Messages

1

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« on: May 06, 2020, 01:49 PM »

I recently bought this piece of exercise equipment to use, while not leaving the house. It's ok for use while seated, but feels awkward when using it standing up, partly because of its short stride, and partly because of the angle of the pedals. It won't get your heart rate up there like going for a brisk walk will, but it does help to burn off some of the calories, without disturbing my downstairs neighbor. It didn't cost all that much and doesn't take up that much storage space.



https://amzn.to/3ftXhuz

2

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: April 29, 2020, 06:27 PM »

[ Invalid Attachment ]

-rjbull (April 24, 2020, 03:08 PM)

There's a bakery in my state that has taken it a step further and includes a poo cupcake with their toilet paper cakes, and they deliver!

3

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: March 31, 2020, 10:07 AM »

You thought you stocked up, but...

4

Living Room / Re: Free learning resources for you and your kids during the pandemic.

« on: March 29, 2020, 07:11 AM »

SitePoint has decided to give all Australian students/educators (with an email that ends in .edu.au) a free premium membership until Jan 2021. https://go.sitepoint...l/y/7C44EBBCDE7C854F

Disclosure: I work for SitePoint but they have not compensated me nor encouraged me in any way to make this post.

5

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« on: March 28, 2020, 12:48 PM »

Microsoft have 'mouse without borders' which does the same thing. It's a more user friendly version of synergy.
One thing to be aware of, if you are actually connected to the computer that is at the other end of the house and then you have moved control to the computer you are actually sitting at, the mouse is very very very sluggish. It took me a whole day to work that one out once!

-absoblogginlutely (March 28, 2020, 08:32 AM)

I have not experienced that with Flow. File copy/paste between machines is a bit slower than you would have if copy/pasting from one folder to another on same machine, but that is to be expected.

6

Living Room / Re: Share your tips and comforts for dealing with the stress and fear of a pandemic

« on: March 28, 2020, 05:22 AM »

With more people working from home, I thought this thread about How to Work from Home might be useful for keeping focused in these trying times.

https://boardgamegee...de?mc_cid=f06ceace8b

-wraith808 (March 26, 2020, 09:05 AM)

There's also my Instant Boss, which can help you break the time into little chunks, that may be easier to handle.

7

Living Room / Re: Share your tips and comforts for dealing with the stress and fear of a pandemic

« on: March 19, 2020, 08:04 AM »

Well, I am one of those people that not only has to work (remotely), but also have extra work to do. So, that's good.

Since I work for an e-learning service, I am going to suggest something that is obvious to me, but might not be that obvious to others. Now is a great time to study something, or get some new skills. There are a lot of online courses you can take, some of them are even free.

If you are stuck at home with a noisy person and just don't want to hear them any more, slap on some headphones and listen to music. Even if you aren't listening to any music, wear the headphones any way. It does prevent people from bothering you to a certain degree, since they don't know there's no sound flowing through them, unless you tell them. So, they won't bother you as much while you are wearing them, because they think you can't hear them.

If you just need a space to get away from the people you live with, try your basement or attic. I've been going down in my basement to walk laps (big basement). You can still go outside, as long as you stay away from people. Go prepare your garden for planting, if you have one. Hang out on a lawn chair or hammock, in your backyard or on your deck, and read a book.

If you are stuck at home with your family or kids, have a spring BBQ with them, play some board games, do some crafts together.

Start a new project, finish an older one, clean your closets, garage, attic, or basement, start work on your NANY2021 project , crochet or knit a sweater, scarf, hat, scrap afghan, or whatever, sew up all the holes in your clothing.

Remember all those thing you said you'd do when you get around to it? Well, here's your "round tuit"!

If you really have nothing to do and can set up a VM with some old unsupported version of Windows, PM me, I have a huge software testing project you can help with.

And if it helps, don't think about what is really going on out there. Turn off the TV and/or radio and stay off social media and news sites, Indulge in a bit of mental fantasy, Try to tell yourself that there's a huge blizzard going on, and just stay inside where it's warm & dry. It's really not that much different, except there won't be any snow to shovel when it's all over. Or pretend you are living on a space station.

Whatever you decide to do, try to ENJOY your unplanned vacation and stay healthy!

8

Living Room / Re: A Rogue Goose...for your Desktop....

« on: March 16, 2020, 06:49 AM »

I really miss E-Sheep from back in the 90's. Excellent but sadly 16-bit desktop "pet".

-Stoic Joker (February 04, 2020, 07:02 AM)

https://github.com/A...ianotiger/desktopPet

You're welcome! 

9

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Amazon Pay has decided to block donationcoder payments

« on: March 06, 2020, 02:33 AM »

I think it enables both. It allows you to post to various social media from a single location (write once, deploy everywhere). But it also allows you to receive and respond to messages on specific social media services.

-Deozaan (March 06, 2020, 12:09 AM)

Write once, deploy everywhere, and never have to bother logging into any of the sites where you deploy, or bother reading any responses. It's a one-way approach to social media that lots of big companies take. In fact, it's pretty much how we approach social media, too, since our Twitter and Facebook posts are all automated through a 3rd party service, using an RSS feed.

If anyone wants to get our attention and the post isn't here on this forum, or in the IRC channel, or an e-mail to mouser, there's a good chance that nobody will see or respond to it. Trying to get our attention on Facebook is not as effective, and getting our attention on Twitter is near impossible.

And this is no different than most companies, that use these platforms to broadcast content, rather than as chat platforms.

10

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro 7

« on: February 16, 2020, 09:09 PM »

Which part of that is the clone brush?

-Deozaan (February 12, 2020, 11:11 AM)

The top two pix, #1 & #2, were all that I could find on youtube; both had unwanted writings, but in different places.

To get the initial pictures, in Windows 10, I grabbed my screen shots by pressing [logos + shift + s] in playback mode to hide youtube progress bar. Then I saved the two images in .jpg format for maximum compatibility.

Then, what I did was to transfer clean imagery from the same area in #1 to the same area in #2 which was over-written with the writing.
The result was the lower, third image, with all unwanted writing removed.
There were a few technical details; setting a convenient brush size (about half the height of the lettering in #2); and round or square brush shape; getting close-up magnification to make sure the selected pixel in #1 and #2 were the exact same pixels (I chose the lightest pixel in the angel's eye); then backing off and reducing both images to 50% of normal size to work with, and setting hardness, density, thickness, and opacity all to 100% for one-pass results.
Then you right-click on clean copy in #1 for pick-up, and left-click on the same spot in #2 for lay-down. I 'think' that's what I did; as the vintage kid's game commercial goes; "It's all in the wrist action."

-holt (February 12, 2020, 03:39 PM)

My daughter did something similar, recently, with a couple of group photos of herself and some friends. None of the photos came out great. At least 1 person in each of them had odd expressions on their face, or was looking in the wrong direction.

What she did was choose the 2 best photos, the easiest to work with, and then work in layers, erasing the face of one person, allowing their face from another photo from the series to show through from the layer beneath. No clone brush needed.

I probably would have done the same in the above images that you used, erasing the text on one layer, allowing the 2nd image to show through from the bottom layer, then merging the 2 layers, once all the text had been removed. You can also move the bottom layer around, if necessary, to ensure they line up correctly. Since those 2 images are exactly the same, except for the text, it would probably be even easier than what my daughter had to work with.

11

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro 7

« on: February 10, 2020, 05:02 AM »

I still have the free PSPX installer from this offer, if anyone needs it.  Read the whole thread before deciding if the fuss & bother is worth it, though.

Personally, I'd just stick with Jasc's v7, 8, or 9, instead, and avoid any of the Corel versions.

12

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro 7

« on: February 09, 2020, 09:01 PM »

What makes you think it is corrupted while 4wd says it works?

The reason I ask is because I used MDF to ISO to convert my PSP8 MDF to an ISO and when I try to mount the ISO it says it is corrupt and can't be mounted. So I decided to bite the bullet and burn the MDF to a CD with ImgBurn and then rip that CD back into an ISO, and I can mount that one without issue.

I'm not sure what I'm using to try to mount it with. It's a context menu that shows up when I right-click an ISO file. It's been there so long I just assume it came with Windows 10. But maybe it comes with ImgBurn or some similar software I have installed.

-Deozaan (February 09, 2020, 06:15 PM)

I have the same option on my context menu, and it didn't work with the PSP7 ISO....It said it was corrupted. Thinking that it might have been an incomplete download, I downloaded it again, and again, and 3X it failed.

I assumed the mounting option came with Win10, too...or perhaps 7zip? I don't have ImgBurn and I don't think any of my burning software added it, since it never showed up before Win10.

13

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro 7

« on: February 09, 2020, 12:07 AM »

Many thanks!    I successfully downloaded and installed PSP9. There doesn't seem to be any way to register for updates.

-holt (February 08, 2020, 01:45 PM)

There are no updates. What you have is the fully updated v9, with whatever bug fixes might exist for it. The Jasc servers are long gone, which is why I told you not to try to register it.

Jasc sold the company to Corel 2 months after they released v9, and Corel then released Paintshop Pro X a short time later, and retired all support for Jasc's v9. Corel had no interest in supporting or providing patches for anything that might have been purchased from Jasc, rather than them. It was a money thing. If you want support from Corel, you have to buy a Corel version.

You could also mount these images and then use 'Folder2ISO' to create ISO files. Don't let the look from that page fool you, it is useful software if you are creating ISO files from any folder on your computer.

-Shades (February 08, 2020, 08:29 AM)

Handy for installing stuff into an OS in VirtualBox, which is my most frequent use for it. (I have a bunch of old 9x games that won't run very well on Win10) 

14

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro 7

« on: February 07, 2020, 10:04 PM »

archive.org  has an ISO for it. But I think it might be corrupted. 

-app103 (February 07, 2020, 06:26 PM)

PSP 7 ISO downloaded, mounted (DaemonTools), and installed fine on Win10 x64 Pro.

-4wd (February 07, 2020, 09:11 PM)

 Good to know!  I'll make a note of that, in case I refer anyone else there.

15

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro 7

« on: February 07, 2020, 06:26 PM »

Thanks, app103!  Any idea what's a safe place to download it from?

-holt (February 07, 2020, 02:44 AM)

archive.org  has an ISO for it. But I think it might be corrupted. 

They also have one for v9 too. And I know that one works.

Both downloads are part of their Vintage Software and CD-ROM Software collections.

To install, download and then double click the ISO file to simultaneously mount it and open it. Then run the PSP9\Paint Shop Pro 9\Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9.msi file. That's the real setup file. (If you get asked for a CD key, you clicked the wrong file) Once you are finished installing, go to This PC in Explorer, right click what looks like a brand new drive with a PSP9 CD in it, and select "eject" to make it go away.

16

General Software Discussion / Re: What was a great program that's now been forgotten?

« on: February 01, 2020, 12:41 AM »

Let me dig into my archive of forgotten software setup files....

Not including the plethora of web apps that are no more, here's my contribution to the list of apps I wish never died:

• 3M Post-It Software Notes - It was good, till it wasn't...and Notezilla is far better in most areas, but I still miss its alarm manager
• Acoustica MP3 CD Burner - nothing I have ever tried, burned better gapless audio CD's, but most recent version doesn't work with modern burners or Windows 10
• AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) - I think in its final days, I only was using it to talk to my daughter from another room, rather than yelling through the house
• Ad Muncher - If only it worked as well as it used to.
• Big Fix - Before Windows Update was automatic, this did the trick of keeping Windows 98 updated for you, as well as most software on your system. It sat in your tray and monitored Windows Update for patches and Tucows software repository for new versions of apps and compared the list to what you had installed on your system.
• Claris EZ Business Cards - (Apple bought Claris and killed everything) I remember setting the image on a card to the desktop wallpaper file from Panorama32, and then hitting the hotkey to change the wallpaper, to print of pages & pages of gift tags. I'd still be using it, if it wasn't for the fact that it's 16-bit and won't run on Win10.
• Copernic - both their classic web and desktop search apps. Before Google came along, their web search app was the best way to find stuff.
• Filebox Extender - Yes, it still works, but it looks like parts of XP pasted onto Win10
• GTalk - Another thing killed by Google
• Juice - podcast downloader that hasn't been updated in over 10 years
• MSN Messenger- and all the great 3rd party add-ons. I lost touch with a lot of good people that didn't move over to Skype, when Microsoft shut it down.
• Newzie RSS reader - still available, but hasn't been updated in over 10 years.
• Popup Cody - DC forum post notifier (still works but is abandoned)
• PS Tray Factory- Still available and works for the most part, but it could use some updating for Win10
• Sam Spade - Still works but could use some modernizing
• Surfulater - It was one of the Big 3 in note taking software, currently my most recent abandonware frustration (still manually migrating data to a local installation of Wordpress)
• Winamp - It was bought from AOL by Radionomy, and they promised to continue development, but they don't really seem that interested. A 3rd party that used to be part of the Winamp team at AOL, has taken up patching it and developing plugins to extend functionality under the name of WACUP, in the hopes of eventually releasing his own replacement.
• WinMX - abandoned by developer a long time ago, small community of diehard users still supporting what they can, but no new client and it's dead for the most part,
• Xteq X-Setup - this was the king of system tweakers, in it's hayday
• Yahoo Widgets - I'm still using some of the widgets that still work. Lost the weather widget once & for all, earlier this month, unless I completely rewrite it, myself.

And games too numerous to mention.

17

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Audio Question

« on: January 30, 2020, 11:30 PM »

Nevermind, I figured it out, and it now works with both sets of BT headphones. 

(Control Panel->Sound->Playback)

18

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Audio Question

« on: January 30, 2020, 11:12 PM »

Same as Deo gets, only hardwired audio connection is HDMI to the monitor, an Amazon Echo Dot is my usual output device (over BT) but whenever I connect any of my BT headphones/earphones they then become the default output device.

Only when there is no BT device available will my system revert to HDMI.

So in order of output from lowest: HDMI->Echo (BT)->SoundPEATS TWS (L, R, or stereo) (BT)->MeeAudio Touch (BT)

-4wd (January 30, 2020, 07:58 PM)

How/where do you do this in Windows?

19

General Software Discussion / Re: Avast sells user data: 'Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.'

« on: January 30, 2020, 08:17 PM »

"Typing Insights"? - O&O has you covered:
https://www.oo-softw...tup10/latest-version

-dantheman (January 30, 2020, 01:27 PM)

Typing Insights is an opt-in feature that some people actually like, that corrects mistakes and auto-completes frequently typed words for you, based on a personal profile of your typing habits. But to make it work it has to collect data about your typing. While other similar 3rd party apps can manage to save this data locally and not phone home to hand it over to the developers to do with as they please, Microsoft needs to have this data in their control, on their servers, so that it will work with a single profile in the cloud, they say, that will be shared across all computers you log into with your Microsoft account. The profile is also shared with one of their Android speed typing apps.

You can easily turn the feature off, but they make it difficult to clear the typing data from your cloud stored profile, so if you log into another computer with your Microsoft account, it will go right back to suggesting stuff from your existing, cloud stored typing profile. If you want to clear that profile, you'll probably end up wasting more time than you'd care to, googling for how to do it and digging around in Windows for all the hidden settings. (I recently had to help someone do that, when the feature kept suggesting an old, compromised Yahoo account, whenever they were tying to log into their email, on any computer they used, at both work and home.)

But of course, once you do figure out how to clear it, that doesn't mean that Microsoft is going to be a sweetheart and completely delete all the data from their servers, and not keep and use a copy for their own purposes.

People that actually do like the feature aren't going to think about what may be happening behind the scenes, with their data, or possibly not care. And they certainly aren't going to want some 3rd party app like O&O to disable their much loved Windows feature. (my friend that had to clear their profile was upset that they lost their entire typing history and couldn't edit it to remove just the one thing they wanted removed)

Of course it's easy to avoid Typing Insights altogether (and a lot of other "features") by never logging into any computer, not even once, with a Microsoft account and not installing their app on your phone.

Then again, if you keep things in your Google account, your Outlook account or surf the web... they will surely find things out about you (even if you don't have a Facebook account).

-dantheman (January 30, 2020, 01:27 PM)

As I said before:

Privacy is an illusion. It only exists in your mind, and only for as long as you can keep your thoughts in there and not let any bit of them escape.

-app103 (January 29, 2020, 05:02 PM)

It's still safe to sit motionless, calm and expressionless, and just think...for now. But once you do anything else, you are letting your thoughts escape your mind, into a world where you don't have much control over how they will be used by others.

20

General Software Discussion / Windows 10 Audio Question

« on: January 30, 2020, 06:32 PM »

I am not sure how much of this info is relevant, so I will provide it all.

• I have a Dell Precision M4800 laptop with Windows 10 Pro.
• I have this port replicator docking station.
• I have a set of external speakers plugged into the 3.5mm headphone jack of the docking station.
• I have 2 sets of these wireless bluetooth headphones. (one to use while other is charging)

- When the speakers are plugged in, they become the default for sound.

- When either pair of headphones are connected while the speakers are plugged in, there is no sound through the headphones. Sound continues to come from the speakers, only.

- I must unplug the speakers for the headphones to work.

What I want to happen: When either pair of headphones are connected, Windows should prefer them over the speakers, automatically cut the sound from the speakers, and allow me to listen through the headphones. (without having to unplug the speakers)

Is there a way to make that happen?

21

General Software Discussion / Re: Avast sells user data: 'Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.'

« on: January 29, 2020, 05:02 PM »

Oh, by the way, for Windows 10 users that have Typing Insights turned on, Microsoft is collecting a LOT of data through that, more specifically, everything you type, including user names and passwords, your inner most thoughts you type into your private offline journal, trade secrets from emails you send to people within your company, etc.

Privacy is an illusion. It only exists in your mind, and only for as long as you can keep your thoughts in there and not let any bit of them escape.

22

General Software Discussion / Re: Avast sells user data: 'Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.'

« on: January 29, 2020, 04:54 PM »

Thanks to Avast, retailers can know exactly what kind of porn some of their individual customers are into, as well as other sensitive personal info, by matching time stamps on purchases made on their site to the timestamps on data they get from Jumpshot. Once they have matched those, they can then apply a name, street address, phone number, etc, to the Jumpshot data, and fill in the blanks about each customer by their browsing habits.

23

General Software Discussion / Avast sells user data: 'Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.'

« on: January 29, 2020, 04:52 PM »

Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data

"Although the data does not include personal information such as users' names, it still contains a wealth of specific browsing data, and experts say it could be possible to deanonymize certain users."

"Until recently, Avast was collecting the browsing data of its customers who had installed the company's browser plugin, which is designed to warn users of suspicious websites. Security researcher and AdBlock Plus creator Wladimir Palant published a blog post in October showing that Avast harvest user data with that plugin. Shortly after, browser makers Mozilla, Opera, and Google removed Avast's and subsidiary AVG's extensions from their respective browser extension stores. Avast had previously explained this data collection and sharing in a blog and forum post in 2015. Avast has since stopped sending browsing data collected by these extensions to Jumpshot, Avast said in a statement to Motherboard and PCMag.

However, the data collection is ongoing, the source and documents indicate. Instead of harvesting information through software attached to the browser, Avast is doing it through the anti-virus software itself. Last week, months after it was spotted using its browser extensions to send data to Jumpshot, Avast began asking its existing free antivirus consumers to opt-in to data collection, according to an internal document."

"De-anonymization becomes a greater concern when considering how the eventual end-users of Jumpshot's data could combine it with their own data.

"Most of the threats posed by de-anonymization—where you are identifying people—comes from the ability to merge the information with other data," Acar said. A set of Jumpshot data obtained by Motherboard and PCMag shows how each visited URL comes with a precise timestamp down to the millisecond, which could allow a company with its own bank of customer data to see one user visiting their own site, and then follow them across other sites in the Jumpshot data.

"It's almost impossible to de-identify data," Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said. "When they promise to de-identify the data, I don't believe it."

https://www.vice.com...g-data-investigation

24

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro 7

« on: January 09, 2020, 08:34 PM »

I have run it on 5 computers with Win10, so Paintshop Pro 7 will work, but there are a few quirks with it...

You could optionally choose to run it in compatibility mode, but that will only fix one issue, and introduce another. I choose not to run it in compatibility mode, as it prevents one from being able to make screenshots of the program UI.

First, you will see an error message that looks something like this, each time you run it. It happens once or twice, as soon as the program launches. Just dismiss them and proceed on to using the app. This has been an issue with PSP7, since WinXP. You might also see one when you try to close it. Same thing...ignore and close the messages. Running it in compatibility mode will get rid of the error messages, but you'll still have to click away a prompt to allow changes to your computer, every time you run it. So, all you'd be doing is trading one type of message to click away, for another.



The 2nd, more annoying quirk relates to the small pop-up windows for tool options, layer palette, overview, etc. Win10 won't show you the rollup buttons that should be on them, but they are still there, invisible. so you have to click next to the close (X) button to lock open or rollup, as shown on this screenshot.



Otherwise, I'd recommend setting automatic rollup in preferences:



The 3rd, most annoying quirk is related to 3rd party filters and plugins. Some of them that used to work well under other versions of Windows, will not work on Win10, and there's nothing you can do about it, since all of them are no longer supported by their developers, and rarely would they ever offer any help to Paintshop Pro users even when they did support them, as they were written for use with old, outdated versions of Photoshop, not Paintshop Pro.


Other than that, it works perfectly fine and is still my favorite image editor. 

25

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: play random wav from a folder at random times

« on: January 06, 2020, 05:23 PM »

Have to ask.....why would you want to do this, apart from a prank?

-Damocles (January 05, 2020, 05:05 AM)

It could have a practical purpose, too. Imagine a folder of positive affirmations, where a random one would play every hour or so, to inspire you. Kind of like an audio version of mouser's Popup Wisdom.

Or in my case....

I made a clock application many years ago, which has an hourly chime that sounds like a cuckoo clock, which has provided much amusement over the years, because when it chimes, it's almost as if my computer is commenting on the current conversation, calling someone "cuckoo". Lots of laughs when it's right, which is often. I don't know why, but someone in my home will usually say or do something crazy at the top of every hour, and my clock is there to call them out on it. 

About 20 years ago, I collected a large number of wav files of short single sentence clips from movies, and people saying silly stuff, suitable for playing as comments to chat room conversations on AOL. They have been pretty much useless since leaving AOL, and I kind of miss them. So, I am going to use this little app to play one at random about every 90 minutes or so. Perhaps it will be as fun as my "judgy" little clock butting into our conversations.