Torpify

This post is meant for those who know me and my significant other personally.

As most of you know, she was recently in Kenya doing volunteer work at a local health clinic in Nairobi. For those interested in reading about her experiences, I recommend that you head over to Aamir Abbas’ blog at http://somethingforthepainblog.blogspot.com/. Aamir is another volunteer working with my girlfriend and has been portraying his visit to Kenya. It’s quite interesting to read about, even if you don’t know any of the volunteers!

Facebook have now reverted back to the previous TOS in response to the reactions of users world wide. If you’d like more information on what is going on with the TOS, check out the group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities (it’s on Facebook; ironic, I know!). In response to this update I have again enabled a “Post on facebook” link.

Apparently Facebook has modified their TOS (Terms of Service). When you signed up for Facebook you agreed to sort of a contract (which is this TOS I’m talking about). Previously it stated something of the lines that whatever material you publish on Facebook, Facebook (as a company) can use free of charge on “the Facebook service”. Previously, if you deleted your account and all material included in it, Facebook stated they would no longer retain those rights.

But ah, there’s been a change of plans. Facebook has changed their TOS to, in short, state that all material you publish on their site is theirs to use for whatever they wish, whenever they wish and free of any charge, and according to Facebook these rights are irrevocable. Materials include pictures, video clips, arrangement information, your list of friends and their e-mail addresses, phone numbers and, yes, even your own name, address and birth day if published. Do I hear you ask where to find the “sign up” button?

This presents an issue though. Have you ever seen those “Terms of Service has changed, please read and accept before using this website” on any service you’ve used? I notice them from time to time. The slick part is that you automatically agree to them, and are encouraged to read them next time you enter the web site. If you then do not accept, I guess you have to delete your account or something the likes. I have never actually gone to that step, personally, but I am considering doing so with my Facebook account. But I digress. Earlier I called the TOS sort of a contract. By clicking accept both you and the service provider, in this case Facebook, electronically sign a contract. The properties of this contract is in fact the TOS. If you are especially bright minded you understand where I’m going at. Facebook has now changed, as far as I understand, the contract (yes, it is a contract) in the middle of its lifetime. I am by no means an educated legal person, but that sounds fishy to me.

So, Facebook owns your “material” until the end of the world. How about that? What do you think?

Edit: Just came to think of, I have removed the “Post to Facebook” link I usually have at the end of each post. I don’t want anyone to give my blog to Facebook

Ref: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/02/16/facebook-we-own-your-content-forever-and-ever

I recently came across this video of the ultimate battle; PC vs Mac! Watch and enjoy

I am sorry for the recent downtime. I had some issues with a plugin implementation causing the dreaded “whitescreen”. This should now be resolved and the site should be fully operational again. If you notice anything weird or any function not working, please let me know. Thank you

Also, I’ve added a feature for so called social bookmarking. Bottom right corner of each post features a set of icons representing various popular social network sites or bookmarking sites. Click on the preferred icon to bookmark the post you are viewing. I hope you find it useful.

I have a habit of making a post if I find a solution to a computer problem I am having, and this is no exception.

Recently I’ve found uTorrent downloads to stop downloading with the following error message: “Error: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process”.

The problem apparently occurs when uTorrent flushes its file handles. This causes uTorrent to release the files, and other processes can access them, and in some cases for so long that uTorrent is not able to further edit them. This causes uTorrent to stop downloading and display an error as mentioned above.

This problem could be caused by one or more of the following (as stated in the official uTorrent FAQ):

• File indexing software, or software that includes such feature.
• Anti-virus software doing real-time scans on the files you are downloading.
• You are viewing the files and Explorer (explorer.exe) is creating thumbnails for certain media files (pictures, movies etc).
• The file(s) you are downloading to are somehow set to Read-only.

Software that includes file indexing features are many. Some of the most popular ones are Google Desktop, MSN Desktop. Also mentioned in the FAQ are WinZip Quickfind, Nero Scout and Roxio Media Manager.

File indexing software also was the problem on my account, however, I have not installed any of the above mentioned programs. So I downloaded SysInternals Process Monitor and did an event search for the filename I was downloading to. I found that the process wmpnetwk.exe is the sinner. This process updates your Media Sharing library in Windows Media Player. In my case it is enabled to share media with Xbox 360. If you have the same problem as me, check out if this process is running, and try and disable it.

For more information, visit the official uTorrent FAQ.

Did you ever come across some math problem you just didn’t know how to solve? Fear no more, MathWay exists! And it’s easy; you plot in your problem, chose what type of problem (algebra etc) and click solve. And lo and behold MathWay doesn’t simply provide you with the solution itself; it hands you the entire process on how to solve the problem in laymans terms! MathWay rules!

Check it out on  http://www.mathway.co.

Sorry about changing the theme yet again, but I couldn’t come to ease with the previous theme. It was nice indeed, but I didn’t find it suiting my blog very well. I don’t quite know why, but it’s just a feeling I had. This one, at least right now, feels more suitable. I’d love any feedback on that in particular.

Other changes are latest version of WordPress, and some other smaller details on backend and security. As allways, if you spot any mistakes or bugs, please let me know.

If you think about it you’ve probably played or at least heard talk of the old legend that’s called Diablo. This saturday, eleven years after the first game, and on the day, eight years after the second installment in the series was released, Blizzard announced Diablo 3.

I recommend you have a look at the videos Blizzard have released: http://eu.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/

The Blizzard Downloaders aren’t very fast, so if you have a BitTorrent client installed, you should download through these torrent files, courtesy of TechSpot.com:

• diablo3-artworktrailer_en-us
• diablo3-cinematictrailer_en-us
• diablo3-gameplaytrailer_en-us

The user Nox on the Gamebeat forums created an excellent guide on how to create a bootable USB flash drive. It can be found here.

I have recreated the steps here, but I should say once again, I have not written the guide myself, Nox has.

1. Download and install HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
2. Download and unpack Windows ME boot disk to a directory of choice. I chose C:\bootme as suggested by Nox.
3. Insert your USB flash drive to a free USB slot. Please make sure to backup anything you have on the drive, because this process will format the drive and delete everything on it.
4. Run the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.
5. Under device choose your USB drive.
6. Under format choose FAT
7. Under volume label you can name it for instance bootdsk or BOOT98SE as Nox suggests.
8. Check Quick Format
9. Check Create a DOS startup disk and chose using DOS system files located at
10. Navigate to where you unpacked the Windows ME Boot Disk files (ie: C:\bootme)
11. Click Start and if you accept the format warning click Yes.
12. Observe the progress bar and click OK when provided with an info box.
13. Congratulations, now you have a bootable USB flash drive.
14. In order to boot from it you should enter your bios and make sure to select your USB flash drive as first priority boot drive. Note: In my bios the USB flash drive was recognized as a harddrive and not a removable disk. You might want to look for it there.

If you needed to create a boot drive such as this, you probably also need to run some program from it, for instance a formatting tool, bios flash tool or similar. That’s the glory of a USB flash drive, it usually has enough space for whatever you want to put on. Just copy the program files over to the USB flash drive, so when you boot you can just run them straight from dos. Needless to say, the programs must be able to run under DOS.

Enjoy, and if you like the guide, head over to the Gamebeat forum and give your thanks. You are also welcome to post a comment here

I went through my bookmarks the other day, with the release of Opera 9.5 with native bookmark synchronization through Opera Link (yeah I know, shameless spam, again). And when I did, I came across this fabolous bookmark. It’s a huge MS Paint style drawing of some imaginary Asian (?) city. At first it looks a little messy, but if you make an effort and pay attention, you’ll notice the huge amount of details. Actually I’ve spent quite a significant amount of time just browsing through the picture, constantly being amazed of the level of details.

Check it out: http://www.lovepixel.idv.tw/

Update 21.8.2008: I just noticed the above link no longer points to the “picture” I described in this post. You can now find it here.