April 2, 2008

Photoshop fails to import clipboard

Photoshop seems to have an annoying bug (or feature) where it stops importing the clipboard. I often copy and paste screenshots from Firefox and Quicktime, only to find photoshop ignoring the new content. I thought it only applied to my old Photoshop 7, but it appears it affects all versions including CS3. This registry change fixes the issue.

Open the Registry Editor and add the following:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Photoshop\10.0]
"AlwaysImportClipboard"=dword:00000001

Where 10.0 is your photoshop version.

Great hall locations: Computing  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

March 18, 2008

Burnt Out

The total lack of entries here is mainly due to me having absolutely no time to update this thing at the moment. I've been a little burnt out recently and in the process of trying to do less, so I have some down time, I won't be updating this for at least the next month, possibility longer. Normal service will return once I'm settled in Italy. thanks.

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

March 10, 2008

Marmite Recycling

 The rummor that I eat a lot of Marmite is completely unfounded, lol.

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 1 Fraggles

March 5, 2008

Out Of The Woodwork

After a break of almost 11 years, Portishead have a new album out next month:

"Bristol-based Portishead were one of the most influential British groups of the 1990s. With 1994's Dummy and 1997's self-titled album they came to define a genre called "trip-hop", combining downtempo electronica, jazz and Beth Gibbons' tremulous, despairing vocals. It was bloody depressing, and entirely marvellous."

Guardian Music article | MySpace | Portishead.co.uk

Great hall locations: Music  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

March 3, 2008

Things That Are Good To Hear

When one is running apache on Windows 2008 for their business:
The Apache Visit to Microsoft Campus: Day One.

Great hall locations: Computing , Web Development  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

February 19, 2008

It's On Like Donkey Kong

I now have a rather flash looking complete with holograms 12 month multiple entry Schengen Visa, which means I can work in Italy and live pretty much anywhere in Western Europe.

Great hall locations: Italy , Travel  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

February 12, 2008

These Shoes Were Made For Walking

I'm sending off my Italian Visa application in the morning. At this point I'm really hoping they issue one since I have had to buy tickets and insurance prior to applying, otherwise it's going to be a rather expensive exercise.

Travel dates are now leave New Zealand on Tue 15th April and arrive in Italy on the 16th. Start looking for a flat over the following week while staying at my friend Anna's place. On the 23rd I'm taking a quick trip via Roma to Istanbul, spending the night there and then traveling down to Gallipoli the following day. After the dawn memorial service and a little exploring heading back to Istanbul, another night there and the most of the following day. Heading back to Bologna late on the afternoon of the 26th.

After that continue to look for somewhere to live, if I haven't found somewhere already. Also on the list at some stage is a trip to Casablanca, since I now have enough Frequent Flyer Miles to go there and back for free! And visiting friends in London and Ireland. Though these trips will be a bit later on in the year.

UPDATE: Visa application has been sent, now we wait...

Great hall locations: Italy , Travel  |  Talked about by: 1 Fraggles

February 8, 2008

CSS Behaviors vs CSS Expressions

In follow-up to my previous post, one thing that is worth mentioning is behaviors should always be preferred over expressions. Why? Expressions are constantly re-evaluated making slow Internet Explorer even slower.

For example, an expression doing a faux "max-width" would be recalculated hundreds of times when the mouse moves, even though the result would always be the same. The advantage of behaviours is that you can bind them to specific events, page load, window resize, etc, and in doing so reduce cpu load and improve the performance of your site.

Great hall locations: Web Development  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

January 27, 2008

CSS Behaviors Don't Work

I recently found that the behaviours on one of my sites had stopped working in Internet Explorer. I spent some time looking for javascript errors before I realized a server change had ommited the following line from http.conf: AddType text/x-component .htc

Great hall locations: Web Development  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

January 24, 2008

Funny

"Searching for information on something on the Internet and finding that your own blog is in the top 3 results."

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 1 Fraggles

January 17, 2008

Tumble Weeds

Sono davvero spiacente per penuria del notizie. È l'opposto di che cosa potresti pensare, sono stato moltissimo impegnato. Sono anche spiacente per come cattivo il mio italiano è diventato (devo troppo usare del dizionario). Allora, del notizie adesso... Primo, tutti è andando a piano per il mio ritorno in Italia. Al momento il giorno è martedì 08 aprile, arrivando mercoledì 09 aprile a Milano Malpensa. Sarò confermare ne nella settimana prossima o così. Il mio visto lavoro sarà per uno anno, supposizione il governo italiano mi lasciato nuovamente dentro il paese, lol.

Ho molte cose fare primo parto, devo finire il mio software agenzia (la causa principale per la penuria del notizie), è vicino a finito, anche installare Windows 2008 sul server rastrelliero [rack server] (mi piace w2k8 ;-). Sono usare RC1 ora, ma sarà spirare nel giugno quindi devo installato di nuovo primo vado, in più RC1 è beta! Ho un altro triathlon al 23 febbraio in Naiper, ho visitato Napier due weekend fa e il percorso pare bouno, è soprattutto piatto e la nuotata pare ok anche. Sto portando il mio abiti sportivi triathlon, monitor di frequenza cardiaca e cose della nuotata in Italia, ma non la mia bicicletta o tuta subacquea—il logistica di portarle è troppo difficile. Sono stato datare una ragazza buona anche, essere stato un ragazzo impegnato lol ;-)

Ok, tempo di cena! Ciao ciao

The english short version: sorry for the lack of news, currently planning on returning to Italy on the 8th of April, been busy finishing my business software, have another tri on the 23th Feb and have been dating a nice girl!

Great hall locations: Italy , Miscellaneous , Triathlon  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

December 10, 2007

Photoshop: Open Flattened Composite

Sometimes I get somewhat corrupt Photoshop documents, that make my older copy of Photoshop freak. If they're saved with maximise compatibility on (which saves a flattened version, as well as the layers), it is often possible to open that version of the document successfully. To do so, hold down and the SHIFT and ALT keys while clicking the open button in the File Open dialog.

Great hall locations: Computing  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

December 3, 2007

Songs Of The Week #9


Def Leppard
Pour Some Sugar On Me


Big Audio Dynamite
Rush


Poison
Fallen Angel



Great hall locations: Songs I Like  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 30, 2007

Disabling PC Speaker Beep

I don't like things beeping at me at the best of times, but the default pc speaker beep that occurs everytime I change the volume on my laptop is right up there. To disable it:

  1. Device Manager
  2. View > Show Hidden Devices
  3. Non-Plug and Play Drivers > Beep
  4. Driver Tab
  5. Stop and Startup > Disable

Ah, silence....

Great hall locations: Computing  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 28, 2007

iTunes 7.5 Watched Folders / Folder Sync (That Doesn't Suck)

As a long time WinAmp user and iPod owner, one of the many things that annoys me is its inability to sync to a folder or folders. I only use iTunes for managing my iPods, and a number of other programs for working with my video and music collection. I've tried various utilities in the past, most require a 50mb .NET Framework download and seem to break with every new iTunes version. So after hearing about the iTunes SDK, and that you could work with it via Windows Scripting Host in JavaScript (a language I know very well), I decided to write my own. The nice thing about using the COM interface is you've telling iTunes to work with its database on your behalf, so the script won't break when iTunes 8 is released for example. Oh and my script is only 12KB.

The goals for the my sync script were to: Add any new files that weren't in the iTunes database, remove any that were missing* and check if the MP4 or iD3 tags in the files have been updated (with Tag&Rename or Atomic Parsley for example) and make the necessary updates in iTunes. Some of my media is on external drives, video especially, so if the base folder for a certain media type is offline the script doesn't remove any missing media files of that type. When the drive with these files is reconnected everything will still work correctly in iTunes.

Currently the script has base folders for Music, Films and TV Shows (music videos are treated as normal music files). The script looks for files directly inside these folders and in subfolders one level deep. It checks files of extensions .mp3, .mp4, .m4a and .m4v. If you need something other than this setup, feel free to modify the script as necessary, but please don't ask me to make changes as I really don't have the time and this is how my library is setup. The code is well commented enough to be a good starting point for making your own script though.

When you run it a dialog will appear with your current base folders (these are stored in HKCU in the registry). Clicking YES will proceed with the folders displayed, NO will prompt you for folders and then proceed, and CANCEL will exit without doing anything. The script will start iTunes if it isn't running and start checking, there's no progress display (sorry I don't think this is possible with WSH) and will take about 30 seconds on most libraries (mine has 8000 items and averages about that), it will display a dialog with changes made when complete. If it finds a large number of items to add, it will prompt you with a dialog prior to this with a time estimate and ask whether you wish to proceed with the add operation. The script only modifies the iTunes database, it makes no changes to the actual media files themselves.

Notes: For files were the tags have been updated outside iTunes, things like Play Counts etc are preserved. You can also just press ENTER on the main dialog to proceed.

iTunesFolderSync.wsf (12KB)

Great hall locations: iPod  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 21, 2007

Songs Of The Week #8

I don't think these tracks need any annotation. They came up on the ipod's shuffle all songs this morning, surprising how good it is at picking tracks...


Guns N' Roses
Patience


Journey
Don't Stop Believin'


Diana Ross
You Can't Hurry Love



Great hall locations: Songs I Like  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 16, 2007

Why HD Rocks

Check out the link below for a comparison of the DVD and BluRay releases of Lord of the Rings. It's a good way to see what all the fuss is about and why I am currently refusing to buy any more movies on DVD. TV Shows are a different story though, since they're usually low-resolution anyway, so DVD is fine for those.

Fellowship of the Ring - HD vs DVD. Mouse over the images to see the HD version, there is some differences in brightness but it's the detail we're talking about here.

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 14, 2007

New, New And More New

This blog is now running on Movable Type 4.01. I'd been putting off upgrading for some time, however the Mobile Safari version of the MT UI finally convinced me. I have one of the new iPod's with WiFi, so I can now easily blog from home. The site's search functionality (and sidebar categories) are currently broken due to the upgrade, I will fix that when I get a free mo'.

Also, new is my laptop now has a brand new 32GB Samsung solid state hard disk, so things are running significantly faster—Windows boots and applications open 2-3 times faster. The machine now has no moving parts apart from the DVD drive & CPU fan (when required) and most of the time is totally silent. This has taken a little getting used to, as there's no feedback other than the HDD led when it's doing something. At the same time, I also gave in and bought a X-Rite i1 Display 2 hardware screen calibrator, so my laptop's display is looking better than ever!

Been a bit behind to due to the reinstall of Windows and my sister visiting from Melbourne last week. But posts should start appearing on a more frequent basis from the end of this week.

Ciao, ragazzi!

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

October 31, 2007

Ha, No I'm Not Dead

And I've just bought a CD, crazy times... whoever does that anymore, lol. It's the new Motion City Soundtrack album, Even If It Kills Me. I haven't even heard any of the songs yet, but I love their previously albums and the reviews are good. And I also ordered one excellent T-shirt, which you can see over on the left there. Hurry up USPS and give me my goodies!

Great hall locations: Music  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

October 5, 2007

Hamburglered!

No seriously we were burgled while I was at work yesterday. They ripped open one of the downstairs windows (in my room), tearing the catches completely out of the aluminium frame. The weird thing was they didn't take much, $100 and a rather expensive heart rate monitor from my room and $45 australian in cash from Sean's. However they left his video ipod just a few feet away. Our other flatmate is overseas, so we're not sure if anything is missing from his room.

The ironic thing was I never have cash, it was the first time about 6 months, as I had to pay my Pilates teacher. And I only found out just before class, so had to do the "funny thing about your money" line... Also in the same vein was the front page story in yesterday's Hamilton Press saying "Hamilton has the highest rate of home burglaries in the country"?!

Still slightly annoyed about the heart rate monitor, however it wasn't the designed thing ever, the menus on it were a bit confusing so it's not the end of the world I guess—will buy a Polar one next time. This has really convinced me to move though, it was really the last straw, I'm now actively looking for somewhere else to live.

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

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