GophaSpeak

NO: SOPA/PROTECT IP

gopha — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:03:52 +0000

I am a content creator.

I do care about my copyrights.

I also care about freedom and Due Process.

Philips DVD Player Unlock Code

gopha — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:53:51 +0000

We recently bought a Philips DVP 3880 DVD player to put in our daughter’s room. I accidentally turned Disc Lock on (because I navigate too fast for my own good sometimes) and I could not play any discs. There is no default code listed in the manual. Fortunately, I found the code, 136900, via a blog post on RejZoR’s little secrets.

Enjoy!

My Domains Transferred Away From GoDaddy

gopha — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:42:20 +0000

Despite GoDaddy’s early dismissive attitude about the backlash and naysayers of said backlash, the situation fire-balled into a controversy that GoDaddy just could not ignore. Over a week ago, GoDaddy announced that it is no longer supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act. Even the initial support was enough for people like myself to transfer away from GoDaddy.

Other hosting and domain name companies came forward with special offers to entice people away from GoDaddy, while pointing out that they did not support SOPA.

Even though the official boycott day was the 29th of December, I moved my domains and hosting away from GoDaddy during Christmas weekend. Both my hosting and my domains are with other companies now. There was some downtime for Gophanet and my HTML5 test page but, everything is up and running. While others have experienced delays while having their domains transferred, I could not tell if my transfers were delayed because of the Christmas holiday.

Apparently many domains have been transferred from GoDaddy however, it should be pointed out that they are the top domain name service. They have daily transfers in, numbering in the thousands. It could be some weeks before we can get a picture of just how much business GoDaddy lost and there has been some confusion over just what counts as a transfer out (read the comments as well).

Now… what to do about the NFL?

Silent Updates To Begin For Internet Explorer

gopha — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 16:45:23 +0000

These are the words web designers, the world over, have been waiting to hear for a very long time.

Microsoft announced the decision earlier this week to roll out silent updates – starting in January – for users who have not, for whatever reason, updated to the newest version of IE. There are a few points:

If you are on Windows XP, you will be upgraded to Internet Explorer 8. IE 9 does not work on XP.
Windows Vista and 7 users not using IE 9 will be upgraded to IE 9.
Windows Automatic updating must be turned on.
Corporations unable to upgrade their IE 6 legacy applications OR corporations who have IT staff who test upgrades before rolling them out to the rest of the company, will be able to opt out of the upgrade using the IE 8 and IE 9 Automatic Update Blocker toolkits.

Truth be told, I have stopped developing/supporting applications for IE 6 and 7 and I only marginally support IE 8. If someone is using IE 8, there’s no reason why they should not switch to IE 9. If their favorite site works in IE 8 but is broken on newer browsers then the problem is the people developing the site. Write them and tell them to join the rest of us.

Battlefield 3 Tips: Getting To Karkand

gopha — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:44:05 +0000

Update: Hours after I submitted this post, EA had trouble with their back-end and many, many people could not log onto Origin. Oh, sweet irony…

I have to hand it to Dice Battlefield 3 is awesome. However, what an annoying mess updating (and joining) the game has turned out to be.

A couple of weeks ago, a giant update for Bf3 was released. In this update were the files for the “Back to Karkand” expansion pack. In order to unlock these files you either had to buy the Limited Edition of Bf3 or , if you had the standard version, pay some money for it (15€ here). I paid for mine earlier today and I was not able to join a server. The message “Game content was not found” had appeared. Apparently, I was not alone. Here is a list of a few things you can try in order to get the “Back to Karkand” expansion working for you. I found these via several different forums.

Log out and back into Origin
Clear all cookies, history from your browser
Attempt to join empty server, or an empty out of region server or with a few ppl
Reinstall Origin
Manually log out of Battlelog in browser (without browser) then log back in

The first four did not work – it worked for others. The last one did work for me.

Like I said, this is a great game but, sorry EA and Dice, using both Origin and Battlelog on a web browser to update the game – just sloppy.

Battlefield 3 Bleeding Eyes Tip: Try A Low-Contrast Setting

gopha — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:58:20 +0000

I have recently begun playing Battlefield 3, my wife bought it for Father’s Day, which is in November here in Finland. I played the single player first (yes, I finished it). Half way through the first session of playing, my eyes really began to hurt. By the end of the 2-hour session, my head hurt and I wanted to gouge my eyes out in the hopes that maybe that will make me feel better.

The next day, while my eyes were still sore from the night before, I did some research and I found that a lot of people were having the same problems I was. The answer came down to Battlefield 3′s contrast is really high. Check out these comparison shots here - courtesy of Battlefield 3 Online.

While you are able to make some change within the games config files, I read a lot of comments saying that did not help and, someday, maybe you might get a boot off of a server via Punkbuster. Fortunately, my Benq e2200HD monitor has settings where I can change – via the buttons on the side of my monitor – the “mode” of the display from “movie” to “picture” and so on. I changed the mode setting from “movie” to “sRGB”. Since then, I have been playing hours of BF3 with no headache whatsoever. If you do not have any mode settings, try manually lowering the contrast. Monitors usually have at least this feature.

I hope this works for you.

Battlefield 3 Update Tip: Log Out Of Origin

gopha — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:21:27 +0000

For the moment, I’ll do my best to not moan about having to log into Origin so you can launch Battlelog in your web browser – just so you can launch Battlefield 3 and play a game…

Having troubles installing BF3′s first patch? Maybe this will help – and with subsequent patches – log out of Origin and log back in. When I went into Battlelog this afternoon to play a round and tried to join a server, the Game Manager told me that an update needed to be installed. So, I pressed “update” and Origin popped up but, nothing happened – it just sat there. Logging out and logging back in solved the problem. Hopefully, this will do the same for you.

BTW, from what I read, this patch did not dim that portable sun people carry around and blinding EVERYONE.

Annoying Google Chrome “Sync Error”

gopha — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:52:44 +0000

For a while, a “Sync Error” message has been sitting on my Google Chrome browser. I haven’t had the time to do anything about it till now. So, when I clicked on “Sync Error”, it took me to “Personal Stuff” in “Options”. I entered in my password and waited.

And waited….

And waited some more….

You get the picture. Nothing was happening. The little Ajax loader graphic was spinning but, that was it. I solved this by clicking on the button “Stop syncing this account…”, then I pressed the “Stop syncing” button in the “Stop syncing this account” pop up window and lastly clicking on the “Set up sync” button and entering my log in information.

A little stupid and annoying but, at least it works again.

Topfield .Rec Files – Two Useful Tools

gopha — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:57:58 +0000

I own a Topfield 500 PVR hybrid (cable/terrestrial). The machine comes with a 320GB hard drive. When a TV show or movie is recorded, it saves a file in .REC format. Which is, in my experience, a little difficult to work with. You can watch these files using VLC but, if you want to watch them somewhere other than your computer… enter in these two tools: rec2mpg and TFRecToTs.

A quick note, Altair is a program that allows Windows PCs to connect to a Topfield box via USB. You can transfer .REC files to your PC. Get it here.

Another quick note, I am not going to get into editing these files – in this post anyways. Sorry, this is a quick informative post only!

Rec2Mpg

Rec2Mpg, via Windows command line program and help from ProjectX and GUI for dvdauthor, converts .REC files into .MPG files so they can be easily edited in Avidemux or whatever you want to use. The download and instructions for setup are here.

You should be aware that the file size will drop a little. Also, if there are separate language tracks and subtitle tracks sent with the signal, you will lose them all in the conversion. The top audio track that comes with the signal is preserved. KEEP IN MIND, that this does not mean that if the broadcast is in English, then that is the preserved track. I converted a show from Investigation Discovery that was in English but, the file ended up with a Russian audio track.

I have watched unedited “Rec2Mpg” .MPG files on the PC (VLC, WM Player) and Playstation 3 and my Sony Bravia KDL-32EX320.

TFRecToTs

TFRecToTs is also a Windows command line program that simply changes information in the header of the .REC file. It turns the .REC file into a .TS file. It also renames the file from filename.rec to filename.rec.ts.

It takes a few seconds to convert the file while it takes, depending on the computing power available to you, minutes or more. The subtitles issue for Rec2Mpg also applies to TFRecToTs.

One more note about the subtitles is that if the subtitles are “burned into” the video broadcast then, you don’t have much to worry about.

I have watched unedited “TFRecToTs” .TS files on the PC (VLC, WM Player) and Playstation 3. They do not work on my Sony Bravia KDL-32EX320.

A DRM quickie

On my box, you can tell if a program has a DRM scheme added in by the $ in a fully yellow box. You cannot watch, covert or edit a .REC file if it has a DRM scheme. You can if the box is half yellow or does not have yellow at all. There is an EASY way to get around the scheme but, I am not going to share it with you because I don’t know if it is legal or not.

When converting using Rec2Mpg, a file that had DRM takes twice as long to convert.

Rockstar “Announces” Grand Theft Auto V

gopha — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:16:28 +0000

With trailer coming at the beginning of November. Anyone want to take a stab at what it’s going to be about? Personally, I would like to see a return to San Andreas with CJ and the gang. But, that’s just one man’s opinion.

Oh, and satellite radio with Vladivostok FM on it!