Apparently the current versions of the Winamp plug-ins "Nullsoft CD Plug-in" (in_cdda.dll) and "Nullsoft Rip & Burn Plug-in" (ml_disc.dll) cause Windows 7 systems with Daemon Tools (or similar virtual disc drives installed) to completely lock the system when right clicking any song/album/artist and opening the Send To menu. Yikes.
ml_disc.dll is used to provide burning/ripping support, while in_cdda.dll allows Winamp to use your optical drives.
Lockups are easily worked-around by going into your Winamp installation's "plugins" folder and deleting ml_disc.dll, and possibly in_cdda.dll if it still happens. You could also move them out of the Winamp folder entirely to achieve the same effect.
If you'd rather keep this functionality, the other workaround for now is equally easy: just uninstall whatever virtual disc software you use. If you can't live without either, you can always use hotkeys instead of the menu.
I just removed the plug-ins since all my music is already ripped. Worse comes to worst, I can just put the plug-ins back into the "plugins" folder, rip and move them back out. But, I hope they fix this before I need to bother with all that.
Source & Further Reading
Also see this post about elevator.exe if you're security-conscience (and you should be).
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Pidgin Sucks (Still)
I tried moving to other IM clients and none of them worked as well as Pidgin, which is an epic failure in the IM client "market." A long time ago Pidgin was known as "gAIM," and gAIM was a great client! It had a sort of minimalistic user interface, it worked on all the major protocols reasonably well (except the MSN plug-in... which still doesn't work worth a shit) and just generally stayed out of the way. Now days it's jammed full of random useless crap for the sake of "looking better" and being "more consistent" while the underlying stuff barely gets improved. Hey, that sounds familiar! *looks at browser* Oh, yeah, Firefox did the same thing. But anyway...
I tried Carrier, and it's like going back in time but forward in functionality. The only problem is, it doesn't go far enough back in time as far as the UI goes. There's still this stupid bug [and more that] the Pidgin devs introduced a couple minor releases back that makes it impossible to move up a line in the input box of a conversation to fix something on a higher line because the damned view goes back to the bottom instead of staying with the cursor. I can't see where I'm at when it isn't on the screen for me to see. And worse yet, the view keeps jumping from the bottom to the cursor over and over so it just sits there and has a seizure while you're trying to fix a typo. Seriously, how couldn't somebody notice this? Or don't the Pidgin devs ever make typos? Oh... they do. They must to produce this pile of shit.
I don't even enjoy using Pidgin anymore, but the truth is it's still better than the rest. Actually, it isn't. I'm gonna stick with Carrier (same damn thing + patches) because at least it's UI works (mostly) the way I like.
Further, more specific bitching:
Firefox (and others) used to have tabs that auto-expanded to fill the entire tab area evenly. Then they decided that the tabs should be a certain width, and if they fill the whole area, then they shrink to fit. So, you can always know what to expect, always know where that close button will be. Pidgin had the second way for the longest time and it was something it's users actually enjoyed. But these downright egotistical devs thought they knew better and went to the way tabs used to be done years ago. Way to take a step back, fellas.
The ability to resize the input box has been beaten to death, even by professors, so that doesn't really need to be discussed. But it does deserve a mention. Fucking moron "developers." Anyway...
According to those who write the software, I'm supposed to look at my list and think (because they dictate how I interpret raw information apparently) "I want to talk to Alex." Not, "I want to talk to Alex on AIM because both of our MSN plug-ins are steaming piles of shit and should be avoided at all costs." Why have him on MSN then? Why don't you just come over and arrange my list for me, asshole. Because sometimes MSN is all the other person has. Why should it fucking matter in the first place? Why can't I force his AIM s/n to be the one that shows up on the list? Why do they think a piece of software can know what I want? It's just 0s and 1s. Leave the decisions to the people with brains.
And failing that, why can't it just show me the damned protocol icons as the actual icons next to the people instead of further cluttering the list with a second set of icons (the status ones)? Remember what I said about gAIM having a simplistic charm? The Pidgin releases throw that right out the window.
I gotta stop for now, but believe me, there's PLENTY more I could bitch about. In fact, should just start posting shit like Adobe UI Gripes.
Also, fuck Skype's latest release. Can't even give the option to put it in the tray? I have more important apps to hang out in the taskbar than Skype. Morons, user choice is always greater than OS UI guidelines/recommendations.
I tried Carrier, and it's like going back in time but forward in functionality. The only problem is, it doesn't go far enough back in time as far as the UI goes. There's still this stupid bug [and more that] the Pidgin devs introduced a couple minor releases back that makes it impossible to move up a line in the input box of a conversation to fix something on a higher line because the damned view goes back to the bottom instead of staying with the cursor. I can't see where I'm at when it isn't on the screen for me to see. And worse yet, the view keeps jumping from the bottom to the cursor over and over so it just sits there and has a seizure while you're trying to fix a typo. Seriously, how couldn't somebody notice this? Or don't the Pidgin devs ever make typos? Oh... they do. They must to produce this pile of shit.
I don't even enjoy using Pidgin anymore, but the truth is it's still better than the rest. Actually, it isn't. I'm gonna stick with Carrier (same damn thing + patches) because at least it's UI works (mostly) the way I like.
Further, more specific bitching:
Firefox (and others) used to have tabs that auto-expanded to fill the entire tab area evenly. Then they decided that the tabs should be a certain width, and if they fill the whole area, then they shrink to fit. So, you can always know what to expect, always know where that close button will be. Pidgin had the second way for the longest time and it was something it's users actually enjoyed. But these downright egotistical devs thought they knew better and went to the way tabs used to be done years ago. Way to take a step back, fellas.
The ability to resize the input box has been beaten to death, even by professors, so that doesn't really need to be discussed. But it does deserve a mention. Fucking moron "developers." Anyway...
According to those who write the software, I'm supposed to look at my list and think (because they dictate how I interpret raw information apparently) "I want to talk to Alex." Not, "I want to talk to Alex on AIM because both of our MSN plug-ins are steaming piles of shit and should be avoided at all costs." Why have him on MSN then? Why don't you just come over and arrange my list for me, asshole. Because sometimes MSN is all the other person has. Why should it fucking matter in the first place? Why can't I force his AIM s/n to be the one that shows up on the list? Why do they think a piece of software can know what I want? It's just 0s and 1s. Leave the decisions to the people with brains.
And failing that, why can't it just show me the damned protocol icons as the actual icons next to the people instead of further cluttering the list with a second set of icons (the status ones)? Remember what I said about gAIM having a simplistic charm? The Pidgin releases throw that right out the window.
I gotta stop for now, but believe me, there's PLENTY more I could bitch about. In fact, should just start posting shit like Adobe UI Gripes.
Also, fuck Skype's latest release. Can't even give the option to put it in the tray? I have more important apps to hang out in the taskbar than Skype. Morons, user choice is always greater than OS UI guidelines/recommendations.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, oh my!
A while back, my mother actually asked me to install Kubuntu/KDE4 on their -- my parents' -- compy when she saw all the cool things it could do. KDE 4 itself runs just fine, but 'problem is, Linux likes to ramp the fan up and down. Enter the famous lm-sensors. I knew it was supposed to give you sensor "support," but I didn't know to what extent - until now. lm-sensors doesn't come installed on Kubuntu by default, so you gotta install it via, well, I would say Adept, but honestly, 3.0 is a hunk of junk. It can't do nearly the same stuff as the old one could. Anyway, one way or another, get the packge lm-sensors installed and run sensors-detect from a terminal. Setting this whole thing up was not as easy as the rest of the distro. Not by a longshot. It asked a bunch of questions about whether or not to probe the subset of buses and what not, almost all of which you'd say yes to if you ran it; The last 2 or so are ones you might want to answer differently to, depending on your degree of experience. After having ran it, modprobed the modules it listed at the end and running sensors to check and see if it was working, I had a readout of what was going on with temps, volts and fan speeds.
Temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, oh my!
Temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, oh my!
Temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, oh my!
Moving right along, the next step was to configure the fan speeds. Never before have I felt stupid trying to make my fan speed adjust. Well, there's a first time for everything, so I got to learn about "Pulse-Width Modulation" while using pwmconfig in order to make my parents' fans adjust dynamically according to the temperature of the chips using fancontrol. After multiple tries and multiple failures -- including a few incidences of "fan stoppage" -- I finally got the northbridge fan to calm down until it hits ~50C. Then, in theory, it ramps up to 100% until it hits 30C, ad nauseum. The funny thing is, I couldn't test it fully because they were already going to sleep. Let alone get the other three fans working. That's how ridiculously long this all took.
If you want *real* step-by-step instructions on how to do this, there's a nice thread on the Ubuntu Forums that still works on Ibex (wtf is an Ibex anyway?). I warn you now tho, only attempt it with low blood pressure and low stress :) Wow.
On the bright side of things, I was surfing around and randomly stumbled upon this really nifty plasmoid to control (at the time of writing) newer ATi video card fan speeds and read GPU temps. The best part, I never saw an official statement in the driver release notes that said my card was supported. But, the fan control driver feature actually works for my card[1]! And with ease!
Cheers,
-DHG
[1]My current video card is the HD3870X2 by Sapphire. It's a pretty damn good card, if I do say so. Rest of the specs are below for those interested:
Temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, oh my!
Temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, oh my!
Temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, oh my!
Moving right along, the next step was to configure the fan speeds. Never before have I felt stupid trying to make my fan speed adjust. Well, there's a first time for everything, so I got to learn about "Pulse-Width Modulation" while using pwmconfig in order to make my parents' fans adjust dynamically according to the temperature of the chips using fancontrol. After multiple tries and multiple failures -- including a few incidences of "fan stoppage" -- I finally got the northbridge fan to calm down until it hits ~50C. Then, in theory, it ramps up to 100% until it hits 30C, ad nauseum. The funny thing is, I couldn't test it fully because they were already going to sleep. Let alone get the other three fans working. That's how ridiculously long this all took.
If you want *real* step-by-step instructions on how to do this, there's a nice thread on the Ubuntu Forums that still works on Ibex (wtf is an Ibex anyway?). I warn you now tho, only attempt it with low blood pressure and low stress :) Wow.
On the bright side of things, I was surfing around and randomly stumbled upon this really nifty plasmoid to control (at the time of writing) newer ATi video card fan speeds and read GPU temps. The best part, I never saw an official statement in the driver release notes that said my card was supported. But, the fan control driver feature actually works for my card[1]! And with ease!
Cheers,
-DHG
[1]My current video card is the HD3870X2 by Sapphire. It's a pretty damn good card, if I do say so. Rest of the specs are below for those interested:
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Linux, Firefox and MIMETYPES!
One of the kind folks in #kde pointed me to my now Original Source of this short HowTo.
To make Firefox work with any and all mimetypes, regardless of KDE 4, 3.5, Gnome or anything else that supports xdg-open, follow these very simple instructions:
Locate xdg-open on your system:
1) Open a terminal
2) Type in: which xdg-open
3) Copy that location (or remember it)
Hint: In any *Buntu distro, it's located at /usr/bin/xdg-open
Now in Firefox:
1) Open up Firefox
2) Download something random (Save to File)
3) Open the file via Firefox's download manager
4) Tick the "Remember This Association for All Files" box, and click "Choose"
5) In the location bar, paste in (or type in) the path you got earlier
In the case of Kubuntu, that's /usr/bin/xdg-open
That's it, every file should open properly without any extra dialogs, files, dirty hacks, etc. Thanks a load TerminalDigit and Frederik :D
To make Firefox work with any and all mimetypes, regardless of KDE 4, 3.5, Gnome or anything else that supports xdg-open, follow these very simple instructions:
Locate xdg-open on your system:
1) Open a terminal
2) Type in: which xdg-open
3) Copy that location (or remember it)
Hint: In any *Buntu distro, it's located at /usr/bin/xdg-open
Now in Firefox:
1) Open up Firefox
2) Download something random (Save to File)
3) Open the file via Firefox's download manager
4) Tick the "Remember This Association for All Files" box, and click "Choose"
5) In the location bar, paste in (or type in) the path you got earlier
In the case of Kubuntu, that's /usr/bin/xdg-open
That's it, every file should open properly without any extra dialogs, files, dirty hacks, etc. Thanks a load TerminalDigit and Frederik :D
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Hilarious
(12:33:11 AM) Stew: X.org has crashed. Would you like to?
(12:33:17 AM) Stew: 1. Restart in Windows
(12:33:21 AM) Stew: 2. Redo xorg.conf
(12:33:28 AM) Stew: 3. Pull the plug
(12:33:29 AM) Stew: 4. Swear a lot
(12:33:35 AM) Brendan: 5. ???
(12:33:37 AM) Brendan: 6. Profit
(12:33:40 AM) Stew: 6. Proit
(12:34:02 AM) Stew: I was trying to type it faster than you were :p
(12:33:17 AM) Stew: 1. Restart in Windows
(12:33:21 AM) Stew: 2. Redo xorg.conf
(12:33:28 AM) Stew: 3. Pull the plug
(12:33:29 AM) Stew: 4. Swear a lot
(12:33:35 AM) Brendan: 5. ???
(12:33:37 AM) Brendan: 6. Profit
(12:33:40 AM) Stew: 6. Proit
(12:34:02 AM) Stew: I was trying to type it faster than you were :p
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