thydzik’s technology blog

I recently purchased a 5 Dimension (5D) deck of playing cards from Canada for $5 (plus $5 shipping to Australia). Unlike a normal deck, the 5D deck has an extra suit, the star, plus a numeric 1 card (as opposed to an ace), a princess card and jokers, totalling 80 playing cards.

The cards are standard bridge size 2.25″ x 3.5″ (the thinner width making it easier to hold more cards), with a card width of 0.3 mm. The card material is of quite good quality, with no ruined corners yet.

So how does an extra suite and more denominations affect the probabilities of standard 5 card poker hands? With reference to Durango Bill’s Poker Probabilities, the probabilities in a 5 suit 13 denomination deck are as follows:

Poker Hand        Number of Combinations     Probability
--------------------------------------------------------
Royal Flush                         5        .0000006053
Five of a kind                     13        .0000015739
Straight Flush                     45        .0000054480
Four of a kind                  3,900        .0004721614
Flush                           6,385        .0007730129
Full House                      9,360        .0011331873
Straight                       31,200        .0037772909

Total                       8,259,888       1.0000000000

The biggest difference is a Full House is easier to be dealt then a Flush.

Now, how does adding a One and Princess denomination affect the probabilities.

Poker Hand        Number of Combinations     Probability
--------------------------------------------------------
Royal Flush                         5        .0000002897
Five of a kind                     15        .0000008691
Straight Flush                     55        .0000031867
Four of a kind                  5,250        .0003041822
Full House                     12,600        .0007300374
Flush                          14,955        .0008664849
Straight                       37,440        .0021692540

Total                      17,259,390       1.0000000000

A Flush goes back to having a higher probability than the Full House.

I like the IMDb Top 250 list as it lets me know about movies I would normally never hear about. The problem though, is that a lot of the movies get pushed off the list by newer movies, and unfortunately you may never get to hear about them again.

Hence, I present the IMDb Top 250 movies extended list, a collection of all the IMDb Top 250 movies from 18^th October 2000 to the 8^th August 2008.

This list was made by downloading all the archived Top 250 lists on the Internet Archive. Once all the movie titles were extracted, I extracted current ratings and votes for the individual movie titles. The movie titles were sorted by rating producing the list.

This list is not a definitive list, and doesn’t include all the movies after number 250. I do wish IMDb did have this feature. Furthermore, this list is not updated in real time, and hence the list is already outdated.

However, this list does provide movies that may be worth enjoying during the next rainy day in.

IMDb Top 250 movies extended

Here’s a quick post on a tested method to unlock a Nokia 6300. Well, not quite unlock a Nokia 6300 but trick the phone into thinking your SIM is of compatible carrier. I purchased the iSIM from eBay for $10 including shipping to Australia. When searching on eBay, search for “unlock 6300″ and arrange by lowest price first.

The iSIM is a IC that goes in-between your phone and SIM card. The only drawback with this method is having to cut a 5mm by 5mm slot into your SIM card to allow the chip to sit flush (see below picture)

I successfully tested the iSIM with a locked Nokia 6300 to Vodafone, with an Optus SIM card.

Here’s a step by step guide on replacing the LCD screen on a Canon IXUS camera. Whilst, the model shown here the IXUS 55, it is fairly similar for other IXUS models.

The cheapest LCD I have found online is through The Foto Geeks for $55, however you can actually buy a cheaper whole (working) camera from eBay, and usually accessories are included with it. Note to make sure it is only the LCD which is cracked and not the backlight, in order to get the correct replacement parts.

My poor camera with cracked LCD screen:

Tools required:

• small Philips head screwdriver
• small flat head screwdriver

First remove the 6 Philips screws on the edges of the metal case, location defined by the arrows in the photo below:

Remove the front half of the metal case by starting at the camera’s base, at the top there is a metal clip which connects the front and back halves. Removing the front half free form this clip requires a bit of manipulating . The clip is circled in the photo below:

Once the front half of the metal housing is removed, the back half can be removed extremely easily. You will be presented with the LCD screen, remove the single Philips screw which holds the LCD in place as per the photo below:

Slide the LCD screen to the left, and this will release the screen from a little clip. Once the screen is free, remove a Philips screen holding the tripod mount is place:

Turn the camera over, and remove the front screw which holds the tripod mount. You can then remove the tripod mount which will allow the removal of the main LCD ribbon cable. The ribbon cable is disconnected by lifting up the brown tab on the connector:

Once the main ribbon cable is removed, the backlight’s ribbon cable can then be accessed easier. It is removed by simply pulling the cable away from the socket perpendicular to the PCB:

The LCD can now be removed from the camera. The below photo is the replacement LCD screen:

To connect the replacement LCD and reassemble the camera, perform the above instructions in reverse. It is a good idea to test the replacement LCD before assembling, to make sure everything works fine.

Here’s a quick code snippet to create a query that selects all unique records from field1, and selects the first corresponding record in field2

SELECT DISTINCT field1, First(field2) AS field2first
FROM table1
GROUP BY field1;

The function First, can be substituted for Last, Min, Max, depending on desired returned record. In the example above, table1 is the recordset, field1 is the field which you want unique records only, and field2 are the corresponding records, field2first is just an alias.

The last few days I have been pulling my hair out over my new HD TV not working with my Home Theatre PC, specifically when switching from HDMI input to TV and back again. The HDMI signal is lost and can only be reset by either rebooting the PC or unplugging and replugging the HDMI cable.

This problem seems to affect ATI video cards only, with NVIDEA updating their drivers to fix this. ATI states that Catalyst drivers at version 7.3 or higher have fixed this problem, but that wasn’t the case for me. A Google search for ati hdmi edid shows a number of users with the same problem.

Hence, I present to you my solution; hdmiOn.
hdmiOn is a tiny program that turns the monitor off and on, which resends the EDID data bringing back the TV to life. Suggested usage is to assign the program to a function or hotkey.

Program was tested on my Sony BRAVIA KDL46X3100 with a ATI HD 2400 PRO.

Download hdmiOn.exe

As requested, source code is as follows.

#include <windows.h>

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)
{
	// Turn off monitor
	SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_MONITORPOWER, (LPARAM) 2);
	// Turn on monitor
	SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_MONITORPOWER, (LPARAM) -1);

	return 0;
}

Need drivers for your USB to IDE adapter for Windows 98 (SE) and don’t want to pay for them?

Download here.

Need to obtain the BIOS password for Dell Latitude with serial number ending with -D35B, download the following.

Latitude_MasterPW.exe

For an example, I have a Dell Latitude CPi with serial WHZQS**-D35B.

I obtain the BIOS password as: d5g3xts5

The hard drive password is then required, using the HDD serial of HRCHRLL0275-D35B.

I obtain the hard drive password as: djb2f5eq

Note: if your serial number has ‘*’, include them.

Thanks to a thread at techspo.