Adding "Stereo Mixer" to Windows 7 with Conexant sound card

This procedure worked for my laptop (Thinkpad E530) with a Conexant 20671 sound card, but I suspect it will work for other sound cards in the Conexant family.

I was playing with CamStudio to do a video capture of a Flash-based cartoon so that I can put it on the WDTV media player and play it on the big screen in the living room for my kids. The video capture worked brilliantly, but to do a sound capture, I needed to do some hacking.

Apparently, there was this recording device called "Stereo Mixer" that was pretty standard in the Windows XP days. This allowed you to capture whatever was played to the speaker in all its digital glory. Then under pressure from various organizations on the dark side of the force, Microsoft and soundcard makers starting disabling this wonderful feature from Windows Vista onwards.

So after much Googling around, I found out that for most sound cards, the hardware feature is still there, just not enabled on the software side. Unfortunately, to enable the "Stereo Mixer" feature is not as simple as ticking a checkbox. The procedure is frequently complicated and is different for various soundcard chipset families.

Luckily, for the Conexant sound card on my laptop, the procedure to enable the stereo mixer feature was comparatively straightforward.

First, right-click on the "Sound" icon in the system tray and select "Recording devices":

 

Then right-click on the whitespace and select "Show Disabled Devices":

Make sure you don't see a "Stereo Mix" device that was previously hidden.

Now, you need to add some entries to the registry. Create a ".reg" file with a text editor with the following content:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\Settings\EPattributes\EpSettings\StereoMixEnable]
"Enable"=hex:01
"MixAssocSeq"=hex:e0,e0
"MuteGainSettings"=hex:00,00

Double-click on the .reg file and enter it into the registry. Verify by firing up "regedit".

This enters the "StereoMixEnable" values under "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet". You also need to enter this into all "ControlSet00x" subtrees under "HKLM\System". So for example, since I have "ControlSet001" and "ControlSet002" under "HKLM\System" on my machine, I edit the .reg file to:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\Settings\EPattributes\EpSettings\StereoMixEnable]
"Enable"=hex:01
"MixAssocSeq"=hex:e0,e0
"MuteGainSettings"=hex:00,00

and double-click to enter it into the registry. I repeat for "ControlSet002".

Now reboot the machine. Then follow the previous steps to bring up the recording devices. If all goes well, you should now see a new, disabled "Stereo Mix" device in the list.

Right-click on the device and select "Enable":

Then set it to the default device by highlighting it, and selecting "Set Default".

Now, under CamStudio, I select "Options, Record audio from microphone". Since the default recording device is now "Stereo Mix", anything that is played through the speaker is now piped through to CamStudio for recording.

Mission accomplished!

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Using Google Dashboard to manage your Android device backup

I used to use AppBrain/Fast Web Install to keep track of which apps I have installed on my phone, and to make it easier to reinstall those apps when the phone gets wiped or replaced. But AppBrain had been going down the tubes, and Fast Web Install had always been a hit-and-miss affair.

Android's own "backup to the cloud" system had previously been even more unusable. There isn't a place where you can see what has been backed up. And when you setup a new phone with your Google account, you just have to wait and pray that your favorite apps will be restored to the phone. Typically all the stars have to be aligned just right for this to happen. More often than not, after waiting for an hour or so and nothing happens, you just curse under your breath and proceed to install your favorites apps manually via the Play Store.

But I just looked again recently and was pleasantly surprised that things are much more civilized now. Firstly there is a place now where you can look at all the apps that are backed up. It's called the Google Dashboard. This is where you can find out almost all the information Google stores on your behalf across its wide range of services, including Contacts, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Google+ etc.

If this is the first time you are visiting Google Dashboard, you will be shocked how much Google knows about you. If you are not (and you own an Android smartphone with location history turned on), then you should definitely take a look at "Google Location History" (under "Latitude"). Even my wife doesn't know that much about me!

Anyway, under "Play Store", you should see an "Installed Applications" link.

Click on that link and you will be brought to a page that shows 1) the apps currently installed on your devices 2) all the apps you have ever installed on your devices

You can quite comfortably manage your entire app library from the web browser, including install/update/delete apps. The only thing missing is probably batch install, which I hope will be added later. But if you choose multiple apps for installation, the system is smart enough to install the apps sequentially so as not to max out the device CPU and storage I/O.

Note that this only tackles app backup. App settings will only be backed up if the app explicitly built it into its code. You can check which apps backup their settings to Google's cloud by looking under "Android devices, More data stored about this device".

Not sure why this information is provided on a separate page. It would have been more intuitive if this was integrated into the "Play Store" page IMHO.

Nevertheless, this is a major improvement compared to what we had previously. All the details about the backup on each device are displayed, and managing apps from the page works very robustly from my testing (compared to Fast Web Install). All we need now is batch install function. Google, are you listening?

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Jamming Flagpoles

Today I read a report about Iran's alleged "flagpole jamming network".  Reading all of this, it became plainly obvious that, "of course this is a method they're using."  Here in the States, we already use flagpoles to conceal cellular communications towers.  You can see an example of such towers here.  So, it makes a certain amount of sense that tyrants (Islamofascists, Democrats, Republicans, etc.) would use similar means to conceal a "secret" jamming network.

The one problem I have with the story reported by Fox news is simply this: a jamming system requires both power and communications connectivity.  I.e. you can't just throw a flagpole in the ground and magically make it a part of a larger jamming network. Hasn't anyone reported seemingly excessive communications or electrical work being done around these flagpoles?  Instead of offering subjective reports about juvenile cancer rates, etc., why not identify the concrete things that would prove the purpose of these mystery towers?

Media.

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Sex and its irrationality

I am probably your average heterosexual male specimen. Having gone through a younger period where sex is at the top of my list of priorities, my hormones have calmed down somewhat and now it appears I can finally examine sex with more rationality.

Recently it is beginning to get to me that sex is not something that one can rationalize. It lies outside the realms of rationality. The fact that a heterosexual male gets aroused by the sight of breasts or the vagina is not something one can deconstruct. In fact, there is nothing inherently attractive about these things other than the fact that millions of years of evolution have built their sense of attractiveness into us, without which our species cannot survive. If an alien from another planet were to land on Earth, they will never understand why we find breasts or vagina sexy, much as we can understand how a peahen will find the large and bright tail of a peacock sexy.

And we have discovered for a long time that there is a large variety of sexuality outside of the standard male-female model. You have the asexual (not interested in sex), homosexual (interested in same sex), heterosexual (interested in opposite sex), bisexual (interested in both sexes), transgender (female persona trapped in a male body, and vice versa). Within a particular category, there are also huge variations i.e. interest in different sexual organs, or even symbolism of sex (eg. brassiere or panties).

It is probably unique to the human species that we have the mental capacity to tie ourselves in knots over variances in sexuality outside of the standard model. There have probably been more debates about the morality/immorality of sexual variances than how to rid our world of hunger. Heterosexuality, being the majority, has always occupied the moral high ground. Other forms of sexuality have always been the deviant form. In some countries, being homosexual or transgender can get you killed. In fact, I have encountered few people who even understand the difference between being homosexual and being transgender. Most people still associate being effeminate as being homosexual (for males), for example.

It puzzles me to no end how most people do not question the irrationality of heterosex itself, that finding sexual organs of the opposite sex attractive is just as illogical as finding sexuals organs of the same sex attractive. To most people, heterosex is just "natural", whereas other forms of sexuality are not. This is crazy, and how people can live with that conclusion is beyond me. It is probably the highest form of prejudice there ever is, that your irrationality is somehow more "natural" than some other irrationality. I mean, this is not some argument over whether one algorithm is better than another, because then you can use logic/numbers to justify your decision. This is a case of my preference is more "natural" than yours and 1) that's it, 2) end of discussion, 3) you are a deviant/outcast.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this crazy as well?

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Roomba navigation algorithm

I have been a long time user of the Roomba vacuum robot, starting from version 1 till now. It has made a big difference to my life, and I enthusiastically recommend it to all my friends.

One thing that stands Roomba apart from other vacuum robot is its navigation algorithm. There is no high-level mapping involved. Instead it uses localized decision making, much like how insects forage for food:

Our robot computes its algorithm 67 times every second, constantly stitching together information about its environment and recomputing its path. When it starts you’ll notice a spiral pattern, it’ll spiral out over a larger and larger area until it hits an object. When it finds an object, it will follow along the edge of that object for a period of time, and then it will start cris-crossing, trying to figure out the largest distance it can go without hitting another object, and that’s helping it figure out how large the space is, but if it goes for too long a period of time without hitting a wall, it’s going to start spiraling again, because it figures it’s in a wide open space, and it’s constantly calculating and figuring that out. It’s similar with the dirt sensors underneath, when one of those sensors gets tripped it changes its behaviors to cover that area. It will then go off in search of another dirty area in a straight path. The way that these different patterns pile on to each other as they go, we know that that is the most effective way to cover a room. The patterns that we chose and how the algorithm was originally developed was based off of behavior-based algorithms born out of MIT studying animals and how they go about searching areas for food. When you look at how ants and bees go out and they search areas, these kinds of coverage and figuring all of that out comes from that research. It’s not exact, obviously, I’m not saying we’re honeybees, but it’s that understanding of how to search out an area in nature that is the basis behind how our adaptive technology is developed.

The algorithm is actually quite effective and robust in the real world. For a short while, I used to house two cats in a room, and you can imagine how dusty that was. Roomba never failed to clean up the room for me after I left it to its devices. It was squeaky clean after each session, and all I had to do after that was to give the wooden floor a quick mop.

Don't take my word for it. Check out this video providing a time-lapsed coverage test of various vacuum robots, including The Roomba 5 series.

However, I never fail to notice, both online and off, how Roomba's navigation algorithm invokes all kinds of negative feeling in users. Comments typically are of the types:

... It is just going in random directions
... Personally I will not vacuum like that
... Why does it go over the same area twice?
... It is not very efficient, it takes too long 

I have seen people just standing there and supervising/criticizing their robot's every move! This is crazy! Do you stand there and supervise your washing machine? I mean, you just dump your clothes in, set a wash cycle, and come back in 45 mins or whatever. What's so difficult about that? Instead you have people just hanging around and second guessing every move the robot makes. Absurd!

I can understand maybe a robot vacuum cleaner is something new to a lot of people, it hasn't become quite as mundane as a washing machine. Or maybe a localized or bottom up algorithm is just harder to understand/accept compared to a top-down algorithm. Rodney Brooks, the co-founder of iRobot, the company that makes Roomba, is a pioneer in the field of bottom-up robotics. He famously created robotic insects that do not have a central "brain", but instead make localized decisions based on the feedback from various sensors (much like the Roomba). In the physical world, that approach turns out to be extremely robust and resilient.

AFAIK iRobot has never organized any campaign to dispel such negativity. I guess maybe it is just too difficult and technical to make people understand that a bottom-up approach is superior to a top-down (mapping) approach. I hope I can make a small difference by blogging about this here. Roomba's navigation algorithm in the real world is robust. You can move furniture around while the robot is running and not have to worry that it won't come back again. You can let it bump into your foot if you are doing stuff in the same room while it is running, but you can be assured that will not have a large impact on what it is doing.

You don't want a robot to vacuum like you do. Otherwise, cars will have legs, and washing machines will have arms. Just clear the room, set the robot down, let it run, grab a cuppa and come back an hour later. The room will be clean. Trust me.

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How to make your OpenBox awesome

As a long-time Linux geek, I've discovered that there are nice aspects of GNOME/KDE, and then there's all the horrifying bits.  After almost 20 years of desktop Linux use, I've concluded that "lighter is better."  I.e. there's no real benefit to having all the bells and whistles turned on.  That's what lead me to OpenBox.

Anyone who has run OpenBox is familiar with ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh... or at least they should be.  In case you aren't, here's the crux of it -- the autostart.sh script runs when OB starts-up, and its the vehicle through which you can start all the bits and pieces of the desktop that you might need.  Here's my autostart.sh:

#
# Openbox config for the ultimate desktop 
# 

#### policykit manager
# allows us to manage networks and other things that require root priv.
(sleep 10 && /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1) &

#### gnome settings daemon 
# allows us to use the gnome tools for things like display and mouse
(gnome-settings-daemon) & 

#### mount encrypted disks and set desktop wallpaper
(/home/cjs/bin/mntenc && nitrogen --set-zoom-fill /home/cjs/mine/pics/backgrounds/current.jpg ) &

#### Enable power management
# we use xfce because the gnome-power-manager went away (as a systray icon anyways)
#(gnome-power-manager) & #this went away in Debian Sid around Dec '11
(xfce4-power-manager) &

#### Thunar Daemon
# handles automounting disks, etc.
(thunar --daemon) &

#### Tint2
# our panel
(tint2) &

#### Screensaver
(xscreensaver -no-splash) &

#### Synapse
# synapse is a key-stroke app-launcher, like Gnome-DO
(synapse -s) &

#### DropBox
# sync files between multiple systems
(sleep 2s && dropbox start) &

## Launch network manager applet
# 2012/01/07 -- this has been getting launched twice, presumably by gnome-settings-daemon?
#(sleep 4s && nm-applet) &

#### volumeicon 
# allows us to control volume from an icon in the system tray
(sleep 3s && volumeicon) &

#### Clipboard manager
# parcellite is a bigger/better utility
(sleep 3s && parcellite) &

## start xsnow!
#(sleep 3s && xsnow -notrees -nokeepsnow -nosanta) &

So, in case all of this is completely Greek to you, I've included comments.  This script works provided you've got tint2, parcellite, xscreensaver, dropbox, volumeicon, and thunar installed, and in your execution path.  This script also assumes that you've got the default GNOME desktop installed for such things as settings and authentication.  The point being is that you can use this even on the default Debian 6 install, and achieve a highly functional desktop without the overhead you'd experience with a full GNOME or KDE desktop.

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Shipping times from Chinese gadget sites

I like buying cheap novelty items from Chinese gadget sites. I have bought hundreds of items from various sites so far, and have had a surprisingly good experience with them overall. Incredibly I have never had an item lost thanks to AusPost.

Most items are as described and satisfactory as long as you have done your research and know what to avoid. In general, I try not to buy gadgets involving flash memory chips and batteries, because most times, you are getting inferior stuff. Lower tech items are generally OK eg. toys, phone/tablet accessories, houseware etc.

The sites I have used so far are DealExtreme, DinoDirect, Lightake and Focalprice. I am eying a few others like TinyDeal and TMart. The only problem with buying from these sites is the long shipping times. I am using this post to keep track of the delivery times of various purchases to Melbourne (Australia):

DinoDirect: Printer Ink Refill
Ordered: 9 Sep
Shipped: 13 Sep
Received: 26 Sep
Time taken:  18 days

DealExtreme: Novelty Candy Dispenser
Ordered: 2 Oct
Shipped 3 Oct
Received: 16 Oct
Time taken: 15 days

DealExtreme: Pocket Illuminated Microscope
Ordered: 1 Oct
Shipped: 3 Oct
Received: 17 Oct
Time taken: 14 days

More to come...

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Yield comparison on toner cartridges/refills

Following my initial encounter with the starter toner cartridge on the Brother Hl-2132 laser printer, I have been experimenting with different toner cartridges/refills and noting the cost/yield with each method.

I bought an OEM high yield toner cartridge for $32 (excludes shipping) that claims a yield of 2600 pages. That only gave me 870 pages of actual output at about 30% coverage. The toner is also a little too light for my liking.

Then I bought a toner refill set for $47. All-in-all, I got about 600g worth of toner, even an accessory kit to convert the starter cartridge to high-yield cartridge (which I have not tried yet, but it looks easy enough). After viewing a few YouTube tutorials about the process, I set about putting 100g of toner into the empty toner cartridge.

It was surprisingly easy, much easier than filling up ink cartridges. The cap on the OEM cartridge was a snap to pop off and replace, and to my surprise, the cartridge worked flawlessly after I refilled the toner. The printout was very dark and nice, much nicer than the original toner that came with the cartridge!

And even better, the 100g of toner lasted a whopping 1200+ pages! Two subsequent refills gave me roughly the same yield at the same 30% coverage. Dividing the original cost of $47 by 5 refills (conservatively), it's like getting a new toner cartridge for $9 each time!

Update:

I discovered that for about $50, I am able to buy 1kg worth of toner over eBay, shipped from US. This is double the amount of toner for about the same price. So now I am getting a brand new high yield toner cartridge for $5 every time. It's crazy cheap! I am extremely happy with the result.

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Volume normalization of MP3 audio track in AVI video files

For AVI video files with MP3 audio tracks, the best way to normalize its volume without recompression involves using FFMpeg and MP3Gain:

> ffmpeg -i input.avi -vn -acodec copy -y audio.mp3
> ffmpeg -i input.avi" -an -vcodec copy -y video.avi
> mp3gain /r audio.mp3
> ffmpeg -i audio.mp3 -i video.avi -acodec copy -vcodec copy -y output.avi

In fact, AACGain in the previous post could substitute for MP3Gain as well.

So the process basically involves extracting the audio and video tracks separately from the original video file, normalizing the audio track using MP3Gain, then muxing the audio (normalized) and video tracks back again.

Since everything is command-line driven, it will be quite straightforward to create a batch/script file that performs all 4 steps in sequence.

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Volume normalization of audio track in MP4 video files

I am currently looking at how to "normalize" the volume of various video files without recompression, and documenting my findings here.

For MP4 video files, an easy solution appears to be AACGain, a command line utility that handles AAC audio. Simply run:

    aacgain /r *.mp4

and all MP4 video files will be normalized. The process is entirely reversible (using the /u command), and involves no recompression at all.

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Brother HL-2132 - Lousy Yield on the Starter Toner Cartridge and How to Work Around it

I bought a Brother HL-2132 mono laser printer from Offceworks recently. Like almost all printers these days, it came with a "starter" toner cartridge that promises 700 pages of print. Well, guess what? The "Replace toner" LED came on after printing only 199 pages! How do I know? More on that later.

A quick search found a number of proposed solutions on the Web, ranging from taping the optical window to resetting the flag gear on the toner cartridge. Well, the starter cartridge I got came with neither of these mechanisms. Seems like Brother has read all these solutions and decided to lock down their starter cartridges even further!

What finally worked for me was to factory reset the printer. This can be done by the following steps:

1. Open the front cover and remove the toner cartridge. Leave the front cover open!

2. Turn the printer off.

3. Press and hold the "Go" button while turning the printer on. All LEDs will light up. Release the "Go" button.

4. Now press the "Go" button twice and pause for a second.

5. Press the "Go" button a further 5 times.

6. If you have done all the above steps correctly, the computer connecting to the printer will detect a new device, try to install a device driver for it and fails, then displays an error window saying that it is unable to install a driver for the printer in "maintenance mode".

7. Now turn off the printer.

8. Re-insert the starter toner cartridge and close the front cover.

9. Turn on the printer.

After the brief startup churn, the printer was ready for printing again, with the toner level restored to 100%!

To check the toner level, right-click on the printer icon and select "Print Preferences":

Then click on the "Support" button on the bottom-left:

 Finally, click "Print Settings":

The printer will print out a single sheet of information detailing interesting tidbits such as the number of pages you have printed, the % of toner left, and the % of drum life left. That was how I got to know that the starter toner cartridge "ran out" at exactly 199 pages!

Update: I managed to get to 329 pages before the print started fading. So that's only about 100 pages more from the starter toner. To be fair, my average coverage per page is probably about 30% rather than the 5% frequently used in industrial figures, so your mileage may vary.

Further update: Yield comparison on toner cartridges/refills

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Life's a Bitch

When we are little, we master our physical self. Witness the toddler who can't seem to stop smearing his sleeves with food.

When we grow older, we master our emotional self. Witness the young adult who goes in and out of relationships. Witness the husband and wife who quarrels over little things every day.

When we are old, most of us (hopefully) would have discovered our true "self". We have achieved mastery of our inner nature.

Then it is time for us to leave the world.

Ain't life a bitch?

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Booting to DOS from a USB memory stick

Now that the floppy disk is ancient history and optical media is not far away, it seems we still have to boot to DOS from time-to-time to perform certain tasks, whether it is to flash a BIOS, or perform some hardware diagnostics. The preferred way of doing it these days is via a USB memory stick, and the easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick to boot to DOS is via a freeware tool called Rufus.

With Rufus, a few clicks is all you need to prepare your USB memory stick to boot to DOS. It comes with two DOSes embedded: MS-DOS and FreeDOS. No extra files are needed. After you are done preparing the stick, you can simply copy the extra application files you need over via Windows Explorer, whether it is to flash the BIOS or to diagnose that network card. It is pretty straightforward.

In addition, Rufus also lets you prepare the USB memory stick to boot to supported ISO images, including Parted Magic, Ultimate Boot CD, Windows 7 Setup etc., even Windows XP Setup (but I haven't tested it).

On an unrelated note, how I came across this tool was because I found myself having to help friends repair the Dell System Restore partition, twice, within the past few months. The DSRFix tool was immensely useful for that purpose, but I needed to boot to DOS from a USB memory stick. After scouring through the dozens of arcane/complicated instructions on the Web, this was the final solution I settled on. I am putting this on record because I am pretty sure it will come in handy for me again at another time!

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Using Google Docs to monitor your website

There are many different ways to monitor your website. You can run a program (eg. Integrio Uptime Scout) locally on your own machine, you can use a web service (eg. FreeSiteStatus), and now you can summon the might of the entire Google infrastructure to tackle this task (via Google Docs) for free.

The whole thing is surprisingly easy to setup. You first make a copy of this spreadsheet. Then within your own copy of the spreadsheet, change the URL to point to the website you wish to monitor and the email address to be notified for uptime and downtime.


Then in the Google Docs menu, select Tools –> Script Editor to bring up the script editor window. Then select Resources –> Current Script’s Triggers. Under the "Run" drop-down menu, select "isMySiteDown". Then under "Events", select "Time-driven", followed by “Minutes timer” and choose how often you want your website to be checked (eg. Every 15 minutes). Now save the trigger and authorize Google Docs, then re-save. To get the script to run, select Run -> IsMySiteDown.

The script is also relatively easy to understand and customize, so if you have any special requirement, it should be quite straightforward to modify the script and adapt it to your needs.

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Speed comparison of USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0 portable hard drive

Here are the CrystalDiskMark numbers of a USB 2.0 portable drive (Samsung G2 Portable 640GB):

and a USB 3.0 portable drive (Seagate Expansion 750GB):

So although the theoretical bandwidth of the USB 3.0 interface is much higher compared to USB 2.0 (48MB/s vs 480MB/s), it is limited by the throughput of the mechanical hard drive. So at best you are looking at a 2x throughput improvement when moving to USB 3.0 for mechanical disks.

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Youth Chess

Calling all chess geeks in the Sioux Falls area.  Here's the deal: I have, for the past several years, had siouxfallschess.org registered and I've never done anything with it.  That said, with my two eldest sons reaching an age where they would like to play chess more with their friends, I'm considering starting up a youth chess club (for 8-12 year olds.)  The objective would be to meet once a week to go over some tactics, motifs, and strategies and in general to play some chess with players of similar skill levels.   At the same time, I'm basically thinking that my role will be first as a facilitator and second as a "coach".  Since I suck wildly at chess, I am looking for volunteers to help with the "teaching" aspects of a chess club.  If you're interested, drop me a line.

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Performance of SATA-to-SATA HDD caddy

The CrystalDiskMark figures for the Cosair CSSD-F80GBP2 running in the slightly reengineered HDD caddy purchased from DealExtreme is as follows:

Not top-of-the-line, but very good for running virtual machines without being bogged down by the mechanical HDD.

Compared that to the Seagate ST9500420ASG, which is a 7200rpm unit that is probably pushing the performance limits of consumer-grade mechanical HDDs:

The 4K read/write performance of the SSD gives it the extra edge when running multiple VMs on the same machine.

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64-bit Windows = 64-bit Java?

Here's one of those counter-intuitive situations that give tech such a bad name and make even an experienced user such as yours truly (with over 20 years of IT involvement) want to throw my arms up in despair. If you are running a 64-bit version of Windows, which version of Java should you install? The 32-bit or 64-bit variety? If you choose 64-bit, you are wrong!

Take a look at this little snippet of information at the official Java website. If you are planning to use Java in your browser (IE, Firefox or Chrome), you'd better install the 32-bit version of Java. The reason is because most browsers are still 32-bit, and they can't access the Java runtime if it is 64-bit. And as far as I know, the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Java cannot co-exist on the same system, so 32-bit is really the only way to go.

You probably only install the 64-bit version of Java on servers where you need the extra "omph" and in-browser Java support is not required. For the rest of us, we have to live in this totally counter-intuitive, crazy world of 32-bit Java within 64-bit Windows!

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Thinkpad Edge E530 won't wake up from sleep

I recently purchased a Thinkpad Edge E530 laptop from Lenovo. I think it is great value. I ordered it with the default 2GB RAM and bumped it up to a nice pair of Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3 RAM, bringing the total up to 8GB. The whole thing costs me only about S$600.

But there was only one problem with the laptop. It wouldn't wake up from sleep or hibernate properly. I have to force power off the machine and boot it up again after sleep. I tried everything. Updating the BIOS. Updating the drivers. Nothing worked. It was frustrating.

After a tedious round of elimination testing, the culprit was finally tracked down to a HDD caddy that I purchased from DealExtreme. This is one of those gadgets that lets you install another harddisk into your space-scarce laptop by using the slot reserved for the optical drive. I use it to add a 120GB SSD drive into the laptop and use it to run certain I/O intensive applications (eg. virtual machines).

As luck would have it, I chanced upon a discussion in NotebookReview.com that talks about this issue on another laptop (but also involves a HDD caddy). I am not particularly knowledgeable about the hardware details, but apparently one of the pins (diagnostic SATA pin) is wrongly connected to ground and needs to be disconnected.

I am not very good with the soldering iron, and anyway the pads are spaced too closely together for my meager soldering skill. So armed with a small tweezer and a sewing needle, I set about trying to destroy the pin in question. Thankfully the pin itself is rather thin, so it didn't take long. A couple of minutes later, I had a clean break.

I put everything back together and powered on the laptop. Taking in a deep breath, I click on "Sleep". Hurray! The red LED on the laptop started to pulse, which indicates it is sleeping. Pressing the power button brought the laptop back to life, just as it was intended to. I couldn't be happier! Thanks to the wonderful folks who shared this piece of knowledge!

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Make Google Chrome Portable the system default browser

Making Chrome Portable the system default browser turned out to be more complicated than I'd expected.

I am currently running Windows 7 x64. I first tried Change Default Browser, which seems to be the tool recommended by everybody, but that didn't work for some reason. I tried a few other methods, but none of them worked. Finally I found salvation in this discussion, in the last post made by jonasformolo.

What is needed is to created the chrome.reg file, then fire up the text editor and replace all occurrences of:

  D:\\Softwares\\Portable\\Extracted\\GoogleChromePortable\\GoogleChromePortable.exe

with the full path to Chrome Portable on your system (mind the double backslashes!). Finally double-click to enter it into the registry.

However, there is one additional and crucial step to take which is missing in the original instructions. Since you can't easily edit the value in:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\GoogleChromePortableURL\shell\open\command

with a text editior (unless you have the unusual skill of being able to edit Unicode strings in pure hex), you need to fire up REGEDIT to change the path value.

Now run "Control Panel" and select "Default Programs". If you have done everything right so far, you should see this:

Now simply click on "Set this program as default", and Chrome Portable will be set as the system default browser.

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Best Android Apps

There are a thousand lists of "top apps" out there.  SO, why write another one?  Because virtually every app list I've seen is full of truly awful apps.   My only conclusion is that syndicated bloggers and so-called "news" sites are "in-bed" with app developers to promote certain apps.

My obscurity in the blogosphere ensures that my app-list will be based on merit.  The apps I am listing here are exclusively apps I enjoy using.

Corey's Top 10 Android Apps

1. Enhanced Email ($)
2. Launcher Pro ($)
3. Dolphin HD 
4. Weather Bug Elite ($)
5. Fast Reboot Pro ($)
6. Advanced Task Killer
7. Slacker Radio
8. Tiny Flashlight + LED
9. WiFi Analyzer
10. Alarm Clock Plus 

There are a ton of games available on the Android, but many of them are ruined by one of three forms of monetizing the game:  push ads, in-game ads, and in-game item purchase. In the case of the first two, there are a couple of handy apps to help squash these.

To identify games with "push ads", you can use these apps:

• AirPush Detector
• TrustGo Ad Detector
• Lookout Security Premium

To disable ads altogether on rooted phones, you can use the "AdFree" app.  That said, it doesn't disable the advertisement space, it just makes it so the pictures don't show-up.  Which, is mostly what I'm worried about, because I hate those types of distractions.

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Turning off numerical sorting in Windows Explorer

Windows XP introduces the concept of "numerical sorting", where filenames in Windows Explorer are sorted by evaluating their numerical value instead of the ASCII order. For example, if you have a bunch of files:
 
  Doc111
  Doc22
  Doc3

they will be sorted as:

  Doc3
  Doc22
  Doc111

because 3 < 2 < 111, get it?

This is very confusing to those of us who expects things to be sorted logically i.e. in ASCII order. Who's the idiot who made this "numerical sort order" default on all Windows after XP?

Anyway, one way to right this wrong is as follows:

1. Press [Win-R], type "gpedit.msc", then press [Enter] to bring up the Local Group Policy Editor.
2. Select "User Configuration", "Administrative Templates", "Windows Components", and finally "Windows Explorer" in the treeview on the left of the editor.
3. Double-click on "Turn off numerical sorting in Windows Explorer" in the "Setting" pane on the right of the editor.
4. Select "Enable",  then click OK to save the changes.

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How to install Windows XP from a USB memory stick

Note to self after having to do this a couple of times. If I need to install WinXP from a USB memory stick, the absolute no-brainer way to do it is WinToFlash. The keyword here is no-brainer, because there are tons of tutorials out there that require you to have a rocket science degree and a PhD to follow. Not so for WinToFlash. Run the program, point the source path to the WinXP install files, point the target path to the USB memory stick and click a button. Then go for a cup of coffee and you are done.

Here is how it looks during bootup:

Option 1 is for the first bootup where you get into the text mode setup, configure and format your partition and copy essential files.

Option 2 is for the second bootup where you actually see the Windows XP splash screen and then it starts to configure devices and settings.

I have no affiliation with the company that produces the software. It has a free, ad-supported version if you are a casual user. There is also a personal, professional and business license if you do this all the time.

Thankfully for Vista and Win7 installation from a USB drive, it is actually quite straightforward and you don't need a PhD for that. You do need to drop to the command prompt for a moment, but that's not as scary as it sounds.

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Dealextreme Aggregator

Just stumbled across this website called GadgetzFinder that aggregates products from a couple of DealExtreme-like sites (including DealExtreme itself). For those of you who are not familiar with DealExtreme, it is the granddaddy of Hong Kong-based B2C websites that list all kinds of Made-in-China gadgets and offer free shipping for all purchases. Almost all the items are a fraction of the price of similar items sold in western developed countries. For example, I bought this laptop security cable recently for under $4, where it would have cost me $20 in local stores.

The downside to that cheap price is the long waiting time for the purchased item to arrive. On average I have to wait about 3 weeks for an item, but surprisingly I have received every single item I have purchased so far, and believe me, I have bought a lot of items from DealExtreme and others. Kudos to the global postal system! Also be prepared for some hits and misses in terms of product quality. But the novelty, convenience and pricing more than offset the occasional misses for me.

Anyway, a site like GadgetzFinder should come in handy in searching for products and comparing prices. I have bought stuff from DealExtreme and FocalPrice, but haven't tried DinoDirect and LighTake yet, so the site should help in product discovery. Plus the RSS feed seems to be quite useful as not all sites (eg. FocalPrice) provide a feed for new products. Note to self: the RSS feed even works for searches, so I can search for eg. "bluetooth stereo headset" and be informed of new products by subscribing to that feed.

Another nice feature is the grouping of similar products that reduces the search space somewhat, though the result is far from perfect and seems to be based on some kind of heuristic matching of the product names. I understand this is a difficult problem, but it would be nice that they can take product description and images into account and produce even more accurate clustering, since there tends to be a lot of similar products even from the same site.

One final notable mention: the website scales down quite nicely to the small screen on my Nexus One. So now I can do all that product research on impulse from my smartphone!

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Export to PDF on Firefox

Looked around for a way to export web pages to PDF on Firefix. Most of the existing addons for exporting to PDF involve doing so via a web service, which has security implications, especially when the web page to be exported contains sensitive information.

The Firefox addon that I finally settled on is PDFIt, which as far as I can tell does not involve any web service but does everything on the client web browser. Once installed, the PDFIt menu appears in the "Tools" menu as well as the context menu.

The PDFIt addon not only lets you convert web pages to PDF, it lets you convert to PNG or JPG as well. In addition, you can add a custom title to the output with full control over the font color, size and position. You can also apply a filter (from a total of 16) to the output, including rotation, flipping, sepia, reflection etc.

The only downside I can find is that the output PDF is an image of the web page i.e. even text on the web page are converted to bitmap. If you need text output in the PDF, then this addon is not for you. However, if text output is not a strict requirement, then PDFIt has a lot to offer.

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