So I opened up the box, and found that the mobo [...]]]> So Steve talked me into an upgrade. I needed to install Windows 7 anyway, and so here was the chance. Bette was gone for the weekend and I had a nice block of time. I ordered a used Gigabyte mobo with processor from eBay. Hmm.

So I opened up the box, and found that the mobo was packed in plastic bubbles – not antistatic. No I/O plate. No warranty papers. I hate eBay. So I hooked up the computer and restored the BIOS. Then restored the overclocked settings to default.

Ran to Best Buy for a new 500Gb HD. Might as well start fresh – then I can mount the old disk for fast copying.

Did the first install of Windows 7. It booted into setup and sat there for 10 minutes easy. Nothing. Googled, found this was normal, some suggested disabling USB, some said poke the CD-ROM drive. Crappy installer. Finally got it to install. Runs nice with 4Gb.

Steve told me to run prime95, a prog from the GIMPS Mersenne Prime Search people to load the heck out of the CPU and then use CoreTemp to read the temp. It went up to 60C, but no higher. Not the best, but I really don’t load it that much.

I installed and then tried to activate Windows 7. Of course, it said “Cannot use this key on a new install”. How is that useful on a clean install disk? I Googled a bit and found if you reinstall by starting Windows and running setup off of the DVD a second time, it classifies the 2nd install as an upgrade. So here we go. UDPATE: Called MS Support. After a bit of phone heck, I ended up with a highly competent tech (from India?) named Rahul who did not drag me thru rebooting and stupid things. He just got it fixed.

In bringing up the new box, PocoMail was great – just point at the old install, copy, bam. I lost the Quicken installer for 2009 Home and Business, but 20 mins on the chat support gave me a download link for the replacement.

UPDATE: Win7 has been great. Only problem is, is not compatible with my HP LaserJet 3150 MFP – HP discontinued support for Vista.

Download CoreTemp
Download Mersenne GIMPS

I first just entered the keywords using Thumbs Plus 7. Pain. TP8 is not much better – cannot keep the image open while I add the keywords. [...]]]> So I am trying to archive the check scans. TIF files named “donation-2010-DEP01-01.TIF” to identify the year, deposit batch number (01) and the scan number within the batch.

I first just entered the keywords using Thumbs Plus 7. Pain. TP8 is not much better – cannot keep the image open while I add the keywords. Small monitor.

Then I tried the user variables in Photo Mechanic. This was better, but I would need to change the settings for the user variables for each deposit.

Then I considered the filename. I can read the data right out of the filename using the variables. For the file donation-2010-DEP01-01.TIF, I use a caption definition:

{filenamebase:-13,4} Clinic Donations Deposit {filenamebase:-5,2} Page {filenamebase:-2,2}

which results in the caption of

Clinic Donations Deposit 01 Page 01

I can do the same thing with keywords. I entered the keyword phrase into the IPTC Stationery Pad:

Clinic, {filenamebase:-13, 2}, deposit_{filenamebase:-5,2}, DEPOSIT{filenamebase:-5,2}, donation, Page_{filenamebase:-2}, SMCORG

to end up with the kewords:

Clinic, 2010, deposit_01, DEPOSIT01, donation, Page_01, SMCORG

But when I reopen the pad, I see:

Clinic, {filenamebase | -13, 2}, deposit_{filenamebase |-5, DEPOSIT{filenamebase | -5, donation, Page_{filenamebase |-2}, SMCORG

which keywords as

Clinic, 20, deposit_01-03, SMCORG

Note the lost 2nd arguments and closing braces on some of the keyword terms.

I researched a bit in their forums and found a similar problem in this article, Colon in Keywords. It was mentioned there that PM 4.6.2.1 had a problem with leaving colons alone in keywords, and 4.6.3 (recently released) fixed these problems. So I downloaded and installed 4.6.3 and the vertical pipes now work, but the problems with the closing braces are still there. Boo. I might have to go back to user variables.

Saturday night I posted a question on the Camera Bits forum. Sunday morning Kirk the developer posts a “I’m on it” message. Then he posts that yes, it’s a bug, it will be fixed, here is the workaround. Nice. I post a followup. He posts one an hour later.

A good reason to support little companies with specialized software. Now I just scan, rename the file, and apply the Stationery Pad. Bam! Fill in the donors – done.

Photo Mechanic 4.6.3 from Camera Bits
Camera Bits Forum
Thumbs Plus from Cerious Software

Voice Message 8884274836

At home, three times a night. Never leaving a messsage.

I Googled the phone number finally and found who: Lifesource blood services.

I logged in (easy) and turned off all my notifications. We’ll see if it works.

With our old crappy teapot, I wouldn’t care. Let it cool down, whatever. Of course this teapot is a 19/10 stainless teapot from [...]]]> So I started the teapot up today, and went downstairs to check one thing. Ten minutes later I came up and there was no whistle. After checking the teapot, there was no water.

With our old crappy teapot, I wouldn’t care. Let it cool down, whatever. Of course this teapot is a 19/10 stainless teapot from the Eva Zeisel by Chantal collection, interestingly no longer sold (although the enamel clad one is). We inherited it from Aunt Lynn, and she liked nice stuff, and it is beautiful. After I cooked it, not so much.

This is the teakettle I destroyed.

If water has been boiled dry from the teakettle TURN OFF HEAT and do not remove teakettle until it has cooled. Leaving a dry teakettle on a hot burner can melt enamel/aluminum base and damage the teakettle and burner. This could be a possible source of fire.

Nice. The flame was on real low, since I knew I wasn’t sitting there, so maybe the damage is not bad. Another post recommended Bar Keeper’s Friend. It has saved me before, as it is a very nice fine abrasive. Another post says the metal is damaged beyond repair, and the wife will kill me. Well, the post didn’t really say that, I did.

So I started polishing with some BKF with a few drops of water, and used my clean hands. Luckily, most of the discoloration came off, except near the bottom, probably where the heat was highest. Good thing I a) caught it soon, and b) used low heat. Some of the burnt crust came off too, so it really looks good now.

The teakettle itself is nice, but not as functional as the cheapy. You could operate the cheapy with one hand, you need to remove the Chantal plug with your hand without getting burned by steam. Get used to it. It does not whistle reliably, either. B**ch, b**ch, b**ch.

Get the code into the target dir: $ svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/2.9 .

Copy wp-config.php $ cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Get new secret keys: https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/

Edit wp-config.php $ vi wp-config.php Change dbname, hostname, password. Change 4 secret key lines to above lines.

Run config: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

Set up the profile pages; add default user;

Install Atahualpa Theme and configure.

I use MusikCube a lot. That said, I sometimes share files from various machines that have duplicate files, and rather than hand-edit the playlists after each synchronization to eliminate the duplicate albums, I want an automated way. Since MusikCube runs on SQLite, why not do it [...]]]> Or, Use SQL Squirrel and JDBC to dedupe MusikCube playlists

I use MusikCube a lot. That said, I sometimes share files from various machines that have duplicate files, and rather than hand-edit the playlists after each synchronization to eliminate the duplicate albums, I want an automated way. Since MusikCube runs on SQLite, why not do it in SQL?

First download the SQLiteJDBC JDBC driver and install to the SQL Squirrel lib folder. Restart the client and add a new Driver to the list using name=SQLite, example URL = jdbc:sqlite:test.db, classname= org.sqlite.JDBC and Website URL = http://www.zentus.com/sqlitejdbc/

First problem – how to access the database. Doc is sketchy, but based on some investigation of the org.sqlite.JDBC.java code I found that it uses everything following the “jdbc:sqlite:” prefix as a new File() argument (unless nothing is found, than an in-memory DB is assumed). So I can access the db using the JDBC URL: jdbc:sqlite:C:/Documents and Settings/username/.musikproject/musik_u.db. I love source code.

Note: I do not put any work into playlists. I am a big fan of letting the metadata do the work. I am comfortable with nuking the DB a starting over, if necessary. If you have lots of valuable annotations, you are editing in the wrong place. So if my tests blow up the DB, so what.

Then from a SQL Server site article, How to remove duplicate rows…, I can compile this query:

SELECT title, album, count(*)
FROM songs
GROUP BY title, album
HAVING count(*) > 1

I easily get 100 rows with 2 hits each.

Alternate form of query (from here)

select s1.filename, s1.songid, s2.songid, s1.title, CASE WHEN substr(s1.filename,1)=’f’ OR substr(s2.filename,1)=’f’ THEN 1 ELSE 2 END as fred
from songs s1, songs s2
where s1.songid < s2.songid and s1.title = s2.title AND s1.artist = s2.artist AND s1.album = s2.album
AND s1.artist = 'Aerosmith'

and also

select s1.filename,
( CASE
– my box has top priority
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 4, length(‘mp3′)) = ‘mp3′ ) THEN 1
– handle \\m51098 machine names
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 3, length(‘m51098′)) = ‘m51098′ )THEN 2
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 3, length(‘m51165′)) = ‘m51165′ )THEN 3
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 3, length(‘m51134′)) = ‘m51134′ )THEN 4
ELSE 10 END ) AS priority
from songs s1
where 1 < (select count(*)
from songs s2
where s1.title = s2.title AND s1.artist = s2.artist AND s1.album = s2.album
AND s1.artist = 'Aerosmith')
-- limit to Aerosmith for speed
AND s1.artist = 'Aerosmith'

More to come…

Tools:
SQurrel SQL JDBC client
SQLite browser
SQLite core function reference
SQLite page
SQLiteJDBC driver

Today I [...]]]> So got the online notice for Quicken 2009 that R7 is ready. I tried 4 times, got a “patching engine has failed” error. After some googling and using Filemon to find the log, and looking in the log, I found that one of the files was not being recognized as the correct version. Dead.

Today I found this article – they released a new version of the R7 patcher. Worked great.

Now the question: Upgrade to 2010?

A little googling. Found this article on Error 500 Wordpress 1&1 Web Hosting. I already had a .htaccess file, but added the two lines – the first time I forgot the space and it blew up everything.

Thanks dude!

I reached into the [...]]]> I found some photos of a rock climbing group from work. They were named “Cora At Top.JPG”, which is great to look at the once, but they don’t really fit into the archival scheme. Plus I didn’t want to have to reenter the caption, since it was encoded into the filename already.

I reached into the new release (2.7.4) of the ever useful EXIFUtils and checked the field name list. I found [file-name] and [file-base], which represent as a source the file name e.g. “Cora At Top.JPG” and the base file name “Cora At Top”. So by entering:

> exifedit /a ip-caption=[file-base] .

I add a IPTC-Caption tag to each file using the file base name as the caption. The brackets make it a “macro”, otherwise the literal text “file-base” is inserted, which is not what I wanted. The dot is *.*.

The program creates a bunch of backup files, which I deleted. The /b option does not create backups. Next time.

Then I use my imgnum script to reformat the name to the FSC_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS std format.

"%EXIFUTILS_HOME%\exiffile.exe" /t /n VVKG[date-taken].jpg .
rem fix VVKGYYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS.JPG to VVKGYYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.JPG
rem change space to _
%CYGWIN_HOME%\bin\rename.exe " " "_" *.jpg
rem change dash to null
%CYGWIN_HOME%\bin\rename.exe - "" *.jpg
%CYGWIN_HOME%\bin\rename.exe - "" *.jpg
%CYGWIN_HOME%\bin\rename.exe - "" *.jpg
%CYGWIN_HOME%\bin\rename.exe - "" *.jpg