Go to dialer and type ##002#, press call and voila.

Problem is that Outlook 2007 works perfectly for blocking spam as far as Exchange and POP3 mails are concerned but it fails to deliver on IMAP.  Solution: SpamBayes’ Outlook plugin.  It works prefectly with POP3 and works perfectly with IMAP.  You just need to train it once and life’s all problems are solved.

This configuration has been working prefectly on my Home Desktop with XP, Laptop with Vista, but failed to work on one of my work computers that runs Windows Server 2003.  As soon as I installed SpamBayes on top of Outlook 2007, and start outlook, it would crash and blame the SpamBayes add-in for it.  Problem? that I diagnosed after ignoring it for few months: Data Execution Prevention.  AMD Athalon 64 bit and newer Pentium 4+ processors have the NX bit for virus protection.  This had been causing the SpamBayes add-in to crash.  Just go to “System Properties”->Advanced->Performance->Settings->Data Execution Prevention and add Outlook as an exception.

Things work like a charm now.  Good-bye IMAP spam.

All of a sudden one day while trying to download the styles from my Word Press 2.x blog, I get this funny connectivity issue.

Windows Live Write can not connect to the blog. xmlrpc.php could not be accessed, ”406, Not Acceptable Error”.  Hmm.. after some long debugging and hair pulling finally I figured it was not WLW issue or Word Press issue, it was actually an Apache issue.  My hosting provider, all of a sudden decided to install mod_security on the Apache web server.  If configured aggressively, it can cause a lot of problems with many web softwares.

Solution: I added following lines to my .htaccess file in the blog’s path:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
    SecFilterEngine Off
    SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>

This will remove all the security that mod_security module provides, but otherwise, you need to talk to your hosting provider and ask them to cut down on this security.

Try not to go beyond 16 bit, that will be an overkill.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics and look for the key named Shell Icon BPP.

Here comes the first one:

I wanted to intsall google local on this device, but Google local says it doesn’t support Palm and Brew based phones. But there was a catch, it says it supports the Java based phones. So I installed the IBM’s Java micro edition from Palm’s website, which is free. But then when you try to download the generic google local, it just downloads the link and that too on the card. So whats the trick?

Start the IBM Java application and click on install, type this URL there and you are good to go.

google.com/glm?brand=Generic&model=Advanced+MIDP2&agree=yes

1) Go to the CMD prompt.
2) Then type cd \windows\inf and make sure we are in that directory.
3) Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)
4) Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)
5) Then goto start – run – type c:\windows\inf and you will see the files in the folder.
6) Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and take a backup of it to desktop (by copying it to desktop) and delete the INFCACHE.1 from c:\windows\inf.
7) Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.

Well, let me stick with NTSC signals here because thats what I have to use 90% of the times.

TVs basically show still images, changing so fast that they look like video (or movies). In NTSC format this is done 30 times in a second or what is called 30 frames per second (30 fps). So they had 1/30 of a second to show a frame. This picture or frame consisted of 480 horizontal lines.

Old fashioned TVs could not handle this information so fast. So they used to divide this picture of 480 lines into odd and even number lines. So to show one single frame they had to do two attempts. Dividing the time alloted to show a frame by 2. In the first half or 1/60 of a second they show the odd number lines (1, 3, …439) and in the next 1/60 of a second they should the even numbered lines (2,4, …480). This scheme is called interlacing giving the name 480 interlaced or 480i or Standard Defintion TV (SDTV).

This worked fine for a while till bigger screens like 60″ started coming in. With them the interlacing scheme showed jagged lines because if an object moved between showing odd and even numbered lines, the borders of the object were jitterred.

Then came the progressive scan or the ability to show the full frame in 1/30 of a second. No need for interlacing. New chips and processors can handle this and much more. This is whats called 480p or 480 lines, progressive scan also called EDTV or enhanced defintion TV. The resolution for these two types was 640×480. (Ratio 4:3)

Then the two wide screen formats came in 1280×720 and 1920×1080. The aspect ratio changed to 16:9. But 1080 signal is still coming as interlaced called 1080i. People thought a progressive signal is better than interlaced, even with less information so cameup with 720 lines of progressive signal called 720p. Both of these are called high defintion or HDTV signals. Both have advantages and disadvantages. 1080i has more information but interlaced, 720p has less information but is progressive.

What will be the next thing?? 1080p. A signal with 1080 horizontal lines with progressive scan.

Answer: Try following steps.

1. Hookup the iPod to a power supply using the Firewire cord (connect to the AC outlet and not to a computer.)

2. Put the iPod in sleep mode by pressing the Play/Stop key and holding it for a while.

3. Reboot the iPod by holding the Top button (Menu) and the Enter button in the middle for a while. After a while you see the Apple logo and iPod reboots.

4. Repeat the step 2 and 3 again.

5. Restart Windows and if you are using Win XP make sure no other user is logged in (Two people can be logged in simultaneously on XP by the method of chosing switch user instead of logging off. Make sure you dont do that and you are the only one logged in.) Uninstall any Real Player that you have installed.

6. Re-install the latest version of iTunes from Apple’s website.

7. Now try connecting the iPod again using the Firewire or USB. And wait for a while if iTunes does not start, do it yourself but give some time before that like a minute or two. If everything went well, now you should be able to see your iPod in iTunes.

Q2: Still no luck?

Answer: Try following steps.

1. Install the latest iPod updater (on a different computer if available).

2. Connect using the USB or Firewire cable and Restore the iPod. Updating only does not help. If you had the music on iPod which you dont have a copy of, try saving the music on your computer with vPod or ElhPod applications.

3. Try the steps above again.