Distortion in Windows Media Player

Fifteen years ago, I published a post on my personal (non-music) tree planting blog, talking about how to solve distortion problems in Windows Media Player.  Some people are still using this app on older operating systems, and continuing to run into problems, so I'm going to migrate that information to this music blog.  But remember, this is for the Legacy player, not the new one!

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Have you ever listened to songs in Windows Media Player and found them to be distorted in places, so the sound quality is terrible? The same files may play perfectly in all other programs - I've had files that worked in WinAmp, RealPlayer, Quicktime, Nero, and a host of other programs with no problems, yet Windows Media Player would not handle them properly.

As it turns out, MicroSoft has a Creative PlayCenter MP3 decoder resident in the operating system which (in many but not all cases) is what causes the problem. Certain versions of Windows Media Player use this decoder, but there are compatibility problems. If you're not using that decoder file for whatever reason, you probably won't run into the distortion problems.

The simplest way to fix the problem, assuming that you're running on a Windows operating system, is to go down to your start menu on the bottom left side of the screen, click on it, then go into "search." You need to search your C: drive (or whatever drive your O/S resides on) and look for a file called "Ctmp3.acm" - if you can find that file, don't delete it, just rename it to "Ctmp3.bak" instead.

If you can't see the file extensions when you're doing searches (the default option on Windows, but one which I detest and disable immediately whenever I set up a new computer), I'll show you how to make your file extensions visible. Go to Windows Explorer, either through your Start menu or by holding down the "flying window" key (left of your left side alt key) and then pressing the letter "E" at the same time. Next, go into the Tools menu, and chose Folder Options in the drop-down Tools menu. In Folder options, click on the "View" tab. The seventh or eight option in that list usually says "hide extensions for known file types" and has a check beside it. Uncheck this, then click OK. Now you'll always be able to see file extensions in Windows Explorer and associated panels. If you're quite computer savvy, you might also want to set the other three options above and below that let you show hidden files, show O/S files, and display the full path name in the Title Bar (although this is only applicable if you're trying to conserve system resources by switching to Classic View, such as for intensive audio or video processing).

 

Anyway, now you know how to show file extensions, and how to fix the distortion problem on Windows Media Player. This may not be a problem on newer versions of Vista, but it certainly was on certain versions of WMP running on XP.


If you want a different approach to disabling the problem codec, here's another set of instructions:

The Creative Playcenter software rudely blocks the Windows MP3 codec. The following instructions show how to unblock it on Windows XP system. The instructions for other Windows versions are the same except the steps to get to the audio codec area from the control panel varies. Note that this will disable the MP3 capability of the Playcenter software. You can re-enable using the same steps or replace the Playcenter software.

1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Double click on "Sounds & Audio Devices"
3. Select the "Hardware" tab
4. Double-click on "Audio Codecs"
5. Select the "Properties" tab
6. Double-click on ctmp3.acm
7. Select "Do Not Use this Audio Codec"
8. Then click on the "Apply" button


Edit, a few years later:

Please note that there are a few posts online now from MicroSoft that might give you additional insight into this problem. Here are the links:

     answers.microsoft.com suggestion (June 2010)

     support.microsoft.com suggestion (September 2011)

Hopefully, between my own suggested solutions, and the comments that MicroSoft has brought forward, you'll be able to fix any issues that you might have.

How to Get Rid of MicroSoft OneDrive

If you're like me, the MS OneDrive app drives you crazy.  To be clear, I'm not trying to bash MicroSoft here.  I enjoy a lot of their products.  But I often work in remote bush camps and areas without internet, which makes OneDrive (and similar apps from competing companies) really annoying for me.

When I first decided to uninstall OneDrive, I found out that it has been embedded more deeply in the Windows 10 OS than I had expected.  Here's a link to the Office Support web page that describes disabling, hiding, or uninstalling it:

https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Turn-off-or-uninstall-OneDrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0

The problem with the information on that page is that if you're using the Home version of Windows 8.0 or 8.1, the Group Policy editor is not available.  And almost nobody tells you that!  So tons of pages telling people how to go into gpedit and disable OneDrive will not work unless you're on the Pro version.


Moving on, I tried some suggestions from Life Hacker, at the following page:

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-completely-uninstall-onedrive-in-windows-10-1725363532

However, my attempts at killing it through the Command Line Interface (CLI) were also a failure.  The only consolation in this case was to see the frustrated comments from other people who were also pointing out the lack of gpedit access through MMC to anyone who doesn't have the Pro version.


However, TechJourney.net finally came to the rescue.  I found an article there which allows someone who is comfortable with editing the Registry to get rid of OneDrive.  Here's the link:

https://techjourney.net/disable-or-uninstall-onedrive-completely-in-windows-10/

This should only be attempted if you're comfortable with computers.  It's a pretty easy fix, although you want to be careful that you don't change anything else in your Registry, as that can really mess things up and make your computer very dysfunctional.  But at long as you follow their instructions carefully, you should be fine.

Good luck!

- Jonathan Clark
www.djbolivia.ca

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I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

Free Cracked Copy of Microsoft Office?

As most people realize, I'm fairly handy with computers. Like a backyard mechanic who has a whole machine shop in his garage, I like to tinker with technology. Installing RAM and hard drives and tuning up operating systems is actually pretty easy if you've got any common sense, but it seems to scare people off the same way you might be scared to change an alternator in your truck (which incidentally, is also not very difficult). So I get a lot of requests for help with fixing laptops. And the biggest request that I get, about once a week, is whether or not I can give someone a copy of MicroSoft Office.

So to cut down on the number of requests, I thought I'd post a solution right here on my blog. No, I'm not giving out hacked copies of Office. It's a great program, and without a doubt, the combination of Word & Excel is the software suite that I've used more than any other software. By a factor of at least 10x. I think I first bought a copy in 1990 or 1991, running on a 286, when computer monitors were still monochrome and color printers were unheard of, and have upgraded constantly since then. I guess it helps that I'm a perpetual student, so I usually qualify for educational discounts on software.

Anyway, my solution for your quest for a versatile office suite is this: "Open Office."

Open Office is an open source software suite, promoted by Apache, often referred to as "OOo." OOo stands for "Open Office dot Org," not "Oracle's Open Office." Anyway, open source means that it is free. Free does not always mean lower quality. This software has been developed by a team of thousands of developers from around the world, working on it for over a decade, in order to provide a free office suite package to internet users everywhere. It has a significant (and growing) market share, and is available in over a hundred languages. And it is very compatible with most aspects of MicroSoft Office; at the very least, with everything that students would use it for.

OOo consists of a number of modules/programs, similar to MS Office. "Writer" is equivalent to MS Word. "Calc" is equivalent to Excel. "Impress" is equivalent to PowerPoint. "Base" is equivalent to Access. Well, they're not quite the same, but very similar. OOo handles all major file types, including export to PDF's, and has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Check it out: http://www.OpenOffice.org

Seriously, why perpetuate the distribution of pirated software when you can get the equivalent for free? If you like MicroSoft Office, buy a copy. If you want to save money, use Open Office. More than a hundred million users can't be wrong.

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

Windows Shortcut Keys

This post is about some useful computer tricks for PC’s.  Apologies to Mac users.

A few weeks ago, I was doing some computer work with someone.  I've done a lot of computer programming in my life, and I initially came to university to study computer science (switching away from the music program at the last second).  However, despite that background, the guy that I was working with is a whole lot smarter than I am when it comes to computers.

  

However, as I was watching him do something, he had to minimize about eight windows at one point so he could see the desktop of the laptop that he was working on.  I was surprised by this, because he usually does things very quickly and efficiently.  I said, “Did you know that you can hold down the ‘flying window’ key in the left corner, and press the letter D, and the desktop will appear automatically?”  He didn’t.  At that point, I figured that I should make a list of useful keyboard shortcuts that people would find useful.  Of course, there are already lists on the internet, because Windows comes with almost one hundred built in short-cuts.   However, I’m just going to make a “short list” of about a dozen of the most useful short-cuts here:


CTRL-S:  “Save” a file.  I do this automatically about every two minutes when I'm working on something, although to be honest computers are about a hundred times more reliable than they were twenty years ago (before modern-day internet and email, if you can imagine that kind of a horrible, archaic society).

CTRL-P:  “Print” a file.  Yes, most of these commands can also be found in the menu bar at the top of the screen with just two mouse clicks, but if your hands are already on the keyboard and you know how to type properly, it is far faster to use the shortcuts than to move your hand over to the mouse.

CTRL-Z:  “Undo” last command.  This doesn’t always work, and some programs have stranger combinations, like SHIFT-CTRL-Z to do an Undo.  But it does work in a ton of programs.  And CTRL-Y often is a "re-do" last command, if you change your mind after an undo.  I use these all the time in programs from people like Abobe, or in Word or Excel docs.

CTRL-C:  “Copy” whatever is highlighted on the screen.

CTRL-V:  “Paste” whatever is highlighted on the screen. And by the way, can someone tell me why the letter “V” stands for “paste”??

Of course, the three most common formatting commands (Bold, Italic, and Underline) can all be done with a short-cut.  Just highlight your selection and hit either CTRL-B, CTRL-I, or CTRL-U respectively.  And these same commands, of course, also work as a toggle, so you can turn them on then type a little bit, then turn them back off.

FlyingWindow-E:  Brings up Windows Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer).  I love this short-cut; perhaps my favorite.

FlyingWindow-D:  Brings up the Desktop, as mentioned above.  Also useful.  Strangely, FlyingWindow-M does the same thing, I think, because it means “Minimize” all open windows.  Maybe there's a distinction, but I can’t think of it.

FlyingWindow-R:  Brings up the “Run” dialog, which normally is accessed by going to “start” then to “run.”  This is mostly only useful for the real nerds.  I don’t even use it (well, not much).

FlyingWindow-C:  If you have “IntelliType” turned on, this brings up the Control Panel.  Useful, except that I don’t have IntelliType turned on.

Of course, there are several dozen more, but they start to get pretty esoteric. For a decent list, check this out: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449  (scroll down the page a bit, past the notice about support for winXP having ended).

And before I stop, I’ll mention one last shortcut that makes me laugh.  Windows just wouldn’t be itself without lots of features that are completely nonsensical and redundant.  If you have IntelliType turned on, and do a “FlyingWindow-S” it will toggle the caps lock on and off.  Why you would want to do that instead of just hitting the caps lock key itself (which is already under your left pinky) is beyond me.  Maybe it’s just a way of giving your fingers some extra exercise, although I can think of better ways to do that.

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

Review of a USB "Shortcut Hint" keyboard by Logickeyboard

For users who frequently jump back and forth between several complicated editing suite programs (audio, video, photo, etc.) it can be really hard to memorize all of the hundreds of short-cuts that can really speed up your workflow.  Logickeyboard makes "shortcut hint" keyboards that list all the shortcuts for a specific program right on your keyboard.

 

 

The type of keyboard that I got was a "Nero Slim Line" keyboard, US style, for Adobe Premiere Pro.  US style has the full-size shift key on the right.  European style only has a small shift key on the right.  Here's the video about this keyboard:

A couple of the key points that I love about this keyboard are:
- You can plug a USB light into it, to illuminate the keyboard.
- It has TWO each of the four main modifier keys:  Alt, Ctrl, Flying Windows, and full-size Shift.

One thing I didn't like about this keyboard was:
- The price.  This is designed and priced for professionals.  Mine was $135 base price, but with shipping and customs (from Britain) it cost me almost $200.  Too much.

Logickeyboard has keyboards for the following long list of programs in a variety of styles, for Mac and/or Windows depending on the program, various colours, various keyboard profiles, and so on:

Apple Final Cut
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Apple Color
Autodesk SMOKE
Avid Media Composer
Avid NewsCutter
DaVinci Resolve
Editshare Lightworks
Grass Valley Aurora
Grass Valley EDIUS
Pinnacle Liquid
Quantel
Sony Vegas Pro
Sony Sonaps XPRI NS
Ableton Live
Adobe Audition
Apple Logic Extended
Apple Logic Preset
Avid Pro Tools
Avid Sibelius
Cakewalk Sonar
MakeMusic Finale
MOTU Digital Performer
Steinberg Cubase & Nuendo
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop
Apple Aperture
Maxon Cinema 4D Studio
Apple Boot Camp
Apple Parallels
and other specialty keyboards

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

A Gift for the World - Donate Spare Computer Time

As I write this, depending where you live in the world, today/tomorrow is a major holiday for people of certain religions. Of course, there are billions of people around the world who don't celebrate right now, but who celebrate other holidays at certain times of the year when gift-giving is a tradition.

No matter what holidays you celebrate, or when you happen to read this post, how would you like to give a gift to the rest of the world? And it doesn't really cost anything (except a bit of electricity consumption when your computer is turned on).

The gift is participation in a volunteer "grid computing" project. Wait! I know, your eyes started to glaze over when you saw "grid computing."  Please, bear with me for a second!

There are literally hundreds of millions of computers around the world.  Many of them are inexpensive laptops or tablets for personal use.  You might not think that your "old laptop" is very powerful, but the interesting thing is that it is probably only "in use" for about 2-5% of the time when it's turned on.  The rest of the time, it's sitting there waiting for something to do.  Even when it looks busy, because it's streaming music or uploading a YouTube video, the brain of the computer (the CPU) is idle most of the time.

So it's possible (and easy) to set up your computers so when they're turned on but not in use, they're helping solve scientific problems that could benefit millions of people.  For example, my laptop is currently running projects to help study proteins.  This research is useful in fighting diseases such as malaria, cancer, Alzheimer's, and HIV.  My laptop is also helping to catalog a high quality model of our near galaxy.  It's also searching for pulsar stars, and working on a few other projects.  And it's not costing me a penny, other than my electric bill.

  

Ok, at this point, if you don't want to try to help cure diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, etc., then you can stop reading.  But if I've aroused your curiosity, let me describe in more detail how it works, and I'll explain some of the specific projects that I'm supporting.

The Software:

The project is called BOINC, which stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.  Berkeley of course refers to the University of California at Berkeley.  You don't have to be very tech-savvy to make it work on your computer.  The people at Berkley set up the software to try to make it as user-friendly as possible, and to run in the background so you never notice it.

BOINC is currently available for a number of platforms.  For Windows, your computer must be running XP (service pack 2) or a more recently operating system, which should cover 99.98% of all Windows machines still functioning.  For Mac's, you need OS X 10.4 or later.  There are also versions for Linux and for Android, although the Android software is currently not working properly since Lollipop was released.  That should be fixed shortly.

Here is the download page for BOINC:  http://boinc.berkeley.edu/index.php

How It Works:

Basically, an institution that has a very large amount of data to process, but not enough computers to do it, can set up their project with BOINC.  People who decide to contribute computer time to a project will receive small chunks of data to process.  Your computer will spend a few hours or a few days processing this chunk of data, and then sends the results back to the project's institution.  The institution then sends you another chunk of data to work on.  This all happens in the background, so you don't have to spend any time answering or sending emails, etc.  And if you're worried about the internet usage, you can restrict the times that data is sent or received, and you can cap the bandwidth if you want.  But for most people, this won't be a big deal.  The bandwidth that most of these projects will send/receive in a day is probably less than you'd use watching a two-minute YouTube video.  If you're on Android on a phone, you can tell it to wait until you're at a free WiFi point to send/receive, so you don't use any of your mobile data.

The strength of the system is that the institution can be sending chunks of data out to dozens or even thousands of computers all around the world to simultaneously help work on analyzing data!  If you're curious about what happens to data that can't be processed, and whether or not it affects the project, there are safeguards.  For example, if you are processing info for a project and your laptop gets run over by a bus, there are deadlines built into each chunk of data.  So for this example, if the institution doesn't get results back from the data chunk that your computer is working on within say, 30 days, it sends the same chunk out to someone else's computer to analyze.

Slightly Technical Section:

You can ignore this short section if you want to avoid technical stuff!

If you want to really control the parameters for BOINC, you can customize a lot of stuff.  For example, I have mine set up so that after ten minutes of no activity on the computer, it starts to run.  I think this is fairly typical, although maybe the default is one hour.  But as soon as BOINC detects that you're using the computer (either through physical interaction such as a keypress, or high CPU usage such as watching a video) then it suspends operations until it knows that you're not using the laptop yourself.  This way, your laptop is never "slowed down" when you're using it.

For CPU usage, I have mine set so that BOINC doesn't run if my CPU is over 15%.  When it is running, I have it capped at a maximum of 95% of CPU.  For people with advanced graphics cards, which probably isn't a lot of people, you can allow BOINC to use the processing power of your card.  For example, I have a fairly nice nVidia GeForce 870M video card, so that's also helping to do calculations when BOINC is running.  BOINC supports quite a few nVidia and ATI/AMD cards.

From the BOINC Manager program, if you want to get really technical, go into View and switch to Advanced.  Then go into Tools and select Computing Preferences.  This is where you can play with your CPU and network and hard drive usage settings.  You can also determine whether or not it auto-loads when you boot your device, or whether it has to be turned on manually.  You can also temporarily do a suspension of processing with a single click in the Manager program.  For instance, I have mine set up to auto-boot and run most of the time, but just in case, I suspend it when my computer is rendering large video and audio files (although it shouldn't run then anyway because my CPU is too busy).

Although BOINC runs on all major platforms, not all individual projects using BOINC are able to run on all platforms.  For example, many projects can't take advantage of GPU processing, and some projects only run in Windows and Mac environments.

Cool Stuff:

BOINC on all my machines has a screensaver, which I've turned on.  I've matched the screensaver start time to my "start BOINC processing after 10 minutes of downtime" setting, so when BOINC starts, the screensaver comes on.  You don't have to run the screensaver.  However, for some of the projects, it's pretty cool, and it's a nice conversation piece if someone notices it and asks what your computer is doing.  You can tell them that you're saving the world.

To get to your screensaver settings in Windows, go to Control Panel then Display then Personalization.  I have mine set to never blank, run the generic BOINC portion for 1 minutes, then run project screensavers for 1 hour.  So it keeps switching back and forth between the generic one (1 minute long) and then an hour of various project screensavers.  Within the project screensavers, I have it set to switch every 2 minutes, so there's more variety.

Some of the screensavers keep spinning or displaying changing graphics of stuff being studied, so a single screenshot isn't very exciting.  But here are screenshots from two projects that my laptop is running, from the Rosetta and Einstein projects:

These screensavers have captured the attention of many people who have been by my house to visit.

Projects:

Here are some of the projects that I'm supporting.  I have them set to cycle automatically, so my laptop processes one for an hour, then moves on to the next, so they eventually all get an equal share of my computer's time.  In the preferences, you can allocate different percentages of your overall CPU to various projects, in case there are some projects that you want to support more than others.

Milky Way 

This project is creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.  They have a facebook page and website and YouTube channel, like many of the other projects.

Rosetta

Determining three dimensional shapes of proteins in research that will hopefully lead to a cure of some major human diseases, including diseases such as HIV, malaria, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc.

SkyNet POGS

An astronomy project studying sixteen different properties of galaxies, and also helping to produce an atlas to help astronomers better understand the distant universe.

MalariaControl

Sponsored by the Swiss Tropical Institute, this project is doing modelling/simulations of large human populations to determine optimal strategies for delivering mosquito nets, chemotheraphy, and new vaccines that are currently under development and testing.

Einstein

Searching for spinning neutron stars (pulsars) using data from the Arecibo observatory.  Volunteers helping with this project have already discovered several dozen pulsars over the past couple years!

SETI

This is the project that got BOINC started over a decade ago.  This project searches through data gathered by various observatories and looks for non-naturally occurring radio signals from outside our solar system, in other words, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  So far, none have been found, but people continue to search.  You probably know this joke: "What's the biggest sign that extra-terrestrial intelligence actually exists?  That they haven't tried to contact us."

World Community Grid

This one, sponsored by IBM, is actually a group of non-profit projects on things like research into HIV/AIDS, cancer, tropical and neglected diseases, solar energy, clean water, and many more.  For instance, there is an Ebola research project available from this group.

If you want to see a more complete list of projects to choose from, go here:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

Obviously, there are dozens of projects available to chose from.  You can contribute to just a single project, or you can contribute to a dozen or more.  Your choice.  You'll find that most of the projects specifically fall within research areas within the following fields, due to the data-crunching requirements of these areas of study:  astronomy, math, physics, quantum physics, biology & life sciences, and medicine.  Just remember that you have to install BOINC itself before you start participating in a project.

Getting Started:

After you install the BOINC software, you'll have to go to the "load project" section and pick a project that you want to support.  After that's set up, load another project if you want.  You'll probably be impatient at first to see it start working.  Give it time.  When you first install it, it needs some time to download data to process, to think about how to set things up, and so on.  Also, your stats screens and screen saver will display stats showing how many "work units" your system has completed.  Don't expect those to go up right away!  It may take hours or a day or two before your system finishes processing the first batch of data, then the data has to be sent back to the project sponsor and verified.  So it may look like you've processed 0 units of work for a few days, and then all of a sudden it'll jump up to hundreds or thousands of units processed.  Be patient.

Final Thoughts:

You may wonder how many people are participating in these projects?  As of today, it appears that about 236,000 people from around the world are contributing computer time to various BOINC projects.  They are doing this on about 481,000 computers.  By the way, many users are running BOINC on several machines and tablets and phones simultaneously.  For instance, I have it running on three devices in my house.

There are many web pages showing the stats and progress of various projects.  Some users gather together in "teams" to 

I highly encourage you to contribute to this project.  Seriously, what do you have to lose?  Some people leave their computers running all night, doing nothing!  Think of how good you'll feel if you know that your computer isn't dormant, it's helping advance research in the cure of diseases that kill millions of people every year!

Also, the screensaver options are great.  They've really drawn attention to the project when people see them.  The whole concept is a great conversation starter.  Next time you have friends over to visit, wouldn't it be cool to say, "Hey, I just set my computer up to help study a potential cure for Ebola."

If you're worried about the electric bill, remember that it's not going to cost you anything unless you leave the laptop on longer than you normally would have.  And realistically, leaving a computer on overnight, year-round, to contribute to these projects is not much different than donating $20 once a year to a local charity.

Even if you only have a single computer running the BOINC software, and it's only running a few hours each day, you're still contributing to a great cause.  And what about your computer at work?  If you're not on a special networked computer, maybe that one can also be allowed to BOINC?  You better check your company's policies first, but some companies are fine with this.  After all, it's for a great cause. 

Once again, here's the link to get you started:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/index.php

Please, share this post with other people you know who might be interested in learning about these projects.  I've just added share/retweet/like buttons below.  There are probably lots of people out there who would love to contribute to some of these projects, but just don't know that the possibility exists.

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

Upgrading to Windows 8

For anyone who is used to older versions of Windows, you’re probably thinking about the eventual pain of having to upgrade to a new O/S.  Well get this:  Windows 8 is actually quite painless.  I detested Vista, and it took me months for my frustration to subside.  I bought computers over a year after I had started using Vista and  intentionally still went with XP instead.  When I switched from Vista to Windows 7, I was a bit confused, but it only took four or five days to feel comfortable.  I started playing with Windows 8 today, and it’s only taken about six hours and I feel right at home.

Geek alert:  Any good DJ should be familiar with the basic process of producing their own music too, even if he/she doesn't release music professionally.  And any good producer of dance music should be very familiar with working with computers.  So this post is specifically for the technically-minded people who read my blog AND who use PC's instead of Mac's.

 

Back to Windows 8.  For those of you who are used to win7, I’m just going to list a few quick tips to help you acclimatize when you decide to move up.

Where’s the Desktop?

Win8 starts with the unfamiliar Metro interface.  Probably great if you’re using Surface or a touchscreen, but I’m not.  My first suggestion is to go with what’s comfortable until you’re used to win8.  To get to a desktop, either hit Windows-D, or click on the desktop tile in the lower left of the Metro screen.

Where’s My Start Menu?

Start getting used to not having one available in the lower left.  To find things like the Control Panel and other Start Menu items, either move your mouse pointer up to the top right corner of the screen then back out just a tiny touch to the left.  You’ll give five choices.  The Start Menu and Settings are important.  I don’t use Search, Share, or Devices that much, but they’re there.

Where’s the Control Panel?

See the above, then click on settings.  Just like being home, no different than win7.

How do I get into Windows Explorer?

Same as with win7 – the fastest way is the keyboard shortcut, Windows-E.

What about Customizing Windows Explorer?

Faster than win7.  Just go up to the top of the screen and hit View.  One of the first things that I do on any machine is then right there in plain sight, “show file extensions.”  In win7, you had to go through several menus to turn this on.

What about the Run Dialog?

Same as win7, hit Windows-R.  You should already know the names of a lot of windows utilities if you’re a power user.  For example, if you go into this and type services.msc you can start editing your services options.  If you don’t know much about windows machines, don’t play with these.  If you want to learn more, look it up and then go to the Black Viper page to start learning which services you can probably play with.  He’s already got a table for “safe” mode in win8 on laptops.

Where are applications installed?

Same as win7.  64-bit software is installed in the C:/Program Files (x64) directory.  32-bit software is installed in the C:/Program Files (x86) directory.  By the way, if you’ve always wondered why 32-bit software is tagged as x86, it’s because when computers began to become powerful enough to jump from 16-bit addressing to 32-bit in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the first major CPU was Intel’s 8086 chip.  After that, the next couple major Intel chips also ended in 86.  Major IBM computers in the mid-80’s were labelled as 286, 386, and 486 systems as they got more powerful.  Remember that this is back in the days of DOS, before Windows was even invented.

Want to do a Restart?

This is one of the few annoying things that took me a second to figure out.  With no Start menu, there’s no quick restart option.  Your best bet is to either bring the right-side menus out by mousing to the top right, then go into Settings and then click on the Power icon at the bottom center.  Yes, that’s one more movement than you would have needed in win7.  Or the other option is a ctrl-alt-delete and then into the Power button the same way.

Looking for the Metro screen from the Desktop?

Mouse down to the lower left corner.  Unlike the getting at Start menu items in the upper right, you do NOT move back out of the corner.  Go entirely into the corner and left-click.  If you try to back out, you're likely to start whichever app is on the left side of your task bar.  Incidentally, did you know that if you've got a bunch of apps on the task bar and you want to start any of them without the mouse, you can hot-key the first ten items starting at the left side?  Just go Windows+Digit to open anything, ie. Windows+1 opens the program on the far left, Windows+2 opens the next one to the right, and so on right up to Windows+0.

Looking for Installed Programs in your Start Menu?

I’ve found that I prefer pinning most of my common app shortcuts to the quick-launch (task) bar on the

Desktop.  But of course, I only pin the most common apps there.  I used to access the other few dozens rarely used apps through the Start menu.  Now I just go into the Metro screen (mouse to bottom left of desktop) and then drag over to the far right of your Metro clusters.

How do I Find stuff?

This is simple.  From the Desktop, hit Windows-F.  Lots of search options there.  Play with this.  Hit Windows-F then try hitting a random letter.  You'll be surprised what this option "finds."

What’s new and cool for people who tinker with their computers?

Well, from the desktop, try hitting Windows-X.  Look at your options.  Very handy.  Regular users won’t play with any of this stuff, but power users will.  For example, in win7, if I wanted to get to the Disk Management utility, I’d hit Windows-R and then type in mmc to get the Microsoft Management Console, and then go through the process of adding the Disk Management module as a snap-in.  Now, it’s just sitting right there.  Cool.

Does the Task Manager still work?

It sure does.  Get to it the same way, with a ctrl-alt-delete, but check it out.  Major,  major improvements.  Performance broken down by CPU, disk, all kinds of stuff.  So much better.

What about Copying Files?

You’ll like the new copy dialog.  Extremely detailed.  Say you’re copying something minor like a 300gig handful of directories with about 100,000 files.  The copy dialog will be giving constant speeds updates, time remaining, file progress, and more.

What about Anti-Virus software?
I used AVG for years, and recently switched over to MicroSoft Security Essentials on most of my machines.  Turns out that MSE has been incorporated into Windows Defender in win8, so you don't need to actually load a specific anti-virus program.  McAfee is probably fairly perturbed about that.

Ableton Live Comment:

If you happen to be installing the Suite free trial (which I’m doing right now since I’m on the road with a new laptop and just experimenting), be careful when it gets to the default installation location.  It defaults to the C:/Program Data directory.  That might be a problem if you are looking for it, because this defaults in win8 as a hidden system folder.  I’d recommend that you just change the installation directory to C:/Program Files (x86).  Alternatively, go in and turn on “Show Hidden Folders” in the View options of Windows Explorer.

Ok, that’s enough for now.  Anyone who is comfortable with computers should just start experimenting for an hour or so.  Afterwards, skim though these notes and you’ll find a few “Ah Ha” answers to solve some problems that you hadn’t figured out already on your own.

Final thoughts?

So far, I really like it.  I’ve only played with the legacy side of the O/S in any detail.  In that respect, I like Windows 8 because it isn’t entirely a new operating system.  It’s basically a slightly improved version of Windows 7.  Easy to learn, but addressing a few of the minor drawbacks of win7.  On the Metro side, there may be headaches, but I’ll ease into those over time.

I think Microsoft has the beginnings of a good thing here.  You see, one of the strengths that Apple has always enjoyed has been the integration between hardware groups, ie. between their computers and iPods and iPhones and iPads.  Microsoft is moving in the same directions.  People who are comfortable with Windows 8 on any one type of hardware will be more comfortable using it on a different device, AND all of the devices will be easier to integrate.  I’m not just talking about computers and tablets here ... think mobile.  I’ve been a Blackberry fan for several years.  I feel that Blackberry 10 couldn’t possibly be enough of a game-changer to save their eroding market share.  On the other hand, even though everyone thinks iPhone and Android when discussing mobile, I feel that Windows phones will start seeing a lot more popularity in the next few years thanks to the introduction of Windows 8.  I've been waiting for months for the new Blackberry to come out.  I might just have to start looking at Windows 8 phone options, once some decent hardware comes out and the user base matures.  I'm not suggesting that win8 phones are going to be a runaway hit.  They won't be. But I think that starting in about two years, they'll be some serious competition for Android phones and the iPhone.

Oh, and one more thing not directly related to Windows 8, but VERY useful: Have you ever shut a tab in your browser by mistake and wanted to get back to that web page, but were cursing because it takes a while to find it again? All you have to do is hold down the control key and shift key at the same time and hit the letter T. A new tab opens to that page you just closed. Magic. This works in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and presumably several other browsers too. There are a ton of people I know who don't know this trick, but it's one of the best keyboard short-cuts out there.

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca