DJ Mixing Software

My brother who operates a sound system dropped his PC at home for repair. The PC boots fine but when he launches the DJ mixing software he was using, the computer suddenly reboots. Took me a few days to shoot the trouble. The problems is a mixture of bad hard disk partition and memory. The hard disk has 2 partitions, the one where the OS was installed is doing fine but the one where the tons of MP3s are stored is damaged. So every time the music software is launched, it accesses the bad partition and crashes. There was also problems in some parts of the memory. So the hard disk and memory were thrown to the waste basket and replaced.

As for the DJ mixing software, I installed a small free software from Native Instruments, whose bread and butter are high-end music software that cost lots of dollars. Fortunately, they also offer a free player formerly called Traktor Beat Port Player but is now called Beatport Sync. The major difference is that Sync has an online capability which enables the user to connect to the internet and buy music. I don't really need the connectivity stuff, just the playing and mixing parts. So I used an old download of the Beatport Player. The player is great. It has two decks and a sync function. The catalog and search functions are also useful. After installing it, I loaded the PC with more than 3,000 mp3s from my collection and have the software load them in its catalog and analyze each song. It took the software 20 hours to finish the analysis which is just figuring out the BPM of each music.

And while hunting for a good and free mixing software, I stumbled upon MIXX which has a white interface and looks promising. I'm still test driving it to see if it fares better than Beatport.

By the way, i'm not really into this DJ thing. My players of choice are - the good old Winamp and VLC.

The Earth is missing on my Google Earth

When i opened Google Earth tonight, i was alerted that a new version (4.3) is already available. I promptly updated to see if my small town already has high resolution image. But when i opened Google Earth after the update it turned out that not only is my town missing but the entire earth suddenly turned invisible. All that remained are the yellow outlines of the countries. Weird.

I tried uninstalling the application and then I downloaded and installed it again but the same problem persists. I miss Earth.

Update: Problem solved. Apparently, my PC is not using the OpenGL 3D engine which is the default setup on Google Earth. So i switched to Direct X. The option is in the Tools menu. Earth is beautiful.

PPTminizer - minimize Powerpoint presentation and Word documents

This software is useful when uploading or e-mailing powerpoint presentations or word documents. sometimes the original files are just too big making it hard or slow to attach to emails or to upload.

PPTminimizer reduces PowerPoint and Word files by up to 98% of their initial size using an intelligent compression technique. The software preserves the original file format so files can be edited without having to unzip them. The optimized files, without any quality loss, are then much smaller, safer and ideal for sharing. Mailboxes, servers and networks are relieved and loading time is accelerated.

The website offers two flavors of the Freee version. The quick trial offers 5 free optimizations and the Comprehensive trial, which requires registration, gives away 12 optimizations. So after those free trials, your only next choice is to buy the software.

So, my next assignment would be to hunt for a really-free kind of this useful stuff.

Viewing Subtitles on VLC Media Player

The last two divx flicks I watched - 10,000 B.C. and Lust, Caution - needs subtitles. The people in 10,000 B.C speaks good english but some speaking parts uses unknown languages. Lust, Caution, directed by Ang Lee is in Chinese. Torrents of foreign language films are often bundled with an .srt file which is the file for the subtitle. To be sure if a torrent comes with a subtitle, you should look at the file name. There's a code thing going on in the torrents world. If there's something like [sub] somewhere in the torrent's filename, then a subtitle is included, either on the film itself or as a separate .srt file. If there's no subtitle file included, never worry. there are lots of websites offering free subtitles for downloaded movies. Try here for some samples.

And since i'm a VLC fan, here's how to make the subs appear on the video:

1. Open VLC media player.
2. Open the divx movie.
3. Click on Settings....then Preferences.
4. Click on the small arrow button before the Video option to expand the video settings.
5. Click on Subtitles/OSD
6. Click on browse next to the Use subtitle file text box.
7. Browse and select the .srt file of the movie you are watching.
8. Click OK.

That's it. The subtitle should appear after a few seconds. And while you're into foreign language viewing mode, try these titles: The Orphanage, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Pan's Labyrinth. Happy viewing and reading!

Ultimate Boot CD

No, it's not a PC game. It's my number 1 tool of trade when troubleshooting PCs and laptops. I've been using my scratched burned copy of UBCD for quite a while now and it's a source of troubleshooting joy, both for me and whoever is the owner of the PC i happen to repair, or destroy.

The Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) is a free suite of tools in a bootable compact disc. It includes

memory checkers, CPU stress testers, system information tools, boot managers and tools for hard drives, partitions, password resets, and more.

You can download this baby from this website. And since the CD is now going the floppy disk way, the latest innovation with this very useful tool is, of course, UBCD in an USB drive aka USBUBCD. Makeuseof.com has a nifty tutorial on how to port the UBCD in a flasdrive. Just go here.

I haven't tried this thing yet, so i can't post a review. I'll try it the next time my neighbor's PC conked out and he yells for my help.

Handling Docx Files

.docx file is the default file format for Microsoft Word 2007. It won't open on older MS Word versions, like the one I'm using (Word 2003) and even to OpenOffice - which is my default document app. Today is the first time I encountered a docx file. A file was emailed to me in this format. First I thought it was an OpenOffice file. When it didn't open I tried MS Word 2003. No luck either. Then it occured to me that it might be a virus, so I google checked to be safe. And that's how I found out about this new doc file with an x. I'm currently loving the free Openoffice so I don't follow MS Office news anymore. I was even surprised when I found out that there's already a 2007 version. Anyway, I resorted to the ever reliable google to find out how to open or convert this docx thing. Reviewsaurus has this list of options:

1. Convert the file using ZamZar : You can simply go on ZamZar.com & then upload the DOCX file and then select the option of exporting it to DOC format.

2. Convert using DOCX2DOC : Another online converter and this one is specifically for converting the files from DOCX to DOC. Visit DOCX2DOC.COM

3. Compatibility pack by Microsoft : You may download the compatibility pack from Microsoft which will allow you to open, edit and save the DOCX format in the older version of MS Office.

4. Convert using the OpenOffice.org : You can also open the DOCX file in OpenOffice.org but that too with the help of the converter. You’ll need to download this extension and then only you’ll be able to convert the file. Found via thedailyblahblah blog.

I opted for the official Microsoft compatibility pack. After downloading, I installed it and presto! the good old Word 2003 in my PC can now recognize the docx-file.

VLC Media Player

My media player of choice is VLC. I've been using it for more than two years now and it pretty much does the job of playing all sorts of media files that I feed it. If you have this app in your arsenal, Quicktime, and Real and Windows media players will have a permanent vacation in your computer. I've been recommending it to friends and they also have no complains.

VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats. (wikipedia)

You can download the free software here.

And once again, VLC was put to good use this afternoon when I watched this long (2.5 hours) film directed by Sean Penn. Into the Wild is a beautiful depressing film based on the life of Christopher McCandless, who hiked to Alaska after finishing college, tried to smoke a moose and died in a magic bus by way of a toxic plant. I had my own Henry David Thoreau spell but i never tried getting away from society and living off nature's bounty like the main character in this flick. The film is great. It's been waiting in my backlog folder for more than a month before I finally able to see it. The soundtrack by Eddie Vedder is great. Quotable quote: "Happiness is real when shared". That should be the motto of all the filesharers in the internets.