there was a rattle in my x5 trunk area that drove me nuts. everytime i heard the rattle, i felt like someone was sticking a needle in temple. i finally found the answer on roadfly.org. it turns out that the two rubber stops – located on the rear of the c-pillars – needed to be adjusted. open the rear latch and you’ll see the two stops about a 1/3 down from the roof line. using a torx 25, unscrew the torx screw, then unscrew the stops so that they extend out a bit more. i turned each of the stops about two turns. the trunk closes with an even more solid thud now.
most importantly though, the sound is gone. i can’t tell you how happy this makes me.
Remeber the good ol’ days when ftp programs were free and reliable like Cuteftp and wsftp? Those days are loooong gone. I tested many ftp programs and they were all garbage… WSftp and Cuteftp was bloated with a bunch of useless crap. Well the search is over for me. I ended up finding a ftp client thats simple and best of all it works unlike the two mentioned up above.
Turbo FTP
http://www.turboftp.com/
Carshooter recommended a screen protector for my psp by Gamemate. I have not seen the protector yet but from what carshooter said it supposed to be pretty bad ass.
Here is a picture of the screen protector shot by carshooter.
The place this can be purchased is Hyper game action: (310) 444-1907 ask for June. Here’s the address if you want to go pick it up:
11301 W. Olympic Blvd #104
Los Angeles CA, 90064
I also found it on good ol’ liksang.com for $13.95 shipped.
More to come.
Try uninstalling all the extensions – try unistalling the tab prefs first.
when you need more control over transparencies on the web (gradations for example), go with png and an alpha layer
creating a transparent image using alpha channels.
basic steps:
- create logo on it’s own layer
- double-click base layer so that it’s a regular layer. delete all contents
- add alpha channel in ‘channels’ tab (might not be necessary?)
- save for web, png24
i love my ique 3600, but one problem i always had was navigating the small icons while driving. common things i would use all the time would be:
- find recent locations
- create waypoint
- route home
- stop navigation
aside from the small icons, some steps would require 2-4 taps on the screen, and while driving 60mph+, isn’t always easy (let alone safe). so this program is basically a launcher that is fully scriptable. map the launcher to a hardware button (i have mine set to the record button) and create your scripts.
install is straightforward, download and info here.
some notes:
- installing the sample script requires a little extra work if you are using outlook to sync and not palm desktop:
- – create a new category in ‘memos’ in palm desktop. i called mine ’scripts’
- – import the .mp4 file into palm desktop
- – copy and paste each memo file from palm desktop to outlook notes. i couldn’t figure out how to copy all at once, so i just did one at a time.
- – once all of them are in outlook, select all of the scripts and assign a category to it.
- – now sync to your ique, fire up fastfinger, and you’ll see all of the buttons and macros.
an absolute indispensable tool now that i have it. it’s freeware, so if you find it useful, please donate.
assuming that your monitor is already calibrated, do the following to calibrate an epson 1280:
- turn off all color-profiling in printer software: go to printer properties and under ‘mode’ select ‘custom’. select ‘no color adjustment’ may want to select 1440 dpi printing as well. it’s helpful to save your new settings as a preset.
- in photoshop, go to print preview, color management. under print space, select the paper you are printing on (select the paper you are printing on in printer properties as well). make sure you have the profiles installed! i found some here.
Some additional notes:
- for ilford classic pearl paper, choose ‘colorlife paper’ for paper selection in printer properties.
- in photoshop, in print preview, under ‘printspace’, for profile, choose: epson stylus photo 1290 colorlife p.p. (if you choose the profile from ilford, you’ll get a green cast).
- intent: perceptual, check ‘use black point compensation’
a couple of options are out right now to convert video files for use on the psp. i wanted to convert a couple of dvds to the psp’s .mp4 format and used the following:
DVD Decrypter to rip the .vob file
Use this guide for settings (take note of the splitting of vob files): http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/psp/file/psp_mp4_convert.txt
A couple of encoding options (3gp, Rapiz, and PSP Video 9). I chose Rapiz after trying the others. Video 9 has a great interface, but I didn’t see an option to maintain correct aspect ratios. 3gp is great if you need to fine tune settings. Rapiz, imo, has the best balance of all three. Download it here
Here are the settings I use:
- Video Quality: Low (384 kbps/Q10)
- 2 pass
- Audio Quality: 32 kbps, stereo
- Video Resolution: 368×208 (for widescreen movies). I haven’t tried non 16:9 movies like Lord of the Rings (2:35:1).
- Frames Setup: 29 fps (NTSC)
Here are the results:
- about 30 minutes to rip from DVD Decrypter (nec 3520a)
- 1 hour to encode first pass
- 55 minutes to encode second pass. no idea what’s going on in the second pass, but i read that by using the second pass, the video quality is suppose to be better.
- File size for Harold and Kumar Goes to White Castle (1:30 minutes) is 293 megs with these settings.
basic electrical knowledge, courtesy of ryan:
- fuse is always positive
- no positive/negative for switches. i had to connect two wires to a switch to turn the inverter on and wasn’t sure if one was a positive and negative. it didn’t matter.
- writing on wire doesn’t always mean the wire is positive (but it does most of the time).
for about a week now, i couldn’t for the life of me figure out why my system was showing 18% cpu usage when the system was idle. it would fluctuate every 3 seconds from 0% to 18% and was driving me nuts. it turns out to be a wireless pci card i just installed (so i could play with my psp via xlink). i disabled it and the system usage when back down to 0%.
what a headache…