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doubleTwist Automatically Mounts SD Card on Android Phone Despite Choosing Charge Only

Jun 172010

I recently made the move from the iPhone 3GS to the HTC EVO with Sprint. There are plenty of articles out there comparing Apple’s phones to those running Android so I will leave any comparisons out of this post and stick to the problem I was trying to solve.

As I was learning the nuances of Android, I ran into an issue where any time I plugged in the phone via USB to my computer I could no longer use any phone applications that needed to access the SD Card. What perplexed me was that I was choosing, via HTC’s Sense UI popup, that I only wanted to charge the phone. What was even more frustrating was that any time I wanted to listen to music or watch a video from the phone’s SD Card I would have to unplug the USB cable. I could not charge my phone while using the applications I wanted to.

After looking through multiple settings on the phone, trying to find the cause of the problem, I finally stumbled on the cause and solution. I had, upon purchasing the phone, installed doubleTwist as my media player replacement. What I had not realized is that doubleTwist has an option to auto mount the SD Card any time you plug in a USB cable that is attached to a computer. As soon as I changed the setting in doubleTwist my problem went away. So what setting do you need to change?

Open doubleTwist on your Android phone. Open the Menu and choose Settings. Under the Settings look for Auto USB drive and uncheck the box. This should prevent doubleTwist from auto mounting your SD Card when you plug in your Android phone via USB.

iPhone 3G with OS 3.1 nearly burned my leg and nether regions

Business, Miscellaneous No Responses »

Sep 142009

Just thought I’d post this for anyone else having this issue that plans on having kids and is using the iPhone OS 3.1. My wife and I both have an iPhone 3G and I updated both of our phones to OS 3.1 the day it was released. We are now getting random iBSoDs (Black Screen of Death) where hitting the home button and/or holding the lock button does nothing. We have to do a hard reset holding both the home button and the lock button for about 10 seconds and then the phone will reboot.

Well, I’m a pretty patient person and can hopefully wait until they release a fix for this, however, today at work I realized that my leg and nether regions started feeling hot, really hot, and that’s when I hurried and pulled my iPhone out of my pocket. As I grabbed it, it was so hot that it nearly burned me through the Rebel Serpent case I have on it. I tried to hit the home button to try to see what was going on and it turns out I was getting the dreaded iBSoD. I had to do a hard reset to get it to respond. I had fully charged it the night before and had it unplugged and on only checking my email occasionally, but after the restart I was down to 26% battery life. In total, it was maybe 2 hours after being unplugged that it was at 26% battery life. I’m guessing some background process (some people are saying the battery life issue is caused by Push for emails being on) got stuck running like crazy in some infinite loop that caused the non-responsive phone, the battery drain, and the almost sterile male.

I tried to call iPhone technical support but sat on hold for so long that I was afraid that I’d either burn my ear off or end up looking like Two-Face. Until they get this fixed, I think I’ll stick with using the speaker phone feature. I think I’d rather have my face than a bunch of money from a lawsuit, but that’s just me.

Anyone else having this wonderful experience? Is there an iPhone OS 3.1 please don’t burn my face and/or leg petition somewhere that I can sign? Post your feelings on iPhone OS 3.1 in the comments.

John Rennemeyer, MuvEnum

WPF application with DropShadowEffect renders incorrectly on nVidia GeForce drivers 185.85 and greater

Programming 1 Response »

Aug 012009

For those of you who develop using WPF, I ran into the following issue recently:

I developed MuvUnder Cover: The Album Art Sleuth, a WPF application, and with the latest nVidia drivers it displays erratic rendering of the interface. Graphical elements are missing, are half showing, when you mouseover them they appear and then randomly disappear, etc.

I have tested this on a Geforce 7800 GTX and GeForce 7300 LE with the following driver versions:

8.15.11.9038 – tested and broken
8.15.11.8618 – tested and broken
8.15.11.8585 – tested and broken (this was the first of the GeForce/ION drivers)

I tracked it down to the following cause, with a solution:

I had the following DropShadowEffect set on a lot of controls:

All of the controls that had that set where the ones that were showing the erratic missing, showing on mouseover, half rendered issue.

I then switched back to the following software rendered dropshadow:

and everything rendered correctly.

You can follow the Microsoft Connect bug I reported to see if/when there is a fix and which side of the fence (nVidia or Microsoft) it comes from at: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=478676

When I run TF2 (Team Fortress 2) all my other sounds get quiet! Windows 7

Gaming, Operating System Tips 10 Responses »

Jul 252009

So I’ve been running the Windows 7 RC for awhile, but I haven’t really been playing many games. I’ve started playing TF2 again with my brother, and I noticed that every time I loaded the game any music I had playing in Windows Media Player, or even my Ventrilo volume would drop extremely low. It was quite frustrating as I could no longer hear my brother in Ventrilo over the volume of the game I was playing.

I spent a little time looking into the problem and it all came down to the same source as the culprit, Windows 7. It turns out that Windows 7 has a new feature that when it thinks you’re communicating with someone, ie. voice chat in TF2, it automatically reduces volume of all other applications by 80% as a default. You can change this by going to Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Sound -> Communications. You have the option to mute all other sounds, reduce the volume of all other sounds by 80%, reduce the volume of other sounds by 50%, or do nothing. I personally have chosen to have Windows 7 do nothing.

If you happen to like this feature and want it to happen most of the time you can always open your game or communications software first, and then open your other application, such as Windows Media Player or TF2, and it won’t modify the volume. I hope this helps those of you out there experiencing the same problem.

BlendSense: XAML Intellisense for Expression Blend v2.1.1760.0

Application Tips, Programming 1 Response »

Dec 182008

Karsten Januszewski has a post (read his post for instructions on installing the addin) about Intellisense for Expresion Blend and upon trying it, it didn’t work. I would get the following error:

“Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.Expression.DesignSurface, Version=2.1.1693.0, Culture=neutral,…”

The issue was caused by the fact that even though I was running SP1, I had v2.1.1760.0. I’ve recompiled BlendSense against this version which resolved the issue.

You can download it here.

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