Recent Posts

6301

General Software Discussion / Re: So simple, so smart - Quick Process Info

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 04:09 PM »

Trouble is there are lots of processes (usually the ones you don't recognise) that aren't in the database, same as for WinTasks.

Shame they don't offer the opportunity to submit information about unrecognised processes.

6302

Living Room / Re: DIY madness ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 04:08 PM »

I got all wecited thinking I could get it by mail order - guess what IKEA don't do mail order ...

Never mind I found an almost identical one somewhere else. Bit more expensive but it looks nice and can double up for photography and table manners

6303

Living Room / Re: Massive collection of dynamic image generators (add text to image)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 01:09 PM »

You noticed - great signs

6304

Living Room / Re: DIY madness ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 01:06 PM »

Thanks - how about IKEA

6305

Living Room / Re: Why is my USB flash drive so slow on my home computer, but not at work?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 11:43 AM »

If it sorts the problem try moving the Joystick to different USB sockets - what I have found is that is USB2 hubs have a priority over the sockets - maybe it is just a fixed scanning order. The first USB1 device encountered seems to reduce the speed of all the following devices, so if you can get the USB2 devices first in the queue it might work. Basically first of all unplug everything except you flash drive and see if that cures the problem - if it does fiddle with the device order until you have everything working the way you want. If you can't get everything to behave together (but do when you joystick is unplugged) then either buy a new joystick or a cheap USB PCI card for the joystick to play through.

6306

General Software Discussion / Re: So simple, so smart - Quick Process Info

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 10:59 AM »

Nice find.

Having said that it is a subset of WinTasks (so if you have that installed it doesn't add anything) and the advertising on the info pages for other Uniblue products is pretty full on (there is lots of talk of Trojans etc. and how WinTasks Pro can solve all your problems).

6307

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: HDDlife Pro (and other disk-health reporters)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 10:49 AM »

I hope so - a "reallocated sector" happens when your drive determines there's a bad sector. It notes this in an internal map, and chooses a spare sector that all references to this sector will be mapped to (all modern drives have a smallish pool of spare sectors). In other words, a non-zero amount of reallocated sectors means your drive has some problem. And once you have one bad sector, others tend to follow...

-f0dder (April 05, 2006, 05:06 AM)

Maybe a sign of my age but ... I thought all hard drives have odd bad sectors. Low level formatting with the drive manufacturers tools hide them from the user but there will always be odd sectors that go bad for one reason or another over time without the drive necessarily dying - this is especially tru of the large format drives available now.

6308

Living Room / Re: Why is my USB flash drive so slow on my home computer, but not at work?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 10:36 AM »

Have you got any USB1 devices plugged into any of your USB2 ports? USB 1 devices can knock down all other USB 2 ports to USB 1 speeds.

If you have got USB1 devices try unplugging them and see if your USB2 devices speed up.

If not try a cheap USB2 PCI card (you can get them for a few dollars) so that you have a separate USB2 interface.

6309

Living Room / Re: Firm pitches $2,800 64GB USB Flash disk

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 10:19 AM »

True but there must be a physical limit on what can be crammed into a Flash disk - and I don't think 64Gb is going to be topped for a while!

6310

Living Room / Re: DIY madness ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 09:34 AM »

Looks ideal (thanks) esp. the UK one which can take up to 100 kg!

Only problem is it cost £9 and they want nearly £12 in delivery charge!!! I'm on the phone

Follow up ...

Found the same item at a number of different sites ... prices vary from £8.75 to £29 and postage seems to vary from £10-£20. That's the trouble with TV box shifters - they have standard delivery charges whether you buy a cable or a 48" plasma TV. Madness.

I think I will go back to my original idea (two sheets of MDF with some kind of lubricant (possibly ball bearings or marbles) to allow it to turn. I'm not going to be photographing anything excessively heavy.

Actually that just made me think - perhaps a cookshop might have the right sort of thing for food turntables ...

6311

Living Room / Re: Firm pitches $2,800 64GB USB Flash disk

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 08:48 AM »

a further limitation is the fact that flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles (most commercially available EEPROM products are guaranteed to withstand 10^6 programming cycles,)

-mrainey (April 07, 2006, 08:29 AM)

How can companies (eg. Lexar) offer no quibble lifetime warranties on their Pro products if the item has a limited lifespan?

6312

Living Room / Re: Giant devil rabbit terrorises village

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 08:11 AM »

Yes you do - it is brilliantly funny. The actors obviously had so much fun doing the voices for it and the 'clay' animation of Nick Park and Co is up to its usual amazing standard.

Buy it on DVD - you have to watch it more than once to spot all the funny little bits of business going on around the screen!

6313

Living Room / Re: Firm pitches $2,800 64GB USB Flash disk

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 08:08 AM »

Good lord!

I'd be afraid to leave my house with it!

Luckly it looks like it would be the perfect size: just small enough to fit in my tightly clenched fist, what better way to NEVER loose it....

-Hirudin (April 07, 2006, 06:49 AM)

Maybe it comes with a lifetime warranty and free insurance

6314

Living Room / DIY madness ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 07:48 AM »

I was doing a google search for some ideas on how to construct a turntable wuitable for photographing objects from all sides by simply rotating them through fixed angles (any ideas gratefully received on this) and came across an interesting blog site.

Be warned it takes forever to download the page (mainly because all the images are store elsewhere - often on flickr and similar servers and all the projects are drawn from all over the place) but there are some really interesting and excentric projects. Here is the main page (which contains a summary of all the prohects): http://www.makezine....rchive/diy_projects/

If you don't want to wait until Christmas for the whole page to download here are just a few of my favourite ideas:

Spinning Vehicle Photos
Lego Photo Turntable
Re-surfacing CDs so they work again
Inverted Planter
Make a $30 bicycle cargo trailer--200 lb capacity
The Melloman - DIY Mellotron using 13 old Walkmans!

My real favourite ...

Recorder Races!


What can you do with old Walkmans? Race them! - "The race management is pleased to announce: Date and place of the race for the title of is finally and ultimately fixed! The race will take place in the PHOENIXHALLE in Dortmund on Saturday, June 3rd 2006. So – dig out your old recorders from your basements, activate the soldering gun and spin with us once again at the Recorder Race 2006!" - Link.

International Recorder Race Rules - Link.

6315

General Software Discussion / Re: Omnipage 15 Review by DSLR member

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 07, 2006, 07:22 AM »

I bought this a while back and was really irritated that way it pushes its way into your whole system: filetypes, menus, macros in Office docs etc. all without any options in setup.

One particular annoyance was that on installation it claimed just about every file type you could think of as its own (there were no options in the setup program). When I complained to the support team and asked how I could install it without this happening they told me it didn't do that (well why did all my JPEG, TIFF, BMP etc. files have OP icons and load OP then) and that if I didn't want that I could always edit the extension properties. At that point I gave up and asked for a refund.

I had been a happy user of OmniPage 11 and thought it was perhaps time to update. Having tried version 15 I could see very little difference from version 11 (bad sign that 4 versions go by and you can't see any difference).

6316

Living Room / Re: QuickTime VR of objects - anyone know how to do this cheaply?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 06:38 PM »

Yeah I looked at the Java stuff but decided I didn't want the hassle. I don't have access to the web server I will be working on (just a VERY simple front end webpage) and so it will be difficult to write HTML files for uploading, and once I am no longer involved no one will be able to maintain them (the office I am doing this for are not that computer literate). Same problem with Flash files.

It is much simpler if I can just upload a movie file for people to view.

6317

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Some programm which is able to recognize newer versions when copying

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 03:05 PM »

I wonder if it would be seen as presumptuous if I write a little one paragraph end-user "review" for her program? I am new here.

-Webijou (April 06, 2006, 02:53 PM)

Not at all go for it!

Oh and welcome ...

6318

Living Room / Re: QuickTime VR of objects - anyone know how to do this cheaply?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 09:12 AM »

Thanks Tony - I guessed you might pop up with something

I had already looked at the duckware stuff - it looks very complex and for organisation it is licensed per "panorama/object" which will get very silly pricewise.

I'll check out picturecloud (thanks).

The other one I have found that looks neat is: Pano2QTVR It's is free or only $29.95 for personal use of the Pro version, and reasonably priced for commercial use. Looks quite impressive too. Only drawback is very limited documentation.

6319

Living Room / Re: A personal note about DonationCredits

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 07:00 AM »

LOL I moved it to admin talk ...

6320

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: InventoryPoster

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 06:45 AM »

Did you see my first post that this should work for an average user?
And that it should be simple. And as an advertisement in forums for DC.com?

-AbteriX (April 06, 2006, 05:41 AM)

I think it should work for the average user, and it is simple.

Is msinfo32.exe available on all windows versions?

Yes as far as I know it has been available since Windows 98 at least

Can we automating the export of the info's from msinfo32 with one mouse click?

Not directly (it takes two selections from the edit menu - select all, copy) but you can select an info category, hit CTRL A then CTRL C to get it to the clipboard.

Can we select desired lines from that export?

Yes - click on the line and hit Ctrl C

What is with info's msinfo32 didn't provide?

Sorry don't understand the question

Can we put this info's than to the clip board automatically?

Yes, select all/copy

Come on guys, isn't there more?  :)

Yes there is loads more info in msinfo32, pages and pages of it ....  give it a try

6321

Living Room / QuickTime VR of objects - anyone know how to do this cheaply?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 05:16 AM »

Take a look at http://www.vrworx.co...worx_examples_02.htm and click drag on the image of the glass.

Does anyone know of anyway to do this cheaply (or preferably for free!).

All the software I have found for QuickTime VR is either for panoramic shots or else they cost a fortune (or both).

I am doing some work producing educational materials for my local museum website (no money to spend) and would like to include 3D images of some artefacts.

6322

Official Announcements / Re: BIGGEST NEW FEATURE SINCE HISTORY OF THE SITE - DONATIONCREDITS

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 03:40 AM »

Well done - I like the new quick reply tools too ;-)

6323

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: InventoryPoster

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 03:17 AM »

Which can also be opened via Start\Accessories\System Tools\System Information (for those who don't like typing commands).

By the way it is useful to note that if you use msinfo32 to collect this data using File/Save stores an enormous amout of info in an XML formated file.

The easiest way to get what you want is to cut and paste to a text editor. For example high light "System Summary" and then click on an item in the right pane. Tyle CTRL A and CTRL C then open Notepad and hit CTRL V to get just the basic summary info.

6324

Living Room / Re: Memory probs ... any ideas?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 03:01 AM »

It has happened in other installs of XP too in the past, but I thought it was working fine in the current install until recently - I was just trying to sort out why it was happening now.

6325

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 06, 2006, 03:00 AM »

Also, I wouldn't say photo management is not one of APE's main functions. It is. APE has a very good organizational component, so I don't see how one could say it's not one of its major components. It does come with other tools and it is sort of an all-in-one deal, but that doesn't make the organizational component any less good. I'll stick with ACDSee for a while and see how I like it though.

-moerl (April 05, 2006, 07:22 PM)

I haven't used APE 4 (the last version I have is 2) so I can't comment on specific changes but I think it is true to say that APE is designed as photo editing software - it is after all the cutdown version of Adobe PhotoShop aiming at the consumer market. Photo organisation was very much added as an afterthought to both Photoshop and APE, in particular it was really added as a browser to find images to edit. I know that they have gone further now in APE 4 and added organisational functions (by incoroprating ideas from the old Album software) but I would still say that it isn't the primary purpose of APE whereas other software such as ACDsee/Picassa etc. really only has organisation as a purpose.