RHFtech Help Desk

This article was written by Johnny Dee, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 3rd July 2010 08.42 UTC

The benefits of Twitter are legion. You can tell random strangers that you’ve just purchased a new phone or keep your friends abreast of your latest bowel movements. Alternatively users can join forces with stand-up comedians in exciting witch hunts against homophobic columnists. Celebrities meanwhile can use the service to reveal how normal they are by telling us they’ve just purchased some hummus. From a real shop.

Not that any of this was relevant to a 28-year-old comedy writer from San Diego called Justin Halpern who, after being dumped by his girlfriend several years ago, had to face the hipster lifestyle catastrophe of returning home to live with his parents.

The arrangement did have one particular upside. It allowed him to spend more time with his then 73-year-old father, Sam, a man who – not always deliberately – happened to be one of the funniest and simultaneously rudest men ever. Justin didn’t realise his dad was hilarious when he was a kid; his father’s preference to wander around the house naked and use phrases before dinner such as “let’s just shut the fuck up and eat” were the source of embarrassment rather than fun. But then as a teenager he began writing down his father’s quips, foul-mouthed pearls of wisdom and blunt advice in notebooks.

Years later, returning home as an adult, he found a whole new use for the 140 characters or less on Twitter and began posting his father’s philosophies and TV-watching asides for the amusement of family and friends.

Going from zero to a million followers in nine months, Shit My Dad Says become the first viral Twitter success story. The site has spawned a book and a sitcom which begins airing in the US this autumn and stars Star Trek legend William Shatner as the cantankerous lead. The book shows Justin inherited his father’s comedy genes and, as well as being very funny, also paints a great story of regular American family life – albeit with added swearing and an obsession with bowel movements. Halpern Sr’s quotes, though, remain the main attraction. Here, are some of our favourites; and feel free to add any Shit Your Dad Says below …

PARENTING “A parent’s only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed.”

NATURE “Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor.”

CHRISTMAS “Everybody’s broke, so here’s the rule for Christmas this year; if you still shit your pants, you get a present. Otherwise tough shit.”

TECHNOLOGY “Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.”

KIDS’ HAIR “Does anyone your age know how to comb their fucking hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their head and started fucking.”

VOICEMAIL “Why would i want to check a voicemail on my cell phone? People want to talk to me, call again. If i want to talk to you, I’ll answer.”

MUSIC “What are you listening to?…I know who Hall & Oates are goddammit. It’s the moustache guy and the gay man.”

EVIL “The worst thing you can be is a liar … OK fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then, number two is liar. Nazi 1, Liar 2″

THE X FILES “So, the woman and the dopey-looking guy screw, and then look for aliens – or they just screw and sometimes aliens follow them?”

FEAR “When its asshole-tightening time, that’s when you see what people are made of. or at least what their asshole is made of.”

BULLIES “You’re gonna run into jerk offs. But remember, it’s not the size of the asshole you worry about, it’s how much shit comes out of it.”

WATER SLIDES “You go on ahead. I’d rather not be shot out of a tube into a pool filled with a bunch of nine-year-olds’ urine.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

The glacial change from analog TV to all-digital is confusing and maddening for most people. We are whipsawed by a continuing flow of abrupt changes to our decades-old habits. All we want to do is watch television. Is that too much to ask for? Although these changes are announced long before the implementation dates, the proclamations are often ignored due to our overly busy lives. We are inundated with information. Today, there is too much information to absorb much less act upon until we have no choice.

Recent changes to the Cablevision system have a lot people in a dither about needing to add cable boxes to TVs that previously did not need them. Many of these TVs are in spare bedrooms, in playrooms or basements and are infrequently used.

Cablevision wants you to add cable boxes to all your televisions. It is in their interest. Though many of the newly installed cable boxes are free for the first year or two they will eventually result in increases to your monthly cable bill. Cablevision is not interested in providing you with options that do not require a cable box. Cablevision does not want you to switch to the Internet for video. It is harder for them to charge a premium for Internet-delivered shows. They do not want you to think you have choices.

There are alternatives, if you have an HDTV with a built-in QAM tuner.

I recently wrote Do you need a cable box from Cablevision?

• NO, if you have an HDTV with a QAM tuner.
• YES, if you have standard definition TV or an older HDTV without a QAM tuner.

Most HDTVs sold in the last 3-4 years have QAM tuners. They can display the digital over-the-air (OTA) broadcast station signals sent out from Cablevision. These are stations like WCBS HD or WNBC USPORTS, channels 2-1 and 4-4 respectively. I can receive more than 20 of these stations on my HDTV in Weston without a cable box, including Cablevision News 12 Connecticut (105-12). (See Do you need a cable box from Cablevision? for more information.)

This got me thinking,

“What would I add to an HDTV that is connected to Cablevision without a cable box in order to provide a more complete viewing experience?

If the HDTV is Internet-capable, the answer is as simple as connecting it to your Internet connection via Ethernet wire or a WiFi adapter. Most Internet-capable TVs provide connections to Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video-On-Demand, Blockbuster On Demand, Flickr and a variety of other services.

If you have a Netflix subscription you can watch lots of movies and TV shows streamed over the Internet directly to your HDTV. Similarly, Amazon Video-On-Demand lets you buy or rent the video you want to watch streamed to your television. You may also be able to watch television shows via Hulu. This makes far more economic sense for seldom-watched TVs than paying a monthly fee to rent equipment from Cablevision.

Another alternative if your HDTV is not Internet-capable is an Internet-capable Blu-ray player. Many moderately priced players have Internet features like the HDTVs described above. These players let you watch video and other material from the Internet. They also play Blu-ray, DVD and CD optical discs.

A third alternative is to attach one of the major gaming consoles—the Nintendo Wii, the Microsoft Xbox, or the Sony PlayStation 3—to your HDTV. They all connect to the Internet and deliver video content similar to the alternatives mentioned above. Netflix and other services’ video can be shown using these gaming consoles. The also play optical discs and the PlayStation 3 includes a built-in Blu-ray player.

You might not need a cable box and end up saving money.

Beginning on June 15, 2010 many Cablevision customers were distressed to find they could no longer view TV stations on their televisions without a cable box. I have heard this from clients, friends and on several heated discussions on Facebook.

This is not true.

They now see the message below or something similar if they live in other parts of Cablevision’s territory, when tuning to an old, analog station, like 2 or 7. This message is technically correct yet misinforms Cablevision’s customers, making them think there are no channels they can view without a cable box.

All digital over-the-air (OTA) broadcast channels are unencrypted and available for viewing. These are the familiar New York OTA TV stations—WCBS, WNBC, WNYW, WABC, WWOR, WPIX, WNET and WLIW. Digital channels have numbers like 2-1 or 4-4, rather than the single number analog stations like 2 or 4.

You need an HDTV with a QAM tuner to view these channels. Your older standard definition TVs CANNOT receive digital channels without an intermediary device like a cable box that converts the digital signal to analog. Most HDTVs sold within the last 3 years have built-in QAM tuners. (QAM is an acronym for quadrature amplitude modulation, which is the format used in encoding and transmitting digital cable channels.)

You can tune to the digital OTA channels if you know how. This will vary with the HDTV and remote control. Check your manual for instructions on how to do this. You may be able to have the TV scan automatically for these channels.

You will NOT be able to see analog stations, like 2, 3, 4… or any non-OTA cable channels like CNBC, CNN or A&E, without a cable box.

Below is a partial list of the unencrypted digital OTA channels my HDTV can receive in Weston, CT, without a cable box. Your stations should be similar if not identical. Note that there are some cable-only channels on the list like News 12 and C-SPAN.

I recently tweeted (@RichardFrisch)

Miracles do happen. My wife who lives in an assisted computing facility taught me something about Finder’s Column View I did not know.

If you own a Mac you use Finder, OS X’s file management application, which is similar to Windows Explorer. Have you ever customized Finder? Did you know you could?

The default toolbar, at the top of the Finder Window, is Spartan. It contains a minimal set of controls. Let’s add some others. The Finder toolbar is easy to customize. Right click on the toolbar (or control+click if you have a one-button mouse) to expose the context menu. And click on Customize Toolbar…

The Finder Toolbar icons window opens.

Drag the icons you want, one-by-one, to the location on the Toolbar where you want them. If you need help remembering what the icons are for change the Show control to Icon and Text instead of Icon Only. When you are finished click the Done button.

Below is a modified Finder Toolbar with Icon and Text displayed.

If you play around with Finder, like my wife, you will discover it has hidden features that improve its functionality. You may even teach me something.

I just ran a speed test on my Internet connection and was astounded by the results. I pay for Optimum Boost which is supposed to give me about 30 Mb/s downstream and 5 Mb/s upstream. The test showed over 55 Mb/s down. WOW!

Thank you Cablevision.

Macs have an eject key on the keyboard to eject discs from their optical drives. Most Windows machines do not.

I describe below how to create a desktop shortcut to do that for Windows computers. The shortcut can be assigned to a keyboard key, pinned to the Windows 7 Taskbar or added to the XP or Vista Quick Launch toolbar.

1. Download the Nirsoft NIRCMD utility.
2. Unzip the file.
3. Three files are included in the zip. Double-click on the nircmd.exe file.
4. A dialog window will appear with a button Copy To Windows Directory; click on it.
5. Then click the OK button.
6. Open up My Computer from the Start button.
7. Find the drive letter of your DVD/CD drive. Make a note of it. You will need it in a moment.
8. Next, right-click on a blank area of your desktop.
9. Select New —> Shortcut from the context menu. The Create Shortcut wizard opens.
   
10. Type in the space labeled Type the location of the item:.

                nircmd.exe cdrom open D:

    Change the letter D to the appropriate letter for your DVD/CD drive, as noted above.

11. Now click the Next button.
12. The shortcut wizard will ask you to name the shortcut. Replace the default text nircmd.exe with something like Open DVD-CD player.
    
13. Then click the Finish button. But we are not yet finished.
    
14. Right-click on the new shortcut icon on your desktop and select Properties from the context menu.
15. Click on the Change Icon… button.
    
16. A warning dialog pops up telling you that there are no icons in the nircmd.exe file. Click the OK button.
17. The Windows default icon repository shell32.dll opens up. Select an icon. I like the one with the optical disk above the drive. Click the “OK” button.Now let’s assign a keyboard shortcut key to open the optical drive.
18. Do this by clicking on the space with the word none next to the Shortcut key: label. Press whichever key or key combination you want. Try not to use existing shortcuts like Ctrl-C (copy) or F1 (help). The F7 key seems to work fine.
19. Now one more time click the OK button.

We are now finished with creating the shortcut.

Test out your new shortcut by double-clicking on the desktop icon you created. If you did it correctly the optical drive transport tray should come out. You have to close the tray by gently pushing it in. Next test your shortcut key. I used F7 which works fine on my Windows 7 computer.

If you are using Windows 7 you can pin the new shortcut to the Windows Taskbar. Right-click on the desktop icon and select Pin to Taskbar from the context menu.

If you are using Vista or XP you can add it to the Quick Launch toolbar. Make certain you have the Quick Launch toolbar visible by right-clicking on the Taskbar and selecting Toolbars. If there is a checkmark next to the Quick Launch item in the menu it is open. If not, click on it to open it.

Now right-click on the new DVD-CD shortcut on the desktop and drag the icon down to the Quick Launch toolbar and let go. Select Create Shortcuts Here from the context menu.

Windows users shouldn’t be envious of Macs because of the eject key. Macs are big-time trouble when a disc gets stuck in their optical drives. There is no little hole where you can stick an unbent paper click to mechanically open the optical drive transport. You may have to take it in for costly repairs to remove the disc and regain use of the optical drive.

I signed up for Square’s credit card processing quite a while ago. I am still waiting. Today I received this email:

Dear Square user,

We announced Square with the phrase: “0 to $60 in under 10 seconds.”

Square’s goal is to enable people to accept payments immediately, everywhere. We realize the amount of time we’ve taken to ship our Square readers has been frustrating, sometimes confusing, and has generated a number of questions. When we announced the company last December, we estimated Square would be ready in the U.S. sometime in early 2010. Since then, we’ve let our excitement get the best of us and have released parts of Square before they were fully baked.

A recent email from our support team to a Square user sums up where we are:

Until recently, we were facing a big hardware shortage, but that is now resolved (we sent our co-founder Jim to China for a couple weeks to arrange better manufacturing, and that did the trick). The problem has transitioned to something we’ve been working on simultaneously, a credit processing and risk issue. We need to strengthen our underwriting infrastructure so that we can handle the huge demand for readers and still manage the risk of chargebacks and fraud. This is the last thing preventing us from shipping readers as fast as we’d like, and we have pretty much the entire team working on it.

The way we are handling the risk of chargebacks and fraud is through transaction limits, but we have received feedback that those limits are too low. We are rethinking and expanding our underwriting infrastructure to address this issue. As soon as we finish, we will send you an email to confirm that you would like us to run a credit check (or you can cancel your request to process cards with Square which will securely remove your personal information). We will then ship your free card reader and activate your account to accept card payments.

We thank you for your continued patience as we work to deliver a utility you can use every day and for allowing us the time to get it right.

Jack Dorsey
Square CEO

This site uses WordPress. It is a great content management system. WordPress.org recently announced a new version. I decided to bet the store and upgraded to WordPress 3.0 from 2.9.2. I backed up everything first and then clicked the “upgrade automatically” link on the notice at the top of the administration console.

It only took a few moments before the console showed, “WordPress upgraded successfully.”

Everything seems to be working. Phew!

ISO and DMG files can replace optical discs, even if you have an optical drive on your computer.

Netbooks and MacBook Air portable computers do not have built-in DVD/CD drives. How do you use a DVD or a CD with them? You can connect an external USB optical disc player to them. These USB drives are reasonably inexpensive. You can also connect to a shared drive via a network connection. Or you can save the optical disc as an image file and then mount the image file as a drive on the target computer.

Mac OS X
In the Mac world it is common to download a DMG file (AKA an Apple Disk Image) to install an application. Below is a picture of Finder showing the Burning Monkey Solitaire DMG file I downloaded.

Once the file is on your Mac, you mount the disc image by double clicking on it and a new drive appears on your Mac. The picture below shows the mounted Burning Monkey Solitaire DMG file. It appears as a device below Macintosh HD in the Finder window left side panel. The right side panel shows the DMG’s contents, just as if an optical disc were in the DVD drive.

The OS X operating system has tools in the Disk Utility for creating and editing your own DMG files. I even found instructions on the web for how to use the Mac Disk Utility App to make ISO files.

Windows
ISO images are more generic than MAC DMG images as they can be used on Windows, Linux and Mac computers. There are many utilities, free and commercial, that can create an ISO file from an optical disc. DVD–Ranger’s ISOBuddy is a free Windows program you can use. Nero Multimedia Suite 10 and Roxio Creator 2010 are commercial applications that can also create ISO files.

Windows does not let you mount ISO files by double-clicking on them as the Mac OS X Finder does with DMG files. But there are free third-party virtual DVD/CD drives that let you do something similar.

I use the free SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive to do this. A new drive appears on your computer in Windows Explorer once Virtual CloneDrive is installed. The picture below shows it as BD-ROM Drive (G:).

You right click on the drive to get to its context menu, pictured below. You then either Mount… an ISO file to explore the files embedded within it or you Unmount a mounted ISO file. Once an ISO file is mounted, the BD-ROM Drive (G:) functions like any other optical drive reader. You can run files on it or copy them. When you are done with the ISO file, you Unmount it.