Audible Files and conversion to MP3
I have had an Audible membership for a few years now. When I was working full time in the city I used to listen to Audible books on my HP 2210 PDA.
Now I listen to the books on my PC. With the latest installation of VISTA on my PC I did not even bother to activate my PDA for Audible.
Yesterday I was thinking about how Nikki, my 12 year old daughter was not reading any books at all and how I could interest her into reading a book. I decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to introduce her an Audible book that she can listen to on her SamSung YP-K5 MP3 player.
I immeadetly proceeded to Audible and found that Samsung YP-K5 was not supported! I then tried to find a way that I could convert the Audible .aa file into MP3 file format. After searching for some time on Google I realized there was no ideal solution to this problem.
I am a strong believer in anti-piracy. In fact all my software at home are registered versions. However by not supporting all MP3 players in the market Audible is forcing people to look for alternate means of converting their files into MP3 file format.
I will update this page if I find a good solution for this.
"Direct Access to this location is not allowed."
If you get the error while trying to install Rocket Theme BentoBox template on Joompla 1.5 then you should go into the admin panel and check mark the option titles “Enable Legacy Support”.
That will remove the error and bring the template up.
"JFTP::connect: Bad response" Error in Joomla
I installed 1.0.12 and the 1.0.5 version of the Joomla template a little while ago and then tried to access the administrator panel. I got an error saying “JFTP::connect: Bad response”. It would not let me go to the next part.
After several attempts at changing file permissions etc I finally decided to change the FTP address in the configuration.php from the default one to the real domain URL and it worked fine.
Windows Live OneCare on Windows Vista
I have had the opportunity to check out the windows Live OneCare all in one solution on Vista. I must say I am quite impressed with it.
Previously on Windows XP PRO I used Zonelabs for my firewall and GRSoft for antivirus. I then purchased IOLO System Mechanic Pro which came with a firewall, antivirus and a system maintenance module rolled.
Immeadetly I started having problems with the firewall part. It would block most programs and when I tried to configure it would not let me do it properly. I then had to uninstall the firewall part. However to my dismay I realized that Zonealarm did not work any more.
So I surfed the net with the windows XP default firewall turned on. But the problem with the windows XP firewall is that it does not do anything about outgoing communication. Anyway to cut a long story short, I ended up having several problems with my machine (classic symptons of a virus attack) and I realized that perhaps IOLO antivirus was not doing the job properly.
I theregore had to resintall my whole OS and that is when I decided to try out VISA. I am glad I did because I simply love it. Now I have setup Live OneCare and it seems to be doing a pretty good job both on the firewall and the antivirus fronts.
I have actually upgraded to the paid version a couple of days back.
The year 2006 in review from Jib Jab!
I love the stuff at jibjab.com. Here is the one about the year in review.
Outlook 2007 problems with sending and recieving emails?
After installing Windows VISTA for Business and the latest Office 2007 I ran into a number of problems with sending and recieving emails via Outlook 2007. I had imported the various email accounts from my previous Outlook 2003 (I have quite a few for the various websites and domains that I manage) and made sure all passwords and mail server details were correct.
The first issue I ran into had to do with the contsant barrage of popups that ask me for the password of each account. Now you can image my trouble with over 40 email accounts. And then when I try to test the mail setting of each account I get an error in the send portion.
So I tried to change the “Outgoing server” tab of the settings for the email account as you see in the image below.
This time I got a different error message. So Changed the settings as shown below.
Still no luck. So finally I tried the option show below and it worked like magic. Now this setting works on for certain mail servers. For example I host with different companies for my different websites. This option worked for one perticular host but for another the option above this worked.
For changing settings for Yahoo mail account in Outlook 2007 try this help section.
Upgrading to Windows VISTA
Last week I started noticing erratic behaviour from my windows xp os. My IOLO anti-virus software picked up a couple of viruses, and that probably was the cause. When I opened one too many applications, the desktop would go all static and/or blank and it would take forever to close the applications to free up memory.
So on Sunday, I decided to reinstall the OS so that any corrupted files could be fixed. I started the process and opted for an upgrade rather than a clean install. Half way through the process I got a blue screen and a physical memort dump! I restarted the machine and the opening screen was the reinstallation process resuming. Again the blue screen! Another attempt resulted in the same blue screen!
I guess there must have been some hardware issues, so I disconnected all perpheral devices and tried to reboot normally. I was dismayed when the machine would no longer boot up my normal windows OS but would rather jump straight to the reinstall. I tried the “last known good configuration” with the same result. After repeated attempts, including safe mode, the reinstall screen would also not show up. The only thing I could see was a black screen with the mouse pointer.
Because all my business files and correspondence were on this machine I started to panic. I went out to PC world and bought an exclusor. I asked the guy at the counter for a exclusor and showed him the hard disk (IDE) that I took along with me. He points me to a product and says that should work fine. So I buy that and a copy of Windows Vista Business (Upgrade Only) and get back home in a hurry to retrieve the data. When I opened the exclusor I find to my dismay that it is only for PATA hard drives and mine is SATA.
So I go back to PC World and talk to an expert this time. He says that it would take a few days to get the SATA exclusor and suggested that perhaps I should get another IDE hard drive and load the OS on to that and connent my current one as a slave so I can retrieve the data. So I buy a 250 GB SATA drive and connent it to my machine. Bingo! Works like charm.
I loaded Windows VISTA and must say I am quite impressed with the overall look and feel and also the improved plug and play. The network connectivity has been tremendously improved and context sensitive links to system tools is fantastic!
I will be exploring the OS more and will be updating you.