Recent Posts

576

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by IainB on February 18, 2018, 10:16 PM »

Regarding the "Five Eyes" per Snowdengate revelations, there is an interesting, if not somewhat ironic "news" item here: All Five Eyes Countries Formally Accuse Russia of Orchestrating NotPetya Attack

By Catalin Cimpanu
February 18, 2018 05:50 AM
"All the countries part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance — the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand— have made formal statements accusing the eussian Federation of orchestrating the NotPetya ransomware outbreak." (...more)

Copied from: All Five Eyes Countries Formally Accuse Russia of Orchestrating NotPetya Attack - <https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/all-five-eyes-countries-formally-accuse-russia-of-orchestrating-notpetya-attack/>

That settles it then. If all "Five Eyes" countries are in consensus, then it must be true - right?   

Love the cartoon of the 5 children with their magic rings, each representing one of the "Five Eyes", by implication.
"But none of the Five Eyes are Asian countries Dad, what's she doing there?" observed my Asian daughter of the Oriental-looking girl in the cartoon.
She could have a point, or maybe its just "cultural appropriation", or an attempt at feel-good "diversification of the consensus", or something.
Either way, those pesky Russians would seem to have a lot to answer for, if all Five Eyes are in consensus. It seems that there is no end to Russian interference and spying in Western democracies and other countries' affairs.
It's not as though those democracies interfere in, or spy on Russian or other countries' affairs either. Oh, but wait...

577

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - v4.25.1 - Feb 18, 2018

« Last post by IainB on February 18, 2018, 09:12 PM »

Eh?
DCupdater not picking up this update. Not a sure why. Is it still a ß?

578

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: StackNotes

« Last post by IainB on February 18, 2018, 04:01 PM »

@YannickDa: Thanks for introducing yourself and StackNotes. I don't think I had come across StackNotes before - though the name sounded familiar, I didn't recollect it and couldn't find any notes I made about it, anyway.

Today I read up about and then downloaded StackNotes v1.043 via the website links you gave.
I was not too impressed until I discovered from the Help file that it has some very interesting/useful and synergistic plugins:

• Encryption / Decryption - StackNotes now supports the highly secured AES encryption algorythm through the use of a third-party command-line program called "AESCrypt". You can now easily secure your padfiles and take 'em everywhere with you (e.g. USB stick) without the risk of beeing robbed of sensitive information. Just be sure to not forget any password you use to encrypt your documents because there is no mean to recover an encrypted file without the corresponding password. You've been warned. Also, take the time to visit the "AESCrypt" homepage to learn more on this open source project. Last word : if you work with very sensitive information, consider the fact to use dedicated software to wipe the free space on your drive to prevent file recovery.
• Screen Loupe - a screen magnifyer.
• Recorder -  allows you to record the output from your sound card to a WAV file, then convert it to the MP3 format using the "LAME" command line tool (freeware).
• Snapshot - allows you to capture your desktop, a program's window or a control inside a window to a bitmap (BMP file format).
• Password Generator - produces base64 passwords.
• Contacts - a basic contacts manager.

The [open source] AESCrypt and the other plugins make StackNotes a potentially very useful toolset, and so I am trialling it in earnest now.
Thanks again.

579

Living Room / Re: Thread on 3d Printing Cody Model

« Last post by IainB on February 14, 2018, 01:32 PM »

Cody plays PONG?   

580

General Software Discussion / Re: Brave: A new browser with built-in adblock and payment solutions

« Last post by IainB on February 14, 2018, 01:25 PM »

...What next, Chromium again?

-Edvard (February 13, 2018, 09:31 PM)

Yes, That's how I ended up as well. But with Slimjet, which is a Chrome-based browser with some useful differences.
I did return to Chrome Canary/64-bit (as a trial), and then Chromium (as a trial), but a trial of Slimjet showed that it seems to better meet my peculiar requirements.

581

Developer's Corner / Re: Save/Load list of hotstrings in ini autohotkey

« Last post by IainB on February 12, 2018, 05:25 PM »

@mouser:

This is not specific to ahk, just a general reminder that for portable programs, it is safe to an ini (or other) file in the same directory as the script, but for programs that you will want to install into Program Files\ directory with an installer, you will have to save ini files into a directory in an appropriate user directory

-mouser (February 12, 2018, 01:48 PM)

Does that say what you thought you wanted it to say?
Not sure I fully understand it, anyway, though I think I can see what you probably intended to mean. May be a typo?

582

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.233.01 - Feb 11, 2018

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2018, 06:52 PM »

Thanks. FARR v2.233.01 running fine and showing the actual date/time in the header bar.   

583

Developer's Corner / Re: Save/Load list of hotstrings in ini autohotkey

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2018, 12:06 PM »

Not an answer to this post, but just a thought:
We could consider having a special board or discussion thread (at least) - e.g., "Autohotkey corner", or something - for posting/curating  these types of AHK-related questions and the answers. It could become quite a useful resource/collection. There are loads of good AHK coding examples amongst DC donationware, and various discussions about aspects of AHK, scattered around the forum. With a bit of effort we could consolidate (index) that into a potentially more useful repository. Not suggesting that we try to duplicate the AHK website here, though we could link to it where relevant.

584

Find And Run Robot / Re: request: dosearch_noregex (dosearch but ignore regex in other aliases)

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2018, 11:04 AM »

Ahh. Thanks. Very thorough, as usual.

I have a similar problem (forgetting details of stuff I have done), so years ago I developed the habit of documenting everything. I used to use a system I developed and which worked well in a hardcopy notebook form, but now I tend to increasingly use things like OneNote, Stick-A-Note, and Readme.txt files to make notes.

I have not yet quite been able to replicate my notebook system on a PC, though I came close years ago - surpassed it, in fact - with Lotus Agenda (a PIM).

585

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff" - organic dowry.

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2018, 06:11 AM »

Husband charged with stealing wife's kidney

A man in India has been arrested for allegedly stealing his wife's kidney without her knowledge.

Rita Sarkar of West Bengal began suffering from abdominal pain two years ago and when she told her husband of 12 years, Biswajit Sarkar, about her discomfort, he took her to a medical facility in Kolkata.

The 28-year-old was told by staff that she needed an immediate appendectomy and she underwent surgery the next day. However in the following months her pain returned, this time in her lower back.

Ms Sarkar told The Hindustan Times that her husband ignored her pleas to be taken to a doctor, and that he warned her not to tell anyone about the appendectomy.

When she was finally taken to hospital by her own relatives some three months ago, doctors made a horrifying discovery - her right kidney was missing.

Ms Sarkar realised that her kidney had been removed along with her appendix when she underwent surgery, and that her husband had organised the theft of one of her organs without her knowledge.

"I then understood why my husband implored me to keep quiet about the surgery," she told The Hindustan Times.

"He sold my kidney because my family couldn't meet his demand for dowry."

Ms Sarkar said her husband's family "tortured" her for years after they were married because her parents were unable to pay them the 2 lakh (NZ$4293) the family demanded as dowry.

She filed a complaint against Mr Sarkar, his brother and his mother, who were all allegedly involved in the scheme. Her husband and brother-in-law were arrested on Monday (local time) while her mother-in-law remains at large.

While in police custody Mr Sarkar allegedly confessed that his wife's kidney had been sold to a businessman in Chhattisgarh, central India.

Source: http://www.msn.com/e...ealing-wifes-kidney/
Also: <http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/human-organ-traffiking-husband-arrested-for-stealing-wifes-kidney-and-she-didnt-even-know-it/news-story/a4cfb7f1cefb3891f18b496e112eb5d0>
______________________________

586

Find And Run Robot / Re: request: dosearch_noregex (dosearch but ignore regex in other aliases)

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2018, 05:33 AM »

Oops I just realized this already exists..
...

-mouser (February 11, 2018, 02:10 AM)

Your alter-ego seems to have been smarter than you are...
       

You tend to build some incredibly useful (if not brilliant) functionality into your software, and then seem to forget about it.
But is it documented?   

587

Screenshot Captor / Re: Missing the toolbar

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2018, 05:27 AM »

What an 'orrible image.
Try sharpening it?

588

Find And Run Robot / Re: bug report

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2018, 05:21 AM »

Thanks @mouser.

EDIT:
It will be a bit of a shock to the system not to see this kind of conundrum any more:   

589

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff" - predictive parodies of the future.

« Last post by IainB on February 09, 2018, 09:26 PM »

Interesting and rather accurate predictive parodies of a potential future that is our present.
The problem with mobile phones - as predicted by a pre-War Daily Mirror cartoonist

From: THE GRØNMARK BLOG - <http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-problem-with-mobile-phones-as.html>

590

Official Announcements / Re: Big News: New DonationCoder Server

« Last post by IainB on February 06, 2018, 12:46 AM »

Well, no, not a "long rambling post", which could mean a chunk of your otherwise productive time, but a brief summary report that simply covered:

• Objectives.
• Implementation Plan.
• Resources required.
• Actual Implementation Steps, and variations to plan - in timeline order (or order of occurrence).
• Outcomes.

 - could be interesting, but only if the report could also be useful to yourself as a sort of diary note.
In fact, if you already had diary notes about the implementation, then you could construct the summary report from those notes. This is something I often do for myself, so that I can go back and review something I did in the past. My notes nowadays are invariably documented very nicely in MS OneNote, and I can put them up in a public share, rather than send them out as a file or put them up as a document on a website. Blogging the summary in a blog or a forum post would be a relatively tedious exercise - the medium being very limited by comparison to a document, which latter is more suited to being indexed, well-structured with a self-contained TOC, diagrams, etc. and thus more easily read as a report.

591

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by IainB on February 04, 2018, 03:27 PM »

@Shades:

...Here is to hoping. After being exposed to Android for a while now, I would be more than happy to get a new Windows phone again.

[rant]
Really, some UI steps that Google puts into Android are an abomination. And is it really that difficult for Google to remove 1 device from your list of approved devices? Instead you must eliminate all devices and re-register each device one by one....ff-ing amazing job, Google! I wonder how many people are bothered enough to do this. But it would be a safe assumption to state that most people just say: 'F... this' and don't do anything. Kinda defeats the whole purpose of your "security".

Seriously, the person(s) who thought this to be a good UI design, deserve to be taken behind the shed (and their final thought to be: "Aha, so that is how a functional UI works on the device that is putting this bullet in my head").
[/rant]

-Shades (February 04, 2018, 08:49 AM)

Yes, quite agree. Couldn't have put it much better if I had tried.   

592

Living Room / Re: [Resolved] Looking for Audio Software for "Audio Learning"

« Last post by IainB on February 03, 2018, 10:41 AM »

@Stephen66515: Re: Looking for Audio Software for "Audio Learning"
Just as a point of information, one could use Microsoft's ON (OneNote) to automatically index/search for recognisable words/phrases (in several different languages) in sound files - i.e., .MP3 and some other audio file formats - and in the audio tracks of some common video formats.

I have mentioned in this thread the very useful/clever features of OneNote. Of particular relevance is OneNote's use of audio as a datatype.
If you don't know what the heck I am talking about and if you'd like to find out more, there is a good introduction from PCworld.com - here: How to record audio with OneNote to supercharge your note-taking

EDIT 2017-01-07 0131hrs: See also my notes on page 1 of this discussion thread - Searching for information in audio notes in OneNote.

-IainB (December 21, 2016, 12:57 AM)

I have mostly played about with spoken English in audio tracks in sound files in ON and it works amazingly well on search (in Windows Desktop Search and in ON search) - e.g., being able to detect decipherable words phrases, even in musical songs, though it is best in straight voice recording tracks, because there is less "noise" around the spoken words. It tells you at what point (minutes and seconds) the detected words/phrase being searched for are located in the audio file.

I am currently in the process of converting a (rather good) maths course on cassette tapes to .MP3 files, for my daughter's use - putting it into ON as audio files. I am using Audacity for the conversion, as it has the capability to negate/cancel out tape hiss/hum. The (rather old) course employs audio lessons which are to be listened to in conjunction with some (rather good and still current) printed (hardcopy) learning texts on different subjects - e.g., including algebra, geometry, calculus, etc.. The syllabus is relevant to NZ NCEA standards and corresponding Aussie standards. The hardcopy is to be scanned and OCR'd into ON.

So I am to some extent doing something similar - using ON - as to what is being done in this discussion thread - whilst at the same time preserving for posterity an excellent old maths course for use with modern collaborative technology, in my "21st Century Zettelkasten PIM".

593

Developer's Corner / Re: The Faery Tale Adventure: A personal history of making a video game

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2018, 10:16 AM »

Thanks. That was interesting - and quite enlightening, actually.

594

Living Room / Re: Share your photos! Travel shots, photoblogs, etc.

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2018, 09:35 AM »

Not to worry, it's just a phase you're going through.

-cranioscopical (February 01, 2018, 07:44 PM)

What a coincidence! That's exactly what the psychiatrist said to me at the hospital, after the doctors had patched me up after I had unwittingly drunkenly attempted to walk through a plate-glass mirrored window during my 40th birthday party.
It was a full moon that night too.
On reflection, I think he was right.

595

Living Room / Re: Share your photos! Travel shots, photoblogs, etc.

« Last post by IainB on February 01, 2018, 05:47 PM »

Wow nice.

-mouser (January 31, 2018, 08:02 PM)

But not altogether polite to moon DC 

-cranioscopical (February 01, 2018, 01:03 PM)

You may have a point there. Not safe either. Looking at those images gave me an uneasy feeling, and then my left upper eyelid started to twitch. I think it was a lunar tic.

596

Living Room / Re: Share your photos! Travel shots, photoblogs, etc.

« Last post by IainB on February 01, 2018, 01:10 PM »

From last October. Anyone want to guess where this is?

-rgdot (February 01, 2018, 11:48 AM)

Somewhere in Holland?
Didn't look right for Venice.

597

Screenshot Captor / Re: Google File Stream

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2018, 04:59 PM »

OK I've closed the Thumbnail Panel but it hasn't helped. Seems the only thing I can do is stop using a Google folder from with SC.

-spcolenz (January 30, 2018, 11:04 AM)

Odd problem.
Might be worth some trial-and-error, if there is something "odd" about the attributes of the Google folder that SC (for some obscure reason) cannot work nicely with - though I can't guess at what that reason might be, unless it is (say) security access control/ownership settings that are at the root of the problem.

As a workaround, if you create a Junction folder to the Google folder, and operate purely on the Junction folder when using SC, then you may find that the difficulty disappears (is avoided), because SC is not working directly on the Google folder.
Suck it and see?
However, if it is (say) security access control/ownership settings that are at the root of the problem, then the Junction folder may well inherit the same settings as the actual Google folder to which it relates.

598

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft releases update to disable Intel's Spectre mitigations

« Last post by IainB on January 29, 2018, 08:58 PM »

Well, this is an increasingly amazing situation.
I have to admit that I may have been much mistaken about this. I had thought Meltdown/Spectre was likely to be a Y2K-type scam, as it seemed to have all the trademarks of one, but then it now seems to have been turned into some kind of a slow-motion trainwreck or farce/fiasco. A sort of comedy of errors.
To protect system stability, I blocked updates to Windows 10 over two weeks ago anyway. Hopefully, it will eventually all calm down to something more sane before too long.

599

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by IainB on January 29, 2018, 01:36 PM »

Clever.

600

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

« Last post by IainB on January 29, 2018, 01:27 PM »

Spotted this "spoof" video in my BazQux feed-reader. Made me smile - once I had figured out what it was all about. I hadn't seen the guy's videos before, but I'm a fan now!