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3876

Living Room / Re: Looking for image stitching software without processing image content

« Last post by 4wd on March 21, 2012, 07:59 PM »

Have you looked through the hugin tutorials?  Not sure if this is what you need or not, but this is one I used for stitching flat images.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/scans/en.shtml

-kfitting (March 21, 2012, 01:21 PM)

I saw that also, that's why I mentioned the far too fiddly bit in my last post......but it has given me an idea.

What if exiftool is used, (in a batch command), to add some bogus camera data to the screengrabs such as the reduced Focal Length, (start with the 10mm they mention in the hugin tutorial), and then pass those pictures to AutoStitch, (or even hugin) ?

That would make the first mind-numbing step of the hugin tutorial void if all the pictures already contain the necessary data.

3877

Living Room / Re: Google Working with the CIA?!?

« Last post by 4wd on March 21, 2012, 05:41 AM »

Don't forget the Australian Greens, (it's a political party not a veg....oh wait), are supposedly in league with the CIA.

3878

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA to automate few tasks for new installed windows xp sp3

« Last post by 4wd on March 21, 2012, 05:27 AM »

change clock to 12 hour format
set location (country)
show hidden files and folders.
unhide exensions for known file types.
unhide protected operating system files.

-3dpinballchamp (March 20, 2012, 03:54 AM)

By default Windows installs with the clock in 12 hour format, (h.mm.ss tt), I always have to change it to 24 hour format, (HH.mm).

You can use nlite to set all the rest, on the Unattended page you can set Location, Language and Localization:



On the Tweaks page you can set the Explorer settings:



As Shades and Ath suggest, I recommend you use nlite to set up your installation disc how you want it, it is so much easier than doing it any other way.


If you want to use a registry file:

This location sets the country, (in this case "12" = Australia, "14"=Austria), see what yours is and change accordingly:

Code: Text [Select]

1. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
2.  
3. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\International\Geo]
4. "Nation"="12"

The Explorer options you mention can be set with:

Code: Text [Select]

1. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
2.  
3. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
4. "HideFileExt"=dword:00000000
5. "Hidden"=dword:00000001
6. "SuperHidden"=dword:00000000
7. "ShowSuperHidden"=dword:00000001

One doubleclick on the file after installation will let you merge it and that takes care of 4/5 of your list.

I have also thought that a tool like this for post-installation configuration would be nice.

-ewemoa (March 21, 2012, 03:38 AM)

But they're already there, in the Control Panel applications.  The problem with doing a 'one Control Panel thing' is that, who decides what should be included?

One person might want Time/Date settings, another might not - to cater to everyone you'd have to combine all the Control Panel applications into just one humongous unmanageable one.

It is so much easier to create your installation media how you want it, (using WAIK, nlite, vlite, rt7lite, etc), and not have to do any tweaking after installation.

Your suggestion of the extensible program might sound good but for the person who has to write it, he's just going to be duplicating all the functions found in the separate Control Panel applications as plugins for a single program.

3879

Living Room / Re: Looking for image stitching software without processing image content

« Last post by 4wd on March 20, 2012, 04:00 PM »

The only small and light program that comes to mind is AutoStitch, the forerunner of AutoPano and a couple of others.

But I just tried it and it distorts stitched screengrabs, I think this because the amount of overlap and the size of the individual grabs varied and the software also assumes that the individual images were made by a camera and therefore tries to compensate for lens distortion.

Otherwise, try hugin, it's not small and light, (can be run portable, IIRC, just download the 7zip version and extract), but you can edit the 'camera lens' attributes so as to remove most, (if not all), distortion plus it has a lot of other settings to change perspective.  (I'll have a play when I'm fully awake.)

Also, is this a specific map site ?

There are programs/scripts written for some map sites that automatically download the individual map 'tiles' and then create the bigger picture.

EDIT: I don't think hugin is going to fit your needs, far too fiddly to combine just a few grabs.

3880

Living Room / Re: Mobile hotspots: your experiences. (mine included)

« Last post by 4wd on March 19, 2012, 10:25 AM »

You can ONLY use the two or three devices your carrier offers, because they're the only people who can buy the hardware.

-superboyac (March 19, 2012, 10:06 AM)

This is something I don't really understand, don't/can't any of the carriers in the USA just sell you a SIM ?

Fair enough if you have to be locked into some kind of monthly contract but why do you have to use their hardware, (phone/3G router/etc) ?

Are you saying you can't buy a phone/3G router from somewhere, (store internet/China), grab a pre-paid SIM and just use it ?

Does the USA even have pre-paid SIMs ?

3881

Living Room / Re: Cell phone for trip to China

« Last post by 4wd on March 18, 2012, 06:27 PM »

I have an old Nokia 1100^w Dual band GSM, (850/1900), that worked fine in Hong Kong.  An old Nokia 6230i^w Tri-band, (900/1800/1900), worked fine in Beijing/HK/Russia/EU/Sth Africa, (and should work in the USA).

You can have the Nokia 6230i if you want, I no longer use it - I'd have to send it sans battery, (Auspost rules), but they're the readily available Nokia BL-5C.  Let me know and I'll test it, (hasn't been used for a few months), and wipe the incriminating evidence.  I'll even throw in the 32MB MMC card it came with.

Otherwise, the Kings of Gadgets have you covered

Dual SIM Dual Network Standby Quadband GSM
LCD Screen Quadband GSM Cell Phone with Torch/FM/SOS

3882

Living Room / Re: Auslogics promoting false speed tester?

« Last post by 4wd on March 17, 2012, 07:29 PM »

Yes well, complete BS AFAICT - I'm getting half my download rate and almost three times my upload rate.

3883

Living Room / Re: Moronic would-be scammers

« Last post by 4wd on March 17, 2012, 06:58 PM »

In today's world of uncertain life, what is the point of health insurance that is sold with card which ultimately expires in just one year?

-mahesh2k (March 17, 2012, 06:54 PM)

Still, it might last longer than the life insured....

3884

Living Room / Re: When are modern Terms of Service going to change?

« Last post by 4wd on March 17, 2012, 06:56 PM »

[Off Topic Warning]

To cover every possibility so the courts have to rule in their favor.

-steeladept (March 17, 2012, 03:10 PM)

Reminds me of the X-Files episode, Je Souhaite, where Mulder finds the Jinn in the rug and asks for World peace and everyone else disappears.  So he ends up sitting down writing a multi-page wish in which all clauses/eventualities will be covered.

3885

General Software Discussion / Re: How to become Admin' for real?

« Last post by 4wd on March 16, 2012, 07:47 PM »

Motherboard from here.

3886

General Software Discussion / Re: How to become Admin' for real?

« Last post by 4wd on March 15, 2012, 06:12 PM »

"No room for more" means either that there are no more (SATA) connectors on your mainboard, your PC case has no room to fit another disk or your power supply cannot handle the load of an extra hard disk anymore.

My money would be on the first option.

-Shades (March 15, 2012, 04:00 PM)

I don't think you'll collect

MS-7379VP = MSI G31 based motherboard which all have 4 SATA-II ports.

Being a mini-tower case it's more likely to be lack of space or the PSU doesn't have a spare SATA power plug, (which can be remedied).

The FUJITSU SIEMENS Scaleo Pi2680 shows as having two 5.25" bays, if only one is occupied then another HDD can be installed in the other using a pair of mounting adapters, then just plug it in and use it for the data drive.

3887

Post New Requests Here / Re: [REQ] Disable sleep/hibernation one time to drain battery

« Last post by 4wd on March 15, 2012, 07:42 AM »

Thanks, it shows that PMT is, (or trying to), switch from Power Saver to High Performance.

You didn't include the High Performance Advanced settings screengrab, could you please?

I'm running Win7 64x with "Balanced" power scheme.

-vevola (March 14, 2012, 03:41 PM)

The powercfg output shows you're running in the Power Saver scheme which is a bit more frugal than the Balanced scheme.

It also seems to indicate that there might be some form of power software installed by Dell, (only because I see a Dell power scheme there - AMD do the same thing if you run their Fusion software IIRC).

Thanks for your help!

No problem, it's just got me beat how it can be messing up your hibernation when all it does is swap power schemes, it doesn't change anything in those schemes.  It shouldn't even be going into Sleep/Hibernation when in High Performance, as you can see from my grab above, they're both set to Never by default.

You can also reset the power schemes to their default values by pressing the Restore Plan Defaults button under each schemes Advanced settings.

I've attached a small video of what happens when it runs - you can watch it change the power scheme each time it's run, (.7z because you can't attach .mp4 for some reason).

It's the equivalent of you typing in the following commands in a CLI, just as a matter of interest can you effect the same change from the CLI and does it do the same thing Hibernate-wise ?

powercfg /setactive 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c   (should set to High Performance)
powercfg /setactive a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a    (should set back to Power Saver)

Anyone else care to try it with a Win7 laptop and see what happens?

3888

Post New Requests Here / Re: [REQ] Disable sleep/hibernation one time to drain battery

« Last post by 4wd on March 14, 2012, 07:41 PM »

OK, I'm going to need some more information:

Is your operating system on an SSD or HDD?

The output of the powercfg list command, (see below):

C:\>powercfg list

Existing Power Schemes (* Active)
-----------------------------------
Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e  (Balanced) *
Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c  (High performance)
Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a  (Power saver)
Power Scheme GUID: e12bd28e-68a8-4f90-b0a5-f76b2b523ca3  (AMD Fusion Utility Recovery Profile)

Can you do a screengrab of PMTs output window when you run it both the first and second time, (like I did here), and either PM them to me or attach to a post.

Can you do a screengrab of both the Balanced and High Performance Advanced settings of your Power Options, the default for both of them should look like this:



Also, after running it once what is the value of the PMT key stored under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce (use regedit.exe) ?

What is it after running PMT a second time, (it shouldn't be there) ?

3889

General Review Discussion / Re: Quick Review: Collusion - Firefox "tracking" add-on

« Last post by 4wd on March 12, 2012, 01:45 AM »

Click the icon in the Addon tray:

3890

General Review Discussion / Re: Quick Review: Collusion - Firefox "tracking" add-on

« Last post by 4wd on March 11, 2012, 08:05 PM »

After a week of just general browsing and forgetting all about it:

3891

General Software Discussion / Re: Auto-Ping?

« Last post by 4wd on March 10, 2012, 08:39 PM »

OK, as Bullwinkle always said, 'This time for sure!'

The new improved version that seems to work.  Comes with a cast iron executable guarantee^*.

It checks for the existence of a website by trying to retrieve the website page at set intervals and changes the SysTray icon accordingly.

If all is well then it will look like this:



If the website is down then, (in theory), you'll get a 5 second popup tooltip:



The icon will change to a red circle with cross and the tooltip will change to:



Explanation of the lines:
1) No connection to the website - this could be because the host machine has died or the webserver program on the host machine is not running.
2) A ping to Google was either OK or not - a failed ping to Google could indicate you have a network problem at your end, (since Google is up most of the time).  If this fails you won't get line 3 - not much point.
3) It passes the website address to http://www.checksite.us and displays the result, this will either be it's down for Everyone or Just You.

Configuration:



It'll open the first time the program is run or if you select it from the tray icon menu.

The first connection is attempted at the end of the first elapsed interval after program execution, so until then the SysTray icon will look like the executable icon.

You can put the executable anywhere you like, you can name it anything you like - the config file will be located in the same directory and have the same name, (except extension), as the executable.

Have one for each site and name them accordingly, eg. google.exe, donationcoder.exe, etc.exe

Source, executable, icons, etc in the archive.

^* It'll work until the moment you execute it.

Updated: 20120312 - Fixed some typos and added an option for the popup to the config.

3892

General Software Discussion / Re: Auto-Ping?

« Last post by 4wd on March 08, 2012, 10:28 PM »

Try this, it's just a quick butcher of my iFallover script elsewhere.

OK, I've deleted it because it was a complete screwup, my brain certainly was dormant at the time  

However, I will have another up shortly...just one question:

Do you want to check for the existence of the website or the machine it's hosted on?

A ping will show the latter but won't tell you if the website is actually up.

Also, what do you consider necessary criteria for a website to be 'up', eg. Error 404 means a webserver is up but the page you were looking for isn't on it.

3893

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PDFZilla free for 20 days - Ends 14 March 2012

« Last post by 4wd on March 06, 2012, 07:38 PM »

Godzilla - the biggest, most monstrous of them all.

-4wd (March 06, 2012, 07:12 PM)

Sorry to get off topic but my favorite too.  Have four Godzira movies in my collection.

-Midnight Rambler (March 06, 2012, 07:19 PM)

I'm worse, I've got 29 Godzilla + 3 Mothra. 

3894

Living Room / Re: Lets Spice Things Up!

« Last post by 4wd on March 06, 2012, 07:23 PM »

3895

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PDFZilla free for 20 days - Ends 14 March 2012

« Last post by 4wd on March 06, 2012, 07:12 PM »

The zilla name come s from the excellent FTP Filezilla program.

-Steven Avery (March 06, 2012, 05:45 PM)

I thought it originated with Godzilla - the biggest, most monstrous of them all.

Anything else is just a pale copy.

3896

General Software Discussion / Re: I Need DC Input

« Last post by 4wd on March 06, 2012, 02:56 AM »

Hmmm - Primary vs Logical  

Time for research!  

-CleverCat (March 06, 2012, 01:40 AM)

The short version:
Primary partitions may contain a bootable operating system, you may have a maximum of four (4) primary partitions on one HDD.
Extended partitions aren't bootable and can contain as many Logical partitions as you like, (well you could run out of assigned volumes under Windows if you go berserk).  Each HDD can contain one (1) Extended partition.

In my screengrab below, HDDs marked D:, R:, E: & G: each contain one Extended partition, (it occupies the full HDD), which each have one Logical partition.
Drive U: has one Extended Partition which contains two (2) Logical partitions, one being U: the other being the one with the RAW filesystem, it's encrypted with TrueCrypt and as such is unrecognisable by Windows until mounted.
Drive C: contains two Primary partitions, the 100MB System Reserved that W7 creates and C: which contains the OS.

The drive with System Reserved and C: is the only drive with Primary partitions, hence it's the only one that shows up in BIOS as being bootable.

I do however, have external drives that have a Primary partition because they are bootable.  They boot into an environment that contains various recovery programs, etc.

3897

Living Room / Re: HTPC - Revisited - Input requested

« Last post by 4wd on March 05, 2012, 06:46 PM »

I'll put forward a setup, maybe it can get you started tweaking it or discussion.  I'll point out now that I've used AMD APUs mainly because there is nothing that can compete with them for video decoding on a price/performance scale but I'm sure you can use an i5-2500 or higher to get the same performance.

For a Mini-ITX build:
$109 - LIAN LI PC-Q08B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case - Doesn't have the, (IMHO), ugly 5.25" bays on the side like their other small cases but does have an annoying blue LED in the fan - which I'm quite sure could be introduced to Mr Cutter or replaced entirely.  USB 3.0 ports, six 3.5" HDD bays, one 2.5" bay, takes a standard PSU,
$139 - ASUS F1A75-I Deluxe FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX AMD Motherboard - WiFi 802.11b/g/n, HDMI, 7.1 audio, USB3, QWERTY remote, BlueTooth, up to 32GB of DDR3 - this covers most of the list of requirements.
$139 - AMD A8-3870K Unlocked Llano 3.0GHz Socket FM1 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 6550D - The locked A3850 is $10 cheaper but why bother?
$39 - Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) - You can get cheaper RAM but Kingston is well known and reliable.
$69 - PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK III 400W Modular 80PLUS Bronze Power Supply - Again, you can get a cheaper PSU, (and 400W is overkill for this build), but PPC make good quality PSUs.
$57 - ASUS Black 12X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Drive Model BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS - Supposedly one of, if not, the quietest BluRay combo drives around.

So that's $552 of your hard-earned money spent.

You could save money by using the following:
$99 - Fractal Design Arc Mini Black High Performance PC Computer Case w/ USB 3.0 - I have to say that I particular like Fractal Designs cases.
$64 - ASRock A75M-HVS FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX - After Gigabyte, ASRock would be my personal second choice even though they are a division of ASUS they seem to make boards that are more reliable than their parent company, at least in my experience.

Total now: $467

But you need to add a WiFi dongle/card - $15-$30 depending on brand.

I haven't mentioned TV Tuner cards because you didn't mention single/dual tuner, just DVB-T or Hybrid or DVB-T/Ananlog/Cable.  Also the US standard is different from here so I can't recommend anything specific but Hauppauge and AverMedia are usually reliable, (although even they have put out some dogs).

But I will say you don't need it to be a PCI(e) card, USB 2.0 is fine for Dual channel HD DVB-t reception.  I use a TinyTwin together with DNTV Scheduler Pro which is a commercial fork of TV Scheduler Pro, (now open source).  I'm not sure whether TVSP will work in an ATSC situation, (you may need to make your own stations xml file up), but I can say that DNTV SP will happily capture two HD DVB-T broadcasts over USB 2.0 without a problem, (more programs if they happen to be on the same stream - I've had five programs from two streams recording simultaneously).
CPU load is approximately 15% while capturing, (Athlon II 235e @800Mhz), and I've used it on my Atom 270 netbook without any frame drops - the reason is, it's actually two programs: a java frontend running the web server/EPG etc, and a dedicated executable to do the capture.

PM me and I'll send you the IP so you can wander around in it, (change anything and I will kill you)  

Anyway, something to think about/discuss/ignore.

Addendum: Here's a program that's almost identical that will work in the USA: DV Scheduler

For a Micro-ATX build:
$99 - LIAN LI PC-A04B Black Aluminum MicroATX Mini Tower
 or
$109 - Fractal Design Define Mini Black Micro ATX Silent PC Computer Case w/ USB 3.0

$84 - ASUS F1A75-M LE FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX

CPU, PSU, RAM & Combo drive as above plus you need a WiFI dongle/card.


Or maybe you'd like to go a little retro

3898

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by 4wd on March 05, 2012, 05:39 PM »

Daminion took a LONG time to import my pictures folder (about 34 GB in just over 8 hours) but it's been smooth since.

-Darwin (March 05, 2012, 01:31 PM)

That seems excessive, here it took about an hour to do 115GB, (555 directories, 43515 photos).

• No configuration at all.

-fenixproductions (March 05, 2012, 05:24 PM)

It's beta software, it says the Preferences are coming.

• For my 200MB cliparts folder it created 90MB hidden directory full of thumbnails.

The catalogue is 58.6MB but the ~Thumb directory is 2.29GB.

Some way to minimise the program while it's cataloguing would be nice.

3899

General Software Discussion / Re: I Need DC Input

« Last post by 4wd on March 05, 2012, 05:34 PM »

I always used to use the old ptedit.exe to mark a partition inactive but Acronis Disk Director and Paragon HDM can do it from the context menu - so I got lazy

Still, Clevercats external isn't marked as Active so the BIOS is just picking up it's a Primary partition.

3900

General Software Discussion / Re: I Need DC Input

« Last post by 4wd on March 05, 2012, 04:40 AM »

Not active - oh well doesn't seem to be a problem so will take off boot list?

-CleverCat (March 05, 2012, 01:49 AM)

Interesting, then again, I try never to have any more than one Primary partition on the system, (hence all the drives being Logical above), so I don't normally see any other bootable drive option in the BIOS.