SimplyTech Ep. 10 Postponed Indefinitely

Unfortunately, it looks like Zach and I will not have time to record another SimplyTech episode until the fall. It has been a good run, we really enjoyed our first adventure in podcasting and I hope all our listeners enjoyed it too.

But this is not the end of SimplyTech. Zach and I will record SimplyTech episodes next fall. And I am planning on doing some podcasting this summer with a friend of mine. His name is Jake Dahn. I meet him through my work on Flock, the social browser. The topics will be mostly computer-based, but Jake and I haven't discussed in detail what we want the show to be about, but I am quite sure that several episodes will be dedicated to open-source software, since we both love the open-source movement. We might even try to use our contacts in various open-source projects and see if we can set up some interviews.

technorati tags: simplytech

Bad Habit

I have a bad habit of procrastination and this time I think I did myself in, as I have no time for sleep until Friday. Right now, I am working on a paper for my World Politics class on Icons of Evolution, I have a socioautobiography to do yet, and a take home test in Differential Equations to start, all due on Friday. Plus, I havent done my homework in Diff Eq for a few chapters, so really have no idea what is going on. Needless to say I'm swamped and will have to rely on my great friend caffeine to get me through it. All hail Mountain Dew and coffee.

testing

Just wanted to test out the new Flock blog editor. They switched from TinyMCE to Midas. I probably won't notice too much a difference, but I do see that interface is a little different. Also, I can't tab from the "Title:" field to the text field. A pain, but a small fish to fry I suspect. Will do more indepth testing when I have time, which will be probably be after school is done.

Working on Flock

Once again, I spent a fair amount of time trying to verify bugs in the Favorites section of Flock. Most of time before yesterday and today was spent on the blogging feature of Flock. It has been a nice change of scenery and I am beginning to get a better understand of Flock's favorite system.

WIP:
1242: (verified)
1613: (gotta ask Ian/Lloyd about this one)
2206: (waiting for a second computer/user)
2226: (verified)
2234: (verified)
2349: (verified)
2462: (verified)
2658: (verified)
2852: (need to look at the wiki page more closely tomorrow)
2972: (verified)
3017: (verified)

To Do:
File bug on blogging, picture of error message. Bug seems to occur when no blog account is setup when selecting "Publish". Setting up an account with blog post still open, then selecting "Publish" does not bring up error message.

technorati tags: flock, flocktesting

WIP 04/13/06

Today, I did some work for Flock and helped out the QA team by verifing favorites bugs. I didn't get as many as I want to get done. But I might have some time tomorrow as well.

WIP:
2799: (prolly resolved, but not sure if read-only resolves bug)
2859: (verified)
2858: (no idea what the bug is about)
2860: (gonna let Lloyd/Eli handle per termie)
2994: (no feed dropdown marker for me; feeds are still in dev)
2615: (verified)
2229: (verified)
1194: (can't work with test case)
1242: (next on my list)

technorati tags: flock

Start of Spring brings Change

Well, I don’t know if I have ever paid enough attention to the weather before. But thanks to my  Konfabulator weather widget, I realized today that it is 20 degrees warmer here in Mankato, Minnesota than it is in Palo Alto, Cali. Needless to say, it is quite beautiful outside today, even if the bright sunlight does give me a headache (which reminded me that I need to buy some sunglasses). Also, I believe this was the first time I have studied Differential Equations outside.

I realized today in one of my stupid gen ed classes that I have only 4 weeks of classes left at my current college. It felt kind of weird to think that I won’t be around many of the people on campus ever again. Maybe I am too sentimental, but I have a sad feeling about the last couple of weeks. Not that I will never be able to see these people again, or that I can’t live without most of them, but just that I am leaving the place I spent 9 months of the last 2 years behind.

However, I am also very enthusiastic about my new college. I can finally focus solely on classes that are either needed for my major, or classes I want to take, with a few exceptions of course. And if you know me, you know I do not have much appreciation for gen ed classes.

So yeah, it’s spring and things are looking up, if I can only get through that last 4 weeks of stupid classes. 

 

Method for disabling Windows Genuine Validation

Well, as of late, I have been delaying updating Windows because of the stupid update that would effectively not allow me to get Windows Updates besides using Automatic updates. I had been using the disable the Validation Add-on trick, but from what I heard, this update made that useless. So I looked around for a cure, and found this forum. There are several pages of discussion, but the post that I tried via an anonymous tip was the suggestion by barn9:

"just replace LegitCheckControl.dll in your C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder with the one from the link below: http://rapidshare.de/files/14475249/LegitCheckControl.dll.html

I am a complete novice, but I did the above, and it worked perfectly for me, a very easy solution once it was done. (Thanks to heskey on another thread here.)
I was a little confused after reading this thread, but I just…

1. downloaded the above file to my machine (you don’t have to open it)…
2. moved it to my Windows/system32 folder (where it asked me if I wanted to replace the existing LegitCheckControl.dll, I said Yes)…..
3. went to Windows Update, ran it, got updates, and installed updates.

Easy as 1 2 3. I’m adding this because if it had been spelled out in steps, I would have understood the process better, and not been confused by the banter. Hope this helps any other "confused novices" like myself.

Aviran’s Place :: View topic – Bypass Windows Genuine Advantage – Workaround

This has worked well for me so far, and if you are in the same boat as me, you could try it out. This is illegal, and I can’t suggest this as a permanent solution, however, I do this see as a temporary solution for those you who are saving up so they can give MS some more money (Sorry, I had to add that).

Also, I might have gotten some of my 15 minutes of fame. Lloyd, from Flock, mentioned some of people who have helped out Flock in their own way. Somehow, I am one of them.

 

technorati tags: flock, WGA