Not Lame: Restoring Your Winamp Back After An Upgrade or Recovery

Posted in Not Lame, Software on November 23rd, 2009 by admin

If you were anything like me you once managed your music collection with something other than iTunes in Windows (Windows XP specifically). Personally my favorite music tool was Winamp – I had plug-ins of all types and a giant history of played songs that I didn’t want to lose. Too long have I used iTunes because I had to sync my library with my iPhone – it’s way too limiting to use under Windows.

Recently I upgraded to a new machine with Windows 7. Before my last crash I made a copy of my Winamp folder (from C:\Program Files\) onto my media drive. I’ve been using iTunes now for months and have decided that Winamp needs to return to my desktop. As my machine is the home theater machine you sometimes just need a program that works and one that makes it easy to control the flow of music and the Winamp developers have always understood this concept. You can use the Jump to File to plan your next few songs, the visualizer to just black out the TV to hide the player controls (and wow some), but I digress.

This method of restoring your Winamp folder is pretty simple and will restore your media library, top played songs, custom playlists and more. You can restore to higer versions within the version 5 series of Winamp if that was your last backup version as well. The trick to a seamless upgrade/restore is to keep your media in the drive tree (My Computer) at the same location. If you have all or most of your media on a separate drive then this should be easy – as on either an upgrade or a fresh install – you can easily make that drive have the same letter (unless you’ve somehow had a media drive on C:\ ?). After installing Windows 7 on my fresh machine I simply put my media drive back at S:\ by going to Computer Management and then Disk Management (as with Windows XP, 2000, Vista).

So now we’re assuming you have backed up your old Winamp folder, somewhere, on a thumb drive, separate drive, or in Windows Backup somewhere to media.

*Get a copy of Winamp (stay in the same version series, try upgrading from there – this written for version 5 series).

*Install Winamp (from Website) – On Windows 7 64-bit Winamp wants to install to the x86 version of the Program Files Folder. I changed this to the default (C:\Program Files\) folder that Winamp might expect from my previous install on Windows XP. I installed everything, but we’ll do it again so skip the Winamp Remote program on this round should you desire to download and install it. Do not run Winamp on exit of the install process.

* Navigate Windows Explorer (Win+E) to the Winamp install folder (C:\Program Files\Winamp) and delete all the files.

* Restore your copy of the Winamp folder to the Winamp install folder. You can copy the contents into this folder or the Winamp folder into the Program Files directory. If you have backed the program directory up on a backup media and can selectively install or extract that folder try to get it to land here or move it here.

* Launch Winamp. Don’t use any desktop or other icons – navigate directly to the Winamp install folder.
Install Winamp – Install the latest version again to the folder we have installed to, deleted and pasted into.
Launch Winamp.

* ???

* Profit

Now you have the current version with your existing media library. If you have migrated over to iTunes and want to move to or restore a old Winamp install like I did you can import your media library over from iTunes in Winamp 5.56, the current version as of this writing, by using the menu option once you have the media library window open. I went to my top played and clicked on the number one song and it instantly played (rather was queued and then played as that was my default for parties).

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Hack: Cleaning Up Your Gmail Account In A Few Simple Steps

Posted in Not Lame, Rant, Review, Software on September 8th, 2009 by admin

It seems that over time I’ve collected over 20,000 Gmail “conversations” and until today had 1,800 unread e-mails in my inbox. Who knows how many “read” e-mails I might have had. When I first opened the account in 2004 I was very diligent when it came to cleaning the inbox up, archiving, staring, and so forth. I rarely deleted e-mails as there seems to be no reason to with Gmail (The footer reads: You are currently using 976 MB (13%) of your 7367 MB). Alas what started as a dedicated mail trap has moved on to become the catch-all mailbox. And why not? It is so easy to search and manage that there is no reason to continually archive and delete. Something had to be done though when I linked Gmail to my iPhone.

I was rarely checking e-mail, up until a year ago, as it wasn’t a source of communication for me. I was e-mailing assignments to teachers (before I graduated from the diploma mill) and getting newsletters and so forth when I started this account. Now everyone is using e-mail and I get quite a few important updates such as Facebook notifications, etc. But that was just coming in too fast, and I wasn’t good about “deleting” stuff. If you click a link an in e-mail on the iPhone you are taken right to Safari and will likely not go back an archive the message when you get the next chance to do so.

The problem I had was that I like to use the “unread” status, rather keeping things unread, to know that I need to follow up on an item (notorious one at this point is the reminder to file my tax returns!). This works for Outlook at work as you can create a search folder that displays just those unread e-mails – I don’t see a way to do that with Gmail on the iPhone (though I have an idea for how to do so with labels!).

So I needed to clean everything up. Turns out it was an easy process. I started by searching for things that seem to flood my “inbox” but that would have taken hours to find each Crate and Barrel, The Onion, Border Rewards and Facebook e-mail that was ever sent to me.

Instead I did the following:

Searched using the following: label:inbox label:read

Selected all (using the Select: All, None, Read, Unread, Starred, Unstarred shortcuts). Then continuted to select more using the “Select all conversations that match this search” option.

Hit the archive button, confirming I wanted to archive each and every one of those suckers.

Profit!
(Though you’ll notice there is an extra step in there – it can be done differently, but it wasn’t allowing me to archive every one using Select: Unread.)

Then to clean up my unread e-mails:

Starred those 10 e-mails that are sitting there as reminders.

Searched: label:inbox -is:starred
(Notice the minus sign in front of the “is:starred”, this will perform an inverse selection)
“Select all conversations that match this search”

Hit the archive button, confirming I wanted to archive each and every one of those suckers.

Profit!

Now I have 10 e-mails sitting in my inbox that I can easily scan over and the unread reminders are no longer spread out with 25 read pieces of junk in between. Very much for the win. Now I just have to keep up on it. But using the above steps I can just go back maybe once a month and perform some clean up when needed, in just a few minutes (if even a whole minute).

UPDATE: Check out this nifty list of Gmail search terms that could make your (e-mail) life easier.

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Lame: After Updating to Firmware 3.0 You’ll See iPhone sync error 13019

Posted in Lame, Mobile, News, Review, Software on June 17th, 2009 by admin

If you recently updated to the iPhone 3.0 firmware you may find that you can’t sync your iPhone in Windows (reports coming in from Windows 7, Vista and XP) without receiving an error. The sync is automatic after the update, and the lame part is that when it fails it will make all your media invisible to you in the iPod app.

Luckily there is a solution to this fail other than restoring from a backup (lengthy) or just throwing your Jesus Phone away:

Heres how to fix.

Unsync your music/videos or whatever isnt going onto your iphone/itouch by plugging in your device and unchecking the sync box within each multimedia tab then click apply. Let the device sync then once completed reconnect your device check all your sync tabs that you want and sync again. This should resolve the problems and sync your files.

It should only be your music and videos and some podcast that dont sync at the start but this description should fix the error 13019.

via Apple – Support – Discussions – Iphone sync error 13019? ….

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Not Lame: Pwning T-Mobile

Posted in Funny, News, Not Lame, Software on June 8th, 2009 by admin

They’ve posted the data to prove it too @ seclists.org.

“Hackers are claiming to own T-Mobile USA’s servers and to have access to the cellular phone carrier’s operations, finance and subscriber data.” Here’s the seclists.org post of the claimed breach.

via Slashdot IT Story | Hackers Claim To Hit T-Mobile Hard.

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Lame: Getting PWNT on Slashdot

Posted in Lame, News, Rant, Software, Video on May 19th, 2009 by admin

Ahh, Slashdot – where you better watch what you are saying because someone that knows something might respond. Like the time I accidentially told Will Wheaton to ‘fuck off’…

Khyber: S3 Virge, not regular Virge. There was a difference. S3 Virge used MeTaL. Regular Virge/VX/DX/Trio3D did not use metal. S3Virge cards did.

UncleFluffy: Sorry, I think your memory is somewhat faulty there. MeTaL was definitely Savage series only, I know because I helped write it.

via Slashdot Comments | A History of 3D Cards From Voodoo To GeForce.

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Lame: Wolfram Alpha Doesn’t Care About Murlocs

Posted in Lame, News, Photo, Review, Screenshot, Software on May 17th, 2009 by admin

I went over to Wolfram Alpha today and gave it a simple question, that was able to be answered on The Instance (a World of Warcraft podcast) in seconds flat – “How Much Mur, Could a Murloc Loc, If a Murloc Could Loc Mur?”

Here was the response:

how-muc-mur-could-a-murloc-loc-if-a-murloc-could-loc-mur

Apparently I’m not the only one having problems, and Wolfram Alpha isn’t a tool for everyone and everything:

The service’s data is incredibly limited at this point, though, which isn’t surprising. The father of the project, controversial scientist Stephen Wolfram, says this isn’t a finished product. So many of the queries even that the company suggests trying with WA simply don’t work yet. The question is whether they ever will – from an outside perspective, it feels like the kind of project that could require immense amounts of human work.

via I Am Not Smart Enough for Wolfram Alpha – PC World.

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Not Lame: Testing Windows 7 Release Candidate

Posted in News, Not Lame, Review, Software on May 17th, 2009 by admin

I’ve been a Windows beta tester since Windows ‘95 – and I personally love seeing what the next generation of Windows holds for us PC users. I’ve got the beta running on both my laptop and my primary desktop, but with the new release candidate for Windows 7 (that anyone can grab and use for an entire year free), I want to move over to that. Since I’m using, maybe foolishly, my primary desktop as a testing machine the thought of doing a clean install scares me. (Which Microsoft would prefer you do, but I’m not all about following “rules”.)

So while looking for information on how to hack an upgrade install I found a page worth sharing. It not only lists how to shim this hack, but also some notable changes and things you should be aware of before making the leap to the Windows 7 RC.

Here is a sample of the 12 things ‘you should know’;

11. What the changes are:

Everyone always asks what the changes are. Microsoft has listed 64 changes from the Beta RC  here,here, and here. If you want the short version, here’s a quick list of the most significant changes:

Improved Taskbar: Can now fit 24-39% more icons depending on your resolution, opened apps stand out more, smaller jumplists, and items that need your attention now blink faster.

UAC vulnerability fix: Every time the level of UAC is changed, you will be prompted for confirmation.

Stream your music library over the Internet in Windows Media Player: This feature would be great if easier to use. To access it, go to Library in WMP and click on Stream in the breadcrumb. It is a lengthy process but the instructions given should get you where you want.

Turn Windows features on or off: Yes you can finally “uninstall” IE8 or other “unnecessary” Windows features. Read about it here

Improved Driver Support: Didn’t download the beta because of all those hardware incompatibility stories you’ve heard? It’s still not perfect in the RC but a lot has improved since the Beta. It’s worth a try.

Insane wallpapers, new themes and sound schemes: If you love customization, Windows 7 RC will satisfy your tastes. There are a lot more goodies added for you to customize to your liking in the RC.

via 12 things you need to know before installing Windows 7 RC | Windows 7 Center.

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LAME: Google Fails At Math!

Posted in Lame, Software on May 15th, 2009 by admin

399,999,999,999,999 – 399,999,999,999,998 = 0

via 399,999,999,999,999 – 399,999,999,999,998 – Google Search.

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World Wide QQ: Blue Poster Announces No More Wintergrasp Daily Quests!

Posted in Lame, News, Rant, Software, World of Warcraft on May 13th, 2009 by admin

The reasoning seems to be that Wintergrasp is too lag ridden now, but I don’t see that. My old machine couldn’t keep up, but that issue was on my end not theirs. A commenter on Wowinsider coined the phrase to describe the effects of this: Wintergraveyard. I think this is a horrible move, it’s going to make the battle so one sided that it won’t be fun to play anymore. The other problem is that you’ll see people begging you to go with them into Wintergrasp when they need the dailies done. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Wintergrasp and will still give it a shot each day; but the incentive is gone for the more casual players who show up even outfitted in PVE gear.

Blizzard, why are you messing with my Wintergrasp?

In an effort to better balance the amount of players that are in Wintergrasp at any given time, we are changing the daily quests in Wintergrasp to a weekly format. This will result in an increase in the honor reward given by these quests as well as additional Stone Keeper’s Shards. These quests will reset every Tuesday morning at 3:00 AM.

There are two known issues that may occur once these changes are pushed to live realms:

  • The quest mark will now show as gold, even though the quests are repeatable.
  • After the quests reset, players near the NPC quest givers may need to move out of line of sight in order for the quests to properly appear.

via World of Warcraft – English (NA) Forums -> Wintergrasp Quest Changes.

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Software Fail: iTunes 8.1 & Windows 7

Posted in Kinda Lame, Photo, Screenshot, Software on March 16th, 2009 by admin

iTunes 8.1 refused to install on my Windows 7 machine repeatedly – now I get the failure shown below. But to be fair, my buddy is getting all sorts of Sidebar errors under Windows Vista Business;

 

The simple act of plugging in the iPhone usually goes without a hitch. After installing iTunes 8.1 (x86, Windows 7) I think the phone is detected five out of ten times. The bigger issue is that this is how I charge the sucker! It doesn't charge when the device isn't detected. *Grumpy Gills*

The simple act of plugging in the iPhone usually goes without a hitch. After installing iTunes 8.1 (x86, Windows 7) I think the phone is detected five out of ten times. The bigger issue is that this is how I charge the sucker! It doesn't charge when the device isn't detected. *Grumpy Gills*

Here is the error my buddy gets today: "The Sidebar gadget "" seems unresponsive. Would you like want to close it to ensure stability of the Sidebar?" Good job on the grammar Microsoft. See below for how to reproduce it.

Here is the error my buddy gets today: "The Sidebar gadget "" seems unresponsive. Would you like want to close it to ensure stability of the Sidebar?" Good job on the grammar Microsoft. See below for how to reproduce it.

 

Per our Skype conversation here is how to reproduce the error:

[7:15:42 PM] MNsh: umm thats a vista business error

[7:15:57 PM] MNsh: i booted my laptop with 3 monitors and it wasnt having it

[7:16:35 PM] MNsh: we have a usb hook up to have 3 montiors and i put the sidebar on the third and it gave that error on startup

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