Recent Posts

576

Living Room / Re: Cut Backs At Hospital

« Last post by cranioscopical on April 20, 2014, 11:58 PM »

She has a bone to pick with our bad puns though.  
 

-MilesAhead (April 20, 2014, 07:43 AM)

Too bad, she'll just have to humerus.
 

577

Living Room / Re: Cut Backs At Hospital

« Last post by cranioscopical on April 19, 2014, 08:57 PM »

Hmm, I'd bet her name is Ann R. Exic.   

-MilesAhead (April 19, 2014, 09:51 AM)

And she's being a bit cagey as she's in for a ribbing.
 

578

Living Room / Re: Cut Backs At Hospital

« Last post by cranioscopical on April 18, 2014, 10:38 PM »

The one on the left looks rather grumpy with that black look. I suppose it's a scowl and cross bones.
 

579

General Software Discussion / Re: Help! USB 3 has left the building — I want it back.

« Last post by cranioscopical on April 10, 2014, 02:00 PM »

Thank you both for the input!

Among other things, I disconnected from every USB port and cleared everything related to USB from my system — drivers, registry entries… every USB-related item. No luck.
I restored the system to a time before this began. No luck.

On a whim I just bought a third USB 3 cradle which works perfectly well, while the other two do not. The two cradles that won't play properly are dual bay. The new one is a single bay (and so was a previous model that works but isn't on site right now to try). There may be something to explore there, OTOH the human brain loves a coincidence.

At the moment I'll settle for one working properly and pick at why the others do not when I feel more inclined.
 

580

General Software Discussion / Re: Help! USB 3 has left the building — I want it back.

« Last post by cranioscopical on April 08, 2014, 07:31 PM »

If the driver has recently updated you could try rolling it back to the previous version as a first step.

-40hz (April 08, 2014, 01:25 PM)

Thanks for the response. There's nothing to which I can roll back (?!?).
I pulled drivers from a March 18 backup and shoved them in while Windows wasn't running and then rebooted into W81 — no go.

 

581

General Software Discussion / Help! USB 3 has left the building — I want it back.

« Last post by cranioscopical on April 08, 2014, 01:09 PM »

Something that relates to USB 3 has changed in my system.

I have a Thermaltake BlacX  external cradle for use with bare HDDs. BlacX 5G Dual Sata 5.0 GBps 3 Tb Usb 3.0 External Hard Drive ST0022U. (link)

Suddenly, when I try to move files of significant size to/from it, under Windows 8.1-64, I get a system error which is:
An error occurred copying
<name of file>
The system cannot find the file specified

Among other things this means that I can no longer run or retrieve backups using USB 3.0.

• I have the same error with a cradle of a different brand.
  
• I have the same error when trying different drives in the cradle.
  
• I can read/write what I like if I'm connected with USB 2
• I have the latest USB 3 driver in my system (Renesas USB 3,0 eXtensible Host Controller - 0096 Microsoft).
  
• Using USB 3, I can read/write smaller files to from a drive in the cradle (4.96GB for example)
  
  

So, like a lumber-jacked tree, I'm stumped.

Can somebody be kind enough to suggest an appropriate starting point for seeking a fix?
 

582

Living Room / Re: Dead Hot Chicks Boost Weather Ratings?

« Last post by cranioscopical on April 07, 2014, 04:17 PM »

they are trying to scare me with talk about killer blizzards

-MilesAhead (April 07, 2014, 03:33 PM)

That's just a snow job!

583

Living Room / Re: A three drive system - the sweet spot

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 25, 2014, 10:52 PM »

You would be amazed how "dirty" the power in your house is.

-Shades (March 25, 2014, 08:17 PM)

I am the power in my house and electricity is just a servant but, please, don't tell my wife I said that as she has other ideas about who/watt is in/on charge. 
 

584

Living Room / Re: A three drive system - the sweet spot

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 25, 2014, 05:51 PM »

That's without even getting into the issue of cooling which is a problem for all drives, but probably even more for a SSD (especially a consumer model) than a HDD.

-Vurbal (March 25, 2014, 04:28 PM)

I find that my machines run cooler with SSDs than with mechanical drives. More space for air flow?
 

585

Living Room / Re: A three drive system - the sweet spot

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 24, 2014, 06:58 PM »

A couple of years ago I installed a 128 GB SSD as my boot drive… 

and if anyone is interested

That was a bit too snug for what I was doing, so I upped it to 240GB. After a while I added a second 480GB SSD, then swapped the boot drive for a 520GB SSD. I keep one 2TB mechanical drive on board for little-used junk data.

Thanks to the SSDs, computing has never been better for me.

I've lost one SSD (a 128GB OCZ Vertex) probably because I was playing around with it in an external drive cradle.

So, I like SSDs but it's probably better to buy a decently sized model to begin with than to work one's way up the capacity ladder. Now I have a few unused 128's and 240's lying around.

FWIW, as I can easily eject drives from a front-fed bay I tried a backup policy of having two identical boot drives - if one fails, shove in the alternate and carry on. That turned out to be a pain as various things didn't like the hardware change and I had to keep track of two items (I find counting things to be difficult with my socks on). For me it is easier to use a 'normal' backup strategy — it's so easy and fast these days just to stick in a new drive and restore to that.

586

Post New Requests Here / Re: REQ: HTPC Util - Hide Desktop for x seconds while program is being executed.

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 23, 2014, 12:44 AM »

Just a note, I'm on a slow convict ship back to the UK in just over a week - I'll be incommunicado for 6 weeks

-4wd (March 22, 2014, 08:45 PM)

I'm not sure I buy your story — I'm unable to find Communicado on Google maps 
 

587

Developer's Corner / Re: T-Clock - Can't get rid of military time!!

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 16, 2014, 03:51 PM »

Have you tried this version too? - T-Clock 2010 (by Stoic Joker, here on donationcoder)

-tomos (March 16, 2014, 11:09 AM)

Hi,

I notice, often, how helpful you are to people so I thought it time to say so. We all benefit from contributions by people like you, either directly or indirectly.

   
 

588

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone can recommend a good macro recorder for windows please?

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 14, 2014, 11:35 PM »

@cranioscopical: Macro Express is a good program, but last time I looked it couldn't compile macros to .EXEs.  Do you know if that feature has been added now?

-rjbull (March 14, 2014, 05:56 PM)

No, it hasn't — good point!
  

589

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone can recommend a good macro recorder for windows please?

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 13, 2014, 02:28 PM »

JoTo,
If you don't care for skwire's (good) suggestion, you might like Macro Express — I find it both useful and inexpensive.
Macro Express web site here.
 

590

Living Room / Re: Dumb question but ...

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 11, 2014, 10:33 AM »

If I try that my camera just shuts down — it's too frightened by what it sees 

591

Living Room / Re: Micro-Fundraiser for the Official DonationCoder CodyMobile!

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 05, 2014, 02:24 PM »

Surely you don't really need four wheels, do you?
 

-cranioscopical (March 04, 2014, 02:04 PM)

Apparently not

-wraith808 (March 04, 2014, 03:27 PM)

Got me there 

Then there's this astonishing claim:

Elio has been designed to fit 95% of all men.

Let's see… world population > 7 billion divide by…  hmmm that's a LOT of capacity for such a little car! 
 

592

Living Room / Re: Micro-Fundraiser for the Official DonationCoder CodyMobile!

« Last post by cranioscopical on March 04, 2014, 02:04 PM »

Surely you don't really need four wheels, do you?
 

593

General Software Discussion / Re: Photos that spontaneously change

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 14, 2014, 11:54 AM »

In the forum here, the face looks well balanced on my monitor (with brightness relatively low on monitor settings).

-tomos (February 14, 2014, 06:26 AM)

Looks perfectly fine here to me as well.

-Stoic Joker (February 14, 2014, 06:49 AM)

Same here.
 

594

General Software Discussion / Re: Photos that spontaneously change

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 13, 2014, 09:50 PM »

Come on chaps, this topic is all over the place — let's try to focus!
 

595

Post New Requests Here / Re: [Idea] Quick toggle dis/connect to Bluetooth audio device

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 13, 2014, 03:50 PM »

A bit of script incorporating EndPointController.exe might help. See here.

596

General Software Discussion / Re: Photos that spontaneously change

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 13, 2014, 03:41 PM »

Chris will come along and flash us.

-wraith808 (February 13, 2014, 01:25 PM)

Yeah.  Puns are a reflex with him. 

-MilesAhead (February 13, 2014, 02:16 PM)

Not at all — as usual I'm waiting to see the latest developments before saying anything negative.
 

597

General Software Discussion / Re: Continuing with XP

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 06, 2014, 05:50 PM »

I am searching for a solution for my wife who staunchly refuses to leave her well-tuned XP behind.

-chrisk (February 06, 2014, 06:00 AM)

If it's any consolation, I switched my wife's machine from XP to 8.1 and she can't tell the difference. If she's happy with it, chances are your wife will be happy with W7. She sees the same interface and runs the same software as before. To achieve that required very little tweaking. Unless you have some really old, quirky software to run your wife should be fine with W7, especially as I think you'd run the 32-bit variant. My wife neither knows nor cares how Windows works, so she's quite a good test case.
 

598

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014: Mug-shots here

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 03, 2014, 01:52 PM »

So....funny story about the 2007 mugs.  Start here and read a few posts past:  https://www.donation....msg145103#msg145103

-skwire (February 03, 2014, 12:18 AM)

Oho! It's true then, what they say about the seven-year glitch… Worried about this year at all?
 

599

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014: Mug-shots here

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 02, 2014, 11:22 PM »

Here's mine:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-skwire (February 02, 2014, 03:55 PM)

To be honest, I didn't think much of your effort in 2007!
 

600

General Software Discussion / Re: 0catch .. that's a laugh

« Last post by cranioscopical on February 01, 2014, 01:15 PM »

0no 0problem :-)