Recent Posts

251

Living Room / Re: Do good mice still exist? Looking for recommendations.

« Last post by 4wd on November 07, 2020, 08:59 AM »

I always keep an old logitech corded standard mouse for those times I need to reinstall Windows or do some MBR building since Windows doesn't have USB support when booting

-mouse53 (October 29, 2020, 01:25 PM)

It doesn't?

I've used a wireless keyboard+trackpad the last couple of times I've installed Windows just fine, (Win 10 and WHS2011).
It also works in the BIOS without a problem, (mouse driven BIOS interface).

Windows might not but your hardware can, you should check your BIOS, enable Legacy USB support.

252

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - Create a text doc of an artists discography.

« Last post by 4wd on November 07, 2020, 04:46 AM »

That's one of the reasons I became fixated on the allmusic site.

-fred dred (November 07, 2020, 04:43 AM)

Yes, nicer format but unfortunately in HTML which can be a P.I.T.A to parse.

They might have an API which can be leveraged but I couldn't find one in a quick look at the site.

Addendum: Looks like there is an API through Rovi (TiVo) if you get an API key here - although a quick look seems to indicate no way to get a list of releases for an artist.

253

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - Create a text doc of an artists discography.

« Last post by 4wd on November 07, 2020, 04:40 AM »

This'll just grab the first date in a release:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile-MB2.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://musicbrainz.org for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile-MB2.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC-MB - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+application\/ld\+json..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + "-MB - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27. if (Test-Path $outFile) {
28.   Remove-Item $outFile -Force
29. }
30.  
31. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
32.   $albumUri = ($json.album[$i].'@id' + "?inc=releases&fmt=json") -replace '\.org\/', '.org/ws/2/'
33.   $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$($albumUri)") | ConvertFrom-Json
34.   "$($album.releases[0].date) - $($album.title)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
35. }

Example output:

Code: Text [Select]

1. 1976-02-14 - Dreamboat Annie
2. 1977-04-19 - Magazine
3. 1977-05-15 - Little Queen
4. 1978-10-07 - Dog & Butterfly
5. 1980-02-14 - B??b?? le Strange
6. 1982-06-05 - Private Audition
7. 1983-08-20 - Passionworks
8. 1985-07-06 - Heart
9. 1987-06-05 - Bad Animals
10. 1990-03-26 - Brigade
11. 1993-10-30 - Desire Walks On
12. 2004-06-22 - Jupiters Darling
13. 2010-08-27 - Red Velvet Car
14. 2012-09-28 - Fanatic
15. 2016-07-08 - Beautiful Broken
16. 1980-11-29 - Greatest Hits / Live
17. 1981 - Heart: Best of the Early Years
18. 1995-12-11 - Definitive Collection
19. 1996-07-03 - Ballads: The Greatest Hits
20. 1997-03-11 - These Dreams: Heart???s Greatest Hits
21. 1998-08-25 - Greatest Hits
22. 2000-06-27 - Greatest Hits: 1985???1995
23. 2002-11-26 - The Essential Heart
24. 2005-09-27 - Love Alive
25. 2005-11-15 - The Collection
26. 2006-01-10 - Love Songs
27. 2008 - Playlist: The Very Best of Heart
28. 2009 - Private Audition / Passionworks
29. 2011-06-23 - Heart / Bad Animals
30. 2012-06-01 - Strange Euphoria
31. 2012 - Super Hits
32. 2013-05-13 - Icon
33. 2013 - Original Album Classics
34. 2014-10-14 - The Box Set Series
35. 1991-09-24 - Rock the House Live!
36. 1995-08-09 - The Road Home
37. 2003 - Alive in Seattle
38. 2007-10-23 - Dreamboat Annie Live
39. 2008-08-05 - Live
40. 2014-02-21 - Fanatic Live From Caesars Colosseum
41. 2014-11-07 - Heart & Friends: Home for the Holidays
42. 2016-11-25 - Live at the Royal Albert Hall
43. 2019-01-25 - Live in Atlantic City
44. 1975-06 - Magic Man
45. 1975 - Crazy on You
46. 1975 - How Deep It Goes
47. 1976-12 - Dreamboat Annie
48. 1976 - (Love Me Like Music) I???ll Be Your Song
49. 1977 - Barracuda
50. 1977 - Heartless
51. 1977 - Kick It Out
52. 1977 - Little Queen / Treat Me Well
53. 1978 - Straight On
54. 1978 - Without You
55. 1985-09-14 - Never
56. 1985 - Nothin??? at All
57. 1986-01-18 - These Dreams
58. 1986-07-19 - If Looks Could Kill
59. 1987 - There???s the Girl
60. 1987 - Who Will You Run To
61. 1988-02 - Never / These Dreams
62. 1990-03-28 - All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You
63. 1990-09 - Stranded
64. 1990 - I Didn???t Want to Need You
65. 1990 - Secret
66. 1991 - You???re the Voice
67. 1993-11 - Black on Black II
68. 1993 - Will You Be There (In the Morning)
69. 1994 - The Woman in Me
70. 1998 - What About Love
71. 2012-08-21 - Fanatic
72. 2013-11-08 - Heart Christmas Single 2013
73. 2017-11-03 - Band on the Run
74. 2017-11-03 - Letting Go
75. 2013-01-15 - Stairway to Heaven (live at the Kennedy Center Honors)
76. 2018-10-23 - Lost Angel
77. 2019-01-11 - B??b?? le Strange
78. 2019-01-16 - Crazy on You
79. 2012-11-12 - A Million Miles (Abe Clements remix)
80. 1988 - If Looks Could Kill
81. 2010-03-05 - WTF+4

You could add filtering to restrict it to certain types of releases by matching in the albumProductionType or albumReleaseType, eg.

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
2.   if ($json.album[$i].albumProductionType -match 'StudioAlbum') {
3.     $albumUri = ($json.album[$i].'@id' + "?inc=releases&fmt=json") -replace '\.org\/', '.org/ws/2/'
4.     $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$($albumUri)") | ConvertFrom-Json
5.     "$($album.releases[0].date) - $($album.title)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
6.   }
7. }

So goes the theory

254

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - Create a text doc of an artists discography.

« Last post by 4wd on November 07, 2020, 03:21 AM »

Thank you very, very much for taking the time to do this !

-fred dred (November 07, 2020, 02:36 AM)

No problem, it was quite literally 20 minutes of playing around - working out the RegEx to remove everything I didn't want took the most time.

The MusicBrainz output is brilliant - but no dates means it's a pain to cross reference with my existing files.

You can get the dates, you just have to follow every album link but they do provide the info in JSON format without having to strip it out of the page.

For example, AC/DC's High Voltage:

XML
JSON

So it can be obtained, just grab the JSON and pull out the first date value, as an example:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/release-group/2b81e645-4586-4456-843a-9bc19a217470?inc=releases&fmt=json") | ConvertFrom-Json
2. "$($album.releases[0].date) - $($album.title)"

The only problem being multiple release dates, eg. for that particular entry there are nine dates ... which one do you choose really?

Considering MusicBrainz provide album data in JSON, I'm kind of surprised that the artist page doesn't provide the same, (I mean including the album details, ie. combined artist+releases).

255

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - Create a text doc of an artists discography.

« Last post by 4wd on November 06, 2020, 09:41 PM »

I'm not going to offer an all encompassing solution but here's something simple in PowerShell that uses Discogs - it might inspire someone

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://www.discogs.com for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile.ps1 https://www.discogs.com/artist/84752-ACDC
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+artist_schema..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + " - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27.  
28. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
29.   "$($json.album[$i].datePublished) - $($json.album[$i].name)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
30. }

Using the example above, output will be to 'AC_DC - Discography.txt' and look like:

Code: Text [Select]

1. 1975 - T.N.T.
2. 1975 - High Voltage
3. 1976 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
4. 1976 - High Voltage
5. 1976 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
6. 1977 - Let There Be Rock
7. 1978 - Powerage
8. 1978 - If You Want Blood You've Got It
9. 1979 - Highway To Hell
10. 1980 - In Concert-215
11. 1980 - Back In Black
12. 1981 - For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
13. 1983 - Special Radio Interview Disc
14. 1983 - Flick Of The Switch
15. 1985 - Fly On The Wall
16. 1988 - Blow Up Your Video
17. 1990 - AC/DC Interview
18. 1990 - The Razors Edge
19. 1992 - Live

Why did I choose Discogs even though the album data is incomplete?

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json

Album data is available in JSON format which makes retrieving it trivial.

Having a quick look at MusicBrainz, it appears to also be in JSON format - maybe I'll devote an extra 30 5 mins to this

MusicBrainz version, they don't appear to include the year in the JSON data though:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile-MB.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://musicbrainz.org for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile-MB.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC-MB - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+application\/ld\+json..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + "-MB - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27.  
28. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
29.   "$($json.album[$i].name)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
30. }

256

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

« Last post by 4wd on November 05, 2020, 01:57 PM »

I'll just leave this here:

257

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

« Last post by 4wd on November 01, 2020, 04:09 PM »

B+D together is bigger than C.

-panzer (November 01, 2020, 11:18 AM)

Nah, the station logo is overlaying part of column C, you'd need A+B+D to beat it.

I heard that in Japan audience always chose the wrong answer on purpose so the producers decided to end the show.

Considering some of the Japanese game shows I saw years ago, they probably decided it was too tame.

258

General Software Discussion / Re: How to manually set clock in Windows 10 Pro?

« Last post by 4wd on October 30, 2020, 10:04 AM »

Most of the rest of the world use the change of seasons to implement DST.

-Shades (October 30, 2020, 09:02 AM)

Except Australia where we made it easier by just making it the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April.

... but only in the southern/eastern states/territories, the northern/western states/territories don't bother with DST at all 😆

259

General Software Discussion / Re: How to manually set clock in Windows 10 Pro?

« Last post by 4wd on October 30, 2020, 07:29 AM »

Try changing the time server to something other than Microsoft.

The public servers at NTP.org have always been better for me, for the UK try: uk.pool.ntp.org

The above will round-robin through, currently, 329 NTP servers in the UK, (split 213 IPv4/116 IPv6).

And yes, to change the system time requires admin.

If it still won't sync then the usual culprits: firewall, service, etc, Event log may give more info.

260

Living Room / Re: When rubber (computer mouse) gets old and sticky, what can you do

« Last post by 4wd on October 28, 2020, 07:19 PM »

My experience is that once the external of the mouse is (severely) deteriorated, than the internals aren't that good as well.

-Ath (October 28, 2020, 11:19 AM)

After 11 years, my CM Sentinel Advance still works well, coating fully wore off about 5 years ago.

Apart from the coating about the only problems with it is that some of the OLED segments are a little dim and the coating they had on the metal mesh inserts started wearing off - so I removed them, cleaned to bare metal, then applied gun blue about 6 or 7 years ago.

IIRC, the removal of the metal mesh to gun blue it has been the only time I've had it apart to clean it ... must be time to give it another surprise 😬

261

Living Room / Re: When rubber (computer mouse) gets old and sticky, what can you do

« Last post by 4wd on October 28, 2020, 05:14 AM »

A light dusting of talcum powder well rubbed in over the surface?

Removed the stickiness for me, usually comes back after awhile though since the rubber coating is still deteriorating.

In the end the coating completely wore away which fixed the problem.

262

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by 4wd on October 26, 2020, 09:51 AM »

Meh, their crappy updates don't work on my system, only way I can update to the next versions are by reinstalling Windows, (probably not a bad thing).

Main computer is still sitting at 1909, won't update to 2004 or 20H2 using whatever means. Keep getting the same useless error messages that involve trying the same useless fixes.

263

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual desktop tools?

« Last post by 4wd on October 25, 2020, 06:27 AM »

Yeah, I've considered going multi-monitor in the past, but couldn't justify it (yet?): hardware cost, desk space, energy usage...

-brotherS (October 25, 2020, 05:36 AM)

Normally don't even have to buy them if you're happy with monitors that are a few years old, I've been given monitors that are left over from upgrades that still work perfectly well.  They might not be FHD but they're still useful, don't even have them turned on most of the time.

264

General Software Discussion / Re: Manage the display in the laptop

« Last post by 4wd on October 25, 2020, 06:23 AM »

The problem with other display off utilities is that they are reactivated...

-Contro (October 25, 2020, 04:04 AM)

If you're saying that the display turns on after getting it to turn off then one more thing to try that may, (or may not), show something:

• Safe boot,
• Run nircmd: nircmd.exe monitor off
• When the display turns on again, (assuming you haven't used the keyboard or knocked the mouse), try powercfg -requests again, see if it shows a reason it turned on.

BTW, what happens if you set the Screen Saver to Blank after a minute?
Does it work?

4wd is right (as per usual), ...

-Shades (October 24, 2020, 08:55 PM)

Thanks but I think my wife would like to have words with you

265

General Software Discussion / Re: Manage the display in the laptop

« Last post by 4wd on October 24, 2020, 07:28 PM »

Tried.

The display don't display off after the minute of inactivity.

-Contro (October 24, 2020, 05:12 PM)

Which still points to a problem within Windows itself so your only probable solutions, (that won't require installing Windows from scratch or otherwise trying to locate the fault), is Kodezwerg's software, (or similar), or an In-place Upgrade.

266

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual desktop tools?

« Last post by 4wd on October 24, 2020, 04:06 PM »

There's also Desktops from SysInternals, (Microsoft), haven't used it in awhile, might be a bit minimalist though.

https://docs.microso...s/downloads/desktops

So far this has been quite a frustrating experience. Did everyone more or less give up working on software in this category when Windows 10 came around?

Most probably started going to multi-monitor, monitors became cheaper, which increased screen real estate allowing you to see it all at once rather than cycle through virtual desktops to the one you wanted.

267

General Software Discussion / Re: Manage the display in the laptop

« Last post by 4wd on October 22, 2020, 08:33 PM »

I also don't understand why we can't do the proofs in safe mode.
Even in safe mode the display off fails...

-Contro (October 22, 2020, 06:53 PM)

You can, try it.

268

General Software Discussion / Re: Manage the display in the laptop

« Last post by 4wd on October 20, 2020, 06:33 PM »

It would seem to indicate that Windows itself is the problem, no software has made any requests to keep the system awake or the display on, (if the output is to be believed).

Try again but wait for a longer period, say an hour or two.

There's always the option to try an In-place Upgrade as a last resort.

269

Living Room / Re: What, if anything, has IMPROVED for you as a result of the pandemic?

« Last post by 4wd on October 20, 2020, 04:50 PM »

Less people around ... but unfortunately the good times are coming to an end as we get closer to exiting Stage 4 lockdown.

270

General Software Discussion / Re: Manage the display in the laptop

« Last post by 4wd on October 20, 2020, 04:44 PM »

Try this:

• Set the screen timeout to a minute,
• Reboot and wait a few minutes to see if the display turns off,
• If it doesn't, enter 'powercfg -requests' in an admin CLI.

What does it say?

271

Post New Requests Here / Re: Show IP Address from domain name

« Last post by 4wd on October 15, 2020, 06:26 PM »

Not if you just output it to a grid

-wraith808 (October 15, 2020, 02:28 PM)

True, but I was thinking of a simple updating textbox, (possibly frameless? - haven't really looked), rather than a scrolling console, (though you could clear it between updates).

272

Post New Requests Here / Re: Show IP Address from domain name

« Last post by 4wd on October 15, 2020, 02:17 AM »

test.txt

Code: Text [Select]

1. google.com
2. cloudflare.com
3. microsoft.com
4. georgebloggs.org

Code: Text [Select]

1. C:\> for /f %a in (test.txt) do ping -n 1 %a

Result:

Code: Text [Select]

1. C:\>ping -n 1 google.com
2.  
3. Pinging google.com [216.58.200.110] with 32 bytes of data:
4. General failure.
5.  
6. Ping statistics for 216.58.200.110:
7.     Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 0, Lost = 1 (100% loss),
8.  
9. C:\>ping -n 1 cloudflare.com
10.  
11. Pinging cloudflare.com [104.17.176.85] with 32 bytes of data:
12. General failure.
13.  
14. Ping statistics for 104.17.176.85:
15.     Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 0, Lost = 1 (100% loss),
16.  
17. C:\>ping -n 1 microsoft.com
18.  
19. Pinging microsoft.com [13.77.161.179] with 32 bytes of data:
20. General failure.
21.  
22. Ping statistics for 13.77.161.179:
23.     Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 0, Lost = 1 (100% loss),
24.  
25. C:\>ping -n 1 georgebloggs.org
26. Ping request could not find host georgebloggs.org. Please check the name and try again.

If you want to get fancy you could parse the reply for the IP only.

Or some PowerShell, this will loop every 60 seconds until it's killed:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. $a = get-content ".\test.txt"
2.  
3. do {
4.   foreach ($i in $a ) {
5.     try {
6.       $i + " -> " + [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses($i)[0]
7.     }
8.     catch {
9.       $i + " -> Does not resolve"
10.     }
11.   }
12.   Start-Sleep -Seconds 60
13. } while ($true)

Result:

Code: Text [Select]

1. google.com -> 216.58.200.110
2. cloudflare.com -> 104.17.175.85
3. microsoft.com -> 104.215.148.63
4. georgebloggs.org -> Does not resolve

You could make a simple GUI for it, (see PoshGUI), but the code will blow out past 13 lines

273

Non-Windows Software / Re: Samsung J5 and free memory in the phone memory

« Last post by 4wd on October 14, 2020, 03:24 AM »

Install Google Files from the Play Store:
https://play.google....droid.apps.nbu.files

It'll tell you how much 'junk' can possibly be removed and/or what is using up space, (apps, documents, images, etc, etc).

Make sure you know exactly what is going to get removed before doing it if you do.

274

General Software Discussion / Re: How to make MakeMKV better?

« Last post by 4wd on October 14, 2020, 03:11 AM »

RipIt4Me, also discontinued but still can be downloaded, was a frontend to DVD Decrypter and DVDShrink.
It 'parsed' the .IFO files, pretty much the same way that a user would navigate the menus, and fed the result to DVD Decrypter to remove VOBs that weren't called, 'empty' VOBs, menu tricks, etc used by the manufacturers to complicate copying.
It was the first program to do so, then, IIRC, DVD Fab picked up on the same modus operandi.

I don't think I found a DVD it couldn't handle.

DVD43 worked pretty well for what it did, transparent decryption, but I think it sometimes had problems with some DVDs.  I haven't used it since Win7 days so no idea whether it still works, if it did then it's just a matter of opening the DVDs directly with HandBrake/VidCoder.

As for VidCoder, just drop the MKV on the interface, choose a preset under Builtin->General if there's one that matches framerate/dimensions, if there is multiple audio tracks or subs, select the ones you want to keep, then hit encode and see what the output is like.  If you need more quality you can pick another preset or tweak the video encoding settings, (it uses HandBrake cli as the encoding engine).

275

General Software Discussion / Re: How to make MakeMKV better?

« Last post by 4wd on October 13, 2020, 07:24 PM »

MakeMKV encodes the videos in MPEG2 format, and the audio in AC3 format.

-Deozaan (October 13, 2020, 05:56 PM)

MakeMKV does not encode, it remuxes the source streams into an MKV container.  Since DVDs are basically MPEG2 + AC3, that is what you will end up with.

Therefore:

Or should I just go back to using HandBrake for my DVD ripping needs?

Yes, if the visual/audio quality is sufficient for your needs.

BTW, if your DVDs have copy-protection then you'll still need something like MakeMKV to rip them first: eg.
AnyDVD, DVDFab Passkey - both commercial software,
Passkey Lite - free Lite version of DVDFab Passkey,
DVD43 - old device filter,
RipIt4Me - this or DVD43 are all I've ever really used.

AnyDVD, DVDFab Passkey (Lite), and DVD43 are implemented as driver filters, they will try to decrypt the DVD on-the-fly, eg. HandBrake will be able to read a copy-protected DVD directly.

If any DVDs you have already ripped had copy-protection then you really haven't wasted any time by ripping with MakeMKV first, just feed the MKV into HandBrake, (personally I prefer VidCoder).