Recent Posts

526

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: why would you want to buy PowerDesk?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 22, 2013, 07:19 PM »

tried XYplorer but found it still can't match Powerdesk's View>File Panes function and Drivebar toolbar.

-Midnight Rambler (August 19, 2013, 10:30 AM)

I'm not sure what View>File Panes does, but XYplorer has has drivebar functionality for a while now (though you had to configure the toolbar to get it):  http://www.xyplorer....om/release_10.10.htm

527

Living Room / Re: Google Goes Dark for Two Minutes. Panic Ensues.

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 18, 2013, 11:49 PM »

Probably not. I've blocked a lot of Google domains at the DNS level, and they all work just fine. Google really adds no value to any site for any user.

-Renegade (August 17, 2013, 12:19 PM)

Blocking at DNS may behave differently than DNS directing a request a server that doesn't respond in a timely manner.  In the first case things fail fast, in the second case things might take a looong time to fail, making the site load slowly or not at all.  That was my experience during the Google blackout.  I was thinking of loading my hosts file into an editor and adding the various DNS names that seemed to be causing my browser to stall to resolve to localhost or something, but I figured it would be more effort than just waiting out the problem.

Whether there's value or not in the Google service is a separate issue (and the value is often to the website, not the reader).

528

Living Room / Re: Google Goes Dark for Two Minutes. Panic Ensues.

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 17, 2013, 11:55 AM »

Big deal, right?

The problem is that so many webpages hit Google themselves (for analytics and what not), so even if you weren't trying to get to Google or Google's apps directly, there's still a very good chance that the sites you were trying to access didn't work very well.

529

Living Room / Re: The fun of installing custom router firmware (tomato, dd-wrt) - an introduction

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 04, 2013, 02:22 AM »

FWIW, the most useful setting in Tomato that I think every router firmware should have is the one that lets you set it to reboot itself in the middle of the night every day. For me, that completely solved the problem of having to pull the power on the router when it started having  problems after a couple weeks of constant uptime.

530

Living Room / Re: 3D Printing Blasts Off Without Cody Wilson?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 16, 2013, 01:20 PM »

Aerojet Rocketdyne

-Renegade (July 16, 2013, 04:13 AM)

I need to find a job there.  Very cool name, and my email address would be [email protected].

Now I have to figure out what I need to do to become a rocket scientist - I hear they're really going places!

531

Living Room / Re: Computers Outlawed in Florida

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 15, 2013, 10:08 AM »

This got a little bit of a write-up on cracked.com today:

what's certain is that all of you reading this in Florida are filthy outlaws right now, and we've automatically reported you to the FBI.

-http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/4-astounding-screw-ups-government-workers-failed-to-notice/

532

Living Room / Re: "Cool" Möbius

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 12, 2013, 11:17 AM »

How come I never knew about the slow fall effect of a magnet through a copper pipe?  I'm glad he demonstrated that because I can actually try it myself - I'm going to have to show that to the kids.

533

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: SoftMaker Office 69% off

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 10, 2013, 11:26 AM »

The normal price includes 3 licenses. I have not checked if this also is the case when on offer.

-Curt (July 10, 2013, 04:26 AM)

The "Fine Print" tab indicates that the BDJ offer includes the 3 installations-per-purchase license. 

I think BDJ has a standing rule that their offers are equivalent to the licenses you would normally purchase direct from the software vendor, though I wouldn't be surprised if occasionally there is an exception to that rule.

534

Living Room / Re: This Just in: From the You Gotta be Shitting Me Dept.

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 09, 2013, 07:31 PM »

At this point I just have to wait for the 25th to take it into the appointment the insurance company (Geico (incredibly not fast)) set up. Then it's fate will be decided (close race).

-Stoic Joker (July 09, 2013, 05:41 PM)

More than two weeks for the insurance company to look at it??  That's crazy. 

535

Living Room / Re: What is safer for data -- a hard disk or a blue ray disc?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 08, 2013, 01:00 PM »

I'm curious if there are any side effects for hard drives that are sitting on a shelf for a long time (years).  Should you plug them in once in a while to keep them happy or anything like that?

-superboyac (July 07, 2013, 11:31 PM)

Since hard discs are mechanical devices with bearings for the platters to spin on, I'd expect that it would be a good idea to periodically spin them up to help make sure the bearing doesn't seize.

Long ago I had a 20MB hard disc (yes, megabytes; this was a very long time ago) that had a 'stiction' problem (Stiction^w). This wasn't a problem with the bearings, but of the heads sticking to the platters when the device wasn't in operation for a while.  When powered up, the platters wouldn't spin because there was enough friction between the heads and the platters they were resting on before spinning up.  I managed to get my data off the drive by taking the top off and giving the platters a little nudge near the hub.

I don't know if today's hard discs are susceptible to that same problem, but anything with moving parts may find it difficult to get going again after being unused for a long period.

So if you decide on using hard discs, I'd also work on a media rotation plan - that might be a good idea regardless of the medium you choose.  It might also be wise to use something like the parchive format (Parchive^w) so that you have a chance for recovery if some pieces of the data were corrupted/lost. (Disclaimer - I haven't used anything like the parchive format myself, so I don't know how usable and effective it is in practice).

536

Living Room / Re: EU Court - Piracy Tax On Printers

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 28, 2013, 03:17 PM »

The rule of thumb originally stated that you weren't allowed to beat you wife with a rod that was larger (in diameter) than your own thumb.

-Stoic Joker (June 28, 2013, 06:20 AM)

This tale about the origin of the "rule of thumb" phrase has been pretty well debunked.

537

Living Room / Re: Google Reader gone

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 24, 2013, 12:40 PM »

Another interesting development is http://www.reedah.com who have reimplemented Google Reader's API to some extent.  If you can configure your reader to pointer to reedah.com instead of google.com for it's RSS API access, it's supposed to be able to provide the synching that google used to provide.

538

General Software Discussion / Re: The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 21, 2013, 02:48 AM »

I think this code is just a command-line-way of doing what you're doing with the right click menu. "ftype" (and its associate command "assoc") are standard Windows commands for manipulating file type registrations. I just have those lines in a batch file in my utils directory so I don't have to do much hunting or mousing around when I set up a new machine.

I suppose it would make it easier to get things back the way I like if another program 'stole' those extensions, but that hasn't happened in my experience.

539

General Software Discussion / Re: The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 21, 2013, 02:10 AM »

What do you mean by "wasn't handling line breaks properly"?

Instead of notepad, I use notepad2 (http://www.flos-free...are.ch/notepad2.html) or notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/) - a couple of lightweight, free text editors.

And instead of fighting against Windows to actually replace c:\windows\notepad.exe and c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe with notepad2, I use:

[Select]

ftype txtfile=c:\util\notepad2.exe "%1"
ftype inifile=c:\util\notepad2.exe "%1"
ftype inffile=c:\util\notepad2.exe "%1"

to associate the majority of file extensions that should open in the simple editor.  Now when I double click on a a .txt file in explorer, it opens in notepad2.  Microsoft's notepad is still on the system, but it never gets launched.

540

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 20, 2013, 10:45 PM »

Lights are powered by water pressure - no electrical wiring needed ... Turbine (powered) LED Lights, no battery needed

Neat!

541

Living Room / Re: Messed Up in Miami

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 19, 2013, 02:23 PM »

If you'd like (and are allowed to from the library), you can upload your source to me and I'll back it up here and through CrashPlan.  Or, you can mail it to me to copy and I'll mail it back.

-skwire (June 14, 2013, 08:08 PM)

Another idea for dealing with a body of source code (and possibly other documents) is to create an account on bitbucket.org and drop the source in a git repo there.  Bitbucket allows you to keep repos private (there's no requirement that repositories be public to be free of charge like on github).  There can be up to 5 users assigned access to a free private repository.

The drawback is that the files can't be uploaded to the repository from something like a library computer, because you need to push them from a local git repo.  But that's a similar situation for getting the files into CrashPlan.

Dropbox is another possibility - Dropbox's web interface should let you upload or access files even from kiosk computers (as long as they let you also access your USB drive).

542

DC Gamer Club / Re: Torchlight FREE for 48 hours!

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 18, 2013, 10:20 AM »

It should also be mentioned that there's a massive sale on GOG in general. 

For the next 20 hours or so: "Alan Wake" titles for 90% off, the suite of DnD games for 80% off.

50% off most other games, and there will be daily deals similar to the above Alan Wake and DnD sales until July 5.

All of it DRM-free.

Very good stuff, even if you're a casual gamer.

543

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RightNote huge 50% discount sale 16-20th June only

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 16, 2013, 02:05 PM »

I can't find any description of the difference between the Standard and Pro versions of RightNote on the website. Is there a page or document that describes the difference?

544

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 17, 2013, 02:03 PM »

a VIP version which has a monthly bill of 600 yuen or something.

-IainB (May 17, 2013, 12:36 PM)

600 Yuan is about $100 USD - so I hope that's either a mistake or that the VIP version has some pretty nice features.

545

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

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 13, 2013, 12:31 AM »

Surreal Black-And-White Photos Cleverly Combine Seemingly Different Objects

-Arizona Hot (May 12, 2013, 11:15 PM)

Now I have to build a book-arch before I drag anymore books to the used bookstore.

546

Developer's Corner / Re: Opinions wanted: Best SVN client for use on a Mac

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 09, 2013, 06:15 PM »

this tool requires a recurring licensing cost that we'd like to avoid

-Ath (May 09, 2013, 04:36 AM)

I believe that you are mistaken that a recurring license fee is required. From the purchase page of SmartSVN (I wasn't aware that WANdisco had acquired this software):

Your purchase includes:

   - A permanent license-key for the current version of SmartSVN Professional
   - One year of free updates (independent of version numbers)

-https://store.wandisco.com/smartsvn-professional

So, you need to pay annually to keep getting upgrades, but if you're content with the software and don't need new features, then there's no requirement to pay the annual upgrade fee.

547

Living Room / Re: How to dial Emergency Services, around the world.

« Last post by mwb1100 on April 26, 2013, 04:46 PM »

How Homer Simpson solves this problem:

Operator, give me the number for nine-one-one!

And, of course, when he becomes head of a powerful secret society, he learns the truth about 911:

Lenny: Your membership pack.  [hands it to him]
Homer: [pulls out a decal] What's this?
Lenny: You put that sticker on your car so you won't get any tickets. And this other one keeps paramedics from stealing your wallet while they're working on you.
 Carl: Oh, and don't bother calling 911 any more...here's the _real_ number.  [hands him a card with "912"]
Homer: Ooh!

548

Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails

« Last post by mwb1100 on April 23, 2013, 01:42 PM »

If you're interested in the RMA route, I'd check withe the manufacturer.  In my experience to get an RMA for a drive (hard drive or optical) all that was necessary was the serial number of the device (which provides them with a date of manufacture) and running through whatever diagnostics the manufacturer required to convince them that the drive was faulty.

I've done this a handful of times over the years and have never had to produce a receipt or other paperwork.

549

Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails

« Last post by mwb1100 on April 22, 2013, 07:41 PM »

A quick Googlin' seems to indicate that the drive may have a 3 year warranty.  If you haven't smashed it yet and the data isn't so sensitive that you feel OK handing the dead drive over to the manufacturer (only you can determine if that would be an acceptable risk or not), you might be able to get a working one in exchange.

As a potentially interesting aside - Lenovo apparently allows you to purchase a warranty add-on that lets you keep a failed drive in the case of a warranty replacement (I have no idea how much additional they charge):

  - http://www.lenovo.co...keep-your-drive.html

550

Living Room / Re: How to open a can with a spoon

« Last post by mwb1100 on April 19, 2013, 02:15 PM »

Wut?

-Stephen66515 (April 18, 2013, 08:01 PM)

"Voila... peaches!" is the best part of the video.