In my case, I wanted to disable forced anti-aliasing so that the enemy outlines in World of Tanks were visible. A well-known bug in the game with a working solution, but an another well-known “feature” in the video software made working around it impossible as I couldn’t access the video settings.

The most dorky thing with CCC is that while there’s a ton of trouble with it, it seems the install procedure is the real reason for it not working. In my case, it was probably because of missing libraries and so the software refused to start (the only hint was an error message in Event Viewer: Could not find Type [ATI.ACE.CLI.Component.Dashboard.Dashboard] from [CLI.Component.Dashboard]).

Many tutorials on how to fix this is to reinstall CCC and the drivers but I found this won’t work and is very annoying even if it did work. So, I recommend skipping that and use this little tool instead. Thank you Ray Adams, no thanks ATI/AMD.

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What is new in 1.5:

• Improved editing
  • Undo/redo for most actions
  • The “compact” pattern display mode can be configured to display exactly the needed pattern columns
  • There’s now an edit mode similar to most classic trackers (you can jam in the pattern editor without changing pattern data)
• New audio driver features
  • Wavetable for sampled drums etc.
  • Bitcrush effect has now optional sample rate downsampling
  • Extra parameter column for volume (like in FT2)
  • New commands such as setting filter resonance and restarting the instrument program from pattern data
• Improved GUI
  • A lot of general laziness has been fixed, e.g. own menu items for opening a sample even in the pattern editor, keyboard control in all editors
  • Editors can be switched with buttons located bottom-right
  • The menu is less obscure with a new added menu button top-left
  • New default theme (no more eyesore)
  • Themes can now use PNG images instead of BMP
  • Program icon
• Fun stuff
  • VU meters and a fake spectrum analyzer (think Protracker)
  • AHX/Protracker/C64 etc. retro themes
• Experimental stuff
  • MIDI sync (not tested very well) and MIDI keyboard support (great for instrument editing)

Get it here. Don’t forget the Facebook page, updates get posted there more frequently.

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Original by Karsten Obarski

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I’ve also updated the effect system to support separate FX chains, meaning you can have different reverb etc. settings for different instruments. While there will be more effects in future versions, they will still be for fine tuning the old school sound.

1.4.0 should be out soon but you can try the nightly builds that should work pretty well.

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Additionally, you can get a better understanding of how fast a page gets indexed by search engines and how fast it gets reindexed after you have modified the page. I found it interesting to note what’s the general strategy of different bots, now I know Yahoo really keeps visiting the pages and GoogleBot just very rarely visits older pages (but indexes new pages really quickly).

The plugin uses some simple heuristics to decide if a visiting user agent is a bot and puts it in a list of suspected bots (along with data of which pages it visited and when). You can then remove all the user agents that are not bots. Basically, This means you don’t need to manually add any bots at all, you simply weed out the false alerts. Of course, you can explicitly specify bots by their user agent string or host address.

Installing and using Seen

After installing the plugin (extract the zip file in wp-content/plugins/ and activate the plugin) data will be automatically recorded. You can monitor what is happening directly from on the Dashboard (there will be two new widgets, a list of bots on the watchlist and a list of unindexed pages). Also, if you go to Dashboard > Seen you can see more detailed lists and also the suspected bots list. I think it’s all quite self-explaining. Hint: you can click the star to add bots to the watchlist — clicking the yellow star will remove them.

In the options you can combine bots (i.e. when two or more entries have a differing user agent string but really are the same bot), delete them and edit them. The different categories are there so you can e.g. put Technorati bot in “Search engine (blogs)” which makes Seen not care if the bot has seen the latest comments. You can also categorize bots as “Browser” which means their data will be hidden as it probably won’t interest you.

Seen 0.5.1 (Supports WP 2.7 thru 2.8)

What’s new in 0.5.1

See comment #2 below.

Note: This is not yet 1.0 quality but it should work OK. By downloading and installing the plugin, you acknowledge no responsibility lays on the plugin author.

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Quick summary

Here is a quick summary (based on the search terms people use when finding this page):

• Will <insert software name here> run on Windows 7? In short: Yes, most likely.
• Will I be able to open documents created using <insert software name here> on 64-bit Windows 7? Yes, most likely. The 32-bit to 64-bit transition only affects the applications itself, not files. And, most of all you can simply use the 32-bit version of the program like you used to use.
• The whole 32-bit vs. 64-bit thing is a non-issue and gets better all the time as developers update their software. A bigger issue is if a program works on Windows 7, which it should if it’s written at least somewhat properly (which is the case with 95% of software).
• Yes, even games still work quite well, especially those released only a year or two ago
• Do not simply format C: — you need to reinstall but you can copy a lot of stuff from the previous Windows installation (see below how)
• No major problems in daily use
• No major slowdowns even with Aero enabled
• If you are knowledgeable enough to worry about the above, you can overcome most problems/differences you’ll encounter
• Just do it already!

Introduction

Here’s some quick pointers and answers to questions I, a stereotypical diehard XP user, had that made me hesitate trying out the new Windows 7 RC. I didn’t immediately find such info on the webs and as a chronic luddite I didn’t even think about finding out until absolutely necessary.

My goals, as always with OS installs, were to minimize reinstalling of apps and data so that I can pretty much pick up where I left. Even though it’s common for even experienced or otherwise sane people to advocate a simple reformat of the hard drive and installing everything yet again, it’s just magical thinking to me (although it does make things simpler, but more laborous). In my experience, it takes just a bit of planning to avoid that. A tiny bit. What I did was taking backups of the most vital data (emails, most cherished boobie picture bookmarks and such) but I knew beforehand that’s not a part of plan B, even.

Then, I just installed the new OS.

First impressions

After some waiting and a reboot or two, the following is a list of what went through my head:

• I was worried about if old programs still work. Most programs you used to use in 32-bit XP should work OK. You simply drop them in C:\Program Files (x86). Generally, I think you should not have trouble with common (non-game) programs because they are not native 64-bit code but see below.
• Windows 7 didn’t remove my C:\Documents and Settings, even though for a short moment I thought it did. It’s simply relocated to C:\Windows.old, as are the Program Files folder and of course C:\Windows is there too in case you need it.
• The Application Data and the Local Settings\Application Data folders that previously were right under the user directory are now in C:\Users\kometbomb\AppData\ and C:\Users\kometbomb\AppData\Local\, respectively. I just dropped the Firefox and Thunderbird profile folders in there and here I am again with the same setup.
• I immediately noticed the way I set Viewer2 as the default program for image files no longer works in Windows 7, so this might be a minor annoyance in case someone else does it the way I do. In the Control Panel there’s a working way to change the default programs manually, although I would hate to do it for more than the 4 different extensions Viewer2 needs. It seems you have to click every extension through and select the program you want to open them. Stuff like this probably is avoided if the program is done exactly as the MS specs tell etc. but the reality is that not everyone did that.
• You will have trouble with file permissions if you were using NTFS (especially if this is your first time with more restrictive permissions), but this has always been the case if you move files around inside the same OS and the file owner is different (i.e. you but under a different OS etc.). Currently, I have had an interesting problem which causes some files being unable to open even though the folder has the permissions set as they should be. Even Explorer shows the files without the modification date and most programs report they can’t find the file (which in reality means they can’t open it even though the file is there).

  Found a solution: some (seemingly random) files are recognized as coming from another computer (i.e. my previous OS) and they have to manually be unblocked (file properties -> Unblock). I don’t know why 99% files that are in the same directory work without a question…

  Personally, I think they could have done without this kind of stuff somehow. Yeah, big boys’ OS’s have that kind of stuff but it’s just confusing if you really don’t want to know about that. After all, it’s the computer that should do the work. It’s kind of interesting how otherwise the interface is very much like something your mom would use after a bit of practice but if you just right click a file and go in the properties, there be dragons there.

Problems

After a week months of use, here’s the problems I have encountered:

• A total of two BSOD’s in a few weeks. Both times occurred when I played a video (in Windows Media Player, I mostly use Media Player Classic and there has been no problems with it). The crash happened when the video card tried to reboot itself but failed to do so (crash happened in atikmdag.sys which is responsible of the reboot stuff). Good news: I think this is related to the AVIVO technology my card uses since I have had no problems except with WMP (because I am guessing MPC won’t utilize AVIVO — this is very much a thin, optimistic hunch, though).

  Update (2009-08-14): Haven’t gotten any BSOD’s in two months or so. Additionally, my video card has rebooted a few times successfully (which is still annoying but not fatal) so I guess either Microsoft or ATI fixed the issue.

• It is not possible to mix and match 32-bit and 64-bit binaries freely. That is, a 32-bit program can’t use a 64-bit library and vice versa. Some examples when this is something that is the user’s problem, too:
  • A 64-bit media player can’t use the old 32-bit codecs. So, for some videos you’ll be using the 32-bit version of, say, Media Player Classic.
  • Let’s imagine you compile your hobby project as a 64-bit app for fun. Oops, all the libraries you are used to use are 32-bit and you for some reason can’t/don’t bother to compile them as 64-bit DLL’s. Solution: You revert back to 32-bit code.
  • Shell extensions (e.g. WinRAR’s “Extract to here…” when you right click a file and such things) of 32-bit programs that otherwise work perfectly won’t work anymore (since the extensions are DLL’s with 32-bit code in them and they can’t be used by Explorer which is not 32-bit). Solution: Use a 64-bit version of the program (which often still need you to double click on a .reg file to enable the extensions).
• Almost constant high CPU use when nothing of value is happening. The culprit was WMPNetworkSvc (I really like the new Performance Monitor that shows an average of used resources and not just the current level of use — makes it easier to catch those processes that use tons of power except when you are looking). I disabled the service in Control Panel\System and Security\Administrative Tools\Services as it sounded like it’s not useful for me (the label on the tin says it shares media across UPnP devices, whatever that means).

Overall, I conclude there will be some problems but nothing that you can’t fix. I am happy with Windows 7 and relieved the whole 32/64-bit issue was nothing but a overblown scare. Some things about the GUI I don’t like but then again it’s usually just something you have to learn to do a bit differently, not that you can’t do something anymore.

Useful tips

How to migrate your old Firefox/Thunderbird profiles

1. Install Firefox and run once so all the directories and files will be created.

2. Exit Firefox.

3. Go to C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles (AppData might be hidden, you can simply just type in the path and press return).

4. Copy the old profile directory (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\dl34875xyz to the Win7 directory above. If you have multiple profiles, just copy them all.

5. Copy C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini to C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini. Also, open the .ini with Notepad and double check the lines that say “Path=Profiles/xyz123.default” etc. are relative, i.e. that the path starts with “Profiles/“.

6. Open Firefox and it should now load your old default profile!

To migrate Thunderbird profiles, do the same for the Mozilla\Thunderbird directory.

A general way for migrating programs and settings

This should work for programs that do not use the registry to store settings. Note that this also means uninstall information will not be migrated and you may need to delete files manually. Try the below method only if you have a basic understanding what you are doing (which said I’ll add it’s not hard at all — just don’t blame me for anything you did.)

I assume the old files from the previous installation are in C:\Windows.old which should be the default.

1. Copy the program folder from C:\Windows.old\Program Files to C:\Program Files (x86)

2. Copy the settings folder from C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Local Settings to C:\UserData\Username\AppData\Roaming. You may need to find out which folder to move but generally it’s C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Manufacturer Name\Software Name

3. Create a shortcut on the desktop by dragging C:\Program Files (x86)\Software Name\Software.exe with the right mouse button on the desktop and selecting “Create shortcuts here”. Again, you need to find out which file is the executable that has to be run to run the migrated software.

4. Double click the new shortcut and cross your fingers!

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My approach is closer to the Google Search calculator feature in that the program only has two text fields, one for the expression and one for the result. It also does conversions and has user-definable functions, constants and whatnot.

Currently, the software is in alpha state (which means it works but is not finished) which I hope will not be perpetual. It is already very much usable, though.

What is left to do is that currently the software does only 80-bit floating point arithmetics (the best precision offered by x87) and displaying the result is double precision (thanks to the fact MinGW uses Windows libraries for printing floats, which have support only up to double precision). I also plan adding simple graphical features for graphing functions.

You can find Calculon (a placeholder name) on its own project page.

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Here’s another little program I wrote. It’s a tool that sits on the system tray and monitors the free space on the hard drives you specify (it works over network, too). I think it’s pretty useful when downloading a lot of stuff so you know the space will run out in six hours meaning you should do some housekeeping before going to bed. Or, you can monitor your HTPC remotely so there’s always free space for recording TV shows.

If DSMonitor notices the free disk space is under the limit you have specified, it can either show that on the tray icon (), display a popup or execute a program (so you can even send email).

Basically, it’s one of those programs I wrote pretty much for my own needs so contact me if you think something would make it more usable for you. This also means it’s not very pretty and the most convenient to use. At least it’s under 30 kilobytes in size.

Quick start

Double click on dsmonitor.exe and it will appear on the system tray. Click on the tray icon and a popup will open with info about the paths you have added to dsmonitor.ini. See the included readme for detailed info. However, here’s a quick example:

settings
  monitor
    path "C:"
    # this will simply add C: to the list
  end

  monitor
    path "D:"
    alert
      type POPUP
      threshold 100MB
      message "D: will be full really soon!"
      delay 30min
    end
    # this will add D: to the list and alert you every 30 minutes
    # if there's under 100 megabytes of free space

    # NOTE: you can add more alert sections here!
  end

  monitor
    path "E:"
    removable  # see the manual, but use this if the path is not always available
               # i.e. it's a removable drive or an unreliable network path
    alert
      type POPUP
      threshold 100MB
      message "E: will be almost full in 30 minutes!"
      time 30min
      once
    end
    # same as the settings for D: but with prediction
    # and the popup will pop up only once
  end
end

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