A new use for those bottle caps lying around to keep track of your weekend drink count

The Razer Lycosa keyboard, a gamer favorite, sold since 2007, garnered some bad press a few years ago due to a few bad batches of keyboards which left them either severely crippled or, at least, very annoying to use. Some keyboards succumb to an issue where the backlight refuses to stay on, the backlight will erratically cycle through the its options or the media buttons won’t respond.

It was found, in some cases, that the touchpad was installed incorrectly at the factory, and opening the keyboard to re-seat the touchpad would fix the issue. A MacGyver fix was found; when a dime or quarter is placed on the touch-sensitive media control area, the cycling ceased.

When I first applied this fix a couple years ago, I had no change available, but I did have a bottle cap which worked just fine! Doing this renders the touchpad useless, but it does prevent the backlight from cycling. After a few months of the bottle cap being in place, I removed it and went for about a year without any issues. Just recently, however, the problem return, and I happened to have another bottle cap at the ready!

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Razer Lycosa Keyboard Problem originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on August 29, 2010.

Charter is the latest cable operator to fire up their “TV Anywhere” Internet video ambitions — a “cord cutter” retention tool that involves giving paying TV customers access to a walled garden of limited TV content. While Charter has yet to name the service yet, last week they launched a trial of their TV Everywhere incarnation involving 5,000 to 10,000 Charter subscribers in St. Louis, Missouri, Madison, Wisconsin, Chicopee, Massachusetts, and Kennewick, Washington. Charter will be running the trial for the rest of the year before deciding whether they want to take the project footprint wide.

The big cable companies, not just Charter, are pushing this “TV Anywhere” as a way to prevent cord cutters. The idea is to offer some online video to subscribers in addition to regular cable to make paying loads of cash for cable service more appealing. The problem? TV Anywhere isn’t “anywhere,” it’s only in your desktop browser, only when you’re logged in, and it’s nothing you can’t already see on Hulu. In fact, it’s probably far less. I saw a preview of a TV Anywhere look-alike through AT&T’s portal. All AT&T had was searchable list of episodes and shows you could watch… on Hulu. Clicking any link simply brought up some AT&T page with a embedded Hulu video.

TV Anywhere is funny to me, because, on one hand you have the cable execs telling the press they’re not losing any sleep over online video. Then you see initiative like TV Anywhere, seeing they’re investing millions into online video hoping that it appeals enough to their subscribers to keep them. Why would you create TV Anywhere if your customers weren’t looking for online video as a replacement for cable?

Next step? Bandwidth caps where TV Anywhere is exempt.

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Rant: TV Anywhere originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on August 6, 2010.

A network administrator at my work came across this issue and was denied access to change a “disallow” shutdown setting in local security settings even logged in as thedomain admin, local admin, safe mode, whatever. It turns out something in the local security settings had become corrupt and a gpupdate command didn’t do a thing. The final solution? A neat little command that resets the security settings to default. Why the network admin was able to do a reset and not change a setting, who knows, but I hope it can help you:

Note: This procedure may remove users from any local security groups, so be sure to take note of all the users in those groups.

1. At command prompt, run: secedit /configure /cfg %windir\repair\secsetup.inf /db /secsetup.sdb /verbose
2. Reboot computer

Local security settings should be reset default now and will download the correct settings from the domain.

(CC-licensed image by cosmocatalano)

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Unable to Select Shut Down or Restart originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on August 6, 2010.

I believe this issue to primarily be a conflict with the Novell GroupWise Office integration (ODMA) for Microsoft Office. Secondarily, it may be an issue with the mouse driver.

Resolution:

1. In GroupWise, turn off or uninstall integrations (who likes them anyway?)
2. Search the computer and remove any instances of GWxl97.xla or GWXLUS.XLA.
3. In Excel, reset the Worksheet Menu Bar by going to View > Toolbars > Customize > Toolbars… then select “Worksheet Menu Bar” and hit Reset… This screen also shows a “Standard” toolbar which sometimes must also be reset.
4. Reboot.
5. If the issue persists, remove the mouse driver, reboot, and allow Windows to install a generic driver.
6. If the issue still persists, remove the mouse driver, install the driver specific to the mouse and reboot.
7. If the issue persists, then it’s not an issue with GroupWise integrations or your mouse driver. Good luck!

• Zune 30GB Frozen at Midnight, December 31, 2008
• Video Not Playing? Check Your Overlay Options!
• Verifying Game Files Crash [Steam]

Unstoppable Cell Selection in Microsoft Excel originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on August 4, 2010.

Replace FM20.dll in the user’s \%windir%\system32\ with the FM20.dll from a computer without the issue.

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Budget Advisor (Professional Edition) Runtime Error originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on August 4, 2010.

If you want to give it a try, Google got a pretty epic IP address grab. Use the following IP addresses for your DNS:

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

As always, the service is in beta, so be sure to copy down your current DNS settings before switching over just in case something goes awry. Google is even providing support telephone numbers in the event you’re unable to access the Internet using their DNS.

Update: I ran tests using Namebench from 3 different locations within my city. Two locations use the same ISP, the third is its own ISP. In all tests, UltraDNS and OpenDNS came out on top. Various Tier3 DNS servers (4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.6, etc) also ranked highly. In all tests, Google’s public DNS servers ranked well, but still towards the bottom of the pile.

• Google TV Ads? Taking Chrome to the Masses
• If You Post it, they will SPAM it
• First Impressions: Google Voice

Look Out OpenDNS: Google Public DNS Hits the Tubes originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on December 3, 2009.

Windows 7 will be available for download on October 22; those who pre-order will be sent a reminder email with the download link on that day.

The offer is good until January 3, 2010. Check out the table below to see what kind of upgrade experience you’ll be looking at. Keep in mind, though, if you purchase an upgrade instead of a full retail version, you need to keep the  discs and keys for the OS you’re upgrading. If you ever need/want to reinstall Win 7, you’ll need those things.

Windows 7 Upgrade Chart

• Frustration with Upgrading My Zune Software [Solved]
• Unstoppable Cell Selection in Microsoft Excel
• Zune 30GB Frozen at Midnight, December 31, 2008

Students: $30 Upgrade to Windows 7 Home Ultimate or Professional originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on September 18, 2009.

xkcd:volume 0 - Cover

The first comic book from Randall Monroe, the genius behind the xkcd web comic is available for purchase! xkcd:volume 0 features 600 comics, selected by Monroe, and include fan and author favorites. Obviously, owning a book of a widely distributed, freely-available web comic is merely for the novelty of the tangibility of a comic book, however, the comics in the book have been assembled from high-resolution scans of the original artwork, and include author notes, doodles, and puzzles in the margins of the book, adding a personal touch to the comics not available online (yet, I’m sure).

A popular feature of the xkcd web comic is the alt (aka, tooltip or mouseover) text, the text a user sees when he/she hovers or an image. The alt text usually contains an afterthought of the comic, or some additional insight. Because of the non-interactive nature of a book (crazy talk, I know), the alt text has been included with each comic in appealing fashion

The book is being published by Breadpig and a portion of the publishers profits will go to the Room to Read charity to help build a school in Laos.

I’ll post again when I receive my copy!

xkcd: volume 0 - Comic and Author Notes

xkcd: volume 0 - Comic and Author Notes

xkcd: volume 0 - Back Cover

• Ex Kay See Dee [xkcd Web Comic]

Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language: The Comic [xkcd: volume 0] originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on September 16, 2009.

The Steam forums and other gamer forums around the ‘tubes have a variety of fixes for this issue (and others). I will list them briefly:

• Check the minimum system requirements for your game. (No really… do this)
• Verify your game cache files manually
• Make sure background programs, antivirus, or firewall programs aren’t causing a conflict
• Make sure there only one sound device in use on your computer. (If you have one on-board, and an audio card, disable one in BIOS)
• Check port forwarding and firewalls (both on your computer and your network’s router)
• Force game settings back into “Factory defaults”
• Check to see if Mss32.dll is in your Windows/system32 directory, installed by another game (details here)
• Update Windows, video drivers, DirectX, motherboard driver and BIOS firmware
• Add Steam and the game you’re trying to play to the DEP (Data Execution Prevention) exception list
• Disable video shadowing in BIOS
• Check compatibility issues with Intel cards (here)
• Rename “ClientRegistry.blob” in the Steam direction (Steam will download a fresh copy on next launch)
• Delete the game folder for the game in question (found in your Steam directory, again Steam downloads missing files on launch)
• Change the DirectX level the game uses, using the -dxlevel switch (more info here)
• Reinstall the offending game (delete common game files)
• Reinstall Steam

I tried all the above fixes, but none of them resolved my issue. Occasionally, I could make it past verifying and actually play the game, but  I could never pin down the ale that cured the ill. Eventually, I had to face the facts: my computer’s memory (RAM) was failing. I upgraded from 2 to 8GB recently, but in my excitement I neglected to test the new modules. Sure enough, one module was failing like Woot.com‘s servers when the Bag of Crap is up. I removed the failing module, and everything’s run fine since. By the way, I used Memtest 86+ and tested each module individually.

Moral of the story… even if you think your beloved computer is faultless, it’s not, get it tested.

• Flash/Shockwave Crashes when Viewing Ustream.tv [IPCamera_MJPEG.ax]
• Unstoppable Cell Selection in Microsoft Excel
• Video Not Playing? Check Your Overlay Options!

Verifying Game Files Crash [Steam] originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on September 16, 2009.

Here’s a few posts and stats I want to “bump:”

Posts: 112
Word Count: 32,444
Comments: 165
Spam comments: 25,195

Approximately 2,600 visits per month, mostly thanks to the post on free church graphics from February and the post on how to CHMOD with Dreamweaver from early last year.

Though not popular, at all, I’ve added about 50 new entries to the post listing where my Flickr photos are used around the web.

A professor of Ethical hacking, networking, and security from CCSF (City College of San Francisco) referenced my post about wardriving with the Android OS in a classroom PowerPoint (here, then ch 8 ) and links to my wardriving results page from the Advanced ethical hacking course web page.

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Looking Back originally appeared on 365 Discoveries on September 6, 2009.