Computers

If you've got a video file that has an accompanying subtitle file which is separate, that's usually preferable to "hardcoded" subs (which are in the actual video itself).

I recently upgraded to Winamp 5.52, and while it looks all very shiny and nice, I was disappointed to find that its startup speed had slowed to a crawl. This really bugs me, as I'm often opening and closing winamp, to check out single music files or podcasts etc, so I need my media player to load instantly.

After a few searches, and some options tweaking and testing, I discovered that by uninstalling the Nullsoft plugin for Ripping and Burning, the startup of Winamp no longer has several seconds of lockup every time its loaded. Sweeeet.

Heres where to find it...

Options > Preferences > Plugins > Media Library

Uninstall the plugin:
Nullsoft Rip & Burn v1.1 [ml_disc.dll]

Of course, presumably this disables ripping and burning music files with Winamp, but I've never used this feature (or indeed many of the others in Winamp).... I simply want a decent music player, without unused bells and whistles which ruin the day to day usability of the program.

Enjoy.

Alright alright, I'll admit it, I don't own an iPod! In actual fact I haven't bothered upgrading from my old Sony NetMD Minidisc MZ-N1 player that I bought probably around 2002.

Well we all need to take a break from our online work, and what better way to relax than hurling yourself into an online battlefield with 64 other human players?! It's great fun, except when your computer has a heart attack every time you turn around in-game.

As most of you know, these days viruses, spyware, and all sorts of other worms, backdoors and trojans are everywhere.

Digital video cameras are great for grabbing footage of your favorite sporting events, social functions or whatever - but there's one thing that usually spoils it... amateur shaky video syndrome.

Well not anymore! Now we've got a free tool in our Virtualdub library which can eliminate all of the shaking in our video footage.

Did I mention Xtra Broadband SUCKS?! Seriously, this has got to be the worlds worst ISP, supplying the worlds slowest, faulty laggy broadband, right here in New Zealand - how convenient.

Firstly to the readers, I apologize for the following rant, but this has to be said. If you are living in New Zealand, or considering staying in NZ for any length of time, stay away from Xtra Broadband. They really are the Worlds worst broadband provider.

Google's Gmail is now known around the World as the best free webmail solution - especially thanks to it's storage size and security of data.

Around 60 Gmail users are not quite so happy with the service anymore, after logging in to find all of their emails prior to Dec 18 had vanished.

If you're like me, you'll want some way to stop MySpace music automatically playing on every one of the tabs you open in Firefox?

Heres how:

Firefox Myspace music toggle script for Firefox

--edit--
Ok thats weird, that one didn't seem to work for me afterall.

Heres another possible solution, mute all Flash browser audio, whatever browser you're using. (Windows only software)

FlashMute

If that doesn't work, I'm going to try this one:

Stop AutoPlay firefox extension