Written by Ren West on June 1st, 2009
I finally decided to install Windows 7 on my HP tablet notebook. I don’t use it a ton and don’t rely on it every day, so it was the perfect candidate. That, and I was getting very annoying with Vista on it. Here is a quick summary of my first day with it.
- Install took forever and appears to have upgraded over top of Vista. Not what I was after, but not a horrible thing I guess. Seems to have worked out.
- It found everything it needed for all the hardware to work right away. Even the tablet features are working perfectly and much better than the Vista ways. Wireless device wasn’t detected at first because I had it turned off. Turning it on caused Windows to discover it and install the drivers quickly. I was on my WLAN in no time.
- The Library folders are neat, but useless for me. I store all large amounts of sharable data on a NAS, which I then mount as a drive. I can’t include anything from this mount unless I index it. I can’t index it unless I set “Use offline”, which copies everything locally. Pointless. Something I hope get’s a workaround or straight-up fixed.
- There were a bunch of updates right away, mostly tests it seems. Several driver updates needed to be installed, which was nice to see, even though all my hardware already worked. 
All in all, I can’t wait to get some fast drives (SSDs, here I come!) for my main system and get Windows 7 on it. A whole new system is in my future.
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Written by Ren West on May 22nd, 2009
I have a large collection of MP3’s. 70G and 14,000 files large. For a while I used Winamp. Then moved to iTunes for music purchases and ipod syncing. Then Songbird came along and it was cool. But the more I used any of them, the more I realized they all lacked something. Not sure what each lacked, but they all seemed to just not be quite right. Mostly, they lacked decent album management. So I started searching some more and came upon MediaMonkey. I used the demo for a while and it was nice. I eventually bought it and starting working towards getting my tags in order, which is no small feat. I’m pleased with MediaMonkey, though I find it includes a bit too much fluff. It has good library management, so it’s not simple to add new tracks like it was in iTunes drag/drop abilities. “Tag Via the Web” is very nice and works quite well though, especially for tagging full albums at once. The “Files to Edit” group is very nice, collecting all the tracks that need better tagging in one place so you don’t have to go searching for them on your own. All in all, it was a good purchase. I’ll never be really happy though.
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Written by Ren West on April 23rd, 2009
There’s lots of documents on the web that show how to move “My Documents” to another drive, so I won’t bother show how here. One step I found missing however was brought on by my use of Linux. Whenever you move a directory to a bigger drive, I just symlink it so I don’t have to reconfigure anything that doesn’t follow along. Granted, Windows management of “My Documents” is a little more internal than just a directory (or folder in this case), so most everything followed along. Except for Google Desktop. It actually created it’s own folder in “C:\Documents and Settings\” (after I moved everything and deleted the original) and made use of that, so obviously, it uses a full path. Windows doesn’t have a simple/proper symlinking unless you purchased some lame Resource Pack or something. Someone was nice enough to write a tool to fix this, called Junction. You can find it here.
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Tags: windows junction symlink "My Documents"
Written by Ren West on March 26th, 2009
I’ve talked about last.fm in the past. I had kinds words to say about them, and I’ve continued to use them since writing them. They’re in the news again this past week because of plans to require a subscription to stream music. Not even a large payment. $3/month. $36/year. A small price to pay if you like the service and want to support the site. I already did. I’m a paying last.fm customer.
But they’re catching hell over this deal. People hate paying for things. But there’s a special sort of hell being created for this scheme. Only those customers outside of the US, UK and Germany have to pay. That’s right, if you have the misfortune of living someplace else in the world, you have to pay. Cause the internet is all about borders and customs.
I live in Canada. I’m used to getting screwed when I try to buy stuff. It’s a fact of life even though it’s slowly changing. But to run a global service (which was created by the users I might add. They don’t have a recommendation list without us.) and charge only a handful of users based on geographical location is wrong. Just plain wrong. I have 50 days left of my subscription and I’ve scrobbled 17K tracks. I’m going to look at some other options now.
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Written by Ren West on March 13th, 2009
My nearly-unused Facebook account was updated to the latest UI today (I much prefer btw) and I noticed something strange. I highlighted something for no apparent reason and some numbers showed up that aren’t there normally, at least, not when the background is white.
SO : 350.17 → A quick google doesn’t come up with anything, and it changes each time the page is refreshed. Anyone have any ideas?
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Written by Ren West on February 5th, 2009
I’ve had some interest in Mens Rights for the past year or so now. I have a hard time finding any real quality information that isn’t just ranting and over examined. The following little image is just wonderful however. Exactly how I feel at times.
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Written by Ren West on January 9th, 2009
So for various reasons, I run two routers on my home network. One is the Rogers supplied SMC POS. I treat this basically as a modem and connect to it with my new Dlink DIR-655 gigabit router. I recently had a need to get some traffic routed to an internal machine and dreaded having to figure it all out. Looking at the SMC, I realized it had a DMZ option. Setting that to the “external” IP of my Dlink router would in effect pass all traffic to my Dlink, letting it handle all security related issues, including routing of traffic to internal IPs. Done and Done.
Posted in General, Syntaxy | 2 Responses »
Written by Ren West on January 7th, 2009
In an effort to re-inspire myself photographically, I’ve started checking out some related blogs and sites. One site pointed me to photographer Sandra Freeman, whose collection of simple flower photos is just amazing. Apparently created using nothing more than a window and black cloth or foam core board. Great stuff. Inspiring indeed.
sandrafreemanphotography.com
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Written by Ren West on January 6th, 2009
So I have many project ideas in my head and figured I would share them with my many thousands of readers (ha!).
- a charging station for my many portal electronic devices. You can buy these, but the nice ones are expensive, and the cheap ones are annoying. I’m going to use a powered USB hub for charging though, rather than trying to contain the massive power bricks. Means I need to line up a cheap supply of USB cables for each device, which is easily done. Then find a box that will work, or build one. Should be an easy, and fun, project.
- Dozens of house hold projects, including building a closet downstairs for the toys, and to cover the unsightly pole and old chimney down there. Also a studio in the garage which will be costly and time consuming, but well worth the effort I think.
- A pole in the backyard for some bird feeders that will have a few branches to attach feeders to. I want it hinged so I can tilt it down to fill the feeders, as well as some sort of anti-squirrel gimmicks. I’ll feed the squirrels in another location.
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Written by Ren West on December 27th, 2008
Caught this advertisement on a local store while stopped at a light. I’m not entirely sure what a “sextional” is, but I think I want one. Or two…
Though maybe I don’t want one if it makes your stool soft…
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