Recent Posts

2251

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Dayu Disk Master Pro giveaway

« Last post by IainB on May 08, 2015, 03:19 AM »

The GOTD Disk Master Pro giveaway looks enticing, but pay attention to what @MilesAhead says.
It parallels my own experience, where I have learned to be wary of anything from GOTD.
Risky. Potentially nothing but trouble.

2252

Screenshot Captor / Re: Automatic take a screenshor if part of the screen changes

« Last post by IainB on May 08, 2015, 03:08 AM »

Interesting idea.
That might also be handy in the case of (say) where you are running through a security CCTV recording of a fixed view where the scene was rarely-changing, looking for any incidents, and wanted to automate the detection of a scene-change.
If you did that, you would probably need to ensure that the screenshot captured the video elapsed time counter as well, to establish at what point the screenshot occurs in the video.

Having said that, it would probably be better/faster to establish the occurrence of a scene-change by scanning the video data itself, rather than a display of the video.
Mind you, I gather that  neither of the above methods are likely to be able to capture the movement of an alien life-form across the scene. We know that because no-one has so far succeeded in capturing an image of them as they move amongst us.

2253

Screenshot Captor / Re: Delete or cut and paste selected region

« Last post by IainB on May 08, 2015, 02:17 AM »

To Copy:

• Select the region you are interested in.
• Ctrl+C will copy that region to the clipboard, and you can paste it wherever you want, from the Clipboard.

To Delete:

• Select the region you are interested in.
• Note: You cannot delete the selected area using the Delete key.
• You can effectively delete it by obscuring it or completely overwriting the selected area with one of the many options - for example (say), overlay it with a note, or a blank area for a note, or use one of the selections from the SpecialFX1 or SpecialFX2 ("Patch text/contents of selected region with background" is pretty nifty.)
• You could also delete it by overlaying it with another image clipped from somewhere else.

If you are making multiple copies - (say) each one a different area of an image - for pasting elsewhere later, then consider using CHS (Clipboard Help & Spell) as an aid in this. CHS will store and display all the clips on demand, for you to choose for subsequent pasting at a later time/date.

2254

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

« Last post by IainB on May 07, 2015, 09:01 AM »

@Renegade: Well, some people (not me, you understand) might say that this is simply batsh#t crazy, but I couldn't possibly comment.

My mother always reckoned that people who were slightly mad or ill-suited to, and unable to function happily and properly in open society, but who were nevertheless well-intentioned and posed no real threat to society, were generally best kept in safe places where they could live without harm from the rest of society and maybe fulfil some useful purpose. She said that in the old days, it was unfortunately the lunatic asylum and the poor-houses where they tended to end up, but society had adapted and made the most of these peoples' limited abilities to cope with and/or contribute to society - examples being nuns in convents, monks in monasteries, and academics in ivory towers, most of whom perform often valuable services to their community/society.

In New Zealand, they have broken from a somewhat disgraceful historical tendency to throw anybody "different" into a lunatic asylum, where the inhabitants were then variously abused, tortured and experimented upon, and who then became thoroughly institutionalised and completely unable to cope in the outside world. The break came when the IHC organisation (which grew from the Society for Intellectually Handicapped Children), hit on the idea of putting these intellectually handicapped/retarded or just slightly mad people out to live in houses scattered throughout towns, which the IHC had bought for that purpose. There was an uproar and formalised protest aplenty from people who would fearfully exclaim, "I don't want no crazy people living next door to me and my family!", but it quietened down when nothing bad seemed to come of it.
My house happened to be next door to one of the first IHC houses to be used in this grand experiment. I used to chat to the inhabitants over the garden fence, and I recall one in particular - a woman who was stuck at the mental age of 11 or so. She would stick her head out of her upstairs bedroom window, which overlooked our garden, wanting to chat to anyone in our family who went out into the garden. Apart from being a bit of a persistent nuisance, she was no problem at all - just a child. She died from a broken neck in a fall downstairs - pushed accidentally, I think, whilst playing with some of the inmates of the house. We all rather missed her.

2255

DC Gamer Club / A Few Hundred More Retro Games To Enjoy For Free.

« Last post by IainB on May 07, 2015, 07:26 AM »

A Few Hundred More Retro Games To Enjoy For Free | Gizmo's Freeware
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Submitted by rob.schifreen | Last update on 6th May, 2015 - 9:22am

If the terms "Jet Set Willy" or "Manic Miner" or "Jetpac" are familiar to you, you probably remember a home computer from the 1980s called the Sinclair Spectrum. It was designed and made in Britain, but also popular around the world. Many of its most popular games became classics, and it's now possible to play many of them on your PC via an emulator. You'll need to be using the Chrome browser to try this. Assuming that you are, head to https://chrome.googl...ccy-portable/jfkpejk... to download the Unreal Speccy Portable add-on, which includes the Spectrum emulator and a load of ready-to-play games. Note that the installer will probably put an icon on your desktop, from which you can launch the emulator. In my own tests, there was no obvious way to start it from within the browser itself.

2256

DC Gamer Club / Wizard101 - online game $FREE and $PAID membership

« Last post by IainB on May 07, 2015, 07:23 AM »

Summary: Go play it - Wizard101.

Description of why:
My now 13 ½yo daughter and one of her friends have been playing the online game Wizard101 ($FREE) for a year or more, and they introduced it to my now 4½yo when he had turned 4, since which time he has proceeded to develop and train 6 wizards in his account (6 is the max no. of wizards allowed in an account) from 6 different magical "schools" - there are 7 schools in all. Wizard 101 seems t be loosely-based on the model of "wizard school" as set out in the Harry Potter stories.
My son has brought up his wizards from where they started at Level 1, to now Levels 14 to 20 (levels go up to a hundred, but you probably would have to become a paying member for that. On the way to getting to this point, he has developed and later deleted some wizards where he made mistakes or choices in their development and where he wanted to see if he could do better or differently by starting them afresh, or trying another school.

Not only is the game fun to play, but it is rather complex, and if the player wants to aim for optimum development and duelling skills (against other wizards and against baddies) of any given wizard, then the playing choices are confusingly multi-faceted and interwoven/interdependent to some extent. I started playing the game with him, helping him along, and by the time I had rather lost interest in it, he had started to become proficient, and he has now gone on to discover things about the game that I had not known of or understood, and I would say that he now understands the game well and in many instances better than I do. The thing that I reckoned would hold him back was his inability to read. Though there are audio tracks where people artefacts in the game give hints and "Quests" for players to undertake (the audio being presented at the same time as text), there are large chunks of the game that necessitate reading skills and numerical comparison of things like health points, mana, spell strengths, etc.

To my great surprise, he has done what I have read about children doing - they memorise the pattern of a word or phrase, and can tell you what it "says", without being able to properly read - so his memory skills are being developed. Furthermore, his numerical comparison and reasoning skills have been raised so that he can cope on his own and no longer needs my help in playing, except in some of the most complicated tasks around arranging an optimum mix for a wizard's skills, powers and magical equipment (redolent of the old RPG approach, but done in a GUI).

The above just scratches the surface of Wizard101. Non-paying members find that they are stuck in the main, initial realm, and unable to proceed to play the game in some specific certain places in that realm, until they start to pay $ to join up. However, apart from this limitation, the game is not crippled and can continue to be played for free in the initial realm, discovering new parts that open up to a wizard as he/she ascends the skill levels.

Wizards have finite max. stores of health points and mana points. As the wizard develops, the max levels increase, and can be further augmented/increased by using appropriate magical paraphernalia. Health and mana need to be recharged after they have been reduced in the game (in using magic and in undertaking magic duels), and there are floating "wisps" that wizards can bump into to get a small recharge.
To get from A to B - and there's a lot of that to be done (maps help to teach you the lie of the land) - Wizards can either walk/run, or travel on a "mount" (e.g., including flying broomsticks and flying dragons). After they get to a certain level, they can also "teleport" from one place to another, which uses up a small amount of mana each time.
If a $FREE-playing wizard has made a "friend" of a wizard on a $PAID account in a higher level, then the first wizard can teleport to their friend - whether the latter is in the same realm, or in his castle, or in a different realm - to play, and at no cost. Very shrewd of the game developers to offer "sampling" like that.

All in all, Wizard 101 seems to be a superb game, and one that I would highly recommend - for game adepts and for children of 4yo and over, alike. It would be great fun for the former, and almost certainly developmental for the latter - and possibly for their parents too!   

2257

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.223.01 - April 28, 2015

« Last post by IainB on May 07, 2015, 05:09 AM »

@mouser: Regarding the difficult-to-read Options panel of FARR:
The FARR Options panel still has small fonts that are difficult-to-read.
The CHS Options panel has fonts that look a bit different, just as small, but which are not so difficult-to-read.
The ProcessTamer Options panel has fonts that look different again, just as small, but which are not so difficult-to-read.
The ScreenshotCaptor Options panel has fonts that look near-identical to the CHS Options panel.

After close inspection, I think the FARR fonts look as though they are less thick (maybe not so many pixels wide/dense?), but I can't be sure.

It occurred to me that these applications may not all use the same display output standards, and that if you were to standardise them to a common display output standard - (say) one that matched CHS or ScreenshotCaptor - then the problem for those users' displays affected might go away.
If you did that, then it might be a good idea to increase the font size used as a standard as well, since it could well be borderline-legible for many users wearing reading glasses or (like me) laptop-reading glasses. (The latter have lower magnification and a deeper depth-of-field to reading glasses.)

2258

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.223.01 - April 28, 2015

« Last post by IainB on May 07, 2015, 04:30 AM »

@mouser:
    Looks like it's all fixed from my perspective.   
That is, unlike @phitsc, I get all 4 (not just Nos. 1 and 2) of the test alias searches to work OK now.
This is using FARR v2.224.01 (Beta), which I just now downloaded and installed.
The 4 search strings are (as above):

1. C:\Users\Iain\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome SxS\Application\chrome.exe https://duckduckgo.com
2. C:\Users\Iain\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome SxS\Application\chrome.exe "https://duckduckgo.com"
3. "C:\Users\Iain\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome SxS\Application\chrome.exe" https://duckduckgo.com
4. "C:\Users\Iain\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome SxS\Application\chrome.exe" "https://duckduckgo.com"

The test PC is a Toshiba Satellite L855D laptop,  and OS is Win8.1-64 PRO, with all auto-updates current to date.

2259

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Project questions

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 11:21 PM »

Sorry. I thought this thread was about helping Kalos with MS Project.
_________________________

-DerekHal (May 06, 2015, 12:14 PM)

My apologies. I can quite see why you would say/think this at this point. You are arguably not entirely wrong in your approach so far, nor entirely right. The focus is, or was, on helping Kalos with his questions.

After years of lecturing, consulting and generally trying to maintain a politely helpful and positive approach to people's questions (including being a Help Desk second-tier technical support specialist and a volunteer on aardvark, and setting up and managing Service Desk operations), I eventually decided on four basic rules:

• Rule 1: that there is no limit to our ignorance (including mine), and I should accept that;
• Rule 2: to limit the contribution of my cognitive surplus to such people and their infinite ignorance/questions, by encouraging them to take more responsibility for seeking out/discovering their own answers (which is how I generally go about reducing my own level of ignorance).
• Rule 3: that people generally seem to have little respect for and to have a limited capacity to internalise answers/knowledge which have come too easily to them, so generally avoid giving them any answers.
• Rule 4: in any event, avoid "telling them the answer" or pushing my opinion forwards without substantiation in theory, experience and good practice (this takes work to communicate).

When I have strayed from these rules, I have usually regretted it.

Therefore, IF I decide to assist people at all, then - and even if I think that I know the answer already - I nowadays usually google it or DuckGo it, or check Wikipedia (say) or RTFM for them, and then send them the results or source links, with the suggestion that  they could probably get even more useful information if they hunted around a bit more themselves or (say) played about with a google (or other) search string.

So where I do decide to help people with their questions, my greatest contribution is by doing what I have generally found to be most effective - simply stick with making the effort to try to help people to help themselves - and I put quite a bit of work into that effort.

Having been responsible for recruiting, managing and coaching project managers, for the coaching I would usually take the approach above, and which I also took in this case.
I suppose I could have added a reference to: https://duckduckgo.c...S+Project+Inside+Out

The implications of this would probably be apparent in the context of (say) this discussion thread.

2260

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3: Google Cloud - the BS is strong in this one

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 08:24 AM »

There is an announcement dated 2015-05-05 on the Google Cloud Platform blog:
Announcing Google Cloud Bigtable: The same database that powers Google Search, Gmail and Analytics is now available on Google Cloud Platform

Amongst the verbiage, it gives a list of "key benefits", which list also makes the classic confusion of features with benefits. One of these "benefits is described thus:

Security: Cloud Bigtable is built with a replicated storage strategy, and all data is encrypted both in-flight and at rest.

Pretty impressive, eh?
Yes, but it set my BS alarm off. What exactly does "in-flight and at rest" mean? Well, it's using ambiguous clichés, so it could mean anything you wanted, or more probably it means nothing, but the desired implication would seem to be  that everything is safely encrypted and cannot be decrypted or viewed by other parties. So why didn't they just say so? Probably because if they did say that, it would not be true/provable, and they don't want to lie about it because it could not be confirmed in contract, and they know that very well and so just obfuscate instead. Heck, this "announcement" is only a marketing puff, after all.

In other - possibly related - news, it might not have escaped your attention that Dropbox have announced that they are setting up data storage farms in Ireland to house all the data belonging to their business users and other paying customers outside of North America.
Now why would they do that?     

2261

N.A.N.Y. 2015 / Re: NANY 2015 Release - Splat (Simple Program Launching and Termination)

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 07:51 AM »

Ah, stuck with it. Thanks for explaining.

2262

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Project questions

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 07:32 AM »

@TaoPhoenix: Heh, heh. Apposite and droll. 

2263

General Software Discussion / Re: Nemo - it's like Outlook Calendar for files

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 05:54 AM »

Just out of curiosity I downloaded the Nemo Documents desktop application and tried it out, yesterday. It is still $FREE.
Quite a good GUI, and very fast/responsive, with the ability to attach labels and Person (email contacts).
You would need to buy the email component to enable the Person (email contacts) component - which could potentially be quite a useful feature.
To make best use of Nemo, it needs to be running all the time, as it apparently keeps its file status catalogues up-to-date by hooking-in with WDS Indexing and NTFS.

The current/latest version is now Nemo Documents v1.3.2 (of update 2014-02-25).

I don't think I'll keep this installed though, as it doesn't really offer me anything that I think I need or could use, though the feature for file labelling - singly or en masse - also could potentially be quite a useful feature.

2264

General Software Discussion / Re: moving data from desktop to laptop

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 04:15 AM »

I do not see that there is anything preventing the user from removing the hard drive from the old PC, connecting said drive to a suitable drive carrier, and plugging the latter as a peripheral device, into (say) a USB port on the laptop.

-IainB (May 06, 2015, 02:47 AM)

Lacking technical skills perhaps? Or maybe bravery
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-Ath (May 06, 2015, 03:22 AM)

Oh, I don't know that's right.
The only skills I needed to do that the first time involved the use of a screwdriver or two and the ability to disconnect/reconnect the appropriate bits and pieces, according to the instructions. It was surprisingly simple/easy.
Nowadays it's just a repeatable process, for me.

After plugging in the peripheral drive to my laptop, all that is involved is using Windows Explorer (or similar) to move software files and data files from A to B.
That would seem to be considerably simpler than some of the approaches being considered above - e.g., including LapLink.
I always used to use LapLink to migrate stuff before that.

2265

General Software Discussion / Re: moving data from desktop to laptop

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 02:47 AM »

I are confuzzled here. Sorry if I have misread something in the original post, but I do not see that there is anything preventing the user from removing the hard drive from the old PC, connecting said drive to a suitable drive carrier, and plugging the latter as a peripheral device, into (say) a USB port on the laptop.
(That's what I usually do, at any rate.)

2266

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

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 02:36 AM »

Epic line from a Spam that just appeared here (which will be gone soon but the line deserves to be laughed at!)
(Solemn visage and voice, like a C rate wise man.)
"After washing that person precisely before you go to sleep, night products should be applied just."
 
_________________________

-TaoPhoenix (May 06, 2015, 02:09 AM)

That is a pretty good example of Engrish as she is spoke.
However, the subject of that particular spam post rather shook me to my foundations:

"cause despair or can induce a headache"
_________________________

I kid you not: that line is absolutely straight out of my Eng.Lit. master's report on me after a particularly gruelling semester at high school.
It was a turning point for me, because it was an improvement on the previous semester's report which had been pretty bad, I can tell you.

2267

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 02:15 AM »

This might be considered humor if it wasn't so sad...
Texas School Suspends 9-Year-Old For Terrorism Because He Brought Imaginary Hobbit Ring To Class
____________________

-wraith808 (May 05, 2015, 08:08 AM)

I'm not too surprised to read that the school suspended him. After all, the teachers must have been scared stiff until they realised that it actually wasn't a real Hobbit ring - invisible or not.
One can't be too careful. The precautionary principle needs to be applied at all times, especially when it is a well-known fact that shadows can and indeed sometimes do jump out at you and attack you.
We should thank our lucky stars. If we didn't have teachers and others in positions of authority standing by on vigilant guard for things such as these, then where would we be?

2268

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 02:01 AM »

...And people wonder why I think that the education system as it is should be entirely scrapped. Viscously. Without mercy. Without remorse. With fury and fire. ...
________________________

-Renegade (May 05, 2015, 10:59 AM)

Either @Renegade has been chatting with our friend Mrs Malaprop again, or there may be reason to suspect that he is not a real person per se, but an AI connected to the Internet. Hard to explain that away as "just a typo" methinks.

2269

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Project questions

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 01:44 AM »

@DerekHal:
Good answer, but now you've gawn an' done it.
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 \/

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Chinese proverb.

2270

Living Room / Re: can anyone help me grab these pics

« Last post by IainB on May 06, 2015, 01:31 AM »

I looked at the webpage source, found the list in an onLoad() function, at around line 310.
______________________________

-ayryq (April 28, 2015, 01:29 PM)

Yes, the URL for all 13 images are detailed there if you right-click and select "View page source" in Firefox.
I wanted to view them, so tried "View page info.", but could only view one image at a time (the one selected or default on the web page).
So I tried the image-finding tool (a Firefox extension) called FoxySpider - refer Re: Firefox Extensions: FoxySpider - useful image-finding tool
That was actually excellent for viewing not just the 13 images for that property, but also stacks of other images not shown on that particular page.
Caveat: The discussion thread at the link shows that FoxySpider tries to scan for and collect as much as it can, which will tend to make it a resource hog if there are very large-size image files present on the webpage(s) being scanned.

2271

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« Last post by IainB on May 05, 2015, 02:10 PM »

Yes, it seems to be quite common to find one's own discussion on a subject coming up in a search on that subject.
Almost real-time computing.

You wrote:
"the results are only drivers when you scrutinize them closer."

Yes, and for Linux and Windows OS. But did you notice the dates on some of the files mentioned? e.g., 1998.
In my comments above, I was trying to avoid saying that I thought modems went out with the Ark. There - now I've said it! In light of which, I would recommend that you reconsider your requirements and so exclude the modem.

One can steel oneself to do these things if one has to. For example, I threw out my approx. 12 y/old  HP DeskJet 1220C A3 printer only a couple of weeks ago, some months after having already replaced it with the Brother MFC-J65IODW A3 lnkjet printer, FAX, scanner.

2272

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« Last post by IainB on May 05, 2015, 12:54 PM »

I would have thought the answer to that was pretty obvious, actually, you ingrate.
That is, it's probably "No".
But this looked interesting: https://duckduckgo.c...+based+LSI+USB+modem

I do apologise for trying to help you.

2273

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« Last post by IainB on May 05, 2015, 12:47 PM »

I am using my own router for incoming faxes.
But for outgoing I would prefer a free software solution.
Doesn't anybody know a free fax software.
__________________________

-brahman (May 05, 2015, 12:09 PM)

I just did a DuckGo search on "free fax software" and came up with quite a lot of what looked like potentially useful stuff. Try it yourself and you will see! https://duckduckgo.c...?q=free+fax+software
It included @mwb1100's response as well

2274

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« Last post by IainB on May 05, 2015, 12:42 PM »

Thanks for the suggestion.
Won't work for me. I live on several continents. I need software only functionality.
_____________________________________

-brahman (May 05, 2015, 09:32 AM)

Ahh, I didn't know that. New information belatedly revealed as to requirements/constraints. (Why do people do that when asking for help?)
I would therefore answer almost exactly as per @mwb1100 above. In fact, I would have answered that straightaway if I had known of your constraints, since that was exactly the approach that I used when I was working across several continents/countries a few years back.

2275

General Software Discussion / Re: Most advanced tagging functionalities? - Tabbles, R.I.P.

« Last post by IainB on May 05, 2015, 12:20 PM »

In trying to review the latest Tabbles updates, I found that it looks like Tabbles is dead, with no explanation as to why:

• There's an inactive site at: https://github.com/tabbles/
• There's a 404 at: http://tabbles.net/
• After doing some searching, I gathered that Tabbles was linked to "Yellow Blue Soft, UAB" - looks like that is/was registered in Lithuania by a 1-man company, a person (developer, I think) called Andrea D'intino (direktorius).
• Wayback has some backups of http://tabbles.net/, but none of the latest/last website pages, it seems
• Latest version was v3.1.22, or something, and I can't seem to download it from anywhere.

Must be a lesson in there somewhere...

Pity. I thought that it had potential, though I couldn't install MYSQL and run Tabbles on my laptop, so was obliged to run the Cloud-based version until my laptop died.