uTorrent 1.9 alpha, the Saviour of Thottling ISP Users

uTorrent never failed to impress me. It is by far the best BitTorrent application out there, and version 1.9 alpha has introduced something called uTP (TORRENTS ON STEROIDS UDP!1!1!!). Geeks should know what UDP and TCP mean, all I can say is, I think ISP throttles BT by doing packet inspection (DEFINITELY NOT tracker blocking as suggested by a friend of mine). UDP packets are probably impossible(?) to inspect at the moment, but who knows.

Anyway, let me try to explain in layman terms. It’s like imagine you yourself is one of the many millions or billions of packets and you are walking thru the “danger sensor” like those in the airports. The gun on you is like the signature (TCP) that tells the sensor you’re dangerous and belongs to the mafia (BitTorrent). GEDDIT? So now in this case, shit loads of mafia members packing guns can flow into the country because they have found a way to avoid being detected (uTorrent 1.9 alpha).

Ok that’s all for my lame layman story, now go download it from:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=49813

And of course have fun.

P/S: The censored part in the screenshot has nothing to do with pornography.
PP/S: You might have noticed I’m running it virtualized, that’s right bro that’s how good it is till I had to run it in VMware.

PPP/S: If you’re wondering why I’m all excited over a mere 100k/s ‘cos that’s the shitty speed I get in a 3rd world country internet. Throttled speeds are like 10k/s and it will probably take 2 weeks to finish downloading something.

Resize Your Boot Camp Partition in a Few Steps

As the release dates for games like Red Alert 3, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are nearing, I saw the urgent need to increase my boot camp partition which holds my Vista 64-bit installation.

Normally, people would need to destroy their current Windows partition and then make a fresh new installation after using Boot Camp assistant to make a new bigger partition.

However, being lazy as usual (one of my lecturers used to say “lazy is good engineering!”), I did a lil research into resizing my boot camp partition easily without much hassle.

The easiest way is to spend 25 pounds and get iPartition and let the app do the resizing for you. But, what about a more affordable way of doing it?

Enter the Winclone method. Winclone is basically just an app that makes an image of your current boot camp partition and saves it as a file that can be restored later on to a different partition. Below are the few steps you need to resize your boot camp partition using this way:

1) Download Winclone (free, donation can be made for appreciation)

2) Use Winclone to make an image of your boot camp, save it somewhere (i.e. Desktop or an external drive if space is an issue)

3) Launch Boot Camp assistant and restore your hard disk to its original state that has no boot camp partitions

4) Launch Boot Camp assistant again but now let it help you make a new larger (or smaller) boot camp partition

5) Now, use Winclone to restore the image you’ve made to the new boot camp partition

6) Done! Restart into Windows and check if all is well

That’s it, you’ve successfully resized your boot camp partition without having to destroy your Windows installation. Till the next tech tip! ;)

Feel free to post any questions or comments.

Solution to Windows Vista’s Wireless Spikes

So I have been toying around with Vista 64-bit on my new MacBook Pro. Using it mainly for weekend LAN parties. But one thing that annoys me the most about Vista is that it tends to have a lag spike every minute or so. My hero in DotA was literally doing a break dance every minute.

Having done a lil bit of research into this matter, I have finally found a solution. A lil app called WLAN Optimizer has solved my problem. What it basically does is disable Vista’s periodical (every 60 seconds to be precise) wireless network scan that was causing the lag spikes.

I recommend that you have this app running in the background and have it run automatically on startup if you use Vista for online gaming. Good luck and may the latency be with you.

Download WLAN Optimizer

Buying a New Computer?

If you’re planning on getting a new pc and you’re from down under, wait! Dell Australia has a lucky draw kinda thing running till mid-July and if you sign up you’ll be in a chance to win either a Dell XPS M1530 laptop + 24 inch widescreen monitor OR a Dell XPS 630 Desktop + 24 inch widescreen (You get to choose the prize!).

Also, there will be weekly draw for a 24 inch monitor. So if you’re a student like me (well, technically I’m still a student since my final paper is on Wednesday), and if you’re dead bored from studying for your exams, why not sign up for a chance to win one of these (OK, I know it’s not that easy since there will be thousands of people signed up but if you never try you’ll never know!).

Click here to sign up!

P/S: I’m a sucker for free stuff even though I don’t really get them often :P

Adium Unofficial Beta Brings Back MSN Personal Messages

… and also brings back much needed daily dose of emo entertaining messages.

warning: this is an UNOFFICIAL build so if you’re using Adium for really, really important stuff (which I doubt so), don’t use it.

download it from this forum thread (scroll down and find a post by Dimmuxx, 4th post from last) or try this direct link.

credits go to Dimmuxx at Cocoaforge forums