Month: May 2011

Going Back a version of Adobe Flash

Recently I started getting some Flash display problems. The Flash graphics was appearing in the upper left corner of the screen and flashing intermittently. I believe these problems started occurring when I upgraded to the most recent version, 10.3.181.14. Here is what I tried and what worked for me.

  1. I tried reinstalling the current version and the symptoms remained.
  2. I tried a forced uninstall and a manual install of the current version. The symptoms remained.
  3. I uninstalled the current version and installed the previous version, 10.2.159.1. I got the previous version from Archived Flash Player versions page. Now my graphics are working properly.

Microsoft Safety Scanner – Remove Spyware, Malware, Viruses Free

I had some funky display show up when I went to finance.yahoo.com so I ran a antispyware check using  http://www.superantispyware.com/index.html. Since this program takes a long time I ran the Microsoft Safety Scanner, too. Microsoft did not find anything and SUPERAntiSpyware found a false positive on a file included in QuickBooks SDK 10, tiny.exe.

Do you think your PC has a virus?

The Microsoft Safety Scanner is a free downloadable security tool that provides on-demand scanning and helps remove viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It works with your existing antivirus software.

Microsoft Safety Scanner – Remove Spyware, Malware, Viruses Free

My Natty Narwhal problems

Last week I decided to update to the latest recent on my VMware version of the Ubuntu Desktop and it did not go well. During the upgrade I got a disk space error message with non-displayable characters. It was a curious message since I thought I had enough disk space and it did not stop the process. It was when I rebooted I encountered the major problem. I would like to tell you more about the error message but the screen clears and I am left with a GRUB prompt. That’s not nice!

So I did some research and booted using the instructions from this page, Express Boot to the Most Recent Kernel. Everything came up nicely except for my windows were missing the title bar when I came in via the NX client. To fix the booting problem, I reinstalled from the LiveCD using the simplest method. To fix the missing title bar I installed the latest version of NX client from NoMachine NX. I also got the missing title bar when I used the VMware console window to log in. In that case I just specified that I wanted to use the Classic interface when I logged in.

Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 book about flies

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on an automated pricing program. This was not one of the algorithms I was looking at. Winking smile

A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping).

Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 book about flies