Having lived in the U.S. for the first 10 years of my driving career, I've become accustomed to thinking of fuel economy in terms of MPG (miles per gallon). Although I have been living and driving outside of the U.S. for more than 10 years I still have MPG stuck in my head. My cars now all indicate l/100km which is probably a better measure, but I still like to sometimes do a quick conversion to MPG. Our latest car is a Diesel and sometimes I'm up for a bit of hypermiling when I've got the whole family in the car and I don't want to listen to my wife complain about speeding. There are tons of online / offline / mobile ways of converting between mpg and l/100km, but sometimes the easiest way is to just have a table to look at.

From a quick Googling exercise, nobody seems to have made available an easy conversion table, so I cooked one up.

Click Here for a PDF file that you can print out and have handy in the car.

I've zoomed in to the particular range that I'm interested in (this is what I generally get with my car). If you have a gas guzzler or some fancy new eco wonder, here is the Excel file so you can modify the chart and make your own. Just set the axes you want, the underlying data is already in the spreadsheet.

Last weekend I bought an HD set top box for my old TX-66PW1050A CRT TV. The default setting of the set top box was 1080p and so when I plugged it in, I wasn't able to see a picture. I eventually used another TV to set the box to 576p but it now seems that the TX-66PW1050A has developed a really bad pincushion distortion as a result of the ordeal.

Turns out, I'm not alone (and here is another example). Doing a bit of searching around the Web I found various posts from people who had the same problem. Apparently, the TX-66PW1050A can be permanently damaged as a result of taking a 1080p input.

I wanted to see if I could fix this problem by accessing the Service Menu on the TV. This is the menu that allows for some fine tuning of the configuration that normally Panasonic would only want done by technicians. I soon found that it's impossible to find the Service Manual for this old model online (although strangely, other similar models still have their Service Manuals available). I was also annoyed to find that the codes to access the service menu on the TX-66PW1050A were not the same as other models.

Through trial-and-error, I found out some of the codes. As there was nowhere else on the internet that had this documented, the purpose of this post is to share what I know. The bad news is that I wasn't able to fix the pincushion problem, but I did learn a lot more about this model of TV than I otherwise ever would have wanted to!

There are two modes that might be of interest: Self Check Mode and Service Mode.

Self Check Mode: To access this mode, you need to press the VOLUME DOWN button on the TV (behind the flip down panel on the front) simultaneously with the TIMER button on the remote (which is behind the flap). It will momentarily say Self Check on the top right, the screen will momentarily go black and then you will get a screen that looks something like this.

Screen from Self Check Mode

As you can see, it passes the self check despite the obvious pincushion problem. The black rectangular box to the left of Option 9 is a mystery. This appears to be a "read only" mode, as you can't seem to change anything.

Service Mode: To access this mode, push the TIMER button on the remote to set a 30 minute sleep time (i.e. press it once). Then press the VOLUME DOWN button until the volume setting is at 0. Then press the VOLUME DOWN button on the TV simultaneously with the REVEAL button the remote (this is the button to the left of the 0 with the little plus inside a pictogram of a CRT).  You will briefly see an informational display with the mode you are in and then you will see the screen as shown below.

Screen from Service Mode

In this mode you can scroll up and down using the arrow keys on the remote. You can also change the option settings using the left / right arrow keys, but after playing around with these, I couldn't see anything actually change in the image. I would be interested to hear if anyone out there knows what these options are. Incidentally, you will notice that these options are the same (except for Option 10) as what is shown in the Self Check mode above.

You will also notice CHK written on the top right of the screen. If you press the 1 or 2 button on the remote, you will then scroll (forward and backward) through different CHK options. You can then use the arrow up/down buttons to scroll through the sub settings in each CHK mode and then to actually change the settings you use the arrow left/right buttons.

Screen from CHK Mode 5

In the example above, we are setting the Gain. The default value is 56 (the pink number above the word Gain) and the current setting is 56. If I push the right button, the Gain increases. Some of the settings can go above and below 0, and other settings can only be positive numbers.

With these CHK settings, you can definitely see a change in the picture (they set things like colour, horizontal position, etc.)

Unfortunately, in the end I never did find the settings to fix the pincushion effect, so I'm afraid this TV is headed to next e-waste recycling pickup.

This afternoon the phone rang with one of those phishing scammers (documented here, here, here and here) that tries to install malware on your computer or otherwise scam you. The last time they called, I didn't have time to mess with the guy, but this time I was prepared and had some time to burn. I had created a totally quarantined Virtual Machine sandbox for them (and me) to play with, and I was ready.

I mostly did this to appease my curiosity about how the scam actually works... I took notes and screen shots as it was happening in case you are interested. The story is below.

The scam starts with a cold call from a guy with a heavy accent who introduces himself as a technician from Microsoft who has detected a problem with my machine. He then confirms that I am running Windows XP and then asks me how long it takes for my machine to boot up. I tell him about a minute and he says "Oh no, something must be wrong - it should only take about 5-6 seconds."

He then tells me he can remotely diagnose my problem and that I should go to my machine and follow his instructions. I boot up the VM and we're off.

First he has me click on START and RUN and then load the Event Viewer (eventvwr.exe).

He then asks me to click on a bunch of things (Properties, and un-check Information/Success Audit/Failure Audit) to basically remove anything except the errors and warnings. He then asks me if I see any Warnings or Errors. Of course, at this point I can only see Errors and Warnings. When I tell him that I do he says "Oh my gosh, there is something wrong with your computer, you have a virus!" For those that don't know, this is a perfectly normal screen on a virgin new installation of Windows XP. In fact if you did the same on a system that's a few months old, you'd say many many more of these warnings and errors. Again, this is perfectly normal.

He then says to open up Task Manager to check the performance hit that I have from this virus. I tell him that the CPU usage is 2% (which is normal) and again I get a "Jees, that's bad" it should be 100%, but the virus has taken away 98% of the system capacity. He then asks for the size of my PF (PF Usage) which I tell him is 148MB and he says it should be 3000MB (3GB). He also says that the yellow line in the "Page File Usage History" graph should be blue - the yellow is a sign of a critical warning. Of course, this is all bullshit - in fact the Task Manager Screen is showing a perfectly normal system.

He then tells me that he understands I would be skeptical of his call and that I should go to http://www.desksense.com which is his company and I can see that they are Microsoft Certified. Look, there is a Microsoft logo on top of the screen. It must be true! Incidentally, the guy said that I could verify that it's him by calling him back on the phone number 0280144592. I didn't bother trying, but I would have imagined that such a large company wouldn't just have a VOIP Sydney dial-in number.

He also asks me to go to the Testimonials and Awards section to see how well regarded they are. The Awards are kinda funny, I'm sure you've all heard of these prestigious awards.

Now that I trust that he is from Microsoft, he tells me to go to http://www.teamviewer.com and install their remote administration software. He tells me that TeamViewer normally costs $150 but he is giving it to me for free as part of this service. He then transfers me to his colleague who then takes over the call.

I install TeamViewer and give him my machine ID and password. What bad could come of this? :)

He then uses these details to connect remotely to my computer so that he can control it. You can see he has full control.

Also, he does a bunch of talking during which other people also seem to connect to my machine. About 5 separate people connected to my machine while he was talking. Don't quite know what they were doing - maybe looking for some interesting personal files.

The colleague, who can now remotely control my computer, loads up prefetch (START - RUN prefetch) which will find the viruses... and WOW! I am infected by the Rundll32.exe virus and the Update.exe virus!!!!! OH MY GOD! :) Again, these are all perfectly normal screens. In fact, prefetch isn't even a program, it's just a directory.

He now tells me that he will "upgrade" my CPU to 100% and upgrade my memory to 3GB (which I will see in my page file). To do this, I need to go to http://www.logmein123.com and then punch in the ID 879463 (which is a top secret number that I shouldn't tell anyone... ooops, did I just reveal his secret?) and speak to Mark Brown who is the Senior Microsoft Engineer who will handle my case. At this point it becomes an online chat and I can't hear Mark Brown's voice, we only type to eachother.

Mark now has remote control of my machine and he then installs Mozilla (which he tells me normally costs $100) for absolutely free!

Then we go to http://www.gitsolutions.net

and he takes me to the pricing page where I need to pay $145 to go on... I humour him by going to the shopping basket stage, but stop when I actually have to put my Credit Card number in there.

This is where my "internet connection" suddenly went down and we couldn't continue. We had been online for just over an hour at this point and I think they really smelled the $145 because they went through great lengths to call me back and offered to check with my ISP about what's wrong. Anyway... I then got bored and closed it all down. This didn't stop them from trying to repeatedly call me for the next hour or so.

So... just saved you an hour in case you wanted to know how this scam works :)

I imagine the next steps are left to your imagination, but by now they would have full control and access to my computer and any connected drives as well as my credit card details and address info. All in an hour's work.

Incidentally, if you get a call like this, you can quickly shut the guy down by either saying you don't have an internet connection, you have a Mac or you left your laptop at work and don't have another computer. They will just quickly move onto their next target.

There is a maddening bug in the Google Apps administration panel that I thought was caused by a bad implementation of their move from CNAME to TXT validation. It took me quite a while to solve until I saw a post from KrisThurston here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/thread?tid=0e879c61fed11c0f&hl=en

Essentially, Google Apps will show that your domain is verified, but then keep asking you to re-verify it (even though it says it's verified). This also means that you can't use it with Google Apps (for example for mail).

The solution, as KrisThurston points out is to ensure that you are completely logged out of any other account you have with Google. The best way to do this is to actually just open up a different browser (using Firefox? then open Safari, or IE (or Opera or whatever)). Once I did this, I noticed that it asked me to validate with a different TXT code, but then it all worked. Thanks KrisThurston!

I recently bought a Logitech G500 mouse and when I took it out of the packaging I noticed that it had a quite noticeable rattle (as if something was loose inside). Once I plugged it in, I realised something was wrong as the tracking was really bad (the movement was very jerky when I stopped moving the mouse). Also, shaking the mouse above the mouse mat made the cursor move.

I opened up the mouse (you need to remove the feet and there is another screw under the G500 sticker) and immediately realised that the lens in front of the laser was loose. The way it was mounted to the mouse was a very poor design in that it was essentially just floating in place.

I used a drop of superglue (cyanoacrylate) to firmly fix the lens and then tested the mouse - everything seemed to work great!

The next morning the scroll wheel stopped working. On investigation, as the superglue dried, it released fumes that had fogged up the optical mechanism that tracks the scroll wheel.

I returned the mouse to the vendor and then got a new one. The new one also had a loose lens with the same rattle and poor tracking symptoms. Either I had a bad batch, or this was a common problem. A bit of Googling and it turns out that this is a common problem (example thread below).

http://forums.logitech.com/t5/G-series-Gaming-Mice/G500-defective-lift-off-distance/td-p/520531

Rather than return the second faulty mouse, I decided to fix it with a less volatile glue (hot glue) and now it works perfectly.

If you get a mouse with this problem - it's probably best to just fix it... since your replacement mouse will probably have the same problem.

Keep the following tips in mind:

• Carefully remove the slippery feet with a pocket knife. They will be easy to replace. You will need to remove all the screws under the feet.
• Feel the G500 sticker to locate the hole for the last screw which will also need to be removed.
• The top shell is attached to the main chassis by a wire (to connect the LEDs and top buttons). If you can avoid it, you should leave this attached - it's a pain to reattach it if you remove it.
• Remove the screws that hold the rest of the mechanism together and you will find the loose lens.
• Use a hot glue (or other non-volatile glue) to glue the lens to the circuit board. This is best done by gluing the plastic pins on the lens.
• Reassemble and enjoy!

For some strange reason, Google insists that any Mac user running their apps (Google Earth, Picassa, etc.) must also constantly run the Google Software Update daemon. They install it silently in the background without asking and I have found this incredibly difficult to permanently delete, it keeps coming back! And worse, it sometimes can get stuck in a mode where it's churning the CPU on my Macbook causing the fan to come on and the battery to be eaten up quickly. Very annoying!
You can always go into Activity Monitor and kill it (or do it via the Terminal console), but it doesn't permanently get rid of it. I recently found a way to silence it permanently (even though it's still technically there).

To disable Google Software Update from checking for updates, execute the following in the Terminal application:

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

If for some reason you prefer not to completely disable it, but to lengthen the time interval between the checks, you can use the following command:

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval [n]

Where [n] is the elapsed time (in seconds) between checks. 

After years of just killing the app in Activity Monitor whenever the CPU went high because of the updater, I recently found a Google article which gave the above tip and also shows how to manually perform an update if you want.

http://www.google.com/support/installer/bin/answer.py?answer=147176 

I recently wanted to upgrade my bedside alarm clock to one that had both an audio input and an iPod charging capability. I also wanted something small but with a large time readout and 2 alarms. I also wanted something that showed a 24-hour time format (instead of the 12-hour AM/PM format). The Sony ICFCD3IP (and it's less expensive brother the ICFC7IP) met all my requirements - EXCEPT that the ones sold in Australia were hard-wired to only show 12-hour time format. The same exact model of radio sold in continental Europe (though not the UK) has a 24-hour format. Searching Google didn't reveal anything so I went and bought an Australian model at a local electronics store with the intention to modify it. Long-story-short, after trying every possible "undocumented" button combination, I was hoping to find a "jumper" or something inside that would let me change the configuration. Instead I found a serial port (JTAG or other) which is obviously where the factory sets the localisation config into the device. At this point I gave up.

But for any of you out there who wish to hack / modify / convert one of these radios, you will need to work out the protocol used to update the config. The easiest way to open the device without leaving any trace is to start with the door (remove all the Phillips screws on the door and carefully disconnect the ribbon cable) then unscrew all the screws around the CD Player part to remove the cover and reach the serial port which is roughly behind the backup battery compartment. Removing the base then needs a further two screws behind the main circuit board and then several screws on the base followed by careful prying since the two pieces are also glued together. The base mostly holds the speakers, dock mechanism and radio circuitry.

EPILOGUE: As I was on a mission to get a 24-hour version of this product, I persisted beyond what a reasonable person might do. Via Amazon.fr I found a place in Germany (AVIDES) that would ship one overseas. Amazon.fr wouldn't ship the product outside of Europe, but AVIDES was selling ex-demonstrators and would ship to Australia. Coincidentally, since the AU$ happens to be very strong at the moment, the total price including shipping was actually less than buying it locally! Having received the device in perfect order (you can't even tell it's a "used" one) I am very happy with it. The European model has an automatic daylight savings mode (which can be disabled) that will not work in Australia because of the opposite seasons. Other than that, it's exactly what I wanted. As a bonus, the European version also has an expanded AM radio range.