MiniTools for XP

I made a complimentary package for PimpShell (yes, this is for XP only) containing very useful selection of freeware that less than 1Mb each.

M$/Sysinternals Regmon and Filemon, a good educational tool (newer replacement is much slower)
M$ CalcPlus
M$ Tweak UI
Powerquest Partition Table Tool (also available here)
PowerOff, automate power off (homepage)
ResHack, the old still popular executable's resource tool (homepage)
ProcessHacker (OSS), why? Process Explorer is overkill
Regshot (OSS), monitor what happened to your Windows before and after an event.
Greenshot (OSS), the best screenshot tool whether commercial or not! (need dotNET)
Name Generator, generate random username (homepage)
Notepad2 (OSS), this is what notepad should be
Mike Lin's StartUp CPL, there are something more out there but this one much smaller (homepage)
GrepWin (OSS), Search files and content with RegEx power
Showin, the old tool to show window handler of application
Angry IP Scanner 1.9 (OSS) (newer version is Java based)

Warning: Partition Table Tools is not for casual user, don't mess around unless you know MBR concept
No need admin right to install, but you'll need it when running most of them
To uninstall go to Add/Remove Programs

MiniToolsXP_Silent.exe (2Mb) Enjoy!

Week of mess

And who couldn't agree that virus is Windows' biggest disadvantage. While my RAID ruins, I try to backup everything then after. When I reinstalled Windows XP and setup SteadyState, I didn't knew if a virus (viking) lurking on my frozen OS is awaited for a break and when I slept (yeah) it infect all (almost) 32-bit executables. The benefit of MSI installer shown in this case.

In the morning at 4:00 AM I generally check my leeching session and I found a corruption of one of exe file. Well of course it's far too late! Tried to trace the originating infection later and it's came from a warez keygen that I downloaded a while ago. Reinstalling and redownload (some) again.. a whole week of PITA. I finally give up and decide to setup a free antivirus until I get better solution, now my PC is as slow as hell!

My hackintosh also can't wait. With my recent comeback to warez world (since the release of AutoCAD for Mac) I need to finish the VoodooHDA problem and yesterday I got it works. I think the urge to move platform is bigger now and while it's fun combating virus (the new one especially) I can't stand a breach like this. Now my hackintosh is ready to kick, everything work as good as Windows in hardware and software terms. Oh why into warez? hmm I don't know but don't worry I still seeing the future is OSS but as a cross-platform solution.

I might give a try to make MyPaint as Python App dmg there, though I still noob to Xcode toolchains.

BTW If you have a spec similar to me, just shout I'll give my patched driver

Mobo: Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD
CPU: Intel E2160 @ 2.9Ghz
Chipset: ATI X1250 (not working) and AMD SB600
SATA/PATA: Both IDE or AHCI mode works but not the "fake" RAID
Soundcard: "properly" known as HDA ATI SB work with VoodooHDA but not with AppleHDA
Radeon 4650: tested VGA interface only, but DVI should even easier to work. Full QE/CI yeah!
LAN/NIC: Works but need a patch for FlexLM to work
Modem: CDMA VT-12 USB. I experienced occasional Dc, still investigating whether it's a driver issue
Camera: Logitech E3500. works out of box (UVD mode)
Printer: Canon Pixma i1700
Tablet: Genius 800x600

Distro: iAtkos S3 updated to OSX 10.6.4

This FAQ really funny

http://pages.prodigy.net/daleharris/5_00.htm

It tells all about $5 LOL and I don't believe if that was really a FAQ, I found it when try to find the usefulness of DOS in modern day. Well, sometimes you just can say "it works for me!" and skip the whole evolution.

In many case DOS still much well reserved than the newly revived eComStation (OS/2) like BIOS updating, low level format tool, emergency tool (in LiveCD form) and tons of artistic pixelated games. Hmm I might can skip until Windows 7's EOL... XP for another decade?

Going with hackintosh

My experiences with quad boot OSes before my RAID broken
PCBSD 7.1.1 In short I will choose being forced to use CLI (among four main BSD variant) all the time rather than using GUI desktop there. All BSD derivative is IMO still a specialty OS (Server, Router, Firewall etc) that works its best when you glued with CLI otherwise it's no match for Linux and that obviously above my head.


Ubuntu Studio 10.04 While KDE is more intuitive than Gnome, Ubuntu is so responsive. I could spent all time on it while not doing CAD jobs. Pre-emptive kernel, AMD Catalyst driver and Synaptic play important role in my experience. A decent workstation OS indeed!

Windows 7 The more time spent there I realise 7 give some valuable benefit over XP, but I will give score 5 out of 10 for compatibility and 3 for privacy. Sure I still want to play some games there.

Mac OS X 10.6.3 I like it more! When I get Quartz Extreme enabled everything changed dramatically, and once I get VoodooHDA works this will become a real deal. I also impressed by HFS+ performance (handling so much files more efficiently and faster) over NTFS. One problem, OSX's dual personality. Its console and plist editing is a hardcore feature while GUI layer offer too simplistic noob experience thus the lack of in-between tools can be frustating (for me).

Prediction: With more increasing port of industrial-strength apps (like AutoCAD, Smoke) and the flourishing hackintosh community, OSX is on the way to slaughter Windows ahead of Linux. The big problem? Apple is a platform company just like Sun with Solaris+SPARC (though Sun is dead and Solaris had been offically ported to PC) which bring tendency to a more greedy monopolist than Microsoft. While OSX virtually runs on PC hardware, Apple strictly maintain the Macintosh term consistently and how hackintosh community keep their pace also remain to be seen. The goodness? OSX's high tide popularity may also brought Linux within and when thing does get worse (monopoly etc.) Linux is there to takeover.

About Indosat IM2

I kind of reluctant to publish this information... but I hope this would be useful especially to fellow Indonesian who too poor to afford the valuable internet. For a record I'm a loyal IM2 (ISP) customer for 2 years now. But somehow it is possible to lower the subscription cost from Rp. 125.000 ($14) / month into merely Rp. 5.000 ($ 0.6) / month.

How? first it's a GPRS modem based service (the one I owned but can be a 3G). It's a good idea to choose GPRS here. The following facts exposed how ridiculous the IM2 services is:

1. You buy initial SIM card for  Rp 150.000 and ALL YOU GET is account. Yeah, the card is unable to make a call right? that's because its pulse (analogue to SMS pulse). The fact is you could use any regular CDMA card (for CDMA modem) just to dial #777 and login.

2. Account is NOT bound to anything but Indosat's billing system (a RADIUS based server), that means: Not your SIM card nor your modem will be used for identification.

At minimum you just need to buy a cheap CDMA modem, regular CDMA SIM card (starone is a good candidate) and get some accounts.

My Degrading RAID 0

When configured for the first time my paired 160GB WDC SATA drive could duplicate 100MB file in a mere second. Now suddenly write speed is around ridiculous 20MB/s! I tried change data/power cable, defrag, cleaned up MFT record and change SATA channel but no avail. If I split them as normal IDE, I notice that my second HDD has degraded quite a bit from ~100MB/s to ~70MB/s of transfer rate, but how come a RAID 0 make them even slower?... It's SB600 controller (of AMD 690 chipset). Yeah the driver sucks too (no WHQL)

Guess I will backup the whole array and back to AHCI mode as neither Mac OS X nor PCBSD recognized the RAID disks anyway.

Index of files

Funny how this search phrase will effectively filter-out most filesharing sites and give you 90% direct link download assuming you know (at least partially) the filename. Type "index of" [filename] in google yeah

Why people don't like KDE?

Does Ubuntu (Gnome) really that good? Till most Gnu/Linux distro use Gnome?
Yeah it's lightweight desktop but so does fluxbox (even more). Today I try OpenSUSE 11.2 KDE4 Edition and I find it much cooler than Windows 7 Aero or more like a mix between OSX and 7. IMO that's the most sane and intuitive desktop I've ever seen in Gnu/Linux platform. Why KDE has less userbase? QT 4.x is certainly better than GTK in many case... But why such beautiful desktop is considered inferior? Amusing, I don't get it...

Just wondering

PyGTK-2.21.0 Unofficial Win32 Binaries

This page is obsolete!  updated here (complete installer)

I finally able to test GTK 2.90.5 which has windows-theme fixed since 2.90.3. This version is actually unstable GTK 3.x but the rundown is Windows native theme is back! As with PyGTK 2.21 unstable released, I try to apply the patch onto GTK 2.21.5 which seems to be working also there is a windows-specific issue with GDK Pixbuf 2.21 (now separated) that pixbuf apparently not using HModule to find its basepath instead rely on hardcoded compile-prefix path. I try to fix this issue and seems going fine too. I don't know whether they will release version 2.22 and fix these or go straight to 3.0 but it seems the previous.

WARNING: These are unofficial yet UNSTABLE VERSION binaries. No installer will ever provided.
read this page for installation and general notes

PyGTK-2.21.0.win32-py26 compiled with Glade and Numpy support (463KB no docs)
PyGObject-2.21.5.win32-py26 compiled with ffi support (192KB no docs)
PyCairo-1.8.8.win32-py26 (19KB no docs)

WARNING: If you mix dlls, you're on your own way.
GTK-2.21.5-Runtime (5.18MB no docs) contains:
gtk+-2.21.5
gdk-pixbuf-2.21.6
glib-2.25.13
libglade-2.6.4
glade3-3.7.0
cairo-1.8.10
atk-1.30.0
pango-1.28.0
freetype-2.4.1
fontconfig-2.8.0
libxml2-2.7.7
libffi-3.0.9
librsvg-2.26.3
libcroco-0.6.2
libgsf-1.14.18
libwmf-0.2.8.4
jpeg-8a
jasper-1.900.1
libpng-1.4.2
tiff-3.9.2

Localisation (3.54MB)

Update:
Now this is sucks for Windows platform!, GTK-2.21 while get theming back is still has many bugs in UI area, tablet and other possibly lurkings

Notes:
- I decided to move bin\*.* outside to root as it seems more Windowish-way
- PyGObject 2.21 actually a bit too old for current PyGTK 2.21 or Glib 2.25.x but seems to work (compatible) anyway
- Be advised that some dll are quite common (zlib, bzip, etc) and often available and used by other software. If you ever experienced "missing procedure error" try to test it with M$ Depends, it might just another same name but different dll file gets on your way instead of mine. Generally you can fix it by re-arrange PATH environment.
- If your have problem with py2exe when building package, you might want to see here for some common pitfalls and example.
- There are missing icons in glade (spinner) see here

How to retrieve locked temporary flash video

I just watch GRASS: The History Of Marijuana at youtube and as usual I simply left it to complete then take the result from firefox's cache folder. But it's not there anymore because my cache setting was far below the video size so I need to repeat the loading process which is so much waste of time. I though that maybe an application that able to directly access harddrive (bypassing windows) may get locked file (those fla*.tmp file under user's temporary folder). I quickly searh some installed freeware on my starmenu and only find Recuva as a candidate to do this, despite inappropriate tool Recuva does the job perfectly nonetheless, here is the screenshot:

recuva settings

Result

First you need to put filemask like fla*.tmp in the search input, press scan, wait for a while (depends on harddrive size) and select the file and recover. That's how to get locked files in Windows. edit: Umm you can unlock with Unlocker :-/ but my point here is "tools that have direct access to harddrive" will show you everything underneath. edit once again: unlocker can't unlock it! shit! now I lose my file forever! What a crap! I can just killing the right process too with Process Explorer if that what Unlocker do.. Crap! I'm pissed off I'm really on slow connection here not work