One Bad Pixel

Image Resizer for Vista/Win7 x86 and x64.

Jim — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:17:28 +0000

Back in 2007, I posted an article about must have tools for windows power users, and one of my favorite items on there was the Image Resizer powertoy. After I switched to Vista64 last year, I was very disappointed that the Image Resizer was not compatible with 64 bit versions of Vista, and now also with Windows 7. I had really been missing this tool,…

Disable Aero Snap in Windows 7

Jim — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:50:44 +0000

One of the new features in Windows 7 is a nifty little bugger called Aero Snap. The intention of Aero Snap is to improve the management for open windows on the desktop. When a user drags a window to the top of the screen, Snap will maximize the window automatically (you can tell this is about to happen with a brief animation before you release…

Windows 7 (RTM) First Thoughts

Jim — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:31:41 +0000

Windows 7 RTM was released to the MSDN network on Thursday, August 6th 2009. Being the curious tester that I am, I downloaded it and had a go with it on Friday. So far, my initial thoughts are that it is a definite improvement over Vista 64, which I have been using for the past year or so.

My initial nightmare was backing up the crap…

AOLServer and Tcl

Jim — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:51:05 +0000

Now, a lot of you may be curious why on earth I would write an article about the merits of anything containing the letters “AOL” in it. In my job, I write software primarly for use on a webserver running AOLServer 4.0x. I know this is already casting a large number of doubts in your mind, but let me finish.

AOLServer was not written by AOL,…

Dearest Spambots

Jim — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:19:41 +0000

Die in a fire. Seriously. I hate you with the burning passion of 1000 suns. I had to delete hundreds of fake users today. As such, registrations will now be greeted with a new captcha system. If this doesnt work, I will extend it to include trick questions which any human should be able to figure out.

jQuery, deus ex machina

Jim — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:43:49 +0000

So back in November of 2007, I wrote a short blurb about jQuery where I thought it warranted a look. Well, I looked at it a little bit and quickly passed it off as a fad.

Fast forward to July 2009. I have now built several sites with jQuery, which gained a ton of momentum over the past couple years. It is now still as prominent (if…

Updated Wordpress

Jim — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:35:36 +0000

So, I have been neglecting my blog for quite some time, and decided to give it a needed upgrade to the newest wordpress.. The next step is to start posting articles now and then.

Why digital media is NOT the wave of the future.

Jim — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:55:37 +0000

In reading this article, I was reminded of things I have been talking about since the inception of DRM (Digital Rights Management). Here is my rant.

Several years ago, the music and movie industries created the bane of the consumers existence, DRM. DRM is a technology which became popular for licensing music and movies over the Internet. When you buy a song from iTunes, you don’t actually…

New Acoustic Research speakers

Jim — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:03:31 +0000

So my wife was scouring the internet for another set of Acoustic Research Hi-Res speakers for fathers day, and found someone about 3hrs away selling a set in near-mint condition. These are fantastic speakers that unfortunately, are not available since Acoustic Research went out of business a couple years ago.

The price was good so we made the trek and picked them up. In the set…

Cataloging and Playing network media in MCE

Jim — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:35:40 +0000

As you may have figured by reading my blog or the forums, I have been aiming for a home theater network, in which I store all my content on my network, and playing it at one of several TVs throughout my house.

In this post, I am going to focus on my movie library. I will follow-up later with a series of posts on how to…