Today was an interesting day: I spent most of it at Kennedy Krieger hospital in Baltimore chatting with MRI technicians. I observed a research project involving MRI scans of the brain of a healthy young woman. I then had a chance to view for myself the files that MRIs created.

.REC files are compressed graphic-and-data files that you can't open in multipurpose software, but a fellow called Chris Rorden created a handy analytical program called MRICro that does the job nicely. I can't pretend to understand a lot about brain function and how MRICro's tools help analyze it, but I did take advantage of its ability to export scans to a series of JPEG files.

I then slapped the JPEGs into Windows Live Movie Maker and turned an hour's work into a sub-2-minute video. There are 271 frames in this video, representing three different MRI points of view.

Brainscans.wmv Watch on Posterous

Sequence 1 is from the side. Sequences 2 and 3 are from the top. Sequence 4 is the longest and most interesting: It's from the front, and you can see the tip of the nose emerge, followed by all the inner workings of the skull, out through to the back of the head.

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For my sins, I maintain a lot of computers operated by a lot of children, both in and out of school. The result? A whole mess of online game software gets installed that messes with the PC in the living room (or classroom). Sometimes it's deliberate malware, sometimes it's just terrible coding, but the result's the same: Kids' computers get hosed more frequently than most.

Here's my latest mess, and how I fixed it.

"The internet isn't working" said young Gen.

"Is that Blockland you're playing? That's an Internet game." said I

"But my Web isn't working." she replied,

And it wasn't. For the non-kids in the audience: I could ping Google.com (Start, Run, CMD, enter the words "ping google.com" without the quotes, and press Enter), but I couldn't raise google.com on Internet Explorer, Mozilla, or Chrome.

I ran through the usual troubleshooting regime: I repaired the wireless connection. No dice. I disabled the wireless connection and completely uninstalled it (Right click on My Computer, select Properties, Hardware, Device Manager, and right-clicked the Networking sections' Wireless option, and selected Uninstall.) I restarted the computer, the wireless connection reinstalled itself. Still no dice.

Then I turned to the dweeb squad on the Internet, and got my response: "Fix the TCP/IP stack."

So I went back to 11-year-old Gen and told her "Fix the TCP/IP stack."

So she did this:

1. Open a command prompt (Start, Run, CMD, OK).

2. Reset the WINSOCK defaults by entering this (followed by pressing the Enter key): netsh winsock reset catalog

3. Reset the TCP/IP stack defaults by entering this (followed by pressing the Enter key). netsh int ip reset reset.log

4. Reboot the PC.

...and presto! The Internet wasn't not working anymore.

 Tell your 11 year old to read this blog next time he or she says "The Internet isn't working." It'll serve the little tyke right.

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You'd expect a media-aware site to handle things like Quicktime and MPEG and Windows Media format, for sure. But Ogg Video--OGV--anyone? Now that's impressive.

NASAWF-AirplaneDesign.ogv Watch on Posterous

globalpulse20070830_350kb.mp4 Watch on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

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More than ten years ago, I set up a site at DirectNIC that has been serving me well ever since. It was nice to know back in the go-go years of the Internet boom and subsequent bust, and boom and bust and so on, that there was a set-it-and-forget-it option out there, and DirectNIC's bannerless hosting option was it. Fifteen bucks a year to register and host a basic Web site (with POP email or email forwarding) was pretty good; and an extra fifteen to take the banner ad off the top was even better.

That era is about to end.

I just got notice that bannerless hosting is being phased out in October. We old faithfuls must now decide what hosting option we want...if we want to stick with DirectNIC at all. The email notification was mighty cagey about actual costs, because as it turns out the cheapest option to replace the $15 bannerless hosting is a budget plan for customers that only have 1 bannerless hosted domain, offering about the same features (100 MB of disk space, 10GB of bandwidth transfer and 1 pop3 account) for $22.95.

Meh. I'll probably migrate to that plan before the October deadline, and take advantage of the current agreement ("you will not be charged until the current bannerless hosting renewal date") and see where to take my bannerless domain. I'm sure there's something better out there nowadays.

Any suggestions?

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Transfer a domain to MyDomain.com for $7.61, they say, but they tack on 18 cents in "ICANN fee" making it $7.79 This is a somewhat misleading practice started by the blustering leader of the global registrar business, GoDaddy, and it's sadly becoming a standard practice.

Beware the price with the *asterisk by it!

Nonetheless, this is a pretty good offer (from ICANN-accredited registrar Dotster); one year renewal included. 

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But how does Posterous handle posted PDFs?

Here's how!

9_GetReady.pdf Download this file

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One blog; three media types; five file types.

We got your MP3s, your gallery of JPEGs, your FLV, your MPG, and your WMV, all in one place.

Does Posterous handle this with aplomb?

You have your answer. 

tHE_wEREWOLF_vS._THE_vAMPIRE_wOMAN_(1971)_-_tHEATRICAL_tRAILER.FLV Watch on Posterous

Vincent_Price-death_by_..._.mp3 Listen on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

The_Shins.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Roar.wmv Watch on Posterous

Roar.mpg Watch on Posterous

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Totally Wired (Live) by The Fall Listen on Posterous

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GoDaddy is running a special discount on .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, and .US domains until August 18th. To get 30 percent off your total, go to http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-409675-10815550 and at checkout, be sure to enter the coupon code fb30tld

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We feel sure that Cisco’s Clean Access Agent is trying to report some kind of error here.

But whatever can it be?

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Ever been at a Web site ordering a surprise gift for someone special, only to hear the door being opened behind you…by that someone special? I have. It’s hair-raising. That’s why I learned the Window+D trick. Hold down the Windows key, press D, and everything opened on your desktop gets minimized. Press Window+D again, and it goes back as it was.

This trick isn’t foolproof. People tend to get suspicious when you minimize everything all at once, so they’ll know something’s up. But unless your special someone is especially suspicious, it’ll just keep them wondering what the treat’s going to be. So if you use this, you’d better make sure you’re planning something really special.

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It's amazing what a $120 Aiptek 3-D camera can do. Grab your Red/Blue anaglyph 3-D glasses and get ready to DUCK!

True, the white balance is off, that's a given, unfortunately. But when you consider that the next cheapest 3D video/still camera is about twice the price and doesn't handle red/blue shift 3D so much as the NVIDIA and TV-based version, this is pretty good. At least, the guy who broke into my car to steal my Aiptek seemed to think so. If you see one going cheap in a pawn shop around Baltimore...buy it up! It was a fun camera to play around with. 

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I usually slip the hard disk out of the old machine and into a USB drive reader hooked up to my production machine. Then I get all the personal data off the machine. It's usually stored in three locations:

The three folders are stored (in Vista or Windows 7) under Users or (in XP and before) Documents and Settings, in the profile of whoever uses the machine. They are Favorites (for Web sites bookmarked in Internet Explorer), Desktop, and My Documents.

Copy these three folders and most of the time, you've got everything people want.

Unless, of course, they don't use Internet Explorer. This morning, I got a dying disk from a fellow who uses Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and has a unique set of bookmarks for each. Gee...thanks Will! Anyone who knows these browsers well knows you can back up and export bookmarks and other settings...but that's not much help when you can't boot into Windows and launch the programs.

Here's where these browsers store their bookmarks and other settings:

Chrome:

%APPDATA%\Google\Chrome\

Firefox:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

In Windows 7, %APPDATA% is the folder \Users\<username>\AppData\Local
In XP, %APPDATA% is the folder \Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data

Mozilla bookmarks are stored in a file called places.sqlite. If you can't find it in the Profiles folder, do a diskwide search for it.

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To revisit this issue again: The otherwise excellent Skype service really lets itself down in its public support forums. Starting around January 20th, their boards were abuzz with problems surrounding Skype 5.0's Facebook integration feature. A server setting they instituted around then caused some very irritating behavior for Skype users in some corporate networks.

After helping dozens of people at Crash Central to turn off the rain of cascading error messages, I mentioned it to an editor at PC World who asked me to write it up for the PC World BizFeed site.

I did, and within hours, Skype claimed to have fixed the problem.

Here's what Raul said on the Skype support site:

==========
This error has been fixed by us.

You do not need to upgrade your Skype for it, we did the fix on our infrastructure side.

Thank you for raising it here.
==========

...and here's what I say in response: How come nothing's changed, then?

Before getting ready to tell the 100-plus people I support that they can now turn Skype's Facebook integration back on if they like, I tried it out myself. The windows continue to cascade when content filters block Facebook. The CPU usage jumped to maximum. Everything slowed down. In short, things are no different from how they were a month ago.

I'd love to say what Skype wants me to say--that it's all cool, guys, just go ahead as usual--but I can't. That's because I'm the guy they come to when things don't work. And guess what? They still don't work.

Ball's back in your court, Skype. Show them you're as brilliant as I know you can be.

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In a laudable attempt at making your social networks merge into a monolith, the latest iteration of Skype integrates nicely with Facebook. Except when it doesn't. Corporate filters that block social networking sites prevent Skype from getting to Facebook. Skype 5 hasn't been programmed to handle that, so it tries again. And again. And again.

Here's how to stop it:

1. Brace yourself for multiple browser windows.
2. Launch Skype
3. Use Alt-Tab to get through the spawning windows to Skype.
4. Click on the Facebook tab in the right pane of the Skype window.
5. Click on the link labeled Don't Show Facebook In Skype.

This will halt the flow. You'll probably want to restart your system to flush the detritus. But you'll be golden.

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This file stores all the email addresses you use regularly, so that when you start to send an email to one of your friends called Dave, for example, you only need to type the first few letters, and up comes every Dave you send email to.

Unless, that is, you get a new PC.

Here's how to move the email autocomplete data to a new PC. First of all, make sure Outlook is NOT running, then follow these steps:

1.On your old PC, the one with the saved AutoComplete names, hold down the Window key and press F. This brings up the search box. Enter *.NK2 as a search term. It'll find a file called Outlook.NK2, or a file with your login name.NK2, probably in the \Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder, or the \Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook folder in Windows 7.

2. Copy the file to a memory stick or email it to yourself.

3. On your new computer, repeat the process in Step 1 to locate the sparsely populated NK2 file. If in doubt, navigate to the folders in Step 1 and see what you find. The AutoComplete file may not have the same name as on the old system, but the extension is the giveaway.

4. Rename the new system's NK2 file (outlook.NK2.bak, for example). Then copy the one from your old machine into the same folder.

5. Power up Outlook to check it works alright.

Presto! The deed is done!

Potential problems:
Guess what? If your file settings are in the default "Microsoft nanny" mode, the Outlook folder may be hidden ("for your protection"). To unhide hidden folders in Windows XP, hold down the Window key and press E to bring up My Computer. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options. Click the View tab, and then burrow through Advanced settings, Hidden files and folders, and click Show hidden files and folders.

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Back in 1947, a team working with Harvard's Mark II computer pulled a dead moth out of the machine, and with a flash of engineer humor, taped it into the log with the caption "First actual case of bug being found."

People who don't know how to read properly assumed that this incident introduced the term "bug" to the computing world--but this old word for a monster had been used in engineering for more than a century before anyone pulled a moth out of a machine at Harvard. But even though it's not a significant day in terms of etymology (or entomology), we thought that September 9 was a good day to celebrate software errors.

We settled on 11 massive failures and a few notable mentions. Check out the article at Computerworld.com. It's called Epic Fail, for obvious reasons.

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