Friday, November 7, 2008

Monday, November 3, 2008

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

SoundMAX HD Audio hack - Dell OptiPlex 755

I was recently trying to record some internet radio at work using Audacity. I say trying because it would not capture the audio despite my mucking with every possible setting. There was simply no option to record "What you hear" or "Stereo Mix". These were options I was accustomed to seeing on my home machine so why were they missing? Was my work PC somehow locked down?

Countless Google searches later I came across a posting in a tech forum where someone figured out that the feature was actually still available -- it's just disabled. Most audio drivers are built to do everything. It's less expensive to have a do-it-all driver with features disabled in a config file than to design a driver from scratch with limited features. As a result, many of the commodity PCs with onboard audio have their "Stereo Mix" feature disabled. They assume you are going to steal audio streams; how nice of them.

We can change the situation. We just need to edit a config file and reboot. The process is generally the same for any AnalogDevices-based audio chipset...

1. Go to your PC manufacturers web site and download the audio driver that shipped with your machine.

2. Be careful to get the correct driver for your current OS. For example, your PC may have shipped from the manufacturer with Windows XP but maybe now it has Windows Vista. Get the correct one.

3. Save this driver and unzip the contents somewhere you'll remember.

4. Go to the folder where you unzipped the driver contents. Drill down to C:\...i386\SMAXWDM\W2K_XP or whatever the path is for your driver.

5. Look for a file called ADIHDAUD.inf and make a backup copy of it. I called mine "ADIHDAUD_inf.org" so I know that it is the original file. This is insurance in case we make a mistake in our upcoming edits.

6. Open ADIHDAUD.inf in Notepad. Time to make some changes.

7. On line 303 I made a change
before: HKR,AD1983\\Disable, OutR, 1, 01
after : HKR,AD1983\\Disable, OutR, 1, 00

8. On line 304 I made a change
before: HKR,AD1983\\Disable, MonR, 1, 01
after : HKR,AD1983\\Disable, MonR, 1, 00

9. On line 352 I made a change
before: HKR,AD1984\\Disable, MonR, 1, 01
after : HKR,AD1984\\Disable, MonR, 1, 00

10. By changing that 01 to a 00 you are now going to have an install that includes the Stereo Mix feature.

11. Click Save (not Save As) to keep the edits we just made. ADIHDAUD.inf should now be updated

12. Uninstall the current SoundMAX Audio driver. When you reboot Windows will say that it found new hardware (sound card) and try to start the driver install process. Just click Cancel.

13. Install the driver you downloaded and unzipped from step 3. It's usually a setup.exe file

14. Reboot to make sure the modified install worked

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Friday, June 6, 2008

New Car

I bought a new car. 2008 Nissan Altima Hybrid. Before you even bother to comment :

-Yes, I know there are other midsize cars which are strictly internal combustion that get comparable fuel economy.

-Yes, I know there are other hybrid vehicles (e.g Prius) that get better fuel economy albeit in a different size classification.

-Yes, I am well aware that my car will not be spewing rainbows and unicorns and happiness...







-Yes, I know that over the life of the car there is generally no major economic advantage to the Altima Hybrid versus a regular Altima
(hybrid premium$ - hybrid tax credit$ - fuel savings$) ≈ regular Altima$

However, if the cars essentially cost the same why not drive one that produces far less carbon dioxide and will scare the crap out of people in mall parking lots because they can't hear you coming?

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

AutoIt v3

AutoIt v3 is a freeware scripting language for Windows GUI and general scripting. I get tired of keystroking Win+R, CMD, IPCONFIG to check IP addresses so I thought this would be a good candidate for a script. I wrote one compiled it into an EXE. It shows the IP addresses for up to 4 adapters on the local machine...

http://www.mediafire.com/?xbqdpfiig2m

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Useful (Free) Things #1

I've installed and used all of the following software. I found them all to be stable and fairly easy to use. Worst-case, I had to actually read the software's documentation to get things working.

Cobian Backup - Effective, option-laden Backup software for XP and Vista

FreeNAS - use retired PCs as Network Attached Storage devices

RipIt4Me - DVD file ripper

Handbrake - Shrink your ripped DVD files

CDEx - Extract CD Audio to WAV or MP3

Audacity - Capture audio output (any audio output; wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

LAME Encoder - Useful with several audio applications; use with Audacity to compress your captured audio to MP3
·http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3

JasperReports - Open Source reporting engine.
·XML based report creation

iReports - Open Source graphical report designer for JasperReports
·GUI report creation if your not an XML jockey

AusLogic Disk Defrag - XP and Vista compatible disk defragger

JAP - Anonymity and privacy while online

SwitchProxy - Firefox plugin to automatically switch between direct and proxy connect modes; great to use with JAP for quick switching between normal and anonymous browsing

McAfee SiteAdvisor - Free Firefox plug-in by McAfee

Adblock Plus - block annoying ads in Firefox

FlashBlock - block annoying Flash-based ads in Firefox

Sunday, February 10, 2008

The Hawaii Chair

If you can sit... you can get fit.