Search tools for Windows 7

Windows 7 Search consumes too much CPU for my liking.

These free alternatives seem to be among the best, I am going to try them, here they are based on the type of search needed:

• Desktop search: Insight Desktop Search
• File contents search: Agent Ransack Lite (aka FileLocator Lite)
• File names and attributes: Everything Search

To disable or turn off search indexing, see this short post (basically set the service to disabled or manual)

 

cellunlocker.net excellent for unlocking samsung corby (t566) from rogers

Mobile service contract with Rogers.ca expired recently but want to continue use of my Samsung Corby Touch (SGH-T566). This phone is exclusive to Rogers and was locked to Rogers.ca network.

Got unlock code from cellunlocker.net and it worked. They provide excellent and speedy service, both in terms of providing code and answer to questions, and surprisingly they are the cheapest I could find ($8, compared to $10 and even $20 for other reliable mobile unlock service providers).

I confirmed via #&74# that there are no locks left. The phone still bears the Rogers brand and I will find out when I go to KoodoMobile whether a new and activated simcard will support phone’s full capabilities (minus anything specific to Rogers of course like “Rogers Email”).

Some sites that were instrumental in helping me figure out if it would be possible, and identify what kind of unlocking service I needed:

• Site http://samsungsecretcodes.info/ has lots of good info. If you use some of the code commands listed there, just be careful those that say “reset”: I used one (like 2767*3855 mentioned in one of the videos on that site!) that completely reset my phone, thereby erasing all my contacts etc, not fun (at the time I was new to unlocking so I thought I was doing a reset of the lock system!).
• Wikipedia SIM_lock page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock) has great overview of the whole locking/unlocking business
• cellunlocker.net has a few great tutorials
• ReviewCentre.com has good info on the company, http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews189675.html

System Performance Tools for Windows

I’m always amazed at the poor quality of reviews of free software on the net. Turns out NovaBench only measures write speed. In the end, CrystalDiskMark wins hands down: nice, simple interface, 4 tests on HD (read, write, seek, random read), can control size of data, pattern used, etc.  So I’m revising the list:

Benchmarking:

• Hard disk: Crystal DiskMark
• SiSoftware’s Sandra Lite: potentially for many benchmark measurements (in fact, too many for simple use)

Cleanup:

• Glary Utilities: defrag registry, find duplicate files, cleanup disk (tmp files etc), …
• CCCleaner: similar to glary
• Iobit’s Advanced System Care (“)

Missing color in printouts of Canon Multipass F80 printer

I have a canon Multipass F80 which is at least 6 years old and it still works great,

way to go canon!! However, over the past couple months I noticed that color printouts were missing one color, magenta. Yet the ink cartridge for magenta was full. I did some swapping of cartridges and some deep cleaning using the Printer Properties dialog but nothing would help. I must have done a least a dozen deep cleanings with no improvement.

I opened up the printhead mechanism as it was clearly designed for that purpose. The printhead can then be pulled out for repair.

I tried rinsing the printhead, that didn’t help. I tried putting a large straw over the magenta intake  (where the ink goes from cartridge into printhead) and blowing so as to force the water through but that didn’t work either. I noticed after that, when drying the printhead, some yellow and cyan ink was on the paper towel, but no magenta.

After a lot of reading on the web, I came to the conclusion that soaking the printhead in windex might work. And it did!! I put the printhead in a clean, empty yogourt container and added Windex until the ink parts were submerged, left it overnight, and next evening when I pulled it out it looked super clean (the liquid in the container was full of ink). I dried it and this time, there was magenta on the paper towel, so something had changed. Once I put the printhead back in the printer, one printout showed it worked better than new. Hurray, just saved us a few hundred dollars.

The Canon Multipass F80 is a great printer, I hope it works for a long time!

Zelda Twilight Princess: The Crazy Difficult Wagon Escort to Kakariko

 

I have been playing Zelda on the Wii with the kids. We were at the part where Link has to escort the Wagon carrying Ilia and Prince Ralis, driven by Telma the bar owner, from the Hyrule village to Kakariko.

I was getting really frustrated with that part of the game as I just could not prevent the birds from dropping the bomb that diverts the wagon into an endless circle around field.

I finally succeeded, here are the two tricks (actually only one of them is a trick, the other a reminder):

1. reminder: don’t forget to z-lock on the wagon when you want to put out the fire with your gale boomerang. I forgot to do this in my second set of attempts at succeeding this part, so it was impossible (worse than the evening before).
2. trick: don’t bother too much with killing the monsters except when you have no choice (say when they are just next to the wagon since in this case they keep setting it afire); instead, focus on z-locking on the bird just before it drops a bomb (it always happens in the same two locations) and boomerang it. I was trying with arrows for the longest time and that was too difficult, but the boomerang was easy to aim and other big advantage is you don’t need to change between arrows and boomerang. Once the wagon exits that field, another small field before last gate will have similar scenario: a bird drops a bomb in one location and prevents wagon from getting to gate.  Once you know where that happens, and you see the bird getting ready, z-target it and boomerang it. The wagon will get to gate and you can let it through.

With those two tricks, it is not so difficult, though still challenging.

Handsfree Bluetooth Speakerphone for Car

I started looking again at Bluetooth devices for handsfree mobile phoning in car. Looks like there are several interfaces available, depending on mount type:

1. ear (headset): little dongle-type device (earbud) that holds onto your ear
2. visor: speakerphone, mounted to visor
3. steering wheel: speakerphone, mounted to steering wheel
4. rearview mirror: speakerphone, mounted to rearview mirror
5. 12V power socket: speakerphone, mounts straight into the car 12V DC power output
6. Hybrid between 3 and 5: base mounts in DC power output, small wireless device mounts on steering wheel

Ear: I have a Jabra that works well, and it was only $30! But I have discovered that I don’t like such ear-type devices mostly because when paired with my phone, any incoming call goes through it, so I *have* to be wearing it constantly if I plan on doing any calls. That constraint really bugs me, plus I don’t like having something in my ear for longer than necessary.

Visor-mounted: My wife bought a Parrot Slim recently and it works well BUT it is not accessible if my visor is tilted into sunblocking position! not very practical.

So I was looking at steering wheel based options. There are a few decent-looking ones out there, but the ones I was interested in were only available at DinoDirect.com and I’m not sure I totally trust the level of support of that company. Their service seems ok, but they did only get a 5′ish rating on ResellerRatings.com. I have a feeling DinoDirect.com would be fine to do business with but I just don’t get that warm and fuzzy. Also, this type of mount causes the dashboard to be partly occluded which could be annoying or even not legal. Update: costco.ca sells a similar one to the DinoDirect ones but it is $120 (not including shipping etc).

In looking at options for the latter, I came upon rearview mounted type. This seems like the best option so far: not affected by moving visor or steering wheel, doesn’t occlude dashboard. I found one by Bluesky, the 1001B. It has FM, builtin mic and speaker, removable earpiece for private comms, and a few other nice features. It even shows the caller ID in the rearview mirror! Looks like it’s sold in town too for under a $100. Update: the cost for purchase is:

• just under $112 (incl. 2-day shipping $9 and taxes $13) from Hands-Free Factory, and
• $110 (incl. 6-day shipping $5 and $5 tax) from PureMobile.com
• $96 (incl 4-day shipping $17 and $5 tax) from Volume Wireless (who was quite willing to work on finding cheaper shipping method).

DC Power mounted: not interested, as I need power for other devices tool so I have a splitter, in which case the device will be dangling and wire will snag etc.

Hybrid is interesting: examples are Kensington LiquidAux and Parrot MKi9200. This type of interface would be my second choice after rearview-mirror mounted because having a second radio signal going around in my environment is disturbing, regardless of how small it its, plus there is no caller ID (having it on the base is not an option for me due to splitter and dangling means will always have to pickup and handle to see LCD, and having it on steering wheel probably makes it more likely to be occluding part of dashboard).

Handsfree Bluetooth Speakerphone for Car

Looking for bluetooth-enabled speakersphone for car. Not as interested in earphones as I don’t like the idea of having a bluetooth radiation right by my ear just so I can hear the phone ring – if I don’t wear the headset I can’t hear it ring. So speakerphone is way to go. Even better if it attaches to steering wheel, like the one sold by Hammacher Schlemmer for $100, called “Steering Wheel Bluetooth Speakerphone”.

DinoDirect sells several, for way cheaper: two $50, called “Steering Wheel Bluetooth Hands Free Car Adaptor Kit BTCK019” and “Steering Wheel Bluetooth Hands Free Music Car Adapter Kit BCK-77”, they don’t have LCD display. A third one, “Car Steering Wheel MP3 FM Modulator Bluetooth Adapter”, is an addition $15 but has small LCD, builtin FM transmitter, and SK/MMC card reader (which might be able to play MP3).

The above devices mount directly onto steering wheel. An interesting alternative is Kensington LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit K33428US, which has two parts: the bluetooth device plugs directly into the car power plug, and a small 2.4GHz wireless remote attaches to your steering wheel. Same idea is the Generic B-228N. This split has a great advantage of less interference with view of dashboard, though I imagine that properly angling the steering wheel would eliminate that problem (if it is one) for the DinoDirect BCK devices.

The Kensington is more expensive, but it does include an audio jack that you can plug into your car stereo. My car stereo doesn’t have an audio jack, but has a tape deck, for which I bought a tape adapter that allows me to connect audio devices into the car stereo, so I would just need a male-female adapter and I would get it all: control from steering wheel, speakerphone, no need to wear a bluetooth ear device, and sound in car stereo, which is important in noisy car environment. Unfortunately, it does not allow for voice dial so it is not truly hands-free, whereas the DinoDirect devices will do this.

So far, the DinoDirect BCK-55 if want dial pad, or HW-F11 otherwise, are my prefered solution. But I can’t find who manufactures those devices so where would I get the manual online if lost? or tech support?

Features:

• Built-in microphone, on steering wheel so closest to your mouth. Don’t want to have to pin microphone to my shirt: the less wires the better, less chance of snag etc and more convenient, can’t forget to unplug etc.
• Voice control through mobile (uses mobile phone’s voice dialing capabilities)
• Hand controls at steering wheel for when voice control not available (for instance, entering access code on dial pad). Ideal: includes digits (not just answer/hangup etc)
• Minimal interference with dashboard
• Easy to remove from steering wheel so don’t attract attention when parked in less secure areas
• Good strong speaker so can hear clearly, OR ability to put in car stereo. But if latter, should be optional, ie can listen to car radio, while calling via builtin speakerphone, and if too noisy, switch to car stereo. This could be achieved for devices that provide
  • FM connection (simplest). Then you have to program a button on stereo so you can easily switch to that frequency when needed. Not as practical a solution if your stereo doesn’t have a “go to last channel” button because you will have to find your radio channel again after call done. Most stereos have programmable buttons but I often listen to channels that are not saved in memory.
  • Audio output jack. This works well and probably better quality sound since wired transmission to car stereo. If no input jack for car stereo, but you have a tape deck, tape deck audio input adapter can be obtained for 20$. If no tape deck, your only option AFAIK is FM connection since there is no such thing as a CD audio input adapter.
• Good customer support
• Ideal: LCD showing caller ID from phone (needs to download contact list from phone); however, will not pay too much for that, as most use of the device, for me, is for outgoing calls, not receiving. But If LCD included, good backlighting important so can use when driving at night.

Can’t delete long filenames on Windows XP

This has a good summary: http://www.atot.net/windows-xp/cant-delete-long-file-names. Basically four possibilities:

1. Move the folder
2. If possible rename folder names
3. Use DOS and short file names (ie Name12~1.txt) (use dir /x to see short version)
4. Use special program to delete invalid file (such as DelInvFile)

Only the first method works infallably. The others work sometimes, depending on the details, but I have not tried DelInvFile.

FreeSound: free sounds database

From the site:

The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter.

There are all sorts of sounds, chirps, wind, storm, etc. Here is a nice one: crickets. Some are geotagged. You can search, browse by tag, see most popular, and UI is convenient to easily hear the search results.

Oddly, no one reproduced the intercom sound from original Star Trek series, though I found a clean version at the Media College though that one may have copyright restrictions. For the intercom sound, also found at phonezoo.com which apparently would allow free download to phone but don’t think my Motorola W385 would be able to receive it.

"Unlocker" works great when can't safely remove USB drive

This works great when you try “safely remove” your USB drive and get an error box saying “try stopping the device again later”: unlocker, by Cedrick Collomb.

Example: Say your USB flash drive is the G: drive; open My Computer, right-click on Unlocker, and Unlocker opens a window listing any file handles open from that drive. You can then click “unlock” and it will attempt to unlock it.

In my case, the faulty process was Explorer.exe itself, certainly not one I could terminate, but the unlock worked immediately, probably indicating that Explorer simply hadn’t released the handle though it was no longer in use (don’t know if it would have worked if it had really been in need of locking).