Recent Posts

651

General Software Discussion / Re: The Outlook is disappointing

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2016, 08:09 AM »

progress bar?  What are you referring to? I've never seen such.

-wraith808 (August 31, 2016, 08:02 AM)

When I log in there is a splash screen with Outlook in huge letters, a progress bar, with text below that says "opening your mailbox."  Perhaps if you signed in months ago you are still with that interface?  Most likely that is it.  Because I have another account I use as a spam catcher and it got sucked into Outlook months ago.  It doesn't do what this other login does.


Here's a screen shot

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General Software Discussion / The Outlook is disappointing

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2016, 07:21 AM »

For as long as possible I out- maneuvered the attempts by Hotmail to draw me into the Outlook interface.  But alas, I had to log in through a link.  There was no way around it.  Now every time I open my mail instead of the inbox just being there I have to watch this progress bar for some unknown interval.  Just like my google mail.  Arrrgghhhhh!!

The guy who named it a "progress bar" was being ironic I suspect. 

653

Living Room / Re: RIP Gene Wilder

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2016, 07:30 AM »

Not to mention classic scenes in Blazing Saddles

The old "fast draw, want to see it again?" joke done well.

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General Software Discussion / Re: BingThing 1.5.7.0 guilty pleasure

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 29, 2016, 10:53 AM »

BingThing 1.5.7.0  Pressing F1 now opens an About Dialog that allows donations.  All it does if Yes is clicked is copy MilesAheadSoftware.org to the Input Line of BingThing.  Then use whatever browser you wish to go to my site and donate.  Speaking of which, the link in the first post goes to my page.  The latest version is available for download.  I think it is in a pretty useful state now.

To quickly search the history type a few characters that would be in the lines of interest and hit <Enter>.  That will trigger the Filter Button to show only lines where that substring is found.  Filtering on an empty Input Line restores the full History List.

Anyway, enjoy.  If you find a big bug please let me know. 

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General Software Discussion / Re: BingThing 1.5.6.0 guilty pleasure

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2016, 04:10 PM »

BingThing 1.5.6.0

Slightly modified About Box.  Increased Max History to 256 lines. Fixed regression in
previous update that caused the history order to be reversed on each program load.

656

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AData s102 16GB USB 3.0 cheap

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 25, 2016, 07:24 AM »

Free shipping on this 32GB version:

https://www.amazon.c...flash/dp/B004AVOGW8/

 

-4wd (August 24, 2016, 04:40 PM)

[..]
Price:   $2,999.99 & FREE Shipping.

-MilesAhead (August 24, 2016, 05:01 PM)

gone up to $3,000
Damn, they wont even ship to my location . . .

-tomos (August 25, 2016, 05:03 AM)

For that kind of money they should deliver it via Jester on a satin pillow. 

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AData s102 16GB USB 3.0 cheap

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 24, 2016, 05:01 PM »

Free shipping on this 32GB version:

https://www.amazon.c...flash/dp/B004AVOGW8/

 

-4wd (August 24, 2016, 04:40 PM)

Yeah!  That's like the Blood Bus that keeps hanging around the campus advertising a "free movie pass" if you just donate a pint of blood.  Strange how "free" is defined these days:

Price:   $2,999.99 & FREE Shipping.

I don't know from first hand knowledge.  But the rumor is a pint of blood gets you close to $200 if you sell it rather than "donate" it.  Me I don't like people puncturing my skin.  That $200 can cost you thousands later if something not nice is on the needle.

Edit:  For $2,999.99 that USB better have 10 GB/s write speed! 

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General Software Discussion / Re: BingThing 1.5.5.0 guilty pleasure

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 24, 2016, 10:00 AM »

BingThing 1.5.5.0  Improved history file load speed on startup.  Eliminated blank lines in history list.  Latest zip attached in this post.

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AData s102 16GB USB 3.0 cheap

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 24, 2016, 09:23 AM »

I got the USB on Monday.  First thing I did after scanning for errors was run Crystal Disk Mark.  I  forget the results.  A bit higher on a virgin flash drive naturally.  But here is a benchmark run I did after using Aomei PE Builder to make a bootable USB out of it.

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

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 23, 2016, 04:25 PM »

[ Invalid Attachment ]

Curious flock to KFC's fried-chicken scented sunscreen

-Arizona Hot (August 23, 2016, 12:03 PM)

This is not a new idea. Back in 2008, Burger King released Whopper-scented cologne.

-Deozaan (August 23, 2016, 04:16 PM)

To twist it around another way, at many fairs and seaside resorts it is considered haute cuisine to cook things in beer.  So why not just crack open a beer and smear it all over yourself? 
( Edit: Deozaan it didn't occur to me until later this reads like I am suggesting you personally should slather beer upon your person.  I meant fad follower people generally.  )

Perhaps it will keep the mosquitoes away?    (  Edit: Not likely.  More likely to attract black flies  )   

661

Post New Requests Here / Re: Hmm .. I love it: MOVEOUT, but it needs an option to turn off the popup boxs.

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 23, 2016, 06:59 AM »

Thank You both MilesAhead and Lintalist for your good replies, much appreciated indeed.   

-BONZ (August 23, 2016, 12:30 AM)

You are most welcome. 

662

General Software Discussion / Re: BingThing 1.5.3.0 guilty pleasure

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 22, 2016, 03:21 PM »

BingThing rev 1.5.3.0  Fixed bug where search strings with %20 instead of spaces were added to history.

663

Living Room / Re: XP Password work around?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 22, 2016, 09:55 AM »

MS has a procedure to make a password recovery diskette.  I don't remember if it was updated to make a recovery USB.

https://support.micr....com/en-us/kb/305478

Also it does not specify if using it orphans your encrypted data.

Edit: For future reference of course.  Once you are locked out it's too late for this technique.  You need to use one of the bootable password erasers in that case as others have posted.

664

General Software Discussion / Re: BingThing 1.5.2.0 guilty pleasure

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 21, 2016, 02:53 PM »

Attached is the latest version of BingThing.  1.5.2.0.

Changes:

I start with a List of only one blank item for history.  Then the file is read and added.  Then any blanks are remove before filling the List control.  This should get rid of blank lines in the history.


The Filter List Button is now set as the Default Button.  While typing in the Input Line hitting Enter will filter the list without necessitating taking your fingers from the keyboard.

The latest zip file is attached to this post.

665

Post New Requests Here / Re: Hmm .. I love it: MOVEOUT, but it needs an option to turn off the popup boxs.

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 21, 2016, 01:37 PM »

Skrommel has not been around in quite some time.  But the fact that all his utilities include the .ahk source implies you may modify it for your own use.  Download using the green 'H' button to get the source.  AHK has been updated quite a bit in the interim.  But if need be you could get the version that was in use at the time the script was written to side step incompatibilities.

For help with ahk scripting if you get stuck, try this forum:

https://autohotkey.c...c0ed4abd78975bcac95b

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General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting compression ratio difference between file compression tools.

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 19, 2016, 10:58 AM »

One could probably play around with this all day, but I suspect that at the end of it one would be unlikely to have made a particularly significant dent in it.

-IainB (August 16, 2016, 04:19 AM)

I suspect the more efficient compress Shades is talking about is with .7z format.  The other thing would be the type of data compressed.  Text compresses quite a bit.  Whereas binary data that Shades is dealing with, is difficult to compress.  Text tends to have patterns susceptible to compression.  In English anyway you tend to have a lot of 'e's and not many 'z's.  So you can probably denote an 'e' with only a couple of bits and perhaps even use more than a byte for a 'z' without losing too much etc..

Stuff like graphics image files often end up bigger since they are a compressed format to begin with.

667

Living Room / Re: External 5.25 floppy usb drive or another way?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 18, 2016, 04:54 PM »

As it happens, this month marks the 35th anniversary of the IBM 5150 computer, better known as the IBM PC, which made the 5 1/4 inch DOS format floppy disk ubiquitous.  The drives in that system were full-height single sided Shugarts with a maximum capacity of 360kb!!!
 
Prior to that, CP/M was the dominant operating system in microcomputers (as they were known) and each vendor typically had their own proprietary format.  Although I used 8 inch floppies myself, I had a disk conversion system with dual 5.25 floppy drives attached to a CompuPro 816 so that I could provide data in whatever format my clients needed for their own systems.  I recall that it supported over 100 different formats.  By 1986, all that was history and certainly not lamented.

-xtabber (August 18, 2016, 03:01 PM)

I just took a computer repair class at Miami Dade College.  The professor was quite cool.  He always built his own systems.  I believe he said he started with the Altair 8800.  When he multi-boots systems he always has a dedicated physical drive for each OS.  He claimed that mixing flavors of Windows is easy as long as you install in the order the OSes were released.  That way each successive installer formats the new blank HD/SSD and adds the older OSes to the boot menu.  According to him you do not need to know all the ins and outs of GPT vs MBR as long as you install in the proper succession.

He was also a programmer.  From the old punch card/tape programs to assembler, VB and C++.  I got into the game very late with my Leading Edge Model D.  But as you say, it had a single sided 5 1/4" floppy with 360 KB capacity.  The HD was only 30 MB and was noisy and slow.  My brother took that one out (we went 50/50 on the PC and printer) and installed a 65 MB Seagate.  I brought the ram up from 512 KB to 640 KB.  One thing I will say, I had no break out switch.  When I was playing with TSRs and device drivers in ASM and locking the thing up, cycling the power never bothered it.  In fact somewhere on Youtube there is a video of a still working Leading Edge.  Twin floppies but no HD in that one.  He boots it in the video to show it comes up to the command line.

One thing about Dos it kind of put everyone on the same playing field.  You could write demo/proof of concept programs on your 8088 based machine as well as the guy with the 80286.

Ah the good old days. 

668

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 18, 2016, 01:11 PM »

@tomos  the way you are going soon your post count will look like the Florida Lotto Number. 

669

Living Room / Re: External 5.25 floppy usb drive or another way?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 18, 2016, 10:22 AM »

RetroFloppy

-mouser (August 17, 2016, 03:25 PM)

Now there's a way to make a buck with obsolete hardware and software.  Good for them. 

670

General Software Discussion / Re: TeraCopy 3 updated August 11, 2016

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 15, 2016, 09:05 AM »

Thanks for posting.  I installed the Beta 2 a few days ago.  So far so good.   

671

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Vopt 9 defragger free

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 15, 2016, 09:03 AM »

By the way, whilst Vopt seemed to work OK, I have also recently downloaded, installed and tried out UltraDefrag, but I uninstalled it due to its persistent hanging/freezing permanently. Bit of a disappointment, that. I had thought it looked like it might have had quite a good potential.

-IainB (August 15, 2016, 08:58 AM)

I tried that one and removed it too a few months back. On another forum someone raved about it.  But it does no good if it works great on their system and not yours.    It seems with spinner HD there are still incompatibilities that crop up even if the basic technology is Sata II or III.

672

Coding Snack Guidelines / Re: Check site www.nirsoft.net for new versions of tools and download if new

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 13, 2016, 02:13 PM »

WSCC is invaluable. Without it Nirsoft and Sysinternals are impossible to manage.

-michaelkenward (August 13, 2016, 12:54 PM)

Speaking of which, have you been able to get the update buttons to update?  The only reliable way I have found is to delete the folder(such as NirSoft tools) then hit install.  It installs the newest.  But if I just hit update button often is says there aren't any when I am staring at new NirSoft versions on Snapfiles and/or Softpedia.

673

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Vopt 9 defragger free

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 13, 2016, 08:58 AM »

Too bad he didn't go all the way and made it open-source, not just gratis

Of course, with SSD hard disks most of the above has become a moot point, accessing fragmented or defragmented files on a SSD hard disk hardly makes any difference in time and are much faster than on a standard spinning hard disk anyway.  Still, the added bonuses from strictly separating files are still valid.

-Shades (August 12, 2016, 10:23 AM)

Would be interesting to see some benchmarks on this. I guess that if the fragments aren't smaller than the SSDs page size, you won't be able to measure a speed difference.

-f0dder (August 13, 2016, 02:45 AM)

I notice some defraggers have an "SSD mode."  I wonder if it is merely marketing though.

674

Living Room / Re: Trying to remember quote about design and beauty

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 12, 2016, 10:10 AM »

or: "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
A. Einstein

-Curt (August 12, 2016, 08:31 AM)

Probably true since wheel and axle days. 

675

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Vopt 9 defragger free

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 12, 2016, 09:54 AM »

I use defraggler when I'm inclined to defrag.  Which is almost never these days.

-wraith808 (August 12, 2016, 08:10 AM)

I can only defrag when RollbackRX is uninstalled.  If I have installed a few programs and want to get them into my Macrium image I remove RBRX, do disk maintenance and imaging. Then I reinstall RBRX.

I do a Macrium incremental backup.  Usually it only takes 2 minutes.  But I noticed after the defrag with Vopt it took about 20 minutes.  Maybe next time I will back up the image first, then defrag.  After all, if things go well I won't be restoring the image.  Just running CCleaner right before the image backup is probably the best approach.

Speaking of rollback software, I just found out in my Computer Repair class last night that the machines in the classroom all have a deep freeze software installed.  I mean these IT guys must read magazines all day because they sure don't let any changes accrue on these PCs.  The student accounts amount to guest accounts.  When you log off everything you put on is gone.  They probably power down after an inactive period.  Then when they are powered back up the frozen image is laid back on.  Talk about zero delta!!  Wow!!