Category: Computer

So for some reason, my file dialogs began to sort by last modified date instead of by name like it used to. I mean right when the file dialog popped open, it’s sorting order was last modified date or something to that effect. I can manually change it back to sort by name, but that got tedious whenever I wanted to search for files. This appeared in both every save and open file dialogs. I sent a email to the Shell Team discussion list and they weren’t of much help. They claimed there wasn’t really any way to change the default sorting order of a file dialog. I even tried resetting all my folder display settings, but that didn’t work.

I actually did some research a month ago trying to fix this problem. I mean if I can change it, I should be able to change it back right? Even with my “1337” searching skills, I came up empty handed. However, I guess I was searching with the wrong keywords, but I swear, I tried searching with the same keywords again: sort order file dialog, and this time it showed up near the top of the 1st page. It was actually a forum post that linked to this site: Fix Sort Order. It was apparently a easy registry fix! But the way it is fixed is pretty obscured. From the .reg file:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
“ShellState”=hex:24,00,00,00,33,80,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,01,00,00,00,0d,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

My registry entry showed:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
“ShellState”=hex:24,00,00,00,33,88,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,\
00,00,00,01,00,00,00,0d,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00

I’m not sure how my registry got changed there, but this did fix it, although it required a log off.

It also changed my start menu from xp mode to classic mode, so I’m guessing one of those numbers there is the start menu mode, while the other is the file dialog default sort order. Guess you can feel free to play around with it if you’re brave enough.

For those who get stuck in this situation, I hope this helps!

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Random Crap:

Call Center (direct download) (from MS newsgroup) – A hilarious video about what really happens when you call for technical or customer support. Don’t ever trust them when they ask you to hold. To watch the movie if you downloaded it from the direct link, you’ll need a .flv (flash video) player; not required if you view through their website. I’d suggest FLV Player, since that’s the one I use. You can visit their homepage for more information. At first I didn’t get the ending scene, but after rewatching it a few times, I remember where the fat kid showed up.

Boston Dynamics – BigDog (from MS newsgroups) – The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth
BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight. Click here to download the video. The video is actually pretty freaky. I just keep imaging those 4 legs as real legs by the way they move.

Windows Live Local – Virtual Earth Technology (from MS newsgroups) –What is the Technology Preview? Windows Live Local Technology Preview demonstrates our work-in-progress thinking about a rich immersive experience in mapping that also explores local information. … Walk, Drive, Race – in Street-Side Views A fun little project which lets you drive through the streets of Seattle and San Francisco in a race car, sports car, or pedestrian mode. The interface needs a bit of work (even in IE6 and IE7), but it was able to distract me from work for a couple minutes. The arrow buttons is for basic manueverability; the shift button allows you to strafe; and the +/- buttons allow you to zoom in and zoom out. The poster mention to try to go the wrong way down a 1-way street. You should see for yourself what happens.

Having to use Remote Desktop (or Terminal Server as they call it in Windows Server 2003), it’s nice to know some shortcut keys. By default, when the remote desktop window is maximized, shortcut keys work directly. Well, everything besides CTRL+ALT+DEL which is replaced with CTRL+ALT+END. Thanks to Tekman and Wrexen for telling me about this. From the Remote Desktop help file:

Using Terminal Server shortcut keys

If you choose not to apply Windows key combinations to your Remote Desktop sessions, you can use these Terminal Server shortcut keys to perform many of the same functions. For more information about applying Windows key combinations, see To configure Windows shortcut keys in a session.

Shortcut key – Description
ALT+PAGE UP – Switches between programs from left to right.
ALT+PAGE DOWN – Switches between programs from right to left.
ALT+INSERT – Cycles through the programs in the order they were started.
ALT+HOME – Displays the Start menu.
CTRL+ALT+BREAK – Switches the client between a window and full screen.
CTRL+ALT+END – Brings up the Windows Security dialog box.
ALT+DELETE – Displays the Windows menu.
CTRL+ALT+Minus (-) symbol on the numeric keypad – Places a snapshot of the active window, within the client, on the Terminal server clipboard (provides the same functionality as pressing PrintScrn on a local computer.)
CTRL+ALT+Plus (+) symbol on the numeric keypad – Places a snapshot of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboard (provides the same functionality as pressing ALT+PrintScrn on a local computer.)

Then there’s also the neat software that came with the Windows Server 2003 SP1 Administration Pack: Remote Desktops. It works Windows XP too. What Remote Desktops allows you to do is manage a bunch of remote desktop locations in one snap-in in mmc. It’s pretty neat if you have a bunch of Remote Desktops to connect to. You can download the Admin Pack here.

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Random Crap:

Multi-Touch Interaction Research (from MS newsgroup) – Since refining the FTIR (frustrated total internal reflection) sensing technique, we’ve been experimenting with a wide variety of application scenarios and interaction modalities that utilize multi-touch input information. These go far beyond the “poking” actions you get with a typical touchscreen, or the gross gesturing found in video-based interactive interfaces. It is a rich area for research, and we are extremely excited by its potential for advances in efficiency, usability, and intuitiveness. It’s also just so much fun! Do at least check out the video (mirror). It’s pretty neat. As someone in the comments stated, it reminded me of Minority Report.

Tragic domain names (from Robtrust):

• Who Represents? A database for agencies to the rich and famous: WhorePresents.com
• Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views: ExpertSexChange.com
• Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island: PenisLand.net
• Need a therapist? TheRapistFinder.com
• Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales: MolestationNursery.com
• New to Milan and you need electric light? Why not sign up on-line with Power-Gen? PowerGenitalia.com

Communication in English – Sinking (from MS newsgroup) – Hilarious video! I guess this is German humor. ;p Some German coast guard finally started his duty and gets involved with a sinking American or English ship. Probably an advertisement to learn better english.

The ketchup effect – Be careful what you ask for (from Cari) – Yet another hilarious video. Warning: NOT WORK SAFE! You can read the following comments, but it’s might spoil it a bit for you if you read it before watching. So this guy tries to persuade his girl friend to give him a blow job. The girl says she doesn’t want to. Then he plays the hand job card. The girl doesn’t know what a hand job is, so the guy explains it’s like holding a ketchup bottle and trying to get the ketchup out. The girl doesn’t really understand, but attempts to “get the ketchup out”.

Looks like スタジオジブリ – STUDIO GHIBLI is going to release another movie: ゲド戦記 – Tales from Earthsea. (from Artemyst) Due for release July 2006 in Japan.

Fantasy Carnival (from Artemyst) – a bunch of cool Ghiblish drawings. Not sure if they’re related to the new movie coming out. Here’s a nice one:

no-sry.net (from #eclipse) – contains a bunch of direct download links for recent anime fansubs like: Black Cat, Fate/stay night, Blood+, and Bleach.

Sex and the Matrix (mirror). I’m guessing this was the opening scene for the 2000 MTV Awards.

Robbing A Money Truck! – It is so easy to make one a robber in a sec! – Another funny video when unsuspecting victims are asked by a kid to pick up a toy gun and 2 actors playing armed truck officers falls to the floor and gives up the money.

Extended iTunes Rating – iTunes has the ability to store ratings of a finer gradient than just the number of stars. Higher rated tracks should be played more, but is this always the case? I needed to know the answer to this. I reported this awhile back, but it appears he now has an update. It’s pretty interesting how iTunes uses it’s ratings for playing music.

Mice Lacking Social Memory Molecule Take Bullying In Stride (from /.) – The social avoidance that normally develops when a mouse repeatedly experiences defeat by a dominant animal disappears when it lacks a gene for a memory molecule in a brain circuit for social learning, scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. Mice engineered to lack this memory molecule continued to welcome strangers in spite of repeated social defeat. Their unaltered peers subjected to the same hard knocks became confirmed loners — unless the researchers treated them with antidepressants. I wonder what’s worse, to be dependent on anti-depressant drugs or to not know when to avoid a bully.

Gmail for your domain (from /.) – now if you want, you can update your MX records to point to Google and have them host your email and be able to allow everyone that has an email on your domain to access all their email through GMail’s UI. Pretty interesting idea.

On the same note, Office Live has entered beta. What Office Live is is not what it sounds like. I originally thought it was going to be Office applications through a web browser, but it turns out it’s more like an extension to the Office suite. The basic (free) account gets you a domain name, 5 email accounts, and website traffice reports. The ones that cost money include better tools, customer tracking, documentat sharing, and etc. You can learn more about it at their site. I wonder if they provide the domain name for free.

For those interested in creating a login system with PHP, check out this link: PHP Login System with Admin Features. Has some pretty useful code to get you started.

That’s enough random crap for today. I still have a large queue, so hopefully I’ll be able to push it out within the next few days.

Ever have Windows tell you that you can’t move or delete a file because some process is using it? That makes sense.

But what if you’re certain that you don’t have any program that’s still running that can possibly be using it.

What’s worse is when Explorer.exe decides to lock down a file. You give it a few minutes, but it still won’t let go! Only way to delete the file or move it would be to kill explorer.exe from your process list andd by doing that you kill your taskbar too. I always found it to be a hacky way to do things, but it got the job done without reboot.

In comes the Unlocker. Saw a post on this on the programming newsgroups at Microsoft.

Ever had such an annoying message given by Windows?

It has many other flavors:

• Cannot delete file: Access is denied
• There has been a sharing violation.
• The source or destination file may be in use.
• The file is in use by another program or user.
• Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Unlocker is the solution!

Best of all, this is freeware! The UI looks simple and easy. I’ve used Filemon before and it would sometimes tell me who has the lock on the file, but wouldn’t let me tell the program to unlock it.

Enjoy!

So I wanted to send and receive faxes on my computer and luckily I still had a 56K modem lying around. I’m not sure if this was the new v.90 standard or if it used the K56flex standard. Either way, I knew it was Viking 56K PCI Modem, so I went ahead and installed it. However, I was disappointed that they didn’t have Windows XP drivers on their site. The only drivers they had were Win95/98 and WinNT 4.0. I tried the legacy drivers, but they wouldn’t work.

Searching online didn’t net me anything useful either.

I finally decided to try a generic driver that came with Windows XP. I installed the Generic SoftK56 and bam, it seems to have work. I have yet to receive or send a fax yet, but I’ll let you know the results.

So in case you arrived at my site looking for Viking 56K PCI Modem drivers for Windows XP, 2000 or 2003, go ahead and install the generic drivers.

Don’t think I mentioned it, but I went and got the Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 (Amazon link) to replaced the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 (Amazon link) because I finally had enough of it. You can read the reasons why I got annoyed with it in my previous blog entry.

My initial impression is it’s a lot better than the wireless one. There are some major differences between the wired and the wireless version, which was surprising (to me at least). I had imagined the only thing different might be the color and one is wireless. Turns out that the wired version DOES NOT have the tilt wheel. I think in this case, that’s a good thing. Since I’ve become very dependent on the middle click, the middle click on the wireless version was very awful and requried a tremendous amount of force for it to work. It was probably because they didn’t want you to accidentally middle click when you wanted to tilt left/right. I wouldn’t mind if they would’ve allowed me to reprogram what tilting left/right would do, but it’s programmed to scroll horizontally and with a 24″ wide screen LCD @ 1920×1280, I really never have to scroll horizontally anymore, rendering the tilt wheel useless.

Another major difference is that the wired version has 1 button on each side, while the wireless version has 2 buttons on the left side. I don’t really have a preference because I really disliked both placement of the buttons. My favorite mouse of all time is still the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical Mouse. This new wired laser mouse is very close to that, but imagine the side buttons to be really small and clicking it requried actually reaching for it. The side buttons on the Intellimouse Optical were large and my hand thumb and ring finger were naturally on it. I guess this was to prevent users from accidentally clicking on the side buttons, but having to use my thumb to reach the left side button is a bit of a workout.

Final thing I have to say about the mouse is that there’s this logo/sticker/button above the Microsoft logo that gets annoying when you brush against it. The surface of the mouse is smooth, but that logo has a very harsh surface. Nothing too major really, but another thing I would’ve not missed if they excluded it.

After all this, the mouse is quite sensitive and I’m enjoying it a lot.

I got tired of not hearing my rear speakers unless the audio was really loud, so I decided to move them closer to me. I didn’t have speaker stands, so my only option was to ghetto rig it.

What you see is my 2 rear speakers sitting on the end of my arm rests stuck to the side with double sided foam tape and a chain of rubberbands holding it down on the rest. I also attempted to stick the wires underneath my chair mat. This restricts my movement of the chair a bit, but since this is mostly carpet anyway, I don’t go crazy like when I have a chair with wheels on a hardwood floor. This does prevent me from spinning in circles, but that’s one priviledge I’m willing to give up.

Watching videos with 5.1 SRS (surround sound) is a totally new experience!

I recently purchased the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 at the company store for $25. It’s selling at Amazon.com for $43. I originally got it because I wanted to check out the new laser technology that all new mouse is sporting and also wanted to see how wireless mouse have improved over the years. I’ve hated wireless mouse 5 years ago because the lag was just killing me. Here’s my review on it.

The mouse is based on Microsoft’s High Definition Technology which claims:

• 1000 DPI (dots per inch)
• 6000 FPS (frames per second)
• 85 MOPS (million operations per second)

The mouse has a good feel overall and is made ergonomically for right handed users. Before this mouse, I used the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical, which is also the mouse I use at work and back home in Monterey Park. That mouse sells for $22 on Amazon.com. It’s actually a great mouse and I’ve fallen in love with it multiple times and actually prefer it over many Logitech mice. But lets get back to this new mouse.

The new mouse has 5 buttons, just like my old one. but has the 2 extra buttons on the left side (for the thumb) instead of one on each side. I still haven’t decided if that is something desirable. I can see why they moved it to the left side. I had to use the side of my ring finger before to hit the right button, but one of the left buttons now require my thumb to stretch, which doesn’t really feel natural. The scroll wheel (middle click) introduces a new technology called tilt wheel, where the wheel can actually tilt left and right, allowing you to scroll left and right. Since I’m running my screen resolution at 1920×1200, horizontal scrolling is no issue, and it never really was to begin with anyway. The default software that comes with the mouse (IntelliPoint 5.4, though I’ve upgraded to 5.5) does not allow you to reprogram the tilt wheel which is surprise. I’ve contacted the mouse department regarding this and haven’t heard back yet.

The default buttons are also a bit weird. The back button is natural, but one of the thumb buttons turns on the magnifier which seems like a neat feature, but not something I’d use often enough to waste a whole button on. I’ve reprogrammed it to forward like my previous mouse. The middle click was also not defaulted to middle click, instead it was defaulted to Next Window, which seemed more like it was minimizing the current window and setting focus on the window immediately behind it.

The sensitivity is great! It took awhile to get used to, but I think my overall mouse movement has decreased with increased precision. I haven’t really tested the range yet, but my receiver is hidden behind a Kleenex box and is about 2ft from the mouse and the software has prompted me twice already that the signal is weak. It came with new energizer AA batteries, so I doubt it’s the batteries’ fault. Speaking of which, the mouse runs on 2 AA batteries, so it’ll be useful to stock up on some AA NiMH rechargable batteries. The website claims the batteries can last up to 6 months. I haven’t found a way to turn off the mouse yet, so I think it’s always pending and probably goes to sleep when there’s no activity. However, it wakes up rather quickly and I detect no delay after coming home and moving the mouse.

Since this was a laser mouse, I was expecting to also use like an laser pointer. But apparently the laser is invisible, meaning you don’t see anything coming out. I highly advise that you don’t look directly into the hole. The bottom of the mouse says: Class 1 Invisible Laser Product.

There IS one big fault about the mouse. The middle button is rather hard to click. It requires a lot more force than I’d expect and am used to. I’m thinking of switching to the Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000, basically the wired version of this mouse. Also sells for $25 at the company store, but Amazon.com is selling it for $37 after rebate. One of my neighboring colleagues uses it at work and it’s identical to the wireless in every way besides the cord and the fact that the middle click is a lot easier to use.