attach them to your speaker cables near the speakers. This is probably not a shock to those of you who already know a thing or two about magnetic interference, but for the rest of you, get scouting and grab some tape.
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Archive for the 'Utilities' Category
Have you ever wanted to lock down a few files behind passwords, but don’t want to jump into a full-featured encryption system with multiple keys, virtual drives and whatnot? Free encryption utility EncryptOnClick is a dead-simple utility that gets the job done. Open the program, choose a file or folder to secure, and type in your password. The files or folder will get an encrypted icon, and you’ll be asked for the password to open them—and that’s it, at least with the freeware version. The app uses 256-bit AES encryption, so for hiding stuff from the average snooper, it’s a tight and light solution. EncryptOnClick is a free download for Windows systems only.
Check it out over at 2BrightSparks, the same guys who brought us SyncBackSE (one of the best backup programs im aware of) !
Well I finally decided it was time to give Vista another go (cus the first three times I tried it weren’t enough fun) and to my surprise it actually runs quite well now Microsoft have pulled their finger out and released some decent updates (still don’t think they care too much, given that XP’s death date keeps getting pushed back and Windows 7 rumors keep floating out into the world, sounds like their just trying to keep Vista out there).
Primarily, I was only really interested in Vista for use on my Mini Mac as a replacement for my current Windows Media Center 2005, which had a few small problems, mainly with the guide not updating or getting random errors about not being able to read the guide and missing my scheduled recordings (dammit, now ill never know who was number 1 in the Miss World competition).
Well, Vista seems to of taken care of this problem, the guide (so far) hasn’t missed a beat, everything loads, shows and records when I tell it too and with the new Vista version of WebGuide I can even schedule my TV recording experience from anywhere in the world (and hopefully on my new iPhone, when it actually arrives).
Vista still seems to still like hogging as much memory as it can get its hands on, so a small upgrade of 1GB RAM was added this morning, which does seem to of helped quite a bit. as for everything else, even the graphics card seems upto the challenge of throwing around the MCE interface, with a few minor stutters every now and then.
Down to Business, one of the only problems I had found so far was a issue with the ’so called’ Media Library, this is truly a pain in the ass, on the 2005 version of MCE, registry entries were added as shortcuts to allow MCE to simply browse the folders where you media was shared (locally or networked). Vista MCE, seems to take a more intrusive approach with ‘ Watched Folders’ which it insists on scanning and cataloging (least I think that’s what its doing). Which seems fine, having everything optimized is a nice thing, but not when it doesn’t work.
Adding folders to these watched lists often takes time for the MCE system to scan the directory, and if there are a lot of things in their and you have a slow home network (aka wireless), then you might have to wait a while (unlike 2005 which just opened the directory as if you were in explorer). Well, getting around this is a simple enough procedure, but not as obvious as you might expect.
In 2005 MCE, removing watched folders was a case of opening library manager and unticking the folders u didn’t want appearing in the list any more, presto they were gone. For some reason vista leaves these folders in your videos list, even after removing them from the watched list (great eh !).
Well, to kill them, follow these steps !
- If you are having a problem getting rid of folders you don’t want in the Library of Media Center, the best way to clean it out so far I have found is to delete all of the files in the “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player” folder, replacing [username] with the account showing the extra folders (Xbox 360’s and extenders come up as MCX1, MCX2 etc.) and then reboot. This only removes the Library Database - not the files so this is safe to do.
If you also have those pesky ‘ Sample Files’ which no one ever wants (PLEASE MICROSOFT, STOP GIVING US RUBBISH ROYALY FREE MUSIC, NOBODY WANT IT, SERIOUSLY).
- They reside in C:\Users\Public\Public Videos folder, so feel free to SHIFT+DEL these to your hearts content, in fact go nuts and so a search for ‘Sample’ using the wonderful vista search facility and delete the lot, sample music, sample videos, sample porn… the whole lot !
Right, now you have a blank slate, lets try getting Vista MCE to act more like its poor cousin, (no I don’t mean incest). Getting some shared folders into you movies folder is simple, and done completely without the use of the ‘Media Library Wizard’
- Make some shortcuts (right click, create shortcut) of the folders on your network share containing your Videos - this is important - DON’T make shortcuts of mapped drives in Vista - make them of the folders on the Network Shares (ie under Start/Network) otherwise they won’t work.
- Place the shortcuts of these folders into the “C:\Users\Public\Public Videos” folder, then reboot.
NOTE : This shortcut method also works for Pictures, simply create the shortcuts and place them in the Public Pictures folder instead !
And there you have it, all your media, with non of the VISTA !
Enjoy !
Looks like the first reviews are in, and when i finally get my 3G iPhone ill be Blogging on the move. A brief review of the new Wordpress iPhone App found at ‘From A to B…. to IT’
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Well well. This is my first post using the new wordpress app avaliable for the iPhone!
So far, so good although I do feel they could male better use of the screen real estate. For a first attempt it’s a pretty cool app and the offline sync works great.
One thing that has slightly annoyed me about some of the apps from the app store is there lack of offline capability. I commute on a train and don’t always have a signal, this is where these apps will shine by allowing me to continue working uninterrrupted.
One app (or suite of apps) I’d love to see is backpack (or packrat). I’m a heavy user of backpack and whilst it works great in safari it would be great to have it as an offline GTD app. Please someone create it!
So far iPhone 2.0 and the app store is amazing. Notch up another win for apple.
