Yoono

Just discovered a nifty add-on for Firefox: Yoono.  It sits in a thin sidebar in the main window, and lets me hook up to pretty much everything: chat, social sites, RSS feeds, etc.  I'm even writing and posting this blog entry from it.  Pretty slickaroonie, I must say.  :)

All right, enough geekin'.  For now, anyway. ;)

iPod Touch vs. the clock

I noticed recently that my iPod Touch wasn't syncing its date and time properly with the computer. At first I thought it might be a glitch in the Touch software, so I experimented by syncing several times in a row to see if I could find a pattern. The only pattern I noticed was it gave me a different time (and I assume a different data) with each sync: 1:24 AM, 4:11 PM, 9:18 AM, etc.

A quick Google search led me to a thread that outlined the true source of the issue: iTunes. If you put your computer to sleep with iTunes open, and then try to sync the iPod Touch after waking it up, iTunes appears to invent a random date and time to send to the device. To avoid this, simply close and re-open iTunes before syncing.

The "joys" of technology

Oh yes, technology can be so "fun" at times, it just makes my mouth hurt to smile to much.........NOT!!

Okay, here's the condensed version of the problem and what I found to be the solution in my case. I'm posting this here in case anyone else runs into a similar issue, but I can't promise that the same solution will work for you.

I had to re-install Windows a few weeks ago (long story behind THAT bit of "fun"), and for the most part things were humming along just fine as I gradually re-installed stuff. However, somewhere in the past week -- maybe a little more -- I noticed that the system performance would occasionally take a big hit...and stay hit. Looking at the Windows Task Manager, I saw that the CPU usage meter was hovering up around 75% or so, even though the main view showed that the System Idle process was the one supposedly taking up 99% of the CPU. In short, there was clearly something very un-idle cranking away, but Task Manager wouldn't show it to me.

After a number of Google searches, I came across a site that recommended using a little-known program called Windows Process Explorer to take a deeper look at system processes. The moment I ran it, I immediately saw the problem. Apparently that 75% of the CPU time was being taken up by hardware interrupts. More Googling led me to a number of possible solutions to that particular problem, but most of them didn't help. However, I finally stumbled across a comment in an NVIDIA forum thread about NVIDIA IDE drivers sometimes causing problems (apparently they're optional drivers, and sometimes have a hard time operating properly when the computer comes out of sleep mode, which I use a LOT as an alternative to fully shutting down). I dug into the Device Manager and found an entry under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers named "NVIDIA MCP51 Serial ATA Controller". I right-clicked on it, chose "Disable," and immediately the CPU meter in Windows Task Manager dropped to near zero. Woohoo!

Thanks and stuff

Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating the holiday this weekend! It's been a while since I've posted a significant update here, so I figured it was about time to crank through a few different things.

First off, The Very First Noel is going to be airing on DirecTV beginning Friday, November 24th, and running through December 31st. It'll be on channel 103, with the first show at 7:30 am, and repeats popping up every two hours after that.

More candy ballistics tests are on the way. Shortly after the first installment with Smarties, Steve and friends ran another test with Starburst. How on earth did they manage to get Starburst down the barrel of Steve's gun? What happened to it once it was fired from said weapon? Stay tuned for more candy gun fun...

Some questions have come up regarding further updates to the tweenMachine. I still have plans to add additional features, and even started working on some of them shortly after releasing 2.02. However, those efforts were short-lived, as I was just a little too burnt from the big push I made to get the updated TM released. Things were complicated further when the motherboard on my home box died and I had to get a new machine. My old hard drive survived, thankfully, but I haven't yet re-installed Maya (and to make a long story short, Alias doesn't make that very easy). Anyway, I do plan on picking up the torch again one of these days, but at the moment I'm working on a totally different scripting project that will likely keep me busy 'til the year is out.

And finally, on a more personal note, some of you will be receiving notification of a new e-mail address for me in the near future. While our spam filter does a great job of setting aside junk mail, the ratio of spam to real mail has taken a dramatic leap in the last couple months (about 10:1 at this stage...even worse on my wife's account). If you don't receive a note with the new addy and start getting bounces from my current address, just use the handy-dandy contact form to get in touch with me. (Sadly, even that has needed an update or two recently to deal with form-spammers. Just sick-n-wrong.....)

There are a couple other things I want to talk about, but they're a bit more involved, so they'll be coming later in their own topics.

Disney rips off Chinese culture?

I'm only joking, but that's one thought that came to mind when seeing the hairstyle on this Chinese artifact. (More info about the piece)

Ah, the things that amuse you when you're sick over the holidays.

House up, e-mail down

Well, it's not exactly like that, but anyway...

With the move into our new house that happened last weekend, we've had some hiccups getting phone and DSL service installed. Long story short, I've been without access to my home e-mail account for just over a week. So if you've written and haven't had a reply yet (or if my mail server is bouncing stuff 'cause it's full...I hope not), I apologize. Only a few more days to go before it'll be up and running again. Thanks for your patience...