Double Parity » Links

Vista: Use the Task Manager as a Desktop Gadget

Double Parity — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:38:00 +0000

> Did you know with the double-click of your mouse, you could make the Task Manager look like a nice desktop gadget for monitoring your cpu usage and cpu usage history or your network activity.

I didn’t, but I do now.

How to Clean Up Your Messy Windows Context Menu

Double Parity — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:21:52 +0000

Every time I delve into the Windows Registry I’m appalled by the amount of cruft that I find.

Deconstructing Google Mobile’s Voice Search on the iPhone

Double Parity — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:53:40 +0000

Interesting detective work on the implementation of Google’s voice recognition functionality. And the comment stream is full of great details.

My New Mac Pro Ultra Mini

Double Parity — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:48:59 +0000

http://wolphbite.com/blog/?p=62

The Cost of Running Your PC

Double Parity — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:38:43 +0000

This article goes into more detail than most people will find necessary, myself included. However, I was surprised to see that the actual power efficiencies of the three test systems were [over 80% at both idle and peak load][1]. I was expecting at least one end of the spectrum to have poor efficiency.

Ultimately, though, if you want to save energy costs, *turn off your devices!* If your devices are plugged into a surge protector, then pull it out of the wall socket after you’ve powered everything down. I plugged my surge protector into a [Kill A Watt][2] and was shocked to see how much energy was still being drawn by my ostensibly off computers and peripherals.

Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor (Amazon)

[1]: http://anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3458&p=3
[2]: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html

Thinking outside the Apple TV with Boxee

Double Parity — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:14:47 +0000

Excellent step-by-step instructions for installing [Boxee][1] (and also [XBMC][2]) on the AppleTV. The process is surprisingly simple and doesn’t remove any functionality from the AppleTV. Instead, Boxee is installed as another entry on the AppleTV’s menu.

One thing to note is that [ATV USB Creator][3] at the time of this post only has an option for AppleTV software version 2.1. However, I was able to install onto my version 2.2 unit with no problems.

[1]: http://www.boxee.tv
[2]: http://xbmc.org
[3]: http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/

LeBron James Dunks from the Free Throw Line

Double Parity — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:58:54 +0000

Crazy. He did this in a tightly contested game with opponents chasing him down, so it’s not like he could take his time and gather himself. And the most ridiculous part is that he dunked with authority, getting to the rim with enough clearance to add a little extra flourish.

Real-world Photoshop

Double Parity — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 08:16:48 +0000

Awesome.

Worst. Bug. Ever.

Double Parity — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 08:04:12 +0000

> When the phone booted it started up a command shell as root and sent every keystroke you ever typed on the keyboard from then on to that shell. Thus every word you typed, in addition to going to the foreground application would be silently and invisibly interpreted as a command and executed with superuser privileges.

Comical and apparently trivial to fix once identified, but still completely shocking that this kind of bug made it through three QA departments (Google, HTC and T-Mobile).

Find Programs Connecting to the Internet

Double Parity — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:43:20 +0000

Vista’s Reliability and Performance Monitor (perfmon.exe) is a nice way to monitor active connections to your local network and the Internet, but it also provides a wealth of other information. The Reliability Monitor pane in particular is a great source of diagnostic data.

Enable DVD Library in Vista Media Center

Double Parity — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:28:52 +0000

A fabulous way of integrating archived DVDs into Vista Media Center. However, given the dubious legality of archiving DVDs to a hard drive, I’m really surprised that Microsoft published this tip.

Memory and Performance–The Final Word

Double Parity — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:46:04 +0000

> Capacity, we found, trumps frequency in terms of performance…When you’re shopping for memory, spend on capacity first, and then performance with whatever budget you have left over.