Posts filed under ‘Software’

• Go ahead and hit: Alt + F2

• Type: update-manager -d
• Perform any additional required updates before install
• Enter your password, agree to upgrade and such

I did all that, then waited for 45 minutes -  now it is say Error: Forbidden 403, WHAT THE HELL?!

It’s terminal time my friends.

• type: sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
• click replace in the search menu
• Replacehttp://us.archive.ubuntu.comwith

  ftp://us.archive.ubuntu.com
  

• Restart your upgrade. Don’t worry no time was lost since it kept all the downloads even though it reverted the installation. Ubuntu so smart.

Have fun and remember.

So you started drinking early and put some regrettable images up on Facebook, or really spoke your mind on Twitter.  You could just bury your head in the sand and avoid all those people you said nasty things about, or you can make them appear as if it never occurred with “Last night never happened“.

This “morning after” iPhone app will automatically scrub your Facebook and Twitter account, removing pictures and posts for the time period you specify. It won’t completely save you from your drunken rantings, but it’s a good start.

[via Gizmodo]

I recently installed SQL Express 2008 and ran into an annoying issue when I later tried to alter the installation.

The initial SQL install went off without a hitch, but the problems began when I tried to add my application. During the installation process, I was prompted to enable full-text indexing on my SQL server. I had no idea this was a prerequisite…shame on me for not reading the application requirements! To add insult to injury, I was not aware that version of SQL Express I was using did not come with full-text indexing as an installable option.

Back to the Internet I went, searching for a copy of SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services. A 500 MB download later, and I was well on my way to getting things running, or so I thought.

I began my SQL installation, choosing to add or change features to my existing install. Everything seemed to be pretty straightforward and painless until I tried to select which SQL installation to upgrade. Each and every time I tried to select the one and only instance on this particular server, I was greeted with the message, “The instance id is required but it is missing”.

I double-checked the installation options I had selected, I ensured that all of the proper services were up and running, plus I even rebooted the server and tried the installation again. However, no matter what I tried, I received the same error each time I attempted to select my SQL instance.

I poked around for awhile, then finally found a solution. First, I went to the Control Panel and selected the Add/Remove Programs console. There, I located the SQL express install and clicked the Change/Remove button. This brought up a slightly different version of the installer interface, from which I could choose an Add option.

Going through the paces, this installer found my existing SQL instance without any issues and I had my SQL Server, complete with full-text indexing in no time!

Until recently when I needed to download media, either from Usenet or torrents, I searched for it manually. This usually involved either using a web based service or an IRC channel, searching for keywords and sifting through results that include spam as well as resolutions and file-types that were not what I was looking for. After successfully downloading the files, I would then manually sort them into their respective folders in my media collection, and rename them if necessary. This was especially tedious for items released on a regular basis (such as television shows), as the process would have to be done weekly for each item.


I realized there must be an easier way.


I had already been using SABnzbd for a while, as it was the only binary newsreader I could find with support for iPhone remote management, and I have to say, I loved it. SABnzbd has a very clean, intuitive interface, and although it doesn’t have quite the features of applications like Newsbin, it has many addons, such as the chrome and Firefox extensions, and a number of iPhone apps. Also, SABnzbd is free, open source, and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. All the applications that will be used in this article utilize the extensibility of SABnzbd. Some can be used without it, but much of the functionality would be lost.

Sick Beard is a program that will periodically search for specified shows on various usenet search sites. When Sick Beard finds the episodes it is looking for, it downloads the NZB file, and sends it to SABnzbd for downloading. Sick Beard also comes with a script for SABnzbd post-processing, allowing for automatic renaming and sorting of downloaded media.

Sick Beard also supports downloading of NZB files to a “black hole” folder, rather then sending them directly to SABnzbd. This allows for other applications to pick the files up for downloading. In addition to usenet download support, Sick Beard also provides some torrent support, although there would be no provided post processing script so some extra configuration would probably be required to get file renaming working properly.

CouchPotato is similar in concept to Sick Beard, only it works with movies. Simply search for a movie using the application, and select the movie you want from a list of movies matching your search query that CouchPotato pulls from IMDB. The application will then search for all the movies in your queue at specified intervals, download the NZB file, and then either send the file to SABnzbd for downloading or send the file to a “black hole” folder, similar to Sick Beard.

These programs are the best I have found for the job, but off course these are just a couple suggestions. Episodebutler offers similar functionality to Sickbeard, although I have no personal experience with this one.

Also, a completely different route to go would be simply using RSS feeds. This can cause an issue however, as reposts will be downloaded multiple times.

[Re-posted with permission from Marissa's Dad]

We’ve got various iDevices in the house.  An iPad.  Iphones.  We’re Apple junkies, regardless of the effect it has sometimes on the wallet.  All told, the tech has been pretty good to me, I’m sure I’ve made more money supporting it out in town than it’s cost me overall.  My inner cheapness prevents me from buying the whammerdyne max-capacity iPhones, and making do with old tech long after the rest of the world has moved on.

Our video library is hosted on an older machine crammed full of relatively ancient hard drives, honestly, well in excess of what the laws of physics should allow.  I’m fairly sure I can cook a turkey with the waste heat coming off that

The landscape folder view.

machine.  As a result, the DVD rips we store on the iTunes running on that machine for the AppleTVs in the house far exceed the capacity of any given portable iDevice we may have.  The existing iTunes covers streaming to the AppleTV units, but not streaming to the portables.

I did some research, tried some free alternatives, then I found Stream to Me.  Stream to Me, by Matt Gallagher’s Projects With Love, is a combination application for your Mac or PC, and an iDevice (iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch).  The Serve To Me part of the application is free for download- it’s the iDevice app that’s very inexpensive.  Given my limited budget, Isplurged for it anyway when an iPad ostensibly to be used for Marissa and the Brother arrived in the house.

Landscape view of a movie playing.

It’s an amazing, seamless solution for streaming entire libraries over a LAN to an iDevice.  The server application runs quietly and with very little footprint on our streaming computer running OSX Leopard.  The Serve to Me part of the application has transcoded on the fly many different containers, I’ve used MP4 H.264, AVI, and MKV files, all in 720p resolution and streamed them to the iPhone/iPad application with minimal pre-processing delay and no hiccuping in the video waiting for the 802.11g stream to catch up.

Before you freak out on me, and say I’m pushing all this on you just because the developer gave me the app for free- he didn’t.  I purchased the app in the beginning of April after I thought it would be best for my problem.  It’s streamed the Brother’s baby signs DVDs as well as some Baby Einstein for Marissa.  It’s an awesome solution for a portable video player for us inside our network.

If you have not been by the site recently, I have updated a few my applications this week, and I have added a pair of new apps as well.

The newcomers include AudioX and RAIDFix.

AudioX is a labor of love several years in the works. A process born in batch files, migrated to Perl, and eventually rewritten in C#, AudioX converts songs between audio formats including FLAC, APE, AAC, MP3, and WAV. I really needed an application to convert my APE audio to FLAC for archival, and to compress my FLAC audio to AAC format for my iPod and MP3 format for my car. AudioX does this for me, managing tags and album art, all while taking advantage of PCs with multiple cores. It’s a great app, give it a try!

RAIDFix is an application I wrote to help the countless people that visit my site looking for a way to enable RAID on their Intel ICH-based Windows PC after they have installed Windows with RAID disabled. I have published walkthroughs on how to accomplish this, but RAIDFix makes it extremely simple. Patching your computer to allow you to enable RAID in the BIOS is now one-click away.

Additionally, Suction received updates to allow the user to specify the text they want used when renaming duplicate files as well as the ability to specify whether this text is prepended or appended to the file name.

MailBin had a bit of work done on the back-end, in order to do away with the flat configuration file used by the program. Instead, MailBin now uses Windows’ standard user config files like the rest of my applications.

All of the applications listed above now take advantage of my new web-based update system. The programs will check this web site to see if there is an update version of the application automatically, alerting you if a new release has been published.

Written from the ground up in C#, MailBin is a small application that checks your Gmail account for NZB,  Zip, and .Torrent files, allowing you to remotely queue up Usenet and BitTorrent downloads at any remote location.  It’s a great tool for when you find something you want to download while away from home, but you want it to be ready by the time you get there.

If you are an avid fan of Usenet or BitTorrent, and happen to use a newsreader/torrent client that will auto queue files (Like Newsbin or uTorrent), give it a try!

Visit the MailBin download page

I have put together a little program that will accept any number of directories as input and “Suction” the contents of any subdirectory to the top folder, deleting all empty subfolders left behind after the operation.

Morehpperliter was quite fond of the “Unify” function in DirUtils, which does not run on 64-bit machines and as far as I know is no longer developed, so he asked if I knew of an alternative.  I did not, so I created one.

The program is simple, lightweight, and very handy if you have to wrangle a lot of files (this means you Usenet and BitTorrent users), so give it a try!

Visit the Suction download page