This little 5 axis cnc machine is just too cool not to post about it.

June 25, 2015

Although it's not here yet, it's definitely a very cool little machine. Even if it's just for small parts.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1090944145/pocket-nc-the-first-5-axis-cnc-mill-for-your-deskt

CamStudio adds plenty of adware to the installer...

June 24, 2015

I was doing a bit of cad and the program is not doing what I want it to do. So I thought I get this software installed to try and get a video of the problem so that I can pass this along to that company. Unfortunately while installing this camstudio software which is open source by the way, I didn't notice how they have made all the windows look like the very first on that you agree for the licence. I knew they started adding this crap to the software which is something I totally hate and I don't care how good any software is. If you like to add crapware to your software like this, I have no respect for you, sorry. I thing this is the worst thing you can do to any software. Yes I also understand this is one way to get paid, but sneaking crap like this in the software is just beyond old. So now I have this other problem to figure out before I can move on to what I was originally doing, thanks a lot! So I thought I write on this to make sure others don't get caught off guard. So I hope this helps and I guess it's time to go look for a different program that doesn't have this crap. Please feel free to post any suggestions on the comments.

 Here's the very first install window. Nothing weird on here. Notice the green button below.

 This next screen looks fine too, it's just the license agreement...

 Now here's the part I missed. Look how small that other software name is. Of course I missed that since the whole bottom looks pretty much like the first. I know better but the truth is, this can happen to the best of us. I'm writing about it so that you hopefully will be reminded to be more careful and slow down your horses when installing any software.

 Here's the next screen with this other software. Same look and feel at the bottom.

 Okay, so this one was more in your face and I caught it because of it. But that doesn't matter as I already agreed on the previous two which you'll see are the worst anyway.

 So after cancelled that, the installation continues.

 Here's what I saw right after under my software uninstall window. The nasty bugger.

 Here's what happens after you open your browser.

 Here's what it looks every time after that.

 So I did the basic uninstall first and this one went out.

Unfortunately I wasn't having much luck with the browser but I found this in there.

 Interestingly enough, I also found this other weird thing about chrome. I could not delete the yahoo search for the life of me.

I accidentally managed to take out the google search so I have to go back and look at that.  In short, now I got some of this crap still on here that I need to go back and clean.

So to  whoever makes is the one adding this crap to the camstudio, thanks for the crap!

Whatever happen to the days when programs were actually really good and just did what they were meant to do.

 So I kind of figured out that you need to make a different search engine the default, then you can delete the yahoo. I also wen ahead and deleted all those sites at the bottom and added the google. com site, but it won't show up on the top window so I can choose this. What the heck?

Okay, now for some solutions...to save you a bit of time with this junk.
https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v110202383_EndUserProfile_en_us
http://keonesoftware.com/guides/dregol/

I just did a quick search to see what else may be around and since there's not much around, here's a quick and dirty but effective suggestion. If you have one, set up a tripod and use your phone or a regular video camera. If your camera supports recent video files, then all you need to do is upload it without even screwing around with formatting files. Of course, this should work well for short clips that you may want to make like what I needed this for in the first place. I think I will go this route and just save me the headache of these programs unless I find something useful again. I just thought I throw it out there in case you really need to do this. This would probably have saved me the last two hours I have been using to fix this problem but there you go. Again, it's quick and dirty but should work just fine unless you use a really crappy camera which I don't recommend you use unless you want your viewers to hate your or just forget about you.

Other software you can try instead of this  is HyperCam. I have also added this to the software page. http://hyperionics.com/

Windows 2012 labels network cards opposite of what the board manual and Xen Server say.

June 18, 2015

I decided to finally start setting up the test vm on my vm server. As I was doing this I noticed that windows labels the network cards the opposite of what the manual shows. Normally it won't matter but when you're trying to set up static ips it's good to know what's what. So I labeled the back to match the board manual. I checked the ip I set up on the nic and it sure shows eth0 which is correctly labeled as the first nic on the manual. So go figure. Needless to say this tiny difference can make a huge impact, but this is why I like to test things on my own first. So I'll leave it alone and go with what the other two state. There's no need to get crazy about it, but it's a good thing to know.

 Here in the USA we read from left to right. In China, it's from right to left if I remember correctly. So with that in mind you can see the two letters on the top of the nics in the manual. F is left and H is right.

 Now if you look at this page, you see f as being LAN2 and h as being Lan 1.

 The Xen server shows I'm connected to eth0 which is the Intel nic. The pictures are angled due to my lamp glare.

 Now you can see that eth1 is now the realtek nic on the same server.

Now I get to windows and this is what I see. It says I'm connected to the realtek nic 2 and not the first which is the intel and what the Xen and board manufacturer says it is. So you see, no, I'm not making this up. You should know that despite this everything works, but it could give you a nice headache though.

So either Xen and the manufacturer of the board has this wrong or Microsoft has it backwards. Keep in mind that this is the 2012 trial version of the server I'm testing. So let's see what happens.

Firefox 36.0.4 Freezes screen when I open up facebook...

March 22, 2015
I have noticed this freezing for a moment every time I go and open the facebook page. The browser just freezes, then it opens up the secure page. I thought I make my post as I have been noticing this every time I do this. I have just reinstalled the OS and programs and updates on a brand new hard drive too so there's not much going on there. I noticed it even more as I was just making a 3D print and when I did this, even that print froze which I thought...well there goes that hour of printing. Once this unfroze the print continued but they really need to figure out what is going on with this thing. The computer has 4 Gigs of memory so I know that's fine.

Hard Drive Tools

March 14, 2015
I got this hard drive that has bad sectors which I didn't even know it had. I thought this was a good time as any to look into some proper tools to check this. Well at least for this one drive I have. I'll add more as I need or find them.

The current drive I want to check is a Hitachi 500GB 2.5 drive. This is a regular 500Gb 7200rpm drive.
Here are the tools I found for this purpose. You can also get the manual for it in the same place.
http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads
I will try this out and see how it goes. I'll update this once I am done testing it out.

Unfortunately I didn't get too far with this tool. I think they are pretty outdated from what it looks like. I got the program installed but I get nothing. It will not see any drive or anything for that matter.

I finally got in contact with Hitachi and they suggested I plug the drive directly to my computer since I have it plugged into the esata port. I want to take a closer look at this so I decided to do a bit of search for a few more tools that may come in handy. I have not used any of them yet so I'll check those out. Here's what I found so far.
Although the article is a bit old, some of the programs are still in use today.
http://www.gfi.com/blog/top-20-free-disk-tools-for-sysadmins/

Here's an article on testdisk
http://www.knowthenetwork.com/2009/02/hard-drive-recovery-mad-eaesy-with-testdisk/

Here are a few others
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-portable-recovery-tools/

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/690-69-fixing-damaged-sectors-reformating-disk-utility

I remember trying out some utilities years back and they actually made things worst, so take these with a grain of salt until you actually test them yourself. This has always been one of those things that you need but they take time, patience and a good program or you will end up losing your information instead.


March 18, 2015
I just finished taking apart my case and connected the drive directly to the spare sata port inside the motherboard. I had a feeling this would not work but since the support at Hitachi suggested I thought I give it one more try anyway. In short as you can see this program is pretty old and doesn't work. You can see that my system does work and sees the drive fine, but this program does not. Heck I can even open the drive like any other drive whether it's internal or external. So they really need to figure out something with their tools as it's pretty outdated from what I can tell and doesn't work. It's all they show on their site too.

My setup for this drive connected directly to the motherboard.

Here's the program opened again and with the other drives showing what I can actually see. So in short, I can't use their program because it doesn't pick up anything. So I'll put this back and connect it through my esata port since I know that also works. I'll start testing other tools to see what if anything works, but that is it for now unfortunately. This of course is a problem because if the manufacturers software doesn't work, you're going to be in a pickle until you can find something that may also work.

Online Speed Tests

March 13, 2015

I need to change isp, again so I thought test before I get cut off. No flash needed with these so cool! Although who knows how accurate these things are, but at least it gives you an idea and they look to be in the range of what the isp says I'm getting.
http://speedof.me/
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

Sata Cables

March 10, 2015

I have been looking a bit more into sata cables and just wanted to find out a bit more in terms of their performance since my new motherboard includes two with the 6Gbs labels on it. I went to the local stores and found a few but most if not all were not actually labelled on the cables themselves. So I was just curious about this since I also want to get some shorter cables, but that seems a bit hard to find for some odd reason. My cases are small and use mini itx boards so I really don't need the long cables. I also need a one or two righ angle versions. In any case I found this article about cables. However, I guess it depends on what the cable is being used for.

Take cat5/6/7 network cables for example. Yes, all of these cables physically exist now. I have installed cat 5 and cat 6 myself, and just held the cat 7 at at store the other day. I also spoke with an engineer about network cables once and I was also shown some of their cable testing areas/machines, so I agree that not all cables are created equal and that can make a huge difference. But then again I like to look a these sort of thing since this is the backbone of your information. Most people don't even think about this stuff.

In any case, I would really prefer the motherboard manufacturers included as many cables as the board has ports so that you don't have to go looking and matching or mismatching cables.

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SATA-3Gb-s-vs-6Gb-s-Cable-Performance-Revisited-183/

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/your_sata_cable_slowing_down_your_data_transfers_max_pc_investigates 

Here's the difference in sata speeds.
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

My new motherboard came with these nicely labelled sata cables.

 The blue is a new monoprice right angle cable I just got and it's not labelled.

They both have the metal clips that hold the cable in and I didn't have any of this type and really like the built in clips now. The monoprice is also a bit longer as you can see which also made for a more painful install in my mini itx case. So this also makes a difference as I just found out.


Here are a few variations of these network cables. As you can see all cables are not created equal.