Recent Posts

176

Living Room / Re: Happy New Year 2018 - Share new years resolutions or best practices?

« Last post by Target on January 01, 2018, 11:17 PM »

It seems to me there is a mind virus on this thread..

-mouser (January 01, 2018, 08:02 PM)

that sure wood screw things up a bit, and if it wasn't for you we miter got away with it!

177

Living Room / Re: Happy New Year 2018 - Share new years resolutions or best practices?

« Last post by Target on January 01, 2018, 03:19 PM »

Just scroll up to see the look on my face.

-mouser (January 01, 2018, 11:26 AM)

now he's got a scroll saw...

178

General Software Discussion / Re: save to text or print to file in chrome

« Last post by Target on December 20, 2017, 06:04 PM »

so you've succinctly summarised the same issue all big businesses/bureaucracies have, pressure to 'succeed'

FWIW I've been banging on about automation to anyone that will listen for years, and its only in the last 12 months that there has been any focus on it.  That said its more to do with the latest management fad of 'digitisation' (and oh man, do I hate that term) than anything I've ever said

But again, this is a business that doesn't recognise efficiency - the tools they built are only replacements for the workarounds we've had in place for years, and some still don't work properly (if at all).  Yet on the back of 'delivering' these boons to productivity they cut our staffing by half...

way to make a wheel squeak...

but we digress, AFAICS the chrome issue is nothing to do with my use case, but more to do with Google determining how I will use the browser.  I fail to see why I don't get to decide what I want to do with whatever is open in the browser (it is in fact its none of their business, or perhaps it is their business and they're failing to deliver). 

179

General Software Discussion / Re: save to text or print to file in chrome

« Last post by Target on December 19, 2017, 11:14 PM »

sadly I work for a big company, which is to say that inefficiency is the norm (no matter what management might say to the contrary)

There is zero chance that the data could be made available in any other format, or via any other means, and certainly not on the scale that we're talking about here (I'm only one of several thousand users, and I do this in order to make these reports usable to others)

180

General Software Discussion / Re: save to text or print to file in chrome

« Last post by Target on December 19, 2017, 09:39 PM »

@Target: Ah, you seem to have added some new factors there that were apparently not mentioned in your OP.

Could you tell us what you are wanting to do with the text a- e.g., how it is to be stored and later used?
That might help.

use case is irrelevant, though FWIW the resultant text files are processed by some VBA macro's for spreadsheeting/analysis

The files are standard reports out of a mainframe sent to a line printer daemon for download.  Presumably the archiving is an attempt to minimise storage requirements.

The issue here is that Chrome doesn't provide me with the capability to save the files as plain text (which is what I need).  Instead it assumes that I must only want certain formats

frankly i don't like chrome.  And I don't like IE.  I used to be a FF fanboy, but they've spoilt that too...  Sadly in this situation these are my only choices, and it feels like they're all colluding to produce a far less efficient and productive toolset...

181

Living Room / Re: Mechanical Keyboards

« Last post by Target on December 19, 2017, 07:00 PM »

and today I see a 75% code keyboard on MassDrop that looks ideal - unfortunately I'm not in a position to capitalise (and I'm very wary of the potential shipping costs  )

182

General Software Discussion / Re: save to text or print to file in chrome

« Last post by Target on December 19, 2017, 06:57 PM »

nothings ever simple. 

The files in question are plain text BUT if they are above a certain size their packed into GZip files.  There is an option to open them in a new window, but they're packed without an extension so chrome doesn't recognise them as plain text...

And FWIW while I usually only need them a few at a time, it's not uncommon to need 50 or 100 files, which makes the copy/paste route unviable

183

General Software Discussion / save to text or print to file in chrome

« Last post by Target on December 19, 2017, 12:46 AM »

does anyone know of an xtn that might allow me to either save a web page as text (it's actually plain txt, not HTML) or print it to a (txt) file?

I routinely have to download reports from our systems at work and it appears that chrome simply doesn't have this facility.  I have IE11 too, but when I save as text it introduces a whole bunch of artifacts that are throwing my processing tools off.  Then there's FF, which does do what I need, but I'm so over FF that this is the only thing I use it for and I'd like to consolidate if I could.

184

Living Room / Re: Mechanical Keyboards

« Last post by Target on December 18, 2017, 06:03 PM »

thanks Wraith, nice write up (exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for)

I'm primarily a gamer so I'd probably want to retain the function keys, but i like the look of those code keyboards

sadly I'm not in the US, so with conversion and shipping that would round out closer to double the price on their site

The cooler masters might be worth looking into, but again with shipping and conversion they're getting pricey (had a look and can't seem to find that particular model locally either, damnit)

185

Living Room / Re: Mechanical Keyboards

« Last post by Target on December 17, 2017, 08:45 PM »

ok, thats a decent recommendation, but I think I need to go a bit more teckonogical like...

It seems the major design choice when considering one of these things is the switch, and there's like a gazillion of them.  Some are loud, some aren't, some offer more resistance, some less, some are 'clicky', some aren't

And then there's the bits and pieces that go along with them, silencers, dampeners, stabilisers, flange diddlers, and so on

without spending a shirtload of money to buy all these things to test, how does one go about making a choice (the right choice?)

186

Living Room / Re: Mechanical Keyboards

« Last post by Target on December 17, 2017, 04:15 PM »

curious about recommendations for a mechanical keyboard nooby.

I'm interested in getting a tenkeyless board (nothing as extreme as 40%!) but all these switches and options mean nothing to me, and spending $140+ a time to test a keyboard isn't in my budget

187

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

« Last post by Target on December 12, 2017, 09:45 PM »

Two scientists walk into a bar...

"I'll have H2O" says the first...

"I'll have H2O, too" says the second...

The bartender gives them both water because he is able to distinguish the boundary tones that dictate the grammatical function of homonyms in coda position, as well as pragmatic context...

188

Living Room / Re: How can I blank out my laptop camera?

« Last post by Target on December 11, 2017, 11:00 PM »

Just put a piece of that lightly frosted scotch tape over the lens. It will still show as video, but appear badly out of focus ... Emulating an "equipment issue". 

-Stoic Joker (December 11, 2017, 03:06 PM)

then how will they appreciate those HUGE BREAST IMPLANTS?

189

Living Room / Re: How can I blank out my laptop camera?

« Last post by Target on December 10, 2017, 10:22 PM »

gotta say reading through this thread it sounds an awful lot like we're pimping for Kalos 

190

Living Room / Re: How can I blank out my laptop camera?

« Last post by Target on December 10, 2017, 07:08 PM »

What's the matter with all of you?

Never heard of glove puppets?

-cranioscopical (December 10, 2017, 05:16 PM)

and we're back to implants...

191

Living Room / Re: How can I blank out my laptop camera?

« Last post by Target on December 10, 2017, 03:15 PM »

yeah, those HUGE BREAST IMPLANTS are sure to do the trick...

192

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA Data extraction and convert to CSV

« Last post by Target on November 27, 2017, 03:17 PM »

I think he meant the OP could do it, just as until you posted, I was going to do it in Excel (didn't think about directly doing it in Access)

-wraith808 (November 27, 2017, 01:17 PM)

yup, thats where I was going.

I haven't used access for years, but I have done this before so I know its doable (could be he could do it directly from word too given how well integrated office is...)

193

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA Data extraction and convert to CSV

« Last post by Target on November 26, 2017, 11:46 PM »

should be able to do this (import a txt file, and parse to a table.query) directly using access

194

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

« Last post by Target on November 20, 2017, 10:21 PM »

damn but I hate showoffs like this 

195

DC Gamer Club / Re: fortnite...

« Last post by Target on November 16, 2017, 04:56 PM »

yep, thats the one.  It was probably a pointless post but I was just so frustrated I needed to vent a bit

Its quite a good game for if you're an FPS enthusiast, but as I said unless you're an expert out of the box it can be a hard grind (it can take longer to go through the staging process that it takes to get taken out, and having to do that over and over gets tedious...).

196

DC Gamer Club / Re: fortnite...

« Last post by Target on November 15, 2017, 07:43 PM »

https://www.google.c...Vdw4BdYM0gmGLSe9Ag0_

its a 'free' Moderately MOPG - there are 2 parts, the 'Battle Royale' is a 100 player deathmatch ala PUBG

197

DC Gamer Club / fortnite...

« Last post by Target on November 15, 2017, 07:19 PM »

<rant>
anyone playing fortnite?

gotta say this is one of the most frustrating games I've ever played.  Learning curve is relatively simple but the reality is quite steep

It could be fun, but there's no soft point of entry to learn tactics and weapons.

After 70 matches I've only had 20 kills - I've had 6 top 10 finishes, and on most of them I've gotten to that point without having actually seen another player.  On at least 2 I've gotten to that point armed only with the most basic pistol or machine gun and a handful of bandages which seriously doesn't cut it when you eventually do see someone...ok, they pretty much always see me, not so much me seeing them

I really want to enjoy this game, but it seriously wants to make me smash something
</rant>

198

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Excel? [Case Closed]

« Last post by Target on November 15, 2017, 01:57 AM »

please post the outcome so everyone that was interested can see

199

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Excel?

« Last post by Target on November 09, 2017, 06:38 PM »

as stated elsewhere you need to post the file (use dummy data if its sensitive)

Without an example any/all suggestions are likely to purely speculative as we have to guess the use case

200

General Software Discussion / Re: chrome has stopped working error...

« Last post by Target on October 08, 2017, 10:59 PM »

yep, done all those except for rolling back...

seems to be very common problem, and has been for some time, but the response from google appears to be a resounding meh...