The Neodon

WoW Multiboxing Setup

2008-09-07T10:08:00.005-05:00

I have been playing World of Warcraft quite a bit lately. In fact, I've been multiboxing--playing with five characters at a time. Yea, I know this makes me quite the nerd.

Luckily, I can do all this with one computer, unlike the old days when multiboxing could only be done with several computers. My system has an AMD Athlon X2 64 Dual 4800+ processor with 2GB of RAM and a striped volume set up using two hard drives and the Windows Disk Management utility. My video card is an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of RAM, and I have a 21" LCD screen running at 1680x1050.

This setup easily runs 5 instances of WoW with the main instance at full graphics settings and the four other instances at minimum graphics settings. However, things start to lag a little bit in crowded areas, especially Orgrimmar, because my memory usage spikes to over 2GB. Another GB of ram would make my system ideal for 5-boxing.

Before I go into key broadcasting software, I'd like to share a couple tips you can use to make your five characters look super-coordinated. First is chain follow. Set up a macro on your second character to follow your first character, one on your third character to follow your second character, etc. Now you can run through populated areas with your long chain of characters so everyone can see just how many they are. This is much better than having them all lumped together right behind your main.

Second, when you are just standing around, you don't want all your secondaries in a big lump standing behind your main. So, here's what you can do. Designate a key (I use the up arrow key, but you might want to use something like F12) for positioning. On your main, leave this key unbound. On your secondary, bind it to strafe left; on your third, bind it to strafe right; on your fourth, bind it to forward; and on your fifth, bind it to backward. Now, you can press your positioning key to have all your characters fan out. Move your main into the middle of the formation and you have an escort.

Now, on to key broadcasting software. I started out using Octopus for key broadcasting and instance management, but it lacks a few features I wanted such as round-robin broadcasting and 'hotstrings.' I know I can set up a round-robin system using castsequence, but this prevents me from using /stopcasting in the macro to get immediate heals. Sadly, I just found out that Octopus is no longer in development.

A few days ago I bought a license for Keyclone. The only thing I can't do with Keyclone that I could do with Octopus is assign F1-F5 to my instances to switch between them. I can do something similar with the maximizer in Keyclone, but I want all my instances to be full screen. Maybe there's a way to do this and I just haven't figure it out yet. --Update: This is possible by creating a bunch of full-screen regions, but maximizer is screwy with widescreen resolutions and wants to just stretch 800x600.

The feature I love most about Keyclone is the hotstrings feature. Using a clever setup, I can play from any of my instances at any time and all my characters will automatically assist the active instance. This is done without using focus or having to keep a target. It took me some trial and error to get it to work right, so in addition to the link above I'll let you know what exactly worked for me.

The first complicated part is setting up a whole crapload of hotstrings. You have to have five hotstrings per instance per macro. To save you this headache, you can download my keymap files here. Unzip those files to your keyclone directory and assign them to each of your 5 WoW instances. You'll need to bind the following keys in WoW to some action bars (I used slots 1-6 on action bar 6):

[ ] ; ' , .

Next, you need some macros with complicated targetting based on which modifier keys are being held down. The example macros in the link above are longer than 255 characters and a pain to get working, so here is a shorter macro that works just as well:

/target [mod:ctrl,mod:alt,mod:shift,target=Character4] [mod:ctrl,mod:shift,target=Character1] [mod:ctrl,mod:alt,target=Character2] [mod:alt,mod:shift,target=Character3] [mod:ctrl,target=Character5]
/cast [target=targettarget] Lightning Bolt
/targetlasttarget

This macro is actually three lines, so make sure you move all the "[mod:...]" parts onto the first line, separated by spaces.

This should be all you need to get the setup to work. If you have any problems, please post to the dual-boxing forums.

Next, I'd like to explain what settings I use for my WoW instances. Like I said before, I run my main instance at full graphics settings and the other four at the lowest settings. The easiest way to do this is to have two copies of WoW, the first one for your main instance and the second one for your other four instances. This wastes a lot of space though, because you have two copies of the Data directory, one in each WoW directory. I have a better solution.

In Linux, you can create links to files and folders. This means you could have a directory called "Bush" with a bunch of incriminating documents, and you could create an alias called "scumbag" to point to the "Bush" directory without copying all the files. Lucky for us, there's also a way to do this in Windows.

First, download the program Junction and extract it to your Windows directory. Next, create a new directory called World of Warcraft2 or something of your choosing. This will be the installation for your other four instances. Now, you need to copy everything in your original WoW folder EXCEPT the Data, Screenshots, Patches, and Logs directories into your new WoW directory. Delete the Accounts under WTF in your new WoW directory (because we're going to create a link for it also).

Now, open a command prompt (Start, Run, type in cmd). Go to your new WoW directory (for example, type cd "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft2"). Type junction Data "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Data" and then "junction WTF\Accounts "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Accounts" and you're all set! Launch WoW from your original installation for your main instance and from the secondary installation for the other four instances. Configure the other four with the lowest graphics settings you can stand.

Finally, a few tips for leveling up. First of all, as you may have already heard, avoid collection quests! Unless you are just collecting one item for each character, that is. Otherwise it's rather inefficient. Finish all the "kill X number of Y" quests in your starting area, then move to the low-level area. If you finish all the good quests there, you can always move to another faction's starting area. For example, I usually do the quests in Durotar and Brill, then Crossroads and The Sepulcher.

Wow, that was a pretty long article. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I am developing a program to manage WoW macros, with multiboxing support. This will make it easier to copy the same macro across all your characters. Post your contact details in a comment if you are interested in trying out a beta.

Run Linux applications natively under Windows

2008-09-07T10:08:00.004-05:00

I hate Windows, it sucks. As I say, failure is not an option--it comes bundled with Windows! However, the embarassing truth is that I need it. I can't live without Photoshop and World of Warcraft, and I don't care to try getting them to run on Linux. Additionally, my job requires me to have some form of Linux for the software development environment we use.

I've tried several solutions that would let me utilize Linux and Windows on the same computer, including VMWare, dual-booting the old fashion way, and dual-booting with a wubi-based Ubuntu installation. It's always a pain in the butt and my wireless drivers just don't work right under Linux, so my search for something better never ended.

The solution is a brilliant software package that lets you run Linux applications in Windows without a virtual machine, and it's called andLinux.

AndLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux installation that runs seamlessly on Windows. This is made possible using the native Windows port of the Linux kernel, coLinux. It's not perfect yet though, so I'd like to shed some light on a few nifty bits of information I have found.

First of all, I installed the lite xfce4 based version. You may be tempted to download the KDE version because it sounds more familar, but wait--it's five times larger and you can do everything you need with the lite version.

After the installation and reboot, you should see a little yin yang icon in your system tray. You can click on this to get a meager list of applications to run on your new Linux-in-Windows installation. This will hardly do. Install an application you want to use (I like gedit) with the Synaptic package manager, and then I will show you how to add it to the menu.

You need to edit C:\Program Files\andLinux\Launcher\menu.txt to change the shortcuts available on the andLinux Menu. Here is a sample and the format:

Root Terminal;xfce4_terminal.ico;xfce4-terminal
<shortcut name>;<icon file>;<linux command>

It's pretty simple. I added a shortcut for gedit (Gnome's Text Editor) by putting:

gedit;xfce4_terminal.ico;gedit

Yea, I know i used the terminal icon. I'm too lazy to go find a decent icon to use.

One of the first big issues I encountered was drive size. My installation defaulted to a size of 2GB, and I need much, much more than that. In order to make your andLinux drive larger, you must perform two steps. The first step is enlarging the container file for the drive, and the second step is enlarging the filesystem to use the whole container.

To enlarge the container, unzip the file C:\Program Files\andLinux\ImageResizeTool.zip, and run the toporesize.bat file. Select your disk drive image, which should be at C:\Program Files\andLinux\Drives\base.drv, and click 'resize file.' Something should happen, and if you get an error message at the end of the process, don't worry just yet.

Next you'll probably have to resize the filesystem to fit the container. Open a Linux terminal from your nifty yin-yang andLinux Menu in the system tray, and type the following commands:

dfree -h
apt-get install ext2online
ext2online /dev/cobd0
dfree -h

You should be all set! -- Update: when I tried to increase my drive size to 20GB, I found out that ext2online has some limitations. If you run into problems when you run ext2online, try the following after increasing the image file size using toporesize. Copy andLinux\Drives\base.drv to base1.drv. Edit andLinux\settings.txt and add cobd2=Drives\base1.drv. Restart andLinux and type ext2resize /dev/cobd2. Shutdown andLinux and move base.drv to base.drv.old. Move base1.drv to base.drv, remove the cobd2 line from settings.txt, and then start andLinux. Voila!

Now you may have noticed when you opened a terminal that it is a root terminal. It's not a good idea to leave it this way--you should create a normal user to do everything except administration tasks. You can find a guide to doing this on the andLinux wiki at http://andlinux.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Quick_Tips#create_a_normal_user.

One of the steps created problems for me, and that was the editing of the /usr/bin/startwindowsterminalsession file. Instead of editing this file, I changed all my shortcuts to start up under my user account. You can start an application under a specific user by adding 'sux - <user>' before the command. Therefore, my command to start gedit is 'sux - jbarton gedit.'

Changing the data directory for MySQL in Ubuntu

2008-09-07T10:07:00.001-05:00

There have been several occasions where I wanted to change my MySQL data directory. First it was to run multiple instances of MySQL, which I gave up on. Then I bought an external drive to save my development environment, including my source code and the MySQL data directory, so I could develop from any machine at work or home. Both times I kept running into problems getting such a seemingly simple configuration change to work properly.

I thought it would be rather easy. One way to do it is by changing the MySQL configuration in /etc/mysql/my.cnf, but I wanted to make it easier for other developers to use the local MySQL database. So instead I created a directory for MySQL data on my external drive, then issued the following commands to create a symbolic link from /var/lib/mysql to that location:

cd /var/lib sudo mv mysql mysql2 sudo ln -s /mnt/jbarton/mysql /var/lib/mysql

Of course, I was greeted with several nasty error messages any time I tried to start MySQL or initialize the new data directory (either directly or through the symbolic link). Here are some of the complaints I found in the logs:

[Warning] Can't create test file /srv/mysql/hostname.lower-test kernel: [ 82.391726] audit(1210139515.249:2): type=1503 operation="inode_create" requested_mask="w::" denied_mask="w::" name="/var/lib/mysql2/hostname-linux.lower-test" pid=5888 profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld" namespace="default" InnoDB: Error: unable to create temporary file; errno: 13 kernel: [ 82.508111] audit(1210139515.369:5): type=1503 operation="inode_mknod" requested_mask="w::" denied_mask="w::" name="/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock" pid=5888 profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld" namespace="default" [ERROR] Can't start server : Bind on unix socket: Permission denied [ERROR] Do you already have another mysqld server running on socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock ? [ERROR] Aborting [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete mysqld_safe[5892]: ended

After several failed searches on Google to figure out the problem, I finally found the solution. The culprit is AppArmor, a security framework now default in Ubuntu that is supposed to be easy to use. I would say that it is a big pain in the ass, and not very user-friendly. There was nothing in my syslog around the nasty MySQL and kernel error messages that even hinted at AppArmor.

Once you know AppArmor is the problem, the fix is very easy. You simply edit /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld. Underneath the two lines authorizing the default MySQL data directories, add two more with your custom directory. Make sure you have a trailing / on the directory name, otherwise it will not work (I had this problem at first). After this change, restart AppArmor:

sudo invoke-rc.d apparmor restart

Now you should be able to set up the new directory as a MySQL data directory and initialize it using mysql_install_db. For more information on this topic, check out the following links:

AppArmor - Ubuntu Wiki
The Brainwrecked Tech had the same problem
Ubuntu bug #201799
A thread on the Ubuntu forums with the solution

Creating a mobile development environment in Ubuntu

2008-09-07T10:06:00.001-05:00

This article was written specifically for a development environment on Ubuntu using MySQL.

I can work from home whenever I want, though it's usually better for me to limit myself to working at home after hours. This creates a problem with keeping my work in sync. I've always assumed the best way to handle this was to carry a laptop around. However, this keeps me from taking advantage of our kickass development machines at work that have two screens.

Just the other day I decided to ask the boss for a new laptop. He said we could talk about it soon, and I was satisfied. Then I had an idea. I could just get an external hard drive and keep my work on it, so I could then just carry it back and forth between work and home. Much cheaper than a new laptop, and I could develop on my home machine or one of the well-equipped machines at work. So I jumped on NewEgg and started looking at my options.

My requirements were an external hard drive, one that is small, runs on USB power, and is manufactured by a reliable company such as Western Digital. I found the Western Digital My Passport external hard drive to be perfect. Doing a quick check on Best Buy's site revealed their price was the same as NewEgg's, so I went to Best Buy and bought it.

Now, if you are working with sensitive data, you'll probably want to encrypt your drive. I found this to be easiest using TrueCrypt. It's easy to set up on Windows and Linux, and the performance is good with the external hard drive I bought, under certain configurations. Let me explain what I mean by "certain configurations."

You'll want to encrypt the entire device and NOT set up an encrypted file container. If you insist on having some space you can access from Windows, you can set up two partitions and encrypt one of them. The reason for encrypting the device or a partition is performance. I tried both ways and noticed a large difference in performance, especially when working with smaller files (like in a large Subversion repo).

Don't try to get fancy with TrueCrypt. Use the AES algorithm, a password and a keyfile. You should probably e-mail to yourself the keyfile so you never lose it. You do use GMail, right?

Make sure you choose 'None' as your filesystem when you encrypt your device or partition, because you don't want to use FAT. Then you can mount the TrueCrypt device without trying to mount the filesystem (since you dont have one yet). There's an option for it in the mount dialog. After mounting the device you'll want to create a ReiserFS filesystem on the corresponding TrueCrypt device (usually /dev/mapper/truecrypt1, you can right-click the mount entry in TrueCrypt to find out).

You might want to check out my article on changing the data directory in MySQL and read about ReiserFS in my article about tweaks for Ubuntu (in progress). I'm not going to go into further excruciating detail filling in the blanks to create this setup. If you can't figure it out, then that precludes you from being a software developer.

So far this setup has been working very well. I just shut down MySQL, unmount the TrueCrypt volume, unplug the drive, and go on my merry way. When I arrive at my destination computer, I plug in the drive, mount it with TrueCrypt, make sure MySQL is configured to point its data directory to the drive, and start MySQL.

I'm interested if anyone has tried doing something like this and what their experience was. I will add more information to this article if I get a lot of comments about something in particular.

How World of Warcraft idiots interact with multiboxers

2008-09-07T10:05:00.002-05:00

This article is a little off from the theme of my blog. I didn't really search for anything, except maybe intelligent players in WoW. You can read some of the responses on the Dual-Boxing Forums and the Official WoW Forums.

The Problem

Unfortunately, World of Warcraft is full of immature idiots and spoiled children. In spite of all the intelligent, considerate players in the game, they really start to come out of the woodwork when something unusual is going on. Like another player who is multiboxing. Any time I go to a populated area I am constantly harassed by these like. Here are some of the common types of idiots I interact with as a multiboxer.

The Genius

This player knows you're doing something wrong and breaking the rules, and they're going to tell you about it. It's cheating, botting, or some other offensive abomination of gameplay. When I first started to get these idiots, I would try to educate them about the legitimacy of multiboxing.

However, I have never been able to get anything across to them. So now to handle these geniuses, I simply tell them to report me if they are so damn smart. I wish I could watch their conversations with the GM.

The Pest

This is the one that irritates me the most. This is the player that follows you and either says incoherent gibberish or puts you on autofollow and won't go away. They say stupid things like "wat ur doing????????????????LOL" and such.

I had the worst encounter once in Durotar with a hunter who put me on autofollow. Any time I would go to attack something, he would try to attack it first to steal it from me. I had to employ some misdirection and instant spells to get my kills. Eventually he got bored and left.

The Buffer

This one isn't so bad, but after running into 2-3 of them in a row it gets annoying. This one thinks you definitely need their buffs, so they follow you until they have buffed every one of your characters. This happens to everyone though, not just multiboxers.

The Excessively Amused

I think this is the second most irritating type. This is the player who just thinks what you are doing is the most hilarious thing they have ever seen. They come up and say things like "LOL," "HAHAHA," or some similar emote. I try asking them what is so funny, but they can't really give me a good answer. Five players in a group is not funny!

I had one today who came up and laughed at me and then ran away. I asked what was so funny and he said "are you kidding?" No, I'm not telling a joke. In fact, I haven't done anything funny yet, so stop laughing!

The Hater

This player hates you and everything about multiboxing. They spit at you, fart on you, and tell you that you're a loser. I don't know what their problem is, but it probably has something to do with either losing to a multiboxer in the battlegrounds or being so poor they can't afford more WoW accounts to multibox themselves. Or they are too dumb to do it.

Yesterday I was in Orgrimmar with several level 70's around me reinforcing each others hatred for multiboxers. It was a rather harsh environment, but I just merrily danced with them and avoided responding to their incendiary comments.

The Poor Child

You know, $75 a month for five accounts is really not a lot of money. I think a lot of people probably spend more on their cell phone. However, there are these poor children in World of Warcraft who are on an allowance and think you are some spoiled rich kid who gets everything in the world, including five WoW accounts. No thank you, I have a full-time job and $75 is next to nothing for me to afford. Ask your mommy to raise your allowance.

The Exception

These are the players I love to interact with. They come up and ask intelligent questions if they are not familiar with multiboxing, or they strike up an interesting conversation if they know more about it.

These players are nice, curious, and mature, and I wish they were more plentiful. I've had conversations about different multiboxing strategies, received intelligent questions about how to do it and how to get more information, and just chit-chatted about random other things not related to multiboxing. Thanks for making the game worth playing.

What are some of the most annoying experiences you have while multiboxing?

Alienware's innovative restore CD automatically formats your computer!

2007-10-14T16:38:00.001-05:00

In October, 2004, I ordered an Alienware Aurora to replace the gaming machine I had at the time, a Smith Corona WordSmith 100 featuring daisywheel printing at an astonishing speed of 12 characters per second.

After a MONTH of waiting for their elderly assembly team to construct my machine out of denture adhesive and bingo chips, I finally received my order. For a long time I pretended to not notice that the Alienware computer cases are really just cheap plastic glued to the metal framework. However, after several pieces of the case spontaneously broke off under about as much pressure as a baby inhaling through a pillow pressed against its face, I concluded that the cases suck. This turned out to not be the only thing about Alienware computers that sucks.

In Spring 2007, I installed Linux on my Dell laptop by resizing the Windows partition to create room for the installation. I soon realized that having Linux on my laptop did not bring me any fame and glory in my social circle.

I soon decided to remove the Linux installation, which messed up the boot loader and prevented me from booting Windows. I needed to figure out a way to restore the master boot record, so I thought I would first try using the recovery console that is available during the Windows installation process.

Lacking a vanilla Windows XP install CD, I dug up the restore CD for my Alienware and put it in my laptop. To my horror it immediately started formatting my drive to prepare for installing Windows WITHOUT ANY CONFIRMATION. That's absolutely brilliant, since there's no chance for anyone to ever put the restore CD into any other computer except their Alienware, and only when they really want to format it.

Sarcasm aside, perhaps it actually would be a good idea to ask the user for confirmation before doing something dangerous, like deleting all their files. In fact, I have had two Packard Bells, a Gateway, and three Dell laptops, and their restore CDs all had some kind of menu or at least a confirmation before blowing away my files. I can't fathom why Alienware would omit this obvious and indispensable feature.

Perhaps the inadequate process at Alienware that illegitimately conceived this deformed fetus of an idea went something along these lines...

Alienware Engineer 1: "Uhhhhhh restore CD derrrrrrr!!!" *slapping self in chest*
Alienware Engineer 2: *drooling, eyes rolled back in head*
Alienware Product Manager: "Time for french fries!" *eats thumb tacks*
Alienware Elderly Assembly Technician: *hip spontaneously explodes, sending bone shrapnel into nearby foreheads*

In spite of their stupidity and lack of engineering prowess, it turned out this wasn't a complete disaster for my laptop. As soon as it started formatting, I turned off the power, so only my partition table was actually erased. Luckily, there is always an older version of the partition table stored somewhere on the disk, and with several hours of frustration and rebooting I was able to copy my important data onto my iPod using some disk recovery utilities.

You're lucky I was able to recover my files! I wonder how many other people this has happened to who have lost everything. *Slaps Alienware in the head!* You should NEVER have a dangerous process performed automatically without any kind of trigger, safeguard, or confirmation.

Since you don't find it prudent to prevent catastrophes for your customers, I hope you are never involved in developing anything important, like defibrillators or air bags. Imagine defibrillators that automatically shock the nearest person repeatedly when turned on, or air bags that deploy as soon as you put the keys in the ignition. STUPID!

So Alienware, I give you the following report card after spitefully smearing poo on it:

Restore CD: F-
Assembly time: F
Computer case: F
Price: F
Ability to see into the future: F!!!

Have any Alienware horror stories? Send them to me!

My favorite one-liners here, so I won't forget them

2007-10-12T12:45:00.004-05:00

Does the noise in my head bother you?

I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.

Allow me to introduce myselves.

Dole for Pineapple.

Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Friends may come and go, but enemies tend to accumulate.

Have an adequate day.

Can you see me right now?

I do whatever my rice crispies tell me to.

I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.

I prefer to remain anomalous.

I have an excellent track record, although I am not a horse.

I wondered why the Frisbee was getting bigger, and then it hit me.

Those that forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

It's not who you know, it's whom you know.

There is no "I" in "Team", but there are four in "Platitude-Quoting Idiot" (go look it up).

I'm busier than a one-toothed man in a corn-on-the-cob eating contest.

Gargling is a good way to see if your throat leaks.

Save the whales--collect the whole set.

What does cheese say when it gets its picture taken?

Should crematoriums give discounts for burn victims?

Blessed are the censors. They shall inhibit the Earth.

Old people read the bible more because they are cramming for their final.

If you jog backwards, do you gain weight?

Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.

I used to be schizophrenic, but we're all right now.

I have a wooden leg with a real foot.

Funny Headlines

Suicidal twin kills sister by mistake!

Little-Known Tweak to Boost Hard Drive Performance!

2006-09-02T19:28:00.001-05:00

Note: Be sure to see my follow-up article about the traffic I got for this post from digg.com.

The speed at which your hard drive transfers data is very important, right? Especially if you need to copy a 20-gigabyte file, like I did. My laptop was initially copying the file at 2 MB/s because it was transferring in PIO-only mode, which would have taken almost three hours. Not only is PIO terribly slow, it consumes lots of CPU power. While copying that 20-gigabyte file, my CPU usage stayed at 100%. Therefore, I tried to figure out the best way to increase the transfer rate. I changed the transfer mode to UltraDMA-6, speeding it up by 600% to 12 MB/s, and the 20-gigabyte file copied in a little over 30 minutes. Plus, my CPU usage was only about 20-30%.

So, how did the drive get lowered from UltraDMA to PIO-only mode in the first place? Well, because Windows has a particularly dumb way of handling transfer modes for storage devices. After six cumulative (all-time total) errors while reading or writing a storage device, Windows will automatically lower its transfer mode. Worse, it never goes back up unless you reinstall the device. This is bad if you put in a scratched CD, causing those six-in-a-lifetime errors happen all at once. Even your hard drive will experience an occasional hiccup, so eventually its transfer rate is not safe either.

However, there is a setting to force Windows to only lower the transfer rate after six consecutive (in a row) errors, and then raise it back up when the errors stop. Therefore, you can keep your drives in UltraDMA-6 mode.

If you would like to try changing the transfer mode for your drives, follow the instructions below. Going from PIO-only mode to UltraDMA-6 will show you the most significant performance boost. However, your results may vary. Of course, your drive and motherboard must support UltraDMA-6, or you won't see much of a difference. Be careful while you are doing this; I am not responsible for any mistakes you make. Please back up your registry first in case something goes wrong!

How to Check Current Transfer Mode

Open Device Manager
Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers
Double click on Primary IDE Controller or Secondary IDE Controller
Go to the Advanced Settings tab to see the current transfer modes. If you see anything besides UltraDMA-6, and especially if you see PIO Mode, then follow the steps below.

How to Force UltraDMA-6

Open up the Registry Editor.
Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
There are several sub-keys under this one, such as 0000, 0001, etc. You are interested in two of them that say Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel.
Make the following changes to both of those keys:

Delete any attributes named MasterIdDataCheckSum or SlaveIdDataCheckSum. This resets the tracking for errors that Windows uses to determine when the transfer mode should be lowered.
Add an attribute with the name ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and a DWORD value of 1. This tells Windows that it should lower the transfer mode when there are six consecutive errors instead of six cumulative errors.
If they exist, set the following keys to a hexadecimal value of ffffffff (eight F's). This will change the transfer modes to UltraDMA-6:

MasterDeviceTimingMode
MasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
SlaveDeviceTimingMode
SlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed

Reboot your computer and check the devices to see if they are set to UltraDMA Mode 6.

Let me know about your experiences with this tweak.

The Digg Effect: An In-Depth Analysis

2006-07-04T10:19:00.001-05:00

Between 11:00AM and 12:00PM on July 3rd, my drive tweak article made the front page of digg.com. In this follow-up article I will cover some of the data I gathered from Site Meter and AdSense during my article's short fame.

Traffic

First, the most important issue is traffic. Traffic initially peaked at slightly over 5,000 visitors per hour when the article first hit the front page, and for the next 18 hours it slowly diminished. It's a good thing I don't host my sites on a Commodore 64 anymore, because it would have crapped out. By Tuesday morning at around 5:00AM, the traffic had dropped to a low of about 400 visitors per hour. Then it started to climb again, and as I'm writing this article, the traffic remains up at about 475 visitors per hour. The total traffic from the article so far is about 36,000 visitors.

Browsers

Next I'll look at the browser wars. Well, not much of a war here, as Firefox clearly whoops Internet Explorer with a share of 59%. Firefox is definitely more popular among the savvy digg.com reader base than the public. Damn it uses a lot of memory though, with mine currently at about 150MB of RAM.

Operating Systems

I was a little more disappointed with the OS distribution, with Windows pulling in about 90%. Having such a nerdy Firefox-obsessed audience, I was disappointed that I didn't see more people running Linux or even Mac OS. It must be the fact that Windows is so much more user-friendly and reliable than the other two, especially with the new and magnificant Windows Genuine Advantage. My toilet paper also has the genuine advantage.

Screen Resolutions

Who the heck has a 3200x1200 screen resolution? Drewl. Get me one of those (or maybe it's two side-by-side). As far as resolutions go, it looks like 1024x768 and 1280x1024 prevail. Most web design guidelines I read say to design for 800x600 resolution, but maybe they are outdated. Therefore, my New Year's resolution is 1024x768 (haha).

Digg.com

Well, my article was the most popular digg of the day for a couple hours. Then Windows Genuine Advantage reared its ugly head in a story about its own demise. The story about the evil program concocted by Microsoft that protects us from ourselves, destroying lives and killing babies, wrought more diggs than my own story. So, my story ended up in second place for the day. Now, I will forever remember this injustice every time I spitefully click on the WGA notice that my copy of Windows may not be genuine.

On a more cheerful note, I submitted my story to Slashdot, and their omnipotent editors rejected it. It's a good thing too, because judging from the article's popularity on digg.com and del.icio.us, Slashdot readers would have hated it. I wasn't sad though because digg is more popular than Slashdot.

Money

Next, let's talk about money. I would post a screenshot of my Google AdSense account, but they strictly forbid it. My site has so far earned around $45 total ad revenue from the 36,000 visitors mentioned above. That's not bad, but it's not even close to the goal I set of $100 billion (Dr. Evil laugh). However, my site is still pulling in about 475 hits per hour, earning around $14 a day, so I should hit $100 billion (Dr. Evil laugh) in about... 19.5 million years.

If you have a blog and you haven't set up Google Adsense yet, I strongly suggest you do. Even if you do have it set up already, here are some tips I have found very helpful:

Make your ads blend in with your page. If you set them off with borders, colors, or anything that makes them too distinct from your content, people will mentally block them out. Here are some excellent case studies from Google's AdSense Help Center on how to set up your ads.
Don't click on your own ads, don't tell people to click on your ads, and don't put anything on your page that suggests to click on your ads. This is a very big no-no, and it's unethical.
If you aren't ready to use a paid blogging service, use eBlogger. Since it's owned by Google and they make money if you use AdSense, there are no other ads on your pages competing with yours.

Post your comments here. I probably missed some good points, so put them in the comments and I'll update the article. Definitely let me know if you see any spelling or grammatical errors. I am a real "grammar nazi," as the WGA fans like to say.

Dell Inspiron 8500 Laptop Autopsy

2006-06-29T14:46:00.002-05:00

Note: You can click on these pictures to get a larger version.

This is my ailing Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop. It was spitefully built on Dell's web site in 2003 when I was working for Interlinc.net in Branson, Missouri, the crappiest Internet provider ever to burden this world with its tortuous existence. My ex-boss, who was a real con artist, bought this laptop for me back in 2003 as a reward for working two 80-hour weeks to complete a merger with another company.

As a token of his generosity and to thank me for all my hard work, he promised to buy me a new laptop as I was nearing the end of the second 80-hour week. Later, when I asked him to order the laptop, he asked me how I much I wanted to make in payments each month. He wasn't joking either. Of course, since I am so stupid I think the Internet is something you catch fish with, I had totally forgotten about his promise. Actually, I hadn't forgotten, and I was surprised that he was trying to get out of the deal. I reminded him about what he said though, and he magically remembered every detail of the offer!

This is what my laptop normally looks like when it boots up. That beautiful white bar goes across the screen, telling me that everything's going to be OK and all my data is still safe. Then the monstrosity of an operating system I use, Windows XP, slowly thrashes itself into memory.

On June 28, 2006 though, something went very wrong. I should have known it was going to happen because last week I ate Chinese food and my fortune cookie said, "James, your laptop is going to totally crap out on June 28th."

The screen started showing weird boxes and garbage everywhere, and it locked up constantly. I tried to take some pictures of this bizarre phenomenon, but none of them turned out well enough to see the defects.

As I child I enjoyed taking everything apart to see how it worked: radios, my nintendo, televisions, cats, etc. So, I got to work tearing the laptop apart to see if I could fix it. I had taken it apart several times before to replace the keyboard, so it was fairly easy.

The first step in taking apart the laptop is to very gently pry the top panel loose with a screw driver and then rip it off . This reveals the cable underneath for the LCD panel as well as the screws to remove the keyboard.

This is the inside of the laptop after removing the screws to the keyboard and turning it over. At this point all kinds of food fell out from under the keys, and it's a good thing because I was starving.

You can see here the heatstink for the CPU and some kind of copper tube which I think is a flux capacitor. To the right of that is the heatstink and fan for the video card.

This is what the video card looks like after removing the heatstink. Here you can clearly see the flux capacitor as well as the 200-millibyte e-mail cartridge.

I then removed the video card, revealing a hidden chip underneath. I tried tapping on it with a hammer to no avail.

Here you can see on the bottom of the video card that one of the tracers has a defect. It looks like it's burnt or something. I don't know if this is causing the problems.

This is the component the tracer connects to on the top of the video card. I don't know what this has to do with anything, but I wanted to show off my Photoshop skills with the little zoomed circle thingy again.

Since the laptop would not keep running long enough to boot into windows, I decided to try adding more juice. I got an old lamp cord, plugged it into the wall, and placed the bare wires on the other end into the back of the laptop. Wait, that's just something I would like to do. What I really did was hook it up to a CRT and boot it with the LCD disconnected from the video card. Voila!

You can see clearly now some of the garbage that flickers on and off on the screen. Punching the keyboard does not fix the problem but sometimes causes the lines to change colors. If you scream and punch the right places at the right times, you can get some pretty effects.

So, it's definitely the video card and not the LCD display. I booted up the Dell Diagnostics CD to see if I could get any more information.

Running the video memory test gave some ungodly error message, but only when the display was having problems. Since the problems were intermittent, I could run the diagnostic when the display was clear and it would not give me the ungodly error message. I never would have guessed.

Conclusion: It's broken, duh. Probably the video card. Anyway, I don't feel like trying to get a replacement part, and the laptop is almost three years old, so I just ordered a new laptop. Yes, my new laptop is a Dell. I did take a look at some other brands including Lenovo, Toshiba, and Sony, but I wasn't impressed.

Now the monitor on my other computer is starting to flicker. Will I be able to bear two computer tragedies in one week?