Electronics and releated stuff
Feb 23rd
I had a problem and found the solution, so I’m posting incase anyone Googles and come across this. 
Ever since I formatted my computer, I’d hear a constant high-pitched sound coming out of my headphones (very faint) and it’d change in pitch every time I moved my mouse. Turns out muting my line-in in my sound control panel fixed it. Some type of interference I guess.
Hope this helps anyone having the same problem.
Dec 12th
Oh boy, what have I gotten myself into?
Matt Mullenweg has been preaching the benefits of Dvorak for many years now. After his latest sermon, I decided it was finally time that I give it a go. I’m only using Dvorak here and there as it murders my WPM (I type like a letter per 5 seconds — this post took forever to write), but I did rearrange my keyboard keys to help me out:
(The F and J keys on my keyboard have their connectors turned 90 degrees, so they and the keys that replace them had to be rotated.)
Currently I type with only 2 or so fingers (hunt and peck without the hunting), so I’m hoping that switching to home row Dvorak will be better on my hands even though home row is really uncomfortable. We’ll see. 
Dec 3rd
I am in the early stages on recoding my Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin from scratch and in the process I will be replacing JW Player with a free and open-source alternative. JW Player is really great, but sadly it’s released under a non-commercial license which just won’t do.
So please, if you know of any good Flash players that will do FLV, MP4, etc. please leave a comment with a link!
Here’s my list so far of players to compare and pick between: (I’ll update this list with suggestions)
Nov 25th
YouTube has supported 720p video for a while now, but if you have a monitor that’s more than 1280 pixels wide, then you’ll be happy to know that YouTube has been rolling out 1080p support for the past week or two.
So what’s the difference? See for yourself using this hilarious example of The Muppets covering Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Click on the little “HD” button in the bottom-right of the video frame, select “1080p”, and then press the fullscreen button. Of course 1080p video itself is nothing new, however it is something that’s rather rare when it comes to streaming video. I for one am incredibly happy that YouTube has decided to move into the future instead of lagging behind like they have in the past when it comes to video quality.
Now if only I could choose 1080p from the embedded version…
(via Gizmodo)
Oct 4th
Now that I own a laptop, I needed a way to keep some folders in sync between my two computers (my web development folder for example). While there are plenty of options that use online methods (Dropbox for example), I needed one that was strictly offline. The free accounts only offer a few gigabytes (I’ll eventually be syncing a few hundred gigabytes and am currently syncing around 30,000 files) and I’m much too cheap to purchase space upgrades (they’re crazy expensive anyway).
So in comes SyncToy 2.0 from Microsoft. I installed it on my desktop (you only need it on one computer), shared the folders with my Homegroup on my laptop that I wanted to sync, and set up some folder pairs. It works awesome and only takes about a minute to check both my desktop and laptop (via wireless) for file modifications and then sync the changes.
However it has no UI for setting up automated syncing. You either have to do it manually or set up a scheduled task using the command line program that comes with SyncToy called SyncToyCmd.exe. The problem with there’s no way to hide it’s window. Every time the task runs, a command line window pops up while it’s syncing. Highly annoying and distracting, even if I’m only syncing once an hour.
Well thanks to a bit of Googling, I found a solution. It’s a little NET application someone wrote that acts as a wrapper for SyncToyCmd.exe and makes it run silently in the background.
Success!
Aug 27th
I was reading the New York Time’s technology section this morning on my iPod Touch (ironically) and ran across something I found quite humorous in an article about Apple’s latest version of their operating system, Snow Leopard:
In any case, Snow Leopard truly is an optimized version of Leopard. It starts up faster (72 seconds on a MacBook Air, versus 100 seconds in Leopard).
72 seconds? Really? I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but I find that very slow. I realize that is on a laptop so the CPU probably isn’t great, but comon.
For comparison, I just did a cold boot of my computer and timed it with my iPod’s stopwatch app. It’s specs are nothing amazing (it’s over 18 months old) and I’m running Windows 7 RC1 (build 7100).
After I typed in my password, it only took about 5 seconds (10 max) for my desktop, start bar, start menu, etc. to show up. That’s nearly 15 seconds faster than Leopard, 40 seconds faster if you ignore the 25 seconds that it took my computer to run through it’s pre-OS checks.
I admit it took another 30 seconds or so before everything else was loaded, but in Windows 7’s defense I have about two dozen programs set to auto-start (IRC, BitTorrent, twhirl, etc. etc.). When the install was fresh, it loaded the desktop in an instant.
Or is my reverse Apple fanboism clouding my judgment?
Nov 25th
UPDATE: This post no longer applies (or works) as YouTube now has built-in HD support for embeds.
Wired is reporting that YouTube now has a 720p-ish (reports vary on what resolution it truely is, but it’s sure good) video playback support. Even more important, the audio is stereo instead of mono (you can really hear the improved quality).
YouTube’s default video resolution is utter crap (not sure what the resolution is) and the existing higher quality video was 480×360. This new video resolution is 2-3 times as good as the previous “high quality” resolution.
To prove it, here’s some sample videos. The difference is more apparent if you click the fullscreen button, especially if you have a large monitor. Make sure to also have your speakers or headphones on to notice the improved audio quality.
YouTube Default (Low Quality)
YouTube’s Previous High Quality
YouTube’s New HD Quality
I have added support to my Video Quicktags plugin but note that if a video does not have the HD quality version available (99% or more don’t), it will drop back to the lowest quality format. As a result, I don’t recommend making the HD format your default on your blog. Instead, set the quality to 22 like this:
[youtube width="630" height="380" quality="22"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY[/youtube]
Sep 29th
This is an improvement upon my earlier post on how to keep SVN checkouts automatically up to date.
DD32 used his awesome Googling skills to find this page in the TortoiseSVN docs that talks about automation. Turns out you can launch TortoiseSVN via the command line, have it update the folder(s), and then close when done. So here’s an updated guide.
These instructions are for Vista, but they are likely similar for XP.
http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/
![](http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/svnguide2-actions.png "Actions: Here's the arguments (change the path): /command:update /path:\"D:\Webserver\htdocs\wordpress-trunk\\" /closeonend:1")
Done!
To test it to make sure it’s working properly, delete a few non-custom files from your SVN’ed folder. wp-trackback.php, xmlrpc.php, etc. are good test files. Then click on “Task Scheduler Library” in Task Scheduler (it’s on the left), click once on your new task, and then click “Run” on the right-hand side. If it’s working properly, the files your deleted will be restored.
Sep 28th
This post has been deprecated as a better method was discovered. Please see this other post for details.
Sep 21st
Hi and welcome to my blog. My name's Alex, although I'm more commonly known as Viper007Bond (or just Viper). I work for Automattic and I blog here about WordPress stuff and various interesting things I find. You can read more about me on my about page.
Viper007Bond: Nope, sorry.
Leon: do you have a plugin like this ,but a list posts by category ?
steffy: Yeah installed your plugin and it totally rocks !!!
you are da man
SteffyViper007Bond: This feature uses the HTML that YouTube provides it.
However my Video Quicktags plugin can force...Viper007Bond: Haha. :)
I had a great time with you in San Antonio by the way. Thanks for the fun.Steffy: Hi Viper
First of all congrat to have joined the automatic team.. that's a kick ass news
is...
Stephane Daury: Woohoo! Even happier I was with you in person to congratulate you. :)