Messages

26

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« on: March 25, 2016, 08:40 AM »

Last night a friend helped me install a preamp (Bartolini AGB 918-2) in my bass. By helped, of course, I mean I double checked which wires he was rerouting where (he's always worked on passive guitars), and set up my amp to test it out when he was done.

It sounds amazing now! Since I no longer have to roll off the bass and mids nearly all the way, while boosting the treble to about 3/4, the noise floor has dropped to near nothing. This morning I tweaked the gain trimpot on the preamp. Now I can keep the bass volume at about 80% running through my Joyo American Sound, and a little extra for bypassing it without having to adjust at the amp.

Besides the pedal, which does an amazing job of copping a Fender amp feel, I recently bought an Ampeg 210 (AV) cabinet, and I'm searching for his twin brother. Together they'll make a fantastic stage rig. For the time being, it's great by itself at surprising volumes - perfect at practice and rehearsal volume. Actually, I imagine it would carry a small bar just fine.

27

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: March 11, 2016, 02:08 PM »

Journey in 1974 at Winterland. If your only exposure to Journey has been their career in Top 40 radio, this will not be at all what you expect.

28

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: February 19, 2016, 08:59 AM »

Last night my daughter was watching The Daily Show on Hulu and they had a musical act called The Suffers on. They looked like an old school funk show band, which I love. Then they started playing, and it was even better than that. They're actually the most authentically awesome old school soul band I've seen in... well ever really. In fact, I would put Kam Franklin up against any soul singer from any era.

Then there's this one from last year.

29

Living Room / Re: Http vs Https Universally

« on: February 18, 2016, 01:01 PM »

The bottom line is that certificate based security is only as trustworthy as the companies responsible for the certificates. Companies generally, large companies in particular, and large security companies especially, are ultimately vulnerable to the whims of government actors. Look at how effective the NSA has been at undermining security standards without even bothering with bringing the coercive power of the government to bear.

I'm not saying that I don't use HTTPS everywhere possible, but I understand that it's like putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound. It addresses a handful of problems, but leaves the underlying issue untreated. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm absolutely sure it will involve a complete paradigm shift in how we handle trust relationships.

30

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« on: February 18, 2016, 12:34 PM »

As 40Hz already knows, I bought a new Schecter 5 string bass about the time I stopped posting to this thread last year. With a budget of only $400, I was actually planning to buy something used, which really sucks for a lefty. Fortunately for me, Schecter had discontinued this particular model, and I managed to get one literally a couple days before they became pretty much impossible to find. As a bonus, the new price was about what I'd probably get selling it used, so it was practically a zero risk purchase.

I fell in love with it the first time I played it, and I love it just as much now. It's everything I expected from a Schecterat that price (it normally sold for around $650 - $700), except for one annoyance. I say annoyance, but had I payed full price, or if I had to pay someone to fix the 1 design flaw I discovered, I'd be pretty pissed. Instead, I'm mildly annoyed with them, and more annoyed with myself for not tracking the issue down sooner.

To make a long story short (mark that on your calendar), Schecter put passive EMG pickups in the bass, which is fine, but then they paired them with the wrong EMG EQ module. EMG sells 2 OEM specific EQ stacks, one for active pickups (which most of theirs are) and another for passive pickups. Not being an OEM, I can't be sure, but I'm betting the active pickup (200k input impedance) version is cheaper than the passive (1M input impedance) one, because it doesn't need to include a buffer (which active pickups have) to avoid impedance loading the pickups. Even if they're the same price, generally, I know Schecter sells a bunch of basses with active pickups, so it would probably have increased the cost moderately to buy a separate (and smaller) batch of high impedance tone stacks).

Whatever their reasons, here's what the difference between 1M and 200k looks like on a frequency plot. They're different pickups, but the effect is fundamentally the same. There are actually 3 different impedance options listed, because it's for an Audere preamp with a variable impedance option. However, the Low Z and Mid Z plots are for the exact impedances for the active and passive pickup EQ modules, respectively. Not to mention that 1M is what every standard onboard preamp uses, and for the exact same reason.



Fortunately, it turns out Bartolini sells a reasonably priced buffer/preamp circuit, so I can fix it without buying an entire preamp/EQ unit. At this point, I can't say I even know what either the pickups or EQ sound like when wired properly, so it would be wasteful to replace them without finding out - especially at nearly half the original cost of the bass.

31

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: January 19, 2016, 06:46 AM »

Lemmy makes breakfast:

32

General Software Discussion / Re: Mind mapping software

« on: September 06, 2015, 09:17 AM »

Thread necro powers, activate, form of...Graduate Thesis Student!

Vurbal,

I am interested to see how your quest to organize your thoughts has turned out as it seems you and I share a similar mind. I was wondering what you found and what you see as the strengths in such a product. I am not officially underway on my thesis in my Master of Science in Information Assurance course, with the ultimate goal being a Doctorate of Science in Information Systems to follow. As such, I am looking for a way to keep all of these random ideas and thoughts that populate in the tangled mess I call my brain somewhat organized. Have you had any luck?

-Josh (September 03, 2015, 09:54 PM)

I don't have time right this moment,  but I'll try to answer this with enough detail to be useful. The short version is yes, I have had some luck, but with quite a few caveats.

If I haven't posted again before tomorrow afternoon, shoot me another PM because it probably means I've forgotten entirely.

33

Living Room / Re: [SOLVED] Boot problem/s

« on: July 26, 2015, 01:49 PM »

Congratulations.   I have pretty good experience messing with MBR.  But with W8 they changed to this UEFI and GPT jazz.  I understand it had to be changed to accommodate huge storage.  But I don't dare to do anything without a lot of reading in preparation and expendable machines to experiment with. 

Plus a lot of bootable utilities that worked for sure on MBR are now suspect.  Can't take anything as a given. 

-MilesAhead (July 26, 2015, 07:28 AM)

As I learned last year, Dell's recovery process was already suspect on MBR systems - and that's being generous. Throw in those additional variables and it's clearly a train wreck waiting to happen - at least for the average user.

34

Living Room / Re: [Help!] Boot problem/s

« on: July 25, 2015, 08:47 PM »

So I am not sure what to make of the 1st partition on your hard disk. Likely when you make the 3rd partition the boot partition your system will start working again.

-Shades (July 25, 2015, 07:43 PM)

I'm pretty sure it's part of the Dell restore crap. Not all of it, obviously, since it's not big enough. IIRC it contains the restore program, accessible through the Windows startup repair process. At least on the one I dealt with, the WIM image was actually stored on the system drive, but hidden so you wouldn't know it was there.

It's still a little fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure all I had to do at that point is set the correct partition to boot (using diskpart obviously), and it was fixed. I do remember for sure that the recovery partition was at the beginning of the drive, just because I had always seen them at the end in the past.

35

Living Room / Re: [Help!] Boot problem/s

« on: July 24, 2015, 01:20 PM »

I ran into this exact problem last year after replacing the hard drive in a Dell laptop. The restore process is supposed to hide that partition at the end of the restore process, but doesn't necessarily do so. IIRC I found a way to do it from the command line. If I get some time, I'll see if I can find the command I used.

-Vurbal (July 24, 2015, 12:34 PM)

Probably diskpart.  Run it from an administrative command prompt(or elevated as they say these days.)

edit: This tutorial on a Vista system changes a recovery partition to show it by changing the type to 07. Supposedly 07 is visible ntfs 17 is hidden and 27 is a recovery partition.  If 17 doesn't work try 27.  

http://defaultreason...-disk-with-diskpart/

-MilesAhead (July 24, 2015, 01:05 PM)

This was actually one of Dell's command line utilities, but yeah, DiskPart should do the job.

Apparently I did just use diskpart, at least according to what I posted here at the time.

For anyone unfortunate enough to get stuck repairing a Dell with DataSafe (a truly ironic name) backup software, I do now have a few words of advice. The first word that comes to mind is run and that's only halfway joking.

It seems someone at Dell came up with the brilliant idea of integrating half assed backup software with the Windows deployment process. Actually that's not exactly right which is really the problem. Instead of launching their proprietary tools inside the deployment process, a successful restore required me to use their tool directly so it could select the correct (original) install image rather than the DataSafe backup which just looked like it was the original.

Also, since Dell decided to leave the recovery partition accessible from Windows, when the Win7 upgrade ran it used it as the boot partition and changed it from E: to C:. That, of course, isn't nearly as problematic as the fact the upgrade obviously had to also make it the active partition. On the good side I can now definitively say I haven't forgotten how to use diskpart.

The tl;dr version goes something like this. After booting with a Windows disc I started by making the correct (OS) partition active. Next I used imagex to manually apply what various Internet sources indicated was the factory image. In reality it ended up a backup from some point which at least got me to the point DataSafe was available from the Windows repair menu. When I booted the next time I let DataSafe do another restore which applied the actual factory image.

-Vurbal (April 02, 2014, 08:43 PM)

36

Living Room / Re: [Help!] Boot problem/s

« on: July 24, 2015, 12:34 PM »

Sounds like the order of the partitions got jumbled up in (parts of) the Windows configuration.

During the boot routine some hard-coded path's are used and it appears that there things go wrong.

Windows partitions are assigned a unique code that is later on translated into a drive letter. My suspicion is that here your problem starts. Suddenly all parts of the operating system are not in the location where the operating system expects them to be and a generic error code 0x3 will be served up to your screen.

Fixing this kind of errors might prove more time-consuming than re-installing or putting an image back. Laptop manufacturers have the nasty habit lately to put the recovery partition in front off the other partition. The reasoning behind this doesn't make a lick of sense to me. After all, this is the fastest part of the hard disk, which should be used for the Windows partition. After all, you will spend more time using the laptop instead of restoring the factory setup!

My guess is that they do this, so they can crank out laptops faster. Anyway, even the Windows installer gets "confused" by this on occasion.

-Shades (July 23, 2015, 09:23 PM)

I ran into this exact problem last year after replacing the hard drive in a Dell laptop. The restore process is supposed to hide that partition at the end of the restore process, but doesn't necessarily do so. IIRC I found a way to do it from the command line. If I get some time, I'll see if I can find the command I used.

37

General Software Discussion / Re: why MS Word breaks format

« on: June 08, 2015, 04:08 PM »

ok guys, but the success of a program is not to spend 1 whole year to master it!!!

-kalos (June 07, 2015, 04:36 PM)

Maybe not for the user, but if it takes a year to master, but people keep buying it anyway, that's exactly what Microsoft would call a success.

38

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Tresorit - Secure, end-to-end encrypted Cloud storage service (FREE)

« on: May 29, 2015, 07:27 AM »

According to their website, there's still a free (Basic) version.

39

Living Room / Re: Robert A. Heinlein - atmospheric processor question

« on: May 20, 2015, 10:02 AM »

The ^lichen method would actually be a very good approach, although current GMO abuses with Franken-foods have given the subject of genetic engineering a bad rap.

-bit (March 20, 2015, 06:21 PM)

Yeah, GMOs... ask the Thrints what happened to their food animals, the frumious Bandersnatch, that their genetic engineers, the tnuctipun, created for them... 

-x16wda (March 20, 2015, 08:17 PM)

Frumious Bandersnatch broke up in 1969. Most of them went on to play with Steve Miller. Ross Valory and George Tickner also became founding members of Journey in 1973.   

40

General Software Discussion / Re: HDD primary partition not able to resize!

« on: May 18, 2015, 03:18 PM »

I would also suggest to use the Windows 7 installer instead of the XP installer. Because that installer will not burden your hard disk with hard disk alignment problems like the XP installer does.

-Shades (May 18, 2015, 07:10 AM)

Seeing an 8MB chunk of unpartitioned space at the beginning definitely makes me think it's a Windows install problem. I ran across a similar issue when I had to replace a NT 4 Server install with the Terminal Services version. Specifically, it had to do with an unsupported drive (actually RAID) controller. Normally, if you told Windows to use the whole drive, the installer would leave 8MB of unpartitioned space at the end of the drive. However, because the IBM controller wasn't supported until at least SP3, it put the unpartitioned space at the beginning of the drive, and before the actual partition, instead.

Had I provided the driver on a disc, when prompted during Windows installation, it would have worked fine. Of course, IBM didn't bother to mention anything about it with the documentation, and finding anything on their website was practically impossible. In fact, they didn't even ship the driver disc with it. I ended up using a Win 98 boot disc to partition and format to FAT16, after which Windows installed normally.

41

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best List of Free Windows Security Software on the Web

« on: May 10, 2015, 11:23 PM »

I started having that problem with Gizmo's Freeware a couple years back.

-Vurbal (May 10, 2015, 12:37 PM)

so did I. But I assumed it was because of my many addons for Firefox, so instead I subscribed to their email, and automated the use of Internet Explorer. But now I am on a new old computer, so I forgot.

-Curt (May 10, 2015, 05:37 PM)

Funny you should say that. I came to the same conclusion. I actually tried disabling them 1 at a time back then, but didn't figure it was worth actually uninstalling anything over. Apparently I was right, since it wouldn't have fixed the problem anyway.

I wonder if anyone has ever pointed this out to them.

-Vurbal (May 10, 2015, 12:37 PM)

I don't think anyone has; the Contact-page has no contact, only adverts.

So you're saying we should report that first?  

42

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best List of Free Windows Security Software on the Web

« on: May 10, 2015, 12:37 PM »

I started having that problem with Gizmo's Freeware a couple years back. In my case at least, the problem appears to be a complete lack of CSS. That wasn't always the case, but since it started, it's been completely consistent. I ended up adding an exception for the site to HTTPS Everywhere.

I did go ahead and try it out in both my desktop and mobile Firefox, and I get the stripped down page in both. Then I found the issue. The external stylesheets (and apparently some images) are being served via regular HTTP. Turning off mixed content protection solves the problem.

Well it answers the question. It only solves the problem if you consider trading up for a bigger problem to be a solution. I wonder if anyone has ever pointed this out to them.

43

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« on: May 09, 2015, 10:00 PM »

...Many programs assume they can write files in the folder where the exe is.  I usually create an .ini file for my AHK programs in the same folder as the AHK utility.  From Vista on the system has gotten progressively more persnickety about writing to Program Files folders.  To avoid running everything As Administrator on W8 I took ownership of all the files in the Program Files and Program Files (x86) folders.  It's a pita.  If the error occurs in XP then it is likely some other issue.
It is not recommended o take ownership of either all of C: or the Windows folder.  Just in case anyone was considering that as a quick solution. 
______________________________

-MilesAhead (May 08, 2015, 03:19 PM)

^ That's why I install almost all software to a custom folder instead, although that obviously doesn't solve every permissions issue.
______________________________

-Vurbal (May 08, 2015, 05:51 PM)

^^ +1 for that. I've tended to do that (install to custom folders rather than in Program Files) more and more over the years, to combat the increasing lengths the user has to go to, to defeat the growing number of seemingly unnecessarily restrictive system "security policies" and bugs therein.

-IainB (May 09, 2015, 01:46 AM)

You, sir, have a gift for understatement. That may be the single most effective strategy for eliminating bizarre access errors, especially if you have any software that's getting long in the tooth.

I do, generally, let Microsoft software install in the standard folders. I've never actually run into problems sticking any of their programs elsewhere, but their installers almost always put some files and folders under Program Files no matter where the main install location is. I figure splitting things up like that is more likely to cause problems than solve them.

44

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« on: May 09, 2015, 08:39 PM »

^ Thanks for the details. That should be a big help if I can reproduce the problem.

Interestingly, I apparently haven't run into the problem since switching from PDFCreator to Bullzip. I think it's already been installed longer than PDFCreator made it before problems showed up. Of course, I only notice it when I need to generate a PDF, and don't really have time for thorough troubleshooting.

Looks like it's time to install PDFCreator again and get a regular testing schedule setup. The long, and seemingly random, time between incidents makes a problem like this nearly impossible to track down any other way, unless you're prepared to wait a long time for the stars to align.

Is it sad that I'm looking forward to this?

45

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« on: May 08, 2015, 05:51 PM »

^ That's why I install almost all software to a custom folder instead, although that obviously doesn't solve every permissions issue.

However, it's unlikely this is related to that. If it were, the error should appear every time, but it doesn't. In my case, I've "printed" numerous PDF files and then, days (or months - not like I use it often) later, either the printer just mysteriously vanishes from the printer list or throws the write protection error. In either case, the only solution I've found is to uninstall and reinstall the virtual printer software from scratch.

This discussion suggests to me that Windows Fax and Scan has similar issues. The responses there suggest the error is usually resolved by blowing away the existing "Fax Account" and creating a new one. Presumably each entry there is a separate virtual printer. Other people reported fixing it by stopping and restarting the service.

My semi-educated guess is there's an issue with the printing subsystem. However, I don't recall every hearing about it happen with actual printers. That suggests it may be specific to some interface unique to virtual printers. My first thought, considering write protection is involved, would be that it's spooling related. However, taking everything (including that MS link) into account, I'm inclined to think it's more likely to be an error sending data from the spooler to the virtual device.

That might also explain why my PDF printers would seem to just disappear from the system entirely, even though the software appears to be working fine. If Windows can't talk to the device any more, it should disappear from the printer list. From Windows' perspective, it has effectively been unplugged. Actually, the more I think about it, the more likely that scenario seems.

46

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« on: May 08, 2015, 01:48 PM »

M

So, maybe we are looking at it all wrong, and simply need to eliminate the cause of the error "write protection message".

-IainB (May 08, 2015, 04:26 AM)

Personally I would love to see a screen shot of that error message to try and ascertain its origin. As I too have always had very good luck with the native Windows Fax & Scan utility. This could very well be just a configuration issue.

-Stoic Joker (May 08, 2015, 06:43 AM)

If this is Windows 7, it could be related to the issue I've run into with virtual (PDF) printers in the past. Most of the time they just disappear from the printer list completely, but on at least 1 or 2 occasions, I've gotten the same bizarre write protection error. It may not actually be specific to Windows 7, but that's the only version where I've seen or heard about it.

47

Living Room / Re: Automakers Want to Outlaw Gearheads From Working on Their Own Cars

« on: April 29, 2015, 07:50 PM »

The law of unintended consequences can't be avoided, even by - especially by - governments.

-CWuestefeld (April 29, 2015, 01:43 PM)

I have a very difficult time believing that the consequences weren't unintended. When you have decision power over that kind of money, you're generally pretty smart and have lots of other smart people around you. While the maxim "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence" often holds, I just can't see that in the Cash for Clunkers program.

-Renegade (April 29, 2015, 07:09 PM)

You can't possibly suggesting there were any ulterior motives behind the government subsidizing car purchases right when the auto industry was scrambling to survive their self inflicted wounds.

48

General Software Discussion / Re: Tweaking.com Registry Backup

« on: April 29, 2015, 01:59 AM »

...www.foolishit.com...

-Giampy (April 28, 2015, 08:33 AM)

-tomos (April 28, 2015, 09:28 AM)

It's unfortunate the way http lower cases everything. 

-MilesAhead (April 28, 2015, 12:28 PM)

no shit, but IT
   
It took Miles' comment, before I could see what address it really is

-Curt (April 29, 2015, 01:32 AM)

Me too. Plus it took me a few more minutes to see the clever double entendre.

49

General Software Discussion / Re: Tweaking.com Registry Backup

« on: April 29, 2015, 01:13 AM »

It's unfortunate the way http lower cases everything. 

-MilesAhead (April 28, 2015, 12:28 PM)

OTOH it did give us the world's most elaborate dick joke.

http://www.penisland.net

-Vurbal (April 28, 2015, 09:34 PM)

And this one:

http://kidsexchange.net/

-Deozaan (April 29, 2015, 01:03 AM)

This website is such a bad influence on me.



I love you guys!   

50

General Software Discussion / Re: Tweaking.com Registry Backup

« on: April 28, 2015, 09:34 PM »

...www.foolishit.com...

-Giampy (April 28, 2015, 08:33 AM)

 

-tomos (April 28, 2015, 09:28 AM)

It's unfortunate the way http lower cases everything. 

-MilesAhead (April 28, 2015, 12:28 PM)

OTOH it did give us the world's most elaborate dick joke.

http://www.penisland.net