Four Seasons - Theme preview

A couple of days ago I was came across this wonderful set of images and I thought of making a PS3 theme using them.

So here it is and I'm calling it, well,'Four Seasons'. I've kept this theme relatively simple as this is my first one. The theme has four backgrounds and I've used the default elements for the fonts, icons, etc.

You can download it from below, and do let me know your feedback.



Cheers!

But fear not, there is a patch available. More details about the vulnerability and its patch at Scott Guthrie's blog.

Cheers!

Update (28-Sep-2010): Microsoft's official patch is now available for this. More details on Scott Guthrie's blog.

More Info:
http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/09/fear-uncertainty-and-and-padding-oracle.html
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/new-crypto-attack-affects-millions-aspnet-apps-091310

Q: What features will the first release of getMeta have?
A: As mentioned in my previous post, the initial version will have only the below features:
* Movie Search with metadata retrieval
* Posters and Backdrop retrieval
* Folder processing

Q: Will it be a final (production) release?
A: Yes but it will still be a BETA. I require the help and encouragement of the community in testing it and letting me know of any issues that they may find.

Q: When will the first BETA be out?
A: Ah, tough question! Well, the tentative date which I have planned, for now, to release the public BETA will be around or after July 2. I'm sorry but I'll have to push this back by three weeks due to unavoidable circumstances. The release date now is July 23. My apologies again for the delay.

Q: Is getMeta free?
A: Yes, getMeta will be released free and will continue to remain free unlike MetaBrowser (sorry MetaBrowser folks, coudln't resist).

Q: So you mean it falls under the 'Freeware' category?
A: The right term for it would be what we typically called a 'DonationWare'. getMeta and its future releases will be free, there will be no fee for any upgrades. Nor will I lock users out of 'premium' features. However, I would still appreciate some kind of donation. Developing getMeta will require time and effort on my part plus I also have to take care of the hosting expenses. I am currently working on a licensing model that will fit getMeta appropriately, suggestions are most welcome!.

Q: Not that we care but what technology will be used to write it?
A: I will be writing this app in WPF & C# using the .Net Framework 4. So yes, if you want to use it, you will need the .Net 4 runtime installed on your system. The installer for getMeta will detect if it is installed, if not it will prompt you to do so.

Q: getMeta does not have a site or a support forum as of now. Are they in the works?
A: Yes, but only some time near the first BETA release. Right now, I want to full focus on developing it with whatever time I have on my hands.

More questions? Feel free to send it to me at getmeta [at] hotmail.com.

I will keep updating this FAQ as and when it is required.

Cheers!

I am using an older version of MetaBrower and recently I found that it is fetching small images for backdrops and posters. As per those guys, this is happening due to the changes at themoviedb.org's end. Thus, I finally decided to go and buy the new version which I presume will not have this glitch. Surprise! The price has just gone to $30 (29.99 to be precise). Great! And this made me think, what if I buy this now and what if this goes to $40 or even $50 next year? I backed out.

But then it opened a door for me to write a similar application myself. That's correct, I will be writing a full-fledged application that fetches movie/tv metadata for using it in a Media center application. I will be calling this application getMeta, which I think is an apt name. I know this will raise a lot of questions among people keen to know more about it and probably use it someday. For that I will be posting an FAQ soon. Meanwhile, if you're interested, you can keep checking my blog and/or feel free to send in your queries at getmeta [at] hotmail.com.

Though, at this point I do have a rough Roadmap for this app. Below are the features which will be included in the first release of getMeta:
* Movie Search withe metadata retrieval
* Posters and Backdrop retrieval
* Folder processing

I know it's not much at this point but I want to get this out in the open as early as possible and then, based on the community's feedback, keep adding on features to it. I have a lot of ideas at this point but it only makes sense to see the community's reaction/feedback and then go about implementing them.

I will be posting more updates soon.

Thanks,

Now, I myself am a TIBB customer and I find it very frustrating to keep the browser window open all the time. Not only does it occupy some of your system memory but some space on your system taskbar as well. Worse is when some other application is using your internet connection (for example a download manager) and you accidently close the browser window by force of habit (I often do that!). Poof! your connection gets terminated, your downloads halt. This gets even worse when you're downloading from a site which does not support download resuming like RapidShare.

Glorious Logo
for T Dialer v1

A workaround to this issue would be a dialer application which would take your login credentials, login to the site and keep your connection on. This would better serve its’ purpose instead of using a browser window. I tried looking for such application, but found none. Thus, I went ahead and wrote one of my own.

T Dialer is just that. Basically, it’s a trimmed down version of IE. When you load it, it opens your login URL, you login using your credentials and once you are logged, you can simply minimize this application to the system tray. At this point, this is all which this application does. Since this is a trimmed down version, it has a lower memory footprint then a full fledged browser window.

This application can be downloaded free from the below link:

T Dialer is written in C# using .Net Framework v3.5. Source code for this application can be downloaded from CodePlex at the below link:

http://tdialer.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets

I plan to remove the browser altogether from the next major release and am currently checking its feasibility.

Feel free to use it and give me your feedback right here.

I will be posting updates regarding this app., right here on this blog.

Thanks,

Found him? Good but wow much time did it take you to do so?

Based on your answer below are the results:
Under 3 seconds: The right half of your brain is better developed than most people.
3 seconds to 1 minute: The right half of the brain is developed normally.
1 minute to 3 minutes: The right half of your brain is functioning slowly, eat more proteins!
More then 3 minutes: You need to practice!

Cheers!

This video highlights the transition of visual effects right from early 1900s uptill now. It's a beautiful collage of clips selected from several films (mentioned after the end of the video). The best part of this, in my opinion, is the background music, which is a track called 'Rods and Cones' by the 'Blue Man Group'. Check it out:

What I don't like, though, about this video is that it has omitted several important films which had extraordinary visual effects (including The Matrix). Editing could also have been much much better.

All in all, it's a nice effort and kudos to the author for collecting, editing and compiling all those clips to make this video!

Houston, we have a problem!

And when it happens to us, some of us leave it, not giving it much thought, some of us make our best attempts to retrieve it. If we're successful, great, if not, we let go of it then. Though, what we do not realize is that in majority of the cases, the data can still be recovered, barring cases where the physical medium carrying the data is damaged, of course.

So here's my question, what if the data you thought was lost, isn't and can still be recovered? Worse, what if you've given up on it, but someone else has recovered it and has full access to it? Scary thought? Yes. Improbable? No, because this is exactly what I witnessed a couple of months ago.

Back in January, I found myself running out of disk space on my system. I decided to go for an external HDD and without ample research (big mistake) I chose Maxtor Basics Portable 250 GB portable hard drive, hoping to put my "storage worries" to ease… or so I thought.

Initially things went pretty smooth and I found myself enjoying my newly purchased piece of hardware and was using it on a daily basis and was moving my important data including photos, documents, project backups, etc. slowly and gradually to the drive.

One fine day, to my dismay, my system running on Windows XP SP3, simply refused to recognize it. Instead, it claimed that it had found some new hardware and that it needed drivers to install it. Reeling from the shock, I tried the standard diagnostics, plugging, unplugging, rebooting system, etc, didn't work. I assumed that the drivers for my USB port may have been corrupted so I booted to linux (Ubuntu) but that didn't help either.

Maxtor Basics Portable

And so began the data-recovery operations in hope that I might be able to recover some, if not all of my data. The next day, I took it to a friend's house, plugged it to his system, same thing. I tried another friend and lo, this time I got lucky, it worked! I wasted no time. I immediately moved all of the stuff on it to my friend's hard drive and so that I can later burn them on DVDs.

I went to the store where I had bought it from and filed it for replacement (another big mistake!) The owner of the store assured me that I would be getting a replacement within two weeks, which, evidently was not going to happen.

Two months later (59 days to be precise), after repeated requests over several calls I finally got the replacement. The store guy came to my home an delivered to me an 'un-pakced' copy of the drive. When I protested that it was not new, he assured me that all replacements arrive like this only. Yet, still after finally getting it, I was not ready to use it fearing that what happened before may happen again. I thought that if I wanted assurance of the safety of my data on this drive, I need to test it thoroughly. Thus, over the next few days I performed various tests on it, the majority of them involving writing data to it and reading it back. All the tests went without a hitch.

And then it struck me, what if I accidentally deleted a file on the portable drive? Would I be able to recover it? Another test! I copied the a 4 GB image of a linux distro to it and did a shift-delete. For the recovery, I downloaded and installed a trial copy of Stellar Phoenix data recovery suite and started the recovery process, having absolutely no idea what I was about to see.

Wait a minute, what am I seeing here?

As I saw the list of files that the software suggested could be recovered, populate in front of me, I was surprised for a second and when it hit me what was going on, shocked.

The software stated that it had found, photos, audio files, video files, various documents, source code files for various projects, etc. which was good except, none of them were mine!

That's right, I had accidentally stumbled across someone else's valuable and confidential data.

But how did this happen? Apparently, some guy had bought the same model of this drive from the same store which I had purchased mine. Then, he must've faced the same problem which I did and had asked the store for a replacement. The store guy, presumably, must have switched the drives, or least gave me his, in effect, cheating us both.

When I called that fellow after getting his number from a document from the hard drive, he was presumably more shocked then I was. I offered him to take the drive, retrieve his data and return it to me, which he thankfully accepted.

So what do we learn from this?

1. Never, ever buy an electronic gadget/computer accessory without doping ample market research. Hardware guys/store owners will insist on selling you a particular brand just because they tend to earn more profit out of it.
2. In case of replacement, always check if the product manufacturer provides a direct way of procuring one, luckily most of them do. Seagate, for instance provides home pick-up and drop replacement service. This, not only assures you that your issue is being take care of by the intended people but you can also keep a track of it progress by following your request status on it's website.
3. Always, always shred your data, which you no longer need, I always do! Whenever you're shift-deleting a document, don't assume it's gone forever. If you're new to shredding data, it's a process by which a 'shredder' application simply overwrites the physical location of a given file on your storage media, several times, with random data, thus making it unrecoverable. There are a lot of shredders available out there, both commercial and freeware. I would recommend Eraser which is available freely under GNU General Public License. The best part of Eraser being that it's also available in a portable version which means you need not install it in order to run it. I would also recommend checking out these free shredders.

I would love to hear back from you about your similar experiences or feedback on this article.

Thanks!

Further Reading:

• Data Remanence

A current, single-sided, standard DVD can hold 4.7 GB of information. That's about the size of an average two-hour, standard-definition movie with a few extra features. But a high-definition movie, which has a much clearer image, takes up about five times more bandwidth and therefore requires a disc with about five times more storage. As TV sets and movie studios make the move to high definition, consumers are going to need playback systems with a lot more storage capacity.

Blu-ray is the next-generation digital video disc. It can record, store and play back high-definition video and digital audio, as well as computer data. The advantage to Blu-ray is the sheer amount of information it can hold:

* A single-layer Blu-ray disc, which is roughly the same size as a DVD, can hold up to 27 GB of data — that's more than two hours of high-definition video or about 13 hours of standard video.
* A double-layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 50 GB, enough to hold about 4.5 hours of high-definition video or more than 20 hours of standard video. And there are even plans in the works to develop a disc with twice that amount of storage.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it's possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB.

At the time of writing this Blu-ray is supported by more than 170 of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer, recording media, video game and music companies. The format also has broad support from the major movie studios as a successor to today's DVD format. Seven of the eight major movie studios have already announced titles for Blu-ray, including Warner, Paramount, Fox, Disney, Sony, MGM and Lionsgate. The initial line-up is expected to consist of over 100 titles and include recent hits as well as classics such as Batman Begins, Desperado, Fantastic Four, Fifth Element, Hero, Ice Age, Kill Bill, Lethal Weapon, Mission Impossible, Ocean's Twelve, Pirates of the Caribbean, Reservoir Dogs, Robocop, and The Matrix. Many studios have also announced that they will begin releasing new feature films on Blu-ray Disc day-and-date with DVD, as well as a continuous slate of catalog titles every month.

For further reading, check Wikipedia's great artile on blue ray at the below URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

Cheers!

1. Login as Administrator
2. Go to Start/Run and type in cmd and click OK.
At the prompt type cipher /r:Eagent and press enter

This prompt will then display:
Please type in the password to protect your .PFX file:

Type in your Administrator password
Re-confirm your Administrator password

The prompt will then display

Your .CER file was created successfully.
Your .PFX file was created successfully.

The Eagent.cer and Eagent.pfx files will be saved in the current directory that is shown at the command prompt. Example: The command prompt displays C:\Documents and Settings\admin> the two files are saved in the admin folder. (For security concerns, you should house the two files in your Administrator folder or on a floppy disk or any removable disk).

3. Go to Start/Run and type in certmgr.msc and click OK.
This will launch the Certificates Manager.
a) Navigate to Personal and right click on the folder and select All Tasks/Import. The Certificate Import Wizard will appear.
b) Click Next. Browse to the C:\Documents and Settings\admin folder.
c) In the Open dialog box, change the Files of Type (at the bottom) to personal Information Exchange (*.pfx,*.P12).
d) Select the file Eagent.pfx and click Open. Click Next.
e) Type in your Administrator password (leave the two checkboxes blank) and click Next.
f) Make sure the Radio button is active for the first option (Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certifcate). Click Next. Click Finish. (You'll receive a message that the import was successful).
g) To confirm the import, close Certificates Manager and re-open it.
h) Expand the Personal folder and you will see a new subfolder labeled Certificates. Expand that folder and you will see the new entry in the right side column. Close Certificate Manager.

4. Go to Start/Run and type in secpol.msc and click OK. This will launch the Local Security Policy.
a) Expand the Public Key Policies folder and then right click on the Encrypted File System subfolder and select Add Data Recovery Agent… The Wizard will then display. Click Next.
b) Click the Browse Folders… button. Browse to the C:\Documents and Settings\admin folder. Select the Eagent.cer file and click Open. (The wizard will display the status User_Unknown. That's ok). Click Next. Click Finish.
c) You will see a new entry in the right side column. Close the Local Security Policy.

You, the Administrator are now configured as the default Recovery Agent for All Encrypted files on the Local Machine.

To Recover Encrypted files:

Scenario #1

If you have completed the above steps BEFORE an existing user encrypted his/her files, you can log in to your Administrator account and navigate to the encrypted file(s). Double click on the file(s) to view the contents.

Scenario #2

If you have completed the above steps AFTER an existing user has already encrypted his/her files, you must login to the applicable User's User Account and then immediately logout. Next, login to your Administrator account and navigate to the encrypted file(s). Double click on the file(s) to view the contents.

Warning: Do not Delete or Rename a User's account from which will want to Recover the Encrypted Files. You will not be able to de-crypt the files using the steps outlined above.

Hope this is helpful to you!

Cheers!