Recent Posts

3626

General Software Discussion / Re: Adobe Acrobat zoom/navigation frustrations

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 20, 2011, 11:24 AM »

Wow! ...Broken is right. While I've never heard of that key combo, I do have Adobe Reader 9 installed. Ad when pressing Ctrl + Space the cursor changes to the little zooming + sign.
Pressing Ctrl + Space + Alt changes the cursor to the little zooming - sign.

But neither have any effect on the current document view.

Rather weird they'd break half of something ... because I use Ctrl + (numpad) 2 to force fit to window all the time.

IIRC Adobe is still doing security updates back to version 7 ... So you should be safe with 8 for a while.

If you run two different versions, the only catch I've seen is occasionally Outlook will hang because it trying to hand the file to both of them via the add-ons. But that's easy enough to fix by disabling one of them in Outlook.

3627

Living Room / Re: it's not Star Trek, it's Cosmic Journey

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 19, 2011, 05:40 PM »

I'm not a gamer (as in, not at all) - but I grew up with Asteroids and Space Invaders (arcade versions).
Looks great, and is difficult!
I even cant get used to using the arrow buttons - yet - it doesnt help that I'm left handed and not a touch typist - I presume people who actually play games on computers wouldnt have this problem. But I find I dont have much precision control moving left to right - dont know if that's just me, or my keyboard, or the game.

-tomos (September 19, 2011, 05:26 PM)

A left handed, not a gamer, that (remembers arcades, and) can't type. Hell you're alright in my book ... We could be related... (hehe)

Me lefty 2.

3628

Living Room / Re: UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 19, 2011, 01:19 PM »

Tying Ctrl+S to Save All ... Cringe. Save current sure. But all?!? Oh the (incredibly huge) messes that could make.

3629

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Fast boot time ? Check this out...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 19, 2011, 06:43 AM »

Crap, I forgot all about this. I'd wanted to play with it over the weekend.

Thanks Carol, tis looking like Windows H8 indeed.

3630

Living Room / Re: Looking for beta-testers

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 18, 2011, 08:46 AM »

Second run at RW Paint:

So I'm donating some time to the local Humane Society by reworking their website, and part of it required doing some graphics. Thankfully very simple graphics given my complete lack of "art" skills...

All I needed to do was add an X pixel border to a silhouetted image so it could be used as a (link) button of sorts. 2 Hours were wasted in PhotoShop trying to pull this off with absolute zero success. Windows Paint (yes I really was that desperate), would do an unfilled rounded rectangle but the edges were hidiously jagged.

Then I remembered RW Paint and this thread. It was 2am, but I decided to give it a shot. It actually took me longer to find the thread, than it did to get RW Paint to spit out a perfectly bordered, finished, transparent, ready to upload graphic.


Now That is what I call easy to use! 

3631

General Software Discussion / Re: Advice Needed: Fixing Pentium 4 PC with Conficker virus

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 18, 2011, 08:24 AM »

Thanks, app!  Sounds like I can safely assume it's a bad CD drive, if it fails to work after getting rid of the virus.

-kyrathaba (September 17, 2011, 06:35 AM)

Even with a boot sector virus, if the CD is ahead of the HDD in the boot sequence, and it still isn't booting ... Safe bet the CD-ROM drive is bad.

On days where time and or hardware are scarce. I've used a Trinity Rescue Disk to boot an infected machine to its Linux/Samba server share, mapped a drive letter to it, and then scanned the mapped drive with AV from another machine.

It's also generally best to update/rewrite the MBR before booting back into the "cleaned" drive to be sure nothing is lurking there for later reinfection.

3632

Living Room / Re: The Boozernet...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 17, 2011, 08:55 AM »

Psht.  You've not experienced some of the nightmares I have in consulting.  Some of the code drives you to drink.

-wraith808 (September 16, 2011, 07:18 PM)

ROFLMAO!

That's probably why, when I reached a career crossroad many years ago, I went down the systems rather than the dev path. Especially after a previous three year foray into code development.
 

-40hz (September 16, 2011, 07:37 PM)

Given that I (albeit foolishly) straddled the two of them ... I gotta back wraith on this.  And frankly some of the stuff I've seen in systems makes it really hard not to come unwound...without a bracer.

(Highlight from just this week) Production system/doctor's office, using software RAID1. Nobody (No-Body...) in the whole damn place thought to wonder (or even notice) the flashing red text POST Error Message: RAID MIRROR DEGRADED ... In the Past Three Years!!!

Now as luck would have it (or not.) it was just a power cable. But when said power cable was plugged back in. Both drives commenced to assume that they were the now rather obviously badly degraded RAID Mirror. So now it's a 50/50 on which side wins/boots everytime you start the machine. Yeah!

Data Peek-A-Boo.

I need a drink.

 

3633

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Windows 7 boot management more broken than ever?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 17, 2011, 08:39 AM »

I'm pretty sure anyway, without one mine will boot till it beeps for a keyboard.
If I don't have one hooked up.

-cmpm (September 17, 2011, 05:20 AM)

POST Error: Keyboard Not Detected!
Press F1 to Continue...  O_o

...I just love that one.


Ath has correct answer ... Assuming you're running a headless box (I run several), or are just planning on doing "Mouse Stuff" (...or just really hate that freakin' error).

3634

Living Room / Re: The Boozernet...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 16, 2011, 12:01 PM »

Speaking of drunk coding, I've often found that when a bit tipsey I actually quite enjoy working on a tedious or mundane bit of code which I was otherwise putting off. Only works for a very low level drunk and it's not really something I would set out to do in advance.

-Eóin (September 16, 2011, 11:42 AM)

+1 Been there many (Um..) a few times myself...

3635

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Windows 7 boot management more broken than ever?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 16, 2011, 11:36 AM »

Well that answer looks good on paper, but...

-Stoic Joker (September 16, 2011, 06:49 AM)

The questions I answered were:
1) what was it for, and
2) how you boot into it.

And I did mention that you had to be able to boot from that partition in order to use it, (in a kind of off-hand way).

-4wd (September 16, 2011, 09:30 AM)

Apparently it was a bit to early in the morning for subtlety

@Stoic Joker

So he's got nothing looking for F8 to catch the keystroke.

Some keyboards don't recognize the F keys on boot up at all.
I have one that does not, could not even get to safe mode,
till I figured out the keyboard will not see the F keys on bootup.

-cmpm (September 16, 2011, 09:53 AM)

That's not quite the direction I was headed earlier, but... I have run into that isue once or twice myself ... Usually with a multi-media keyboard (which is part of why I hate them). A lot of the MM Keyboards like to toggle the default usage of the F-key row between its intended/proper purpose and a bunch of daffy media shortcuts. This behavior makes the keyboard completely useless unless you can remember which hotkey combo will force the keyboard to go back to acting right.

3636

Living Room / Re: The Boozernet...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 16, 2011, 11:13 AM »

If it's after 12 on a Saturday...  

3637

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Windows 7 boot management more broken than ever?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 16, 2011, 06:49 AM »

That's the million dollar question

And after a little experimentation the answer is.......[drum roll].........F8

As usual, press F8 as you boot then choose Repair Computer.  It boots into a WinPE environment, (the files are stored in the 100MB area).

Didn't ask for the DVD at all.

-4wd (September 15, 2011, 09:07 PM)

Well that answer looks good on paper, but...

(from first post)

"Reboot and select proper boot device..."

-JavaJones (September 15, 2011, 03:24 PM)

^That's^ a BIOS error message that say's no boot record/MBR found ... So he's got nothing looking for F8 to catch the keystroke.

...Think I'll save a copy of that article JJ linked to.

 

3638

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Windows 7 boot management more broken than ever?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 15, 2011, 05:12 PM »

FWIW, I've run into this hassle often enough that I usually take the easy way out and temporarily unplug all the drives other than the the one I want to install Win7on. Cuts down on bad surprises down the road.

-40hz (September 15, 2011, 04:00 PM)

+1 I started doing that back in the XP days to keep CardReaders from shifting the OS to drive H:.

One Drive = One Target ... and no mistakes/suprizes.

3639

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 15, 2011, 11:41 AM »

Not quite the same thing... But I had a client last week that had a Win7 x64 machine and an external video adapter that used the DisplayLink drivers. I had to DL the latest from their site to get it running, but it worked just fine.

3640

Living Room / Re: Apple and users' privacy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 14, 2011, 06:41 PM »

So tomorrow's schedule is:

3641

Living Room / Re: Apple and users' privacy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 14, 2011, 06:38 PM »

And that's how my day went...

3642

Developer's Corner / Re: Any wordpress coders here available for hire?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 13, 2011, 11:04 PM »

With all the Wordpress parts you want stripped out, what value do you see in Wordpress that you are actually trying to capture?  Maybe this would be a better way to attack it?

-steeladept (September 13, 2011, 06:58 PM)

I found myself here too.

I'm insistent on having the (faithful standby) "Old School" direct FTP access as well. But I just did a WordPress (with shopping cart) project for the office, and I gotta say; the built-in file upload thing is mighty handy when you get used to it.

Given the tendency of the WP plug-ins to need things where they want them (as opposed to where you want to put them). The file uploader saved me a good bit of time ... and that's even when developing with the production server on the local LAN. Poking through the file system isn't always that much fun ... Ya know?

3643

Living Room / Re: Apple and users' privacy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 13, 2011, 06:51 AM »

8

Oh well... It helps to remember... Jesus loves you. Cthulhu thinks you taste like chicken.

-Renegade (September 12, 2011, 10:30 PM)

ROFL

Ok, I think since this initially came up as a weekend thing, we probably owe it to people to try to explain the madness. It started with some relaxed TGIF discussion in the irc channel (this is an excerpt, I omitted some stuff):

-Jibz (September 13, 2011, 01:22 AM)

Had a feeling it would be something like that, but I just don't have time to hangout in the channel.

Actually my first question was just a setup line for the second one ... I really do want one of those stickers.

3644

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Fast boot time ? Check this out...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 13, 2011, 06:41 AM »

7 seconds? Damn. I might consider rebooting more often then (or not). I only reboot every few (3 - 6) months for Win updates depending on how critical what patch is. Hell I've only shutdown my main comp about 4 times since I built it.

3645

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: MS Office is breaking ALT-TAB

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 13, 2011, 06:31 AM »

Hm... Played with it a bit, and can't quite duplicate the behavior (document tab'ed to got displayed). But the standard behavior for a MDI interface (which Excel is), would be to Alt+Tab into it, and then Ctrl+Tab through its open documents/child windows.

Or I could be missing something... *Shrug*

3646

Living Room / Re: Apple and users' privacy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 12, 2011, 10:16 PM »

Okay... I have 2 questions.

1. Have you people completely lost you minds?!?

2. Where do I get a bumper sticker of that first one?

3647

Living Room / Re: PCWorld recommends DonationCoder.com and says: "Give a Little, Get a Lot"

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 12, 2011, 06:25 PM »

Yeah, i hate to throw cold water on those of you who love fine print, but here's the reality as i see it:

• If you are not making a lot of money (or look like you might soon), no one is going to sue you or hassle you so the fine print stuff just never becomes an issue.
• If you are making a lot of money (or look like you might soon), no amount of fine print or correct legal positioning can save you from the hired gun lawyers who can bleed you dry or extort money from you, whether you are legally in the right or wrong.

Bottom line is: Legal fine print doesn't seem to have much practical value.

-mouser (September 12, 2011, 06:16 PM)

Couldn't of said it better myself.

3648

Living Room / Re: PCWorld recommends DonationCoder.com and says: "Give a Little, Get a Lot"

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 12, 2011, 06:03 PM »

Well, there is a case where the refund would not be possible.. If the donation was specifically sent by the donator to an author, and the author cashed out the donation after 30 days, and the author didn't have enough donations in their credits to handle a refund, we wouldn't be able to refund it.  This has never happened but it is possible.  I suppose I should add some asterisk to the refund statement about this.

-mouser (September 11, 2011, 07:15 AM)

Maybe if it's within 30 days of the donation - any donation.  So if I donate X today, then Y some days later, 30 days after X donation, I couldn't get it back, though I could still get back Y within it's 30 day window.  I think that's more than fair.

-wraith808 (September 11, 2011, 09:17 PM)

I think the key point here is, its never happened. Once you start down the slippery fine print slope...It tends to end in lawyers (which is never safe for anyone).

3649

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR noshow when focused window is admin (UAC @ top level win7)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 12, 2011, 11:47 AM »

Run as Admin & the UAC prompts run in a different session than the locally logged on user. These sessions are isolated for security purposes ... So trying to get them to interact (like handing a file from one to the other, etc.) is AFAIK futile.

3650

General Software Discussion / Re: Case of the missing partitions when downgrading from W7 to XP

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 12, 2011, 11:31 AM »

I just don't see the peek-A-boo partition as an alignment issue. That and I think that the whole partition alignment thing is getting a little out of hand. Unless you're going to/from SSD/machanical drives.

It sounds more like in the process of flopping the OS back and forth between machines, you picked up a script/policy/startup command that is trying to hide what it thinks is a recovery partition.