Recent Posts

151

Living Room / Re: Hardware: HDD & Case Queries

« Last post by 4wd on May 19, 2021, 06:41 PM »

The top drive is 5400rpm, what's the bottom drive?

If the bottom is 7200 or 10k rpm then move it to the top and think about putting a case fan mounted on the case to the right, (so it blows air between them). A slow rpm 12cm fan will be all that's needed.

If they're both 5400rpm then I personally wouldn't worry about it unless they're consistently running at higher than about 35°.

BTW, the top drive doesn't appear to have mounting screws on the side we can see?

Any chance of a photo from the left angled towards the front, (to give a better idea of the mounting points)?

Also BTW, if you want a Simple No Holes Required Mounting Solution:



As long as the computer isn't moved around often, (eg. dragging it along to LAN night), this'll be fine.

For a case, if you're only looking to have 2x2.5" + 2x3.5" (no 5.25") then the Thermaltake Versa H17 or H18 isn't too bad, (I have the H18). Cheap and one of the smaller mATX cases, (honestly, most mATX cases these days are bigger than my old ATX mid-tower).
Also done a couple of builds in the Silverstone Temjin 08 case, they can take more drives and are slightly smaller.

:P

152

Post New Requests Here / Re: Ping with latency alarm?

« Last post by 4wd on May 17, 2021, 07:31 AM »

Someone will come up with something fancier but it gave me something to do 

It's only requirement is PowerShell 7 or higher, (I no longer use earlier versions).

Doesn't write to console, just directly to the output file.

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   pinger.ps1
3.  
4.   Run: pwsh -F path\to\pinger.ps1
5. #>
6.  
7. $ip = "8.8.8.8"       # IP/site to ping
8. $file = "R:\ping.csv" # Output file, (will be output as CSV)
9. $maxlag = 40          # Latency above which to go beep
10.  
11. # If it ain't PowerShell 7+ we don't want to know about it.
12. if ($PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major -lt 7) {
13.   "Requires PowerShell 7" | Out-Host
14.   Start-Sleep 10
15. } else {
16.   While ($true) {  # Loop-de-loop
17.     # Ping a site once and select latency
18.     $lag = (Test-Connection -ComputerName $ip -Count 1 -Ping -IPv4 -DontFragment | Select-Object Latency)
19.     # Format file output and append latest to file (date time,ip,latency,exceeds max)
20.     "$(Get-Date -Format 'yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss'),$($ip),$($lag.Latency),$($lag.Latency -gt $maxlag)" | Out-File $file -Append
21.     # If latency is above maximum allowed value ...
22.     if ($lag.Latency -gt $maxlag) {
23.       # Go beep
24.       [console]::beep(1000,500)
25.     }
26.     # Sleep, restful sleep ... for all of 2 seconds >:|
27.     Start-Sleep -Seconds 2
28.   }
29. }

File output is in CSV format:

Code: Text [Select]

1. 2021/05/17 22:22:35,8.8.8.8,6,False
2. 2021/05/17 22:22:37,8.8.8.8,17,False
3. 2021/05/17 22:22:39,8.8.8.8,41,True
4. 2021/05/17 22:22:42,8.8.8.8,32,False
5. 2021/05/17 22:22:44,8.8.8.8,32,False
6. 2021/05/17 22:22:46,8.8.8.8,41,True
7. 2021/05/17 22:22:48,8.8.8.8,33,False
8. 2021/05/17 22:22:51,8.8.8.8,44,True
9. 2021/05/17 22:22:53,8.8.8.8,43,True

153

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

« Last post by 4wd on April 25, 2021, 02:21 AM »

[ Invalid Attachment ]Tiny helicopter on mars

-Arizona Hot (April 24, 2021, 09:24 AM)

They screwed up, the rotors should be contra-rotating.

154

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by 4wd on April 24, 2021, 08:28 AM »

So anyway I thought I'd lump this in with Bitcoin rather than start yet another crypto thread.

Not content with causing graphic card shortages it looks like we'll now have to contend with drive shortages caused by crypto.

Behold "Proof of Space and Time" crypto: Chia

Hard drive shortage ahead of debut

The sooner this planet suffers a zombie apocalypse, the better.

155

General Software Discussion / Re: Two : 1. GPS offline 2. Free Document Generator

« Last post by 4wd on April 23, 2021, 10:25 PM »

I find Osmand a little slow for navigation, (probably not a problem for walking).

Another alternative:

• Install Maps.me
• Go to Wikiloc and download your track in KML format, (Google Earth)
• When it's downloaded, go to files, hold your finger on it, and choose to open it with Maps.me
• Maps.me will load it and save under bookmarks, (the star in the menu strip)
• Open bookmarks and select it, Maps.me will display it and automatically download the required map area

156

General Software Discussion / Re: Two : 1. GPS offline 2. Free Document Generator

« Last post by 4wd on April 22, 2021, 06:43 PM »

Aren't you glad there is no Windows Phone anymore?  Mine came with off-line maps already build in. And could use cellular masts to do a "poor man's GPS" triangulating position. Used it in this city myself (on foot), some 4 years ago, maybe 5 by now.

-Shades (April 22, 2021, 10:30 AM)

Same as Android's Low Accuracy Location mode - it will use mobile and WiFi networks for location, (and lower battery drain), when GPS is turned off or there's no signal.

However, it is very inaccurate if you don't have reception from at least three towers, (pretty much how GPS is useless without 3 satellite signals on cold start).

And technically it's trilateration

A bit more trivia:
Triangulation would require two receivers at two different locations, (or one receiver moved between two locations), because it uses angles to get the distance from the towers.
Trilateration only requires one receiver at one location but uses three transmitters. It uses the broadcast transmitter position along with signal strength, where the transmitter radio spheres intersect is your location.

If you've ever logged your GPS track and lost GPS coverage but still have mobile coverage from one tower, you'll see that the track will sometimes jump to the location of the tower.

157

General Software Discussion / Re: Two : 1. GPS offline 2. Free Document Generator

« Last post by 4wd on April 22, 2021, 04:33 AM »

Have you ever heard of the ancient artefact that us older folks call: "A Map"?

-Stephen66515 (April 22, 2021, 03:29 AM)

Only good if you know how to find yourself on it, which, oddly enough, most people don't these days.

@contro: Any app that can use offline map data, this includes Google Maps.
Google Maps->Menu->Offline Maps->Select Your Own Map->Select the area->Download.

Most other offline map apps will use OpenStreetMaps.

158

Living Room / Re: Movies you've seen lately

« Last post by 4wd on April 19, 2021, 12:03 AM »

A bystander who intervenes to help a woman being harassed by a group of men becomes the target of a vengeful drug lord arms manufacturer.

Highly recommended if you like lots of violence ...

-brotherS (April 18, 2021, 12:14 PM)

A little change to the plot line and you have: Shoot 'Em Up.

159

General Software Discussion / Re: Cannot claim free space in C:\

« Last post by 4wd on March 31, 2021, 02:43 AM »

I don't think changing the download location could magically claim lost space in c:\

-hulkbuster (March 30, 2021, 11:41 PM)

It would actually, when you change the location, part of the process is to ask you if you want to move the existing files to the new location, to which you'd answer "Yes".

Instant 40GB+ drive space freed up.

If you're trying to say, in a round about way, that you have no other drive than C: then you're right ... and you could have said this earlier.

160

Living Room / Re: Looking for alternative script to search site

« Last post by 4wd on March 30, 2021, 07:02 PM »

First try was with Vivaldi (still doesn't work after third verification).

-dantheman (March 30, 2021, 06:30 PM)

Just tried the Presearch one above in Vivaldi, (Vivaldi   2.9.1699.4 (Official Build) (64-bit)), and it worked OK - had to double-click the bookmarklet.

161

General Software Discussion / Re: Cannot claim free space in C:\

« Last post by 4wd on March 30, 2021, 06:30 PM »

Run WizTree, when it's finished, drill down on the left side to the directory that's using the most space, then take a screenshot of the WizTree window, (including the right side), and post it here ... because atm we have no idea what we're dealing with.

It could be 150GB of AVIs, 130GB of old Windows patches, 160GB of VM VHDs ...

eg.

Largest thing I've got is Docker's VHDX.


A suggestion, never, ever download stuff to your C drive. Microsoft might think this is the greatest idea on Earth, having a single drive in which everything is stored in a directory tree from Hell but it isn't, it's a shit idea.
(I'd expand it to anything that's not the OS you don't have on C unless absolutely necessary.)

BTW, to bypass the Recycle Bin use Shift+Delete.

162

Living Room / Re: Looking for alternative script to search site

« Last post by 4wd on March 30, 2021, 06:00 PM »

NOTE: This was all written on a tablet, tables would have looked better but editing on a tablet is painful to say the least. (It actually looks better in Preview than Posted.)

So basically, if Presearch is selected, then this is the part i would use
%22http://engine.presearch.org/search?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)
to replace Google's?

-dantheman (March 30, 2021, 02:04 PM)

Not even that much, google.com -> engine.presearch.org, everything else is the same.

Don't look at the JavaScript, look at example search URLs from the search engines themselves:

[Select]

https://   www.google.com          /search?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com  (Google - original)
https://   engine.presearch.org    /search?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com  (Presearch)

[Select]

https://   www.google.com/search     ?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com  (Google - original)
https://   qwant.com/                ?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com  (Qwant)
https://   duckduckgo.com/           ?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com  (DDG)
https://   startpage.com/sp/search   ?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com  (Startpage)

The second section in each case is the minimum that needs changing.
All other sections of test searches on the engines are identical.

NOTES:

• I removed unnecessary crap from the example URLs, eg. setting strings, tracking, etc, so all are the minimum that are required for them to work.
• www.google.com is google.com in the bookmarklet.

Did use 4wd's last script and it isn't responding.

I tested all four of the ones I changed and they all worked for me. The Presearch version in the last post was a copy/paste of the previous, which was copy/paste out of my browser, (Opera).

163

General Software Discussion / Re: Cannot claim free space in C:\

« Last post by 4wd on March 30, 2021, 02:05 AM »

WizTree - Find out where the space is being used first.

164

Living Room / Re: Show us a picture of your.. CAR!!!

« Last post by 4wd on March 30, 2021, 12:24 AM »

I couldn't give a shit less about CO2 or any of that, but electric motors are AMAZING.

-Renegade (March 29, 2021, 10:31 PM)

Meh, broaden your horizons and go for a Koenigsegg Gemera 

Combined power output of 1700 bhp
Power output from the three motors – one for each rear wheel producing 500 bhp and 1000 Nm, and one E-motor on the crankshaft that produces an extra 400 bhp and 500 Nm to power the front wheels – add up to 1400 bhp as individuals and 1100 bhp when combined. In addition to the TFG’s 600 bhp (at 7500 rpm) and torque of 600 Nm (2000 rpm to 7000 rpm), the combined power output of the Gemera is 1700 bhp or 1.27 MW.

The most amazing part of the car is the TFG, (Tiny Friendly Giant), engine: 600hp from a 2 litre, 3 cylinder, multi-fuel, twin-turbo, cam-less design.

Never really got the hype about the Bugatti Veyron, 1000hp from a W16 engine ... whereas Koenigsegg had 900hp -1600hp from V8's on biofuel, far better engineering IMHO.

165

Living Room / Re: Looking for alternative script to search site

« Last post by 4wd on March 29, 2021, 09:28 PM »

Let's start with a site search on Donationcoder for mouser in Google, you'd enter:

Code: Text [Select]

1. mouser site:donationcoder.com

After hitting Enter the URL becomes:

Code: Text [Select]

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com

Same search on Presearch gives a URL of:

Code: Text [Select]

1. https://engine.presearch.org/search?q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com

Your original bookmarklet, (which is what a bookmark consisting of JavaScript is generally called):

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:q=%22%22+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getSelection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!q)q=prompt(%22Search%20terms%20[leave%20selection%20and%20box%20blank%20to%20list%20all%20pages]%20...%22).replace(/\s\+/g,%22%252B%22);if(q!=null)location=%22http://www.google.com/search?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)+%22+site:%22+location.hostname;void(0);

Within it is the same format site search URL as for Google above, (%22 is HTML escaped ASCII for quote, " - ignored for the purposes of simplified explanation):

Code: Text [Select]

1. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)+%22+site:%22+location.hostname

You have code replacement for your entered search term:

Code: Text [Select]

1. q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)

ie. mouser
And addition of the current site URL:

Code: Text [Select]

1. location.hostname

ie. donationcoder.com

The format of the search terms is basically identical between Google and Presearch, shown above in the individuals URLs, this bit:

Code: Text [Select]

1. q=mouser+site%3Adonationcoder.com

The only difference is the base URL:

Code: Text [Select]

1. https://www.google.com/search?

Versus:

Code: Text [Select]

1. https://engine.presearch.org/search?

So it becomes a simple text replacement to switch from Google to Presearch, the same applies to the other search engines listed above, so the bookmarklet becomes:

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:q=%22%22+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getSelection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!q)q=prompt(%22Search%20terms%20[leave%20selection%20and%20box%20blank%20to%20list%20all%20pages]%20...%22).replace(/\s\+/g,%22%252B%22);if(q!=null)location=%22http://engine.presearch.org/search?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)+%22+site:%22+location.hostname;void(0);

So no coding required, just observation

BTW, haven't bothered explaining the rest of the JavaScript involved because:

• it's not really relevant to the original query and,
• I'd have to read up to understand it also

166

Living Room / Re: Looking for alternative script to search site

« Last post by 4wd on March 29, 2021, 06:28 PM »

Did try to replace Google.com with Qwant.com and it doesn't work.

-dantheman (March 29, 2021, 02:10 PM)

Qwant doesn't use the search keyword:

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:q=%22%22+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getSelection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!q)q=prompt(%22Search%20terms%20[leave%20selection%20and%20box%20blank%20to%20list%20all%20pages]%20...%22).replace(/\s\+/g,%22%252B%22);if(q!=null)location=%22http://www.qwant.com/?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)+%22+site:%22+location.hostname;void(0);

Neither does DDG:

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:q=%22%22+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getSelection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!q)q=prompt(%22Search%20terms%20[leave%20selection%20and%20box%20blank%20to%20list%20all%20pages]%20...%22).replace(/\s\+/g,%22%252B%22);if(q!=null)location=%22http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)+%22+site:%22+location.hostname;void(0);

Startpage different again:

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:q=%22%22+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getSelection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!q)q=prompt(%22Search%20terms%20[leave%20selection%20and%20box%20blank%20to%20list%20all%20pages]%20...%22).replace(/\s\+/g,%22%252B%22);if(q!=null)location=%22http://startpage.com/sp/search?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)+%22+site:%22+location.hostname;void(0);

Presearch:

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:q=%22%22+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getSelection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!q)q=prompt(%22Search%20terms%20[leave%20selection%20and%20box%20blank%20to%20list%20all%20pages]%20...%22).replace(/\s\+/g,%22%252B%22);if(q!=null)location=%22http://engine.presearch.org/search?q=%22+q.replace(/\s+/g,%22+%22)+%22+site:%22+location.hostname;void(0);

Just input the search into an engine and use the relevant part of the URL:

https://engine.presearch.org/search?q=thought+site%3Adonationcoder.com

167

General Software Discussion / Re: List And Print Folders And Subfolders

« Last post by 4wd on March 29, 2021, 11:54 AM »

Me don't understand .
1. Is a portable program ?

-Contro (March 29, 2021, 11:48 AM)

They're standard Windows commands, no need to carry them around.

Code: Text [Select]

1. tree <dir> | clip

168

Living Room / Re: Looking for alternative script to search site

« Last post by 4wd on March 29, 2021, 11:46 AM »

Without seeing the script it's a bit hard to comment but you should be able to change any occurrence of google.com to qwant.com, (my default search engine), I believe the query format is similar.

169

General Software Discussion / Re: Sync: move files on one side but *dont* copy any?

« Last post by 4wd on March 28, 2021, 10:44 AM »

... but with many files I can see no reason for the different modified date / size.

-tomos (March 28, 2021, 05:01 AM)

This could be due to metadata, adding metadata will increase the file size without affecting the image.

Usually I resort to something like Beyond Compare or enable the extra metadata fields in DOpus.

My personal preference in this case would be to combine the separate file structures onto another drive, any filename clashes would be auto-renamed.
Then I'd run Antidupl, (set at 0%), over that file structure to remove dupes, (ie. leave the original sources alone).

I've had to do this twice for friends whose backup software was doing recursive backups ... it was fun removing a couple of hundred GBs of dupes 🙄

I found it was the fastest method, do the copies then let Antidupl take care of working out what could be removed based on image data, (they did not have any metadata requirements so I could ignore this).

170

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA Drop Zone javascript link extractor and launcher

« Last post by 4wd on March 23, 2021, 05:05 PM »

I would think a UserScript would be a better option, have the links replaced directly in the page.

BTW, just tried a search on Ancestry and it comes back with full links here, (wife uses Ancestry all the time via the local library portal).

171

Living Room / Re: Whoever understands NFTs let's make one for DonationCoder

« Last post by 4wd on March 21, 2021, 07:26 PM »

An opinion piece on the current NFT craze:

NFTs Are a Pyramid Scheme and People Are Already Losing Money

“NFTs are entirely for the benefit of the crypto grifters. The only purpose the artists serve is as aspiring suckers to pump the concept of crypto — and, of course, to buy cryptocurrency to pay for ‘minting’ NFTs.”

172

Living Room / Re: Free eBooks

« Last post by 4wd on March 12, 2021, 01:36 AM »

ffmpeg Quick Hacks - Free to celebrate 1 year in publishing by V. Subhash

Original Reddit post

173

General Software Discussion / Re: Any taskbar hiding applications?

« Last post by 4wd on March 10, 2021, 05:48 AM »

TaskbarActivate still works under Windows 10, increase the delay before the Taskbar is expanded.

174

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by 4wd on March 08, 2021, 02:03 AM »

love to hear how you're going to use it..

-mouser (March 07, 2021, 10:39 PM)

I'm thinking image classification atm, there's a few projects on GitHub that use TensorFlow (Lite) so I thought I might have a play around.

Having spent quite a few hours classifying hundreds of digital photos which is just a drop in the thousands I have, it'd be nice to see if the Accelerator can speed up the process by using low powered hardware rather than having a full desktop doing it.

Plus it's cheap enough that it's worth playing with.

It could also end up sitting in a drawer because I've decided to put it in the "too hard basket" 

175

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by 4wd on March 07, 2021, 10:26 PM »

Something new in my quest to turn my RasPi into SkyNet: Coral Accelerator

The Coral USB Accelerator adds an Edge TPU coprocessor to your system, enabling high-speed machine learning inferencing on a wide range of systems, simply by connecting it to a USB port.

...

The on-board Edge TPU coprocessor is capable of performing 4 trillion operations (tera-operations) per second (TOPS), using 0.5 watts for each TOPS (2 TOPS per watt).