A violation of the Laws of Thermodynamics?

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/9051/msi_employees_stirling_engine_theory/index.html

Basically, this device uses the expansion nature of heat to move a
piston that moves a shaft that spins a fan that cools a metal grid that
is heated up by the same heat whose expansion pushes the piston in the
first place. Wow.

Enhancement for Windows Explorer

Let's face it, Windows Explorer is crap given the complexity of the OS. The best you can get is a two-panel window to navigate and manipulate files. For most people, this is fine which I guess why Microsoft has it this way, but for a geek like myself who manipulates a lot of files in
Windows, it's a real hassle.

Fortunately there are add-on utilities out there that enhance the default anemic Windows Explorer. I use this free one on both my XP and Vista systems. There are two versions of this utility: free and paid. For my work, the free version is fine.

http://www.zabkat.com/

The free version gives me 3 columns. I assume the paid Pro version gives me unlimited columns. Given that almost all computer monitors these days are wide screen, there is enough space to display 3 or more columns.

Copy multiple files from different locations

This is what is said on its website:

http://www.conceptworld.com/Piky/piky_features.asp

With Piky Basket, you can reduce repetitive tasks when copying/moving files and folders in Windows. Piky Basket allows you to select files/folders in to a "basket" from different locations. Once you are done selecting, you can paste them all at once to the target folders. It also allows you to selectively paste the files to the target folder.

Piky Basket is integrated with Windows Explorer. You do not have to run Piky Basket as a separate program. It can be accessed from the menu which appears by right clicking on any files/folders in Windows Explorer.

Piky Basket is a replacement for Windows file copy/paste operation

Piky Basket can save lot of time when organizing files on your hard drive

Piky Basket can be very useful when copying same set of files to different locations

Piky Basket can be used when taking backup of files and folders from different locations

Piky Basket can be used when burning a CD which requires copying of files and folders from different location

Another webpage embedded tool

A few posts ago I mentioned PDFMeNot. There is an even better tool that does the same and more because this tool enables you to embed additional file types such as Word and PowerPoint.

http://www.scribd.com/ipaper

Putting a timer of multiple downloads

Sites like Rapidshare allow people to upload and download massive files.
Unfortunately unless you are a paying member, you have to wait for a
certain period of time between download. This site offers a ways to put
all those downloads in a queue so that these downloads will take turn
without your intervention.

http://www.rapget.com/en/

Backing up your blog

One would think that the information in your blog here would be backed up by the people who run the site. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But if I were a betting man, I would not rely on other people to take care of my data. I am not saying that the good people who run this blog site do not care about my data. I am saying that they still may lose the data if they do care and back it up. I have been in the tech support business long enough to know that no matter what people tell me that they take care of my data, I will back it up myself thank you very much because per chance that they lose my data, no matter who is at fault, the data is still gone. With that said, there are tools and ways to back up the blog posts here. You can either save it like a book or mirror it locally on your computer.

Here is the blog page that shows you how to do it.

http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com/2006/04/how-to-backup-your-blogger-blog.html

The two programs you can use are HTTrack Website Copier and Blog Collector.

Embedded PDF

There is a service on the Internet called PDFMeNot. It offers you the ability to view any pdf files without the need to have a PDF reader installed locally on your computer. This is great if you try to access a PDF file online on a public computer that does not have this reader installed and you have no permission to install it.

I like it for its embedded option. Basically, instead of posting a link of the pdf file on the webpage that requires the visitor to download the file and view it offline, I can embed the pdf file as an inline document. You can see an example below.

There is an inherit danger here though because for this to work, you must give permission to this website to have access to the PDF file. This is not an issue if the file in question contains no confidential info.

This embedded feature works on Internet Explorer7 and Firefox2 on a Windows PC.

The only code I put in this post is this:

FreeNAS

I used to manage a computer lab at a high school with 20 iMacs running OSX 10.4. The reason for me choosing a NAS box was the old Windows Server 2000 machine at the time acting as the lab's fileserver had some serious problems.

Firstly, some files stored on the W2K box got corrupted. The files themselves were fine if they were accessed on a Mac client, but when I attached a firewire drive to the W2K machine for backup, a lot of files got messed up. Lesson learned: don't store files created on a Mac on NTFS.

Second, thanks to Microsoft's licensing policy, only 10 clients can access the server at a time. Given that there are 20 clients in this lab (more if someone brings in their laptops), some people had to wait in line until someone else logged off before they can access the server. Microsoft says that this limitation is imposed because when there are more than 10 clients in a network, it would be a mess to manage the computers without a centralized server. Well, should I be the one to determine this?

Third. Mac data files have the resource folk and the data folk integrated. The users in the lab work on collaborative projects where they would color code the files for easy identification. Files saved on the W2K machine (if not corrupted) had this color info removed. Interestingly, under FreeNAS, if the users access these color coded file under SMB, the colors are gone, but under AFP, the colors show up!

Fourth. Perhaps this is why files were corrupted. The Mac OS seems to be more liberal with the naming scheme. Mac users in general love to use unsual characters as the file names. Once a file with these "unconventional" file names were saved onto the W2k server, it got corrupted and would not be accessible by the very same Mac that had created it.

Fifth. The W2K server was slow serving out files. Maybe it was trying to work its way through the protocol stack to the Appletalk one. Also, sometimes the Mac client could not connect to the server at all.

So these were the reasons I was looking for a better storage solution.

I stumpled upon FreeNAS and gave it a shot. I installed it on a P4 with 128 MB of RAM and a 20GB IDE drive. It took me several tries to set it up because FreeNAS kept telling me that there was error in mounting the drive in the GUI, but I ignored it and it worked. Basically, it was a false positive. I could not make FreeNAS boot from a 512MB CF card attached via IDE so I settled with a two partions scheme on this 20GB drive. This FreeNAS file server was in service for nearly a year and no problems. It survived 3 unplanned shutdowns: 2 from power outages and the other because some student yanked out the powercord. The best part was no 10 users limitation. Speedwise, it was definitely faster than the old Windows server. I upgraded the NIC to gigabit as the switch in the lab was already a Neatgear Gb switch and all the iMacs were Gb as well. There was a little speed increase, but there was less congestion when multiple people access the server. The lesson here is gigabit may not give you the speedboost, but it does provide additional bandwidth. With a fatter data pipe, there is less congestion.

One major gripe I have about FreeNAS (version 0.681) though is user permissions. Although I could create groups and members to put into these groups, they all had the same access permission (read and write) to the files! Therefore, if one user in the lab carelessly or intentionally deleted all files, they would be all gone! I attached a firewire hardrive to one of the iMacs and backup all the data (18GB) everyday just in case.

In short, other than a security "problem", FreeNAS rocks. By the way, the people who used the lab were reminded frequently that the data saved on the fileserver or locally on the Mac client were not secured so if they wanted security, they had to store their files on their own USB sticks.

Remove email addresses before forwarding the email

For some email clients, when you forward an email, the text of the forwarded email appears in the body of the new message. This somewhat blurs the line between the new and the forwarded message, and replying to the original message can get cumbersome and confusing after the original email has been forwarded a few more times. In other words, the original email will get lost in the chain, or worse, it gets replicated every time it is forwarded.

Forwarding these messages as attachments however solves these problems nicely because the original message now acts like a baton in the relay foot race. No matter how many runners the baton goes through in the race, there is no confusion where the baton is. Encapsulating the original email as an attachment keeps the various people in the conversation from going off topic.

So that was a little back ground info on potential problems with forwarding an email. Now let's talk about one side effect of making the forwarded email an attachment -- at least in Thunderbird.

When you use Thunderbird version 2 with its default configuration to forward an email, the program encapsulate the original email as an attachment. This causes a problem if you want to forward an email but you do not want the recipient of this email to see some or all of the email addresses to which the original email was sent. When Thunderbird sends the original email as a attachment, there is no option to remove these email addresses. However, if you tell Thunderbird to send the original email as "inline", you have the option to completely or partially remove these email addresses.

Tools --> Options --> Composition. Under Forward Messages, choose Inline.

The above change is now part of the configuration of Thunderbird. However, let's say you only want to do this address removal as a case by case basis. In other words, you still want Thunderbird to send the original email as an attachment in the forwarded email, but once in a while, you prefer to remove the addresses from the original emails before forwarding it. Open the message you want to forward.
Select Message --> Forward As --> Inline from the menu. Remove the addresses as you wish.

A Glimpse of Windows 7?

Now that Vista is a bit of a flop -- it's the WinMe of the NT family -- we want to look forward to its replacement. It used to be called Blackcomb, but now it's being referred as Windows 7. Let's see, Windows 1, 2, 3, 4 (NT4), 5 (Windows XP), 6 (Windows Vista), and now Windows 7. Notice that I skipped Windows 95, 98, and Me. This is because given that Microsoft has completely abandoned the so-called Win9x architecture, there is no point in including them in the lineage. I hope Microsoft learns a lesson with the unpopular Vista and goes back to the basics where less is more. This is the theme of the video presentation. The basic core of Windows 7 in this demonstration runs on 40MB of RAM!

Here is the link:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071019/eric-talk-demo-windows-7-minwin/

The Irony Did Not Escape Me

This is event is embarrassing and none of you want to have to experience this, but hell, I am sure it will happen to all of you if you live long enough.

On my way home from work from a graveyard shift as I was getting off the bus, my lower bowels decided to have a 9 alarm fire. Dammit, I thought. I was so close to home. Six freaking blocks. I decided to make a run for it. After two blocks, I realized that this baby was not going to wait for me until I get to the privacy of my throne. I ducked into a restaurant asking for the toilet. The employees there gave me one of those looks. You know, the one that says if I am not a customer, I can bleed to death for all they care. After I told them that I would buy something, they directed me to the secret hole. But before I went there, I felt like I should order something on the menu just to show them that I was sincere. As I scanned for the cheapest item on the menu list, it dawned on me that most of what they were selling were burritos. The irony was as transparent as the stool that would soon enough coming out of my butt. I picked an item after taking a few seconds deciding if I wanted chicken or pork and ran to the toilet. Actually, I did not run, I didn't want them to know the dire situation that God had put me in. I nonchalantly walked away.

When I got there, the men's side was locked, but the women's side was open. It was really early in the morning so I thought that no one would be using the place, so I dived in. Ok, I should fast forward a few minutes in this story because even the most infantile brained among you would want to know the details. All I would say was as I was in there in the stall, every sound I heard could mean some unsuspecting woman could be coming into the room. I did not have time to do any thorough job, just enough to triage the emergency. As I walked out of that room, I was as happy as a schoolgirl.

The moral of the story is even if you do not want to take a dump at work like me, at the first sign of any intestinal discomfort, please hold your pride and modesty and just do your duty there because when the shit does hit the fan, you might not be anywhere near a toilet.

The burrito that I unwillingly bought was delicious. It usually cook my own meal at home, but I might as well enjoy this Mexican specialty now that it's mine while pondering the mysteries of the Universe.