Category: Tech Posts

Skype: Playback Not Supported Error [Solution]

by
Inf

This will be a rather short port. I was using Skype 4.2 when I got the following error message while trying to show someone what sound Skype makes when it rings.

This error has also been reported to occur when call events happen but I’ve not personally witnessed it.

Turns out the solution is simple, but quite awkward. The steps are:

  1. Go to Tools → Options.
  2. Under the General section, choose Sounds.
  3. Click the Enable all Sounds button.
  4. Click the Save button. This is important! Changes will only take effect after you click Save and exit out of the Options window.

Now if you were like me, and trying to test ringtones, you can go back to Tools → Options → Sounds (steps 1, 2 above) and playback your sound (green play button) and you won’t get the error.

An alternative solution, if you get the error during call events is:

  1. Go to Tools → Options.
  2. Under the General section, choose Sounds.
  3. Click Mute all Sounds button.
  4. Click the Save button.
  5. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to return to the Sounds window.
  6. This time, click Enable all Sounds button.
  7. Click the Save button.

Hopefully those steps should solve your problem, and I hope this simple solution is useful to you.

(source: Skype forums)

5 Bookmarklets To Make Websites More Readable

by
Inf

If you’ve ever read a long article online, you know that reading on-screen is not easy on the eyes. Some web designers do a good job at making their content readable. Some, well, let’s just say they want to keep to traditions and keeping simple.

Let’s say you have to read a long article on one of those traditional-looking web pages. You don’t have to subject your eyes to the torture of reading tiny fonts on a stark white background. We’re going to save your eyes using bookmarklets, which are bookmarks that use Javascript code to do some task instead of going to a page.

The bookmarklets in this post will change the look of the web page you apply them on to something that is more readable and easier on the eyes. Some of those bookmarklets can be customized to your liking, e.g. in terms of background color. So let’s start…

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10 Tips on how to Speed Up your Computer for Free

by
Inf

I’ve never heard anybody say: “This computer is too fast! I wish it was slower”. We all wish our computers performed faster, that it booted faster to allow us to get down to gaming working in a shorter lapse of time. The thing is, computers tend to get slower after some time. Windows XP was particularly vulnerable to this. Just after installing, XP booted in around 30 seconds. A few years later, it seems it takes ages to boot. Windows 7 holds its ground better in this area.

Leaving chatter and nostalgia apart, let’s see how I can get that machine of yours performing faster, while saving you some money. I’ll assume you are on Windows Vista / 7. Especially Vista. Yes, you resource-hogging Vista.

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Media Player Classic: No Sound When Playing Multiple Videos – Solution

by
Inf

I’ll confess that I love Media Player Classic (or its newer flavor, Media Player Classic – Home Cinema). I have yet to find a player that has a simple interface yet packs so many features. Undeniably there are other great players out there, such as KMPlayer, SMPlayer and VLC among others. But I still find MPC’s interface to be better than the rest. Or maybe it’s simply nostalgia…

Recently I was having a small problem with Media Player Classic (MPC). When I set MPC to play different videos in different instances, that is, two videos in two different MPC windows, one had sound, one did not.

The volume control was not muted, and it was nothing to do with Windows’ volume settings. It was just a misconfigured setting in MPC and it’s simple to correct.

A quick journey to the MPC IRC channel (#mpc-hc on Freenode) gave me the answer, which was simply selecting the right option from a drop-down menu…

The steps are:

  • View menu – Options
  • On the left, under Playback – select Output
  • Set your Audio Renderer to this option: “Default DirectSound Device”
  • Problem solved

Answers are sometimes as simple as that. I don’t even know how to conclude this post, so I’ll just leave it at that. Thanks for reading, and hope this helps you. 😀

I’ll also thank the developers of MPC for the awesome program they provide to us and the quick help I got from the people present in their IRC channel. No “RTFM” or anything, just a straight answer. Thanks!

Mount ISO Images In One Click Using WinCDEmu

by
Inf

Do you often have to mount ISO images? If you don’t know what ISO images are, they are simply images, or copies, of the filesystem of optical disks such as DVDs. You can think of them as “zip” files containing whatever there was on the disk.

Now before you can use an ISO file, you have to do something called “mounting” the ISO file. Mounting means to make a separate filesystem part of the current filesystem used by your Operating System. It’s like you’re taking a branch, and sticking it to the side of a tree. Then by climbing the tree, you can reach your new branch and its leaves, correct?

For ISO images, this “mounting” process is done by making the ISO file be represented as a virtual drive in Windows. All this to say, you’ll just get an additional “DVD” drive in your My Computer if you mount an ISO file.

There are various tools out there to do this mounting job. The most famous ones are probably Daemon Tools and Magic ISO. Maybe even Ultra ISO.

But, I tend to like minimum effort. I tried getting Daemon Tools to give me mounting options when I right-click on an ISO file without much success. The others are either too complex or not free.

If you want a dead-simple solution, try WinCDEmu. Despite its name, it does work with DVDs huh. And even Bluray I guess, but I haven’t tested those. I’m not lucky enough to be the owner of a BR drive… yet!

So WinCDEmu is an open-sourced application that works by installing a sort of virtual driver, along with its virtual bus and drives. Nothing for you to worry about, since it’s all done automatically. But you’ll need to have appropriate permissions (being Admin, for e.g.) to grant the permission to install the driver. And it’s a signed driver at that!

The process is just a Next-Next-Next process until it’s done. And? That’s it.

You’ll be presented with that window to customize settings. Nothing much to do.

To get it working? Double-click on your ISO image. A new “DVD” drive will be created in My Computer. You can then access the ISO contents as if they were a normal disk.

To unmount the ISO image, just right-click the virtual drive and select Eject.

Simple huh?

Also, WinCDEmu supports a variety of other disk image formats, such as ISO, CUE, NRG and IMG to name a few.

Just to mention that WinCDEmu didn’t associate with the CUE, NRG, IMG and other file formats on my machine, just ISO. If that’s the case, just right-click the image file, then select Open With – WinCDEmu Mounter. You can also change file associations in Windows to point the WinCDEmu Mounter—to have the double-click mounting functionality—like this on Windows Vista/7. For XP just Google.

  • Head to Control Panel – Default Programs – Associate a File Type or Protocol with a Program.
  • Locate your File Type e.g. NRG
  • Select it then click the Change Program on the top right corner.
  • Select WinCDEmu. Done

That’s it. Go download WinCDEmu and give it a try. A portable, but beta version, is also available. And if you know some application that can beat WinCDEmu in simplicity for this task, do share! Thanks for reading 😀

7 Utilities to Enhance your File Copying tasks

by
Inf

Let’s face it: Windows’ file copying functionalities haven’t improved much over the years. More details can be seen on the dialog, and the progress bar is prettier, but that’s basically it. There have not been any new functions added since… uh since forever? I have proof!

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Vim: Essentials Cheatsheet

by
Inf

There are many Vim cheatsheets out there. Some are very elaborate, listing almost every single thing you can do in Vim. I’d go as far as calling those reference cards instead of cheat-sheets. However much I searched, I couldn’t find one which I like, which is simple enough to give me the info I want at a glance. They usually have too many things, so that I have to search for what I want, or they are not organized as I’d like.

So I created my own. And I’ll share it with you. Enjoy, and please drop me a comment if you find it useful, or got some suggestions. 🙂

This cheat-sheet should interest you after reading my Vim Beginner’s Tutorial. You can see the cheat-sheet below:

[ PNG Version ]