Mediamonkey doesn't recognise your device?

Give the device a name in Windows Explorer (right-click, properties, type something in the blank box and hit ok).

Mediamonkey seems to have trouble identifying devices without a name - perhaps because it can't tell different devices apart if they're all called "Removable Disk F"?

rwc crowd estimates - i don't buy it

Estimates of only 50k people to both the game and party central? These are implausibly...implausible. It makes much more sense to interpret this as estimation being cut to fit what the transport infrastructure can handle. Thus all involved can claim they're only to blame for mismanaging a specific event rather than comprehensively failing in the years of planning and preparations that have led to this point.

Windows Explorer Path Too Long - How to Fix

I wrote this up because when I searched for a solution, all I found were people trying to sell me a fix tool for what is a very simple problem that you can fix yourself.

Symptom

Can't do anything with one or more files or folders using Windows Explorer.

Possible cause

As I understand it, modern versions of Windows allow paths up to 32000 characters, but for some reason the Windows Explorer is only able to handle 256 character paths. So it's possible to get into a situation where a program allows you to create files and folders that you can't manage later with Windows Explorer because the path is too long.

Solution

1. Use a different program to work with files. You can often do this from the File:Open dialog box of various programs.

2. Install an alternative file explorer. I didn't do this, so sorry but I can't recommend one. There is a list here.

3. Use the Subst command to create a virtual drive with a shorter path that Windows Explorer can handle, so you can fix the problem.

Subst Example

Let's say you have a file c:\very\very\long\path\file.txt that has this problem.

1. Open a Command Prompt window (Start:All Programs:Accessories:Command Prompt)
2. Type subst x:
3. In Windows Explorer, browse to the file
4. Copy perhaps half of the file path (e.g. c:\very\very) from the text box at the top
5. Paste into the Command Prompt (right-click Paste)

You should now have the following text in your Command Prompt:

subst x: c:\very\very

Hit enter, and you should find that there is a new drive x: in your windows explorer, pointing to c:\very\very You can work with your files using this drive.

At this point it's up to you whether you use x: drive all the time to work with these files, or if you go through and shorten the names of the files and folders so that Windows Explorer can handle them from your original drive (c: in this example).

If you don't need the virtual drive any more, you can remove it with

subst x: /d

Space travel reality is stranger than fiction

Prior to space flight, science fiction writers imagined all kinds of horrors awaiting in space, from killer cosmic rays to space hallucinations that would drive you crazy to malevolent aliens that needed to be fought off with psychic cats. I doubt they could have predicted that a combination of budget cuts, poor politically motivated decision making and a dearth of planning would have largely put an end to human space travel. As stories go, reality is the most fantastical of all.

Radio New Zealand With Pictures

Truly exciting news. Hopefully this means no more of the uncertainty and wishy washy lip service to the charter that TVNZ offered.

"The Radio New Zealand board of governors has given the thumbs up to plans for televised versions of its content as the foundation for a new public service television channel.

The proposed new channel would replace TVNZ7 when government funding runs out next July."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10743011&amp

Official: Pastafarian strainer titfer is religious headgear

Pastafarians worldwide are celebrating after a landmark Austrian decision in favour of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster paved the way for its recognition as a full-fat religion.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/14/pastafarian_ruling/

Mana = Hamas?

The media keep harping on about how unpalatable Hone Harawira is to the wider electorate, but it's not the wider electorate that matters - this is all about the Maori constituency. The fundamental issue is - are Maori willing to make incremental (and possibly very slow) behind-the-scenes progress in achieving their goals, or are they so raddled with grievance that any hint of collaboration is unacceptable?

Taking the Palestinian electoral situation of Fatah/Hamas, it's clear that Hamas was able to take advantage of powerful feelings of national hurt and anger by taking a hardline stance.

From a disinterested observer perspective, it's hard to see strong similarities between the respective plights of the Palestinians and Maori. Israel is a loooooong way from showing enough guilt or remorse to introduce positive discrimination and ethnic political quotas.

Alien lifeforrm discovered on Europa

Pretty exciting news, but it hasn't been picked up by the majors yet which is surprising considering how old this article is. No date is provided but it was probably released at the beginning of April. I mean right at the beginning of April.

http://www.welshspaceagency.org/Cymru-III-Mission/alien-lifeforrm-discovered-on-europa.html

AFC Wimbledon

Feeling pretty damn excited about AFC Wimbledon being still alive in the playoffs as they attempt to make the step up into the Football League, and looking forward to the day when they finally face and take down the evil MK Dons. AFC Wimbledon has been a going concern for 9 years now, so unfortunately it looks like MK are going to be harder to hunt down and destroy than Osama!

How to really predict NZ's earthquakes and volcanoes

The "Moon Man" Ken Ring claims to be able to predict earthquakes using lunar cycles, but I have found a far superior predictor of tragic geological events: unMondayised holidays.

2010 was a year with two unMondayised holidays (Waitangi and Anzac Days) and a major geological event - the 4 September earthquake near Christchurch.

2011 has one unMondayised holiday (Waitangi Day) and one forfeited holiday with Anzac Day falling on Easter Monday. This bizarre alignment has resulted in the most tragic earthquake of recent times - the 22 February earthquake.

After discovering this correlation, I examined NZ's history of major geological events and was astounded to find the following:

1953 Tangiwai disaster caused by the eruption of Mt Ruapehu, 151 people killed - Anzac Day was on a Saturday.

1931 Napier earthquake, 256 people killed - Anzac Day was on a Saturday.

1886 Tarawera eruption, 121 people killed and the Pink & White terraces destroyed - Waitangi Day was on a Sunday and Anzac Day was on a Saturday!

Some might argue that neither Waitangi nor Anzac Days actually existed as holidays in 1886, thus destroying the theory. Au contraire, this should have been taken as an omen for future generations that mere mortals shouldn't mess with fate by dabbling in the unnatural abomination of unMondayised holidays.

Some might mention that in 1929 the unMondayised Two landed slap bang in the middle of the week which didn't prevent the Murchison Earthquake that killed 17. Well I'm not some Moon Man predicting every little tremor and aftershock, I only get out of bed for the big stuff.

After 2011 we can probably breathe easy for a few years. However 2017 is shaping up as another big one as the holidays align once again, so be prepared for earthquakes, eruptions and tsunamis by sleeping in a flat open field at least 250 metres above sea level and away from any boulder-strewn hills. Actually volcanic eruptions can trigger lightning storms so you're probably stuffed there as well.

This article is not intended to trivialise the Christchurch earthquakes or any other natural disaster - but it definitely is intended to parody earthquake predictions based on spurious correlations.

gmail app as a combined inbox

I switched to gmail, but I still have hotmail and yahoo accounts I don't want to get rid of. I was sick of checking three different accounts both on pc and android phone.

So I set up gmail as a combined inbox as follows:

1. Gmail can fetch email from pop3 accounts - see here for more info

My preferred settings:

Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server, so that your legacy account retains copies of all emails fetched by gmail and can continue to be used independently - why have gmail as a single point of failure?

Label incoming messages - this is crucial to be able to differentiate the accounts that emails belong to

You can also set up the smtp side so that when you reply to a fetched email in gmail, the replies are sent from your legacy email.

2. Use account "views". Once you have set up pop3, your inbox will contain emails from multiple accounts which can be confusing to work with.

To view only emails from a legacy account, select the label on the left hand side.

Viewing only your gmail emails is a bit fiddlier. In the search box you can filter out all non-gmail labels by using the -label: operator.

Example: if you have set up the a@hotmail.com and b@yahoo.com accounts to be fetched into gmail, you can filter these out by entering the following in the search box:

-label: a@hotmail.com -label:b@yahoo.com

It's a pain to have to type into the search box every time, so luckily there is a feature you can enable in the labs to save this search as a "quick link".

Select Settings:Labs and Enable the Quick Links feature. Then go back to your Inbox, enter your filter search term and click Add Quick Link. A dialog box pops up allowing you to name the quick link (you could call it "Gmail Only"). Click OK and the quick link is created.

Now you can just click the Gmail Only quick link to filter out the emails fetched from other accounts.

3. Account "views" in the Gmail app for Android

The Gmail app for Android is not nearly as feature rich as the PC version. It does allow you to select labels to filter the view, but it does not have Quick Links. I was worried that Gmail would be unusable if I couldn't easily filter out legacy account emails.

Luckily it turns out that the Android version handles exactly the same search operators as the PC version, and previous searches are saved for reuse.

So you can key in the search above and it will be available for reuse as a recent search. This isn't as nice as Quick Links and it's possible you might have to rekey the search once in a while. But it's good enough for me.

Lunn Ave sucks

Lunn Ave is another completely unnecessary piece of new strip mall that is surrounded by plenty of existing shopping alternatives. This development is completely rapacious and makes no consideration for the spectacular clifftop views that are available on the site.

2011 - another crap year for Kiwi wage slaves

2010 sucked for public holidays, and it was a terrible year for a lot of Kiwis. Coincidence? I think not.

And look out, 2011 sucks just as bad - with the added cruel irony of Anzac Day not falling on a weekend, but the same day as Easter Monday! I predict a plane crash and a volcanic eruption in Auckland...

Heavy bank presence at Onehunga Christmas Parade

Every second float was a bank. Is this the only sector able to sponsor anything these days? The delicious irony is that Scrooge was in the vanguard, telling everyone to go home and save their money to bail out more banks!

Dearth of decent graphics and data for NZ local elections

The papers have made little effort and are mainly sticking to articles. The worst use of a map that I have seen for a long while can be found at http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-elections-2010-map

The only site that makes any effort is the official elections2010.co.nz site. Unfortunately it has some serious flaws. No effort is made to explain how many candidates in a ward or board will be elected, which makes the results fairly meaningless. The elections for a particular region are presented in one enormous page full of photo thumbnails that takes an eternity to load for populous regions - this is particularly bad for Auckland.

Hobbit and Actors Equity

I'd say that NZ Actors Equity has a strong case for a better deal on American productions. The producers are looking for the best balance of value and psychic distance, and NZ is the cheapest place in the world for a good supply of white native-English-speakers with developed-world mannerisms in a not excessively exotic natural environment.

If you wanted to find cheaper mobile scenery than this, where would you go?

Africa, China and South America are out unless you're doing a movie with a specific cultural theme.

Eastern Europe has whities who could do a good elf (and they have pointier ears), but these days you'd have to go really far east to escape the worker-enfranchising attentions of the EU - think Serbia or Ukraine. Good luck getting any of them to step up to fill out the gaps - you'd have to fly in anyone with a speaking part.

Kiwibank as a NZ model for government owned businesses

Kiwibank - NZers should love it. It's profitable, has reduced banking margins in the market by several percent and is singlehandedly saving NZ Post from death by precipitous collapse of snail mail.

To me this represents a fantastic model for government to influence mature, margin-rich "incumbentopoly" markets for the benefit of consumers.

My next targets: the main spends for NZers. Groceries, power, phone, petrol, insurance.

Kiwipetrol

It already looks like petrol is being dealt to with the acquisition of Shell NZ by Infratil and the NZ Superannuation Fund.

Kiwiphone

Phone has been addressed with Telecom in a regulatory stranglehold.

Kiwipower

Power is already dominated by government owned companies. It actually needs divestment and a change of philosophy for whoever is left.

Kiwigrocer

To me the grocery market is the top candidate for intervention. The Warehouse, our largest retailer, had to abandon its foray into groceries after a ferocious double-team by Progressive and Foodstuffs. With two players there is little to prevent collusion, and between them they're certainly squeezing the life out of their suppliers.

Post the recession there are acres of vacant light industrial space that could be easily converted. Being shopping destinations in themselves, supermarkets don't have to pay over the odds for sought-after space in malls or high streets.

Kiwisurance

The bottom end of the insurance market is full of restrictive fine text and slothful claim processing times. A provider of basic, cheap, non-nonsense policies is needed. This could be an offshoot of NZ Post/Kiwibank.

Kobo 100 preloaded books list

Picked up this list at Whitcoulls. Not sure I'm familiar with item #33... 1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2. Dracula - Bram Stoker 3. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott 4. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 5. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 6. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 7. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 8. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Pere) 9. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 10. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 11. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe 12. White Fang - Jack London 13. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 14. The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde 15. The Art of War - Sun Tzu 16. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse 17. The Romance of Tristan and Iseult - Joseph Bedier 18. Grimm's Fairy Tales - The Brothers Grimm 19. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 20. Doctor Faustus - Chris Marlowe 21. The Odyssey of Homer - Homer, translated by Alexander Pope 22. Treasure Island - Robert Louise Stevenson 23. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 24. The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper 25. The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle 26. Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas de Quincey 27. Prufrock and Other Observations - T.S. Eliot 28. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James 29. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins 30. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky 31. On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin 32. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (Pere) 33. Alice's Adventures in Whitcoulls - Lewis Carroll 34. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad 35. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 36. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle 37. Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand 38. Japanese Fairy Tales - Yei Theodora Ozaki 39. Ulysses - James Joyce 40. The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy 41. The Iliad - Homer 42. Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery 43. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe 44. Aesop's Fables - Aesop 45. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole 46. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 47. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 48. Emma - Jane Austen 49. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving 50. Irish Fairy Tales - James Stevens 51. English Fairy Tales - James Stevens 52. The Arabian Nights Entertainment - Andrew Lang 53. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 54. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne 55. Moby Dick - Herman Melville 56. The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux 57. Paradise Lost - John Milton 58. The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle 59. Beowulf 60. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded - Samuel Richardson 61. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde 62. Peter Pan - James M. Barrie 63. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen 64. The Lost World - Arthur Conan Doyle 65. Persuasion - Jane Austen 66. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 67. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli 68. Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne 69. Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche 70. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon 71. Book of Nonsense - Edward Lear 72. Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum 73. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen 74. The Island of Doctor Moreau - H. G. Wells 75. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne 76. Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll 77. Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 - Andrew Lang 78. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson 79. The Secret Adversary - Agatha Christie 80. The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems - Geoffrey Chaucer 81. The Man Who Knew Too Much - G. K. Chesterton 82. The Lady of the Lake - Sir Walter Scott 83. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 84. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka 85. The Princess and the Goblin - George MacDonald 86. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau 87. The Call of the Wild - Jack London 88. The Sea Wolf - Jack London 89. The Souls of Black Folk - W. E. B. du Bois 90. Tales From Shakespeare - Charles and Mary Lamb 91. Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 92. The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling 93. The Republic - Plato 94. Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham 95. Middlemarch - George Eliot 96. Twenty Years After - Alexandre Dumas (Pere) 97. The Prince and the Pauper - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 98. Four Arthurian Romances - Chretien de Troyes 99. Dubliners - James Joyce 100. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky

What is the best trademe user name for buyers?

The advice for people buying a house at auction is to project confidence with the intention of intimidating or psyching out more inexperienced bidders so that they don't bid. This can be achieved by wearing dark clothes and glasses, bidding assertively and hiding any worry or stress you might be experiencing.

Online auctions may feel completely different from a physical auction, but a lot of the principles remain the same. In theory there is much more bidder info on an auction site than you can discover by observation at a physical auction - with a few clicks you can view their complete trade history. But in practice, you can't guarantee that other bidders will be impressed by your extensive trade history, either because they can't be bothered viewing it or don't know how to.

So the key place to try and stamp your authority is within the auction itself.

On the face of it, intelligent questions to the seller could be thought to achieve this. However my experience is that questioners are not viewed as a threat because they're often just kicking the tyres and aren't serious bidders.

Perhaps a confident bidding pattern would help? Without the body language, I seriously doubt it.

This leaves the user name as your only weapon. I think the name is worth a bit of thought. You want to use it to convince others that you are a serious buyer, won't let others take advantage by being distracted from the auction, and are sufficiently web savvy to avoid screwing up.

This rules out names such as tyrekicker4life, harriedmumof3, newbiegrandad, etc. On the other hand, there is very little to fault with names such as topgun, trading247 and webwhiz.

I wouldn't put too much effort into naming. Consider that once you have done a few physical auctions then your body language will be on a par with the other experienced bidders and their advantage will be cancelled out. There is no point in hamming up the body language to try and outdo them - they will not be fooled.

Similarly, a good online name brings you up to the same level as other experienced bidders, but the world's greatest name ever is unlikely to give you any meaningful advantage over them. The goal is merely to minimise entanglement in bidding wars with beginners.

Incongruously wild celebration of totally dominant sports teams

Why is it that the Australian cricket team celebrates victory and game milestones so passionately when playing against the likes of the West Indies, who are completely outclassed?


I can understand it in football where goals are comparatively rare and worth getting very worked up about. But not in cricket.


These contests aren't close, so I doubt they're experiencing the kind of excitement that you or I would experience at winning a huge lottery payout.


Some might say that they have such competitive spirits that they can't help themselves.


My opinion: it's become the favourite way to express dominance over your opponents and try to psych them out. They're saying "Look at us, we're celebrating. You can't do this."