Recent Posts

526

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Possible Malware Debug - HW laptop back-light detector

« Last post by Shades on January 01, 2019, 01:58 PM »

Keyboard can. And if the external drives came with driver and/or back-up software, those could trigger Windows to become active again.

Wireless headset uses BlueTooth? That sure can re-activate the audio system from Windows again when battery level from the wireless headset goes below a certain level. Same can be true with a wireless keyboard that uses Bluetooth.

The external BD device is the least suspect. The process of elimination to find the suspect device really requires you to disconnect everything from your laptop. Not just the devices that you think is logical.

Because this problem is playing long enough to make a thread for it on this forum, I think it is safe to assume that we are (long) past the stage of applying the logic that already has been applied and didn't solve your problem.

So, disconnect everything external, cut power to any of them, keeping all of them out of Bluetooth range, etc. If your laptop still activates at random, you can be sure that it something in your Windows installation or the hardware of your laptop and not something external. Right now it is unclear (to me) what is connected and what not. So better start from the most essential setup to get a good bearing of where to look for your problem.

527

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

« Last post by Shades on December 30, 2018, 08:12 AM »

A piledriver rammed home...

528

Living Room / Re: Movies you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on December 29, 2018, 07:39 PM »

If you are very sensitive regarding religion, in particular the story about Jesus, than don't watch this movie ever. Actually, show this in the 'Bible belt' from the U.S. and I am sure the people you show it to will never ever want to talk to you again.

For those with a (not so) healthy sense of humor: The last hangover.
It is in spoken in Brazilian Portuguese (comes with subtitles) and lasts about 45 minutes. But don't let those things stop you, it is brilliant.

529

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Possible Malware Debug - HW laptop back-light detector

« Last post by Shades on December 29, 2018, 02:51 PM »

Perhaps with a tool like this you are able to find out what instance of software is making your monitor light up.

530

N.A.N.Y. 2019 / Re: NANY 2019: AHK Script Center

« Last post by Shades on December 29, 2018, 09:28 AM »

I am confused as to why you call it the same name as the already well known AutoHotkey.exe ? I find this weird, even dodgy.

-Curt (December 29, 2018, 02:06 AM)

Confusing?

From what I see it is more like software that allows you to keep your favorite set of AHK scripts and runs them when needed. All of that in a GUI that is more usable than the one provided with the default AutoHotKey software.

It isn't a replacement, it is more like an supplement and likely some will qualify software like this an improvement that uses AutoHotKey as a base. Nothing wrong with that (in my mind at least). I am also looking forward to it.

531

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

« Last post by Shades on December 27, 2018, 05:43 AM »

[ Invalid Attachment ]

If Guns Kill People T-Shirt 2nd Amendment Gun Rights

-Arizona Hot (December 27, 2018, 03:01 AM)

Should the 'I guess' on the shirt not be replaced with 'I'll guess'?

T-SHRTS make spelling grammar mistakes. 

532

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Possible Malware Debug - HW laptop back-light detector

« Last post by Shades on December 24, 2018, 10:56 PM »

Are you sure it isn't your mouse sliding, because it is on a surface that isn't level?

Do you know the state of the hardware in the mouse? I have seen older (el cheapo) mouses move the cursor all by themselves when they were connected.Perhaps you don't notice during the day, but at night the hardware in your mouse can "misfire" for a long enough period to activate Windows.

Same is true for wireless mouse/keyboard devices. Some of them start to act weirdly when the batteries have become poor.

In short, a simple process of elimination is likely to produce a much quicker cause for the problem that you experience. Only when your computer is still acting up when you have disconnected all peripherals. It can even be something like your USB mouse/keyboard is supplying too much information than Windows is set to handle. Any operation system can start acting weird with something like that.

533

Living Room / Re: Avaiability/outages of the DCF website.

« Last post by Shades on December 22, 2018, 04:18 PM »

After the DDOS attack not too long ago, I understood that the DC website now uses CloudFlare's facilities to handle internet traffic to the DC web server.

CloudFlare indicates that error 522 can be caused by:
 -   Overloaded web server
 -   Offline origin web server
 -   Blocked Cloudflare requests
 -   Faulty network routing
 -   Disabled keepalives
 -   Incorrect IP address in the Cloudflare DNS settings (i.e. the request from us was sent to the wrong place)
 -   Dropped packets on the host network

The responsibility for the first 2 possible causes are directly related to DC, the other possible causes are more on CloudFlare's turf. Therefore CloudFlare can be just as much a solution as it can be a problem.

534

Living Room / Re: How's everyone doing this year?

« Last post by Shades on December 22, 2018, 04:05 PM »

Well, I was a unwilling participant in a motorcycle/car accident a few months ago, smashing up my left leg pretty good. While it was clear to me who was at fault, the driver of the car brushed off my reasonable request for helping out with fixing of the bike and cost of healthcare/physio in rude & disrespectful ways repeatedly.

Last Friday I got to hear that the PY Traffic regulation body deemed her to be at fault and she is now personally responsible for all the costs made by me and herself.

535

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Directory Opus 12 - 40% discount

« Last post by Shades on December 22, 2018, 06:14 AM »

Unless you are happy with the version of DOpus you bought at 40% discount?

By the time you have an idea on how to use the (new) functionality built into DOpus to your workflow, you can buy the next version at discounted prices. You don't have to the latest and greatest at the time it arrives. And even if you do, in my experience DOpus is worth the full asking price. So you either shop sensibly or pay "the penalties" for running at the front-lines. Calling that dumb is incorrect in my point of view.

If I cared enough to make a Christmas wish, I would spent mine on wishing GPSoft to take the codebase from an older version of DOpus (like version 9 or so) and start making a version with that codebase for Linux. Any distro GPSoft would choose to work with would be my distro of choice. Even if it would be one they are building from the ground up.

536

Developer's Corner / Re: Anyone used protocol buffers?

« Last post by Shades on December 16, 2018, 06:05 PM »

Last time I got this software for free on 'BitsDuJour' or 'GiveAway Of The Day' and it helped me out with JSON.

Yet at 28 USD JSONBuddy isn't that expensive for what it does.

537

General Software Discussion / Re: Move specific file types with original folder path included to another directory

« Last post by Shades on December 16, 2018, 06:01 PM »

How about just collecting files, dumping them in  more logical and easy to backup folder structure and making symbolic links to these file, so the users have their (idiotically) deep layered folder structure they are accustomed to and you have it much easier doing the maintenance.

Just an idea, not sure if that is easily done on scheduled intervals. It sounds like your place of employment is one where you must make it easy for yourself to get things done.

538

N.A.N.Y. 2019 / Re: NANY 2019 - Windows App - Process Watcher

« Last post by Shades on December 16, 2018, 05:57 PM »

If you don't need or care about data being human readable, try: EDIFACT   

539

General Software Discussion / Re: offline browsing - archiving

« Last post by Shades on December 15, 2018, 03:04 AM »

@Steven Avery:
What about running a tool like XAMPP locally, implement the forum software of choice there, Make your additions (blogs) on that local instance and when done, dump the content from the local database and upload that into the remote hosted version of your blog/forum?

You would have a fully functioning backup this way, and with local tool like XAMPP it is usually much easier & faster to try out what blog/forum software you like best. And XAMPP comes by default with PHPMyadmin, with which you can easily make dumps from the database and it is also handy when uploading the dumped content into a remote database.  And if you are willing to invest more time to learn, you can automatize the mirroring of databases (if your ISP allows for this).

Having a local copy makes it also easier to troubleshoot problems like the blank page you experience. and once you found it, it will be easy to implement the fix at the remote site. It will help if your local server matches the server at your ISP. With that I mean that both should have the same operating system if possible. The rest of the hardware does not have to match, but if it does that's a bonus.

The above might sound complicated, but once you have such a setup, you'll wonder how you got on without it. Dumping databases and re-uploading them maybe takes 15 minutes in total, but that depends on the quantity of content, the bandwidth between the computer you use for the upload and the remote server and the resources available on the server at the moment you do the the upload (to a shared server).

Creating such a setup will give you also more insight in how the combination of websites, web server and database server work. It might seem daunting, but it isn't that difficult. 

540

General Software Discussion / Re: Consumer Photo/Pic Editing Software - what do you use?

« Last post by Shades on December 12, 2018, 11:07 AM »

@wraith808:
I assume you are right about that. Still, Installed it once, liked it enough to keep and was pleasantly surprised that it could be used on other computers by simply copying the installation folder to that computer. Have been using it like that ever since. Caveat: I barely have a need to edit images, so my (lack of) experience might mean diddly squat to anyone else.

541

General Software Discussion / Re: Consumer Photo/Pic Editing Software - what do you use?

« Last post by Shades on December 12, 2018, 05:29 AM »

If you can get around it's quirks, there is PaintStar. It is rather tiny and uses a floating dock style user interface like Gimp does. But it is free, supports layers and can be used as a portable application. The website has (downloadable) tutorials, lessons and examples.

Perhaps this piece of freeware strikes you as simple, yet powerful enough to do your tasks. That is, there is no active development going on for it anymore, so it might not be your thing after all.

Having said that, I have used the software since Windows XP and it still works fine on Windows 10 (and every version of Windows inbetween).

542

Find And Run Robot / Re: Wait for a web page is fully loaded and then enter a password

« Last post by Shades on December 09, 2018, 06:34 AM »

Sounds like certain elements of that website need to be loaded completely, before you can log in.

If you have an option to dynamically add code to a page, you could perhaps create a trigger that acts when those elements are completely loaded.

First you will need to find out what those elements are, then there is the problem of adding support for dynamically adding code/trigger to a page and then of course create code for the trigger. Doesn't sound like an quick and easy fix. Especially with so little background information.

Perhaps an add-on like 'GreaseMonkey' could help with the dynamically adding the code/trigger to the website in question.

This link might prove useful for the trigger: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/GlobalEventHandlers/onload

543

Living Room / Re: The quest for a completely silent PC

« Last post by Shades on December 07, 2018, 10:15 PM »

I always get a funny feeling in my tummy when I look at Russian dolls now.

-IainB (December 06, 2018, 02:26 AM)

You get a funny feeling in your tummy? Spare a thought for the Russian dolls, they have much more to stomach, stomach, stomach, stomach, stomach, stomach...

-cranioscopical (December 06, 2018, 08:15 AM)

That's a rather insightful comment. Is that what they call "duodenal insight"?

-IainB (December 06, 2018, 10:41 PM)

Not in and off itself, no...

544

General Software Discussion / Re: Why AdGuard? Why do they detect ad-blockers to begin with?

« Last post by Shades on December 01, 2018, 04:40 PM »

I use uMatrix in FF. All news site open just fine. uMatrix blocks any or all of the following ads/scripts/media/images/frame/css/xhr in any of the combinations you configure it to. And it does so per website. I am barely bothered by any ad, cookie, tracker scripts, (external) images etc.

Don't know why people keep bothering so much with ad-blocker this or that. In my anecdotal experience, uMatrix has all of them beat. Yes, all those items being blocked can lead to layout mishaps and some things might not function as you would expect. But then you can start enabling items in the matrix until the site and/or functionality works again and store those settings. And you can do this per website. All that configuring could be considered more of a job, instead of an easy-peasy solution, but I think the extra configuration work will be to your benefit in the end.

I visit a lot of Dutch newspaper web sites, so checking those would be useful to no-one, except for fellow Dutchies or Flemiings here in the forum. Also, whenever it is possible, I do not click on the 'Accept cookies' button from a web site. On some sites that stops a lot of scripts running in the background as well.

545

General Software Discussion / Re: How secure is a private WordPress post from public view?

« Last post by Shades on November 30, 2018, 08:09 AM »

Advocate of the devil here:  Would it then not become just a numbers game?  This post is liked by x amount of people on this forum? What does that add exactly?

I visit other sites where people can indicate how much they like a post on that website. It doesn't add anything content-wise, not without the "liker" giving a reason why he/she likes that post. And if "liker" doees that, he/she might as well type a new post anyway.

Personally speaking: Of course, the amount of likes could mean that a particular post is valuable, but that also means that you would need a way to highlight them or find other ways to get the post the attention it deserves. The amount of likes can also allow for a filter to those who only want to see posts that have at 2 or more likes for example. While such things may work on other sites, forum posts on DC I find interesting enough to go through all of them. Besides, the best curator of posts I want to read is me, not some arbitrary number.   

546

Living Room / Re: is there life without Microsoft Store?

« Last post by Shades on November 29, 2018, 06:34 AM »

Follow this link for the installer on download.cnet.com.

This link is available on the photoscape website itself. That is, if you are not hell bent on getting Photoscape X. Which is not specifically mentioned on their website, only when downloading for Windows 10. If you take a look at their changelog page, the only versions that are mentioned are ....well, not the X version. So, I would just use the installer if you want a MS Store free experience.

547

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

« Last post by Shades on November 28, 2018, 07:02 PM »

@IainB:
That reminds me of the little joke
Masochist: "Hit me..."
Sadist: "....No"

548

Living Room / Re: Is it possible to have Microsoft Exchange account to Ymail Android app?

« Last post by Shades on November 27, 2018, 05:38 PM »

Do you get interruptions or asking for password when Ymail messes up with updates?

-kalos (November 27, 2018, 05:25 AM)

Nope, I prefer to receive my email with close to 100% success rate, so I don't use Yahoo.

-4wd (November 27, 2018, 07:04 AM)

Running my own mail server on my own domain...That has proven to be a good way to send/receive mail reliably for almost 14 years now.

549

Living Room / Re: New SSd in an aging PC

« Last post by Shades on November 25, 2018, 06:35 PM »

Right?!. I have older boards here that also have no problem with >2TByte drives. So it shouldn't be an issue in the first place. But it is my reality. I really had to go to the manufacturers website *SeaGate, in this case) and get software to manage the extra space. It is included in a specific version of their partition management software. Which is not available on their site anymore. So, I'm guarding that piece of software by copying it on every drive I own or work with.

Besides that though, the board is excellent in everything it does.

550

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2018

« Last post by Shades on November 25, 2018, 09:07 AM »

True, people do go for the sensation of getting a thing at discount prices. It is also subject to diminishing returns.

If, for example: I drop by your house and brink your favorite cake for you to eat. You will be happy. If I then return with another unit of the same cake, you won't be as happy as the first time, but you'll still like it. If I return again with another unit of the same cake, you'll be angry and tell me to get lost with that ff''ing cake.

This also happens when you buy lots of different things. Less fast than buying the same item, but it still happens. People think they can get the same feeling from the first time back by spending on bigger items. But that barely works. Add to all of this an artificial time-limit and people keep falling into the same trap. In the mean time a lot of retail business has taken place and made a profit.

Which is why I don't go for that kind of crap at all anymore. I'll look for the best item I can buy, at a time that I deem best without a time-limit. Brings me peace of mind and I usually end up with (much) higher quality products that last longer and not having so much stuff gives me peace of mind. Which I treasure most of all.