In this first installment of Things I Forgot to Say Weekend Roundup here are a few things I forgot to mention in previous posts:

1. Another way to test if your netcam is working is to use VLC Media Player. Click Media > Open Capture Device then select your webcam from the Video device name drop-down menu. You will then see what your netcam sees. You can set the video size to whatever you want as well and if you click Advanced you can play with other settings like frames per second.

2. To see exactly how much hard drive you actually bought (ie how much drive space you got screwed out of) head on over to epowermac’s hard drive calculator page. False advertising sucks and should stop.

3. Languages are fun to play with. Here is the Esperanto translator page and the LOLCat Speak page that helped give some readers here seizures when I posted The Only Way to Dual Boot A Computer (entirely in LOLCAT speak and then when asked to repost it I did but in Esperanto).

4. Readers here suggesting after my earlier iPad and Steve Jobs mockery that Steve should send me an Apple iPad to review. Some have suggested if Steve & Apple really wanted to allay fears that the iPad sucks as many think it does that he should trust his product enough to send me one to review. The theory goes if it’s really all that and the iPad wins me over enough to change my mind then it has a chance of not being the latest Lisa/Macbook Air debacle.

I really don’t know what to say on this one. I enjoyed making fun of the iPad like many others out there and have a ton of #1 hit search results on Google based on Apple’s iPad, which I still don’t understand but that doesn’t mean anyone at Apple, let alone Steve Jobs has seen my iPad mini spoof or the slideshow fun or the iPad Etch-A-Sketch imagery people seem to so love right now. And then even if they did see it why would they want to send me one for my opinion or possibly inevitable further mockery? Me just a simple, semi-imaginary and at times zany slightly-creative blogger. Why would Steve or anyone at Apple waste their time on me for a second when they’re all too busy trying to convince people it’s cool, hip, magical and everyone needs an iPad Etch-A-Sketch iTouch thingy?

Even after what I just said, let me respond to my crazy readers exactly why Steve Jobs and Apple will never send me an iPad to review. They’re chicken. buk! buk! baaaaaaaaaaak! buk! buk! baaaaaaaaaaak! buk! buk! baaaaaaaaaaak! buk! buk! baaaaaaaaaaak!

(Email me here Steve).

Ack, that’s it for now. G’night Steve. G’night Apple. G’Night Mary-Ellen, Jim-bob…

Dear Computer Gods,

It has been a while since I last spoke to your silicon goodnesses (with chewy caramel centers) and I supplicate myself before your bits and bytes properly chagrined at how long it has been since I last genuflected before you. I know you don’t have many nanoseconds for such an unworthy geek such as myself but I figured that as long as I have your attention… I STOLE YOUR WALLET!!! NEENER! NEENER! NEEENER!!

Made you look. Sorry, I couldn’t help it. Any-whoos as I was saying I am awfully sorry that I have taken this long to… seriously that wallet thing was so funny! I couldn’t believe you guys fell for that for .0002 picoseconds. *snort* HAHAHAHAHA! *ahem*

My bad, won’t happen again. *snort*

I am heartily sorry that I have been busy of late with what amounts to be my carbon-based existence (life) to talk to you as I should; as a humble and grateful computer geek. Your 0’s and 1’s fill me with infinite joys and pleasures, as long as the right codec is installed. I am eternally grateful and humbled by your generosity and every neuron in my feeble meat-brain is alight with that thing that chick banana did with the horse maracas. It’s peanut butter jelly time!!!
Peanut butter jelly time!!! Peanut butter jelly time!!!

You make me happy whenever I am in your silicon-ey presence. You have done more for me than any fanatic imbecile NERD! geek worshiper can ever have imagined, or watched on Youtube. Your electronic impulses caress my gelatinous orbs and cause them to dance in their skull-sockets with glee.

Please, I beseech thee listen a zeptosecond more to my baring of my soul in your honor. Remember those times we shared when we were alone and no else was watching but the Lower Merion School District tapping covertly into our webcam? Those were good times, no matter what anyone says and we shouldn’t be ashamed of what we were doing. There’s nothing wrong with body oil handcuffs a taser a little input output of not gonna say it ideas.

It’s not unusual for those that are worshiped for their silicon-ey goodness and those that grovel at their feet to come together to a mutual toga party rubdowns sharing of hearty love sonnets candy cocoa butter rub downs discussions in a hot tub broom closet mature manner, is there?

I just didn’t want you to think that I had forgotten about you, Oh Computer Gods and for all that you’ve done for me. I won’t waste another yoctosecond of your time, I know there are other geeks in line to talk to you. But none of them, none of them will ever know how much cocoa butter you like I am grateful to you for pinging me so good keeping me in your L2 cache for as long as you have.

Your loving servant forever,

Vincenzo Asti Spumanti Manicotti
010011110110100001101101!

Like a good geek you order a lot of stuff online and like to know exactly when your packages are going to arrive. You’ve noticed most tracking information from sites like UPS and Fedex don’t update often and can be very vague. Leaving you that uneasy feeling that the minute you step out the door that delivery guy is going to show up and you’ll have to wait another day for your package.

A site I go to that usually offers more specific details and more tracking updates is iShip’s tracking information page located here. Just enter your tracking number you were given and usually you’ll get a lot more detail than the carrier’s own tracking site. iShip’s Track Package page works on multiple carriers like UPS, Fedex and their other competitors.

I don’t know why this is but 9/10 times I find quicker updates and more details on my arriving packages and have yet to miss a delivery. It makes life easier and I’m all for that! Aren’t you?

What sites do you use to track your packages?

If you use a computer and like movies it’s a pretty sure bet you’ve heard about The Internet Movie Data Base (or IMDB for short). While IMDB is great for many things movie related, to see how a movie did at the box office, I head on over to Box Office Mojo.

Box Office Mojo is a movie portal with a simple and clean, almost basic HTML design. You can find out showtimes in your area, upcoming releases, movie news, how many theaters a movie is being shown at and there are also forums you can talk about films.

It’s strength however, and the reason I use it is box office returns. Want to know how a movie did/is doing at the box office? Go on down to Box Office Mojo and find out. You’ll not only get a breakdown of total receipts (domestic and foreign) but you can also get it broken down by daily or weekend box office results. Besides box office take, they also tell you how much a movie’s production budget was so you can see just how good a movie did/ is doing.

Want to bet your friends that Evolution, that horrible 1991 flick didn’t make any money? Bet your friends $20 and then take them to Box Office Mojo and find out you lost $20. Sad but true. (It made $18 million over it’s production budget.)

It’s by far the simplest and easiest site to see how much money a movie has made/is making. And best of all it’s not an ad-laden, graphic-heavy, flash festival either so the pages load fast! fast! fast!

Head on over and give it a try. And if there are other similar sites you use, please share them here.

One of the sites I go to daily to get caught up on some tech tips, shortcuts to make the geek life a little easier and find some interesting software is Lifehacker.com. The good folks over there post about 5-10 entries per day, scoured from all over the net. Want to learn how to backup your files automatically to a thumb drive? How about how to download entire Picasa Web albums without having to log in? Or would you rather like to learn how to add a self-portrait mirror to your camera?

Lifehacker is a decent and small tech site aggregator that’s not overwhelming with too many blog posts a day. It’s ordered, clean and has a lot to offer the people that go there.

And best of all, since there aren’t a lot of posts a day you can easily check up the latest from them on your break. If you haven’t given them a shot before, please give the good folks at Lifehacker a try. Just don’t forget to come back here, OK?

Recently I accompanied a family member to a local Office Depot store where I came upon a couple of web cameras that were in a clearance bin marked $4. I remembered my sibling wanted a netcam but didn’t want to spend the same amount as a $5 dollar footlong, so I pointed the webcams out to him. He didn’t look convinced they were any good until I pointed out that (a) they’re $4 and (b) he could spend $6-7 in gas to return them and get his $4 back.

So he quickly snatched up two.

After we got home, before he even tried one out I researched the netcam. It was a Markvision Magnetic Webcam model #MVWC-MG4933-L. Seems a lot of people bought these for $9.99 on Black Friday. There were a ton of complaining on the Net that the drivers on the disc weren’t the right ones. After looking at more sites, some people said their Windows 7 and Vista eventually found the drivers on their own, they just had to wait a minute or two.

It was this point that my better deal than a $5 footlong sibling informed me the driver didn’t work on the webcam. I let him know to wait a minute or two and then did a little more research as I plugged one in my Win 7 computer. It found the camera after a little bit and said it was an Altair Vimicro USB Camera.

I haven’t found more on this webcam but if you’re looking for drivers for it and have Win7 or Vista it should install automatically. The drivers information in Device Manager for Win7 is:

ksthunk.sys
usbvideo.sys

Altair USB2.0 Camera
Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Date: 6/21/2006
Driver Version: 6.1.7600.16385

This info doesn’t do me any good, but it might help someone else getting it to run. Since his Vista and my Win 7 rig said it sees it, now was the time to test it out.

Well, how do you test out a new webcam?

You can use instant messenger programs like AIM and Yahoo (but I loathe IMing). You can use any video capture programs (if you have them installed), or you can head out to a very cool web page - Testmycam.com designed just for that purpose.

Testmycam allows anyone with a browser using flash to test out their webcam. All you have to do is head on over to the page and click the allow button to give the flash application permission to access your webcam and microphone and BAM! you see what your camera sees. As well as a nifty green and black window that apparently shows you the camera working out what’s changing on the screen.

Testmycam is a very happy discovery and I’m very glad to have found it. It’s a great and easy way to check out if your webcam is working and is very worthy site to add to your bookmarks. It does one thing and does it very well.

See, you never know what you might find until you go looking for it. If you have a webcam, try that site out. Testmycam rules!

Oh and as for the $4 webcams - yeah they work and all but I’d rather have a $5 footlong!

PS. If you have one of these Markvision webcams and can’t figure out how to turn the lights off, it’s the slider that looks like a volume control on the cable. Weird.

Two of the biggest and brazen outright liars that plague computer consumers are hard drive and monitor manufacturers. From almost the very beginning they have purposely lied to consumers in order to rip them off and one has to wonder why are they still allowed to do so? It’s like the worst kept secret that they never advertise their products truthfully when mentioning size/ capacity/ specs.

Hard drive manufacturers totally misrepresent the capacity of their hard drives and monitor makers purposely lie about the size of their screens. Hard drive makers tell you that the size of their drives are much higher than they actually are, while monitor makers either count the bezel when measuring their screen or they round up the inches. No matter what they say, hard drive makers are always selling you less capacity while monitor makers are selling you a smaller monitor.

Love that nice huge 1 terabyte drive you just got? It’s not a terabyte drive dude. You just got ripped player!

Hard drive makers are the worst of the lot because the larger the hard drive, the more capacity you get screwed out of. See, if you buy an 80 gigabyte drive, you’re actually getting a 74.5gb drive (a loss of 5.5gb) and if you purchase a 1 terabyte drive, you only get 931gb (a loss of 69gb!). Sucker!

Why? That’s because they use a decimal system where computers use a binary system. 1k in decimal = 1,000 whereas 1k in computers (binary) = 1024. So for each 1k a drive manufacturer reports their hard drive is in size, they’re lying by 24 bytes. And those bytes add up quickly, believe you me!

Monitor manufacturers also rip off their customers by either counting the bezel in their measurements or rounding up the size. The bezel scam was the worst with CRT monitors since the bezel was usually quite HUGE on these heavy puppies. LCDs on the other hand usually do not count the bezel when talking about screen size but round up so there are a ton of 22″ LCDs that are actually 21.1-21.5″ LCDs. Doesn’t sound too bad, but there are other ways LCD makers give you less instead of more. They lie about the response time, brightness, contrast ratio, pixel pitch (sharpness); in short they lie or intentionally mislead (same thing) just about every spec they list.

The biggest scam of LCDs is that it’s perfectly acceptable to the manufacturer that you get a broken monitor with stuck or dead pixels and will refuse to replace your monitor if it’s broken in that way. See, they say that MOST of your monitor works then that’s OK by them and touch luck for you. So what if there are 4 bright white dots (or black ones) on your brand-new 22″ LCD, suck it up, stop crying and get used to it! While there are a tiny bunch that don’t agree with this scam, most manufacturers require you to have a significant amount of problems on your LCD before they’ll even consider replacing it, even though it’s obviously defective.

Which is total ! There is no excuse during the warranty period for there to be any display defects of any kind! But just like hard drive manufacturers who lie about their product every day, LCD makers don’t care if not everything works the way it should, as long as people buy it. These ers have thought this way for far too long!

It’s about time hard drive and LCD makers stopped lying about their products.

What do you feel, people Do you care? Have you ever contacted either industry and told them to knock it off? Because if you all did, they would. So…