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Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

rich
rich
@rich@richtong.org
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  • Audible Success Activation Error

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  • Darwinia. Both Alex and Calvin just love this game. “John”:http://www.theludwigs.com turned us on to it. Essentially, it is a cool simulation and not too violent either.

  • Railroad Tycoon and Stop 8#

    Stop error message on a blue screen when you transfer data to a USB device in Windows XP. Probably not the right hotfix, but “Railroad Tycoon regular causes a blue screen on my Athlon XP

  • Audible .aa files to .mp3

    Converting .aa files to mp3’s. _DBpoweramp comes in handy again as a way to get my audible files onto unsupported devices. Audible is great but they don’t support every device._ Here is how: I’ve finally found a way to convert .aa (audible) to .mp3’s at 50x realtime! # Install Just use dBpowerAMP Music Converter which…

  • F.E.A.R and loose fans

    Well, I finally got the new Maxline III drive and it works fine with my nForce. So, when you buy a drive, make sure you get a recent one. The 7S series is newer and it works fine. Also found out that my fan was loose in my new computer so that is why temperatures…

  • Lame is not an MP3 Encoder

    The latest places to get LAME for my new machine build: * Multi-threading LAME MP3 Encoder. Kind of cool, this is a multithreaded version of Lame that should run better on hyperthreaded Pentiums by splitting the integer from the floating point calculations and also compiled by the special Intel compiler. A research project from the…

  • Saturn Rings

    Thickness of Saturn’s Rings. _Grace asked how much does Dad know and one question was, how big are Saturns rings, so google helped him…_ The rings are very wide, about 170,000 miles across, but only about a mile thick.”

  • Yaris

    Carscoop: Toyota Yaris Verso. Wow, Toyota seems to have figured out life in the $3/gallon range. They just announced the Yaris. It will cost less than $13K in the US. Has four doors and gets 40 mpg. Maybe that’s why they are the only car company to grow sales last quarter in the US.

  • Junior Bikes

    Between clearly kids bikes that cost about $100 from Wal*Mart and grownup bikes, there is a funny zone. Basically, until you get to 5″4″, you can’t really get on a mainstream 54cm high bike, so what can you do until your child is big enough to get on a 26″ wheel bicycle. Well, there are…

  • Too much Thermal Grease

    Arctic Silver Instructions. I’ve been getting pretty hot temperatures on the new Athlon X2. When the two CPUs are running, I rapidly get to 70C and this causes thermal shutdown. These things should run about 50C at maximum according “AMD Forums”:http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=59602 particularly with a high quality heat sink like the gigantic XP-120 I’ve been using.…

  • Athlon X2 stress test

    Back to getting my X2 overclocked configuration stable. Right now at 245MHz FSB x 10, I’m driving the CPU as hard as I can. I’m also now running at 5:6 multiplier to memory, so memory is now at 223MHz running at T1 2-2-2-6. So how do I test stability, well a single instance of Prime95,…

  • Useful MovableType Plugins

    With MovableType 3.2 installation done, there are a couple of plugins that are pretty much mandatory installs including: * MtInlineEditor – Movalog Plugins – Trac. This lets you inline edit text entries. * “Enclosures”:http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/plugins/plugin/enclosures.html. You pretty much have to have this to do podcasting. When upload an MP3 that’s a podcast, this plugin sucks it…

  • DFI LanParty nF4 Ultra D and Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB fix

    Tong Family Blog: DFI LanParty nF4 Ultra D and Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300 bugs. Well, here’s an update, you need a couple of things to get this drive working right: As they say at “DFI-Street.com”:http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9496&page=6&pp=20 you have to get a new piece of firmware called the BANC1E00 and then you have to find a plain…

  • MovableType 3.2 and StyleCatcher

    Six Apart – Professional Network – Power Tools. Well, have flipped the “tongfamily”:https://richtong.org and soon the “geekfishing.net”:http://geekfishing.net blogs over to MovableType 3.2. “Ludwig”:http://www.theludwigs.com was right, the install is tricky, since configuration files are changing and there in compatiblities with the anti-spam stuff I use. Notably MT-Blacklist has to be manually deleted. In exchange though, styles…

  • Birthday Party Trek

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  • Speed Link Medusa 5.1 Headset

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  • Jin Mao Tower

    !>http://www.building.com.hk/feature/05_00jinmaopic2.jpg! This is an amazing building. Incredibly beautiful with a super high atrium in the Grand Hyatt that has the highest hotel rooms in the world. “Buildings.com.hk”:http://www.building.com.hk/feature/05_00jinmao.htm includes many interesting nerdy facts about it. Edward had told me that it had a huge ball in the center to keep it centered, but this is actually…

  • Tallest Buildings

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  • Best USB Flash Drive

    AnandTech: USB Flash Drive Roundup – 10/2005. The latest roundup. Last time, the Transcend was the fastest, but now we have 100x drives that are more expensive at $100 but incredibly fast. The two fastest overall are the Kingston DataTraveler Elite and Lexar JumpDrive Lightning. Both really fly because they are “dual channel.” That is…

  • DFI LanParty nF4 Overclocking

    AnandTech: OCZ VX Memory + DFI nForce4 = DDR533 at 2-2-2. I finally got the system working. I was getting all kinds of blue screens saying things like “Accessing illegal memory.” The issue is the nVidia Network Manager which everyone on web says that this thing is very unrealiable. I just used ZoneAlarm. Looking at…

  • pci.sys corrupt

    Computing.Net – pci.sys – Missing/broken 🙁. Been steadily going from my Windows SP1 up to SP2, installed the latest nVidia drivers on the DFI LanParty. Boy, was that a mistake, the thing won’t boot now and the boot system reports, missing pci.sys. To get this back, you need to find a Windows XP original CD…

  • DFI LanParty nF4 Active Armor

    Sigh, problem after problem. Installed the various drivers, ignoring the Maxtor problem right now. Now the Ethernet controller is on and see the DHCP host and I get an address, but mysteriously, I can’t access the Internet. Ugh. This seems to be a problem with the builtin nVidia firewall. Incredibly, when you boot it, it…

  • DFI LanParty nF4 Ultra D and Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300 bugs

    Some folks at “Hard Forum”:http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1028319389#post1028319389 think the issue is that Newegg (where I buy my drives) doesn’t pack them properly. Get them from ZipZoomFly or Hypermicro is the recommendation. Sage words about packing, maybe that’s why so many of my drives fail? “DFI Street”:http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9496&page=1&pp=20&highlight=maxtor+16MB reports that it is a problem with the Maxtor DiamondMax 10…

  • DFI Lanparty boots!

    Wow, I had almost given up hope on the DFI LanParty nF4, but amazingly, somehow it has come back to life. It must have been the CMOS reset. The recommendation is to take the battery out for a day. I didn’t plug the CMOS jumper in right and then I flipped the 5V dRAM voltage…

  • Quiet 120mm fans

    Tong Family Blog: Gigantic Fan. Well, I finally put the XP-120 into a machine and it was indeed big. Still need a bunch of 120mm gigantic fans. The Globe is hard to find and mnptech.com doesn’t carry it anymore :-0 So here is a new listing. “Sharky Forums”:http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?s=9df064fe0a0738b846800c5006cdd5c4&threadid=259758 has a good list of fans which…

  • Sony TX Series

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  • Bluetooth Headset on Windows XP SP2

    WindowsDevCenter.com: Getting Your Bluetooth Headset to Work in XP. _Argh, I have a bluetooth headset and a Bluetooth adapter, but it won’t work with the default driver in SP2._ The problem with the Bluetooth stack built into Windows XP SP 2 is that it has limited support for profiles. In particular, it does not support…

  • DFI LanParty nF4 Ultra dead?

    DFI Forums – NF4 Ultra-D – Ultra D: Leds of Death Once Again…. Well, I got a brand new 600 watt power supply and the thing is still dead. The LED standby power light goes on, but nothing happens when I push either power button. I also see the DRAM light is off.

  • 2006 Scion xB

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  • Chaintech VNF3-250 and Quiet N Cool

    Well, I tried to get my DFI Lanparty board working and I’m pretty sure I toasted it. At least I tried the Seasonic Supertornado 400 against a known good machine and it worked fine. Also put the memory in and the OCZ memory seems good. So, now I just have to wait for the new…