Recent Posts

3526

Living Room / Re: What's the best way to sell old electronics?

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 21, 2008, 08:50 AM »

Place items into your crusher.
Form output into coin-sized pieces.
Hire Cody to distribute them, starting at 00:01, Dec 25.
(Better hurry!)

3527

Living Room / Re: How to tell if your cat is plotting to KILL you

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 20, 2008, 04:10 PM »

is asking why he would name the nice kitty Persia

-Deozaan (December 19, 2008, 05:31 PM)

I'm obviously not sure, but I guess it's because Persian cats are one of the most common breeds of domestic cats.

-city_zen

Probably, because he likes to travel around with his cat.
Surely you've heard of the Persian car pet!

3528

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 20, 2008, 04:03 PM »

On which event was IE launched? Have you selected a special menu entry? Was it during installation, or when you started Linkman?

-Outertech Support (December 20, 2008, 12:40 AM)

On updating an already-installed Linkman Pro. IE was called automatically from the installation, as I recall.
(The already-installed version had 'Linkman settings: Browser' properly configured for FireFox)

Outertech Support, this isn't a big issue for me.
I commented simply to confirm that what Dormouse encountered is not an isolated case.

3529

Living Room / Re: If somebody offers you swapping your PC for a mac cold turkey: would you do it?

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 19, 2008, 08:26 PM »

Given the season, if somebody offered to swap my mac for a cold turkey I'd certainly consider that!

Here's why

A raincoat's not terribly useful at -25C.

3530

Living Room / Re: HELP! Failed System Restore

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 19, 2008, 08:19 PM »

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? Quandries?

-Josh (December 19, 2008, 02:29 PM)

File system corrupted in some way?
Checked the drive from some external media (install disk/recovery console or whatnot)?

3531

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 19, 2008, 08:13 PM »

Note that it doesn’t look like yours at all, cranial. Weird. Of course this is on an XP Pro machine.

-J-Mac (December 19, 2008, 03:48 PM)

Mine's XP Pro also. 
Probably not so weird; the only difference is that FF isn't installed to the default folder on my box.

3532

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 19, 2008, 07:59 PM »

Thanks cranio.  I don't overclock and I don't know what graphics card I'm getting.  But if I don't need  extra fans, I won't get them.

-superboyac (December 19, 2008, 07:52 PM)

Sorry, I was revising my post at the moment when you read it.

Look again, in case I misled you. Puns-'R-Us

3533

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 19, 2008, 07:43 PM »

cranioscopical link=topic=16186.msg143009#msg143009 date=1229718764]
Typically, a case of mine will be VERY dusty after 6 months in service.
This one looked virtually as clean as the day it went into service.
I was amazed.
Most air enters through a front-panel side grid, passes through a filter, through 2 front fans, across the HDDs and on into the case.
The front-panel filters sure needed cleaning, but they've been doing a great job of filtering, and the mobo and chip temperatures stay nice and low.

cranio, given the hardware I'm getting (in the first post of this thread), do you think I will need additional fans?  Or will the fans in the Antec case be enough?

-superboyac (December 19, 2008, 03:25 PM)

The front fans are optional, and I think you'd want those for the increased airflow over your HDDs.
With those and the main case fan I think you'd be fine.
Depends a bit on your CPU and graphics card(s).
I deliberately chose a cool-running video card for my box and the cpu also runs a lot cooler than previous ones.

Others have talked about hanging back from the bleeding edge.
Mine is the first machine I've ever had that's not on the bleeding edge.
It was an excellent decision for a few of reasons.

• Cost: looking back, my previous machine ran me >$7K Canadian and the current one was about half that.
• Reliability: more importantly, I've had a lot less trouble with this box.
• Reality: the bleeding edge is the bleeding edge only for a few months

(If costs begin to matter to you, keep in mind that the Antec Sonata 550 case comes with its own perfectly adequate power supply. Perhaps some of the other cases at which you're looking also offer this, I don't know.)

3534

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 19, 2008, 02:32 PM »

Re cases.

I have a Antec Sonata Plus 550
I chose it because it helps to minimize noise, which it does extremely well (sound-damping side panels, soft drive mounts etc).

This one's been in service since May.
The chip is an Intel quad core and the graphics card was especially chosen for a good compromise between silence and efficient cooling, so controlling temperature wasn't as big a challenge as in some others of my machines.
The discussion here prompted me to take a look inside.

Typically, a case of mine will be VERY dusty after 6 months in service.
This one looked virtually as clean as the day it went into service.
I was amazed.
Most air enters through a front-panel side grid, passes through a filter, through 2 front fans, across the HDDs and on into the case.
The front-panel filters sure needed cleaning, but they've been doing a great job of filtering, and the mobo and chip temperatures stay nice and low.

3535

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 19, 2008, 11:34 AM »

Just to add my experience on this point...

On first (no configuration found) Linkman start the program tries to determinate your default browser and sets it as default also in the Linkman settings.

This registry key is evaluated: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command

I've just tried it in a Virtual Machine on a freshly installed Windows XP SP3 with Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 and Firefox was detected as the default browser.

-Outertech Support (December 19, 2008, 03:33 AM)

FWIW updating Linkman Pro to the latest version, yesterday, called IE which I use very seldom indeed.
On my  machine the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command yields:
Name: (default)
Data: "E:\Winsupps\Firefox\firefox.exe" -requestPending -osint -url "%1"

I'm not stating this as a complaint but it did cause a moment of very mild disapproval.

3536

Living Room / Re: Can you throw a shoe at Bush?

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 17, 2008, 08:53 PM »

It's very insulting in Asia as well. I understand the "statement" that the man was trying to make...

-Darwin (December 17, 2008, 05:07 PM)

It's time to put a sock in it!

3537

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 17, 2008, 08:43 PM »

Maybe you could hitch up a few helium balloons to it and pilot it around the room

-40hz (December 17, 2008, 07:27 PM)

I'm a big fan of yours, 40hz!

3538

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 17, 2008, 01:56 PM »

The case supports up to 7 120mm fans.

-superboyac (December 17, 2008, 12:24 PM)

My goodness!  You'll have to tether it to the desktop or it'll be hovering at the ceiling 

3539

Living Room / Re: In-car GPS

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 16, 2008, 02:36 PM »

Look into this mounting system - it's highly popular with GPS users.  Fifteen bucks at Amazon

-mrainey (December 14, 2008, 06:15 PM)

Thanks for your input, both on GPS generally and on the mount.

3540

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 16, 2008, 02:31 PM »

OK, then I guess WD is the drive to get.  Lashiec recommends WD, I also have had no problems in the past with them.

-superboyac (December 16, 2008, 01:26 PM)

FWIW, I've had a  total of 3WD SATAs fail in two machines in the past year.
None was more than a year old. Two came from the same batch (can tell by serial #s).
In the year prior to that I had one fail within a week of installation.

This may never be your problem, and plenty of others like WDs (as did I up until recently).
Speaking for myself, I can't see buying another for a good long time.

None of these drives went into machines that had anything other than quality components.
The machines were built by different people.

Just in case you're thinking (as I well might reading the above) that I'm doing something stupid that trashes HDs, I'd  never had an HD failure since HDs first became available to individual consumers, apart from one dodgy IBM SCSI drive during the time when IBM was having some real trouble getting decent drives out of the door.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just passing on one person's experience. I'm sure there are plenty of issues about any and every drive on the market if you dig around.  If you do choose WDs, I hope that you find yours to be trouble-free hardware.

3541

Living Room / Re: Childhood Memory

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 16, 2008, 02:13 PM »

I would be a real geek if I remembered a phone number because it followed a Fibonacci sequence.

-Edvard (December 16, 2008, 10:22 AM)

Or an artist 

3542

Living Room / Re: In-car GPS

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 16, 2008, 09:41 AM »

It's possible but I don't think so. Maps don't seem to make much sense to her.

-Deozaan (December 16, 2008, 03:14 AM)

Are you one of us with a navigator who thinks contour lines represent the route? 

3543

Living Room / Re: Childhood Memory

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 16, 2008, 09:23 AM »

I remember one, from (heaven help me!) 50+ years ago.
Also available to me are the registration-plate numbers from some, but not all, of my early cars.
The trouble with 'memory' is that, while the information is always in there, it's not always accessible.
Retrieval depends a number of factors, one of the least important of which is the perceived need to remember.

[edit:] While it may seem a little morbid, I can recall the name of every dog I ever owned.
I cannot, however, recall the name of every cat who has owned me (I prefer dogs to cats).

3544

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Intro

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 15, 2008, 09:09 PM »

I'm gravitating back to "iphi's memorable passwords" idea - because I don't like using tools that remember passwords for you, that is a security risk, neither is it smart to use the same combination everywhere

-iphigenie (December 15, 2008, 11:05 AM)

That certainly sounds interesting!

3545

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Intro

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 15, 2008, 08:20 AM »

I'm feeling rather discouraged/overwhelmed at trying a desktop app.
Tried in wxperl (since i can do perl in my sleep, or close) but realised that there is pretty much no way to package things properly for distribution. So will have to tackle something else.

Netbeans/java perhaps but I already have another product with a steep learning curve so I don't know.

-iphigenie (December 15, 2008, 05:56 AM)

It'd be great to see something from you.
Let me offer a truly self-serving idea (feel free to ignore it, of course).
I mention this because I feel it would be quick to do for someone capable.

Some while back I asked if someone could do this.
There were many helpful responses but none resulted in quite what I was seeking.
This was easy to do under OS/2 and I've always wished it were available under Windows.
None of the 'canned' applications does it.
It's Here.

As I say, if this strikes you as ludicrous, or beneath your talents, just ignore the idea.

3546

General Software Discussion / Re: Bear Bottoms Freeware: A very nice high-quality software site

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 15, 2008, 08:01 AM »

People are getting pretty antagonistic on this thread -- can i remind the DC regulars that the way we demonstrate tolerance and good manors here, is by acting respectful and showing by example how we expect people to behave, not by going on attack.

-mouser (December 14, 2008, 10:55 PM)

Very true.

Nevertheless...

-40hz (December 15, 2008, 12:11 AM)

Come on chaps, let go of it!

So,  how about those Rays?  Good on the ice, or what!

3547

Living Room / Re: In-car GPS

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 14, 2008, 11:29 AM »

to patteo, Thanks for that detailed post, very helpful.

to y0himba, Good idea -- something to consider.

3548

Living Room / Re: Repeated drive corruption

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 13, 2008, 05:22 PM »

Thanks everyone!

As I've been told, I don't have the brains I was born with.
Not thinking at all, of course I should pull the other drives 

Just to be clear, the troublesome drive is being replaced... no question. 
Data (and reliability) are worth far more to me than the cost of a replacement drive.

While replacing, I will check out all the other points, though (connections/cable etc).
I'll put the troublesome drive into a different computer when I run the tests as I need the machine that it's now in to be functioning.

My original query was aimed at avoiding a recurrence of this with a replacement drive (this one's only 6 months old).

3549

Living Room / Re: In-car GPS

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 13, 2008, 03:00 PM »

Thanks for taking the time to answer, Josh.  Very helpful!

3550

Living Room / Re: Repeated drive corruption

« Last post by cranioscopical on December 13, 2008, 02:58 PM »

Thanks again.
I'm hurrying at the moment but from a VERY quick look it looks as if
these (http://www.dban.org/) and (http://www.lehigh.ed...ty/gwscan/gwscan.htm)
Will wipe anything they find.
Will I have an option ONLY to wipe the second of 4 drives, do you know?

TIA