Peter's Blog

MSN Desktop Search has been updated: the new name for it is "MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search". I am only interested in the Windows Desktop Search bit.

• Installed it and it says it needs to reindex everything, i.e. it will be offline for a few hours.
• The options page now lets you specify file extensions to be indexed as text files so I have added .py and .pyw.
• The options also let you edit the list of file extensions that are not indexed: now you do not need to hack the registry to search for .exe and .dll files, you just remove them from the list.
• I'm not sure if it did this before but you can specify a different web search engine to MSN. I set it to:

  http://www.google.com/search?q=$w
  

  Switching from desktop search results to web search on the same search term it now goes to google.

Conclusion: useful upgrade.

..to change the year in your copyright notice?

Happy new year.

Sorted my mum out with a 17" LCD monitor with built-in TV tuner:

• Nice solid built.
• It has SCART, TV Aerial, SVideo, PC (15 pin D-type) and Stereo audio inputs (from PC to speakers).
• 1280x1024 pixel best resolution, at other resolutions the fonts look odd as columns of pixels get chopped out.
• Picture is very bright, characters look kind of thin and spindly as I had to set large fonts for mum's eyesight. Wasn't bowled over by the picture.
• TV works fine, auto-tuned itself in ok. Tee'd into a loop aerial on old portable TV it had a noisy picture but good sound. With a decent aerial feed I think it would be a very good bedroom TV.
• Comes with remote control (with batteries).
• There is a button on the remote and front panel to step between the various inputs (PC, TV, SVideo, EXT3) and it takes a while to switch from TV to PC, as you have to step through three or four other blue screens and it takes a couple of seconds for the picture to appear at each step. This was a bit annoying.
• Has teletext for nostalgia victims.
• I realise that I am typing this on my notebook with a 1400x1050 resolution 15" TFT display. I would say it was a slightly better picture, letters look crisp and smoothly detailed.

I think in conclusion that if I was buying myself a Monitor/TV I would look around to see what else was available before buying myself one of these Samsungs. It's OK but not breathtaking.

I try to put only original stuff on this site, I don't simply link to other posts I find interesting or partake in the blogosphere as such. Seems like lazy blogging to me. If I do find interesting links then I put them in my Furl profile. Furl is a handy place to store links where I can find them on laptop, home desktop or work pc and I don't clutter my bookmark folders up with stuff I rarely look at.

As wishing you a merry christmas is not an original sentiment I won't do so. Happpy boxing day.

Here is a festive picture of my daughter in her christmas pudding outfit. Parental cruelty?

It was bugging me that I could not find .exe files with MSN Desktop Search.

A quick look through the registry found the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\RSSearch\Gather\RSApp\MyIndex\Extensions\ExtensionList

This contains a list of numbers and file extensions, e.g.:

Value 0
  Name:            0
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            386
Value 1
  Name:            1
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            aps
Value 2
  Name:            10
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            chk
Value 3
  Name:            11
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            ci
Value 4
  Name:            12
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            crwl
Value 5
  Name:            13
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            dbg
Value 6
  Name:            14
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            dct
Value 7
  Name:            15
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            DeskLink
Value 8
  Name:            16
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            dir
Value 9
  Name:            17
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            dl_
Value 10
  Name:            18
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            dll
Value 11
  Name:            19
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            drv
Value 12
  Name:            2
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            AudioCD
Value 13
  Name:            20
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            dvd
Value 14
  Name:            21
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            evt
Value 15
  Name:            22
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            ex_
Value 16
  Name:            23
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            exe
Value 17
  Name:            24
  Type:            REG_SZ
  Data:            exp

I changed the entry for 'exe' (value 16) to 'exex' to hide it from the list (I didn't delete it to avoid breaking the numbering of the keys and to make it easier to change it back). I also changed the entry for 'dll' in case I want to search for a dll file (I do strange things).

I rebooted desktop search (right click on the toolbar item and exit, then launch again from start menu) and told it to index. In a minute or two I could search for *.exe and get executables! Clicking on them ran them! Bliss, happy, waiting for something bad to happen.

My justification for this being reasonable is that desktop seach can find zip files but does not try to index the contents and the zip file extension is not found in the list above so hopefully it has enough brains to just list the executable files but not look for strings inside them.

I've finally got my paint shop photo album registration problems.

• I emailed Jasc customer services and got no reply
• I emailed Digital River (the licensing people) and was asked for order number etc
• I replied with the order number and they emailed back to say they couldn't help
• I got a reply from Jasc customer support giving me a key number and password
• I tried the key and password and it gave me a Paint Shop Pro download instead of Photo Album
• I emailed to tell them this and they asked for my PSPA order number. They gave me a PSP link because I had already bought that and they found this in their database.
• I gave them the number and they emailed me another download link.

It is now installed and running with no nag screen. I tried installing it over the trial edition but InstallShield wouldn't let me, I had to uninstall the trial edition first.

This took 8 days to sort out, so if you are on the 30 day free trial, it may be advisable not to leave buying it to the last minute.

I would say that Sourceforge was the least reliable site that I regularly frequent. I'd really like to download the latest development snapshot of the libusb-win32 filter driver but I cannot connect to SourceForge. When I tried it a few days ago, I just got a message telling me the site was down for maintenance.

I'm not complaining, it's all free, I'm just frustrated.

Moral: while Sourceforge is up, grab all the files you might even need.

Hey, I'm writing a sentence per paragraph.

Been reading too much scoble (aka the dark side).

Top of today's tech issues is the news that I am now a daddy:

Victoria Jean Wilkinson, born 20th November 2004, 8lbs.

I read that there is a worry that children will sue their parents for blogging about them and infringing upon their privacy. Victoria, if you are reading this, take pity on your poor dad.

Trying to get an IoTech ADAC IO card to do something. Installing it on my pc, my network card stopped working as it had used up the last free IRQ. To get around this I pulled the sound card as I never use that anyway.

As a simple test to whether the card works I tried running the PlotterX and PlotterXPlus applications that come with it. Both die with access violations when I try to open the configuration files. I've messed around with this all morning, pulling cards, disabling drivers that use the same IRQ, reinstalling, all to no avail.

I've installed the diagnostics programs with variable results. The main diagnostics program generates lots of errors but it is not clear whether this is because it needs loopback connections.

Peeves:

• The IOTech website takes the novel approach of having no FAQ or knowledgebase, just email tech support. If I want help next week I'll give it a try.
• I have to register to download anything (documents, lastest software) which violates my privacy. Why should I register to read a sales brochure?
• All the documents are in lovable pdf format, much loved by people who never have to use them.
• The documents prattle on about DMA setup without actually saying how to set it up.
• The software is all vintage 2002.
• The vb sample programs appear to be in VB4 and won't load in VB6 as they need a message hook library that is not supplied.
• They have an out-of-the-box (tm) slogan that erroneously and annoyingly implies it will take less that a day to get the thing going.

These cards are not cheap and I've wasted a whole morning with this and it still doesn't work. My big fear is that the hardware engineers will keep specifying them.

Monday morning

Update: Downloaded latest version of PlotterX software from IOTech and installed it. I also installed the latest drivers and ADLIB software development libraries. PlotterX installed itself in a different program group (or the XP equivalent) to the original one. It still crashes when opening the .con file. BUT PlotterXPlus now works! The diagnostics still fail the power up tests.

Update 2: Message hook ocx is in the C:\Adlib\AlWdm\Vbasic folder and needs registering on the command line with:

regsvr32 MSGHoo32.ocx

Then examples run in VB6.

Monday morning is over, now we are rolling.

Now that the bayesian filter has kicked in, spamassassin is looking much more effective. 6 spams this morning, mostly caught with a 99.9% spam probability, one false negative.