Solved: Freezing Problem On Nintendo DS And TTDS/MicroSD

My Nintendo DS Lite (with a TTDS cartridge and a MicroSD memory card) used to freeze a lot while loading. It will either display the happy face MicroSD graphic (and doing nothing else) or the "No Card" error message with the sad MicroSD graphic. It also used to freeze at times if I accidentally touch the TTDS cartridge/MicroSD. A temporary fix for me is to just reseat the MicroSD card. Numerous attempts may be necessary at times. If this does not work, I will try reseating the TTDS cartridge.

As this looks like a contact problem to me, with a tinge of similarity to one of my previous post "Bad Contact In The PC Slots", I decided to coat the metallic pins of the MicroSD card and the TTDS cartridge with some contact enhancer - I use Electrolube's "EML Contact Cleaner Lubricant".

It has been about a year now, and I have not encountered the 'freezing' problem with my Nintendo DS since.

TV Captures On-Demand - An Easier Way

One Touch Recording or OTR. A function on my old VCR that enables me to record a TV program immediately without delay. And with the ability to set a countdown timer, the VCR will shut off once the countdown reaches zero.

I wanted something similar to OTR on my PC for my TV recordings with VirtualDub. There are times when I wanted to start recording a TV program immediately without scheduling a task in V2CRS. Task scheduling is easy with V2CRS but it takes time keying in the parameters. Consequently, there is an undesirable delay when I want to start recording immediately.

Batch Files To The Rescue

The easiest method that I could think of in creating an OTR like function on my PC is to use Windows batch files, that will in turn call the V2CRS program "Scheduler.exe". VirtualDub capturing will start almost immediately plus I will get a countdown timer, courtesy of V2CRS.

A command for immediately capturing TV1 (channel 6 in my case) into the file name "TV1" in the directory "F:\RecordedTVPrograms" for a length of 30 minutes will look like this:

Is Sulfur An Effective Snake Repellent?

I saw a thin green snake in my back garden last Saturday morning - lizard hunting and slithering up and down a tree branch. Its head is about the size of an adult human thumb and it is about 3 feet in length. Immediately after noticing this snake, I went out and sprinkled some sulfur within the vicinity of the back garden thinking that the smell of sulfur will cause the snake to go away. I was careful to leave some space sulfur free so that the snake could escape. Instead, it did nothing. The snake just continued lizard hunting. It seems to be unperturbed by the chickens and ducks walking around its vicinity nor was it threatening them. Likewise when I was standing about 6 feet away from it. It just stared at me and did nothing.