Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Testing

Hooking up g1 with blogger

Friday, December 19, 2008

Online TV and Movies

So You like TV and Movies? Well I do to, however I don't like most of the stuff on cable, and I don't want to waste money paying for cable TV if there is an alternative. Luckily there is. For the last 3-4 years I have not payed for TV however I watch all the shows that I am interested in when I want to. (in the little spare time I have) You may ask how do I do it? Well, thats what I will be sharing with you today.

There are many places on the web where you can legally watch TV and movies. There are also some more questionable ways to watch TV and movies however we aren't going to go into that today. The different ways that you can watch stuff online are as follows, Website (Flash), Website (plugin), or program (bittorrent or streaming client). A couple examples of Flash websites that have plenty of content are Hulu.com and Joost.com. I have use both of these extensively and they offer good quality TV and movies for free.
If you are a Netflix subscriber you also have access to view  many movies and TV shows instantly. This does however require a plugin. If you are a firefox person you will have to run this through ietab, however as we speack I am watching the original episodes of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy full screened on my second monitor. "Don't Panic"  Netflix has done a great job of ensuring qulity, and smoothness.
If you would like to watch TV and Movies else where you can Check out Hulu.com and Joost.com both of witch offer a wide selection of TV shows and Movies. If you make a account with them (which is free) you can save things to a queue and be notified when there are new shows etc. This is a nice option for TV on the web because there are ussually options for hi quality and low quality, and you can pause any of these videos and watch them at your leisure. For people sponsored tv you can also turn to Democracynow.org.
Last of all are the programs. There are a few programs that will let you watch video streams, Winamp , TVUplayer , Miro, and Vuze. The first two do exactly that they play streams of video, and the pause feature is extrememly limited and ill advised. However the last two Vuze and Miro, are quite different. Vuze is a bit torrent client that recently has started making it easy for poople to release their video and other creations. You can choose to download them or play them. Miro on the other hand is still a video client, however it downloads videos or podcasts that you subscribe to (for free) and allows you yet again to play them when ever you choose. Unlike the other options for watching TV and Movies these last two can use up alot of space, however with space being so affordable nowdays, that really shouldn't really be a big concern. If you have questions or would like me to look over a program that you use, let me know by leaving a comment or contacting me.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Vista's Winsxs Folder

Well many of you Vista owners out there probably have from time to time looked to increase your free space on your machine, and you have found that the Winsxs folder seems to be taking up a lot of space. You wonder what is Winsxs and why does it need so much space.
Well WinSxS stands for "Windows Side-by-Side" in really simple terms windows creates a Hardlink to files here, however because hardlinks look like regular files to windows explorer, It seems that this folder is taking up a ton of space when really they are just glorified shortcuts. Windows uses these shortcuts to keep track of important system files, so deleting them could be disasterous.
There is one tool that can up slim it down slightly removing the out of date non performing hardlinks. You have to run the tool in administrator mode, here is the file. C:\Windows\System32\vsp1cln.exe remember after you have run this you will be unable to ever uninstall SP1 should you need to. Not that you ever would however I have to include that disclaimer. Run this program at your own risk, it made by Microsoft and I have no connection to it, however that being said it slimmed my WinSxS folder down a few Gb. 
Post comments here letting others know how this tool worked for you. As a side know if you have a Vista where Sp1 was slipstreamed into it already when you installed it, this tool will probably not help you much.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

EA connection issues fix


After getting a couple EA games that I couldn't play because of " network/DRM  issues " I was really upset. It seemed that because I have Vista x64 Sp1 I couldn't play the games. After alot of searching I found the answer. Its the new network settings in Vista, so I figured out the network settings, and was going to write a batch file to fix them, when I found one on the internet. It was written by Marluxia Kyoshu I modified it slightly so that it explained better what it did, and I am putting it here for you all on the internet seeking answers. 

Games I know it works for:
  • Spore
  • NFS:Undercover

I believe it will also fix the EA Downloader issues (though not tested)

Also if you like my blog tell your friends...

Remember you need to run the file in administrator mode.

Link to the file.
NETFIX.BAT

The code incase you want to look over it without downloading it

@ECHO off 
ECHO Welcome to Marluxia.Kyoshu's EA Server/General Network Connectivity for Vista!
ECHO This tool will fix the problems that cause error messages like the one below,
ECHO Or similar network error messages. Bat Optimized by D4RK_4NG3L
ECHO ---------------------------------------------------------
ECHO 'The game can not start'
ECHO.
ECHO 'The game needs access to the internet in order to verify 
ECHO 'ownership of this game. Please ensure that your computer 
ECHO 'is online and try again.'
ECHO ---------------------------------------------------------
ECHO.
netsh interface tcp show global
ECHO. You may want to write down these settings incase you want
ECHO  to revert to your original settings.
ECHO.
ECHO Please press the 'ANY' key to begin the tool.
PAUSE > NUL
netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global chimney=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=none
netsh interface tcp set global ecncapability=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global timestamps=disabled
netsh interface tcp show global
ECHO.
ECHO The above and below tables should be exactly the same.
ECHO.
ECHO TCP Global Paramaters
ECHO ----------------------------------------------
ECHO Receive-Side Scaling State          : disabled
ECHO Chimney Offload State               : disabled
ECHO Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level    : normal
ECHO Add-On Congestion Control Provider  : none
ECHO ECN Capability                      : disabled
ECHO RFC 1323 Timestamps                 : disabled
ECHO.
ECHO.
CHOICE /N /M "Are they the same? Type Y for yes, N for no."
IF ERRORLEVEL ==2 GOTO NO
IF ERRORLEVEL ==1 GOTO YES
:YES
ECHO.
ECHO Just start up the EA Game now and it should work now.
ECHO Enjoy the game!
ECHO.
ECHO Press the 'ANY' key to exit.
PAUSE > NUL
GOTO END
:NO
ECHO.
ECHO Once the program is terminated, right-click NETFIX.BAT and click 
ECHO 'Run as Administrator...'
ECHO.
ECHO If you have already done this, try running twice more at both
ECHO Administrator and User level.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO Press the 'ANY' key to exit.
PAUSE > NUL
GOTO END
:END
EXIT




A more in depth look at the file.