Fast YouTube – Making YouTube Work as Fast as Possible

There are multiple ways to use YouTube.  You can subscribe to channels you can comment and join the YouTube community or if you are like the me you may just want to watch the video.  This applies to schools and educational settings where teachers and students find value in watching certain videos but do not need comments or suggestions for other videos / in fact these things actually distract and more importantly slow things down.  The fix for this has been created by Google itself and is called YouTube Feather.

Click here to Access Google Feather and check the box to participate in the Beta  Youtube Feather

Feather works by removing google + integration, removing comment section, removing suggested videos, and by defaulting to playing mid level video quality based on network connection.¬† It also minimizes advertising Рoverall it returns to the simplicity and core of what makes YouTube great.

Again Feather is great for use in Educational settings where users post inappropriate comments or where suggested videos that pull up with the content are off topic or just simply inappropriate.  Lets hope Google does not kill this beta and keeps it going.

youtubefeather

Original iPhone as a GoPhone from AT&T

So perhaps my iPhone 4s is no longer operational and am awaiting a new phone, which may not arrive for a couple more weeks.  To fill in the gaps in between I took my original AT&T iPhone and activated it using a GoPhone Sim Card.   No Jailbreak is needed and you can do from the phone and from a computer with web access (or Phone connected via Wifi).   Here is what worked for me.

1.  Buy a 15$ GoPhone generic Samsung flip phone from Wal-Mart.  I bought ATT because that is what the original iPhone (2007) was.

2.  Open the GoPhone and discard the phone and keep the Sim card (looks like a credit card with a little chip that pops out).

3.  Join your iPhone to Wifi and download this file.  Mobile Config (For US AT&T carriers only)

Your phone will ask you to install the settings, just click install and choose okay.

4.  Now put in the SIM card into the older iPhone (Works with Original iPhone, iPhone3g and iPhone 3gs -with older iOS)

5.  Now follow the GoPhone instructions and activate the phone but using the iPhone and using the web to activate instead of the phone.

Start here.  https://www.wireless.att.com/GoPhoneWeb/goPhoneLanding.do?method=activatePayGo

You will find your SIM number on the card that came with the GoPhone.

gophonesim

 

 

 

You will find the IMEI number on your iPhone under | Settings | General | About – then scroll down to IMEI.

imei-3

6.  Thats it now just save the phone number and put this into your iPhone settings,  Settings | Phone | My Number

7.  Make sure you add money to your go phone account,  can do it through the phone if you reboot it, or can also put money on account via the web.

https://www.myprepaidrefill.com/MobilityUSWeb/enter.do

After you have money on the account, reboot the phone or just wait few minutes and your iPhone is now a GoPhone.

 

Note:  There is no need to jailbreak or modify your phone whatsoever.

Note:  Do not activate the GoPhone Sim in the generic flip phone that comes with the package.  If you do the SIM gets locked to that phone for 6 months and will not work.  You must activate the SIM first with the iPhone or go to AT&T and get a new SIM.

 

 

Chromatic Tuner and Metronome and other Musical Tuners for Mac OS X 10.8

I was looking for a simply tuning app that a band teacher could use to play a note/tone that the band could use to tune there instruments.  There were a few paid apps in the Mac App Store but after some that work  and are free.

TapNTune (Version 1.3)  This app works well and has built in metronome, can generate tones (fork tuner) and can use microphone to tune and instrument.  Price is free.  Couple of useful hints with this program,  turn the volume up on the Tuner, also check the Extra | Audio Preferences if you want to change sound output to an Apple Tv.   Great range of notes that you can generate a tone for.

Screen Shot 2013-09-24 at 12.51.12 PM

 

Here is a simple Guitar style tuner that works with the microphone.

TuneIt.¬¨‚Ć This app doesn’t have anything special but does work pretty well.

Very small program but works.

Screen Shot 2013-09-24 at 1.06.08 PM

Lastly a Linux program called TuxGuitar.  This program has a lot more to offer then just a tuner but does have one built in under tools.

Note this version of TuxGuitar is 64 bit and will work on latest version of Mac OS X 10.8.5  (32 Bit version does not)

Tuxguitar 64 bit Mac 10.8.x

Tux is probably the most full featured of the programs but its tuning portion is pretty basic – but works.

Screen Shot 2013-09-24 at 1.10.37 PM

 

Tux Guitar Website – http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxguitar/

Tap N Tune Website – http://jnote.org/47

 

Batch Script to Recursively Delete Files in Windows based on File Types

Most version of windows do not come with a good built in utility to delete files recursively, or to delete files recursively by file type.  I ran across a situation where I needed to set an scheduled task to run that would clean out excessive .bak and .trn files in a specific location on a server.   Creating a script in linux and setting a cron job is a bit easier but with a bit of trial and error I came out with something that works well.

Here is what worked for me:

—————————————–

@ECHO OFF
cls
d:
CD\SQL DUMP
for /r %%R in (*.trn) do if exist %%R (del /s /q “%%R”)
for /r %%R in (*.bak) do if exist %%R (del /s /q “%%R”)

———————————————-

Note if you are wanting to run a recursive delete from the command line change %%R to %R,  the double %% is only needed if running as a batch file.

example running directly from command line you would use:

for /r %R in (*.bak) do if exist %R (del /s /q “%R”)

You can easily modify this script and just copy the last line and add really any file that matches this extension. (*.mp3), (*.log) etc.

Make you set the correct directory where you want this to start and do not run from the root of the drive (unless you really want to).

 

 

Mass Copying USB Flash Disk with imageUSB

This afternoon I started a process of making 300 exact copies on a 2 gig flash drive.  To copy a single disk at a time on Mac just using Finder was around 10 minutes.  So at that rate we have 300 x 10 = 3000 minutes or 50 hours of copying.  Not really going to work,  I tried a few google searches for copying multiple disk images to USB on a mac and did not really find anything that would work quickly and efficient with USB disks.  On the PC side there is a free application called imageUSB,  program works perfect and does what it says.

imageusb

Here simply created a image of the a perfect finished flash disk,  then using multiple USB hubs plugin disk and whoalah now I can do 32  at a time at 12 minutes per copy cycle.  This reduces total time to make 300 copies to just around 2 hours.

Download ImageUSB for PC Direct

 

Using generic sub 15$ dollar 10 port usb hubs I setup two PC’s doing 11 on a laptop and 21 on a Desktop. ¬¨‚ĆThis setup with two machines offset a bit gave me time to plug and unplug usb thumb drives. ¬¨‚ĆIf you ever need to mass duplicate thumb drives ImageUSB works great.

Mass Copying in Action

20usb 30usb

 

Trouble Viewing PDF’s in Safari? Blank PDF’s in Safari | Easy Fix

I have noticed a few Mac users have come upon an issue where PDF’s do not open in Safari or that they simply appear blank.¬¨‚Ć The issue is that there is an older Adobe Acrobat plug-in NPAPI-Plug-In has been installed an is no longer supported.¬¨‚Ć Even if you install a new version of Adobe Reader this older plugin remains on the¬¨‚Ć machine and browsers like Safari will attempt to use it and the users will see a blank screen.

To Fix:  Simply close Safari and then remove the plugin.  The easy way is to use spotlight search and simply type in NPAPI,  then click on show in Finder.

show in folder

Now in the list that pops up simply delete or drag to Trash any file that shows up that has npapi and the word plugin in it.

Another way to fix is to click on the Finder Smiling face,  then click on the top of the screen and choose GO | Go to Folder

In the box that pops up, type /Library/Internet Plug-Ins

gofinder

In this list that opens drag to Trash any and all files that have the characters npapi.

Screenshot of /Library/Interent Plug-Ins with older npapi plugins. Highlighted a NPAPI.plugin that needs to head to Trash.

npapi

That’s it, with these removed you can simply restart Safari Browser and PDF’s should open normally.

On a side note:  the new Firefox Version 19.0 Browser has a built in PDF viewer similar to Chrome and will open up PDF natively ignoring any plugins at all.   http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

 

Lamp Timer and Color Issues with Sony VPL-EX4

The Sony VPL-EX4 projector can be problematic when replacing the lamp.  This projector does not allow you to reset the lamp hours without entering the service mode first.  Accessing the service menu is not including in the projectors documentation and they instead suggest contacting a Sony service department.  This is silly since in normal day to day operation the lamp will only last 8-12 months (School setting), to be expected to contact a service person to put in a lamp and reset lamp hours with 30 projector units is not realistic.  Epson printers and most newer projectors in general allow you to easily reset the lamp timer through a simple menu using the console or remote.

Okay back to the Sony VPL-EX4, to access the service menu you need to user the remote and hit  ENTER | ENTER | LEFT | ENTER.  This can sometimes be a bit tricky to take effect, it seems to help to be only 3-4 feet away almost directly in front of the projector when hitting the keys on the remote.

In Service mode press the enter key until you get to a screen that says System Protect ON.  Here you can turn System Protect OFF then click DATA Reset and then restart the projector, this should clear out lamp hours.  You can also do a Hard Reset but be warned that this will cause all of the color settings to reset to values that do not work well.

IMG_2716

If you hit the Hard Reset and need to fix the colors here are the correct values  in Order starting from the first screen of the service menu.  Why these are not the defaults I have no clue but if you match your settings to mine below the picture color will look good.

Screen P1-1 (Notice you must turn ON a setting near bottom)

IMG_2708

Screen P1-2

IMG_2709

Screen P1-3

IMG_2710

Screen P1-4

IMG_2711

Screen P2

IMG_2712

Screen P3-1

IMG_2713

Screen P3-2

IMG_2714

Screen P4

IMG_2715

 

 

Smart Driver for Serial to USB 500 Series and Mac (10.7 and 10.8)

If you have an older SMART Board with a Serial to USB connector cable you may find that the newer version of SMART software does not support the device.  This is because the SMART board Driver package does not include a 64 bit driver for this device and so the board will not attempt to connect.  Luckily Smart did release a Windows and Mac driver for this specific style of devices but it is not included on the main webpage.

Here is the driver for the 500 Series SMART board Interactive Whiteboard Serial to USB cable.  To install first install the latest SmartBoard software then install the package below.

SMART Board Serial To USB Cable Driver.pkg

 

SMART USB adapter cable (Part No. USB-FRU).

smartcable

Windows 8 Atheros AR9485 Wireless Problems | Cannot Connect to Network

If you happened to buy a new laptop over the holiday seasons chances are you may have Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 wireless adapter.¬¨‚Ć I have run across three machines, 2 HP’s and one Lenova that use this wireless adapter all three laptops were unable to connect to Wi-Fi.

When connecting a generic error simply states unable to connect to network.  Unfortunately the help option simply lists very basic things to try and troubleshoot when in fact the problem is in fact the driver for device.  This problem is not apparent because if you glance in Device Manager it will appear the device is working and if you attempt to auto update the device driver it will say it already has best driver.  After a few trial and errors I found a driver that worked for this device on all 3 laptops running windows 8 64 bit.

Here is the working device driver for the Qualcomm Atheros AR9485  Simply unzip the file and run the installer and the wireless will start working.

Some of my initial thoughts on the launch of Windows 8

In general the new consumer class Windows 8 fleet of machines available at retail have good price points but still seemed to be plagued with typical Windows OEM partner problems.  These machines still have lots of junk ware installed by default, Norton trial license, Babylon Search Engines, etc etc.

I also had a machine with a track pad that stopped working and also needed a driver update.

The new Metro  interface still seems a bit jarring and unnecessary for all users,  it works well on touch but seems like Microsoft should have a toggle setting to turn it off and let the user run a traditional desktop if they desire.  Overall my two cents is that Windows 8 future is still uncertain, although I should mention it is quick, boots fast and seems very stable once all drivers are loaded correctly.

WordPress IOS app | Invalid Data Error with Untangle

If you utilize the Untangle Filter distribution and run into problems connecting to a self hosted WordPress site via the IOS App WordPress such as Invalid Data then here is the fix.   The problem is caused by the Intrusion Prevention Module.   If you open this modules settings and locate Rule 3827 usually found on page 96,97,98 or 99, you need to simply uncheck the block option.

Error may look something like this, can appear when you are syncing content or when you are trying to setup the app initially.

That is it,  I have found some users turn off the entire intrusion prevention module to get the app to work but overall just disabling the one rule is preferable as the module itself provides excellent protection for you network.

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