You may not be slacking off as badly as you think. (Procrastination)

February 6th, 2010

What is a procrastinator?

What is an incubator?

Yes, Oprah.com mentions that some ‘procrastinators’ may actually be ‘incubators’– people who produce great work, but only at the last moment… Versus procrastinators, who never cared in the first place.

Sprint Hero plan VS Droid Eris

January 26th, 2010

I took a look at the Sprint Hero, and finally got one.

Problems:

  • It has its slow moments.  Sometimes, I type so fast that the keyboard can’t keep up, even when the phone is doing nothing.
  • Some applications you download can stay on constantly, draining the battery, even if you aren’t using them.  (EG: See the UStream application.  Great in theory, bad in practice?)
  • It has its slow moments more frequently than you’d desire.  Sometimes, I hit the phone-hangup button to stop the sleep display on the phone, and I have to wait at least half a second for it to show up.  This can be a problem when it doesn’t show up for seconds, and then you hit the same button just to make sure it’s working.  If you dot hat, when the phone DOES come back, the display will light up–and then immediately disappear because you DID hit the ‘turn off display’ button twice.

I think it’s worth my investment, however, and I’ll let you know how pleased I am by the end of the… ack. Two year contract :p

$80 per month is affordable, however.  I’ve had this for at least a week, and have only used 24 minutes out of 450… Either I don’t call landlines enough, or I picked an amazing plan for my phone.

Be back later– I plan to make an intellectual post on How to discipline yourself, what habits to create to get yourself discipline, and what has inspired this need for it with me.

Wacom Tablet – Shaky, Shaking, Wobbly, Jittery, Jitters, Parkinsons, the mouse cursor shakes.

December 20th, 2009

If you’re ANYTHING like me, you are FRUSTRATED (to say the least) if your cursor shakes when using the Wacom Tablet pen.

So, I decided that it’d be best if I had an extensive index of EVERYTHING I’ve tried to do to get mine to work.


My Symptoms:

WACOM INTUOUS 3
While hovering the pen above the tablet pad, the cursor shakes WILDLY. While hovering the pen just above the surface (and resting my hand on the pad), my hand does not shake but the cursor does.
The same happens for the Wacom Mouse.

Placing my pen right at the surface causes the tablet pen to do anything from waver about once per second to five times per second.

The biggest symptom: drawing a diagonal line creates an obviously wavy line. (This is different from a naturally curvy line that would be created from your hand movement.)
This has happened between two different PCs, so I am the definition of frustrated.


My Comparison Device:

I have a Compaq Presario R3000 running Windows XP and the not-necessarily Newest Wacom drivers. It doesn’t wobble, and MAN can you tell the difference in drawing.


The Best Solution

NO SOLUTION YET. Well, isn’t THAT nice? :|   Read my attempts below.


Attempted Solutions

Installing New Drivers, & Rebooting

Didn’t help. Even worse– if I Stop the Wacom tablet service, my tablet still shakes.  It just takes more for windows to recognize the slight movement. That is to say, windows jumps the distance.

IF I stop the Tablet service entirely, I can’t use my Wacom at all.  Strange.

Rubbing your hand on the drawing pad / really Polishing It

I have a Nintendo DS screen-wiping pad. I’m using it to wipe the pad.

  • Wiped only the drawing surface: no success.
  • Wiped it with my hand for 15 seconds: no success.
  • Giving it a really good clean throughout it all (lifting the pad surface): no success.

Stopping Vista’s tablet PC service

My old PC was XP, and it also shook. I expect this to not fix the problem.
(just tried it): Didn’t fix the problem.

What happened:  I couldn’t move my cursor with the the tablet at all.

Adjusting the Hertz rate of your monitor(s)

This happened between two different monitors (EG: Two different computers, my old and new one.)  Tried it. Didn’t work.

Moving tablet-related input devices away from the tablet

Where my tablet pen is: On the desk, about 8 inches away. Where my tablet mouse is: About a foot away. Symptoms persist.
Moving the tablet mouse 4/5 yards away, to a bed. Symptoms persist.

Moving a mouse or such away from the tablet

Microsoft Intellimouse, plugged into a USB port. Current distance away: 4 inches. Moving it to where the tablet mouse in the previous solution was (about 8 inches to a foot away). Symptoms persist.

Testing for the same symptoms from the Wacom wireless mouse device

Wacom Mouse also shakes, in pen or mouse mode.

Unplugging any other mouse input devices

Unplugging my mouse didn’t do anything.

Moving your tablet further away from a Wireless Router

Wacom tablet is about a yard away. Moved it to two to three yards. Still had a problem. Moved the full length of the cord to an area with no technical devices nearby. Problem still not solved.

Moving the tablet cable away from the pC, excluding where it plugs into the USB port.

Still has a problem.

Moving your tablet to be beneath , or on-level with your tower PC.

Mouse seemed to shake MORE.
Moving the tablet straight up to the ceiling didn’t fix the problem, either.

Moving speakers or monitors further away from the tablet

See the above steps where I move away from the computer setup and still had the problem.

Waiting a duration between trying any of the above solutions.

Swapping to my mediary/control device immediately produced a pleasurable, error-free drawing experience, so it doesn’t need time to ‘cool down’ or be de-radio-waved.

Changing the Wacom Intuous recognition / standard drawing mode

Slightly changed the shake, but not enough to improve drawing.

Pen Nib is too short

Installed new pen nib, still had the problem.

Rotate a screw inside the Wacom pen

Did as instructed (removed rubber and pen buttons), didn’t see a screw in the Intuous 3.

Trying another tablet pen.

Bought another when my last pen broke. No change/no fix.

Trying another USB Socket

Tried another socket, no success.

Shake the tablet

Shook it, tapped it. Didn’t hear anything rattle.

Check for general radio interference

(Use a ’straight edge’ to test for radio interference)
Shakes differently in both directions. Obviously it’s not some missed sensor that causes a line to be warped.
Radio interference?

Walking around with the control device to see where it shakes the most, if it shakes on the control device

While testing, my laptop (control device)  had no shaking. I tried a variety of methods by walking around with it.  I tested the drawing in a drawing program, and had no wavy lines. That’s the crucial test to me– to draw a diagonal line.

After the above, I realized the proof was complete that this was a software/driver problem with something I had installed.

Enabling/disabling certain drivers

I read this how-to on how to see hidden devices.
In the order, here is what I removed:

  • EVERYTHING under “Mice and other pointing devices” that was not a highlighted icon. (This INCLUDES “Wacom Mouse”.). I remembered to ‘delete driver software’ on Wacom Mouse : No fix.
  • EVERYTHING not-installed under Universal Serial Bus Controllers. No fix.
  • THe same under “Storage Volumes.” No fix.
  • Other items under “Other Devices”. No fix.
  • EVERYTHING not-installed under “Monitors.” I had 2 not-in-use copies of one of monitors. Decided to reboot just in case those drivers would fix. (EG: My old ‘TV Card’.) Reboot didn’t fix it.
  • Everything under “Keyboards” That wasn’t plugged in. Also: a strange entry that said a keyboard was plugged into USB. (there was none such keyboard.): No Fix.
  • Removed entries from Disk Drives and DVD/CD-Rom Drives. No Fix.
  • Human-Interface Devices – I noticed something funny. There was “Wacom HID Digitizer” and “Wacom HID Pen”. Neither were listed as active, even though my tablet was plugged in. a HID-Compliant Device entry and an USB Human Interface Device were disabled when the tablet was removed.  What I did here continued below.

My Device Manager reported that the Wacom Digitizer and Pen weren’t in use.

  1. I unplugged my tablet, and then uninstalled every single device that was listed as not-in-use, EXCLUDING the Wacom entries.
  2. Re-plugged in tablet.
  3. Device re-showed up as “HID Compliant Device”… but neither Wacom entry was lit up.
  4. Uninstalled Wacom Tablet Software, and looked at the listing. I have 3 “USB H[IDs]“, and the Wacom Digitizer and Wacom pen entries. My Mouse is properly listed, so the remaining 3 USB HIDs have to be my printer, my camera (?), and my USB Bluetooth dongle. However, when I remove the bluetooth dongle, I get only the mouse and a USB HID. Apparently the USB HID was the Webcam. My Bluetooth dongle adds two entries. Rebooted.
  5. Looked at the list. Wacom entries remained. I uninstalled everything that was a default setting, including “Virtual Keyboard”, and Wacom’s settings. I DID Leave “Virtual Media Keys”, my PC’s mouse, and my PC’s webcam USB HID entry.
  6. Downloaded the Wacom software, and then reinstalled it (WITHOUT ATTACHING THE USB DEVICE). During the installation, Wacom HID Digitizer, Wacom HID Pen, and Wacom Virtual Hid Driver were installed.
  7. When I plugged in the Tablet, it showed up again as “HID-Compliant Device.”
  8. Still shook madly.
  9. Under the “Mice and other POinting Devices”, Wacom Mouse had a ! next to it. “Could not load the device driver for this hardware.” Told Windows to look for a solution (properties of the Wacom Mouse item), but I didn’t learn anything.

Began nuking services and processes to see what would get it working.

I even have the shaking tablet in Safe Mode…  After a variety of disabled startup items and ended processes, I gave up.

Incredible Linux server Vulnerability – Fork Bombs and protecting yourself against them!

November 24th, 2009

I only recently learned about Fork bombs. The idea is that a user who can successfully log onto your server will run a simple program that will tell the server to run more simple programs– these programs may do nothing malicious by themselves, but when they keep creating more and more kids, your server’s resources will dwindle until the server has nothing remaining to operate with.

This VERY IMPORTANT POST about limiting user’s process/RAM Limits will help you guarantee that users will find it hard, if not impossible, to abuse the system with a fork bomb.

I suggest you read the above posts and immediately secure any Linux servers you are running!

What does Sprint’s EPRP mean? Also: Sprint Hero

November 10th, 2009

EPRP means “Everything Plus Referral Program”.

I read a comment at the DROID ERIS for Verizon post at Engadget that talked about an affordable plan with Sprint’s Hero SmartPhone, which is essentially HTC’s Droid Eris.

If/when I switch to this plan/phone, I”ll let you know. I currently don’t get to leave my computer a lot, so if I plan on going out sometime, I think I’ll get the phone.

Illustrator displaying hidden elements? Illustrator not cropping the output to the document?

October 26th, 2009

This below page helped me out a LOT:
http://www.justskins.com/forums/file-converted-to-cs-does-not-crop-to-page-size-15166.html

Here was the problem: I had my completed document, but I wanted the exported PDF and PNGs to not include anything hidden, or outside the page’s area.

Lo and behold, there was a setting for that outlined on the above page.

Woo!

Uhh.. speaking of which.. Hey! Look! My resume was just coincidentally updated! Fancy that.

How to Listen on Multiple (More) IP Addresses on Linux

October 9th, 2009

One of the best articles that discussed how to bind or listen on multiple IP addresses is this article:

Bind Multiple IP Addresses to a Single Network Interface Card (NIC)

Amazing!  Useful!

Vibram Five Fingers helped me DDR

September 22nd, 2009
Awesome for DDRing.  Meet my shoes!

Awesome for DDRing. Meet my shoes!

Vibram Five-Fingers have helped my DDR fatigue almost dissipate.

The following pictures are from the third time I played in them, completing a DDR Supernova stage. I haven’t played in 3 months, so I SHOULD be out of shape, and I SHOULD be getting leg fatigue.. but I wasn’t.

So, a bit about me.  I heard about these from Dylan a Wired.com, as well as from a Google Ad while checking my Gmail.  I was afraid that they’d hurt my feet, but not so.

7825520 on Supernova ONI

7825520 on Supernova ONI

WHAT a score  My feet didn’t hurt, my legs feel fine!  I normally practice DDRing for a long time– three credits.  Normally, I’d be exhausted halfway into my DDR Oni mode.  however, not this time.  I was shocked– the KSOs still felt great.  My feet didn’t feel sweaty at all.

My score on the left isn’t great, but what can I do? bah humbug.

Anyways, I plan on wearing these to as many DDR workout sessions as possible.

Final picture: Woburn skyline!

From the Bowladrome/municipal parking!

From the Bowladrome/municipal parking!

How to get Old Windows 3.1 Applications Running on Debian Linux, but forwarded to your Windows Machine using XMing, a X Windows Server Forwarding Tutorial

September 19th, 2009

What you’ll need for getting old Windows 3.1 applications running.

one thing to note:
I read recently that MSDOS applications are having problems in WINE (the solution I have below.) On that note, if you’re having problems, try running the program in DOSBox on your windows machine!

apt-get install alsa

Which will install ALSA, a Debian sound environment,
And

apt-get install xserver-xorg-core

Yes, I had very little success getting any WINE application running without the “X” windows setup.

apt-get install wine

Install Wine.

Now, let’s say yo’ure on a desktop PC and you want to connect

Continuing on..

winecfg

Lets you configure WINE when you install it. :O

alsaconf

And that lets you configure Alsa. It should be done.

Last few moments:

Follow this tutorial to get PuTTY to forward your X Session to XMing:
http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/trouble.php

So let’s go over this:

  1. Putty is set up to receive windows from your server
  2. Your computer is set up to receive windows from Putty
  3. Your Linux server is ready to create windows for use with WINE.

Burning Images (ISO) from Floppy Disks in Debian Linux

September 19th, 2009

Recently, I just got some Legacy software. Woo!
On floppy disk. What is this, 1990?

So, my beta/Old PC was the only one that had a disk drive. And that computer had Debian linux.

So, let’s get these to my pc!

Step 1:
Make sure the floppy drive works.

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0

If that says something like

mount: /dev/fd0: can't read superblock

, then open up your computer and make sure that the floppy drive works. This happened to me, and apparently I had forgotten to.. well.. hook up the drive.... remember to do that.
SU up to root in case you can’t mount.
Tip: you have to specify a filesystem format when you mount the drive. -t is the switch that does so.

Step 2:
If the above step works, you’ve mounted the drive. You’re going to need the following two commands:

  • md5sum – but only if you have more than one disk involved with your ISO burning work.
  • mkisofs

md5sum is to help you verify that, when you are mounting and unmounting disks, that your unmount attempts are working.

how to install MD5sum on debian linux

apt-get install isomd5sum

How to burn ISOs in Debian Linux– required step: install mkisofs

apt-get install mkisofs

OK. So now that you have the required software,

Step 3:

mkisofs -r -o /path/to/desired/ISO/file/newFileName-0.iso /media/floppy0

The above step creates the ISO file.
Then, umount your disk. Make sure to leave the /media/floppy0 folder if you were just in there! You can’t unmount a folder you’re in.

umount /media/floppy0

Repeat step 1 as many times as necessary.

Step 4: (optional)
Use md5sum to check the MD5 of a file. Do this with the ISO files you want to compare.

~# md5sum /path/to/desired/ISO/file/newFileName-*
a583c9cc94c11d0e35b4967b79f979a0  /path/to/desired/ISO/file/newFileName-0.iso
7f15179dbc68c18b2f91ecd9365b7c70  /path/to/desired/ISO/file/newFileName-1.iso

If you have more than one matching MD5 answer (first column), the files are likely to be the same.

Step 5:
Make sure to unmount the last disk, and then transfer your files to your destination computer.

Stay cool, viewers!

The URL I used to help myself with this:
http://vertito.blogspot.com/2007/08/iso-creation-and-cddvd-burning-from.html