Last week out of nowhere all 6 of my motherboard’s USB ports died. Windows will no longer recognize any device attached through any of the ports. Power will be given to the device for a couple of seconds, windows will display and error about how the USB device is unknown, and then the device’s power is cut off. I’ve been searching the internet for the past week or so for a solution. It seems as though I’m not the only person on the internet with this problem; and it just so happens that my dad ran into a client with the same exact problem. No explanation and after a few days of work, no solution. And again, today I ran into a kid in my school who has the same problem, suddenly none of his USB ports will recognize any devices. He suggested that it was a virus and he’s been using a PS2 mouse/keyboard to get by.

While browsing with my PS2 keyboard and Mousekeys (Alt + Shift + Numlock for those in Windows), I found that the only easy solution would be to buy a new USB 2.0 PCI card. There were many suggestions to check the BIOS USB settings, reset the BIOS, uninstall and reinstall USB drivers, reinstall Windows and even format the hard drive and replace the motherboard. I had tried everything up until formatting and replacing with no success. Two trips to BestBuy and a PCI USB 2.0 card later I have a semi-functioning computer.

So the easy solution is to buy a new piece of hardware, but it still bugs me that I’m not able to make use of the 2 convienient ports in the front, and 4 ports in the back of my rig. It is very odd that this same situation has happened to 3 people within the same week. If you’re stuck with this problem yourself, again, the only way to solve it for now is to go out and buy a new USB PCI card.

If you have any information about as to why this happens, or how to solve it, please shoot me an email or leave a comment below!

Trying to work up a new style. Heres a new piece and a bunch of stuff to go along with it including a video and teeshirt submission!

tragedy by ~J3nnings on deviantART

I picked up a pair of Converse All stars last week for about $7 from Pac Sun.I was told that Chucks are a hassle to wear, and they were until I made a few compromises. The biggest problem I’ve found concerns the laces.

If you lace Chucks as you would any normal shoe, over the course of a week you’ll notice that they get extremely tight around the toes and middle (assuming you are wearing normal chucks, this won’t apply to slips ons or low cuts). This doesn’t help the fact that you might find the tongue getting lost in the shoe from time to time. They’ll take a lot longer to put on and take off like this. It’ll probably be uncomfortable as well.

The solution? Different Lacing. I experimented with a few different types of lacing, and I found that Straight (Fashion) Lacing is the best solution to this problem. When tied your Chucks will feel tight and comfortable, but when untied and taken off they loosen up again, so there isn’t much difficulty putting them back on.

Absolutely amazing. I just completed portal, my entire playtime adds up to somewhere around 4 and a half hours.

Portal is a innovative sci-fi first person puzzle game based off of the Source engine. You play the role of an unknown test subject in some sort of facility competing with the New Mombosa facility of the Half Life world.

Although short (about the length of either of the Half Life episodes), it does contain a bit of replay value. You can play through the entire game a second time with developer commentary (as done on DVDs). If thats not enough, there are optional harder levels of some of the puzzles in the game. And if you’re still bugging for more Portal, there is a feature play custom maps (a few come bundled), which anybody can make.

I will post a larger review in a few days, I would hate to ruin any part of the game to anybody who hasn’t finished it yet. And if you haven’t picked up the Orange Box, take a deep look into it. For $50 you receive Half Life 2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Thats $10 a game. If you already own any of them, Valve allows you to gift you’re already purchased games to any of your buddies on Steam. This is the deal of the season.

Again, more to come on Portal later (maybe a walkthrough?)

So much for the Flock browser. I’ve been experiencing a lot of crashes lately, too many for me to deal with. I’m not sure weather its the loaded browser or my own hardware problem, but it’s just unbearable. It was fun while it lasted, thanks Flock.

Thanks for trying Flock; stay tuned for our 1.0 release. We’d love to hear your feedback about the browser. If you’re game, please send us a brief comment using the form below. It’s totally optional. Thanks again!

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

read more | digg story

While wondering around the tubes the other day I came across the service called Jott. Jott allows you to call a number, and leave a note on a virtual “to do” list. You’re asked who you want to Jott, then you leave a voice message. The message is translated into text, and sent to your lsit. Not only can you leave yourself a note on your list, you can leave notes on anyone else who uses Jott as well. Can’t get everyone to sign up for Jott? Jott also allows you to send email to friend as well as text messages just by speaking. As of now Jott is completely free.

And even if thats not enough, Jott allows you to blog in a hurry using your phone via Jott Links. Jott Links is an extemely easy format to allow anyone to interact with the internet via their phone. In a couple of hours I was able to create a program that would allow Jott users to recieve the weather by speech.

• You can add Jott Weather by adding the link “http://supplycrate.com/jott/weather.php” to your Jott Links page, give it the name “Weather” and your done.
• Call jott, ask for Weather.
• When prompted for a message, say your area code slow and clearly.
• Jott will ask you if you’d like to send without transcription or wait.
• WAIT! Jott will tell you something like “Message Sent.”
• Wait another minute and you’ll be texted with the area code’s current weather conditions.

Jott has even released a small desktop application to allow you keep track and create notes on the fly. It’s currently a little buggy, although Adobe AIR may be to blame.

I have no relation to Jott, this post is purely my own experience.

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Giveaway of the Day is a “woot” like site where one game and piece of software is given away free each day, The software is normally priced over $20 according to the site. Today they feature the game Master of Defense. Master of Defence was a hit last time it was featured Giveway of the Day.

Master of Defense is a wonderfully-crafted game that lets you hone your strategic skills in a variety of combats. Assuming the role of the hero, you must ward off relentless attacks of monsters and protect people taking refuge in your castle. Build towers that meet unwelcome guests with a barrage of fire, upgrade them to improve the firepower, fire speed and range.

Game Giveaway of the Day

Basically, it’s a tower defense game entirely in 3d and is loads of fun. Last time GotD featured it (months ago), I played through the entire game in one sitting.

Master of Defense is a wonderfully-crafted game that lets you hone your strategic skills in a variety of combats.

Assuming the role of the hero, you must ward off relentless attacks of monsters and protect people taking refuge in your castle.

Build towers that meet unwelcome guests with a barrage of fire, upgrade them to improve the firepower, fire speed and range.

The totally addictive game play is complemented by superb visuals and animations.

Game Giveaway of the Day » Master of Defense - Flock

Remember that this is only free today, the software requires internet activation. You can only install it today, but you’ll be able to play the game anytime after.

If you missed the link up top, download Master of Defense.

While on the topic of eyestrain, I found a great color picker (eyedropper) application yesterday. Upon installing Flock, my colorzilla color picker extension ceased to work. Now I’ve got Colorpic, and eyedropper tool on steriods.

Ever tried using a color picker on a high resolution monitor? It’s impossible. That’s why this color picker has a magnifier attached. Control it from the keyboard and grab up to 16 colors at once. See your color in RGB and HSL and get websafe info. Consistantly the most popular free color picker on the web, the latest version offers more choices to easily and effectivly create color palettes.

ColorPic

For those of you who don’t know, ClearType is part of the IE7 bundle. It’s not your fault though, Microsoft never told you ClearType was enabled. ClearType “smooths” all your on screen fonts, so they appear more visible to people on LCD monitors.

With Windows XP, ClearType delivers improved font display quality over traditional forms of font smoothing or anti-aliasing. ClearType improves readability on color LCD displays with a digital interface, such as those in laptops and high-quality flat panel displays. Readability on CRT screens can also be somewhat improved.

ClearType Tuner Step 1: Turn on Windows XP ClearType

Rather than just rant about how horrible Microsoft is (you already hear enough of that), I’d rather just quickly provide a solution to everyone out there who might have thought their text started to look a little blurry.

For starters, you can tune the ClearType settings over at the Microsoft site. Note that you must be using IE and it will prompt you to install an Active X control.

If you want to get rid of ClearType all together do the following. First right click on your desktop. Then hit Properties. Select Appearance, then hit “Effects…” Finally, deselect the checkbox next to “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:”

All hail the pixelated font!