Messing around with the PIC board

Needed to get some drivers for the USB to serial driver for the pic board.

References
Information about adapter: http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/794220-please-help-usb-serial-controller.html
Drivers: http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=31

WiFi printing at Plymouth Uni

For my reference / any body who is interested - the instructions to set up printing over Eduroam at Plymouth Uni is here: http://ilsselfhelp.plymouth.ac.uk/novo/admin/virtual/imgs/Wireless%20Printing%20Guide.pdf

Automatic Dropbox backup

As I found out last year, if any of my computers require formatting, the change of the dropbox folder on there will also mean my dropbox is cleared.  As I am currently saving all my uni work to the dropbox account obviously I want to guard against this, so I have written a batch file to backup the folder to each of my laptop / OS configurations.

Installing MS Visual Studio 2010 Premium on Windows XP SP3

I have been attempting to install Visual Studio on my computer for several days now, but the installer repeatedly hangs whilst in progress.  I have looked for support on the issue from Microsoft and there appears to be a couple of issues handled in two service bulletins.  I have firstly updated the Windows Installer (as detailed in the first article) and then applied the registry fix mentioned in the second article.

References
Article regarding Windows Installer Freezing: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/vssetup/thread/fcf7d496-d0a9-457b-8c33-54e70a2d6258
Article regarding slow installation of MS Visual Studio: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/vssetup/thread/c72a9fee-07a3-4843-8da0-c7fe0c278999

Installing Windows XP SP3 on the Mac

My Macbook that I use for Uni is setup to triple boot between OSX, Windows XP and Ubuntu.  I am currently setting up the Windows Partition for some computer vision and neural network work I need to do for my degree.  One problem I have had for a while now is the inability to install Service Pack 3 on the Mac, therefore I could not install Visual Studio 2010.  Now that it has become essential for me I have finally got round to sorting the problem using the instructions from the Apple support website.

References
Apple support article: support.apple.com/kb/HT3841