For examples, refer to almost anything that Ricky Gervais has made.

• Toshiba and Sandisk co-own the same fabrication facility.
• Samsung does not sell their own cards retail, only through resellers who re-brand them.
• Kingston does not appear to manufacture their own memory chips, but repackage Sandisk/Toshiba chips.
• A complete SD card’s cost is nearly identical to the raw Flash chip itself, meaning that the controller and package is provided essentially for free. This is presumably because the cost of testing a free-standing Flash chip is dramatically higher than testing a complete SD card.
• Chinese fake SD cards are impressively made and packaged.
• How to spot a knock-off SD card (appearance irregularities and card ID data).
• Z-A-Recovery is useful for recovering strange data from that re-sold, fake SD card you bought at a Chinese market stall.

I’m certainly wouldn’t say that Kingston SD cards are bad, but I will point out that I don’t see any reason to move away from my quite affordable Sandisk, Lexar, and A-DATA cards.

This led me to ime_func.ahk, which appears to be an AutoHotkeys script which uses DllCall to access Imm32.dll, the Input Method Manager library. I believe that this script was intended to manipulate the state of the IME language bar.

As near as I can tell, this AutoHotkeys script targets an older implementation of the IMM library. Some of the methods used are now only listed for Windows Mobile platforms.

I began experimenting with ImmGetContext and ImmGetConversionStatus. ImmGetContext always returned a hIMC value of NULL.

On the Developing IME-Aware Multiple-thread Applications MSDN page, the following is stated (bold highlight added):

The IMM includes thread identification checking that determines if a calling thread is the creator of a specified input method context handle (HIMC type) or window handle (HWND type). If the thread is not the creator of the handle, the called IMM function fails and a subsequent call to GetLastError returns ERROR_INVALID_ACCESS.

Additionally:

• A thread should not access the input context created by another thread.

• A thread should not associate an input context with a window created by another thread, and vice versa.

So, it appears that cross-process IME manipulation is forbidden.

This guide to GoDaddy DNS record configuration made it relatively easy to modify my TXT record.

$ vim Documents/passwords.gpg

"Documents/passwords.gpg" [Incomplete last line][converted] 7 lines,
2547 characters
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Pressing enter simply resulted in gibberish, likely the raw data of the encrypted file.

The solution was to turn on vim’s filetype plugin processing:

:filetype plugin on

To make this setting persistent, add it to your ~/.vimrc file.

@echo off

REM ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
REM  Set the following variable to the ffmpeg.exe path on your system.
REM ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
set FFMPEG_PATH="c:\tools\FFmpeg\ffmpeg.exe"

REM make sure the user provided an argument.
if NOT "%~1" == "" goto ARGS_OK

REM bad arguments, print error and exit.
echo.
echo    Usage examples:
echo       mp3toaac.bat file_to_convert.mp3
echo       mp3toaac.bat *.mp3
echo       mp3toaac.bat some_directory\*.mp3
exit /b 1

:ARGS_OK

REM use for/in so that we can accept individual files or wildcards.
for %%i in ("%~1") do %FFMPEG_PATH% -i "%%~i" "%%~ni.aac"

echo.
echo Done.

exit /b 0

Interesting elements of this batch file:

• Use of for/in in order to accept both filenames and wildcards.
• Use of %~X to strip parentheses from a filename variable.
• Use of %~nX to strip the extension from a filename variable (i.e. retrieve the basename).

9A0275
MMAGR08GUDCA-DB
S FLH3E6X3 941

If you search for MMAGR08GUDCA-DB, you’ll find posts listing this same product identification number for Transcend cards.

Corporate profiles list different CEOs (Peter Shu for Transcend, Simon Chen for A-DATA). The product details, however, seem to indicate that they’re the same company, or at least share suppliers.

This is relevant only because A-DATA cards sell for slightly less than Transcend cards ($17.49 vs. $20.99). Additionally, if you don’t need the SD adapter, you can get the bare A-DATA MicroSDHC 8GB card for a few cents less ($16.99).

Coding Horror experienced 100% data loss at our hosting provider, CrystalTech.

I have some backups and I’ll try to get it up and running ASAP!

According to his Tweets, however, Atwood soon discovered that all backups were on the very virtual machine which was lost.

This is all rather ironic, since Jeff himself blogged about how important backups are. The record of this is currently only available via Google Cache. Within the blog post, he did mention the potential of Google Cache as a backup system, so perhaps this is just his admission that second-rate backups are good enough for him:

while Google may be a great service, it’s only a so-so backup mechanism.

This, of course, has the Internet falling over in alternating fits of schadenfreude and irony.

My goal is to provide, for each gym:

• Exact location, including standardized Japanese address, as well as a Western-readable address.
• Hours of operation.
• Prices.
• Whether the gym provides roped climbing, bouldering, or both.
• Images of the exterior and interior climbing walls.

View Indoor Climbing Gyms/Walls in Japan in a larger map

The map currently includes the following gyms:

Central Fitness Club Nishidai
3-7-10 Hasune Itabashi-ku, Tōkyō

Fukagawa Sport Center
1-2-18 Etchūjima Kōtō-ku, Tōkyō

Nippin Main Branch
3-11-1 Soto-kanda Chiyoda-ku, Tōkyō

Rondo Fitness Club
1-28, Sakae-chō Higashi-murayama-shi

T-Wall Kinshi-chō Branch
2-10-12 Mouri Kōtō-ku, Tōkyō

T-Wall Edogawabashi Tokyo
2-5-23 Suidō Bunkyō-ku, Tōkyō

Tama Sport Hall
5 Azuma-chō Akishima-shi, Tōkyō

Climbing Gym Runout
Tokyo Building, 2-10-19 Nishi-koigakubo Kokubunji-shi, Tōkyō

B-Pump 2 Kanagawa, Yokohama
1-8-2 Hiranuma Nishi Yokohama Kanagawa

B-Pump Tokyo
1-24-10 Kamiogi Sugunami-Ku Tōkyō

Pump 2 Kawasaki
Tama Ward, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture

Pump Ōsaka
Nishiyodogawa Ward, Ōsaka City, Ōsaka Prefecture

7a
NS Building B1, 3-17-11 Sanda-machi Hachioji-shi, Tōkyō

J-Wall in Kanagawa
Kanagawa

Central Fitness Club Mizunokuchi
2-10-22 Mizonokuchi, Takatsu, Kawasaki, Kanagawa