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When used for gaming, laptops tend to over heat, and eventually they destroy their video cards. My Alienware m15x laptop, while it seems to have good cooling, has had 4 new video cards in the last 3 years. I have wanted to use a desktop for gaming, but prefer to do most of my playing from the comfort of my recliner. Here is the start of an idea to accomplish that. Missing from the renderings are the arm that holds the monitor from the case to the right of the recliner to the monitor in front of me. As  you can see the computer case is very large. I’ve provided for a UPS in the cabinet since in my area all my computers require a UPS due to frequent power glitches that would cause an unprotected computer to reboot. Click on pictures for larger views. (more…)

AlienFX Fusion Woops

Based on a forum post, the AlienFX hardware now works, but if you use this software on Win 7 x64, there appears to be a problem.

It was indicated that the Alien Fusion component would not work, but the problem is that there is a memory leak or other problem that causes the program to apparently grow without bound. After several hours, I found that the AlienFusionController.exe was 1.7GB image size in memory. Clearly a problem. (more…)

AlienFX Head

I assume you have been following the continuing saga of the non-working AlienFX under Win7 / Vista x64.

OMG.. A fellow from the UK had a solution for his Alienware ALX-58 system. So I got his private download and it works just fine.

Here is a post that contains the downloads in a later reply that I used.

So no board to make, no more hassles and it even supports the animation of the zones that I have.

Wheew.

I can’t believe that Alienware support were completely out to lunch that they had a solution all the time.

- w

Board with Programming

After considering the previous design for an AlienFX static lighting board, I have come up with a new design that simplifies the layout and the programming of the board. The previous design used pin headers and jumpers and required resistors on the board. This design uses socket headers and is programmed by inserting resistors and wires. (more…)

AlienFX Side Light

The AlienFX Lighting feature of older Alienware desktop systems – 2006-2008 – is not supported by Alienware for Vista x64 or Windows 7 x64. These operating systems are required to support memory beyond 2.7GB or 3.x GB depending on the motherboard of the system. This means that any system that has been upgraded does not have a working AlienFX lighting feature. This was discussed this in detail in a previous post.

Since I plan to get another decade or so of use from my Alienware P2 case, I’m designing a static lighting solution for my system. By static I mean a board that mates with the existing connectors for power and LEDs, and allows setting the colors, but does not support animation, and does not require any drivers, or USB connection. Anyone with this case and a recent version of Windows or Linux, will benefit from a lighting solution. (more…)

Here’s a bad laptop hard drive I recently replaced. Since the drive is dead, I took off the label and removed the screws and cover to see the platters and arm. Don’t ever spin this drive up again, of course. Click on a picture for a larger view.

If your Jade Dynasty screen looks like this, or if any other MMO you are playing fails to find a server or update does not work, you might want to check this.

Update Screen Failed

If you see this, then you can play the game, as long as you don’t need an update. But the update process clearly won’t work. (more…)

Google has help and services for Webmasters. Among the things they provide and encourage are sitemaps. However, it’s not as complex as it all seems. WordPress and coppermine, and many other CMSs have scripts that generate these sitemaps. There are tools that run from your computer too, but these can’t know the internal structure of the site database, and so they are inefficient or don’t work for dynamic sites like WordPress and Coppermine.

With over 2000 images in my photo site, it seemed useful to generate a Google Sitemap for the Coppermine gallery. After some searching a plug-in turned up in the Coppermine Forums.

This plug-in is fairly primitive and when I tried it, it failed with an error on Google. Google produced an error about the first URI produced by the script. Also, the entire sitemap was produced as one single line, so error messages or looking at the sitemap with an editor were not user friendly.

I have repaired the script and you can find the new version by the link below. It is advertised to work for CPG 1.2.x, 1.3.x and 1.4.x. For more information, read the forum post above.

To use the script, unzip and upload it to the base coppermine directory on your site and then activate it from the browser with a URL like: http://www.yourdomain.com/cpg144/sitemap.php

Then visit the Google Webmasters Site,

1. create an account, or log in with your google email account,
2. add your site, using the Coppermine base directory, and
3. then verify your site using one of the methods provided and finally
4. point to your sitemap to tell google about it.

Here is the fixed script.

d

After using Chaos Manager calendar for the past year or so, I wanted to start with a web calendar so I could access the calendar from multiple systems. Web Calendar looks like the simplest and most reasonable free solution based on php and mysql.

After some study, writing a new import method wasn’t that hard. The enclosed zip file contains two modified php files and a new import file. It worked to import about 130 events into WebCalendar 1.0.4.
I never used repeating events, so no provision is made to import repeating events into WebCalendar.

Chaos Manager has some limitations.

• It cannot be accessed from multiple systems, although it will synch up with a PDA.
• It does not store event durations, but only an event time.
• For some reason, Chaos Manager csv files are not comma delimited but semi-colon delimited.

Download the new import code.
ChaosManagerImport.zip

Cheers,
darrell

RSS 2.0 feed for Coppermine…

I didn’t write this. Credits are in the file.
I tried to contact the author, but his site is down.
And he is greek.

I have tested this with CM 1.4.3 and it works.
To install, copy it to the coppermine base directory.

You can choose various types of feeds by using the following:

http://www.yoursite.com/coppermine/rss.php?album=xxx

where xxx is:

• lastcom – last comments
• lastup – last uploaded
• topn – most viewed
• toprated – top rated
• lasthits – recent hits
• if http://www.yoursite.com/coppermine/rss.php alone is used, then some random pictures are presented.

Edit the file to change the number of thumbs in the feed.

The script is RSS 2.0 compliant and works with feedreader.

Apologies to the author if he doesn’t like me passing this on.
I found it in his coppermine integration for joomla.

Cheers,

Coppermine RSS feeder

I’ve converted the phpBB2 forums on my site to Simple Machines Forums. Along the way I ran into some problems.

The convert.php module for conversion from other boards to SMF has at least two problems:

• A field in the board table called lastUpdated is referenced. No such field exists in RC2 versions of the table.
• A last step attempts to set the image width/height of attachment and avatar images. However, this code does not correctly set the full file path and the step fails in an infinite loop at the end of the process if there are missing avatar images.

As far as I know this is a complete fix for the problems. After running this version, the attachments correctly display as images in the posts. Missing images have width/height set to [20,20] to avoid the loop.
Fixed Convert 1.1RC2

Here’s the link back to the SMF boards: 1.1Converters

djd

OBSOLETE
See the new version

Here’s a fix that I’ve made to the phpBB2_to_smf.php converter.
I’ve done a conversion from phpBB2 2.0.18 with attachments to SMF 1.1RC2 and it appears to work. I would not say that it was thoroughly tested.
The memberlist failed without the fixes that I’ve included.

• There were field name changes in the SMF members table. im_xxx changed to pm_xxx and this caused a silent failure in the INSERT’s.
• Also the version number needed to be changed from 1.0.5 to 1.1.99 [maybe , but this works.].

You can download it here: Fix to phpBB2 to SMF converter

enjoy,
djd