Dark Side of the Carton

Synergy is one of those DotCom era buzzwords that you still occasionally hear from an out of touch executive giving a bad presentation. Synergy also happens to be a piece of software that has significantly contributed to the clean up of my desk here at work.

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I’ve been a staunch supporter of Windows Vista since well before release. I’ve used it for well over a year and defended it’s use for a long time before arriving at this conclusion. That changes today. As Microsoft would say, my support has gone EOL. For you non-techs out there, EOL stands for End of Life. In short, I am no longer defending Vista or using Vista on any machine that I own. I give up. For all the benefits and things that I like about Vista, I just can’t deal with it’s bloat any longer.

My desktop is already XP and my current and future laptops will be downgraded as soon as I get them.

Viva XP!

If you didn’t already know, consider yourself now informed that installing SP1 for Vista removes the GPMC from Vista. Running the GPMC from a Windows Server 2008 or Vista machine is the only way to access the 700 additional Group Policy settings available for Vista and Server 2008 machines. With the release of SP1, Vista no longer has the GPMC bundled with it.

I don’t really know the exact reason that it was included in the first place, or why it was quietly removed, but it was. If you managed a domain with Vista based workstations then odds are that you’ll want to take advantage of the GPMC from a Vista based machine.

With v2 of the GPMC not available as a standalone download, what exactly are your options if you’ve already installed SP1? For starters, you could roll back and remove SP1. This is probably more trouble than it is worth and not the path I’d recommend.

Your best bet is the Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools vor Windows Vista. RSAT is available in x86 and x64 variations. Simply download and run the installer to get started.

Once the wizard is done, there are a few additional steps needed to enable the features that have been installed.

1. Open your computer’s Control Panel and click on Programs and Features.
2. Under Tasks on the left, click Turn Windows features on or off (Fig. 1)
3. Once the list of available features is populated, find Remote Server Administration Tools in the list and make sure it has a checkmark next to it (Fig. 2) and then click Ok.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Next you can start an empty MMC from your start menu (”mmc” + Enter) and add in the previously available GPMC span in from your File menu and get back to editing those GPOs.

Credit goes to Matty-B from this thread for the tip on grabbing RSAT.

A few notes about RSAT from the Microsoft website:

• RSAT should not be installed on a computer that is running the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack or Windows 2000 Server Administration Tools Pack. Please remove all versions of Administration Tools Pack from the computer before installing RSAT.
• Only one copy of RSAT can be installed on a computer at one time. Before installing a new package, remove any existing versions of RSAT, including any copies that are in different languages.

There is no denying the speed or convenience of using instant messaging for communication. Phone calls are good, email is better, and IM is the best. Since about 2006 I’ve been using Trillian for my IM needs. Trillian uses an XML based client side file to store your buddies and their aliases. The lack of a solid server side buddy sync has driven me away from the popular IM client. Well, that and the fact that it’s become a piece of bloatware only rivaled by Firefox in terms of its sluggish response.

Previously known as Gaim, Pidgin is an open source alternative that has really come into it’s own. With a GTK+ based UI, Pidgin can take any of the existing GTK+ application themes out there and use them natively. It’s lightweight, responsive, and works very well and though it took me over an hour to recreate my Trillian buddy list complete with aliases, my buddies are now stored on their respective server’s so if I have the need to use Meebo as my web based IM client, I have access to my up to date buddy list.

I haven’t been happier.

It’s probably rare that someone who has worked in the IT industry as long as I have managed to wait until 2008 to buy their first laptop. I thwarted the evil deed of dropping lots of money to take my computing on the road, but today I gave in and bought the family a nice little HP Pavilion Entertainment PC. It’s a Costco only model, but is based on the DV9720US model that is available just about anywhere. I’d be surprised if the gas station I filled up at this morning wasn’t stocking the doggone things.

It’s sporting a 17″ widescreen display and a dual core AMD Turion 64 chip with 2 GB of ram. I was leaning towards something a little less expensive and a little smaller, but I fell in love with the bigger display and just couldn’t manage to buy something without that kind of real estate.

The machine’s primary use will probably be for the house so lugging around this 7lb beast is less of an issue. We don’t really use the computer in the office all that much these days so having a nice solid machine in the living room is going to be a godsend.

I’ll post some pictures of this thing later on.

Back in November, Wal-Mart was running a few pre Black Friday holiday sales that included an awesome deal on the Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player. As a supporter of HD-DVD, and now both formats, I was lured in based on the $98 price tag. Given that the player had been going for well over $200 just weeks before, I figured it was an impulse buy that saved me quite a bit of money and gave me a reason to justify the large sum of money I spent on that HDTV set a few years back. I mean, it’s not like all the channels in your cable lineup are coming through in crystal clear HD yet. So how did the HD-A2 measure up? Let’s take a look

The HD-A2 is the second generation entry level player from Toshiba and has already been replaced with the HD-A3. This “sale” was probably a calculated effort to push sales of HD-DVD players as well as clear out the remaining stock of HD-A2 units. Regardless, I got a nice player on the cheap.

There is nothing particularly fancy or exciting about the HD-A2. It’s got a nice glossy black finish and has a fold down cover hiding the front panel buttons and USB ports. The power button is situated on the far left side of the front panel and glows red around the edges of the button while off and a brilliant blue when powered on. The unit’s display is fairly basic and can be dimmed from the device’s setup menu.

Powering on the unit takes some time and I haven’t quite figured out why. My standard DVD player comes right on and ejects the tray when I press the open button, but the HD-A2, and all HD players I am told, take between 20 and 40 seconds to power on and open the tray. This is a constant source of irritation that I work around by opening the tray before I go off and figure out what movie I am going to watch.

Movie playback of HD-DVDs is absolutely stunning. I tested the player out using component and HDMI connections and they both delivered a crisp picture. The HD-A2 supports upscaling of standard DVDs, but only when used in conjunction with an HDMI connection. DVD playback over a component connection is limited to a 480p signal and the player notifies you in these instances. Of course, if the display and player haven’t completed the HDMI digitial handshake your player will tell you, in 720p, that it is limiting playback to a lower resolution when it really isn’t.

In one instance recently, my home had a brown out that surged and caused the TV only to lose power. When powered back on, the HD-A2 had downgraded the signal from 720p to 480p and refused to correct itself until powered off and back on. I assume this is a design feature to protect the content.

The HD-A2 has a very robust Menu and Setup that includes tons of options. I won’t go into them all here as you can look up the player on the Toshiba website, but the one feature I wish was included was the ability to disable sound output over HDMI. In my setup, I have my audio handled by a receiver that accepts an optical audio signal while the video is sent directly to the display over HDMI. Of course the problem is that audio is being sent with both streams and unless I mute my TV, I hear duplicate audio signals. I’ve yet to figure out how to disable the HDMI audio without having to turn my TV down to 1 as mute leaves a stupid symbol up on the screen.

Since HD-DVD players have updatable firmware and mine shipped with a very old version, v1.2, I decided to go ahead and upgrade to the newest firmware, v2.7. My first 2 attempts were by downloading and burning the ISO of the update to a CD and updating that way. Both were met with dreaded 200700cf error, which is somehow indicative of a bad burn. Suggestions on the net are to use ImgBurn or ISORecorder to burn at a very low speed like 2x. I was unable to get that to work so I ended up updating directly via the ethernet port on the device. Very simple and was done in 20-30 minutes with no hiccups. I haven’t noticed any real change since the update, but having a net connected device enables many of the advanced HD-DVD features so it was worth the setup time.

My one real complaint about the HD-A2, and this seems to be widespread among all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players, is the “boot time”. If I hit the “Open” button on my device, it takes anywhere from 20-40 seconds before the tray is open. This is a stark contrast to the 3-5 seconds for my standard DVD player. I haven’t figured out what the cause or reason is for this, but I assume it’s necessary. If the device is already on, pressing the Open button is almost an instant action. Regardless of the reasoning for this, it’s irritating. I suggest powering on your device well before you have movie in hand ready to drop it in the tray.

In all, the HD-A2 is a stellar player. It plays HD-DVDs and DVDs wonderfully over the HDMI connection, it’s easy to use, and the interface for HD-DVDs is slick and “next gen” looking. The device is pretty basic itself, but it performs like I expected. The lag issue when it powers on is quite annoying, but since it’s a technology wide affliction I can look the other way.

When the dust settles you might expect me to give you the green light to run out and pick up an HD-A2 of your very own, but I just can’t do that. With the recent news that Warner Bros has flipped to Blu-Ray only and the pending news that Paramount and New Line Cinema may follow suit, it looks like the last hand for the HD-DVD group. Your best bet is to just wait this one out for now. My player was an impulse buy at $98, but I’d give serious thought to spending $200 or more on a technology that may have just had it’s fate sealed. If you just have to get a next gen player, and trust me when I say that I get that, the PS3 is still the best value around in the Blu-Ray market. For people with no need for PS2 compatibility, the 40GB PS3 is a sweet deal at $399. For those of you with large PS2 libraries, good luck finding a 20GB or 60GB model or you can always settle for emulation with the 80GB model.

Final Verdict: Skip HD-DVD for now

I’ve been waiting for a good time to pick up a PS3 since it launched just over a year ago and that time finally arrived. With the almost extinction of the 20GB and 60GB models available for purchase I decided to pick up a refurbished 60GB model from Overstock this evening for about $470, $129 less than it’s original retail price. Considering this was probably my last chance to pick up a console that had the internal PS2 hardware necessary for full backwards compatibility, it was worth the cost. It even comes with a copy of Motorstorm and just might qualify for the 5 Free Blu-Ray promotion.

At any rate, I can’t wait for it to get here so I can pick up the newest installment of the Ratchet & Clank series. I also can’t wait to start building my Blu-Ray library. There are so many good movies out on Blu-Ray that I just can’t wait to see in HD.

My home computer isn’t exactly a smoking machine. For those interested, it’s a 2500+ w/ 2GB of Ram. After running Vista Business for about 13 months I finally conceded that my machine was just not up to snuff when it came to running Vista smoothly. I was forced to downgrade to XP Pro and I haven’t been happier with that decision.

All things considered, I do like some of the things that Vista brought to the table. More specifically, I loved the way the new Explorer worked. I just liked the way it handled the address bar. Luckily, the fine folks that maintain Directory Opus have copied this feature. Directory Opus will set you back about $74US if the exchange rates hold steady, but honestly after using DO for a while I can say that it’s totally worth the price.

The other feature that end users may notice in Vista that I liked was the Start Menu. Fortunately, this is really not a deal breaker as I had shortcuts setup for most of my often used applications via the Quick Launch toolbar.

There are a lot of other technical features that Vista brings to the table such as ReadyBoost, improved security, etc. The problem is that none of those features make Vista a must have product worth enduring a slow and clunky OS for.

My big mistake was jumping into Vista with 1GB of Ram, realizing Vista sucked with that little Ram and then upgrading the Ram. I was unhappy with performance under XP with only a single GB so I went about it all backwards by moving to Vista and then upgrading the Ram. At some point I am definitely going to move back to Vista, but it won’t be until I’m running a dual core proc with at least 2 GB of ram. For now, I am joining the legions of users that maintain that XP is where it’s at.

phpBB 3.0 was released this week and the default theme, Prosilver, has the post content on the left and the poster’s profile on the right. This is reverse from most forum software and the subsilver theme of previous phpBB releases. I’ve taken the time to tweak the CSS and code to flip the poster profile back to the left and the post content to the right. Here are the steps you need to take:

Prosilver Left Packaged Style Download Now Available
Many users were having issues with fully completing this mod without a typo and since it involves modifying the main templates for the theme, I went ahead and packaged this style into an easy to install theme with the name of “prosilver_left”. You can download this theme as a zip file here.

Simply unzip this file and upload the “prosilver_left” folder to your styles directory in your phpBB3 directory. Install it from the Styles tab of your ACP.

Help/Support Instructions - If you need assistance after attempting this modification, please make sure you accurately describe your problem (including an image if necessary) and either include a link to the live board or PM the link to me. Please post your requests in the official thread at phpBB.com

Mod Instructions

Demo: http://www.darksideofthecarton.com/phpbb3_demo/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1

1. Go to your ACP and click on the Styles Tab.
2. Under Style Components on the left, click Themes
3. On the right, click the Edit button next to Prosilver. This should bring up an editing window with the full CSS for the Prosilver theme inside it.
4. Find the following code inside that CSS file. It should be around like 1054. We are going to change the float value for the .postbody class from left to right.

/* Post body styles
----------------------------------------*/
.postbody {
padding: 0;
line-height: 1.48em;
color: #333333;
width: 76%;
float: left;
clear: both;
}

Change it to:

/* Post body styles
----------------------------------------*/
.postbody {
padding: 0;
line-height: 1.48em;
color: #333333;
width: 76%;
float: right;
clear: both;
}

5. Find the following code inside that CSS file. It should be around like 1532. We are going to change the float value for the .postprofile class from right to left and move the white vertical border to the right side.

/* Poster profile block
----------------------------------------*/
.postprofile {
/* Also see tweaks.css */
margin: 5px 0 10px 0;
min-height: 80px;
color: #666666;
border-left: 1px solid #FFFFFF;
width: 22%;
float: right;
display: inline;
}

Change it to:

/* Poster profile block
----------------------------------------*/
.postprofile {
/* Also see tweaks.css */
margin: 5px 0 10px 0;
min-height: 80px;
color: #666666;
border-right: 1px solid #FFFFFF;
width: 22%;
float: left;
display: inline;
}

6: Next find this:

.pm .postprofile {
border-left: 1px solid #DDDDDD;
}

Change it to:

.pm .postprofile {
border-right: 1px solid #DDDDDD;
}

7: Next find this:

.online {
background-image: url("{T_IMAGESET_LANG_PATH}/icon_user_online.gif");
}

Change it to this:

.online {
background-image: url("{T_IMAGESET_LANG_PATH}/icon_user_online.gif");
margin-top: -5px;
}
 
.online dt {
margin-top: 5px;
}

8: Click Submit to update your Theme/CSS file for Prosilver.
9: On the left, click Templates under Style Components
10: Click Edit next to Prosilver.
11: In the drop down menu, go to the very bottom and select viewtopic_body.html and it should open an editor with the current code inside it.
12: First we need to remove the current image from being applied to the Post’s div. Find the following line of code at or around line 117:

<div id="p{postrow.POST_ID}" class="post <!-- IF postrow.S_ROW_COUNT is odd -->bg1<!-- ELSE -->bg2<!-- ENDIF --><!-- IF postrow.S_UNREAD_POST --> unreadpost<!-- ENDIF --><!-- IF postrow.S_POST_REPORTED --> reported<!-- ENDIF --><!-- IF postrow.S_ONLINE --> online<!-- ENDIF -->"></div>

Remove this:

<!-- IF postrow.S_ONLINE --> online<!-- ENDIF -->

to create this:

<div id="p{postrow.POST_ID}" class="post <!-- IF postrow.S_ROW_COUNT is odd -->bg1<!-- ELSE -->bg2<!-- ENDIF --><!-- IF postrow.S_UNREAD_POST --> unreadpost<!-- ENDIF --><!-- IF postrow.S_POST_REPORTED --> reported<!-- ENDIF -->"></div>

13: Now we need to add this back to the postprofile dl element. Find the following line of code at or around line 173:

<dl id="profile{postrow.POST_ID}" class="postprofile"></dl>

Change it to this:

<dl id="profile{postrow.POST_ID}" class="postprofile<!-- IF postrow.S_ONLINE --> online<!-- ENDIF -->"></dl>

14: Click submit to save your template.
15: Select ucp_pm_viewmessage.html from the drop down.
16: Find this code at or around line 16:

<div id="post-{MESSAGE_ID}" class="post pm<!-- IF S_POST_UNAPPROVED or S_POST_REPORTED --> reported<!-- ENDIF --><!-- IF S_ONLINE --> online<!-- ENDIF -->"></div>

Remove this:

<!-- IF S_ONLINE --> online<!-- ENDIF -->

to create this:

<div id="post-{MESSAGE_ID}" class="post pm<!-- IF S_POST_UNAPPROVED or S_POST_REPORTED --> reported<!-- ENDIF -->"></div>

17: Find this code at or around line 65:

<dl id="profile{MESSAGE_ID}" class="postprofile"></dl>

Change it to:

<dl id="profile{MESSAGE_ID}" class="postprofile<!-- IF S_ONLINE --> online<!-- ENDIF -->"></dl>

This should correctly align the profiles on the left just like in subsilver in topics as well as Private Messages. Here is what you get if completed properly:

Viewing a PM:

Viewing a Post:

I recently blogged about making the jump into the high definition format war with my purchase of a Toshiba HD-A2 player at Wal-Mart’s special friday sale. Now that I’ve taken a good hard look at the movies available on each format and the amount of titles that retail stores and online stores are stocking, I think I am going to have to re-think my stance of supporting only a single player.

If all goes well, I’ll have a Playstation 3 in my possession in the next 2 weeks and then I can start building my Blu-Ray library up in parallel to my DVD and HD-DVD one. I guess I grossly mis-understimated the strength of having Disney on board. I mean, I have kids so most of what I watch is Disney or otherwise animated. That makes Blu-Ray an obvious choice for parents that can get past the cost of entry.

I’ve also mentioned to numerous people and seen the topic discussed online in recent days that Microsoft is supporting HD-DVD purely to prolong this format war so they can perfect digital delivery. I don’t find this to be so far fetched as I can actually see how that is beneficial to Microsoft. I mean, how much money does MS get when you buy a Blu-Ray movie? An HD-DVD? Now, how about if they act as the reseller of the movies via digital distribution? There we go.

You can’t exactly fault them for using their power to build another stream of revenue. They already have the software and system in place via the Xbox Live Video Marketplace, but they need more time to establish a larger base and maybe even port the software/system over to other devices before this can really be ready for primetime.

In the meantime, I’m going to be buying movies in whatever format I want and I honestly don’t give a crap who wins the format war. Until we have a clear winner, I’ll be enjoying my movies in high definition, either natively or via an upscaler.