Windows Mobile Device Center :: “No Default E-mail Program” Error Dialogue Box

Every time I fire up Windows Mobile Device Center, it pops up a window telling me I have no default e-mail program installed:

There is no email program associated to perform the requested action. Please install an email program or, if one is already installed, create an association in the Default Programs control panel.

This is clearly not true, as every time this happens I go to the “default program” center in the Control Panel and make sure I have Windows Live Mail selected as my default for ALL THINGS e-mail.  I have also tried choosing the computer’s “email default” from Internet Explorer, just to see if that made any difference.  It didn’t.

So… to reiterate… my Microsoft program won’t recognize another Microsoft program it’s requiring.  I could understand some third-party program incompatibilities, but you’d think Microsoft could at least work with it’s OWN software.

What gives?!

It’s incredibly frustrating, especially considering Windows Mobile Device Center won’t open up until I click OK in the “no mail program” dialogue box.  Thus, instead of being able to just open WMDC and keep working elsewhere, I have to open it, wait for the damn error box, click OK, and then it will open.

I searched for a solution for an hour this morning and couldn’t find anything.  There was promise here, but it doesn’t work.  I went through the steps listed to alter my registry, but it didn’t fix anything.

There are lots of forums and blogs reporting this problem, but Microsoft seems to be ignoring the issue, as there is no response from Big Brother anywhere.

Argh.

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I found that my Windows Live Mail is rather outdated (version 12 something instead of 14 something).  I think it’s awesome that if you click “check for updates” under “help” in Windows Live Mail, you’re taken to a screen capture showing you how to use Windows Update from the Start Menu to check for updates… but then when you do that, it doesn’t check for updates for Windows Live Mail.  Awesome, Microsoft, just awesome.

So I found the latest install for Windows Live Mail (14.0.8092.0805) and am currently installing it.  Warning: the install will try to install a bunch of other Windows Live crapware, be sure to deselect all the garbage Microsoft is going to try and load your computer with.

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Installing the latest version of Windows Live Mail did nothing to solve the problem above.

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Positioning Lens Flare Center in Photoshop

It’s not like I use “lens flare” very often, but every once in a while, the mood strikes.  Since first I started using Photoshop, it’s been an exercise in happenstance and randomness; trial and error until (hopefully) I can at last position the lens flare correctly.
After 15 years, I have found the answer (I guess maybe it wasn’t that important… as I’ve never looked it up):
In the Lens Flare Filter dialogue window, if you alt-click in the preview area, you can actually enter the coordinates (pixels) of the lens flare center.
Before you do this, you can use your cursor and the “info” window to find the exact pixel coordinates so you know what to enter into this box (p.s. there’s a little plus next to the x,y coordinates in the info window that conceals a drop down that allows you to select the units displayed).
Typical Adobe bullshit… why in the HELL don’t they just include this option in the window dialogue?  Seriously.  WHAT THE FUCK?!
Some moron (or team of morons) actually made a decision to hide this option behind alt-click?  When would you ever NOT want to know where you’re positioning something you’re rendering?
I am at a loss for words.
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My Feature Wish List for Adobe Premiere CS4

For the past two months I have been editin a feature film in Adobe Premiere CS4.1.  While I still think Premiere is the right choice for editing a feature shot on RED, there are definitely some things lacking from the program.   A few are minor things, but a few are MAJOR shortcomings of the software.

I should have been putting this together over the course of the entire project, but I just thought to do this now.  And I guess late is better than never.  Hopefully I can remember most of the things I “wished” for while working with the program.

I submit “feature requests” to Adobe all the freaking time.  I assume my pleas fall on deaf ears, so I’m at least going to put a list together just to document my needs.  Perhaps some of these are actually already implemented, and some kind soul who stumbles upon this post will leave a solution to one of these wishes in the comments.

I will keep adding to this list as things come up.  Please feel free to cut and paste any of these wishes to Adobe Feature Request.

SOUND SYNC via TIMECODE
For some insane reason, Adobe has decided to completely ignore time code synchronization of sound/video in Premiere CS4.  This means if you record your audio to an external source, as ALL professional shoots do, you have to MANUALLY sync your audio and video.  And by manually, I mean line your waveforms up with the slate clap visually.  We recorded our audio (24 bit, 48KHz) to an eight track digital recorder.  We had a time code smart slate.  In regard to Premiere, it doesn’t matter, because Premiere won’t chase audio time code.  I can’t get over this.  This is like making an editing program that won’t handle video.  INSANE.
The work around is to sync all your audio via time code in Final Cut Pro, export the footage via XML, and then import the XML into Premiere.  When doing this, there are some very important things to remember.  You MUST place the footage on a timeline in FCP before exporting the XML.  Premiere does not link audio and video in the bins (stupid, stupid, stupid –see next wish list item) so the audio/video MUST be on a timeline to remain synced when it’s imported into Premiere.  Also, we found that FCP 7 would not work for this process.  We actually had to use an older copy (FCP 6) for the XML export/import to work.

LINK AUDIO/VIDEO IN PROJECT BINS
I cannot believe you can’t link audio and video files in the project bins.  This means you can’t use the bins to select clips for your edit.  You have to cut and paste EVERYTHING from a sequence/time line.  This makes me so angry that I can’t even write about it any more.  Moving on…

EXPORT LIST OF EFFECTS OR CLIP CHANGES
I am currently having to go through my project files to manually find each and every clip that has been manipulated by scale and position (keyed/cropped/scaled clips).  It would be phenomenal if I could simply generate a list of all the clips in a sequence that had been manipulated.  Same goes for effects.

When you generate an EDL for, say, color grading, any information regarding anything but in and out points is completely lost when the EDL is imported into wherever it’s going.  In order to recreate any changes you’ve made, the person importing the EDL will need a list of any clips that have been changed.  Thus, you have to go through each of your sequences manually to find any changes you made to each clip, and then give those changes to the person who is opening the EDL so that they can re-implement your changes.  Being able to generate a list of these changes would save an incredible amount of time.

XML EXPORT
You can import an XML, why the hell can’t you export one?!

BETTER (UP TO DATE WITH THE REST OF THE WORDL) EDL FORMAT
RED cameras generate 16 digit file folder names.  The EDL format that Premiere uses (CMX3600) only handles 8 digits for the file folder structure.  Thus, when the color house imported all our files, they had to go in and manually add the missing information.  I can’t imagine they were happy about this.

CUT/PASTE INFORMATION FROM THE “INFO” PANEL
Believe is or not, you can’t copy/cut any text in the clip “info” box window.  What in the FREAK?!  Why would such a thing be disabled?  Since I’m having to let my color guy know the file name, instance number, and in/out point of the clip he needs to manually scale and adjust, I am constantly in need of being able to copy the information regarding a clip, but I have to manually type out all the information, because you can’t select any text in the “info” box.  Infuriating.

NUMBER THE CLIPS IN A SEQUENCE
There is no place to find a clip’s instance number.  In an EDL, each clip is referred to by it’s instance number… simply which clip it is in numerical order.  In order to determine the number of a clip in a Premiere sequence, you either have to count the number of clips up to the clip in question (unacceptable in a sequence with hundreds of clips), or search an EDL you’ve generated for the clip’s file name (and then make sure you’ve got the correct instance if that file has been used for multiple clips).  How easy would it be to simply put the number of the clip in the “info” box?!  Grrrrrr.

SAVE “STATE” (expdanded details) IN EFFECT CONTROL PANEL

Since I’m having to go through and manually find each clip that’s been resized and/or cropped, I need the “motion” line in the Video Effects Panel to remain open.  Since it doesn’t, I’m having to go through hundreds of clips, click on them, then click on the little triangle next to “motion” to expand the details to see if any changes have been made to scale and position.  If I could set the “motion” line to remain open for all clips, it would save a LOT of time.

EXPORT OMF IS PRETTY WORTHLESS
That’s it.  Not much more to say here.  OMF export performance is spotty at best.
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Bare Hard Drive Storage

These days I’ve got a lot of bare hard drives lying around.

Actually, I’ve got quite a few drives in hard drive drawers like the one to the left.  They’re great for backing up things on my own system, but not the best way of getting drives to other people (because other people usually don’t have the tray that the drawer slides into).  I sometimes use these drawers to transfer drives anyway, but it’s kind of a pain-in-the-butt for the recipient to have to unscrew all the tiny little screws when it arrives.

You would think that these days, with so many people using bare drives and drive docks for storage, that there would be plenty of solutions for storing said hard drives.

For some reason, this is not so.

Wiebetech sells a bare drive case that seems to work pretty well, but $7 a pop plus shipping (which is hilariously more expensive than the plastic box itself, at $7.23) seems extremely steep for what amounts to no more than a VHS Cassette case with the dimensions of a hard drive –no padding or anything.  Seriously?  I mean, I can’t imagine it could cost more than $.22 to mold plastic into a shape.

The only other thing I’ve seen (pictured at right) is on Ebay, and it isn’t much cheaper at $6 per container, though it’s still a win, because that includes shipping.  You get a little break buying 5 at a time (5 for $20) but you’ve got to wait for them to arrive from Hong Kong.

I went ahead and took the plunge with the multi-colored boxes.  They’re a good, snug fit, but I have no idea how “anti-static” they are (as the Ebay seller claims).  I think they’ll do a decent job of keeping dust off the drives, but they don’t offer much in shock protection (from a drop).  The only kind of “padding” is a small piece of foam in the lid that keeps the drive from wiggling around when the lid’s closed.

I should also point out that the “hinge” for the lid is just a really thin piece of plastic.  I am certain that the hinge will not last long with anything but the gentlest of handling.

Still, it would seem that this is as good as it gets for bare drive storage these days.  Let’s hope somebody comes up with something better in the near future.

UPDATE (4-14-11): Believe it or not, there is really nothing new to report here.  Someone posted a link in the comments a while back (thanks, Brent!) to a place in China called Meritline.com that sells the cases I was getting from Ebay for even cheaper (around $3 a piece, shipped), and I just made my first purchase.  I’m a little worried about giving my credit card number to an online company in China, but I did a little research and they seem to be legit, so I guess we’ll see!

keywords: hard drive harddrive disk disc storage case protection cover carrier protect

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Make a Flash SWF Background Transparent

To make the background of a Flash .swf transparent, simply place two small pieces of code into your HTML.
First you need to insert a parameter setting after the object tag:

<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />

Next, you’ll need to insert a little extra code inside the embed src tag.  Place the following after your quality setting:

wmode=”transparent”

Sometimes after you make this change, your webpage may still display improperly until you resave the web page and possibly clear your browser’s cache.
However, the two above pieces of code will definitely make your .swf’s background transparent.

Electric Shelby Cobra

It’s just the prettiest car in the world (and by pretty, I mean incredibly fast), so it was only a matter of time before somebody started making them electric… and it looks like they’re just about as fast.

When I am rich, I will have one.  Oh, yes.  I will.

From Green Auto Blog

I will also have a diesel/electric 1964 Lincoln as my everyday driver.

<\fantasies>

GRemote Is My New Best Friend (remote control for PC via mobile device)

I’ve been trying to configure my Omnia i910 as a remote for my PC, and thus Windows Media Center (via Bluetooth and Windows SideShow), for a while.  I have been extremely unsuccessful in this endeavor, so today I decided to see if I could find a decent 3rd party app to take care of this seemingly simple task.

Hello GRemote!!!

There are two versions of this program (both work on Windows Mobile and/or Android): GRemote Pro ($14.95), and GRemote free.  I went with GRemote free, and it seems to do everything I need it to.  GRemote Pro has a larger suite of features, but since I’m just looking for a media controller, GRemote free is perfect for my needs.

Evidently GRemote Pro will work with .Net 2.0, but the free version requires .Net 3.5 or later (no big deal –just make sure you have .Net 3.5 installed on your device).

To make GRemote work, you’ll need to install the GRemoteServer program on your PC and GRemote on your device.  You can configure GRemoteServer to spawn on startup, or manually; I have mine configured manually, as I’m not always using my laptop as a media center.  Be sure to install the appropriate CAB for your device’s resolution.  The first time I installed the program on my device, like an idiot I installed just the “qvga” version instead of the “wqvga” version appropriate for the wider screen of the Omnia.  Because of this, the app was crashing on me quite a bit until I figured out what was wrong.

You can configure the app to work with multiple profiles, which means you can have a profile for all your computers (just make sure you install GRemote Server on any computer you wish to use with GRemote).  Configuring profiles is extremely easy thanks to the “find” button used to automatically retrieve the IP address necessary for communication between the server (your PC) and the device.

GRemote will work via USB, WiFi (my choice) and Bluetooth.

The free version includes these main parts:

	GCenter, where you select the control type you’d like to use,
	Gmouse, a virtual mouse that works with your device’s gravity sensor to control your PC (on the Omnia I have the HTC Emulator installed, and it works beautifully! Make sure to hold your finger on the screen to make it work (it took me a little while to figure that one out). If you click the “touch free” icon, the feature will work without touching the screen),
	Touchpad, a virtual touchpad to control your PC,
	GPad, specially configured for navigating around things like Media Center,
	GMedia, for directly controlling media program features (volume, stop, start, forward, reverse),
	Keyboard, an interface that you can type with,
	and GRace, a 2 axis, 12 button (?) game controller.

 

The app works perfectly with Hulu and Windows Media Center.  In fact, since it can function as a gyroscopic mouse and touchpad, it works perfectly with damn near anything on your PC (like Miro and VLC)!

Extra points for a really nice, clean looking interface with simple, finger friendly buttons and great design.

I love it.  One of the best (if not the best) apps I’ve installed on my Omnia to date.

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