Apple iPod Hi-Fi Rocks!
March 31, 2006
Posted by Roel in : Life , add a comment
First i was a bit sceptic and thought it was too expensive. However, i walked into the Apple Store (in The Netherlands), payed EUR 379,- and went home.
I must say i’ve seen a lot of real Hi-Fi installations and studios, but this thing really gives an amazing sound. Your room will be completely FULL of sound, the Low (BASS) and High tones sound great. It wouldn’t be a problem to have about 20 people on a little (birthday)party and use this ‘single box’. It is absolutelly not a MONO Speaker like some people say.
Just hear it and you’ll buy it. I have to admit it’s a bit expensive but it’s different than with other things you buy.
Most things you buy; you connect it, the wires are too short, the sounds could be better and they lack some functionality or options.
Not with this one.. It’s worth the full price. Really nothing found which could be better. Connecting it is so easy (like with all Apple products) and the buttons are also what-you-see-is-what-you-get. The wire is long enough (3 meters), on the bottom of the device is a flat anti-slip-rubber which makes it also a great device for sportive use (when sailing on a boat or outside in the park).
That’s also the reason why i bought it; for my boat. I have a sailing boat and want some good quality music on it, i’ve experience with home-build-beer-boxes with car-radios and car-batteries in it, but then you have 1 or 2 speakers and it’s quite ugly. When you have a nice wooden ship and everything is perfect, this thing is what the ship deserves.
The iPod Hi-Fi uses 6 D-cell batteries. When i load it with 6x GP 8000mAh NiMH (fully charged) it works for a maximum of 8 hours (90% volume, normal bass). When the batteries discharge, the volume will decrease (the last few hours). This is a bit anoying and it was would be better for me when they made it sound perfect till the last mAh and then let the device shut-down.
For more photos and comments see this article at Engadget.
Windows Genuine Advantage bypassed again!
March 11, 2006
Posted by Roel in : Technical , 1 comment so far
UPDATE: This bypass method described below doesn’t work anymore. Visit mydigitallife’s article for an updated (3-dec-2006) and easy method of bypassing WGA/Notifications/Visiting Windows Updates, etc.
In 2005 Microsoft introduced Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) which was (also) meant to reduce illegal copies. Since then, people who had an ‘illegal’ Corporate copy of Windows XP or Server 2003 were not able to use the Windowsupdate site anymore.
Shortly after that people found a way to bypass the checks required by the Windowsupdate site by disabling the WGA ActiveX plugin from their Internet Explorer.
It could be done by pasting this line in your browser:
javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all');
Microsoft fixed it and bypassing was no longer possible after March 2005.
The following content is for informational and educational purposes only.
I came accross the website of djlizard and he found a NEW way to bypass the checks at the Windowsupdate site.
- Close all your browsers (this is really important)
- Click Start -> Run -> Type:
regsvr32 /u LegitCheckControl.dll - Go to the WindowsUpdate site, select typical or custom. It will show the Activate button to activate your copy of windows. Click Start -> Run -> Type:
regsvr32 LegitCheckControl.dlland go back one page in your browser. Now you can click typical or custom again and it won’t show the Activate button but continues to search for updates.
Script it! A logfiles compress/backup script
March 5, 2006
Posted by Roel in : Technical , 1 comment so far
Lesson of this article is: Script It!
I will also show an in depth example of a sheduled script which will zip/rotate/delete/move/copy you logfiles. This is a typical task everyone with a webserver would automate/script because you want to save your logfiles for statistics and to track ‘bad’ visitors while zipping them reduces it’s size approximately 25 times. So a 100MB logile will only be 4MB.
You can much better script the tasks you do often than doing it by hand all the time.
Advantages are:
- No human mistakes any more
- Scheduled scripts always run on time, even when you’re on holiday
- Schedule scripts at night to save server resources and minimize impact on other systems
- Last but not least: It saves you a lot of time which you can spend on scripting other things ;)
Before scripting tasks i advise you to do the tasks manually a few times, then you exactly know which steps you have to do and which are always the same, you have more feeling with the task now.
