Chaos Rising: List of DLC stuff

I just restarted the campaign mode on Chaos Rising once more just to double-check exactly what it was that I got in the supposedly "Exclusive Wargear Pack" from the myTHQ promotion. Now depending where you live, it might be limited (I read somewhere that for THQ UK, only the first 50'000 people who register will get the code to redeem the DLC). On the little insert that came in my retail box (I'm based in Canada, by the way), it simply says "while supplies last" which is kind of funny to think about since these are virtual goods.

So everybody's published and republished the list of items for the Librarian Wargear by now (if you pre-ordered your game as a soft-copy from THQ.com). You get the following 4 items in that one:

1. Sword of Codicier
2. Mantle of the Codicier
3. Tome of Displacement
4. Obsidian Raven

I don't have any further info other than their names. But I suppose they are a power-weapon, an armour, an accessory, and a command-accessory. And of course, probably all useable only by the new Jonas character who happens to be a Librarian.

Now everybody keeps referring to the other DLC pack as being a Force Commander Wargear pack. It is never stated anywhere in the official literature. The only clues given by THQ is the little set of previously existing icons printed in black and white on the paper insert. I also go by the assumption that while the Techmarines stock your inventory at random when you start a new campaign, the DLC items appear at the bottom of the grid. You should find the following items:

1. Axe of the Ravens
2. Fist of Valhalla
3. Golden Fury of Terra
4. Pistol of Ideus
5. Venerated Zeal
6. Helm of Command

The first five are in the weapons (respectively: power axe, power fist, plasma gun, plasma pistol, an auto-cannon for a dreadnought) and the last is a command accessory (a white helmet).

So you ask, are they worth it? To be honest, I'm sure yet. At a glance the new weapons don't have much higher stats that the others you might find during play. For example, my version of Davian Thule as a Dreadnought imported from the first Dawn of War 2 game save already had a powerful auto-cannon equipped with exactly the same stats as Venerated Zeal. However Venerated Zeal also gives a couple of boosts to the percentage chance "Scatter". And one could safely assume that the other items also have such minor boosts compared their same-stat counterparts. The item I'm torn over is the Helm of Command which sounds great (gives boosts to nearby units) but I just love my Force Commander wearing his jump-pack...

Soulstorm updated!

So I noticed two things tonight...

Firstly, my previous post was my 666th post on this blog.

Secondly, Dawn of War Soulstorm has finally been patched!
Yes, it's actually been out a couple of weeks now but tonight was the first time I happen to log in online to see the message in the online lobby. I mean really, at one point (about 2 months ago, I guess) I even stopped going to Relicnews (which by the way, turns out not to be an official Relic forum but a fan community who happens to be in very good standing with Relic). So anyway, go to Fileplanet and get the patch!

In fact, get both v1.1 and v1.2 because Relic mysteriously patched the patch almost right away within a few days of each other.

On a side note, hope you kept your original "Soulstorm.exe" file if you previously no-cd-hacked it because the patcher won't recognize the hacked version and will ask you to reinstall the game. No we'll need to rehack the damn thing after the patch installs. :-/

waking up from sleep mode

OK, so I got a puzzle for my readers and I just spent at least 90 minutes crawling the back-alleys of the web reading a million different sleep-mode problems in Vista and each one different from the last... and none of them the same as mine.

Actually, not accurate. I did find one person who does have the same problem - but nobody replied with a working solution.

Anyway, so folding down my laptop puts Vista to sleep mode. But on waking it up, Windows Live Messenger (currently v8.5) hangs. The icon appears in the system tray, but cannot be clicked (left or right). I need to use Task Manager to End Task and then restart it manually.

Anybody else see this before? Got a solution to share with me? Post a comment!!

The PSU story (still)

Well, the story, hopefully has a happy ending (even if it took forever to conclude). My folks visited me this weekend. If you hadn't figured that out from my previous posts, then at least you have noticed some unusual activity in my Twitters. They brought along the failed Corsair.

Previously I had gone back to the shop and asked about changed out the PSU. The guy said he'd waive the 30-day limit for me and told me that since I'd been reporting ongoing troubles ever since the original purchase that he'd deal with Corsair himself and that I'd get a store credit to pick another PSU.

I chose an Enermax. I know, they're not fancy by any means, but they're reliable and I trust them (I've had one for nearly a decade now). So now I've got the new unit inside my machine.

It seems to be working okay. I'll give it a couple of weeks because well, you simply never know. Heck, it was at least 6 days after my install of the Corsair in my parents machine before it up and died on them. I mean, what the hell? Still haven't applied the case sticker yet (nor for that matter have I removed the Corsair sticker). I think I'll keep it as a reminder that from time to time, even the most reputable guys can make a lemon.

The Final Word on the 450VX

(As far as I'm concerned anyway!)

Well, I'm back from visiting my parents. I went with two PSUs in my baggage. My old Enermax (which really had nothing wrong with it to begin with except its age) and the troublesome Corsair I had blogged about previously. I was armed with only a medium Phillips screwdriver...

Well, when I got home, I pulled out the temp PSU I had thrown in a month ago when their original PSU blew up in a spectacular puff of black smoke. Then I mounted the Corsair into the case using a gentle bit of elbow grease (it seemed to be about a fraction of a millimetre too big - I think it was the larger fan-grill on the bottom of the VX series). Anyway, it went in and plugged in just barely. The 20-24-pin combo plug was a tight fit for their particular motherboard. And then... [insert drum roll], the machine booted up.

And it continued to boot up. In fact, it booted normally throughout the rest of the 4-day Easter weekend. So, reluctantly, I decided to let my folks keep the sexy new PSU. So now everything in my own home is back to status quo (The old Enermax is back in my machine), and $80 has gone into my parents' POS machine.

The PSU chronicle

Well, I still don't know what the hell is going on.

I took my new PSU into the shop to show them what was up. But when they plugged it into their test gear, the multimeter showed normal readings across the board. In fact, compared to my readings, some of the voltages I said were high were a little low, while those I said were low were a little high.

Anyway, they suggested I retest my PC with the old PSU plugged in, and then retest the PSU myself by plugging in only 1 device at a time to see if there was something drawing an unusual amount of juice that would cause my low readings.

So home I went. First I plugged in my old PSU into the mobo and video card alone - no hard drive. The system posted fine and the BIOS readings looked very normal. Then in went the new Corsair PSU (the same setup). The readings were still low. But I did make note of the fact that the power button was now acting normal again and starting the power supply on the first button press.

So I shut it down and added the hard-disk and floppy, all on the same cable. This also posted fine and the voltages were still low. But again, the ATX wake-up button seemed to be delivering enough power. So then I shut it down and plugged in the second IDE line for my optical drives (these on a second line). Also booted okay.

I dreaded the next step (because I had troubles with the case accessories before). But I shut down a final time and plugged in the case fans and front-pannel (on the line with the optical drives). And surprise! Everything was up and running and no sign of the strange ATX power button weirdness I reported earlier. It seems like the low voltage was NOT the cause of the false-start because I'm still reading between 4.70 and 4.73 volts on the 5V line.

I refer you to the old fallback: "why ask why?"

updates all around

The running commentary on my PSU: I've learned that I'm not the only one with "false starts" on my PC. According to http://www.pjrc.com/about/rambling/antec.html my ATX power switch is a symptom of a weak 5V line. I can't wait to check out the readings in my BIOS. If I can confirm it's the same problem, I'm taking the thing to the shop to show them and then ask for a replacement.

Also, about a month ago I reported seeing cracks in my paintball loader. Well, DXS never got back to me. I even called this support line and left and message. Anyway, in the end (last week) I tried what I swore I wouldn't do: contact the store that sold me the loader. These guys in the past would take an eternity to respond to me but this time sounds like they got my back. They gave me an RMA number and said depending on what the thing looks like, they'll send me a new loader. They also thought to warn me in advance that they only had black ones left in stock (I'm at the point where I don't really care). Anyway, I shipped it off yesterday. We'll see what I get back...

My last Amazon order is still in limbo. I wrote about this in January, I think. The Annihilation book is in but the Voltron book is not. Argh. Good thing Weirdguy still invites me to the comics shop every week (he goes for the designer collectibles while I go for weekly randomness).

Speaking of which, here's a shout-out to a new player in the virtual world: www.canadianvinyl.ca - they're so new I was member number 2... I'm pretty much Weirdguy's test monkey. But he did open a section on the forums for discussion of anime PVC statues. The only collectible vinyl I own is a PandaZ Robonimal. I should blog that in the near future...

ATX weirdness

In the 24 hours following my install of the Corsair VX450W PSU into my box (with an Asus A7N8X-E motherboard), I've discovered something ...weird.

From a "cold" start, I must press the ATX power switch twice. The first press doesn't do anything. But a second press will boot up the PC. Once up and running, it exhibits no symptoms of unstable power or anything.

And instead of holding-for-a-second to shut down, simply pressing and releasing the ATX power button will cause the PC to power down (including proper shut-down of the OS and everything!). In fact, it behaves exactly like it should if I had pressed-and-held-for-a-second.

Now the weirdness of shutting down doesn't bother me much. Because I can't even remember when the last time was I had to use the physical ATX switch to shut down my PC. I always use the OS software shut-down. But it does bother me that I must hit the switch twice to turn on. I can't help the feeling "if it's not working properly, that might be a symptom of something else wrong."

Update: a couple of hours later while browsing my motherboard manual, I've learned that the power-down delay is a programmed behaviour of ATX. For some reason, my board's default CMOS setting is for "instant-off" when you hit the power switch while the PC is on. After playing in the BIOS, I was able to set the delay on - tested and working. Just proves what I said about not using that function too often, eh? "not often" as in "never."

The Corsair PSU

I needed to have a spare anyway. A few weeks ago, the PSU in my parents' computer fried (I'm serious: a loud pop and a puff of smoke came out the back!)... So I figured, I have a decent PSU in my machine... but it'd be cool to have a new one (it's always cool to have new stuff).

This hunt started back in the fall when Ars Technica did a highly unusual hardware round-up: they reviewed a whole bunch of Power Supply Units. While the Seasonic S12-II came out on top, Corsair's offering was in the running too. And in fact, it picked up a ranking at SilentPCreview as well. I picked up the VX today at a local shop. Now I've never purchased my own PSU before... but I figured, I've built PCs before... all PSU follow the same basic principles, yes?

After being fairly experienced with trying to save a few bucks buying OEM products, I was pleased to know that in a retail box, even PSU manufacturers like to spice up their goods. The box opened to reveal a cloth draw-string bag with the Corsair logo silk-screened on it holding the PSU. Too bad it's a little ragged like it's been snagged on something before. Oh well. The PSU also came with a bunch of plastic-ties and a case badge (yeah! another one for my collection).

I was a little confused at first because the main plug was 24-pin and while I didn't panic, it took me a moment to realize that the 4 extra pins just snapped open to swing away from the rest. Presto: a 20-pin plug. Another thing that threw me off was that on my old PSU, it had a separate line to the motherboard that could monitor the fan. Well, the VX doesn't have one. And finally, I also worried a bit to realize how old my platform is getting. I don't own a SATA drive... so pretty much half the plugs are useless to me. And would there be enough 4-pin Molex plugs for my IDE drives and video card? Hmm...
Well... yes.
The VX completely maxed out in my case to power a pair of optical drives, my HDD, video card, case fans, lights and front panel. I breathed a sigh of relief at the end of that install. All the unused lines were tied up and tucked into an unused drive bay. One last thing that drives me a little crazy: my PC is just as loud as it was before this PSU went in. Turns out my old PSU was an Enermax - while not the most silent PSU in the world, it did boast the "whisper" label on it. And of course, my two case fans are probably making most of the noise, however, I'm not too keen on removing those.

Fixing the damn HID

In their trademark outstanding attention to detail, Microshaft had seen fit to have an infinite number of variations on your typical Windows install. For my part, I use a version of XP Pro with SP2 and guess what? Although this is the very same version that my parents have, while their HID service started without problems, my service did not.

HID stands for Human Interface Device and is basically Windows' way of recognizing industry standard signals coming from a given keyboard. Have one of those fancy keyboards with media keys like volume up/down, play, stop, etc? That's an HID. And HID Service is what "makes it go."

So on day 2 of running on my G15, I decided it was time to stop goofing off with my macros and start playing with the media keys (which weren't working yesterday). Turns out my HID Service was not running. I found clues on-line what the problem was (not missing files but actually a registry problem. That is, in order for HIDSERV to work, the service keys under your HKey Local Machine registry should look like this:I was missing an entire key under HIDServ. Now for those of you who aren't really into mucking around the registry, it may look like Explorer, but it doesn't quite navigate the same way. Each "directory" is actually a key itself. And mine was missing "Parameters" key under the "HIDServ" key. So you need to right-click in that window and say "new" and "key." In there, you need to create a new "expandable string value" with what you see in my screen capture.

I'm basically repeating info I found on the web but I think a picture is worth a thousand words. Because reading other peoples description of the registry, I had no idea I had to create my "ServiceDll" value inside another "subfolder" I was missing!

Anyway, being that DJ Specs asked so nice, here's a shot of what my work area looks like at the moment. I only now realize after having photographed it, what a frickin' eyesore this mess is! :P

First Impressions: G15

So yeah, I'm enjoying a week-late X'Mas present to myself. I picked up a G15 (version 1 - the blue one) on December 24... needless to say, besides just plugging it into my parents computer to make sure all the keys worked, I didn't actually get to put it through its paces until now

So my first impressions after fooling around with it for about an hour or so?
Well, first of all, it's a pretty solid keyboard. And you can't really deny the inherent coolness of having a "gaming keyboard." I mean, forget the plain keyboard you "just get by with" this is a keyboard made for playing with, for crying out loud.

My second immediate thought was, "damn it, this thing is pretty big." I mean I'm used to having my keyboard on my lap (depending on the chair I'm in, of course) but at that LAN party last month, people looked at me funny when I told them I wouldn't need as much table space as everyone else. It's that additional keypad of macros keys on the left that gives it width. It also takes a moment to acclimate to the shape. I'm on those folks who rarely looks down at his keyboard, so I operate by touch, mostly. But now ALT+Tab and the ESC key down feel like their in the same place anymore. They're no longer at the left-most edge: the programmable macro keys are!

And what of that fancy LCD screen now that I've had some minor experience with it? Well, it's cute, but I don't see myself using it that much. I do feel ambitious and I think I will try the included SDK. I've already downloaded the Unreal Tournament patch that puts a running ammo count on the LCD. That's again, something cute, but why the hell would I take my eyes off the screen to look down at my keyboard?

And while Logitech has added a Dawn of War to the profiler software, Relic still hasn't patched it with any usefulness with the G15. That is, the G15's macro key profile manager is smart enough to recognize that have Dawn of War installed and will let me reserve a keyset for it. But I was really hoping for the LCD panel to, I dunno, tell me how many critical points were being captured or something.

So, uh, yeah... anybody want to do that?

Monster PC700

Blurring the thin line between geek-ness and nerd-dom, I bought a Monster PC700 power bar today. Not because my POS computer requires such lavish hyperbolic protection... But rather for reasons simpler than that: the price was right.

Simply put, I found it on the shelf at The Source (aka: Circuit City) at a ridiculous half-price. Yes, twenty-five bucks IS HALF-PRICE. If you're not in the know, that's because aside from setting the industry standard for mid-range home-theatre cabling, Monster is also dabbles in over-priced solutions for power protection. They have a whole line of this sort of stuff. Just walk into your local Futurecrap store and you'll find a really gimmicky demo station with what looks like an oscilloscope read-out that shows the stability of the electric current with and without a Monster product in it...

But aside from the questionable legitimacy of Monster's claims or the rationale a sales guy will try to give you for paying out the nose for a freaking power-bar, I will give Monster credit for some of their design choices. Besides making good solid cables, they do produce a pretty cool power-bar.

For their power bars, the plug is a handy round affair that is angled so it won't interfere with other plug you may want to have in the same 2-outlet wall-jack. The main toggle is positioned safely on top where an errant toe won't kick it accidentally (if you happen to be me at a certain LAN party). Plus, on the off chance you have a few plugs for devices which have their transformers built into the plugs making them fat, Monster also provides a few outlets with extra space around them too. Do you have one of those all-in-one FAX printers? Well, that's now protected too as there's a pass-thru for the phone line on this baby as well.

Monster products don't go on sale too often. In fact, they pretty much NEVER go on sale directly from Monster and usually it's the retailer taking a hit (I've been told in the past that Monster has very strict pricing policies on their products). So if you're in need of a power-bar to replace that crappy one you bought in the 80's, welcome to the 21th century.

DoW on G15, anybody?

Ok, I'm just throwing this out there (because I know there are people that come and go without leaving comments). But does anybody out there have an applet for the Logitech G15 keyboard's LCD screen that does anything for THQ's "Warhammer 40'000: Dawn of War" series of games?

Tonight I finally saw the G15 in person and it does indeed look very sexy as far as keyboards go. Actually, I like the look of the "Gaming Keyboard" (with the blue lighting) better than the "Version 2" (has orange lighting). But then I came home and started doing research. And it seems Logitech was pretty sparse on the included software for the cool little screen.

But they did release a full SDK suite for the general public to code custom applets. So has any body out there tried this thing? Is it easy to work with? Hard to work with? I may be an IT professional, but I'll admit, my track record for setting up my own compilers has been spotty at best - I do my best work when I just have to worry about the code itself and not the mechanisms behind the machine language.

Anybody? The best answer would be to say, "why yes, I play Dawn of War also and have a G15 set up to show lots of good info on the mini-screen. And here's how you can get it too!"

A new interface for ZeroPrime

So I finally went and bought a new monitor. It's one of those rare instances where I'm replacing a perfectly good piece of hardware (my 17" Samsung DF756 still works and works well). The irony is, the LCD ended up with isn't even the one I went running out to find.

I was browsing this week's brochure from Future-scrap and noticed that my dream LCD monitor was on sale. The Samsung 226BW happens to be one of the highest rated models around and shares a pedigree with one that mrbabou heartily recommended to me. And well, earlier this week, my overtime pay finally came through so I had a bunch of cash on hand.

But when I got to the store, I took a look at the 206BW - the same monitor, but 2 inches smaller... And you know what? Having them side by side on the same shelf, I realized, "damn, talk about the law of diminishing returns." I decided I didn't feel like paying $60 for an inappreciable difference in size. I mean seriously, between 20" and 22" I stood there and couldn't even tell the difference. So I grabbed the smaller one.

And really, now I'm sitting in front of it all plugged in and it's fine. I just need to get used to the funky resolution (because really, everything does look kind of smaller because everything's so stupid sharp. It's kind of like transitioning from a 800x600 screen to 1024x768 for the first time.

Anyway, I'm happy and I didn't spend anywhere near as much as I was anticipating. So there.

Messenger roll-out screws me!!

Messenger is arguably the most polished of the IM clients out there. I tried a few others in my day but nothing is more intuitive than Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger). It keeps me in touch with friends and family (particularly my mother who likes to go on-line early in the morning and sometimes we video-chat; and it's all free - unbeatable!).

Well, if you haven't heard about it yet, this past week Microsoft decided it was time to roll out version 8.1 - but in the process crushed any sense of normality I had come to expect with Messenger. Somehow, the network refresh completely wiped me out!

Now there's an up-side to this... For the last 11 months I've been using an outdated email address to sign-in to Messenger. An email address acts as one's LiveID. You can change your email in your LiveID profile, but you cannot change the actual LiveID itself. This morning for whatever reason (I guess somebody else claimed my old Sympatico address finally) LiveID prompted me to update my username. So I gave it my new Rogers email address. Easy right?

Wrong.

Firstly, I've since discovered that I lost all my custom emoticons, custom avatars, and backgrounds for chat-windows (which was a very ero-kawaii Misaki Kureha from Divergence Eve, by the way).

Secondly, I don't know if this is new or what... but just now a buddy helped me test my setup. And boy did it act funny. Let's say we're in already in a chat window and I decide to hide by going "Appear Offline." Suddenly my friend could not continue our conversation... any further messages he typed into our chat window instead went to some kind of temporary hotmail inbox (and I assure you, I don't have a hotmail address). Talk about bizzarre!

Anyway, excuse me while I go try to rebuild all my missing emoticons and stuff.

WinXP: is it a known bug?

I'm just throwing this out there... maybe someone will read this and it will ring a bell with them. But I for one have never encountered as many problems as my parents have on my own system.

My folks are running WinXP (of questionable origins that neither myself nor WGA will attest to *ahem*). And they are pretty computer illiterate so I can only assume that from time to time they will allow the auto-update to function.

All I know is that at one point, after grabbing a bunch of updates and attempting to reboot, I got a "Windows cannot boot because the following file is missing" (and I'm just paraphrasing because it was at least a few months ago)... and IIRC, the file in question was some DLL or something (a config.-something). Well, anyway, it prompted me at the time to foolishly run out and buy them a new harddrive and in the process accidentally destroying any backups they had of... well, everything... I won't get into that now.

So anyway, the last time I debugged it I got it down as far as a bad PSU (which thanks to a co-worker buddy who had an old derelict lying around, I got to replace for free). And then the following morning I narrowed the problem still further to faulty RAM (at least I suspect it of being faulty because as soon as I pulled it, the system booted without any further problems).

Now we're about a month since the last time I looked at that damn thing... and it's got that "missing file" problem again. And since it's Thursday, I'm assuming that some time earlier today, WinXP attempted to update itself and something (again) corrupted the system files.

And since I'm no tech support specialist, I can't really talk my technically-challenged parents through running the Windows setup... In fact, I'm kind of toying with the idea of buying a new PC (for myself) and giving away the one I'm typing this on right now to them. Because really, in its 7 year history, this PC has never had any of the problems they've had with theirs.

New Toy! Logitech MX Revolution

It seems ridiculous now that I think about it. Ridiculous in more ways than one. Firstly, I realize that my mouse doesn't work... It hasn't worked in years. The scroll wheel was buggy and jumped my pages around uncontrollably any time I touched it. Well, I learned to live without it because up until this mouse, I didn't even have a wheel to begin with. But after many visitors on many weekend stays in a row pointing out the obvious to me - that my mouse DOES NOT WORK, I decided it was time to replace that POS mouse I bought for $10...

Ultimately, the situation has improved... but the situation is still ridiculous. Yes... my mouse is now the most advanced piece of technology attached to my PC. Next to my haphazard PC case (which makes it looks sort of fast and furious), my POS computer still sports a mismatched keyboard (an old IBM Media Pro of which the driver is not even installed at the moment), and a mismatched beige monitor... my fresh MX Revolution is a Ferrari to my f*cking Daewoo computer.

But am I enjoying the new mouse or what? Still got a little kinks to work out like customizing some of the functions but this baby has the coolest scroll wheel I've ever played with. It clicks for precision scrolling, but then if I'm scrolling on an unusually long page, it automatically disengages the micro-gear and allows me to free-spin the wheel. And despite the warnings I've seen on some sites, the latest version of Logitech's "Setpoint" driver (4.0) does work with Firefox. The Docu-flip wheel at my thumb becomes and alt-tab and the forward and back navigation buttons also work in Firefox 2. And to top it off, the little auto-search button works great: it was relatively inuitive to reset it from Yahoo to Google.ca.

So far so good. Not sure if it'll make a big difference to gaming (doubt it) but it is nice to actually be able to use the zoom functions in RTS games now.

I'm so very tired of this...

OK, so I've figured out that the success of a dual-layer DVD burn is dependent on what I ate for supper on the Wednesday of the week I attempt the burn. No really, that's about as random as it gets.

My brother has notified me that after a weekend here doing no less than 3 test burns in his laptop, he went home with one last ISO on his hard-drive that stubbornly will refuse to burn on a Memorex disc! And while I have a couple of burns on Fujifilm discs prior to giving them away to my brother many months ago when this story started, I've found that CloneDVD2 is NOT compatible with the Fujifilm discs...

So what to do with that ISO? I burn it to the last remaining Philips disc I have... and it... works... sort of. At least it's readable and does not give a "no disc in drive" error. Except, and here's where things get REAL weird: it does not readable in my secondary drive (the Pioneer one). It plays in my stand-alone player with flying colours and is readable in the LG burner, but the Pioneer drive will have none of it.

So now I have another mystery: is my Pioneer drive acting up (it's pretty old)? Why does it read some of my Philips burns and not others? Why will it read that Ultraman movie I made (a rip of a Region 2 DVD I bought) and not a concert I made a year ago when all this started? WTF is going on?!

video wallpaper

File this one under "stupid things you can make your computer do without Windows Vista." You may have heard by now that one of the freebies Microsoft is giving away to Vista Ultimate users is a little novelty app called "DreamScene" which turns any video file into a moving wallpaper.

Well MyDigitalLife has published an article detailing exactly how to accomplish the same thing... for free... and on Windows XP. And all you need is VLC media player.

It's not without its glitches though.
For one thing, you'll need to remember that this is VLC running in the background (i.e.: you can choose to skip the part where you hide it from the task bar, but then if you're like me and like your Alt-Tab shortcut, then you'll eventually swap back to the player. Videos with sound of course will also get annoying pretty quickly. Finally, I noticed that at the end of the playlist, VLC behaves unpredictably - in my case, it tried to loop the video to play again but then it not only paused, but it also became it's own full-screen video meaning an Alt-Tab me to a the full screen video instead of the VLC interface... man it was weird.

I'm going to keep playing with this and if anything interesting turns up I'll follow-up.

DL saga: final post (for real this time)

DL Conspiracy: Final Chapter

Two things... I'm going to go back and add a new "tag" type for this because when I started out documenting my troubles with Dual-Layer burning, I never imagined how many entries it would become. So, when you see those old blogs come up in your RSS, feel free to ignore them.

Anyway, I just wanted to report an addendum to the situation. Remember those Memorex DVD+R/DL that I bought? Yeah, the big 50-count spindle that I CANNOT use. Any ISO file imported to CloneDVD2 becomes a freezing, choppy, altogether irritating mess. And Nero makes a weird archive data disc that can only be read on the original burner.
You know what this reminds me of?...it reminds me of how Philips brand discs behave on my brother's laptop. It was completely incompatible. Could not burn to it at all (ISO file or otherwise).

But in an amazing turn, my brother successfully test-burned several ISO files this weekend using his laptop on the Memorex discs. Not only did they play back on his laptop, but they were readable in my two optical drives, and also in my living room DVD player. I gave them away to him.

So that about closes the book on this story. Memorex for him and Philips for me... I'm sure he will give the spindle a loving home.