Mildly Hurtful Sarcasm

Meaningless ranting, just like everybody else.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

I can't run in my dream

A couple nights ago, in my dream, I tried to run home, and I couldn't. I tried to pick up pace, but something was weighing me down. I remembered that happening, in my other dreams, but it didn't occur to me that I was in a dream at that time.

It's strange that that happened. What could have caused that? My brain could not generate new surround images fast enough? Or that I am really so out of shape my muscles were sending signals back that running was not possible?

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Friday, May 15, 2009

Botched mouse

Yes, I think some Apple products look good. I thought the Mac Mini had nice construction, basically because it is wrapped around by a thick strip of brushed aluminum (second only to bacon) that gives it a sturdy, solid feel.

Employing some substantial aluminum casing, and with a glossy black framed bright screen, I admit the iMac has an enticing almost futuristic cold industrial look. The keyboard that comes with is a small thin plate matching material. And the mouse, the mouse... uh... the mouse... where is the aluminium mouse? How come it is that translucent white plasticy thing from the last generation? Botched bundle? Ran out of foil at home?



Apple - it's mind boggling.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I got writing pad custom.exe to work on Vista

I got Ruier's software/driver (custom.exe) that came with my handwriting pad (Legend LX-WRP-1) to work on Vista, finally, here is how...

Many years ago I bought this handwriting pad for cheap. It had apparently low quality software, cause even on Windows XP it had alot of problems: it assumed administrative rights for all users. To get it to work with limited user accounts, I had to make the entire ruier directory writable to all users. But at least it worked after that.

Recently I plugged it into my Vista machine, and at first it acted as if the driver wasn't recognized. No matter what I scribbled on the pad, nothing showed. Soon I realized I need to calibrate it from its configuration window found in Control Panel.

Now, I can draw 1 stroke but custom.exe (the main program) would just crash after that. I hook up the debugger and tried to debug, and found this call stack

0012fba8 031e0352 0x0
0012fbd0 031dfc1b PPGHOST!DSS+0xd112
0012fbf4 75f40f96 PPGHOST!DSS+0xc9db
0012fc0c 776399ce USER32!__fnHkINLPMOUSEHOOKSTRUCTEX+0x35
0012fc4c 75f3bc77 ntdll!KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x2e
0012fc78 031ea80c USER32!NtUserCallNextHookEx+0xc
0012fcac 75f2f794 PPGHOST!SE+0x9e2c
0012fd24 75f30008 USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x14b
0012fd88 75f25a2c USER32!DispatchMessageWorker+0x322
0012fd98 0040448f USER32!DispatchMessageA+0xf
0012fe30 77645b87 Custom+0x448f
0012fec0 75f29791 ntdll!RtlpLowFragHeapAllocFromContext+0xa6f
0012fee8 0040104b USER32!RegisterWindowMessageA+0x44
0012fef0 00407329 Custom+0x104b
0012fefc 004050b0 Custom+0x7329
0012ff88 76704911 Custom+0x50b0
0012ff94 7761e4b6 kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk+0xe
0012ffd4 7761e489 ntdll!__RtlUserThreadStart+0x23
0012ffec 00000000 ntdll!_RtlUserThreadStart+0x1b


I could tell it was referencing some mouse hook struct, probably a callback to mouse events, but other than that, no help there. All I knew was it crashed in ppghost.dll. I brought up Microsoft Dependency Walker to try to gain some insight on ppghost.dll... oh well, almost all of its exported functions are just 2 to 3 letters long - someone tried very hard to obfuscate the code. I had to try something different.



I noticed something strange though. It only crashed when I started writing. It won't crash if I had just changed the settings. However, those settings were never saved. Normally settings are saved in the registry so I pulled up Process Monitor to trace registry activities; didn't find anything. But I noticed this application uses alot of .ini file. So I switched to look for file activities.

Bingo.



When it started up, it was trying to read WinPenJR (presumably Win Pen Junior?? another company's product?) directory under Windows directory, which did not exist. I went ahead and created C:\Windows\WinPenJR directory, and my handwriting pad started working.

I suspect there is some piracy going on here. Ruier itself looks like a shady company even from its own web page (I was trying to find updated driver). Though its binaries are all Ruier branded, the file names (custom.exe, WinPenJR) are identical to other products. Unless you tell me they are OEM (doubtful, cause it's crappy)... it smells funky.

What do you think?

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Monday, May 04, 2009

New new computer

Last year, while I was at my brother's place, his PC spontaneously restarted (that's the term we developers use instead of crash! in front of customers). It happened a couple more times which resulted in my brother swiftly declaring the need for a new computer.

I convinced him to try out a new power supply first. He bought a very expensive 600W one, no help there. He is an impatient person; fearful for a long road of diagnostics, he went off an bought a new PC.

That could not have been a better thing, cause that meant, new computer for me.

From experience, I know that other than the mother board, PC parts hardly ever fail. I had an extra chassis laying around, and my brother wanted to retain his hard disk (and the data within it), so I took the mother board (with CPU and memory on it) and the power supply back home with me.

I transferred the new parts to my existing PC, reinstalled the OS, and ran it for hours, no crash. I celebrated for my new PC.

Unfortunately, sure enough, a few weeks later, it started hanging, and crashing, sometimes, same symptoms my brother experienced. The mother board was actually bad, I knew it, but I wasn't sure exactly in what way.

I installed the Intel (it was an Intel board) utility that monitors chassis condition (such as voltage, fan speed, etc) and noticed the CPU temperature was going exceedingly high: not surprising cause my case was from my Pentium II PC, it had no ventilation at all.

A new case ran anywhere between $35 to $150, I didn't want to spend that kind of money for an old new computer... so I applied new thermal grease to the CPU fan and installed an extra fan at the back.

No help there either.

I had no choice. My mother was starting to complain about not being able to check her portfolio online, God forbid. So I set out to buy a new motherboard.

I got a Biostar board from Fry's for $60, a fairly economical choice but the down side was, my brother's 1GB of DDR won't fit on the new board, the new board takes DDR2. Luckily, Fry's had the DDR2 on sale, $5 after rebate for 4GB. I don't really need that much, but it's only $5, what the heck.

I got home, screwed on the new mother board, connected all the peripherals, hard disks, CD-ROMs and what not, spent hours making sure I do a good job, and behold, when it was time to connect the power, schmuck! the new board requires the 24-pin power supply, my brother's was a 20-pin.

I had already spent $65, how much more do I need to spend to have an old new computer? After all, I gave up my previous computer (which worked very well) in lieu of my brother's slightly faster system, but for all I got from him (mother board, CPU, memory and power supply), it turned out I could only reuse the CPU.

But I had no choice, again. Fry's I went. Though blessed I was, the Raidmax Sirius, (a gamer-ish kind of case) was on sale. It was cool because it came with a 500W power supply, for $30 only! That's even cheaper than most 350W power supplies with the 24-pin connector that I needed.

I went home happy. I screwed the new mother board onto the new case, slided in my hard disks, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs and floppy drives, dropped in my brother's CPU, connected the power supply. Cool, it booted up fine though the BIOS didn't like one of my older CD-ROM; I could live with that.

It took a couple of days cause several devices had compatibility issues. But in the end, virtually everything worked out. I am not the superficial type but this case appeals to me. It's made of brushed aluminium that gives it a hard industrial look.



It has fan speed, CPU temperature, and hard disk activity -o- meters in the front that glow.



The side fan lits up in some mystic purple when power on, and shines through wicked cut out decor patterns on the side and on the top of the chassis, which makes it look even cooler under the desk in the dark.

At the end of the day, it costed me $100, 1/3 of what I would have paid for a brand new PC. And finally, I have my new new computer.

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