redconfetti

I just want to let everyone on the Internet know that the Hulu Desktop application rocks. Seriously.

I have an iMac, which came with a remote controller for use with FrontRow, a multimedia viewer which uses a 10-foot user interface, and came packaged with Mac OSX when I bought the computer. I’ve been using Hulu Desktop for a while with my Mac now and it works great. It ties into my Hulu account and lets me setup subscriptions to the shows that I like, so I can quickly navigate to view the latest Lost episode of season 6, or even watch clips of the latest Saturday Night Live episodes.

I just sit back in my bed and watch without having to be face-to-face with the computer screen, which is great because I’m face-to-face with a computer screen all day at work. Sure, I should be out jogging or something, but if I want to unwind with a comedy on-demand, this is great. Oh yeah, I don’t have cable also….I can’t justify paying for cable and Internet at the same time, so this is a great. I can’t wait for all the networks to come onboard and offer subscriptions to view shows online, with very minimal commercial interuptions.

If you don’t own a Mac, don’t think that you’re left out. The Hulu Desktop FAQ states “…Hulu Desktop will work with Apple and Windows Media Center remotes. Remotes that are compatible with Windows XP and Vista can be purchased at most electronics retailers.”

Update 04/23/2010 – I’m not finding a solution to this issue. Sorry. I’ve lost interest.

I recently setup Ubuntu 9.10 on a desktop system, so I could use it as a file server. I’m was able to enable the remote desktop feature for it, which is basically a VNC server.

The issue is that once I disconnected a monitor from the computer and set it up next to my router (plugged directly in), and restarted it, VNC would only work with a maximum resolution of 640×480.

In a forum someone pointed out that this configuration added to /etc/X11/xorg.conf would save the day:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "VNC Device"
        Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "VNC Screen"
        Device "VNC Device"
        Monitor "VNC Monitor"
        SubSection "Display"
        Modes "1024x768"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "VNC Monitor"
        HorizSync 30-70
        VertRefresh 50-75
EndSection

I just restarted after my ‘sudo service gdm restart’ command didn’t seem to work. I think this might have something to do with a special Nvidia driver I’m using. Hm…

And I thought this most recent article was giving me the holy grail.

Eh. I’m going to bed now. It’s 3:29 AM. I’ll slay this dragon later perhaps.

At work I have a Dell Dimension 3000 workstation, and for months I’ve put up with the computer being kind of slow. I just figured it was due to the computer being kind of old…but I brought in some headphones so I could do some serious music listening while I work and just got fed up with the way the sound was choppy. Anytime I’d do anything processor intensive the music I was listening to in Grooveshark (which I highly recommend you check out) would sound like crap.

So I installed the latest sound driver from Dell.com for the integrated sound card and still after rebooting it sucked. Also when I start the computer up in the morning, I would have to wait like 3 minutes at least for all the startup programs to load. Nothing else would open until this was done.

So anyway, I searched for a solution to this issue and found this post:

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/hardware-problems/29157-choppy-sound-dell-dimension-3000-a.html

It turns out that the Primary IDE controller in Windows XP was set to use some sort of PIO mode to communicate with the hard drive on the computer, as opposed to DMA mode. DMA stands for Direct Memory Access, and is totally more efficient than the PIO mode, Programmed Input-Output, where the central processor transfers data byte for byte or word for word through your system to the other components (like your sound card).

My computer runs blazing fast now in comparison to how it was running before. I’m so glad I checked into this. If you have a Dell Dimension 3000 and it’s running like crap, definitely try this.

My aunt recently asked me how to un-hide someone from the news feed for her Facebook account.

Like many other people before her, she’s pressed the ‘Hide’ button for someone, then realized it was a mistake…but couldn’t find out how to unhide them.

To add someone back to your Facebook news feed, simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the ‘Edit Options’ link for your news feed.

After you’ve done this, simply click on the ‘Add to News Feed’ button to add updates regarding one of your friends, or other pages, back to your Facebook news feed.

I’m not very experienced with X-windows on the Linux platform, so I’m not too skilled in troubleshooting issues with the display. I recently upgraded an Ubuntu system at work to use Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), which only has Firefox 3 available (no package for Firefox 2). I had a Selenium server setup running tests, but they stopped working after I upgraded to this newer version of Ubuntu.

I thought that perhaps Selenium wasn’t compatible with version 3 of Firefox, but this isn’t the case. The Selenium website says ‘Firefox 2+’ for browsers running on Linux.

The error I was receiving when I would run a test was:


10:46:19.778 INFO - Preparing Firefox profile...
Error: no display specified


After a bunch of research and Googling online, it turned out I just needed to run this before I started my Selenium server:

export DISPLAY=:0

I hope this saves someone else some time.

At work I’m using Google Chrome 3.0.195.38 on Windows XP, and recently the check boxes on various pages have disappeared. I tried to upgrade to the latest BETA version, but this didn’t resolve the issue. I un-installed and reinstalled to the current version (the one I just mentioned), but this still didn’t resolve the issue.

Further investigation revealed that someone has reported the following:

This bug is still existent in 4.0.249.30. It seems to happen randomly, and can be fixed
without exiting the tab or browser by right clicking the Windows task bar, going to
properties, then simply pressing OK.

I tested this myself by right-clicking on my Windows task bar, then selecting ‘Properties’.

I then simply press the ‘OK’ button.

After this I refreshed my page, and whala! The check boxes re-appeared.

I just installed the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin, because it seems like everyone is doing it now and I’m missing out on something.

After installing and configuring this plugin, I went through my site and refreshed a couple pages, only to find out that the javascript needed for the analytics was not being included in the HTML as I expected. I tried to briefly search for help on this, but I didn’t find anything.

It turns out that you have to be logged out of WordPress for this to display within the code. It makes sense, you don’t want your statistics to tell you about your traffic on your own website, you want to know the stats on REAL visitors. I hope this tip helps save someone some time.