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I just switched to the Blogger Dynamic Template. You can read about what it offers readers here, and what Blogger wrote about it here. I am still on the fence about keeping it, or switching back to my old custom template, or adopting one of the standard templates. It is much easier using standard Blogger templates vs. using custom templates; the template designer keeps up with new Blogger features, or Blogger changes. With custom templates there is always manual CSS and HTML editing involved. ...

I have around fifty thousand digital photos in my library, and it has become impractical to browse through them looking for some event, or some place, or some person. So other than archiving, there really is no value in collecting photos if you can’t go back and find the ones you are looking for. A few years ago I switched to using Image Ingester Pro and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to import and catalog my photos. Now one of the first things I do after importing photos, is to add keywords describing the event, the place, and the people. But, I still have tens of thousands of photos that have no keywords, and there is no easy or automated way to add keywords to these photos. One thing that can be automated is adding people keywords to photos based on automated face recognition. ...

I was trying to install SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2 RC. But, when I launch SETUP.EXE, Windows warns me that SQL Server is not compatible with Windows Server. If I ignore the warning, the install proceeds but then fails to install .NET 3.5. After a little searching and experimentation I found a way to install without any problems: 1. Create a slipstreamed SQL Server 2008 SP1 install, follow the instructions here. I set my PCUSOURCE=".\PCU" and that worked fine. 2. Add .NET 3.5 by going to server manager and adding the .NET 3.5.1 feature. 3. Install by running SETUP.EXE. ...

I drive a 2008 VW Touareg with stock 17" Pirelli P255/60R17 Scorpion STR tires. I noticed the VW recommended tire pressure was 2PSI higher than the tire’s maximum pressure rating. The tire pressure sticker on the driver door indicated 46PSI, while the tire wall indicated a maximum tire pressure of 44PSI. Overinflating tires is potentially very dangerous. I posted my findings on the Club Touareg Forum, and other owners of similar vehicles confirmed the same information on their tire labels. ...

I have now moved all old archived content from my website to this blog, the old pages contain links to the equivalent blog postings. I know the copy-and-paste blog formatting is not very elegant, but it will do. I was using the standard Blogger “Tic-Tac” template, but the readable area was not wide enough to fit many of the images I embed in articles, and this would either skew the text, or cut off the images. ...

This post is about Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows, symbol servers, and symbol proxy servers. You can read my posts about this problem on the Microsoft WinDbg group, and on the Google Chromium group. We run several symbol servers, and a single symbol proxy server that provides transparent access to all our symbol servers, as well as the Microsoft symbol servers. I was debugging a Google Chrome crash, and was looking for symbols for Chrome. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that both Mozilla and Google have public debug symbol servers for Firefox and for Chrome. I added the Mozilla and Google symbol servers to our symbol proxy server list. ...

I received my new Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook, pre-installed with Vista Ultimate, but also with 3rd party software I did not care for. I wanted a clean Vista install, and that is exactly why I made sure to order the recovery media with the notebook, thinking that this would include an OS install DVD. It turns out that the recovery media is six CDs, I don’t know why not a DVD, regardless, the recovery media does not include a Vista install DVD. ...

This article was originally posted here. Introduction: I was very excited to find the Abit F-I90HD motherboard for use in my HTPC, primarily because it had an onboard HDMI connector. I purchased two boards, but I ended up returning them both because of problems. Instead I purchased two Intel DG33TL boards, read about that experience here. The Good: Onboard HDMI with 7.1 digital audio over HDMI. At least on paper, I never got to test it. ...

I previously commented on this problem here and here. I participated in the Microsoft Vista SP1 Beta program. After installing Vista SP1 Beta on my machine with an Intel DG33TL motherboard, and installing version 15.7.3 of the Intel GMA drivers, my machine would blue screen crash when it went to sleep. The crash happens in the igdkmd32.sys and igdkmd64.sys drivers, and I could reproduce it on two machines, both with DG33TL motherboards, with Vista x86 and x64. ...