Recent Posts

2251

Living Room / Re: Pac-man at Google Search...

« Last post by Shades on May 22, 2010, 02:48 PM »

Darn, I played it in the arcade...man I feel old.

2252

General Software Discussion / Re: Pros & Cons of a headless server?

« Last post by Shades on May 10, 2010, 09:39 PM »

Webmin is a decent solution for managing headless servers. If it isn't, then you should consider to not give that person access to the admin group of the server. Try FreeNAS if the desktop PC only has to act as server. That is a small linux distro created to be used in headless computers. With small I mean basic and to the point.

There is also a server edition from Ubuntu, which is preferable if the desktop pc is designated to server duty. From personal experience I can say that 9.04 is actually very reliable. It hasn't crashed on me since I have been using it over here on 5 year old hardware and a "flaky" power grid. Unfortunately I cannot say the same from my favorite distro OpenSUSE (10.1).

Your mileage may vary ofcourse, but as a general rule: use a server OS on a server PC.

2253

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: folder type templater

« Last post by Shades on May 08, 2010, 05:25 PM »

Directory Opus has this kind of functionality. My lack of experience with other filemanagers like XYexplorer, X2(lite),Total commander, etc. stops me from saying that they can do this too. I assume that DO is not the only one who has this problem tackled.

Unfortunately I am not familiar with any extensions for Explorer who can do what you ask for.

2254

DC Gamer Club / Re: Mechwarrior 4 is now FREE!

« Last post by Shades on May 06, 2010, 01:12 AM »

It looks way too dated for me. And playing it on 3GHz Dual Core with NVidia 9500 cards  (on XP) was not as smooth as expected, especially with the low quality graphics.

And where are the tactics gone?, Looks like a mech that is equipped with long range weapons is hardly useful as your CPU teammates just go and swarm the enemy. To me it is too much simplified.

Lets hope that the Mech mod for Crysis is a lot better in this regards as well (it beats the graphics from MW4 by a long shot).

2255

Living Room / Re: KVM switch woes -- any recommendations?

« Last post by Shades on May 03, 2010, 07:29 PM »

Try a software tool like Synergy or Synergy+ (a fork of Synergy). Both are open source. My personal experience with Synergy is very good and very reliable. Using it for years already on XP/2000/2003 systems without any problem.

There was another one, also free to use, but I forgot the name. Search this forum and you will find out.

2256

Living Room / Re: Donationcoder: How did you find it + What has your experience been like so far.

« Last post by Shades on April 25, 2010, 09:29 PM »

I hope you mean 'attention span'. With a term like 'too short time span' one could be tricked into thinking that you know the date and time of your departure...sounds kinda grim om a positive site as DC. 

2257

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« Last post by Shades on April 25, 2010, 09:22 PM »

+1 with what 40Hz said in the previous post.

@IanB (and maybe the rest of the DC crowd):
If you would walk here through the city center/shopping malls on any given day in the summer, you would utter the words: "Angelina who?" within 20 minutes.

In other words, not that impressed with Miss Jolie/missus Pitt

2258

General Software Discussion / Re: Alternatives to AnVir Task Manager

« Last post by Shades on April 19, 2010, 12:44 AM »

For a more hands-on approach you could try the (latest) SysInternals Suite. All the tools in this collection are free, come from the Microsoft TechNet site and are lean, mean, clean and best of all...free.

The raw power behind these tools is amazing, if you put in (some) study time. It is not really a one-click solution, but you will find replacements for a lot of commercial software.

Responding to the original question:

• ProcessExplorer - a very good task manager alternative and part of the SysInternals Suite,
• ProcessHacker - a very able task manager, quire similar to ProcessExplorer and open source. Admittedly, the name is not so trust inspiring, but don't let that stop you from trying this one.

2259

General Software Discussion / Re: Process Tamer speeds up my games & internet speed!

« Last post by Shades on April 18, 2010, 11:30 AM »

I used to make batch scripts that enabled/disabled services for what I was about to do. Gaming? Disable a lot of services that are not required by the game in question. Done gaming? Enable the services again.

This has never lead me into any trouble other than finding out which service is required for a game. Most people seem to think that all services need to run all the time, which is not the case.

Spending a bit of time with the cli command 'sc' and use what you find in simple batch scripts (together with a little bit of common sense) gains you more speed than any of the snake-oil mentioned in this thread. The black viper webpage makes it easier to differentiate between not-so-essential and essential services.

What strikes me as strange is that people who find out about the Black Viper site, make changes and then call for help because something goes wrong. The site also shows what the default service setting should be in case something goes wrong. Can people not change back to the default state which is shown to them? More or less next to suggested change?

Sorry, but that kind of stupidity does hardly compute with me. Such things make me always think: 'User error, replace user and continue'

Then again, if persons like Innuendo and scancode can make an honest pay for repair, more power (and cold hard cash) to them

2260

General Software Discussion / Re: Process Tamer speeds up my games & internet speed!

« Last post by Shades on April 17, 2010, 11:32 AM »

To me your list of speedup software seems overly excessive. I suspect a lot of overlapping functionality within this set.

When you start a gaming session, would it not be smarter to disable (MS Windows and 3rth party) services and other background tasks (indexing for example) that are not essential for the game? Throwing in the famous car analogy...'nothing beats cubic inches'.

Go and look at sites like www.blackviper.com to see which services can be disabled. Besides spending some time this solution is free, unlike all those more or less 'snakeoil' type of software you mentioned.

2261

General Software Discussion / Re: Vpn folders, file operations and speed

« Last post by Shades on April 15, 2010, 08:33 PM »

Lately I created batch scripts that handle the copying of files from a VPN PC to my own PC.

What I do:
1. First I create the VPN connection on my PC
2. On my own PC I start an FTP server
3. Then I use RDP to execute a batch script on the VPN PC that creates an 7zip archive from whatever I need and which is automatically FTP'd to my PC. On most Windows 2000+ PC's a very basic Microsoft FTP client is already available.

Granted my system only takes care of half your requirements. But I have to say that it is very convenient to run those kind of tasks automatically, you do get a lot more done during the day. 

2262

General Software Discussion / Re: Vpn folders, file operations and speed

« Last post by Shades on April 14, 2010, 07:36 PM »

In my experience with (intercontinental) VPN connections the following:

Normally I hook up to Windows systems. And to manage those I use the MS RDP protocol, it is faster and more stable than whatever edition from VNC offers. Whatever I have to do locally on those machines is done with their standard explorer...again speed and stability. Moving data from those systems to mine, Filezilla FTP server and client combination works wonders.

Using a local tool on my system to look at folders through a VPN connection...meh, in case of Windows.

Linux, however...Midnight Commander is a basic file manager but it is really fast and very stable. For me, this is where Linux shines.

2263

Living Room / Re: Hidden Netflix Marathon Gems to Watch Online

« Last post by Shades on April 12, 2010, 09:44 PM »

I am just going through the 5 seasons of Angel - a spin-off from Buffy. Darn, I like the writing behind it (thanks, mr. Whedon  )

Is 'Spartacus: blood and sand' any good? I loved both seasons of 'Rome', which had a lot of good reviews. But with this Spartacus it is mixed. The era holds my interest, hence the question.

2264

Living Room / Re: How do you rip your DVD collection? (I want to know)

« Last post by Shades on April 12, 2010, 07:29 AM »

As the owner of a 1080p monitor I can say that you do see 'artifacts' when a movie is compressed to 700Mbyte...when I watch it full screen. Most of the time these kind of files are created for a setup that uses a 720p monitor/tv/beamer for display.

MilesAhead pointed us to the existence of MakeMKV, a tool that creates .mkv files that will contain all the chapters, subtitles etc. Granted those files are not that much smaller (at least in the cases that I tried), but the quality doesn't suffer. Because of that, the conversion is fast. On my dual core system the conversion takes about two minutes, if the original dvd is in pristine state.

The latest version (at the time of writing) is free to use for dvd, for blu-ray support you need to pay.

When you only like files in .avi container, then there is an interesting piece of software, called: OxelonMedia (and sidekick: OxelonPlugins)
and they should make the conversion a whole lot easier. Oxelon conversion becomes part of the context menu.

Oh yeah, sorry about being too lazy to add links.

2265

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sharkoon USB 3.0 QuickPort Dock

« Last post by Shades on April 04, 2010, 10:14 AM »

CAD can be very expensive, easily rivaling or surpassing Gaming. Have you seen the prices nowadays for the FirePro (ATI) range of videocards?   

Here in Ciudad del Este (a border city between Paraguay and Brazil) you can buy new computer gear for cheap to reasonable prices. But still, for the price of one of these FirePro video cards alone I can buy a very decent and complete Gaming rig. I assume that this situation is the same all over the globe.

Note:
As an ATI fanboy I could not be bothered to look up similar type of videocards from different manufacturers like NVidea, Matrox etc.

2266

Living Room / Re: Should I swtich from w7 32 bit to w7 64 bit?

« Last post by Shades on April 03, 2010, 09:53 PM »

If you had a system that was setup like this:
- partition C: only 'Windows' folder + boot files
- partition D: only for folders 'Program Files', 'Program Files (x86)' and 'PortableApps'
- partition E: only for folders 'Users', 'ProgramData' and your own personalized folder structure for your user data if you such a system

In that case it is relatively easy by dumping the registry keys from the installed software in Win7 32bit, install the customized 64 bit version of Win7 (here is a link on how to do that), import the earlier created registry dump and that should be it.

If this is sound too complicated, invest time in looking for portable versions of the software you like/need/desire. I have done that while on my XP installation. When the time to upgrade was forced upon me, 80% of the software I use regularly was immediately available/use-able. All-in-all it took me 2 hours to convert from XP Pro to Win7 64-bit, mainly because I was reading through all the installation options from the Win7 installation DVD.

EDIT:
See this thread and this thread for software that can make portable versions from normally installed software. That should make migrating easier.

2267

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Requests

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2010, 08:52 AM »

If you like (some) of the look and feel from XP in Win7, visit this link for ClassicShell, which I am using myself.

-Shades (April 02, 2010, 07:12 AM)

Since I'm in the UK and don't have access to W7 on my netbook can you please tell me if it passes this one simple test:

Does it work correctly with the Taskbar located on the sides of the Desktop as XP does?

Last time I tried it, it opened the menus from the bottom left no matter where the Taskbar was located which was extremely annoying.

-4wd (April 02, 2010, 07:25 AM)

Seems that this is fixed.

2268

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Requests

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2010, 07:12 AM »

If you like (some) of the look and feel from XP in Win7, visit this link for ClassicShell, which I am using myself.

From the website:

    * Brings back the classic start menu that Windows 7 doesn't support
    * Adds a toolbar for Windows Explorer
    * Shows recently used documents. The number of documents to display is customizable
    * Translated in 35 languages, including Right-to-left support for Arabic and Hebrew
    * Does not disable the original start menu in Windows. You can access it by Shift+Click on the start button
    * Right-click on an item in the menu to delete, rename, sort, or perform other tasks
    * Available for 32 and 64-bit operating systems
    * Has support for skins, including additional 3rd party skins
    * Fully customizable in both looks and functionality
    * Support for Microsoft’s Active Accessibility
    * And last but not least – it's FREE!

2269

General Software Discussion / Re: How to watch folders and perform certain actions automatically?

« Last post by Shades on March 27, 2010, 09:43 AM »

What about LifeHacker's Belvedere?

It will look in multiple folders for different files and can execute several actions (copy,move,delete, compress etc) all based on rule sets  that you yourself can set up. It does this on configurable time-intervals and can even keep a log of all the actions that are performed.

Although this may not be what you want, it certainly looks interesting to me.

2270

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: usb drive backup program

« Last post by Shades on March 21, 2010, 11:59 PM »

@ techidave:
Well, I can promise you this, it does not see any differences. What it does is very simply dump the complete content from the USB drive into an archive folder.

The only reason I whipped it up (as a BATCH file) was because you told me that during the day you connect to a lot of different PC's. If I know schools, then I have to assume that there are a lot of different versions of Windows involved. BATCH scripts tend to work on practically every version of Windows. For example, the script as it is works on every Windows version from Win2000 to Win7.

Although they can be problematic to setup, those scripts tend to be very reliable...and never nice to look at.

But with all the trouble both you and Deozaan experienced, I have to something about my commenting skills. Ah well, live and learn as they say.

Furthermore, Deozaan is totally right about checking for versions will be difficult (in BATCH), time consuming and error prone if drive names keep changing. Now I know that there are tools/hacks to make sure an USB drive gets the same drive letter assigned, but I don't have the time to look into that right now. Besides that, lack of (my) skills in this department do not help your cause one bit.

Hmmm, now that I think of it, there are BATCH script commands that can copy differences only. Maybe it would be smarter to copy these differences to the archive location first and when that is done create the archive and clean up everything inside the archive folder (remove everything, except 7-zip archives).

2271

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: usb drive backup program

« Last post by Shades on March 21, 2010, 03:16 PM »

I downloaded a portable version of 7-zip and unpacked it on my USB stick, then created the following (simple) BATCH script:

Code: ActionScript [Select]

1. @ECHO off
2. REM --- Purpose of script: automatically create small 7-zip archive from all files on USB stick. ----------------------------------
3. REM -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. REM --- 01. - Type which drive letter is assigned to USB stick. -----------------------------------------------------------------
5. ECHO -
6. ECHO    step 1: Type drive letter assigned to USB stick, for example: C
7. ECHO ---------------------------------------------------------------------
8. ECHO
9. SET /P driveLetter=[USB drive letter]
10. REM GOTO :EOF
11. GOTO Step2
12. REM
13. REM -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14. REM --- 02. - Initializing the folders for getting and creating the archives (user definable). ----------------------------------
15. :Step2
16. ECHO -
17. ECHO    step 2: Initializing required parameters
18. ECHO ---------------------------------------------------------------------
19. REM --- note: date notation depends on regional settings from the system the script is executed on (current = Dutch!). ----------
20. REM --- current = Dutch on WinXP US ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21. SET     year=%date:~9,4%
22. SET    month=%date:~6,2%
23. SET      day=%date:~3,2%
24. REM --- current = US on WinXP US ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
25. REM SET     year=%date:~10,4%
26. REM SET    month=%date:~7,2%
27. REM SET      day=%date:~4,2%
28. REM --- current = US on WinXP NL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
29. REM SET     year=%date:~6,4%
30. REM SET    month=%date:~3,2%
31. REM SET      day=%date:~0,2%
32. REM --- the order from the work date should always be the same (according to my preference) -------------------------------------
33. SET workDate=%year%-%month%-%day%
34. SET usbFolder="%driveLetter%:\"
35. SET archiveFolder=C:\Archive
36. SET recentArchive=%archiveFolder%\USB_%workDate%
37. ECHO              USB drive: %usbFolder%
38. ECHO  Archive file and path: %recentArchive%
39. REM GOTO :EOF
40. GOTO Step3
41. REM
42. REM -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
43. REM --- 03 - Create the archive in the archive folder (-mx=9 is most extreme setting). ------------------------------------------
44. :Step3
45. ECHO -
46. ECHO step 3: Creating archive %recentArchive%
47. ECHO ---------------------------------------------------------------------
48. "%driveLetter%:\7-ZipPortable\App\7-zip\7z.exe" a -t7z %recentArchive%.7z %driveLetter%:\* -w%archiveFolder% -mx=9

or get the script from here [attachment]


It works on my XP and Win7 system, but please bear in mind that it was whipped up in 5 minutes, so there will be a lot of points for improvement.

2272

Living Room / Re: Which is better windows mobile or android os or iphone os?

« Last post by Shades on March 20, 2010, 07:08 PM »

It reads to me that you have a personality that is more in line with the Android OS than the IPhone OS.

After all, if you have to deliberately break a phone to have the more open nature of the Android OS, you should not ask any further. You have already made up your mind, but maybe you didn't realize it.

Personally the Android OS sounds more appealing to me (but let it be noted that I am anti-Apple) and with a little bit more time you can have all the extras from the IPhone platform on Android as well.

2273

Living Room / Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug

« Last post by Shades on March 20, 2010, 12:34 PM »

Here in Paraguay the DST is adjusted when the president signs a decree. He/she does this when it suits him/her best. My english Windows changes the time automatiaclly in the middle of the month. And I communicate a lot in Holland, where the DST is automatically activated at the last sunday of the months March/October.

As you can imagine, it is a messy time here in the South Americas. But we are not alone as I understand from Karen's story in the first post...

It definitely looks like an interesting tool to me.

2274

General Software Discussion / Re: Trying to remember an old game

« Last post by Shades on March 17, 2010, 11:14 PM »

My first introduction with Turrican was on the C64 and it was great on that platform. And then got it on Amiga later on as well...I totally agree with f0dder, a classic of epic proportions in its league.

2275

Living Room / Re: Donationcoder: How did you find it + What has your experience been like so far.

« Last post by Shades on March 15, 2010, 11:14 PM »

Way back when I was still working for a Dutch ISP, I got the task of finding good software for their download portal. To do that I needed a proper screenshot program and it didn't take me too much time to find out about Screenshot Captor on Donation Coder.

Since that time this site has lured me back on a frequent basis.