It was a while ago that I wanted to buy some stuff from Amazon, though I avoid Amazon mostly and prefer to buy from Newegg. However, this one time, I found Super Street Fighter IV for Playstation 3 to be available on Amazon for a lower price than Newegg. The price was $34.99.

So, I decided I’ll buy it later in the night. To my surprise, when I checked back at night, the same item was priced at $39.99. This was the price that was offered by all other merchants and I thought that it must have been an offer, which expired. So, I just made the buy.

I checked later the next day and the price had changed back to $34.99. This was really amazing and I knew I was not mistaken. I searched about the matter on the internet and it was indeed true. An article written by Mr. R. Preston McAfee shows research into the matter. According to his research, this practice is only carried out by the Amazon USA website and the UK website does not follow it. Link here.

I’m keeping an eye on the prices of various items and will update this post. Meanwhile, did anyone else experience this?

I’ve been struggling with an issue with Windows 7 since the Beta was released. At first, I thought it was because of the Realtek drivers or the Beta status of Windows release. But that was not it. So what’s the issue:

My Mic shows fine in the Sound Device Manager and I can hear it fine but it wont record. In other words, the mic works, I can hear it, but it won’t record. What else was annoying that any application that I tried to use the mouse with told me that Mic wasn’t available or working. I know most of the issues related to Mics are because people do not have proper drivers installed or their Mic is not properly configured but this one’s a kind of its own.

The reason behind the problem:

I believe it is because of Applications taking exclusive control of a device. When windows starts up, the device goes into a state where the exclusive control of the device is not released and it becomes unavailable to other services or programs. This is the reason why you can see the Mic in the control panels and windows reports it as working but you won’t see any activity.

How to solve it:

Yeah, to the solution already. Let’s go through this step by step. I will always refer to the Windows’ own Sound Control Panel. So if you have Realtek or IDT or VIA or any other chipset, we’re not concerned and I won’t refer to it.

- Close any sound related applications that you may have running.
- Make sure that you have one Mic active in your Windows Sound Control Panel. Disable all others.
- Open your Mic’s Properties.

- Go to the “Levels” tab. Take the sliders all the way to the right. Don’t worry, this is to test and we’ll take them back afterward. For a note, I’m referring to the “Volume” and “Boost” Properties. Here’s a screen shot for reference.

- Go to the Enhancements tab and check “Disable All Sound Effects”. This should disable everything on that tab and especially the “Immediate Mode”. Another reference screencap:

- Lastly, go the the Advanced tab and uncheck everything under the “Exclusive Mode” Section.

Alright, we’re done. Now apply all the settings and click “OK”. Always click “OK” as “apply” doesn’t persist the changes. Close the Sound Control Panel completely by clicking “OK” on every screen. You can restart your windows if you want but that is not necessary. Re open the Sound Device control Panel. Try talking into your Mic, it should show activity.

There you have it. Let me know if this works for you. It worked for me. The catch is “exclusive” application control of the Mic and Sound Effects. So remember to disable them. Moreover, if your Mic works now, you can adjust the sensitivity, which we leveled up before.

I can post a video of this if there’s demand.

Sometimes (make that many), I find out hacks or little solutions on my own to help fellow colleagues and friends. I always thought that someone on the internet might also find them useful but never posted them because they are little hacks and wouldn’t look good for a whole post. So, today it struck me that I should create a single post that I could update with time and include all the little hacks in it.If you think that you have a better solution to something I post, then please feel free to post it. Let’s start off with some:

1- Magento Admin Logon fails on Localhost

Why it happens: Magento has a core security feature that checks if the domain it is installed on is indeed legit or correct. It can be avoided if you use the option to save session data in the database while installing Magento.

Solution: If you’re using Magento version 1.4+ then do this:

Open up Varien.php at app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Session\Abstract and search for the following line:

call_user_func_array('session_set_cookie_params', $cookieParams);

Comment that line and it will start working. Remember that it is not a good idea to use this hack on a live server.

If you’re using Magento version <=1.3, this solution is present on Magento forums as well. Open the same file (Varien.php) and do the following:

-Find the code,

session_set_cookie_params(
$this->getCookie()->getLifetime(),
$this->getCookie()->getPath(),
$this->getCookie()->getDomain(),
$this->getCookie()->isSecure(),
$this->getCookie()->getHttponly()
);

-Replace above code by,

session_set_cookie_params(
$this->getCookie()->getLifetime(),
$this->getCookie()->getPath()
//$this->getCookie()->getDomain(),
//$this->getCookie()->isSecure(),
//$this->getCookie()->getHttponly()
);

2- Changing Windows 7/Vista wallpaper through Commandline/Registry

Now I know that this hack isn’t the best way to do it. So, if you guys know of a better way, then do let me know.

copy TranscodedWallpaper.jpg %APPDATA%\Microsoft\windows\Themes\ > nul
reg add "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v Wallpaper /t REG_SZ /d "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper.jpg" /f > nul
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe > nul
start explorer.exe

Yes, the file needs to be named TranscodedWallpaper.jpg, because if you don’t then Windows will rename it and Transcode it to JPG automatically.

3- WordPress AZIndex plugin shows a blank page/broken page

AZIndex is a great plugin for wordpress but unfortunately, the author hasn’t been updating it for a while now. One of the issues that has risen after the wordpress 2.8 upgrade is the plugin not displaying any output. It will either display a blank page or a broken page with no entries on it when used.

The solution is simple, you need to look into your site’s error log and search for the term “strtoupper" function does not exist or there’s an error in the azindex cache file. Here’s what you need to if you see that error:

1) Open the “azindex/az-index-cache.php” in your wordpress plugin directory.

2) Search for  (function_exists("mb_substr"))
2) Replace
} else if (function_exists("mb_substr")) {
with
} else if (function_exists("mb_substr") && function_exists("mb_strtoupper")) {
3) Save the file and refresh your wordpress page.

It should work now.