deKay’s Blog

You know that there iTunes, what recently got an upgrade to version 8? I finally got round to installing it this morning. The “big thing” with this release is Genius, iTunes’ way of looking at what songs you’ve got, and using that information to recommend other songs and artists.

It’s been well documented that it makes some slightly… confused suggestions. Perhaps recommending Sepultura when the majority of your library is Kraftwerk or something. But I’ve not heard of it being actually totally stupid like it has been with me:

That’s right - Genius is telling me that I’m missing some Blondie tracks. Tracks that are RIGHT THERE in my library already. Amazing.

Finally!  I installed VB.NET on my machine at work almost four years ago, but because the apps it creates can’t be run from network shares or mapped drives (without headachey group policy changes and MSI rollouts and other nonsense) I’ve been unable to use it, instead having to rely on creaky old VB 6.

But, last month, it seems that SP1 for the .NET Framework not only fixes the problem, but doesn’t require a recompile of existing applications!

Brad Abrams : .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Allows managed code to be launched from a network share!

For the last couple of days, Outlook has been throwing up the following error:

Task 'Microsoft Exchange Server' reported error
(0x8004010F): 'The operation failed. An object could not be found.'

Googling it wasn’t much help, as there seemed to be more than 20 reasons for the fault. Emails were syncing OK, and everything else appeared to be normal. However, checking the Exchange (2003) server, and looking at the Offline Address List settings (alluded to in the majority of the search results), I found another error message. When trying to rebuild the offline address book, this came up:

There are no bindings.
Facility: Win32
ID no: c00706b6
Exchange System Manager

This gave me a bit more to go on, and thanks to this page, I eventually found this solution on Microsoft’s website.

Basically, I deleted the old offline address list, created a new one, pointed it at the Default Global Address List, then waited a short while for the servers to catch on to the change. I could then set the new offline address list as the default, and then rebuild it.

Then it was a case of waiting for the next list sync (I triggered it by changing the update interval for the offline list to a custom one forcing an update in the next 15 minutes) and then quitting Outlook on my machine, reopening it, and then downloading the address book from Tools > Send/Receive > Download Address Book…

Phew!

Gamestracker changed the way their site works recently, so I’ve updated my Firefox search plugin to make it work again. You can get it from this page here.

Chrome, the new web browser from Google, is very nice. It’s quick, it’s low on resources, and it’s pretty slick in general. There are a few bugs (like certain links can crash it), and there’s a nasty security problem in that your stored passwords aren’t protected in any way. Oh, and there’s no Mac version yet. However, once they’ve sorted these issues out, I might make the switch.

In traditional Google Humour style, Chrome is also full of easter eggs. For example, type “about:internets” into the URL bar.

In addition, if you right-click the bar at the top and choose Task Manager, you get this:

Chrome: Stats for Nerds

Click “Stats for nerds”, and you get… stats! For nerds! Stats that also show you have Chrome’s resource usage stacks up against other browsers you might have running…

Chrome: Browser stats

I managed to get the borked PC in my last post working, only to find it riddled with viruses and spyware. Running a spyware scan revealed the following:

Casino 777 Spyware

I was given a PC to repair today, and look at what happens when you turn it on. Amaze!

Browsershots runs your supplied URL through a metric plethora of browsers, on assorted platforms, and then provides you with screengrabs on how it looks! They seem to have a bank of virtual machines doing the real actual work, and you are placed in a queue, but it’s certainly easier than installing all the OSes and browsers yourself.

I was surprised to see that this very blog not only broke on some systems, but actually killed the browser. Now that’s power!

Play Asia started selling these recently. They look like a Megadrive variant of the many Famicom “famiclones” out there, but they’re not - they’re officially licenced by Sega! And they’re really cheap too, coming in at under £20. You get 20 games built into the unit, but it also has a cartridge slot to play original (and forthcoming re-released) cartridges. I tested it with quite a few games of varying geographic origin, and aside from the UK version of Street Fighter II SCE crashing, I didn’t have any problems.

Anyway, if you want one, get thee over to Play Asia. They even come in green and blue!

And still the netbooks keep coming! They previously concentrated on cost, but now they’re adding style. See:

No word on specs or price yet, though.

Dell to launch ‘Eee PC beater’ today | Register Hardware