C# Comments and Doxygen

Similar to Java, you can comment your code using special mark-ups, however, unlike Java, you need to source your own tool similar to javadoc to covert these comments into document pages. There are plenty of such tools for Windows, but for Linux, may I recommend doxygen to you. It is an open source documentation tool for a variety of programming languages, e.g. Java, C/C++/C#, php etc, and it is available through the APT package manager under Ubuntu. You can installed it by running

sudo aptitude install doxygen-gui

This would install the doxygen command line utility plus doxywizard, its graphical tool. To run the wizard, you run doxywizard in a command prompt, and after, you simply follow the simple step by step instructions. Presto, you have a well made documentation in minutes!

64Bit Windows 7 MCE and RMVB

While it is generally great to move to 64bit to take advantage of cheap memory, there is an exception. If you are using Windows Media Center to playback RMVB files, you may want to stay put to the 32Bit version as the 64Bit version cannot use the popular 32Bit Real Alternative DirectShow filter to playback RMVB video inside the Media Center. So, if you have lots of videos in RMVB format and you would like to use Windows Media Center to getting round things, you may want to still with 32Bit a bit longer ... at least till the 64Bit version of Real Alternative is available.

skype 4 and speed-dial

I have been using the USB-Skype adapter to allow me using my normal house dect phone for skype call for a while. It works great with Skype 3.8. However, skype decided to remove the speed dial from version 4 which is needed for my adapter to work. Hence, until today, I am forced to stay with version 3.

Today, I found a solution for my problem, and it works great. I found this little utility called SkypeSpeedDial which lets you to reveal the hidden speed dial feature in skype 4. You can use it to set speed dial numbers for contacts. To remind yourself the number, I use the rename function to add the speed dial numbers next to the contact names, e.g. John Smith (01)

Windows 7 and ULi Chipset

When I try to install Windows 7 on my Acer computer which uses ULi chipset, I got no hard drive. It seems Windows 7 does not carry ULi drive, and requires to load ULi drivers manually. After some search on Google, I manage to find the driver at

http://www.4shared.com/file/i1fDjHnr/ULI1575_RAID_F6.html

You simply extract the driver from the archive file and put the extracted file onto an USB pen drive. Load the driver from the USb drive prepared when you reach the empty drive screen. Hope this helps others in a similar situation.

TraceSource

Yesterday I was trying to get the TraceSource (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228993.aspx) working in C# under mono. I have been following the example in Microsoft website, but nothing seems to work. Today, I finally manage to get the TraceSource working. It turns out that I need to include TRACE as a define symbols in the compiler option (see the image below).



After making this change, my code

TraceSource ts = new TraceSource("DefaultTraceSource");
ts.TraceEvent (TraceEventType.Error, 1, "test");

works perfectly as intended.

Another catch I found with TraceSource is that the switchName attribute in the source element seems to be got ignored. To define the switch level, it seems better to use the switchValue attribute in the source element directly.

MPC-HC D3DX9.DLL error

When I use the dDirectX output for the Media Player Classic Homecinema, I got the D3DX9 error. A quick search on Google shows that this error can be eradicated by

Step 1. open “C:\Program Files\MPC HomeCinema” with your explorer.
Step 2. Make a copy “ANY” of dll (e.g. mpcresources.fr.dll)
Step 3. Rename the duplication dll to “d3dx9_41.dll”

Full details can be found at

http://hkdennis2k.homeip.net/2009/12/29/simplest-way-to-fix-no-d3dx9-dll-with-mpc-hc-on-windows-7/

Older ATi Card and Ubuntu

I have been using VESA driver instead of ATi driver for my old IBM Notebook due to the corrupted notification problem in Ubuntu.

Today, I have found the following from the Ubuntu site, which may seem to be the solution for my problem.

Window corruption with older ATI graphics cards

With older ATI graphics cards with 32MB or less of video RAM some corruption of direct rendered windows, for example OSD notifier windows, might appear. This may be worked around by disabling 'RenderAccel' in the Xorg configuration. (426582)

To do this first exit to the console using the following command:

sudo service gdm stop

Then create an Xorg configuration file with the command below:

sudo Xorg -configure

Then add the 'RenderAccel' option to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Device"

...

Driver "radeon"

Option "RenderAccel" "off"

EndSection

And restart X/GDM.

sudo service gdm start