Windows Media Center refuses to start

I'm having some problems getting Windows Media Center to start on my machine. Whenever I click on it, it complains that "Windows Media Center has been closed because it does not support running in portrait mode. You must restore landscape mode in order to use Windows Media Center."

The funny thing is that on this machine, one of my two monitors is in landscape mode. WMC should just use that one... but it doesn't.

Two obvious solutions:
1) Ditch the second monitor, or disable it, or switch it to landscape mode when running WMC. These options are not that great.

2) The geek way is to tweak the registry;) By deleting the "monitor" value from "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.PerUserSettings" I can force WMC to start on my primary (landscape) monitor. If you don't know how to use regedit, there are lots of tutorials available.

Troubles with ISO Recorder v3

Executive summary:
ISO Recorder v3 captures ISO images into "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows\System32\".

I've used ISO Recorder v3 for some time now to burn iso files onto CD's and DVD's. It's simple, fast, and free, and I've been a very happy user.

Today I needed to make four copies of a DVD - videos and photos captured from my family's recent holiday, and I decided to use ISO Recorder. Right-click on the DVD, choose "Create image from CD", and name the file to copy to. Simple.

Of course, once it was finished, I then wanted to burn that .iso to my DVD. The only problem was.... I couldn't find it. Desktop? User directory? Application directory? Um, Temp directory? Nada. I tried to capture a second copy of the ISO into a well known location (root of my C: drive, perhaps), but found that the user interface didn't let me specify a location for the file - just a name.

After a 15 minute (automated) search, the file turned up in "C:\Users\egirard\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows\System32\Cottage2009.iso" - and once I found it I was able to easily burn my copies. I'm using Vista, and I expect that other operating systems (XP, etc) would find the file in "C:\Windows\System32". So for anyone else out there whe can't find their ISO, hope this helps you.

And by the way, I'm still a happy ISO Recorder v3 user.

Tapping Maples

I tapped a maple tree yesterday, after finding a tap in a Montreal restaurant, and a little bit of web research. So many questions - is it too late to tap, is it actually a sugar maple, will tapping hurt the tree, and will local teens vandalize the equipment? I felt ever so foolish drilling into the tree (3/8" drill, two inches deep, pointing slightly upwards at about waist level), hammering the tap into the hole (firm strokes are required - don't worry, the tree can handle more than you can dish out), and hanging my home-made pail (a two litre pop bottle with a hole cut at the top - slides right over the tap with no need for a lid). But it was all worthwhile when the sap started flowing.

Managed to collect about about two litres of sap on that first day.

Sweet.

Programming an ExpressVu 3100 to talk to a Sony VCR

I'm trying to teach my ExpressVu 3100 Satellite Receiver to talk to my Sony VCR, so the receiver can tell the VCR to record shows for me.

The documentation and the online help tell you to first program your remote to work with your VCR, by trying a number of code numbers, and then to use that same code to program the receiver. For my Sony VCR, the list was 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, and 629. Not surprisingly, it was the last one that worked.

Didn't work for the receiver though. Ran the test a bunch of times, moving the VCR around, just in case something was blocking the IR signal. No dice.

Finally I give up, and contact a helpful Bell technician (Claude) through chat support. It turns out the receiver might use a different code than the remote. Exactly the opposite of what it says in the manual. In my case, 500 worked just fine in the receiver.

Thank god for smart technicians.

Connecting svn checkins to Campfire (under Windows)

We use campfire for office communications, and wanted hear from subversion (our source control repository) whenever a checkin happens. There's a great article by David Naffis at Intridea describing just how to do this, but unfortunately their solution is aimed at linux.

To get the same magic to happen on Windows:

1. Install ruby if you don't already have it. Instant Rails is a fairly easy install.
   (i) Download version 2.0, or look here for the latest build.
   (ii) Unzip that download wherever you want it to live - I chose C:\InstantRails-2.0-win because that was the default name. (Note that Instant Rails doesn't like spaces in their file names.)
   (iii) After you download it, run InstantRails.exe from the root of the package. (On my system, this was C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\InstantRails.exe.) This configures all of the instant rails package, including some stuff we don't need, like apache and mysql.
   
   
2. Install Tinder.
   (i) I downloaded tinder-1.2.0.gem from rubyforge - check for a more recent version here. I copied the gem file into C:\InstantRails-2.0-win
   (ii) Open up a command prompt. (Start|Run|cmd)
   (iii) Switch to the InstantRails directory. (CD C:\InstantRails-2.0-win)
   (iv) Run "use-ruby.cmd". This will add ruby to your path.
   (v) Run "gem install tinder-1.2.0.gem". This will take a little while.
   
   
3. Create svn-campfire.rb as described in Intridea's post. I copied their text into C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\svn-campfire.rb, and then I removed their code at line 17 which read:
   project = ARGV[0].gsub("/home/user/svn/", '')
   and replaced it with
   project = '/svnrepos'
   This could also have been "project=ARGV[0]".
   I also replaced the login info with a local account and password, and replaced line 7 which read:
   campfire = Tinder::Campfire.new 'campfiresubdomain'
   with
   campfire = Tinder::Campfire.new( 'campfiresubdomain', :ssl => true)
   
   
4. I tested svn-campfire.rb by running
   C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\ruby\bin\ruby C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\svn-campfire.rb /svnrepos 1000
   (Where svnrepos is the name we use for our svn repository, and 1000 was a random checkin number.) There may be some debugging required here - especially if you mess up the login information in the svn-campfire.sb. Have fun!
   
   
5. I then added
   C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\ruby\bin\ruby C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\svn-campfire.rb "%0" "%1"
   to the post-commit.bat file in C:\svnrepos\hooks\post-commit.bat. (Your batch file will probably be found elsewhere, so figure it out;) If you don't have a post-commit.bat file, then you will create one. (Note that the %0, %1 parameters are different here than on linux, which would use $0, $1.)
   

And that's all it took.

(In this author's opinion, this installation process is a nightmare, and should be easier. But on the plus side, at least you can do it. Thanks for the helpful article, David)

Fresh, not frozen.

Wow.

I just read a posting by Raymond Chen in "The Old New Thing", where he describes his writing process. Apparently he writes articles ahead of time, and publishes about one article per day. The article in question was written a year ago, and the current backlog of articles stretches out to June 2010.

Is he just kidding?

Somehow I thought blogging was about topics that were current. Maybe even "topical".

Well, I guess his tag line makes even more sense now. As for me, I don't feel quite as compelled to follow his writing. Strange how perception makes the product....

Different Viewpoints...

While watching the CBC news this morning, I heard a reference to a story that the National Geographic had written about the oil sands. They described the article as being quite condemning of the project, and that it included many distressing images of the project.

As an information junkie, I felt compelled to find the article to see for myself, and found a "Alberta gets fresh black eye with oilsands coverage" at canada.com, and "National Geographic paints oilsands with a dark brush" at the Vancouver Sun. Both articles cover the material in some depth, and both paint a fairly grim picture of what the original article says about the oilsands. NG's article, and the imagery it contains, are described as the "baby-seal moment" for the oilsands, which "no amount of damage control can overcome, no matter how reasoned the argument."

But my search at google had also uncovered "National Geographic features oilsands" from the Calgary Sun. There I found an article that describes the NG article, giving it a total of one sentence. That is followed up by (what I would describe as) some random spin about how the province is cutting its carbon emmisions by more than the American government, and that Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach had been interviewed for the article.

I was amazed. Stunned. Confused. Was this article really covering the same story?

For those of you who want all the facts, you can read the original article for yourself, and make up your own mind. Me, I'm worried about how our media can spin information to their own ends. The Ministry of Truth isn't so far away.

This is a deal???

So I have to ask myself... does my credit card company think I'm an idiot? They send me these cheques, see, and they offer me an astounding interest rate on them. I'm looking at a package from Canadian Tire right now, and they're offering me 0.9% on any cheques I cash in the next six weeks. And the offerr me that rate for about four months. It's like free money, right?





Well, no, it isn't. As always, the devil is in the details, and in this case, that means the fine print. In the fine print of the offer. That's where they point out that any payments you make are applied first to interest, then to cash advances (such as these cheques) and then to your purchases. In the end, some of your cheque will get the 0.9% rate, but some of it will get the standard 18.9% rate. For a person like me, that means that I'll end up paying about 11% for that free money. Not so free any more, is it?




This is how I figure it. I don't spend very much on this account - about $200 each month. I also pay off the full amount each month, which means that I don't normally pay any interest on this card. Over the next four months, I'd expect to see something like:




	Purchases	Payment	Interest
March	$200	$200	$0
April	$200	$200	$0
May	$200	$200	$0
June	$200	$200	$0
Total			$0




Now let's imagine that I cashed one of those cheques for $1000.00 and paid the full amount just before it comes due in June. By a quick calculation, I should pay $0.75 per month in interest, resulting in a total interest hit of about $3.00. But with the "pay down the advance first" policy, it would look more like this:




	Purchases (Advance)		Purchase Balance	Advance Balance	Payment	Interest
March	$200 +$1000		$200	$1000	$200	$3.90
April	$200		$400	$800	$200	$6.90
May	$200		$600	$600	$200	$9.90
June	$200		$200	$0	$1200	$12.90
Total						$33.60







So I've paid about $33.60 instead of the $3.00 I was expecting to pay ($1000 @ 0.9% for four months). That works out to about 11.5% annually. It would actually be a bit worse than this, because I've ignored the compounding interest, and I've ignored the fact that most credit cards only forgive interest charges on purchases if you paid both this month and last month's bill in full - so that would mean that I'd pay another $3.15 in July. Adding those two factors in would put the total interest to about $41.50, or about 12.5% annually.




The only way that these "low interest cheques" can work for me is if I use them, but stop using my credit card for the duration of the low interest offer. So is my credit card company asking me to stop being a customer, or do they think I'm stupid enough to use their cheques?




Since they send cheques to me every four or six months, I have to assume that somebody, somewhere is buying into this scheme. And it's not just Canadian tire - I get similar offers from two other credit card companies, so I'd guess that this kind of thing goes on everywhere.




To consumers out there, I'd suggest you do the same thing that I do with those cheques - tear them up. And to credit card companies out there, please get a clue. Stop trying to fleece your customers, stop wasting your money on junk mail, and start treating your customers with just a shred of respect.