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1576

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks

« Last post by IainB on July 22, 2016, 12:06 PM »

No Firefox support? Shame.
________________________

-Attronarch (July 22, 2016, 11:24 AM)

Heh. Yes, that's what I thought too, even though I'm weaning myself off of Firefox, so it doesn't adversely affect me. Mind you, MS have never provided a OneNote clipping tool for Firefox, though there was one called Clip to OneNote provided by http://web.madharasan.com/
- details at http://web.madharasa...ects/clip-to-onenote
That had two components - a Java-based "Listener" and a browser add-on/extension - one for each of Firefox, Thunderbird, Chrome, and Opera.
I trialled the Firefox one and gave a lot of feedback to the developer (Jayarathina Madharasan) as it was not functioning happily and he needed a guinea-pig (me). He eventually got it to work OK, but not the way he expected, and then I think the Firefox one didn't work for the later Firefox versions - see https://addons.mozil...don/clip-to-onenote/
I eventually stopped using it as it stopped working properly with newer versions of Firefox.

Still, it might be worth a trial if you were interested. His website seems unattended (he apologises for his absence), but - who knows? - he might be interested in some collaborative development effort/testing.

I nearly forgot: he has a read-only shared OneNote NoteBook - a Guide to using Clip to OneNote (click on the link). (Smart thinking, that.)

1577

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft OneNote - improvements to OneNote Web Clipper.

« Last post by IainB on July 22, 2016, 06:27 AM »

...Added to which, the OneNote developers are quietly beavering away in the background, making changes that are beneficial for users, so a seemingly kludgy feature found in OneNote today may be gone by tomorrow.
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-IainB (July 22, 2016, 06:17 AM)

Partial extract from: OneNote July roundup - From <http://blogs.office.com/2016/07/21/onenote-july-roundup/>

OneNote Web Clipper
Our OneNote Web Clipper is better than ever. We have a number of new features on our Web Clipper for Chrome, Safari, and IE to give you more control over your screen clippings before you send it into OneNote.

• Preview—Ever wonder exactly what was about to show up in OneNote once you clipped? Problem solved! Now all clipping modes—full page, region, article, recipe and product—provide a preview so what you see is what you get.
• YouTube and Vimeo support—You can now clip videos from YouTube and Vimeo pages into OneNote.
• Highlight text—When you clip an article, product or recipe you can highlight sections of text, and those highlights will be saved to OneNote.
• Clip multiple regions in one go—Clip multiple regions of a webpage and save them all in a single OneNote page.
• Use your own title—Change the title of your page in the preview window before sending it to OneNote.
• Articles your way—Change the font size and type in your article to improve readability before you even clip it to OneNote.

Update to the latest version to see all the new features or download the extension at www.onenote.com/clipper.

Some useful, timely and overdue changes there.   
There's more at the link.

1578

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks

« Last post by IainB on July 22, 2016, 06:17 AM »

• ...feels like a lot of effort to get there as Onenote always has for me...
• ...btw, I get more and more confused by attempts to compare Onenote and Evernote. What's here is wonderful but it doesn't impact on my Evernote usage at all.
• ...It's clear that people use Onenote in many different ways, each developed for their individual purposes.

-Dormouse (June 13, 2016, 05:22 AM)

1. Yes, I used to feel that way. The trick is to avoid assuming that you actually understand how best to use it and just approach it as though you are trying to use the thing "better" - e.g., I realised that if I dropped the old "data entry" habit and used the OneNote clipping tool and Windows Clipboard, then there were quicker ways to add/build useful content into one's notes, gathering text from elsewhere and even text inside images (e.g., an image of the "About" window of a program). Don't underestimate the automatic OCR capability of OneNote. It's a real timesaver, and the text in an image is very promptly indexed and thus easily found in searches. I started this discussion thread because, for me at any rate, using OneNote was not a simple affair and I figured that others might like to save time by learning from my experiences as I blundered along on my journey through the experiment.

2. I wouldn't recommend spending too much effort on comparing Onenote and Evernote - unless there was some practical purpose in it. I've used both and am familiar with their pros and cons, but I have at least been able to pragmatically determine which one has been able to best meet my peculiar needs in this so-called "information age". For example, see the long comment above in this thread on "OneNote as a 21st-century zettelkasten".

3. Yes, that's probably true, but some/most users (e.g., myself, my daughter) might typically be slow to find or appreciate some really nifty aspects of OneNote, because they don't have a common artificial framework of reference for how it could be used. "Too much to unlearn" maybe? They largely have to find out by trial-and-error, and my feeling is that a lot of people might not have the stamina to sustain that approach. Added to which, the OneNote developers are quietly beavering away in the background, making changes that are beneficial for users, so a seemingly kludgy feature found in OneNote today may be gone by tomorrow.

1579

Living Room / Re: Super Annoying Freezing Mouse (and Keyboard) - can ANYONE help, PLEASE!?

« Last post by IainB on July 22, 2016, 05:44 AM »

...it is very possible there was corruption in that driver (i.e. it was running for President.) ...

-Steven Avery (July 22, 2016, 12:33 AM)

Very droll, but arguably not unnecessarily unkind towards politicos...

1580

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CHS Note field display disappears [Bug?]

« Last post by IainB on July 21, 2016, 12:16 PM »

My apologies for no feedback. I have been a bit tied up over the last few months.
I had been experiencing this error again, and on checking this discussion thread just now, I noticed that I had not downloaded CHS v2.36.0 BETA - May 13, 2016 ...   

Downloaded and installed it now.

1581

Living Room / Re: Google Drive webhosting functionality to be shut down. (AOBTD)

« Last post by IainB on July 21, 2016, 08:28 AM »

On the Google Apps Developer Blog, there is this post:

Reminder: Turn down of Google Drive web hosting coming soon
July 12, 2016
Posted by Hodie Meyers, Product Manager, Google Drive and Steve Bazyl, Developer Programs Engineer, Google Apps

Last year, we announced the deprecation of Google Drive web hosting for users and developers, and that the service will be shut down on August 31, 2016. We’d like to remind remaining users that websites hosted via googledrive.com/host/[id] will become unavailable from that date.

For those who haven’t switched yet, please consider the following alternatives.

Google Drive API: If you’re using the web hosting feature to provide logged-in users access to public Drive items, you can use the API instead.
Firebase Hosting: If you’re using the web hosting feature to provide users access to static web pages whose content lives on Drive, you can migrate to Firebase by uploading the content to Firebase and serving pages via Firebase-specific URLs. Please see this video to learn more!

1582

Post New Requests Here / Re: Replace text months to digital months

« Last post by IainB on July 21, 2016, 08:06 AM »

A useful experiential tip that I learned for document retrieval and sorting in document managementsystems: if you need/have dates in the filename, then consider putting them at the front of the filename, and in ISO format:
For example: 2016-07-22 This is the filename.xls

Thus, you can always find/sort documents by date (thus putting the date to good use), and there's no easy mistake about dates in ISO format.

1583

General Software Discussion / Re: Picasa to be 'phased out' (File link updated 2017-09-12)

« Last post by IainB on July 21, 2016, 06:33 AM »

Ghacks wrote:

… I suggest you download Picasa from the official website to have local access to the installer. While Google may keep it up after it shuts it down, you may want to have a backup of it at hand should you require one.

From <http://www.ghacks.net/2016/02/14/want-to-keep-running-picasa-you-can/>
____________________________

The download source was (on Filehippo.com): Picasa  3.9 B 141.259 - http://filehippo.com/download_picasa/
This "Sunset" version was downloaded by me and saved as:  picasa39-setup - v3.9 Build 141.259 (2015-10-14) Sunset version.exe

The file is apparently still available from there: Picasa  3.9 B 141.259
_____________________________________
EDIT 2017-09-12:
The download source at Filehippo.com (above) apparently no longer hosts that Picasa file.
However one can still obtain it from the good link here, and it works just fine: picasa39-setup - v3.9 Build 141.259 (2015-10-14) Sunset version.exe

1584

Find And Run Robot / Re: Problem: episodic FARR error - a non-appearing active FARR window.

« Last post by IainB on July 21, 2016, 06:17 AM »

Update: 2016-07-21 2300hrs
Using Win10-64 PRO.
This event of a non-display of the FARR UI in the foreground still keeps recurring, and I haven't found any other application of note that coincides with the event(s).
I now know that it is happening (I can see the FARR UI sort of dimly flickering in the background, as it were) and my workaround is to press the "tilde" key slowly a few times until the FARR UI comes up to the foreground.

I have also noticed that when the FARR UI is in the foreground, it stays there just fine, but when I select Help | Check for updates, the FARR UI does not go away but persists unaltered and I can't see the DCupdater window - though I suspect that the latter has come up behind the FARR UI. My workaround is to repeat the Help | Check for updates steps until the FARR UI suddenly goes away to reveal several DCupdater windows in progress. Since this is a tad annoying I generally only check for updates infrequently.

1585

Living Room / SOLVED: Logitech software permanently alters mouse firmware? How to revert it?

« Last post by IainB on July 21, 2016, 04:54 AM »

@Shades, @Ath, and #f0dder: Many thanks for your helpful comments.
This note for posterity and other seekers.

Discovery:

• It seems that once a Logitech mouse has been paired with a unifying dongle, then that mouse will only talk to that dongle, and will not then talk to its specific "original" dongle. That would presumably be due to a modification in the mouse firmware.
  
  
• You can test this after the pairing (and I had already established this), by putting the specific "original" dongle into another computer, and the mouse for that dongle will still be unable to talk to that dongle, whereas, if you put the unifying dongle into that same computer, the mouse/mice that was/were paired to it will still be able to talk to it. So the pairing process is definitely to a sole, specific dongle (the unifying dongle, in this case).
  
  
• I felt sure that there would be software available to modify these settings, but the unifying software only offered a feature to either pair or unpair a device/mouse to a unifying dongle. Unpairing a mouse did not enable that mouse to talk to its specific "original" dongle, and it effectively left one with an orphaned and otherwise useless mouse. I felt sure that would not have been a desirable design objective.
  
  
• Of the 3 mice I had, the M515 was apparently the only one whose specific "original" dongle was also a unifying dongle. The purpose of the unifying dongle seems to be simplifying and efficient, making optimum use of a limited number of USB ports: instead of having to have a separate dongle for several Logitech devices (e.g., a mouse and a keyboard) that you might want to connect to a PC, the unifying dongle enabled a 1--> many communications channel for a single USB port. Thus, you would only need one dongle for "n" devices - (say) 2 devices (a mouse and a keyboard) - to communicate simultaneously through a single USB port. This is where "n" will probably have an upper limit, but it is at least 3, as I had already established that 3 mice could work simultaneously through a single unifying dongle.
  
  
• I recalled that whilst I had been browsing the Logitech support site I had seen some downloadable software called "Options" for the M185 mouse, that I did not recall seeing on the corresponding web pages for the M215 or M515. I had downloaded and briefly looked at this, but it was not the  software to manage a unifying dongle and so I had discarded it. Fortunately, I had been taking lots of notes as I went and so I turned to my OneNote Notebooks and located my notes on the M185 mouse and used the support pages link to get back to the software download page for that mouse. There it was: the file Options_3.40.25.exe from the M185 downloads page http://support.logit..._us/software/options.
  
  
• I installed Options_3.40.25.exe (this is on Win10-64 PRO), and it executed from the Start menu as "Logitech Options". After some experimentation, I found that this software seems to do just one thing - it enables the user to pair an orphaned mouse with its specific "original" dongle. I did this for the M185.
  The software only seemed to work for restoring a dongle+mouse combination that were originally supposed to be paired/matched, and where the mouse was currently orphaned, so once the pairing was restored, you couldn't repeat the pairing on that mouse unless it was subsequently orphaned from its own dongle again, nor could you pair an orphaned mouse with any other dongle except its specific "original" dongle (not even the unifying one), using this software. So it was very specifically a "one job only" kind of tool.
  So this Logitech Options proggie was exactly what I had needed.
  The M515 does not require such a tool (the unifying software fits that purpose), so I did not bother to test Logitech Options out on that particular mouse+dongle combination.
  _______________________________________
  

Meanwhile, I had placed a Logitech support website query which essentially stated the problem as per the opening post. When they eventually responded, it was to show that they did not seem to understand the problem, so I just sent them a reply that I had managed to fix it.

So, for the mice (but I assume it'd probably be the same for other Logitech devices that can work through a unifying port), it seems that they can only talk to a single dongle at a time and to which they have been paired (or are already paired by default).
By trial-and-error, I was able to figure out how to fix the problem I had stated.
The firmware in the two mice (M185 and M215) - once they have been paired to a unifying dongle or "orphaned" - can be reverted to ensure that they each only respond to their own specific dongles, by using the downloaded file Options_3.40.25.exe  from the M185 downloads page http://support.logit..._us/software/options
That is, running the executable Options_3.40.25.exe enables the user to reset each of the two mice to communicate only through their own specific dongles again.

Phew! - and respect for the Logitech engineers, though they could have published something more helpful about the need for and location of the Logitech Options software...(mutter, mutter)...

(By the way, I had earlier read about hidden reset switches on Logitech mice and so, before embarking on my voyage of discovery,  I closely examined each of the 3 mice in question, hoping to find some kind of concealed or tiny reset switch/button, but none of them seemed to have this, so - though I could be wrong, of course - I presume it might be a feature on some different types of Logitech mice.)

1586

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching for a old freeware "Documalis Free Reporter"

« Last post by IainB on July 20, 2016, 03:30 AM »

@anandcoral: Seems to be a dead end. I looked around but couldn't find anything better.
The currently available Documalis Free Reporter versions - v1.0 or v1.0.0.33 - seem to be available only as a crippled demo version with file size less than 1MB.
Wayback download page for Documalis Free Reporter for Oct. 2, 2008 is: https://web.archive...._telechargements.htm

- but the file is not held/downloadable via that page. Pity.

The relevant discussion forum on Wayback is: https://web.archive....action=profile;u=155
Read permission was for Registered Users only, apparently.
Forum seems to have been discontinued after 2009.
Trying to access www.eaistorage.com gets a "server DNS address could not be found" error message.

- but you probably already found all this too.

1587

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by IainB on July 19, 2016, 11:42 AM »

It rather looks like my luck has run out with Windows 10-64 PRO.
So far the Windows Update log shows 5 occurrences of Failed to install Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1511 for x64-based Systems (KB3172985) on these dates:

• 2016-07-14
• 2016-07-15
• 2016-07-15
• 2016-07-16
• 2016-07-18

This event is no small matter. Once the update has been downloaded, each event has exactly the same pattern:

• It takes about 10 minutes to shutdown and install the changes,
• It then takes about 10 minutes to back out the changes when it finds that the update has not been successful.
• It then takes about 10 minutes to restart the system and restore the old settings.

In a human, to keep trying to solve the same problem with the same unsuccessful solution is reckoned to be a sign of madness.
In computers, this sort of thing is sometimes referred to as "a bad loop" (a program error).
As I write this, a fresh attempt at the same update has been scheduled by the system for 0530hrs. The cumulative time spent in this failed update loop so far is 5 x 30mins = 2.5hrs.

There would have been more failed update attempts, but I have avoided the system being shut down - if it is shut down or restarted, then the failed update will be moronically attempted yet again, taking 30 minutes each tome to run its course.
I am unspeakably annoyed by this.

Nice one Microsoft.

I have posted a comment about this problem on the MS page for: Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1511 for x64-based Systems (KB3172985), but am not holding my breath.

1588

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias for choosing program based on file extension

« Last post by IainB on July 19, 2016, 02:16 AM »

Nifty! (Assuming it works - I haven't had time to try it yet.)   

1589

Living Room / Re: better battery life out of a laptop

« Last post by IainB on July 19, 2016, 01:49 AM »

...Or somebody trips over your power chord, or there's an outage, or if you just happen to be unlucky and get that once-in-a-blue-moon-BSOD. Windows is pretty stable these days, as long as you're running Vista or later, but bad things can happen. I'm not very fond of losing work.
______________________________

-f0dder (July 18, 2016, 08:54 AM)

My comments were framed in the context of laptops (with batteries included - as per the opening post) ... so, "...somebody trips over your power chord" would probably be unlikely to be an issue.  In fact, that 's one of the things that I got to really appreciate about laptops when, some years back whilst I was working in Manila (Philippines) where they had a horrendously unstable power grid, with brownouts regularly occurring, and normal grid supply was spiky anyway, my trusty laptop was isolated from any such power-supply problems. (Having access to and use of a reliable laptop computer at such times was an essential job requirement.)

The possibility of BSOD events was what I was obliquely referring to with "...unless the OS is unstable, of course." I usually recommend a risk-averse approach. If the system gets regular BSODs then system stability is an issue and a risk, and I would not necessarily recommend using a RAMdisk until that issue/risk had been addressed/mitigated. Similarly, if work that was being done on the laptop was mission-critical and (say) a BSOD event was untenable, then I would generally only recommend a RAMdisk for \Temp (at the very most).
To put things into perspective: Similarly, if work that was mission-critical was being carried out on a laptop, then I would be skeptical of that system being necessarily conducive to passing for a pukka risk-averse approach anyway.

For me, inherent system efficiency and minimal risk of system outage and/or data loss tend to be 2 main criteria for using a laptop. I would be ambivalent towards the idea of what you mention (though personally I would prefer to avoid time-consuming flush intervals and would opt for a hard disk) where you write:

Sure, you can use a ramdisk that flushes to disk at set intervals, but then you still have the drive spinning up and down every now and then. Doing that too often is not good for drive health, and losing 30 minutes of work can be a real bummer.
______________________________

Similarly, on any computer system, if a loss of some primary data store, for example (say) browser history, is really untenable because it is (say) mission-critical, then I would recommend an auto-logging or syncing of a trailing parallel duplicate/secondary cache - to hard disk or SSD - and regular back-up of both primary and secondary.
My above comment To put things into perspective for laptops would also apply here though, of course, and I would add the need for disk encryption.

My idea of an ideal and risk-averse laptop system would probably be a Tandem Non-Stop laptop (with secondary/backup batteries included!) - if there ever were such a thing.   
I don't expect it would be very energy-efficient though...   

1590

Living Room / Re: recommendations for a free web host

« Last post by IainB on July 18, 2016, 11:16 PM »

Take a hunt around here: http://www.acme.com



The URL for that is: http://www.acme.com/...oftware/micro_httpd/
I wondered whether it was a genuine site, because it popped up unasked for, when I had a slow response to a 192.168.1.1 router admin page request, so I have no idea how it actually got there, onto my browser, but I took a look and it seemed like it could potentially be quite useful (no warning messages from Malwarebytes about it). Clever marketing to get it to "pop up" like that (though it wasn't a pop-up).
The domain address http://www.acme.com   says:

ACME Laboratories   
Graphics * Unix * Networks * Fun
Purveyors of fine freeware since 1972. On the net since 1991. ...
_______________________________

It's an interesting site, and includes references to secure and "lite" own-website hosting software.
I thought of using some of the software to replace the static website hosting I currently have on Google Drive. The latter service is to be killed off by Google around 29 July 2016, with the suggestion that one could replace it with what seems to be an incredibly techno-obfuscated and tortuous approach seemingly designed to make you NOT want to use it.

EDIT: 2016-07-22
Refer also Google Drive webhosting functionality to be shut down. (AOBTD)

1591

Living Room / Re: better battery life out of a laptop

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2016, 09:16 PM »

1.  ...Don't even consider running editing on a ramdrive - it's simply too much grief if you lose your work. There's a good chance there will be enough background I/O anyway that your main drive wouldn't spin down... aaaand they don't even use that much power.
____________________

-f0dder (July 16, 2016, 03:40 PM)

Hmm. I think you may find with most RAMdrives nowadays that stability is probably not an issue - unless the OS is unstable, of course.   
A good example would be using a dynamic RamDisk with (say) ImDisk Toolkit. I've been trialling that for a few months now, and it has performed superbly. It's a simple set-up-and-forget service, and quite trouble-free.   

2. ...Screen is definitely the biggest power drain, especially when you're not running anything compute-intensive
____________________

-f0dder (July 16, 2016, 03:40 PM)

Yes. I've always assumed this to be likely, though I didn't collect any data to back it up.

3. ...the hardware change that would be most likely to get you more battery life would be, well, the battery - especially if the computer is more than a couple of years old. Batteries wear out over time.
____________________

-f0dder (July 16, 2016, 03:40 PM)

Yes. A failing battery is a PITA. A new/second and/or larger capacity laptop battery is a worthwhile investment and reduces such annoyances. Extends the happy/useful working life of the laptop and the user experience too.   

4....A SSD might be a good option - you might not get much extra battery life out of it, but it's a big quality of life thing. Less noise, faster program startup, much reduced vibration (nice if you use the laptop in your lap). And do be careful to check reviews first: in laptop situations (especially when it's been possible to spin down the disk), some brands have actually ended up being more power-hungry than traditional disks.
____________________

-f0dder (July 16, 2016, 03:40 PM)

Yes, I would intuitively expect shorter start-up times for SSDs, though never having used an SSD I wouldn't know for sure. An improved user experience would probably be the telling factor there.
However, I do wonder what hard disk drives you have had that reduced your QOL by vibrating or being too noisy.   
I mean, I have never experienced such problems on a laptop hard drive (even failing drives), over the years. It's generally the fan(s) that will tend to vibrate and/or become too noisy, because the heat-exchanger is clogged-up by bits of airborne fluff and flakes of dead skin to the extent that the waste temperature rises through lack of adequate cooling, so more power is fed to the fans to improve the cooling. Taking apart and thoroughly cleaning the heat-exchanger grill, the fan enclosure (and the fan blades too), and a shot of CRC on the fan spindle usually transforms it into a cool and as-good-as-new state, believe me.   

Oh, and for a cool-running, long-lived and more trouble-free laptop, DO NOT rest the laptop on fabric or on your lap! Place it on a smooth surface (e.g., a tray) which is resting on your lap or on some fabric, and place a 1½-inch long pencil eraser in the centre under the back edge of the laptop (try it out). There's minimal restriction to the airflow that way (and see above re fluff, etc.). Be kind to your laptop.   

1592

Living Room / Re: better battery life out of a laptop

« Last post by IainB on July 17, 2016, 08:22 PM »

Wow, I added 30% to the battery life, without a single hardware change...
Just changed the background of the translation software (which I run full screen) from white-grey to black-blackish. Now the battery lasts roughly 4 hours instead of the previous 3.
________________________

-eleman (July 16, 2016, 02:09 AM)

That's interesting. Intuitively, that's what one would expect. I do most of my reading in the Bazqux RSS aggregator (on my laptop), with the display set (via NoSquint) to phosphor green on a black background (that's real easy on the eyes, and very easy to read), and those websites that I tend to use the most I have set so they are displayed as black-on-grey background.
So I will probably be reducing power consumption by the screen display, in those cases. I would like to have some data on that, but have no real way of measuring it.

1593

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by IainB on July 15, 2016, 11:15 PM »

I find a clipboard tool (of course I use my own, CHS) an excellent emergency backup for such occasions.  All I have to do is Ctrl+A then Ctrl+C and I've got a copy of the text in its current version saved in case of a crash.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who uses a clipboard tool for such purposes.
______________________________

-mouser (July 13, 2016, 04:49 PM)

Yes, I'll second that. That's what I do (have done for ages) - use CHS (though any Clipboard Manager would probably do as well).
I did try Text Editor Anywhere, but, though it's quite useful, it's not as easy/simple to use as CHS, and it imposes a complexity and system overhead that I could probably do without.

1594

Living Room / Logitech Unifying software permanently alters mouse firmware? How to revert it?

« Last post by IainB on July 15, 2016, 05:48 AM »

I wondered whether any DCF denizens could help to unravel a problem with this unifying process.
Using Win10 the other day, I experimentally took 3 meeces (Logitech M185, M215, M515).
They all worked fine, separately, using their 3 separate, individual/unique dongles. They used the USB device "Logitech HID-compliant cordless mouse".
As M515 was a Unifying dongle, I downloaded the Unifying software from Logitech support.
Then I installed it and, using the unifying software, paired the 3 meece to the M515 dongle. It worked a treat. Very impressive. The UI can display a report of the battery status (if the software can fetch the battery status) and the firmware version of each mouse paired.
Then I unpaired them all. That seemed to work fine too, according to the UI report.
However, when I then tried to use M185 with its own dongle, it simply would not work. Same for M215 and M515.
So I re-installed the unifying software. Made no difference.
I then re-pared the meece (using the Unifying software) to the M515 dongle. It worked a treat, as before.
So, the unification seems to aggregate mice or other devices when it pairs, without discrimination, and it seems that the firmware within each mouse is changed on pairing, so THAT mouse can ONLY work through the unifying dongle, and henceforth THAT mouse cannot work through its original dongle as a "Logitech HID-compliant cordless mouse".

So, it seems that I may have just disabled 3 mice (or 2 at least), in testing out the Logitech pairing functionality.

What I would like to know is, if the mouse firmware has indeed been changed (as would seem to be the case, by deduction), then how can one revert/restore that firmware to its default initial state? Leaving the batteries out of the mouse for a while doesn't seem to do it.
I haven't been able to find any info on this so far, which is why I posted this curiosity here.

1595

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on July 13, 2016, 05:37 AM »

Mega is incorporated as an NZ company, and its articles of association, AGM decisions and shareholder changes, etc., are detailed on the NZ Companies Register: https://www.business.govt.nz/companies
It's a relatively transparent system that the public can access, and which needs to be easily accessible so that directors of NZ companies can update their company's status - e.g., file an Annual Return.

I was looking at the Mega details about a year ago, and it was evident that there had been a series of decisions by the Board to  accept significant changes to the ownership, and someone with a Chinese-looking name (could have been a Kiwi) appeared to have become a majority shareholder, with Dotcom progressively reducing his share to what looked like (from memory) a non-controlling or insignificant stake, whilst others had increased their shares/proportions. One shareholder in NZ seemed to have been allocated a small stake. I surmised that this was possibly as part of an employee share-incentive scheme. I did at the time wonder what was going on, as it certainly seemed that Dotcom was either being removed, or was removing himself, from any controlling interest on the Board. I wondered whether it was in anticipation of his deportation.

1596

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on July 12, 2016, 09:21 PM »

Well, it's now July 2016 and Dotcom apparently still hasn't been extradited from Kiwiland to Merika. Lots of appeals etc.
I guess, like well-matured cheeses, "These things take time.".

Meanwhile, prompted by this comment on DCF under Re: Interesting "stuff":

... Megaupload is coming back and your old account will still work ...

-Arizona Hot (July 12, 2016, 04:14 PM)

- I watched the video and then found this following and rather interesting video interview and report by VICE (they're usually pretty objective):
Kim Dotcom: The Man Behind Megaupload - https://www.youtube..../watch?v=gMxhIfG0MpY

1597

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by IainB on July 12, 2016, 09:12 PM »

@kalos: Did you try Text Editor Anywhere as suggested by @rjbull ?
That seemed like it might offer the most comprehensive recovery options overall.
The in-browser text editing recovery tools (Firefox and Chrome) otherwise all seem to be a bit iffy, in my experience.

I'm going to trial Text Editor Anywhere, anyway. Thanks @rjbull !   

1598

Screenshot Captor / Re: Updates to fix screen resolution errors using different res. monitors

« Last post by IainB on July 12, 2016, 07:53 PM »

@Clairvaux: In response to what you last commented - I am essentially saying that the visual/perception deficiencies that you experience in common with the OP by @Holisticmdwf are also experienced by me, but that CHS has options to adjust the fonts and colours to the extent that the UI becomes pretty much perfectly usable (try it as I suggested, and you will be able to see for yourself), whereas SC does not have similar UI adjustment options.

To some extent therefore, both SC and CHS could be described as "legacy" software, in that they were not necessarily developed to work under ("support") the current OS and hi-res screen technologies - the latter issue, for example, being as @tomos points out.
It seems that the newer computer technologies have taken us backwards in terms of the ergonomics of visual perception. The manufacturers and OS producers are largely responsible for this, but they seem to have treated it as an externality (i.e., SEP - Somebody Else's Problem). The experience of difficulty in reading some on-screen displays of information today - and which might have been perfectly legible on-screen a few years ago - cannot be simply ascribed to needing reading glasses, or something.
However, it is apparently left up to the developers to rewrite their program code to work around the new constraints, and I guess this will necessitate the commitment of time and effort by the developer(s) involved. In the case of SC and SCH, that would be @mouser, and he probably would be well aware of the problem, since on-screen legibility is certainly not a new issue.

1599

Screenshot Captor / Re: Updates to fix screen resolution errors using different res. monitors

« Last post by IainB on July 11, 2016, 07:50 PM »

I think what is being protested about here - problems experienced with perceiving the small fonts/icons in the windows/panels with SC (Screenshot Captor) and CHS (Clipboard Help & Spell) - is probably addressing what seems to be largely a symptom of the modern "Metro" OS interface.

Speaking as a dedicated user of SC and CHS, and as someone with eyesight problems, I started to experience difficulty in clearly reading post-Windows 7 OS screen displays - the earlier Windows versions were no real problem, but then with the post-Win7 OSes they became too "glary" and lacked clear distinction between objects on-screen, and this and the prettified pastel colour schemes, whilst perhaps being visually attractive, reduced visual object discrimination and made things ergonomically a perceptual PITA.
The rot probably started earlier, with the dumbing-down of things - e.g., MS Office "Ribbon" menus - where one had to have clearly distinguishable icons to memorise the functionality. Whilst that worked reasonably well under the Win7 OS and earlier, the clear distinguishability was reduced in post-Win7, and the smallish icons in SC and CHS were certainly made less easy to discern/distinguish between, though currently the CHS ones seem easier to distinguish to me than the SC ones - and I'm not sure why that is, but it is probably a difference between the way in which objects are output to the display by the two proggies (SC and CHS).
The "Metro" interface was apparently an attempt to make a generic vanilla interface for all devices, and though it might have worked on the little smartphone screens, it seems to be a vague, glary perceptual mess on an LCD laptop display.
 
Having said that, To adjust CHS UI colours and fonts: Go to the Menu View | Options | Custom Appearance where, with some experimentation and trial-and-error, you will be able to set things pretty much to your heart's content (this is what I have found, in any event). Kudos to @mouser for having had the apparent foresight to build-in that functionality - and a lot more besides - to CHS.

As for SC, the option to modify the appearance of the UI simply isn't there to the same extent that it is in CHS. For the SC icons, as a workaround, I just try to memorise the relative on-screen positions of whichever tiny and blurry/glary icons I generally use the most. Spectacles don't help much either.

The biggest problem I have had for a while now with both SC and CHS under the post-Win7 OSes is trying to read the Options screens, which currently have non-adjustable fonts and which have now become relatively tiny in the post-Win7 OSes. The lines making up the characters seem to be just one pixel thick!   

1600

Living Room / Re: better battery life out of a laptop

« Last post by IainB on July 10, 2016, 02:51 PM »

^^ Yes, BlackViper is an old reliable stand-by. With Win10 though, I don't really need to Disable too many services, just set them from Automatic to Manual.

By the way, I just added a 12th item to my list above.