CutePDF Out / Bullzip In

FREE PDF Printer
The Bullzip PDF Printer works as a Microsoft Windows printer and allows you to write PDF documents from virtually any Microsoft Windows application.

This program is FREEWARE with limitations, which means that it is FREE for personal and commercial use up to 10 users. It does not contain any advertising or popups. For commercial applications with more that 10 users there is a commercial version of the product available at www.biopdf.com.

Comments: Cute is out and Bullzip is in. Does the same thing and much more flexible.

Scanning Wi-Fi In Windows 7

Two programs that work:
Inssider - Uses the Native WiFi API to get wireless information. Can be extracted and run stand alone. Looks better but they both work.
Vistumbler – is an AutoIt script that uses the netsh to get wireless information. Open source and can be downloaded as stand alone.

Ubuntu 10.04 Try

Wubi 9.10 worked fine to install Ubuntu 10.04
Run System Admin Update Manager.
Set appearance to advanced and let it look for video driver.
Click on an MP3 and Ubuntu will search out the codex pack to install.
Install Flash 10 through Ubuntu Software Center and Firefox will play embedded YouTube. (Thank Heavan)
They put the "close window" x on the left. (mind bending)
Installed these Firefox extensions:
Adblock Plus
BBCodeXtra
Evernote Web Clipper
Greasemonkey
LastPass
QuickDrag
ScribeFire
What the hey, Gimp is gone?
Future ScanSnap S510 install maybe: http://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/ and here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7391379&postcount=7
No Printer tried yet.
Installed Shutter for screen clips and edit/upload. http://shutter-project.org/faq-help/ppa-installation-guide/
Example clip here:

Installed Wine and tried a couple screen capture and writing programs. Unimpressed. Can't save/write anything to disk.
CPU usage is 25 ot 45 percent both cores at idle.
Here is a shot with every process sleeping but System Monitor:

Not familiar enough with Linux to know what the problem is. First guess would be Compiz but only a guess. Makes you admire Windows.
Activated the sensors with sudo sensors-detect
Holy cow I am running +74C on both cores!
Can't seem to get a visual for LM-Sensor to work.
I turned off visual effects and it helped.

Here is a typical Win7 on the same laptop:

Some say uninstalling Compiz will help with the temps.

Ubuntu works but Windows is better, no surprise. The heat is a big issue on my laptop and I would have to get that fixed somehow. But I will end up back in Windows anyway so no biggie.

Facebook Makes Public About You

See what facebook makes public about you link.

Ubuntu (trial post on my findings for Karmic Koala)

I might be a tad late trying Karmic, the new version comes out tomorrow.

First, Wubi installed Ubuntu Karmic Koala as a dual boot on my Windows7 drive, no problem. It automatically grabbed the 64 bit version to match my Windows system and I may have been better off choosing 32. I'm not sure and this would be a long involved story so just be aware. 64 is running fine by the way. If you want something other than what Windows is using, you must make a selection (probably download the version and point Wubi to it).

Accessing data on NTFS disks was in the past tricky in Linux. Now it's a piece of cake. Go to places and data and there it is. Ubuntu may have been doing this for awhile.

In Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala the internet could be slow. The fix is easy but it took me awhile to find it. Enter the OpenDNS numbers in the DNS server for your router and/or wireless adapter. Here are the numbers: 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220, For my simple needs this fixed things. Others may have needed further massaging. Here is an example of someone needing more settings.

By the way, I am constructing this post in Bilbo Blogger (now called Blogilo). The name change is a shame. I love the name Bilbo Blogger. Look up Bilbo in the Ubuntu Software Center and install it. Bilbo is still cranking away trying to upload so I grabber the HTML and pasted it into Blogger manually. Maybe it is a Hobbit thing. I will probably use ScribeFire in the future.

I could not get the display settings to advanced until I let Ubuntu update so just do it. Run Update Manager. Karmic now has many updates. Now my windows wiggle.

Wireless auto connected on Karmic. Jaunty (previous version) required manual connection (click a button). I like the auto connect, my memory is short and it keeps me from troubleshooting my wireless unnecessarily.

Cropping an image is easy with F-Spot but you must open F-Spot from the Applications menu. If you right click the image then choose F-Spot, only a simple viewer activates. F-Spot Photo Manager does a few adjustments but the crop is handy for blog posting. Use Gimp for more complicated functions. The first time Gimp opens it takes awhile to register things. After that Gimp opens quickly.

As I find things I may come back and mention them. Tomorrow I will probably try Lucid Lynx but the downloading will be intense. If Wubi for Lucid is not up then I will wait, unless I can just update the current install. Who knows?

Install software from ???? The more obvious stuff is easy. But there are curious locations for software and upgrades. After my experience with Bilbo for instance, I tried BloGTK. It was available in the Synaptics Package Manager so I installed it. According to the BloGTK page there was a newer version. Some day I will figure out how to do this stuff with the command line. But for now I found the location of the update and added it to Synaptic. Note the screen shot. OK, it's impossible to read, but you get the idea (so right click and view will ya). The software site gives you the location and you enter the location into Synaptic. But forget BloGTK, it is painfully primitive.

Here is a link for Linux info. from Tom's Hardware recently. And here.
This is developing into a link list:
10 things to do after 10.04 install

Getting Into Your Passworded BIOS

How to Reset a BIOS Password
The best method to reset a BIOS password depends on what BIOS the computer has. Common BIOS's include AMI, Award, IBM and Phoenix. Numerous other BIOS's do exist, but these are the most common.

Some BIOS's allow you to require a password be entered before the system will boot. Some BIOS's allow you to require a password to be entered before the BIOS setup may be accessed.

Comments: Trying to fix your HP/Compaq or whatever and can't get into the BIOS? Try this page. I have not tried any of this and am not needing to use it at present but the last time I needed this information I could not find it. Marked for future reference.

No Windows Steady State In Win7 ... but Guest Works

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Windows 7 Feature Focus: Guest Mode
Configuring Guest Mode

From a user experience perspective, Guest Mode is almost completely hidden in Windows 7. You can't access it from Start Menu Search (Go ahead, try. I dare you!), nor can you search for it from within Control Panel. It's like it's not there at all.

But it is. To find Guest Mode, open Control Panel, User Accounts and Family Safety, and then User Accounts. (Shortcut: Open the Start Menu and click your logon picture in the top right.) Then, click on Manage another account. From the list shown there, select the account for which you'd like to add Guest Mode. Or, if you don't have an account for this purpose, create one first.

Comments: If you have a motel lobby (library, mean kids, etc.) and used Steady State on XP then you will have to set up a Guest Account in lieu of Steady State in Windows 7, because Microsoft ain't given you no stinkin' Steady State for Win7. Mr. Thurrott explains how to do it.

Download the instructions from Microsoft.

Lifehacker describes using Guest mode.

Securing a guest account

Uninstall Office 2007 Hair Pulling Cure

Uninstall Microsoft Office 2007 in Vista and XP » Raymond.CC Blog
Raymond seems a tad touchy about copying any of his "article" so I will just supply the link. I am currently uninstalling Office 2007 with Revo and the zillions of office entries ... I'm tempted to Rip it out with this little program.

Here is the little site that has the program. Gotta love the site's name: Refuse to Suffer.

I have no idea how to tag this???

OK, I ran it (I only had a couple pieces of Office remaining) and it worked. I had a runtime error the first run and then ran as Admin. I would chance it again but no guaranties. I'm throwing the ripper on my portable drive to impress some future troubled soul. Now to install good old Office 2003. Why did I uninstall 2007? I had become increasingly irritated at seeing all the unnecessary files, for you see I had not been cautious when installing and got the whole useless load. Besides, I hated the menu bar.

Cursing Your USB Flash Drive Lately?

USB Flash Drive Comparison part 2 – FAT32 vs NTFS vs ExFAT
So what have we learned from all of this, besides the fact that I need to get a life and out from in front of this computer?

We’ve pretty much learned the same thing we did from the original article really, that OCZ and Super Talent are the drives to own in terms of speed.

In terms of file systems, I would have to call FAT32 the winner only because it’s the most compatible with everything or every other operating system basically.

NTFS of course really isn’t compatible with everything, and ExFat is only compatible with Vista, but I’ve read that it can be easily made compatible with XP, but I haven’t tried it myself.

If we go back and look at the SiSoft Sandra test, the best scores were achieved using ExFat, then FAT32 came in second and NTFS in last.

Sandra 2009 and Diskbench are totally different tests with different results, if we go back and look at the Diskbench tests we can see:

For Copying to the USB drive FAT32 took the least amount of time, with NTFS coming in second and ExFat taking on average the longest time to Copy to the drive.

Copying From and Reading From the drives were very similar in their results though, most of the time the File Systems were close, with at points NTFS taking a bit longer while FAT32 and ExFAT were nearly identical.

So in my opinion the all around best choice is FAT32, or the default for most all USB drives out there today, it seems to give us the best average performance overall.

Comments: Check the whole article. I put the summary here. Flash drives are great for porting around a few small files but transferring 3 gigs drives me crazy. What is the answer? USB3 of course, and buy fast models, and use sync.

If you want to see how miserably slow (or gloriously fast) your USB flash drive is grab USBDview.

Post to Blogger, et. al. From Reader With "Send To"

Become a Google Reader Power User - PCWorld
So, how do you get at all these goodies? Simple:

1. Head to Google Reader and click Settings, Reader settings.

2. Click the Send To tab.

3. Click to place a checkmark next to any of the services you want to add to Google Reader's Send to menu. (The aforementioned Save as PDF option is enabled by default.) Note also the option to create a custom link if you want to include a service that's not already there.

4. Click Back to Google Reader and you're done.

Now, look at the bottom row of any item you want to share. You'll see a number of options (most of which are self-explanatory, I think), culminating with Send to on the far right.

Click it, and then click the option you want. Simple as that. Gotta love that Google Reader.

Comments: This is very cool but I doubt I will use it much (say ScribeFire). It evens grabs the main graphic. I'm not sure how power userish this is but I had never noticed it.

iTunes Replacement "CopyTrans Manager"

I have been using Floola to transfer media to iPod Classic but noticed CopyTrans Manager included in my Liberkey. I like Copy Trans better (I think). I'm not going to delineate all the why's but it is a little more intuitive or friendly or something. Granted I have only used it once so far.

Searching for iTunes replacement never brought CTM to my attention before. Too many people crying for attention.

Screen Capture Flip-Flop

I seem to keep flip-flopping around on my screen capture programs. I would like to simply draw a box on the screen, grab it, then annotate, re-size if necessary, upload to a free server and grab the link. Is this asking too much?

I'm back to TPUCapture from TechPowerUp. No I can not annotate or re-size but I can do everything else. It leaves a little watermark in the lower right corner but they deserve it for making a great little free program/service. I quit it a few versions back because it didn't work well with Win7 (or maybe it was just time to flip-flop) but it works well again.

If you need to annotate use Snipping Tool first then use TPU to grab the annotated clip. I loved FastStone for this but the free version became squirrely in Win7.

TPUCapture downloads with an installer but dropping the installer on Universal Extractor gives you the folder and TPU runs fine as an executable. Wow! LegRoom is being tagged as malicious by Firefox? What's up with that. I wouldn't worry about it.

So until my next flip-flop ... I'm trying to warm up to FireShot but it is clunky and limited to browser shots.

To make this even more long winded. I tried the old free FastStone Capture again (part of my Liberkey Suite) and it worked fine. It is a far better annotator than the Snipping Tool. FS can even re-size. So I have gone full circle.

In Chrome Awesome Screenshot Capture works well for browser captures.

Drag Drop Attachments To Gmail

Drag and drop attachments onto messages - Official Gmail Blog
I used to have to click "Attach a file," find the photos, click them, etc. Starting today, if I'm using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.6, I can just drag and drop the files to attach them — easy as pie.


Comments: This is great but you need to Update Firefox to 3.6 to make it work. Just sayin'.

Dual N and G Network Setup

If you have an N router and both G and N adapters accessing the network, then performance will drop to the lowest common denominator. Setting up a dual system and letting the G adapters connect to the G router and the N adapters connect to the N router would be a better solution. Good instructions are hard to find. Here is a good start on the Netgear site. Here is another discussion on the procedure. Or here.

It does not matter which router feeds into the other because even 100 Ethernet is faster than N class wifi.

High points are:
1. Disable the DHCP server in the secondary router (only one allowed).
2. Connect from the primary router's LAN port to one of the LAN ports on the secondary router. Do not use the WAN port.
3. If the "primary router" has a 192.168.1.1 base address for example, and the DHCP pool is 192.168.1.2 thorough 192.168.1.100 (change this if needed).
Secondary router is set to 192.168.1.250 or some number outside the pool.
4. Create separate SSIDs (to know which is N or G) and use different channels for each wireless router. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are good choices.
5. Security needs to match on both routers.
6. Secondary router may require static IPs on the wireless PCs if DHCP information is not being relayed correctly from the secondary router.

Plantronics 655 USB Headset

Amazon.com: Plantronics .Audio 655 USB Multimedia Headset: Electronics
Plantronics .Audio 655 USB Multimedia Headset
Comments: Currently $34.79. Leo Laporte's podcast people use it so I assume it is good. Marking for future purchase.

Microsoft Fix It Center

Microsoft Fix it Center Online
Microsoft Fix it Center makes getting support easier than ever because automatic troubleshooters solve the issues you have now and prevent new ones.

Comments: I guess it is an easy way to get at troubleshooters. Not sure of other advantages.

Maybe this (FixWin) will be sufficient.

Touchfreeze automatically locks touchpad

touchfreeze - Project Hosting on Google Code
Annoyed when you are typing a document and accidentally the palm of your hand brushes the touchpad, changing the position of the cursor in your document or accidentally clicking on an option. TouchFreeze is simple utility for Windows NT/2000/XP that solves this problem. It automatically disables touchpad while you are typing text. Like syndaemon on x-windows.
Comments: Have not used but marking for future.

Remove Old Java Installs

JavaRa Updates and Removes Old and Redundant Java Versions - Windows - Lifehacker
Windows only: Tiny utility JavaRa cleans up older or redundant versions of the Java Runtime Environment
Comments: Look in Add/Remove Programs, do you have 4 versions of Java? Dump them with this little gem. Updates Java too and removes the startup entry. This is a good way to update Java and have control over the process.

Port Forwarding Program

Download Simple Port Forwarding | Simple Port Forwarding™
Comments: This interesting little program will handle port forwarding. As yet I can't see why it is any improvement over directly tweaking the router's setup page but the program is kinda cool. Maybe it could be useful, someday ... for something.

Blu-Ray Ripping

Bottom line is MakeMKV is easy. See below for getting beta keys after 30 day trial.
MakeMKV beta code here https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053
Instructions here https://www.howtogeek.com/161498/how-to-backup-your-dvd-and-blu-ray-movie-collection/
DVDFab beta files here and works but is harder to use.
Blu-Ray/HD DVD Copy Helper free for copying Blu-Ray. Both 64 and 32 bit. It works but ...

You may be better off using LifeHacker's instructions.

I am using a cheap Liteon reader from NewEgg.

DVDFab looks like it will expire except for the HD Decryption part. Copy appears to remain functional even after expiration. It takes around 45 minutes to copy 24GB to the hard drive on my system. It copies a full quality DVD in 10 minutes. Interesting, I had an Avatar BD which would not play on my Integra player and was giving errors on my BD reader. I set DVDFab to ignore all read errors (look in settings) and it copied with a a few minor skips. I was impressed.

HandBreak is the next step for reducing the size of bluray monsters and retaining HD quality. I could not get HandBreak to process the bluray when decrypting with Copy Helper. HandBreak recognized the disk and started the process but seemed to hang on file 3. Maybe I did not give it enough time.

HandBreak works great on the file transfered to the hard disk with DVDFab (after I found the huge 24 GB file) (VLC will play it for testing). I chose MKV packaging. Set the output directory first. Then choose the folder where the mts files are. It will search subfolders and if there are multiple mts files, HandBreak will combine them in the output. Don't try to add all the files in the que, let HB find them. The movie I am currently working on does not require 1920 to look good so I opted for the "loose" 720. I also chose the AC3 pass through. The encoding estimates 52 minutes which is a 10 minute time savings by choosing pass through audio. HandBreak's time estimate appears wonky so I don't really know if it saved time or not. Encoding actually took 1 hr. 10 min. The mkv file size ended up being 1.73 GB. I can see the difference in 720 but it is still very good. File size reduction is staggering.

I must say, on a movie like Avatar the visible quality difference between mkv and m2ts is noticeable.

Now I need some way to play these on HDTV. Can't decide WDTV or Roku or ???. I chose Roku and it plays mp4 files with some pixelation but chokes on large mkv files. The part it plays is great but it folds half way through. Roku's Netflix interface may be worth the price and it does allow some personal media playback. I really need to build a small HTPC.

Alternative ripping:

MakeMKV (here is forum post on beta serial http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053

remux tool

Forced subtitle spreadsheet

Optimize Services (lazy man's version)

Smart PC Utilities - Download Center

Comments: Today's huge memory and fast processors eliminate some of the importance of optimizing services. If you are a big time gamer the "Gaming Mode" on this program might be handy. If you have an old PC, this program might give it more life. View video here. I have not tried it.
via: Gizmo