Seems like an awful lot of money to buy textbooks that often get opened one time, right? Well, with Chegg.com, you will save hundreds!

So stop wasting your money and start renting from Chegg.com. I’m on the bandwagon and I’ve saved enough to buy all my term papers! Not really, but I have saved some serious cash by Chegging my books.

I have a promo code that will save you an additional 5% off your total order, use CC102055.

Want proof?

• Essential Biology by Campbell, Reece & Simon is $83.18 if you buy it on Amazon.com.
• If you rent it on Chegg.com, it’s only $11.78. That’s a savings of over $71!

It’s so simple, just search for the books you need and place your order. Chegg will ship them to you fast and at the end of the term you ship them back for free. What’s really cool is that they plant a tree for every book that you rent.

Don’t forget to visit Chegg.com and use promo code CC102055.

One minute you’re filling out a ridiculously long form, or fervently writing a massive blog post… when your finger slips, or you squeeze your mouse in frustration… and you hear the distinctive “click” noise, and suddenly you’re browser brings you back to the last page you were on… A glimpse of hope pops up, a window asking you if you’d like to “Resubmit your form input?” …  you click it, but alas, all your work is gone, all thanks to the third mouse button that nobody even asked for. I feel for you, I really do… Let’s put a stop to the problem that brought you here, it’s time to disable the back button on your mouse!

STEP 1:

Press and hold on your keyboard to bring up the “Start ? Run” window.

STEP 2:

Type “main.cpl” in the Open: box then hit the OK button.

STEP 3:

If you have a Microsoft® mouse and you have the Intellipoint® software already installed, you will see a window like the one pictured below. If you have a Microsoft® mouse and do not see the window, or you have a different brand of mouse, see below.

STEP 4:

Use the Large thumb button: pull down menu to choose  a new action it will perform. You can choose to disable the button entirely (pictured on the right) or pick whatever strikes you as being more functional and less catastrophic if accidentally clicked.

For example, the Flip3D option, lets you switch between open windows using a 3D flipbook style interface.

STEP 5:
Click the Apply button in the button left hand corner of the screen… Now squeeze and misclick away hamburger hands, you’re in the clear!

WHAT ABOUT ME?

If you have a Microsoft® mouse and see a more basic window, with no mentions of a third button, you need to head on over to the Mouse and Keyboard Hardware Download Software page. There you will select your hardware and operating system and will be provided a link to download the appropriate version of Microsoft’s fanciful mouse driver, dubbed Intellipoint®. (You can also check out FileHippo.com’s page for Intellipoint®)

If you do not have a Microsoft® Mouse and have checked all of the tabs in the mouse window that appears and there is no mention of a third mouse button you need to download the mouse driver for your mouse from your mouse’s software vendor.

Mouse Driver Links for Common Vendors (subject to change):

• Logitech > Support + Downloads > Downloads > Mice:
• Belkin: Support: Search: Downloads
• Kensington - MouseWorks download for Windows
• Targus | Support Downloads and Drivers

Have you ever had a MP3 file appear in your iTunes library that simply won’t play in iTunes or on your iPod? It doesn’t give you an error, it just refuses to play singly, or if it appears in a playlist it just skips to the next song? If your iPod and iTunes won’t play an MP3 file and Windows Media Player or another media player can, there’s a good chance that Apple doesn’t like your ID3 Tags. Let’s find out how to prevent this specific issue, since there won’t be a patch for it.

If you’re “sleeping with the enemy” by listening or organizing your audio files with anything but iTunes it may just give you the silent treatment the next time you go try to play a “tainted” file. Apple has left this incompatibility in iTunes and the iPod’s operating system with the mentality “If you’re not listening to your music in iTunes or your iPod your not listening to it at all.” If you’re using iTunes you probably have an iPod, so that’s ok most of the time, but if you accidentally open something up in Windows Media Player, or want to use one of the many MP3 tagger and organization programs available, you should be able to without fears of reprisal from Steve Job’s money maker.  

THE WHY

When digital audio files first popped up, they were identified by filename.  This didn’t work out so well because if you name each file according to its Title, Artist, Album Name, Release Date, Genre, Track Number you’ll end up with something like this:

The Beetles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band (01.06.1967 UK) – Side 2 – 05 – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) [Psychedelic rock].mp3

Or even worse some songs filenames would exceed the length allowed by any respectable operating system. A tragic example would be any of the tracks from Soulwax’s October 22, 2007 release titled:

Most of the remixes we’ve made for other people over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn’t think sounded good enough or just didn’t fit in length-wise, but including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven’t been released yet, a few we really love, one we think is just ok, some we did for free, some we did for money, some for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent.

To address these issues and add flexibility to embed things like lyrics and album art a standard was created to enable storage of data inside the MP3 file (encapsulated in something called an ID3 tag.) This standard has changed over the years, but the last time it was updated was 1999, and iTunes was released in 2001, so don’t count on Apple ever supporting or implementing it properly. Some programs write tags that are incompatible with iTunes propriety tags. Microsoft’s Windows Media Player is one of many such applications.

However, Windows Media Player is written to allow you to play audio files with incompatible or even corrupt tags, way to play nice Microsoft! However, Microsoft isn’t the only company with evil geniuses… the masterminds at Apple found a great way to lock users into using iTunes. It gives users who deviates from iTunes just once the impression that x.y.z player “broke” my MP3 files and they won’t play on my iPod! I’m never using x.y.z player or music tagger and organizer again! Well guess what? I think you should be able to play your files or organize them however you want, wherever you want with whatever you want without fear of reprisal. Here’s how you can do just that:

THE FIX

Step 1: Highlight the silent file in iTunes and right click on it, when the menu appears click “Convert ID3 Tags…”

Step 2: Select either 1.0 or 1.1 in the version pull down menu, if the Reverse Unicode option isn’t grayed out, check that off as well, when you’re done click OK.

Step 3: Enjoy your “repaired” song by playing it normally. The next time you sync your iPod the file should be repaired as well.

Step 4 (Optional): If you have many problem files, or don’t have the time to weed through and find which ones aren’t playing properly you can repair your entire library at once:

1. Select the “Music” option in your iTunes library
2. Next to the green Apple display in iTunes, click the List View button (first on the left).
3. Click the first track that appears and press CTRL + A on your keyboard, OR choose the Edit option from the top menu bar and click “Select All”
4. Follow the same steps from above for a single file (it will take a while to complete depending on how many songs are in your library so be patient.)

If you’re still having trouble playing your files, want to check for and delete duplicate and missing files from your library, check out iTSfv – iTunes Store file validator, it’s FREE and open source. Even if you’re not having trouble, it’s pretty much the iTunes swiss army knife and I highly recommended it.

]]> http://thispos.com/2009/03/26/itunes-and-ipod-won%e2%80%99t-play-certain-mp3-files/feed/ 2 http://thispos.com/2009/03/12/windows-dvd-maker-encoding-slow/ http://thispos.com/2009/03/12/windows-dvd-maker-encoding-slow/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:26:36 +0000 Jeffrey http://thispos.com/2009/03/12/windows-dvd-maker-encoding-slow/

Microsoft gifted Vista Premium and Ultimate users DVD authoring tool, Windows DVD Maker. It’s so simple and easy to use even grandpa can take it for a leisurely stroll and wait overnight for his DVD to burn. Why is it so slow? Conspiracy theories aside, the answer is a simple one… Microsoft made it that way! Read on to find out why and how to fix it.

Windows DVD Maker is reasonably responsive while designing your DVD, but when it comes time to encode things comes to a screeching halt. It’s no mystery, I know why and how to fix it.

THE WHY

Every programs running on your computer is assigned a priority. This is how windows determines who gets dibs on the computer’s processor and how important they are in maintaining system stability and insuring the system is still responsive to your commands. The browser you’re using to read this article has a higher priority than any number of non-critical background tasks going on in your computer. When you’re using Microsoft DVD Maker to design your DVD, it operates in the foreground and gets a generous helping of processor time out of your computers busy schedule. However, once you’re done designing, and it’s actually time to burn the DVD, it becomes a background process and executes at a low priority. What gives? Microsoft quite literally decided where your priorities are, and thought you’d rather be able to watch movies on YouTube while your disc burns very slowly,  then to surrender use of your computer so Windows DVD Maker could have some one on one time to speed things up a bit. While it was admirable, in the event you decided to walk away, and surrender your computer anyway, the priority is still set low. Now, that you’ve been enlightened… Let’s fix it!

THE HOW

Once the burn process has begun, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and when the Vista Splash screen appears, click “Start Task Manager”.

1. Click the Processes Tab
2. Click the Image Name column, to order the programs in ascending alphabetical order
3. Right-click DVDMaker.exe
4. Position your cursor over Set Priority and then click to select High.

Take heed to the intimidating prompt (see exclamation below) and click “Change Priority.” Your DVD should now burn more quickly, but keep in mind it is a very intense process. Depending on the file size and duration of your videos it’s not unreasonable for it to take as long (sometimes longer) as the DVD’s actual running time.

The priorities of programs are set by the software developers who created them, they know more about that program and how it functions at different priorities than you do. It is not advisable to go willy nilly “custom tuning” your priorities (plus when you restart a program, or your machine, the priorities will be reset.)

KEEP IN MIND

Encoding videos is a slow process in general and is no fault of Windows DVD Maker; or Microsoft.  Here are a few cases where you should expect encoding to take a few hours:

1. If you are encoding videos from your Mini-DVD camcorder, even though they are already in DVD format, if you combine more than 90 or so minutes of footage, they must be recompressed, this is a very time consuming process.
2. High-definition content takes a good long while to downscale and recompress, this is not a process where you want to “sit and watch the paint dry.”
3. You are encoding video captured via Firewire (1394) from Mini-DV tapes. These videos don’t need to be scaled, however, the files are uncompressed and require a great deal of hard disk activity to read and encode. If you have the choice between a laptop and a desktop to perform this task, you will really benefit from the desktops speedier hard drive.

For more information, check out John “PapaJohn” Buechler’s excellent Windows DVD Maker page.