Blessed by the Potato

Wow, Portal was every bit as awesome as I heard. Neat new puzzle gameplay, hilarious computer, short but sweet. Add on cake and companion cubes and you’ve got a winner.

In fact, it took me longer to get my video card updated to a new set of drivers than it did to play through the game (about 3 hours, but I still have to play the bonus stages I unlocked). It’s an Asus made X1650 Pro (ATI) over AGP. And for some reason, ATI drivers don’t work on it. I install them, reboot, and then face a screen full of fuzz. Go into VGA mode, try another driver, repeat. When I last tried this, I ended up sticking with the out-of-date drivers that came on the CD (dated mid-2006 or so), which were good enough to run CivIV. Unfortunately, Portal just wouldn’t start up under those old drivers, so I had to try the process all over again. Fortunately, news of this stupid card’s incompatibility has spread enough that I found evidence of it when searching the web… just too bad it came too late to keep me from buying the stupid thing in the first place. To make a long story short, Asus has dropped the ball on this card, hard. Their drivers are really out of date for this card, and it is completely incompatible with other versions. I found two potential fixes: the first involved reflashing the BIOS on the card to make it think it was a Sapphire made X1650 Pro AGP. The other involved a custom version of the Catalyst drivers (“Warcat XG 7.4”) which properly recognizes this card.

I swear I’ve ranted about the mad proliferation of power adaptors, power bricks, AC-DC transformers or whatever you want to call them before, but I can’t find it in my archives. My search function is not quite as helpful as I would have hoped.

Anyhow, this was a pretty good Potatomas for me, with lots of toys to haul in: a Nintendo DS, some Wii games, and a new camera to replace the one that was stolen. The camera looks pretty keen: a Canon SD850 8-megapixel unit that’s quite small and sleek. So far I only have two complaints about it. The first is that the flash is way too bright, and that it could really use a half-flash setting, or even a low, med, high flash like my old, old 3-MP camera had. The second is that it doesn’t take AA batteries, so I have to remember to charge it when going places, and also to take the proprietary charger. Likewise, the DS has its own charging dongle. My old Sony camera also had its charger, but it used rechargeable AA-batteries, so when I inevitably ran out of juice in the middle of a trip or a party, I could just run into a convenience store or bum some batteries from somewhere else and I was good to go.

My cell phone (motorola Razr V3c) has a mini-USB slot to charge, which I find quite handy. I don’t need to pack a charger, just my laptop. Of course, that stupid thing needs a specific driver for my laptop in order for it to charge properly, so it was of no help when my phone died over at a friend’s place last night, and I had no way of charging it.

Another device I have is useless for the moment as I’ve lost its charging brick, and am trying to figure out how to get another. At Wayfare’s house, her mom has a bag of power bricks and no one knows what they’re for, so they’re afraid to throw them out just yet (in a sign of inspired organisation, they’re labelled with the date they were found so that they can eventually be declared orphan bricks and thrown out/recycled).

I think about now I would kill for someone (ISO? ANSI? IEEE? The government?) to come out with a couple (even a couple dozen) standardized power brick/battery charger configurations. A few DC voltages, a few different max current/wattage ratings, a few different plug geometries, and we’d be off to the races. Sure, we might have a whole alphabet of charger types A through Z, but even narrowing it down just that much would help if it ever becomes necessary to replace one. At work we have “universal” power adapters that are giant and have selectors for 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15 V and 4 or 5 different plugs, and while we use those for a number of different pieces of lab equipment/prototypes, I don’t think there’s a single laptop that they could run. The desktop replacement ones need too much power, and the smaller Dells have a weird square 3-pronged plug.

Plus, my understanding is that there is a certain amount of inefficiency inherent to these transformer power bricks. People simply aren’t going to pay the price for a more efficient version for every device they have; in some cases, the power bricks might end up costing more than what they power! However, if there were only so many power brick types needed in a home, then a person could spring for a more efficient one, and then use it to power a couple of different devices…

For some portable devices, like my camera and DS, it does make sense that the AC-DC converter is in a separate power brick, even if the non-standard adapters drive me crazy. Other devices, such as my PS2 and computer have the power supply internal, and then have a fairly standard plug on the back. I don’t know why that’s not the case for the Wii and the TV — it’s not like they’re portable, and they don’t have batteries so they can’t be used separately from the power supply. While it would be more weight to put on my lap, I would even prefer to have the power brick internal on my laptop, since I can never travel far without it anyway (note that I don’t think this should be true of most laptops: mine is already heavy and hot enough that it’s never on my lap anyway, and the battery life is so short that I never carry it anywhere without the power brick).

I’ve been having a problem with my VCR lately that I just can’t figure out how to fix. (Aside for those who don’t know: a VCR is like an ancient PVR that can hold up to 6 hours of analog video on a removable magnetic cassette medium.) It’s getting a little old now, having served my time shifting needs very well for what must be over a decade now. The problem is basically that the sound on some channels is wrong. There are a few with video but no audio, and a few with video but the wrong audio. Most notably, CBC has the audio of 680 news (which is, actually, an interesting way to pick up 680 News out here in London). I only have basic cable, which translates into something like 8 watchable channels (sure, I get the weather network, two news channels, a TV guide channel, and a few others that I just never watch, but only about 8 that might ever have shows I’d want to tape). Of those, 3 have no sound. Fortunately, I’ve found work-arounds for every show I care to tape, thanks to the networks often airing the same show on another channel, but if anyone has any idea of what might be wrong or if I’ll be able to fix it (or vice-versa, if this is a sign of more failures to come), I’d like to hear it.

In a related note, I’m also open to any suggestions for the next step. With x-mas coming up, a DVD recorder/VCR/PVR might be a good gift idea for the ‘rents, so if anyone has an implementation they like, feel free to mention it. At the moment I’m still leaning towards getting another VCR: it’s cheap, it’s familiar, we have a huge VHS library, and I don’t really plan on switching to digital cable in the near future.

I’ve had a Kingston USB drive with U3 for a while now, and have quite liked it. The U3 software can be a little naggy at times, and does slow down the first recognition of the drive by Windows, but the ability to carry around some programs, and most importantly, to easily password protect the whole stick appeals to me.

So when my dad decided that he didn’t want to carry his laptop back and forth with him to the cottage, and instead bought a second to leave there, he suddenly had a need for something to securely carry his data back and forth. I decided to get him a U3 thumb drive, and some kind of automated synchronization software. When I saw the SanDisk cruzer 4 GB U3 stick with “Cruzersync” I figured I had exactly what he needed. Cruzersync is billed as a synchronization program:

CruzerSync™ U3 Edition software allows SanDisk Cruzer® smart drive users to easily and securely (AES 128-bit encryption) access, edit and restore ALL their personal files (productivity documents, audio and video files, bookmarks etc.) and Outlook® data (emails, attachments, calendar, contacts, notes, tasks) at anytime from any computer in the world. A true Mobile Desktop at your fingertips!

[emphasis mine].

It turns out, though, that it’s not a synchronization program at all. It is fairly intuitive and easy to set up a “synchronization” between the computer and the stick, and once the directories to sync are set up, it will “synchronize” with just one button to find, so it’s perfect for my dad… except that it only works on one computer. You can’t really synchronize at all, instead it’s just a flashy automatic backup program. There is a mechanism for uploading files off the stick to another computer (or to your “main computer” if you accidentally delete some), but it’s no more automatic or intuitive than using the drive as a normal disk/folder and manually copying the files back and forth.

Other than that bit of bait-and-switch, it seems to be a good drive. It has a decent write speed, it’s light, and attractive (the black with orange accent light is very Halloweeny :)

With U3, there are some other providers of software, so I’m trying some other synchronization tools to see if they’ll work for my dad (they’re a bit pricey, around $30, but that’s really nothing compared to $900 for a second laptop). Otherwise, I may have to teach him how to copy his work to the U3 drive and then back to the computer, or create some kind of batch file to do that automagically.

Wayfare also recently got a new Kingston memory stick, this a 4 GB one without U3 (she just outgrew her 2 GB stick). However, it’s been frightlyfully slow, taking a good couple of seconds to save an empty Word document to the stick, and over a minute to save my thesis. Her old memory stick, also a Kingston, was at least twice as fast at transferring the very same files. Kingston tech support suggested that there might be a defect with it, and that they did have a batch go out that should be recalled due to slow speeds, but her serial number wasn’t in the range. We replaced it anyway, but the replacement is just as bad. Of course, they both came from the same Best Buy within a day or so of each other, so maybe I shouldn’t have expected any kind of improvement. I think we’re going to try exchanging it for a SanDisk next week.

I have a bit of a strange Azureus problem recently. I thought at first that Rogers’ throttling had gotten even more restrictive, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. It looks as though there’s some sort of negative interaction between PC-Cillin, Azureus, and possibly my network card.

Symptoms: As soon as I open Azureus (even if I have all torrents stopped), I can’t surf the web any more, or connect to any local computers over http (that was my first clue that it wasn’t just Rogers’ throttling, my second was that while I was complaining about the network being down, Wayfare was having no trouble at all). I simply get a long wait period and then a could not find server message. The download on Azureus is even more erratic than normal: varying between 0 and 15 kB/s (this torrent was running at around 30-40 kB/s, which is fairly decent, but not a mind-blowing speed, last week). When I was watching it earlier today, the speed seemed to mostly stay around 2-4 kB/s: dreadfully slow, but moving at least. Within the last hour or so, the download speed has been essentially zero (in the 40 B/s — that’s bytes per second, no kilo!). The upload is steady at whatever max I choose to set it at, until I get to about the halfway of my connection’s theoretical maximum, where it plateaus. This all started sometime within the last week — I had left my file downloading when I went away (and the house got broken into), expecting to have finished downloading long before I got back.

Troubleshooting so far: I noticed that PC-Cillin was using well over 70 MB of memory with Azureus open (not checked with it closed). I tried tweaking its firewall (there were a lot of obvious torrent traffic hits in the firewall log with “packet matched filter rule” or some such message, and I have no idea if that means that the firewall let the packet through, or if that means it was stopped. Disabling just the firewall part of PC-Cillin didn’t seem to help the web surfing problem. Closing PC-Cillin entirely, and I can surf the web again. Closing Azureus (with PC-Cillin open), and I can surf the web normally within about 20 seconds. Adjusting the max upload rate down did not allow me to surf with PC-Cillin open. The only things changed on the computer recently are various automatic updates (Firefox, PC-Cillin, etc.), and being forced to upgrade my MSN Messenger (though I still have the problem with Messenger closed).

Solution: I haven’t a clue right now. I’m not comfortable running my computer with PC-Cillin closed, so the download will just have to suffer. I don’t know what makes Azureus kill my connection, even with nothing running. If anyone can suggest anything, let me know!

During my troubleshooting, I had a look at my router and cable modem, and noticed in the logs that my router lost power after midnight (closer to 1 am) on Friday Sept 20. It might be possible that that was the time of the break in. It could be coincidental, since I’m not sure exactly why my router would lose power. I at first thought the thief might have flipped some breakers in the basement to kill an alarm system, but then that would have reset some of the clocks, and they all seem fine. It’s possible the power bar or cord got moved when they were searching my room, and maybe was temporarily disconnected that way…

Edit: Now my firewall log is filled with outgoing ICMP requests every second, so now I fear I have a virus/spyware/something evil going on…

Edit2: I seem to have fixed the problem, but I’m not sure how, exactly, since I sort of did a bunch of things at once. I did remove some suspected spyware with PC-Cillin, and one more piece of unrecognized software that HijackThis found, but I also killed a few background processes (including ATI’s hotkey detection thingy and the PC-Cillin proxy server, which I wasn’t knowingly using, but for some reason was eating 40 MB of RAM anyway). I also set up my router to block outgoing as well as incoming ping requests (previously it just blocked incoming).