I remember a few months back, Creative announced that they will be introducing a new series of digital media players by Christmas. After a few exciting releases, such as the Zen Stone and the Zen Stone Plus, and some not too exciting releases, such as the Zen Wav, a new player, set to be released this September, instantly caught my eye today.

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Concisely named the Creative ZEN, this flash-based Portable Media Player will feature an 2.5 inch screen that can display 16.7 million colors and will come in 4 GB, 8GB, and 16 GB of flash memory, priced at $150, $200, and $300 respectively, and also features an SD Card slot.

While further details have not been released, a promotional/demo video is available here.

What is most amazing is the new Zen UI, which sports stunningly beautiful visual effects, similar to that of the Zune and the iPhone.

With my excellent experience with Creative’s media players (albeit a few software problems), this new player is indeed very impressive. I greatly look forward to its release.

Source: Creative ZEN

~DC

I recently have had problems with connecting my Creative Zen Vision:M to my computer. The computer simply stopped recognizing the device. At first, the ZVM icon appeared under My Computer although the Creative Zen Vision:M Manager said that the device was not connected. On the ZVM’s screen, the menus displayed instead of the normal “Docked”display. When I checked Device Manager under Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Device Manager, there were no apparent driver problems with the device.

However, from there it went downhill.

In trying to fix this, I not only officially screw up the driver, I also caused the computer to not recognize the device at all, other than the annoying, “there seems to be a problem installing this hardware” message.

After sifting through many “solutions” to connection problems in the Creative Labs forums, I finally found a solution that works, not just for me but for others who were on the verge giving up hope and bombing Creative Labs…literally.

Here is how you can restore contact between your computer and your Creative Device. Warning! This involves some WGA workarounds! Hehehe…

1. Download Windows Media Player 11 here.
2. With an file archiver program such as WinZip or WinRAR, open wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe and extract all of the files into a folder.
3. In the extracted files, there should be a number of .exe files.
4. Go to Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Device Manager
5. Make sure that your Creative device appears under Removable Devices. It may say Creative Zen Vision:M or simply MTP Devices. You may need to plug your device in for this. The icon for your device may have a yellow triangle on it, signifying that there is a problem with the device or the driver.
6. Right click on the item for your device. Select Properties. Leave the properties window open. Unplug your device.
7. Execute the following .exe files in this order:
   1. wmp11.exe - The Windows Media Player 11 program files
   2. wmfdist11.exe - The WMP11 Distribution Pack
   3. umdf.exe - User Mode Driver Framework. Note: This file is very important!!!
8. If any of the wizards ask you to restart your computer, select “Do not restart now.”
9. After finishing running the three .exe files, go back to the Properties window for your device and uninstall the driver.
10. Reboot
11. Connect your Creative Device and it should be working again.

If you have had troubles with the newest version of Windows Media Player on XP and want to revert back to 10, but have had problems removing it through Add/Remove Programs, here is a failsafe method of removing WMP 11.

1. Go to Start Menu
2. Click on Run…
3. In the Run dialog box, type in the following: C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallwmp11$\spuninst\spuninst.exe
4. An uninstall wizard will appear. Follow the wizard through the uninstall process.
5. After the uninstall process completes, reboot your computer.
6. After starting up, WMP11 will be removed.

Note: if you start Windows Media Player 10 after removing 11, the configuration wizard may still be that of WMP 11. However, after completing the wizard, you will see that it is actually WMP 10. This may be due to the fact that some components of WMP 11, such as the Windows Media Player 11 Runtime, and URGE, are still there. However, this will not affect WMP 10.

Beginning with my wacky reverse text post, I am creating a new category, more like a component, of my blog: tutorials. Although I am a hard-core techie, the tutorials I post will not only be limited to technology, but may also include any random how-to manual.

To access my tutorials without filtering through the other posts:

1. Go to sidebar
2. In the Categories widget, locate Tutorials category
3. Click on Tutorials category
4. Voila! (….so cheesy…)

This will do for now. I might create a link somewhere sometime later.

~DC

I am sure you have had the experience where your OS installation has become filled with so much junk that its more bloated than Windows Codename Longhorn right before the development reset.

In pursuit of the customization hype, I have literally filled my default XP Home installation to the brim. It has become so bloated and bugged that I had to start over.

Due to the time needed for backup, I am again creating a second XP installation, replacing the barely-usable Vista installation (as you know, my current specs suck). This time, although I will go uxtheme patch, that is basically the only thing I will do with regards to “customizing.” I will focus more on efficiency, performance, and keeping it “clean.”

Here is what it looks like so far:

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As you can see, clean and simple XP. No gadgets/widgets, no icon mods (though I most likely will install an Oxygen shell pack if they make one…those icons are beautiful), etc.

Basically, I just want to create a clean-looking, usable environment that though may not look very fancy, gets the job done quickly and efficiently.

~DC

‮Lately, there has been a new hype, the Backwards Text Phenomenon!!!.

‮Apparently, theres a little trick on Windows that allows you to type reverse text. Although there are people in various forums now spamming in reverse, there is also an ongoing fierce debate over whether or not this is a Windows bug.

‮Well, but or not, here is how you can go backwards too!

1. Before you go post something somewhere, like a forum, type the following without spaces: & #8238;
2. Then after the semicolon, start typing what you want to say
3. Then post it!

‮With any luck, what you type will be reversed.

‮~DC

I don’t mean to be a flip-flopper, but although I know that I just posted a few hours ago saying that I MAY HAVE given up hope on ZenPhoto and whatnot, but I just decided (yes, that quickly), to wait for ZenPhoto and in the meantime, make Gallery2 look a tad more usable.

The reason?

I got news that the lead developer for ZP just returned from camping a few days ago. Although development seems to have stalled, there is now hope that the next version, and hopefully subalbum support, will be soon released.

Furthermore, I was not able to find another good gallery script that is Wordpress-supported. It seems that the main gallery scripts that has Wordpress support are Gallery2, ZenPhoto, and, to some degree, Coppermine. Other than that, there are plugins that are galleries by itself such as NextGen but those usually have more limited capabilities.

Thus I will continue editing the template files to make G2 as usable as possible for the time being. Until then, stay tuned.

~DC

I have been browsing the embedded gallery with the Haiku theme and I admit, the gallery is a mess. Not just a bit messy, but the gallery embedded in Haiku looks horrible. Not only is the font size out of proportion, some elements of the Wordpress Embedded G2 theme would horribly stretch the wrapper.

I would create a Haiku theme for Gallery2 and access the gallery as a standalone yet keep the WPG2 bridge for post content purposes, but G2’s  theme engine, though based on Smarty, looks like a trainwreck compared to that of Wordpress.

I believe that I mentioned ZenPhoto earlier but the problem is that many features that I absolutely need, such as subalbums (can’t live w/ out subalbums), are currently not present and its development has stagnated to the extent that some people are speculating that ZP is dead.

As a result, I am on the search for another gallery program, preferably one that is lightweight, richly-featured, easily-customizable, and can be bridged with Wordpress.

As both a programmer and a blogger, I will ultimately need some way of displaying code in my posts and pages, and preferably one that can do syntax highlighting. Because Wordpress did not come with such a feature (though it did with quotes), I installed CodeColorer.

I had some trouble tweaking the settings to get it to display correctly. And I think it may still be somewhat wonky and may need reinstallation. But hey…

It is here!

The Haiku theme for Wordpress is finally fully-featured and will from now on be the default theme for this blog.

However, this theme is yet neither complete nor polished. There are still many bugs that need to be found and eliminated. The embedded Gallery2 is especially troublesome as it tends to stretch the wrapper. Thus I would greatly appreciate it if you would assist in finding bugs. I will soon create a page for Haiku theme bug reports.

As for releasing this theme, I will consider a release as soon as the rough spots are smoothed out to the extent that the theme is releasable.

~DC