KyleCaulfield.com

A new kids learning application for iPad has been released, Kid Letters.  This application is geared to 6m – 2 years to teach children hand eye coordination, letter recognition and sounds for each letter.  The application does not allow children to leave the application so there is less parent involvement needed.  The application will be updated to the users wishes.  Want numbers?  Comment in the app store and our developers will create that for you.  Find the application here, you wont be disapointed:

itunes.apple.com/us/app/kid-letters/id443061000?mt=8

Well, it’s that time of year again, vacation time!  Many of us are going to Disney and may even go back every year.  For those people there is a special timeshare called the Disney Vacation Club.  While it is a very expensive club to join it could save thousands if used wisely.

With all large purchases there are a lot of questions to consider… is this right for my family?  Do I need to go to Disney for the next  40 years?  Will this even save me money?  Since the first two (and many more) are person questions, I can try to help you with the money choice.  Below is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that will calculate the cost of your normal Disney vacations at two different hotels, the DVC direct from Disney as well as resale.  Each also includes costs for your own food budget or using the Disney Dining plan.  To use this spreadsheet all your need to do is edit the far right section with information about your family, your trip and how many points you think you need.  You will then see the costs for the next few years to see what makes sense money wise.

Here is a link to the spreadsheet filled out with a week stay at DVC Saratoga Springs Resort, hotel 1 set to a moderate hotel and hotel 2 is a value resort:

Download

Feel free to play with it and leave feedback in comments!

Kyle

Running Windows 7 64 bit a common VMWare (and many other programs) problem is that a driver will cause a Blue Screen of Death, or BSOD. An easy way to allow these drivers to run and have windows ignore the issues is by disabling “Driver Verifier” in windows 7. These is a quick and easy way to try to solve your problems with your .sys drivers.

1. Hit windows key + r to bring up the run window and type “verifier” without quotes.  Click OK.
2. Choose “Delete existing settings and click “Finish.”
3. Restart your computer

Hopefully this will help with your BSOD problems.  If you are having such bad problems you can not even get into windows before your BSOD, try this same method using Safe Mode.  Let me know in the comments if this worked for any of you!

If you are like me, you have been banging your head against the wall trying to get your xbox 360 working correctly with your Windows Media Center’s Movie Library. I went on and on figuring it was a codec problem. The issue you are seeing should be that when logged directly into the media center it sees your movies, but the xbox 360 shows an error: “There are no items in the library yet …”

The solution is stupid… you just need to add the folder FROM the xbox 360. You would think it would pull the settings directly from the media center PC just like it does for music and pictures library, but it does not. Anyways, just go to settings, Media Libraries and add a movie library to the share (or folder) where you have your videos.

Now, if only these videos had cover art etc. Well, you could add each video and find cover art for the video and spend the rest of your life doing that for each video… or you could use an easy windows service that will easily find the name of your video and download cover art and even extra meta data. It doesn’t work for every movie but in my collection it covered about 80%.

The tool you need to download is called Yammm (Yet Another Media Meta Manager). Before you install though you should know that each video needs to be in its own folder. You can easily complete this by running this dos command inside your videos folder:

FOR %i IN (*.*) DO (IF NOT EXIST “%~ni” MD “%~ni”) & (MOVE “%i” “%~ni”)

When this command completes point Yammm to the root of your movie folder, click save and walk away. It will create artwork for any new movies you put in this folder as well!

If you install WordPress on IIS you will notice your friendly URLs do not work.  This is because WordPress wants to use an apache add-on called “mod_rewrite.”  The quick rundown of that this does is it will take your friendly browser URL and actually change them to index.php on the back end.  One problem with this method is that IIS does not load apache mods.  Here is an easy and free way around this:

1. On your IIS Server download and install ISAPI_Rewrite Lite.  This filter does the job of mod_rewrite for IIS.  When downloading make sure to use the free Lite version.  This Lite version does not limit the product very much and will be perfectly fine (and free) for our wordpress blog.  Just install Rewrite Lite to the default locations for this tutorial.
2. Next add the ISAPI filter to your IIS Site.
   You will find this setting by right clicking yourIIS site -> properties -> ISAPI filters tab -> Add …  Name the filter whatever you wish and your path to your executable should be:
   C:\Program Files\Helicon\ISAPI_Rewrite3\ISAPI_Rewrite.dll
   Click OK on both windows to save your settings.
3. Next navigate to C:\Program Files\Helicon\ISAPI_Rewrite3
   Here we will edit httpd.conf  (Note:  This is the difference between the pay version and the Lite version.  In the pay version you will need to edit the .htaccess file on your web folders root)
4. Open the httpd.conf file in wordpad and paste in these lines:
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?p=$1 [NC,L]
5. Save and exit this file.
6. To complete your IIS changes, Go to start, run and run the command:  iisreset /restart
7. Now lets change your WordPress settings.  Navigate to yourblog/wp-admin
8. Navigate to the left side menu bar -> settings -> Permalinks
9. Now you get to choose how you want your posts to look.  I choose a custom setting and just: /%postname%  This is how you see this blog working today.
10. Click “Save Changes” and you should see your new friendly URLs!

For all of you trying to get cheats working in your BioShock game you bought on steam, you may notice they do not activate and trainers will not work.  Follow this tutorial to get cheats working:

1. Navigate to your steam folder, normally:  C:\Program Files\Steam
2. Enter the folder: steamapps\common\bioshock\buids\release
3. Edit the file DefUser_int.ini
4. Do a find and replace on the key you would like to find for what cheat
   Such as replace… “F10=” with”F10=god”

Here are some more codes you can try out!

Code:                  Result:

fly                          Fly Mode

ghost                    No Clipping Mode

teleport                Teleport to Crosshair

walk                      Remove Fly and Ghost modes

killpawnsKill        All Enemies on Level

slomo                   Slomo Mode

suicide                 Kill Self

givehealth           Gives Health

givebioammo     Gives EVE

igbigbucks          Give $500

After finding yellow jackets in my siding I tried everything to get rid of them… sprays, dusts, waiting… they just would not go away!  Tired of spending money I found a quick and easy way to take care of the pests for good.  This will work with any flying pest, too.

Items Needed:

1. A Shop Vacuum
2. Bleach
3. Long Extension Cord
4. An hour of time

I think you know where I am going with this, as it is pretty straight forward.  First, take about 1/2 gallon of bleach and put it in the bottom of your shop vacuum, then fill it about half way with water.  Place the lid back on and make sure the exhaust port is not open and the filter is connected to your vacuum.

Now you are ready to take out some wasps.  Carefully move your vacuum over to your siding hive and carefully move the suction tube close to where the wasps are flying in and out of their hive.  It is okay if you do not get it perfectly near the hive, within a few inches is perfect.  Next run your extension cord to the nearest outlet and plug in your vacuum and turn it on.  You will need to let it run for about 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes go back to your wasp killing machine.  You should see no bees coming in or out.  If you do, just give it a few more minutes, you can enjoy watching what is left get sucked into the tube.  If you have come out to find no wasps left you can walk up and bang on your siding with your open hand.  This will shake up the last of the wasps protecting the hive.  They will fly out and get sucked into your trap.

At this point you should be able to turn off the vacuum.  SLOWLY open it up and you will see just how many you caught!  Wait until tomorrow and see if any wasps are back.  You should be good to go, but if there are any just suck them up like the day before.

After a few days the queen should die and it will be over, you won.  What about the nest you say?  Well, new wasps will not come and use that nest so you can leave it.  When winter comes go outside and seal up any holes that the wasps were using.

More video game problems? Yes! Always! This time I was trying to play Diablo 2 on my new Vista computer. The game will start and I get a black screen. This is the error i get to enjoy when I tab out: UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: ACCESS_VIOLATION (c0000005). I do a little googling without any luck, but found a solution! Hopefully this helps someone else.

Right click on Diablo II.exe
Go to Properties
Go to Compatibility
Check off run in 256 colors.

You are good to go!

Error:  When starting Warcraft III Frozen Throne you get an error: “Sorry, Warcraft III could not be opened.”

Quick Fix:  

Download patch 1.21b

Run Warcraft III Frozen Throne

Update with Battle.net

Backstory:

So today I broke down and bought the Warcraft Battle Chest.  I was trying to find a game my Macbook Air could play  Anyways, I install and download the newest updates from the Blizzard FTP.  I start playing Warcraft and it was as fun as I remembered.  I then want to play Warcraft III, Frozen Throne expantion and to my dismay I find that it will not start!  It says “Sorry, Warcraft III could not be opened”  Some error… no other info at all!

Downgrade time!  I downgraded to 1.21b and the game started up.  I then connected to Battle.Net and let it update.  Now I can play on battle.net, fully updated without any problems.  By the way, here is the patch.

* Note:  If you have already connected to battle net and applied the patch from there you can still downgrade using the download above.