Category: Tech

When Sun was bought out by Oracle, many wondered what was going to happen to things like Java, MySQL, and VirtualBox. Well given the way trying to upgrade to version 2.2.2 on Windows XP totally nuked my working installation of 2.1.4 which I can now neither remove or repair, I think I’ll be saying buh bye to VirtualBox and hello to VMWare.

The VBox 2.2.2 install runs and then rolls back. This has been described in the VirtualBox forums, but the solution there doesn’t work for me. Not only that, running the old 2.1.4 installer in Repair mode does the same thing.  So rather than waste anymore time, I’m simply noting it here. Yeah I could login and post to the forum but after wasting half a day on this problem, I’d rather just switch to VMWare which we use at work anyway. It’s a real shame when you can’t get the installer to work right. Color me annoyed…

Update: Since I’m a glutton for punishment and loathe defeat, I searched the VBox web site and found in the wiki a link to Microsoft’s Installer Cleanup tool. After running the tool I ran the 2.2.2 installer again. Like the first time I ran it, it hung at the very end. But while the installer is botched, apparently it installed enough of VirtualBox for it to work. So at least it works now even though as far as Windows is concerned the installation was interrupted. Now only slightly annoyed.

Sadly, family commitments kept me away from Flourish! on Saturday. But I did get a lot of time to play around with Kubuntu in a VirtualBox VM. The main hiccups I had were VM issues more than anything else, like learning that I needed to install the guest tools and using ICH AC97 sound. I didn’t get host folder sharing to work before I gave up for the day.

Again, not issues with Kubuntu itself. My first impression is of a very polished desktop that a Windows user should be able to use right out of the box. My only complaint was not finding any way to move icons on the panel around. Somehow my K menu ended up on the right side of the screen rather than the left.

I’ll probably play around with Kubuntu some more, but first I want to jump into Processing. I downloaded the installation from Processing.org and had been hoping to attend the workshop at Flourish. Since that didn’t come to pass I’ll just have to poke about on my own, which is pretty much SOP for me anyway, and a lot of fun!

A few days ago I finally got what I thought was a good idea for a Facebook application. I’ve been working on it and learning a few things about what is allowed and what is not. Now comes the hard part, making something that is really useful and perhaps fun, but not in the usual pandering chain letterish sort of way that most Facebook apps I’ve encountered are guilty of.

I think a good Facebook application should foster meaningful communication centered around some shared interest. I’m not going to outline what I have in mind here, but that is my central premise. And, of course, it will be nice to make some money from this as well. For that I’m depending on sales commissions which, if I accomplish the first goal, will hopefully follow in the steps of a truly useful application.^_^

There’s been talk of so-called convergence devices combining the functions of multiple entertainment products in the living room for at least the last 10 years. One box handling broadcast/cable TV, on demand movies, and video games has been the holy grail for a number of companies. I’ve never been a fan of the concept though, preferring to keep some things separate, like my computer gaming for example. And it never looked like it was going to happen in any meaningful fashion, until now.

Things started to change with the arrival of two devices, TiVo, and later the Xbox 360. The TiVo started its life making sure I didn’t miss the shows I liked. But later it started trying to get cozy with my PC, giving me ways to start shows on the much larger PC hard drive and making use of some of its greater CPU power for some functions. But on the whole, it did these things badly. The TiVo hardware is just too underpowered to do much more than its basic functions. And as a person accustomed to high performance personal computers, I was never going to be satisfied with anything less. So I was annoyed with TiVo on this point, but I appreciated what it was trying to do. And unwittingly, TiVo had paved the way for the eventual conquest of my living room by Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 arrived in my living room all ready to embrace my PC in ways the TiVo could only dream of. Playing video from my PC on the Xbox 360 was generally pretty easy and I didn’t have to wait for it the way my TiVo made me. The Xbox 360 couldn’t play everything I had, but updates came relatively fast and soon I no longer needed to burn DVDs to preview my video projects on the living room TV. Now I could render a version in an Xbox friendly codec and in minutes I was watching it from the comfort of my sofa. A beach head had been established. My TiVo still makes sure that I don’t miss shows I like, but that pretty much all I use it for now.

Xbox Live has a lot of videos and games available for download. But with only a 20GB hard drive, I really felt constrained against downloading video. Not only that, I already had a Netflix subscription, so I had little reason to pay for rentals from another provider. So when I heard that Netflix’s instant play internet movie streaming was coming to the Xbox, I knew the final assault on my living room was about to begin. I had used Netflix’s streaming service on my PC, but I hate watching movies on my PC and wanted no part of connecting my PC directly to my TV.

Netflix on Xbox Live came last month with the New Xbox Experience update and while there were some quality and network issues at the beginning, it’s been a real champ the last few weeks. My TiVo box isn’t going anywhere, but the entertainment center of my living room is clearly the Xbox 360 now.

I’ve been playing around with the Google Chrome browser since the beta was released a few days ago. Normally, I won’t bother much with new browsers since, well they’re all pretty similar by this time. But I decided to look at Chrome because after reading Google’s Chrome webcomic, aimed at developers, I was quite intrigued and curious.

The first thing that impressed me was how much noticeably faster Chrome is compared to Firefox on my machine. But in fairness, Chrome doesn’t have the plugins I have loaded in Firefox, still it is impressive. But to cut to the chase, on my machine at least, Chrome and YouTube videos do not play nicely together. Videos would play properly at first, but later they start to play then no sound and no motion video at all. Right now, that’s a deal breaker for me.

Some other things I ran into were buttons in which the text was truncated, and page time out errors on some sites. It was like Chrome gives loading a page faster than Firefox if the web server at the other end is a little slow, which is common for heavily trafficked sites. The button issue may be due to my use of Stardock Windowblinds, nevertheless, Firefox has no problem with this.

I’ll still use Chrome on and off as it is updated, but it’ll need a lot more polish before I would seriously consider replacing Firefox with Chrome. My hope is that Firefox may adopt the V8 javascript engine and some other Chrome concepts in future versions. I suspect that Google hopes for that as well and Chrome is just a friendly nudge.

Yahoo! has been in the news a lot lately. The most recent news is of a possible alliance with rival Google in part to avoid a buyout by the likes of Microsoft. So billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been throwing a hissy fit because he was unable to make more money selling Yahoo to Microsoft, and the press says shareholders are confused. Well, what’s to be confused about? Are we so greedy now that it is impossible to understand that maybe not everyone wants to sell to the highest bidder? Is it hard to believe that maybe Yahoo! wanted to remain independent? And, gasp, that maybe a free and independent Yahoo! is a better deal for consumers overall. Yahoo! has also been a strong supporter of open source technologies and open standards, anathema to Microsoft for the most part. As a developer, my world is better with Yahoo! than without it. So go Yahoo!

RRRRRRrrrrrrrr! My Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 keyboard is back from the dead, for now at least. After reading on the net numerous reports of key issues, and hating hating hating the replacement spare I was using, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to fix my malfunctioning keyboard. So I opened it up with relative ease to see what I could do.

The internal circuits are essentially painted conductor on thin plastic film. I noticed a number of dark areas probably due to oxidation. So I cleaned these areas with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol, drying the swabbed areas with the dry end of the swab. I paid special attention to the area of the bad R key. I then reassembled the keyboard and am happily typing this post with it, R’s and all!^___^

One of the downsides of a big family is having to share everything with a lot of people, of course that’s one of the upsides too! But in this case it meant not being able to watch the Battlestar Galactica premiere last night on the living room TV, in part because I don’t feel like paying for another digital box to watch in the bed room. No worries though, I’d just transfer the TiVo recording to my PC and watch later, or so I thought…

TiVo transfers are notoriously slow, so after waiting an hour, I was all set for some BSG action! I started the video and immediately my CPU fan kicked into high gear emitting the usual jet engine-like whine. I didn’t think much of this as I’d gotten used to it. But about 15 minutes into the show, the video slowed down, even the sound was in slow motion. I was sure that the broadcast had been frakked up and started searching the boards for answers. Finding no mention of broadcast problems, I began to suspect that something on the PC was the problem.

As part of my troubleshooting, I decided to see if I could do something about the fan noise. Upon taking the cover off, I could clearly see at least part of the problem. The heat sink cooling fins were totally clogged with dust. So the fan must have been doing double time to remove the heat since there was virtually no air flow between the fins. I blew out the PC with compressed air and since that time it has run much quieter.

As for the play back speed problem, I turned off Zone Alarm, a real CPU hog, and some other apps. At first this seemed to solve the problem. I started the video again and skipped ahead to where I had stopped. It played normally for about 15 minutes and then the slow down happened again. This time I just closed Windows Media Player and started again, skipping to where I stopped and was able to finish the show. I still need to find the source of this problem, but at the very least I cured the noisy fan and perhaps extended the life of my PC in the process.