Topics

1

Living Room / If not Cubby, then what?

« on: October 17, 2016, 10:04 AM »

So now that Cubby is pulling the rug out from under it's users, what sync service et al are you moving to?

I was getting all ready to try it based on recommendations from Donation Coder.

2

General Software Discussion / Scripting Programming Coding for kids

« on: October 03, 2016, 10:49 AM »

Some friends of mine homeschool their littles. They both use smartphones and computers but they admit they are definitely users of technology. Mom recently became concerned with the hype about how kids should learn to code because that's the world in which they'll be living.

So I've been asked to teach coding. I am not a coder so I have not yet committed. I have always wanted to code so I view this as less of an impediment and more an opportunity to learn something myself.

Scholastic publishes this material some of which is on hand, at which I haven't had a look. I want to first build an idea of what's out there to give me a hand with teaching coding to kids and so I turn to the most clever community I know.

Age group is 7 1/2, students 2.

Some questions:

1. What computing fundamentals should they be taught as preparation?
2. What coding for kids resources are out there, specifically targeted at kids?
3. What languages (or specialised subsets) would be appropriate, which can be built upon in the next few years?
4. What non-coding activities should be considered, that would help develop skills.
5. What would be the best way to set goals and judge progress?

You don't have to be a home schooler, a teacher, a coder etc. to make suggestions - all are welcome to contribute.

Cheers!

3

General Software Discussion / Resources for learning Windows PowerShell

« on: November 28, 2014, 08:09 AM »

Apparently, Windows will be getting a package manager sometime in the future that will use Windows PowerShell.

I have it installed, but have never tried to use it as anything but a CLI.  I think that should change and I have done multiple searches for resources to help me start to learn.

However, seeing as though one of my favourite online communities is stuffed with clever programmers (erm, that would be you-all if you didn't get that reference ), I thought it prudent to ask here as well.

I did a search on the forums and while there were a lot of hits, they were pretty old and I couldn't find one directly related to learning, so any suggestions are appreciated.

4

General Software Discussion / How to remove CDFS partition from a USB Stick

« on: June 04, 2014, 01:47 PM »

I just got a free USB stick from a vendor, but everytime I plug it in, Windows7 also mounts a hidden file/partition as a CD drive (device manager), giving it a drive letter

It hold s single Promotional PDF.

It doesn't take up a lot of space, but because I would use it at work in a network environment, there is a good change drive letter assignment with conflict with the network.

While it *acts* like a U3 device, the U3 remover util doesn't not recognize it.  I've spent most the day tracking down expired or irrelevant Google hits, trying to find help, to no avail.

While cruising those threads, I am given to believe that a low level format might be what I need.  I am personally doubtful, as I have also booted my computer with GPartED magic and a couple of other environments and the same thing happens - the regular partition shows up like normal, and the CDFS partition shows up with it's own drive letter, but no program can show me that particular partition, nor delete/rename/disable it.

Has anyone else run across this and if so, where you able to find a way to get all of the disk space into a single partition that require two drive letters?

Thx!

5

General Software Discussion / I need some help configuring Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4

« on: November 14, 2012, 08:23 AM »

I have a client who has a spanking new PC and is using Lightroom 4 on Windows 7 64bit.  She has moved from a previous version on Windows XP, details unknown.

Lightroom has some very irritating behaviour that she has not encountered before.  When typing in a dialog or other text field within the program, it often suffers from some sort of "outage" as it "goes to sleep" for 15 to 20 seconds. Sometimes, Windows even displays the partly opaque "white screen", which generally indicates the system is trying to cope with demands on the system.

During the outage, the system continues to capture keystrokes as evidenced when it comes back to life - all keystrokes captured during the outage are subsequently shown in the text field.

Original observations led me to conclude that something like Windows Indexing might be playing a part - the behaviour very much looks as though the system is struggling to index something or struggling to search an index of something, perhaps a repository of auto-name-completion information. It's difficult to explain.

In order to eliminate some of the typical Windows irritations, a number of configuration changes have been made, but none have made a difference.  Co-workers have suggested that there might be some configuration options within the program itself that can be tweaked to smooth out the program's performance.  I am in the process of researching those at the Adobe site, specifically looking through their forums and some of their troubleshooting documents.

Specifically, one co-workers was able to resolve another clients Adobe problem (not the same software) by moving some resources like a disk-based cache to another physical hard drive.

As I am not at all familiar with the product, I'm hoping someone here may have gone through the same experience or might be a frequent user of the software and therefore be more aware of what's at play here.

As usual, any help, pointers, or references are very much appreciated!

6

General Software Discussion / Wierd Chrome browser behaviour; or Have I not been paying attention?

« on: June 21, 2012, 06:50 AM »

I just noticed this morning that the Chrome browser is misbehaving in an odd way.

I accidentally opened task manager this morning to see 9 instances of chrome.exe *32 running.  I had one browser open.

I closed it and all instances immediately disappeared.  I fired it up again and nine instances immediately reappeared.

Is this normal? My computer's performance does not appear to be impacted, but I'm concerned none-the-less.

Do I have cause for worry or is this some new fangled programming technique of which I am unaware?  Chrome fans keep telling me what a fantastic browser it is because of it's non-standard/non-traditional underpinnings, but I have my doubts.

Thanks for any advice.

7

General Software Discussion / Monitor folder, print and then archive document?

« on: July 06, 2011, 02:33 PM »

I'm pretty sure one of you has already created this program.  Unfortunately, even after the couple of years I've been hanging out here, I *still* am clueless when it comes to trying to find programs I think someone has already done.

On the other hand, everytime I've asked if someone knew of a program that does something, you've all been very quick to help out.  I hope that is still so.

I have a very bizarre printing problem that can't be handled natively in Windows.  I have output from a PuTTy derivative that needs to print landscape to letter sized paper.  One of my hardware techs wrote a little proggie to handle the problem under XP (using output from QVTnet), but now the user has moved to Win7 (and using KiTTy) and said little proggie is now a bust.

I am looking for something that can monitor a folder, print a file dropped into it, and then preserve that file (because the user is a luser and needs to review his work regularly). It would also need to utilize a paper size as defined by Windows.

The reports are wide print jobs and to avoid wrapping lines, we define a custom paper size of 11 inches wide by 8.5 inches long, with no margins, to avoid the line wrap (this all used to be printed to line printers and then to dot matrix printers, all which have finally died).

Any help appreciated and if you need further details, I'm all ready to answer questions.

Cheers!

8

Find And Run Robot / FARR gets props at Freeware Genius

« on: November 18, 2010, 09:05 AM »

Read it and weep tears of joy!

http://www.freewareg...reewaregenius.com%29

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Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Mark browser text to print, not other way around

« on: September 27, 2010, 10:22 AM »

Just saw another hit for a browser plugin that allows you to "hide" or remove parts of a webpage you don't want to print.

Seems bass-ackwards to me.  I've tried these things and they *all* fail because I have to do so much clicking and turning off of things that it's just a huge waste of time.

Why hasn't someone come up with the idea of choosing the part of the page you *DO* want to print and ignoring the rest.  One click and print..yer done and Bob's yer Uncle (unless you don't have a Bob in your family, or if he's the *creepy* uncle).

There may be reasons this can't be done, of which I am unaware.  First time for everything I guess....;0..roflmao

Anyway, if this can or can't be done, I'd love to hear about it!

Cheers!

10

Living Room / Linux Learning - what to do after basic install?

« on: June 25, 2010, 09:59 AM »

I've had a job function change, from end user support back to the server side of the force, for which I was originally hired about 15 years ago.

It was unexpected and has caught me a little flat-footed as I never expected to be reprieved from the user side of the force.  Now I am trying to catch up on all of the server skills that have been dormant and unnurtured, lo all these years.

So I'm jumping to Linux (as a server - no interest as a desktop as yet). I have one project to play with - putting my Xbox on my home network as a media centre - but I'm looking for other tasks to help me learn more about getting around in, and managing Linux.

I have a zillion pdfs on how to *begin* learning Linux, but after installing etc. and learning basic commands, how to get around, and all the other basic stuff, I don't know what to do next to put my beginner skills to use.

Any suggestions are gratefully accepted.  Considering that my work focus is on managing servers, more tasks to practise those skills would be more appropriate than learning to play a movie an mp3 or other "desktop/User" oriented tasks.

Thanks Y'all!

11

Living Room / Dagnabbit - I want my cercle!

« on: May 10, 2010, 01:38 PM »

I want my image cercle - two of them in fact, and a site cercle to boot!

12

Living Room / OSS for Macintosh

« on: May 11, 2009, 01:51 PM »

Well my boss dropped a nice new MacBook on my desk a couple of weeks ago and told me I will soon be supporting them.

So, I know there are Mac users out there (hiding behind their PC facades) - can you point in the direction of some decent software? Or blogs that deal with such? Or technical troubleshooting sites specific to Mac? Or whatever you think I will need for this adventure?

Thanks loads!

13

General Software Discussion / Nero Vision replacement

« on: May 30, 2008, 09:59 AM »

In the past year or so my nephew has become increasingly interested in how computers work and what you can do with them.  He has been fairly involved in the game mod community for the games he plays.  Last year he bought a DVD burner and now wants to burn some videos from the computer to disc, so he can play them on his portable DVD player. My assumption is that these are in games videos he has captured, or something similar, although I will ask specifically when I see him next.

I suggested he try out the Free Nero disc that came with the burner and he did, but got a message saying he'd have to buy Nero Vision to do whatever it was he tried to do.

I have no idea what Nero Vision is - I assume some sort of DVD authoring tool, but I encourage someone to correct me.

He doesn't have an income yet and so isn't likely to be able to buy what I consider to be a potentially over priced piece of boxware.  I told him I'd do some research on what alternatives were out there, and so here I am.

I guess my questions are:

1. WTF is Nero Vision? In order to find a replacement it would be nice to know what it actually is classed as.
2. Are there any decent OSS alternatives, or freeware, or at least decently priced packages that do the job without adding the kitchen sink? (see other messages about Nero, here at the DC Forums)
3. Ease o use will be big heretoo, as old Uncle Daleus will be the support person
4. What other information do I need to gather for you folks to answer these questions properly?
5. What learning resources would you recommend the two of us read to learn more about what we're doing here?

Thanks in advance for helping me be one kids' hero

14

Living Room / Timeline Software

« on: February 28, 2008, 08:56 AM »

I'm looking for software that helps to create historical timelines.

Timeline Maker Pro -> http://www.timelinemaker.com is just the ticket, but not at the $195 pricetag.

So, I'm soliciting suggestions for alternatives.  I'd like to stay with the "single purpose"-ness of this program, in that making timelines is *all* that it does.  However, to the best of my Google-fu, there doesn't seem to a lot of offerings in that area.  So, I will also take suggestions for really good Gantt chart software etc. I have to stipulate that I am *NOT* looking for full blown project management software, so I would favour "single purpose" Gantt chart making software as well.

Additionally, I am *not* interested in web based services, unless they were something I could install on my own web server   And of course, OSS is preferred.  However, I'd also consider a good inexpensive alternative to Timeline Maker Pro if nothing else suitable turns up.

You folks have such wide ranging interests that my confidence is high that where I have failed, you'll succeed!

Cheers!

15

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Portable Registry Tool(s)

« on: January 22, 2008, 09:15 AM »

I have for years been looking for a simple search and replace utility for the Windows Registry.  I want to be able to enter a simple alpha numeric string and then replace with one that is almost identical. Currently, I do the search and replace by hand, using the default regedit settings in XP.  No special "types" have to be searched.

Essentially, what I do at work is use Ghost to snap an image of a machine the way we set 'em up for campus here.  When the same model comes in, I can just drop the image on the new harddrive.  However, because these are networked machines, they have to be assigned a unique machine name.  This is the part I do by hand.

Granted the task takes all of 90-120 seconds, but sometimes I enter a typo which can cause all sorts of weird behaviour.

Another possible function to be included, or perhaps saved for a separate util, would be the ability to search for the same key, and bookmark it some how, so that I can return to the specific keys at will.

My final requirement would be for these to be so-called "portable" apps, in that they require no "installation" and can simply be copied to a USB key drive and run from there.  These would be dangerous tools to leave on a client's computer.

I have run across numerous utilities that do one or the other job, or both.  Invariably, such programs are also bloated with numerous features for which I have no use, they are time limited or usage and limited, and the author wants a payment which I consider to be out of line with what the program can do.

Also, I don't imagine for a minute that I've tracked down every instance of registry tool on the net, so if someone knows of such a util that's free, and portable, I'd sure appreciate some pointers!

Cheers!

16

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Auto Focus for Windows

« on: November 26, 2007, 10:47 AM »

I used to have an "add-on" for my Amiga (yes, I am *that* old) that was very handy.  As you passed your mouse over a window, the window would pop to the front and would automatically focus.

With multiple windows over two monitors, am I increasingly wishing I had that functionality in Windows.

Does anyone know of such a proggie for windows?  If not, would anyone else but me find this useful - I'd hate to suck up someone's time for somethin that no one but me would use.

Cheers!