FettesPS

Bypass Adobe Illustrator’s 4GB Memory Limit

FettesPS — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:30:03 +0000

Type ‘bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072′ into command prompt and reboot*
In cmd prompt CD to ‘%VC2010 install folder%\VC\bin’ and run vcvars32.bat
Cd to ‘%Illustrator install folder%\Support Files\Contents\Windows\’ and run ‘editbin /LARGEADDRESSAWARE Illustrator.exe’

* Can cause some instability issues on some PCs, run ‘bcdedit /deletevalue IncreaseUserVa’ afterwards and reboot to revert

iRobot Roomba 530 Battery Removal

FettesPS — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:49:05 +0000

Nintendo Wii – Partial Teardown

FettesPS — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 02:26:16 +0000

Had to tear apart my Nintendo Wii to fix a loose connector that was causing some DVD drive issues. Decided while I was at it I’d test my new camera rig and bring you all along for the ride.

Logitech LS21 Speakers Review

FettesPS — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 03:37:34 +0000

My old four point surround speakers blew awhile back. Since then I’ve been living off the two half watt speakers that are built into my Acer AL722 LCD monitor. They aren’t bad speakers, for that wattage, but they lack a sub and everything sounds a bit hollow. So I’d been reading reviews on different speakers for some time and had several models in mind when I went to Staples, but for some reason I walked out with the cheapest speakers that came with a subwoofer. I realized even that would be an improvement over what I’d been using for speakers so I decided that I’d cheap out and see just how bad they were. At $39.99 CDN I didn’t expect much in terms of quality, but I had two workstations in need of speakers so I figured I couldn’t go all out on both sets.

The two promoted features seemed to be it’s remote control module and their stow away wire system. The control module was nothing to write home about but the ability to wind up extra wiring at each satellite speaker is definitely appreciated. However this system suffers from an extreme case of short wires. Sure, you can wrap them up and hide what extra but you’re not going to be able to put the speakers anywhere useful. With my two satellite speakers on the desk and the wires dropping through a hole in the desk they just barely reach the subwoofer where they plug in. This means they can only sit about 30-40cm apart on my desk. This may work for a laptop but for a comfortable desktop setup that wont do. Thankfully I had an extension cable around and was able to remedy that problem.

Summary:

Cables are too short
Sound quality is surprisingly decent
Dirt Cheap! ($40)
Ideal for laptop based workstations

So if you’re just looking for cheap run of the mill speakers, go a head and pick these up. They’re well worth the $40 and will get you some decent sound for your desktop or laptop computer. They’re not going to make an impressive sound system for a media center or gaming system but if they’re all you can afford they’re certainly far better than any laptop or built-in speakers. And they’re Logitech, a well respected company for their mice, keyboards and other peripherals — so you know you can’t go wrong there!!

Roomba 530S Serial Port Mod

FettesPS — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:21:13 +0000

Since the Roomba 530S does not come with it’s programming port exposed I had to do a slight modification in order to get it ready for hacking. Equipped with a 1/2″ spade bit and some masking tape I carved out a hole for my serial tether to plug into.

Parts:

A Roomba 530/560
A 1/2″ Spade Bit
A drill or Rotary Tool
Masking Tape
Black Marker
X-Acto Knife
File or sand paper

Steps:

Remove bezel
Place masking tape so that it covers the programming port but has enough excess so that it will stick out from under the cover allowing you to make some markings
Using magic marker or a sharpie, trace the two grooves around the center circle as well as the programming port itself
Peel off masking tape
Replace bezel
Put the masking tape back in place, taking care to line up the 2 curved lines traced out earlier
Use X-Acto knife to trim off excess
Remove bezel again
Drill out the hole for the programming port with 1/2″ spade bit
Remove masking tape
Use rounded file or sandpaper to smooth out the edges on the hole
Put bezel back on

SABnzbd – Change Base Folder

FettesPS — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:14:01 +0000

This one really frustrated me, I switched from HellaNZB to SABnzbd (after many years of loyalty) so that I could start using SickBeard. When it came time to configure where my downloaded files end up I found I could only change the last part of the file path and the root, or the base folder, seemed to be hard-coded. My first thought was just to enter a full path in the box so I entered C:\Users\fettesps\Downloads and got an obscure error so I figured it couldn’t be done. After some serious Googling I found a forum that suggested reversing the slashes and dropping the colon, which worked for me. So enter the full path, completely ignoring the idea of a base path, but enter it like /c/Users/fettesps/Downloads/ and you’ll be good to go!

Close Skype

FettesPS — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:51:57 +0000

As much as I love Skype, it does have it’s annoyances on virtually every platform I’ve used it on. The newest Windows 7 version of Skype hides the option to exit. The big X at the top right only minimizes it and there’s no File menu but rather a Skype menu which does not have an exit option, and even right clicking the icon and hitting Close Window does not get rid of it. Rather the option is obscured under that right click menu, there is a Quit Skype option but many people like myself just right click and hit close w/o reading all the other options, especially the only option lacking an icon.

Download Every File of a Certain Extension on a Site

FettesPS — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:21:51 +0000

Today I was editing some video for Youtube and was looking for some free stock music. I ended up at a site I’ve seen many times before, DanoSongs.com, but haven’t really ended up using since finding a song involves going through a long list and playing them in an embedded player and then downloading the one you want. What I wanted to do was download every MP3 and put them in a folder that I have full of stock music and then when inside my video editing software I can preview it along with the rest. So here’s the command I used:

wget -r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off http://www.danosongs.com/

This is of course done with wget, a powerful command line utility for Linux. To tweak the command all you need to do is replace the URL with the page you’d like to scrape and then replace “mp3″ with whatever file you’d like to grab. So you could easily scrape a page for all .png files or .docx files if you wanted.

Enjoy

Uninstalling Visual Studio’s Productivity Power Tools

FettesPS — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:00:52 +0000

Took me far too long to find this option. Powertools had some annoying quirks that I just couldn’t get passed and I wasn’t using any of it’s good features. Plus either it or the SP1 upgrade has left Visual Studio 2010 in a less than stable state, I find it crashing several times a day. So today I have removed Productivity Power Tools using the following method:

Tools -> Extension Manager -> Productivity Power Tools -> Uninstall

Converting ACSM files to ePub for the Sony eReader

FettesPS — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:40:19 +0000

I was fortunate to be gifted a Sony eReader (PRS-T01) for the holiday season and have so far spent much more time playing with the damn thing than I have reading books on it. I have been plugging away at the first Game of Thrones book as well but today I decided to buy another one for more casual reading. Unfortunately this book did not come as an ePub file or even a PDF, as I am used to, but rather a ACSM file. I did not realize this until after I had paid for it and downloaded it. Now the file did launch the Sony eReader software when double clicked but I don’t use that software, rather Calibre, and wanted to import it there. It would not recognize the file so I was forced to find a method to convert it.

After some research I was told to first install Adobe’s Digital Edition. This is not ideal as it involves yet another program, and a crappy flash one at that, but it was my only option. Once installed I was able to open the ACSM file which then downloaded the book. It turns out that this file is not really the eBook itself, but rather a voucher for the actual book which you can only redeem using Adobe’s software. After it has been downloaded I suggest you close the program and never revisit it unless to fetch another ACSM as it is terrible. It will reveal to you no method to access the ePub file it just downloaded, but alas it has done just that. You will now find an ePub file in your My Documents folder under My Digital Editions. Take that file and import it to Calibre, and go ahead and delete Adobe Digital Editions after that.