It took a bit of searching but I finally found the fix: go into C:\Windows — the Temp directory is missing! Create a new folder, name it “Temp”, and then update again and it will succeed.

I’m baffled as to what point in the process of clean installing this computer the Temp folder got deleted. I thought it was a standard folder, and obvious MSE thinks so too! This is definitely a squeaky clean computer, with all official software (nothing illegal), I got the CDs from Microsoft and I’m behind a NAT router so nothing unsolicited is coming in; I’m completely confident that the computer has no viruses or spyware which could have removed the Temp folder.

Anyway, I hope this helped you! If it did and you have a website or blog, please write a post about this (spread the word) and consider linking back to me so that hopefully this entry can rise to the top of search results.

When you double-click a .camproj file and play it in Camtasia Studio, the mouse cursor is a black box.

Resolution:

If your display settings are in 16-bit color mode, change them to 32-bit color.

Windows XP: Right-click the desktop and hit Properties, go to the Settings tab. Under “Color quality”, change the drop-down from “Medium (16 bit)” to “Highest (32 bit)”.
Windows 7: Right-click the desktop and hit Screen Resolution, then Advanced settings, and click the List All Modes button. Choose the one with the same resolution as your current screen resolution but with “True Color (32 bit)”.

“No,” you say, “I store all my documents on my flash drive.” Okay, but do you store them on your hard drive too? All of them? Current copies? Do you really save your document to both places as you work? And your photos are backed up there too? What if it wasn’t your hard drive that broke, but your flash drive: you plug in your flash drive and Windows doesn’t even budge. There’s just nothing. Then what would you lose?

These are both very real situations. Hard drives today generally spin at either 5,400 RPM (revolutions per minute) or 7,200. Simple math tell us that’s 90-120 revolutions per second. Furthermore, the technology is not so different from a record player. Think of a record spinning 90-120 rotations per second, with a “needle” hovering just nanometers above it, but if the needle touches the drive, anything it touches will likely be permanently damaged. There really is no room for error here, and it’s a miracle of modern science that hard drives are as reliable as they are.

Flash drives, on the other hand, have no moving parts; but they are just as susceptible to corruption, if not more so. Do a search for flash drive reviews, and pick any model of flash drive (even your own), and you are bound to see reviewer after reviewer complaining of their flash drive having broken and losing data. You could be next.

Have I scared you enough?

This is the introduction into 4 blog posts that I will be posting in the next few days. I will tell you exactly why I could lose my laptop and external drives, and I wouldn’t actually lose any of my precious data. Because a laptop can be replaced, and a flash drive can be replaced cheaply, but data is invaluable. You need to act now to protect your data, before it’s too late.

Update 4/17/2010: This turned out to be the introduction and the conclusion; I never wrote the rest of the articles. I have no idea why I just stopped, but I apologize to anyone who might read this and wonder where the others are.

The cards can be printed with your Google number as well as your name and (optionally) your email address, mailing address, business, etc. I opted for my name, number, and school email. They are good quality cards, on good paper and bright colors. They’re not really blurry – that’s my cell phone camera at it’s finest. (I don’t currently own a working camera, but I need one!)

If you have a Google Voice account and didn’t hear of this offer, you may still be able to get in! Check your Google Voice page and look under your balance on the left bar. You can’t miss it, if it’s there for you. If not, the cards are from iPrint, so you may be able to order them there if you feel so inclined.

import java.awt.Frame;
import java.awt.event.WindowAdapter;
import java.awt.event.WindowEvent;

import javax.media.opengl.GL2;
import javax.media.opengl.GLAutoDrawable;
import javax.media.opengl.GLEventListener;
import javax.media.opengl.awt.GLCanvas;

import com.sun.opengl.util.Animator;

public class JOGLAPP implements GLEventListener {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    new JOGLAPP();
  }
  
  Frame fr;
  GLCanvas canvas;
  
  public JOGLAPP() {
    fr = new Frame("JOGLAPP");
    canvas = new GLCanvas();
    canvas.addGLEventListener(this);
    fr.add(canvas);
    
    Animator anim = new Animator(canvas);
    
    fr.setSize(300,300);
    fr.setVisible(true);
    anim.start();
    
    fr.addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() {
      @Override
      public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
        super.windowClosing(e);
        System.exit(0);
      }
    });
  }
  
  @Override
  public void init(GLAutoDrawable drawable) {
    GL2 gl = drawable.getGL().getGL2();
    
    gl.glClearColor(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
    
    // init opengl here
  }

  @Override
  public void display(GLAutoDrawable drawable) {
    GL2 gl = drawable.getGL().getGL2();
    
    gl.glClear(GL2.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL2.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
    
    // draw things here
    
    gl.glFinish();
  }

  @Override
  public void dispose(GLAutoDrawable drawable) {
    
  }

  @Override
  public void reshape(GLAutoDrawable drawable, int x, int y, int width,
      int height) {
    
  }
  
  
}

1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck
(bathtub variety)
2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it, if that’s all right.
3) Explain to the duck what you code is supposed to do, and then go into detail and explain things line by line
4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you on your way.

I am so going to get a rubber duck now…

-Ricky

First of all, do NOT just do a tight while loop. It may appear to pause for that much time, but if you watch the CPU usage for your program, a while-loop like that will use 100% CPU. That is quite unfriendly to people like me with laptops. Not to mention, a 100% utilized CPU can heat up pretty quickly; especially when on a processor like the Pentium 4 (yuck).

So Windows has this handy function inside the all-mighty <Windows.h> file, Sleep(). It takes one argument of how many milliseconds to sleep. This argument can be 0, in which case it yields to another thread for some small amount of time. Or, according to the MSDN documentation, “A value of zero causes the thread to relinquish the remainder of its time slice to any other thread of equal priority that is ready to run. If there are no other threads of equal priority ready to run, the function returns immediately, and the thread continues execution.”

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686298(VS.85).aspx

Linux does something pretty different. Their sleep function is inside the include file <unistd.h>, which apparently is a file that contains “standard symbolic constants and types.” The function is usleep, and it takes the parameter of how many microseconds to sleep. That’s right, microseconds. As in, thousandths of milliseconds. So, take the number of milliseconds you want, multiply it by 1000, and give it to this function and your Linux processor will sleep that many milliseconds.

http://opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xsh/usleep.html

Macs, well, I don’t really know. Nor care. I don’t feel confident enough that I can contort to their differences enough to get my program running on their machines. Meh.

-Ricky