Great video on YouTube - Klavan on Culture

This is a great video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC6MnwknfmU

Enjoy!

Windows 7 - Day 25

Updating the "Send To:" options in the context menu.

To update your "Send To:", run through the following steps:

• Open Windows Explorer either with or hit type "Windows Explorer" and hit
• Do the step above again to open a second Windows Explorer window
• Drill into the folder you want to create as a short cut for the "Send To:" menu in the first Windows Explorer window
• In the second Windows Explorer window, click in the address bar and type: "shell:sendto"
• Press
• With the mouse "Right click and drag" the destination folder from the first Windows Explorer window into second Windows Explorer window
• Release the mouse button in the second window
• When the context menu opens where you released the mouse, select "Create Shortcut Here"

Repeat the steps above to create more "Send to:" options.

I ran through this in order to update and move some music files I had spread across my computer. These were music files that I wanted to correlate by a high-level genre identifier folders (Hip-Hop, Rock, Soft, R&B, etc.). Going through the steps above allowed me to copy the files into the higher level folders through the "Send To:" option.

Hope this helps someone out there....

Oil prices and speculation

I am not a big fan of 60 Minutes, but this is a great report:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/08/60minutes/main4707770.shtml

The "article" is a transcript of the video/story.

The people that set the price for gas and promote the fluxuation of prices need to be hung by their toenails.

My experience of gas prices over the last few weeks:

• - 4 weeks ago, gas was at 1.88/gallon
• - 3 weeks ago, gas hit 1.97/gallon
• - 2 weeks ago, gas jumped over 2.20/gallon
• - 1 week ago, 2.39/gallon
• - Today, 2.59/gallon

What happens is that the gas price jumps up $0.20 for a few days then drops $0.12 or so. A few days later, gas jumps again $0.20 but then comes down $0.10-$0.15 cents. Over time, this results in gas prices being higher with no real reason outside of …. I guess demand increases during the summer months. But production of gas is controlled by those who define the supply. They generate the need of demand by stimulating stories of demand increasing.

And let’s not get started on “oil swaps”…

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Related items

Here's a graphicaly breakdown of the energy commodities (from: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/cfutures.html)

Here's the today's crude futures:

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html

Windows 7 - Day 23

Day 23 of my experience with Windows 7...

Quick observations:

• Search functionality is really working out well. I have been searching through on how to find all files in a directory. In an effort to figure out some complex searches, I found this article on the Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965711.aspx

Now, I realize this dates back to Windows Search 2 or 3, so the functionality exists within Windows Desktop Search(es) and Vista. However, other issues on Vista and being an avid Linux user, the advanced syntax commands didn't really interest me. Now that I am on my 4th week of Win7, getting deeper into the framework, constructs, and designs of Windows desktop software interests me more.

My use case around this is determining a decent way to find non-music files in a directory to clear out old JPG, M3U, etc., files to keep the data clean. By following the instructions on the webpage, I came up with this search in Windows Explorer:

NOT *.mp3 kind:NOT folders

I'll have to be selective on the deletes (lucky for the Recycle Bin), but this at least separates the MP3 files from other file types as well as removes "folders" from the output.

More to come... back to house cleaning on my drives.

WTF moment on the web

I frequent newegg.com for various computer parts and bits. I have been looking for a new powered USB hub and jumped over to newegg for a quick stroll.

I found this little guy:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817165029

I looked at the description and specification page to make sure the USB hub was 1.0-2.0 compatible. Now for the WTF moment... from the spec page:

Features

Features

Origin Country: China Accord with USB 2.0 specification , and downward inclusive USB 1.1/1.0 of the standard specifications Having supported the voltage and electric current in the twinkling of an eye to protect the function in year, the load of the electric current protects and prevents the electricity from stopping causing and damaging. Is it insert with and hot to insert and draw the function promptly at the same time to support. Light small and exquisite help the commercial affair hand-carry while going on business. USB concentrator in a four ports can fetch the electricity to use from the computer independently. (Mini USB concentrator lets you increase the peripheral equipment on the note type computer whenever and wherever possible. ) Can USB join port supply power directly , exempt using the voltage transformer. Can another outer DC power transformer of 5V too. Use the voltage: 5 volts. Power consumptive power: 2.5 amperes. Systematic demand: Inclusive operating system: WindowME,2000, XP, Mac OS8.6, 9XX, the edition after Mac OS X 10.1.3

This must be from a bad translation.

Windows 7 - Day (I think) 16

From my last post: http://sloppyganger.blogspot.com/2009/05/windows-7-day-4-er-day-5.html

Things are still going VERY well with W7. The PC froze once... but I was doing a ton of stuff...

- disk defrag

- Windows Defender checking

- Virtualization (on the disk I was defragging)

- and downloading some Android software

I have tried to replicate the same steps, scenario, and options... but it has not happened again.

As far as any new features, etc., I have not hit anything new. The snip tool (http://sloppyganger.blogspot.com/2009/05/windows-7-snip-tool-just-might-push-me.html) was really the last thing...

Cupcake - G1 Day, well, after one day

So far... I have only ONCE had to fully reboot (power off, power on) the 1.5 cupcake OS (?) since updating the phone.

The restart was more to do with me shutting down a ton of applications through 'Advanced Task Manager lite'. The 'End All' option... should be used only (ONLY!) when you are ready for some instability.

That makes sense to me...so, be careful when just forcing applications to shutdown.