How to deal with suspended account in Twitter

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Astrum

We know Twitter for its speed and communication efficiency. As for their Customer Support — it is simply slow and deaf, one of the worst customer support I’ve ever seen. Well, maybe I should not generalize my experience. Look what happened.

On December 13th 2011 my Twitter account @expertvista was suspended without explanation and any notification. I read again the rules but I had no clue what my violation could be. The help page was particularly useless (see the screenshot below):

twitter account suspended

I used the online form with stupid “with love” built-in ending to report my issue. In few minutes I got an automated email from Twitter Support [mailto:notifications-support@twitter.zendesk.com] asking to reply (!) ”to this ticket with a confirmation that you understand our policies and will not engage in any prohibited following behavior.” That request to reply was unusual, and easy to miss.

So I replied. Nothing happened. I sent another request on December 20th. No answer.

Only on December 22nd I received an email from someone with a dog’s name “gobeee“, saying that I’m fine now. Eight days for Twitter customer support to fix an issue.

So if you want to quickly deal with your suspended account in Twitter, I really don’t know what to suggest. It looks like Twitter handles manually the customer tickets. I think it is OK, but that should not be that slow (8 days!) for a company providing instant services.

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Cheap PC upgrade with 2nd Generation Intel Core i3 Processor for less than 300$

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Astrum

intel_i3_logoIn January 2012 the time has come for my old PC to die. For a day or so I was confused to identify the root cause—as I thought it could be the video card fault due to the BIOS beep pattern (endlessly repeating two short and one long) —but it turned out to be my super-hot (literally) motherboard ASUS A8N32-SLI. I assembled the PC in 2006, back in Switzerland, and since then I upgraded only the hard drives. Obviously, together with motherboard the other important  components were doomed: CPU and memory. It was an old AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 for socket 939 working with DDR memory. But I thought it would be a good chance to upgrade. So I would keep my roomy ATX Thermaltake Swing Case, Gainward GeForce 7800GT PCX 512MB with fanless design, Thermaltake Toughpower 600W PSU, and all the hard drives. As this breakdown was unexpected, the budget was going to be miserable, very thin in fact. I also understood it had to be reasonable, as I was not going to buy crappy stuff. So I went down to the exploration part on the internet.

AMD new Bulldozer offer did not impress me at all, it was a fake cores feeling somehow. Intel on the contrary has opened new vistas with their successful 2nd generation Core CPU line. I was thinking about something close to 100$, and I found the fastest 3.30 GHz Intel Core i3-2120 Processor with 3M Cache. intel-core-i3-2120

The motherboard became a nice AsRock H61iCafe in LGA1155 ATX package with cool  AMI UEFI BIOS, SATA3 ports, USB3 and other good stuff for less than 100$. CPU and motherboard are both based on new Sandy Bridge platform. But AsRock reinforced Intel H61 chipset with USB3 and SATA3 support, which is great for saving money.

The rest is DDR3 8Gb (2x4Gb) 1333MHz DIMM Kingston [KVR1333D3N9K2/8G] and a Cooler Master Hyper 101 PWM. Again altogether for just 300$.

Then couple of hours for hardware assembly, getting Windows 7 Sp1 64-bit installed, and here we go—almost new computer:

rating

Eventually I will change the video card as well, but not now.

Continue reading →

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No end-to-end encryption in Opera Mini

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Astrum

At some point I realized that I cannot access www.careerbuilder.com website. For the first time it happened to me back in Switzerland when I worked few years ago. Since then I moved from there and from time to time I tried that website again. I like Money section on msn.com and careers.msn.com was always just a click away. But I had no luck. First I thought it was screened by a corporate firewall, but an attempt to connect at home did not improve the situation. Careerbuilder.com is not something I really need to use, but it has been a bothering feeling that there’s a major website where you are not allowed to access, and you do not know why.

As in a good detective story there was another plot developing independently from the Careerbuilder.com story. I have an iPod Touch and I installed Opera Mini browser there as I enjoy Opera browser in general (mouse gestures are very handy). After a while I noticed that with Opera Mini I can access some sites that I could not normally access from the country where I’m staying now (Russia). To my surprise it turned out that Opera Mini uses a transparent proxy, which is built-in and cannot be disabled, as according to my ip I was somewhere in Iceland (please see the screenshot below):

opera-mini-1

Puzzled I typed in careerbuilder.com and here you go, as if it has been always there for me:

opera-mini-2

Then I pinged careerbuilder.com in a usual way, and here’s the result:

careerbuilder.com-unreachable

Reply from 38.104.182.222: Destination net unreachable. As I could not decipher that message myself, I posted a question on Neowin.net forum.

And mighty BudMan replied in his typical elaborated manner, with a short summary in this quote: ”Clearly ICMP is being blocked [...]. Yeah it sucks with parts of the internet do not follow the RFCs and block icmp that should not be blocked..” Continue reading →

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Convert DVD movie to iPod Touch or iPhone format with Handbrake

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Astrum

Handbrake logoMy favorite serial is British “Fawlty Towers” with brilliant John Cleese as Basil Fawlty. All twelve parts are full of sharp-tongued hilarious dialogs. As people say: “the best farce ever written in the English language.” I wholeheartedly recommend. Anyway, I wanted to convert the DVD I bought few years ago on Amazon to m4v format, suitable for my iPod Touch (previous generation) to watch “Fawlty Towers” during the business trip. The key requirement would be to keep the subtitles, as I like to savour the wording (that movie in particular) along the watching these episodes. The hard part was to choose the right program to convert DVD into iPod Touch format as the selection looks excessive at first glance.

In the past I used to convert with CloneDVD, so I started this time with it. Unfortunately CloneDVD did not recognize the subtitles. I tried also Nero 10, Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate, Xvid4PSP, Aimersoft Video Converter, and DVDFab with its ugly monkey head. No luck. That is the conversion was OK, but no way to put subtitles together. Almost at the moment of desperation I tried a program called Handbrake, which is an open-source converter available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It supports video in following formats: MPEG-4 (ffmpeg), H.264 (x264), and Theora (libtheora). Handbrake also supports chapters and all kind of subtitles (Vobsub and Closed Captions). I used version 0.9.5 for Windows.

So here’s the screenshot of the settings that did work with my iPod (click to enlarge):

handbrake-0.9.5-01

Handbrake settings to convert DVD movie with closed captions

That worked nicely. So in iPod Touch (or iPhone) you just select subtitles in the menu:

And enjoy the movie:

A little disappointment is the capital letters of the subtitles — that I could not fix yet.

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Time Person of the Year — The Protester

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Astrum

The Time Magazine has just published that Person of the Year 2011 (click to enlarge):

The Protester - Time person of the year 2011

The Protester - The Time (c) person of the year 2011

Nice design! As Russia is mentioned as well (Moscow), I see we can oppose Vladimir Putin (TIME’s 2007 Person of the Year) to that Anonymous on the Time cover. The face of the many, but I hope not the legion. Continue reading →

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Internet Helps Russia Change

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Astrum

December 10th, 2011. I hope that day will be marked in the newest history of Russia to be an awakening from the lethargy that Putin’s regime has put the country in. For the first time in this century in Russia people massively went to the streets to protest against the last election falsification. Hundreds thousands of people across the whole country! Look at the photo below to understand the size of the meeting in Moscow (source, click to enlarge):

planeta-meeting

(c) www.ridus.ru 2011

People went not to support particular party or leader, they just feel abused by the government and its leading party The United Russia, which they call: “the party of Crooks and Thieves.” That nickname was given by a famous Russian blogger Alexey Navalny, who was put to jail just after few days after the elections of December 4th 2011, when first protests started. He is known for disclosing on the Internet the facts of theft and corruption in Russian government and the United Russia party, he also involved many supporters while investigating those cases and making them public. When Alexey is back after his 2 weeks of detention, he will be very welcome to lead that new opposition force, as it seems to be the very right moment. Looking at his face, I hope Russia will have a good chance, although many people in Russia are still to meet Alexey.

Alexey Navalny

Alexey Navalny, (c) Martin Schoeller / Esquire, December 2011

The meeting resolution was to redo the elections, investigate all the falsification facts, and free all the political prisoners detained after the first wave of protests. Putin and Medvedev have two weeks to address the claim. The next meeting is planned on December 24th.

Continue reading →

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Windows 8 Developer Preview — Perfect Stranger

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Astrum

win8-8102New Metro interface of Windows 8 Developer Preview (build 8102) — available to everybody to download and try — has puzzled me from the first screen. I understand the concept, but I don’t see how it is going to be productive in its way to access programs and present information from the web. Font is not distinctive. If somebody likes clean and neat display, what is Metro going to look like then? This Powerpoint style of bright and big square titles is not new at all. Look at some screenshots below (click to enlarge):

metro-1

Look at new Control Panel (click to enlarge):

metro-2

 Or another one:

metro-3

The “problem” with running of Metro applications is that you cannot close them. If you leave them and run something else, they get “suspended” — look at the new Windows Task Manager (click to enlarge):

Windows 8 Task manager

 And another one:

Windows Task manager cpu

If you need to disable Metro in Windows 8 Developer Preview, do the following:

Press Windows key + R to get Run command. Type “regedit” and press Enter. In the registry editor find the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RPEnabled
and change its value from 1 to 0. Restart the computer. You should be done now. But what is the point of running Windows 8 without Metro??

Continue reading →

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Get Pre-Beta version of Windows 8 for developers, build 8102

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Astrum

win8-devMetro style application development has been started. Go to this link to see latest updates: http://dev.windows.com

You can download the Windows Developer Preview (pre-beta version) of Windows 8 build 8102 for developers here:

  • Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64): ISO file 4.8GB [ be careful - you will need a dual layer dvd to burn this!]
Contains:
64-bit Windows Developer Preview
Windows SDK for Metro style apps
Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview
Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview
28 Metro style apps including the BUILD Conference app
 

There’s no need to activate or enter a serial number. The time-bomb is set to 12 March 2012. But if you reinstall Windows Developer Preview or use the Reset functionality, you might be asked to enter a product key. In this case use these:

6RH4V-HNTWC-JQKG8-RFR3R-36498

4Y8N3-H7MMW-C76VJ-YD3XV-MBDKV (WDP server version only)

Source for keys: Microsoft

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Free Online Classes from Stanford University School of Engineering

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Astrum

Stanford Artificial IntelligenceStanford University’s School of Engineering is offering three cool online courses this fall:

You can enroll for free. All classes start on October 10th and finish in December 2011. Contrary to a learning through simply watching video courses available, you will be asked to do homework and pass mid-term and final exams — so this is going to be interactive. At the end you will be able to receive a statement of accomplishment from the instructor (i.e. an document to describe how well you did and how your performance compared to other online students)—so this is not a Stanford certificate or grade unfortunately.

As for the courses content:

Machine learning is taught by Professor Andrew Ng. The course is about the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In the past decade, machine learning has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome.

The link http://www.ml-class.com/

Continue reading →

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Direct download links to Windows 7 SP1 ISO images

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Astrum

win7-birdIf you reinstall Windows 7 frequently, it is handy to keep an image of the installation DVD as a backup. So here’s the direct “official” download links below from Digital River servers. The files are bootable images that vary in languages and 32/64 bit option to choose:

Let’s see the most advanced ULTIMATE edition of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Media Refresh edition – click the links for downloading directly:

English x86 http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59463.iso
English x64 http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59465.iso
French x86: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59477.iso
French x64: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59479.iso
Spanish x86: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58877.iso
Spanish x64: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58879.iso

Continue reading →

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