BrainWyrms

Yesterday, ctumaven tweet’d me that I had made the WOOT! blog.  It turns out that they had caught my tweet about WOOT! addiction from Tuesday and linked it as a (small) part of their daily blog.  They said, “Aw, come on, one purchase isn’t going to hurt you. And you can quit anytime you want.”

Oh, if only that were the case!  I’ve been looking at the current sale and thinking about it… but then there will be something else cool tomorrow and I will want that one too.  And the shirt.woot is a really cool green on black design and sellout.woot is a good deal for a name brand 22″ LCD Monitor.

Crap.  Back to my dungeun.  WOOT! is too dangerous for the weak.  Like me.

I spent several hours over the past few days working on getting my Zune 30 to sync with my Zune software.  (I was craving my Buzz Out Loud.)  During this period of time I re-downloaded and installed all of the latest software, drivers, patches, etc.  I uninstalled the software.  I manually deleted the registry entries (since the uninstall doesn’t bother with this.)

After doing an uninstall followed by a registry cleaning and a reboot, I was able to at least get the software side of things working in a very stable manner.  Until I tried to connect the Zune.  When given the option to sign in as a guest or to make this “new” computer my home, I chose to move.  After that, I was given the option to start syncing things or to wait on that.  It was when I chose to sync my podcasts that the software failed out.

I detached my Zune 30 and executed the software again.  Still looking good - even on the podcast tab - until I connected the Zune 30.  Boom!  Down and out again.

Re-run the software, change the settings to NOT sync.  Connect the hardware.  Stable… check the podcasts tab of my “collection” and still holding strong.  Poke around and around and still looking good.  Poke too far, this time into the podcast tab of my “device” and Boom!  Down again.

Okay.  This is what I am thinking.  I’ve got a corrupt something or other.  It is on the my Zune 30, not on my HDD.  I think it is one of my podcasts or podcast feeds, but it could be the photos or the music or the videos.  As long as I don’t try to update the podcasts or look at them on the player, I’m good.

So I go in and hand wipe everything from the player.  No more music.  No more photos.  No more podcasts.  I have a fit and leave my Roswell Pilot episode on ‘cuz it took literally hours on the old machine to transcode and copy onto the player.

Then I start setting up my sync options.  And so far, everything is holding steady.  I’m still having some really odd moments, like how the hardware says that I have still got four artists and some 20-odd tracks but the software says that I have a single artist with no tracks at all.  But so far… so far, my luck is holding.  I have about 20 of my 103 feeds resubbed and synced up again.

I’m taking it slow and hopefully will be able to identify where things go bad IF I hit that suspected corrupt file again.  But I’d much rather just have it work and continue working.  Because I really do need my Buzz Out Loud every single freakin’ day.

My Zune hardware, despite having a somewhat anemic battery life (but don’t they all) and a defective hold switch (it wants to fall off and it occasionally turns itself on mentally), is a fairly good piece of podplaying tech.

The software, on the other hand, is a mental reject.

To be fair, I realize that part of the problem is that I just ripped the guts out of my box and replaced everything but the hard drive. So Windows XP wasn’t happy with me, and neither was Microsoft’s overly DRM-happy Zune software. I had to reinstall first XP and then the Zune software.

Why didn’t Microsoft follow in Apple’s trail and name the freakin’ software something else? It’s stoopid that I have to say Zune S or Zune H every single time. St00p1d!!!

To continue, even after patching XP up to date and re-installing all the bits of Zune S (’cuz it’s not just point-and-click), the program faulted out every time that I opened it. It was at this point that I discovered how bloody crappy the official information for the Zune really is. If you want help with your problems, then you are going to have to either look outside of the official channels or be some sort of Knowledge Base ninja (’cuz I sure couldn’t find any useful information - on ANY topic.) Eventually I found a posting on a forum somewhere that suggested the DRM must be corrupt and to delete the DRM directory under “Documents and Settings/All Users/”. I feel that a !!!!! is warranted at this point.

That worked for me. I deleted the DRM dir and was able to actually update my podcasts for a few days. Syncing the Zune H worked fine and all was well. Until something when glitch and an in progress sync session was interrupted. After that, I haven’t been able to update my podcasts becuase every single time the Zune S fails out as soon as I click on the Collection - Podcast tab. Boom! Fails out with what amounts to no error message for me to trouble shoot with. Of course, it does not check my feeds, download new tracks, update the Zune H, or remove old tracks either.

The delete the DRM folder trick didn’t work this time. I uninstalled the software and re-installed it. It took 15 seconds to reinstall, so I was pretty sure that it didn’t actually get rid of anything. The Zune S failed out as soon as I hit Podcast. So I deleted the DRM folder, uninstalled and deleted the Zune S. Rebooted! And then reinstalled the software.

That actually worked.

For 15 minutes.

I’m back to square zero. I can’t seem to find reliable troubleshooting information for the Zune 2.3 software. As far as I can tell, the error code being sent to Microsoft is something like #0000000005. I haven’t found any information on that error. At this point, I’m going to have to get out Regedit and start pruning things away in a manner that always makes me nervous. Or find a new podcatcher program and manually transfer the ‘casts in and out.

I wish that the software just worked. I also wished that there was any good podcatcher software out there. (Don’t bother telling me about some ‘catcher software that is sooo great, cuz it isn’t. I’ve tried most of them and they are all suckbags in more than one aspect.) I also wish that ID3 tags included a field for “played”. I bet that would catch on really fast as a way to get around the monoliths of podcatching.

P.S.  I didn’t really get into the issues with the software when it is actually working.  I’ll come back to this sometime.

MSI is supposed to be showing off a new “Air Power Cooler” at CeBIT next this week. The “Air Power Cooler” utilizes a Stirling Engine Theory or is based on Stirling Engine Theory. Depends on where you read up on it. I think that the best part is that the accompanying video (sans audio) is more confusing than helpful.

I haven’t been able to get a good working impression built in my head of just what it means to be a Stirling Engine, so here’s so more links to help you research this more. Wikipedia entry on Stirling Engines. Robert Stirling biographical information from Stirling Engines.

Here i have a bunch of computer parts there are some pictures here. These are parts that work absolutely perfect just don’t have the time to use them like i wanted to. Selling them all Not for individual sale. Looking to buy a 80 GB ps3 and need the extra cash. There are 2 mother boards 1 ASUS Mother board and 1 Foxconn motherboard. 2 internet cards.5 power supplys 1 is brand new never been used. Will name the Brands (Power King, Codegen, Antec, Acbel, and a Mitac. Also have 3 Hard Drives 1 160 GB brand new SEAGATE. 1 4.0 GB hard drive, and 1 8.2 GB hard drive. Also have a Samsung DVD/CD RW Combo. And Samsung Compact disc drive. And last but least 8 sticks of RAM 3 256MB of RAM and 4 128 MB of RAM
Please Make me an offer. Just want to get rid of this all at one time. Will take any reasonable offer. Will drop off if needed or you can pick it up.

This person does not know enough about their own parts for me to ask them intelligent questions about what they have.  They COULD have good stuff, but there is no way to know without personally inspecting/testing each item.  In other words, best offer is … hmmm, I’ll charge them $25 to tell them what that pile of parts is worth.  [evil grin]

I had to share this one.  Kotaku is reporting that Emotiv is going to be releasing Epoc for $300 around Christmas time this year.  Who cares?  Anyone who wants to pretend to be an Ilithid.  All cyberpunk junkies.  Iron Man wannabes.  This is totally cool… and really creapy.

It is basically a scary helmet that detects, ”

[T]he electrical current conducted by the brain and transmits the data to an in-board chip that deciphers the information and translates it into data that can be used by the program to control games. “

I remember hearing about this device last year, when it sorta worked some of the time for some of the various people reporting on it.  Now, it has apparently grown up some,

evolv[ing] to be able to detect a range of brain activity [...] using the data to detect facial expression, mood and, to some degree, simple thought.

Hit the link for more information:

Gdc08: PC Psychic Controller Hits This Year