October 20, 2004 in Web/Tech Looking for the crazy site I talked about on tonight's TSS? The one where you can animate your plain old photos and make your subjects say funny things?
Click here for Veepers!
Only caveat: Firefox is still unsupported, but you can still use Netscape if you're trying to avoid IE.
I'd love to see your best efforts. Make sure to email me the gems when you're done!
October 19, 2004 in Web/Tech Back by popular demand...
Ever wish you could make one of your computer's drives invisible to anyone snooping around on your system? Well, happy days are here my friend! Whether you have sensitive docs, pictures, or any other private data, this is one of the easiest ways to keep them safe. Keep in mind that you'll still be able to access your hidden drives; you just won't see that they exist in Windows Explorer or the My Computer folder. Back up your registry before you start!
1. Open Regedit.
2. Navigate to one of these strings:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer - this only changes the settings for the current logged in user
HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer - this changes the settings for all users on the machine. You may have to create the key folder "Explorer" manually.
3. In the Explorer key folder, create a new DWORD value by right-clicking Explorer, then choosing New DWORD value. Name the value "NoDrives" (without the quotes). This value defines local and network drive visibility for each logical drive on the computer. All drives will be visible as long as this value's data is set to 0.
4. Following the table below, enter the decimal number corresponding to the drive(s) you want to hide as NoDrives value data. When you right-click on NoDrives and choose Modify, make sure you select Decimal base, not Hexadecimal.
Drive Number to hide:
A: 1
B: 2
C: 4
D: 8
E: 16
F: 32
G: 64
H: 128
I: 256
J: 512
K: 1024
L: 2048
M: 4096
N: 8192
O: 16384
P: 32768
Q: 65536
R: 131072
S: 262144
T: 524288
U: 1048576
V: 2097152
W: 4194304
X: 8388608
Y: 16777216
Z: 33554432
All drives: 67108863
If you want to hide more than one drive, you simply add the drive amounts together for a combined total.
For example, to hide the D:/ and T:/ drives, add the decimal value for the D:/ drive to the decimal value to the T:/ drive.
8 (D) + 524288 (T) = 524296
To disable all of your visible drives, set the value to 67108863.
You must reboot your PC to see your changes. Have fun!
I know it's time for a new post, but it's been a long day and I'm all out of witty prose. As a consolation prize, I offer you a glimpse into my strange and wonderous pics folder. You never know what you'll find inside!
Vanessa sitting on my old steps at Turk Street.
Happy days for the kids in the old nook.
The best picture of Dan, ever.
Girls and good mojo.
Marty when he still reminded us of Tom Green.
Me and my #1 valentine.
This concludes today's edition of photo phun. For dessert, we will be serving pumpkin cheesecake.
October 14, 2004 in Web/Tech Looking for a free program that allows you to trim mp3s without losing quality by having to convert them to wav files first? Then Mp3Trim is your new toy. It's free, it's easy to use, and it does a lot more than trimming if you want it to. Add fade ins/outs, normalize volume, even clean up bad data within the file if that's your goal.
Thanks to Mike in Michigan (again) for the tip! Mike's on a roll!
October 7, 2004 in Web/Tech If you're looking to soup up Windows for free, then I highly recommend Madotate for an afternoon of fun.
Once running, Madotate will allow all open windows to be docked in 3D to the left, right, top, or bottom of the screen and arranged to your liking. It's window independent so Madotate doesn't use a lot of resources and keeps you in total control.
A couple tips before starting: make sure you have WinRAR or equivalent to open RAR files. Then make sure you extract both "madotate.exe" and "mtatecfg.exe", or else you won't be able to read the settings menu.
Madotate was originally written in Japanese, and recently someone translated enough of the setting prefs to get by. When you right-click Madotate in your system tray, you'll still see a bunch of jibberish, but I after some trial and error I figured out the context menu. Here are your options, from top to bottom:
1. Convert all open windows to 3D
2. Convert all open 3D windows to normal view
3. Open settings menu (in English)
4. About Madotate
5. Exit
There aren't many downloads that require this level of detective work, but it was 5 minutes well spent. Ha ha! Thanks to Nate for the link!
