Recent Posts

826

Living Room / Re: Cleaning Inside the Case

« Last post by Nod5 on February 01, 2009, 07:10 AM »

Nod5, any online site for that?

-Paul Keith (January 31, 2009, 12:23 AM)

I've seen it on sale online, only in physical stores. But techidave's metrovac above looks very similar.

827

Living Room / Re: Cleaning Inside the Case

« Last post by Nod5 on January 30, 2009, 04:16 PM »

Here in Sweden you can buy a special computer cleaning add-on for 6$ that fits any standard size vacuum cleaner. There's probably something similar elsewhere.

828

Finished Programs / Re: ExtDesk: control the primary desktop from the extended desktop

« Last post by Nod5 on January 30, 2009, 02:00 PM »

v090130:
- right click menu: open video players (default: VLC & KMPlayer)
- ini with option to override default video players
- tray icon menu to move all (non-fullscreen) windows from secondary to primary monitor

v090131: mbutton on magnifier toggles zoom modes
v090132: middle click extdesk left corner window to toggle onscreen keyboard
v090201: fixed error with middle click magnifier zoom toggle

829

Find And Run Robot / Re: The killer feature request (maybe impossible to do on windows)

« Last post by Nod5 on January 29, 2009, 12:31 PM »

Some new thoughts on this:

What is the easiest way to pass the paths for all files currently in the match list to an autohotkey script?  (via command line or by saving them to a textfile and sending the file path to the script)

If we could just have that up and running then it would be easy to put together a small script that when started does this: (1) filters input paths for image files, (2) makes a temp folder (in FindAndRunRobot\MyLocalData\ ), (3) copies links to all image files to that folder, (4) opens that folder in thumbnail view mode, (5) cleans up when the user closes that folder and/or next time the script is run. That way a FARR search that returns a large number of image files can later be browsed as thumbnails.

830

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com - Complaints, Problems, and Rooms for Improvement

« Last post by Nod5 on January 28, 2009, 05:13 PM »

A minor forum quirk in IE (and Maxthon, but not FF): after clicking in the message text of a post the page can't be scrolled with the pageup/pagedown keyboard buttons. Clicking in the right/left margin of the page makes then buttons work again.

another one (also a Maxthon/IE thing I think): when I'm (1) not logged in, (2) already have multiple DC forum pages open, and
(3) log in on one of those pages, then I'm returned not to that page but to one of the other pages (maybe the one that I accessed first?).

831

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: JustCloseSomeTasks

« Last post by Nod5 on January 27, 2009, 12:28 PM »

[edit: posted in wrong thread  :-[]

832

General Software Discussion / Re: HELP: disable/enable USB mouse service from command line

« Last post by Nod5 on January 25, 2009, 03:56 AM »

No that didn't work either. When the error occurs the device is listed as unconnected even when it is physically connected (the multiple copies of the same device in the list comes from it having been plugged into different USB hub ports)


Edit:
tried devcon again just now and solved it by making a .bat file that disables+enables the whole class of devices:

[Select]

devcon disable =HIDClass
devcon enable =HIDClass

When the error occurs I just use FARR to run the .bat file

Edit2:
The above worked for the mouse but also had the drawback of messing with the multimedia keys of my keyboard (until the next restart). That is caused by the .bat file disabling/enabling too many devices. So I made a new attempt at disabling/enabling only the specific mouse device. It now works when I specify it like this:
devcon disable *PID_XYZ*
devcon enable *PID_XYZ*
where XYZ is replaced with data for the specific device (as shown in the properties > information tab for the device in Device Manager). It remains to see if that value can change, but it works so far.
Edit3: Yes, it definitely works. I think the problem with my first attempt was to specify the complete string ID string from the device properties (including the backslashes). The shorter command with wildcards above did the trick.

Ideally I'd like to automate this even more so that a script runs on each boot and checks the mouse device status. When the mouse was not responding then the device properties had a special flag (I think it had problem or error in the name but don't remember exactly). But I can't find a way to check for that flag through devcon. So for the moment I'll just run the above script on each reboot.

833

Find And Run Robot / Re: [bug] FARR error and freeze if html view mode page tries to close win

« Last post by Nod5 on January 24, 2009, 08:08 AM »

I'm reviving this. I often use FARR's html view mode to access a specific webpage and that page tries to close itself when a link is clicked. So I encounter this problem almost daily. My current workaround: when the "do you want to close window?" FARR popup shows then I kill and restart the FARR process (through an AHK hotkey).

834

General Software Discussion / [solved] HELP: disable/enable USB mouse service from command line

« Last post by Nod5 on January 24, 2009, 06:54 AM »

I have a problem with my labtec 800 wireless mouse.

Sometimes when the computer starts the mouse is unresponsive and the LED light on its USB unit is off. I have found two different manual fixes:
1. physically disconnect + reconnect the USB unit, re-pair mouse and unit
2. open device manager, find the USB HID with an error, right click: disable + enable



I want to automate fix number 2. Things I've tried that did not work:

devcon.exe commands:
devcon restart [HID]
devcon disable [HID]
devcon enable [HID]

restarting the HidServ service:
net stop HidServ
net start HidServ

Any suggestions?

835

Find And Run Robot / Re: [idea] Let FARR score plugin results

« Last post by Nod5 on January 20, 2009, 11:43 AM »

Captain Elctrobrain says: good suggestion! 

836

Finished Programs / Re: tv_out: a shortcut for quickly turning extended desktop on/off

« Last post by Nod5 on January 19, 2009, 12:09 PM »

great suggestion lanux128! 

I've uploaded version 090119: ini option to make a ctrl+alt+__ hotkey

It must be a ctrl+alt+___ hotkey due to a limitation in the autohotkey FileCreateShortcut command. But ctrl+alt+D (D as in display) is a pretty good hotkey.

837

Finished Programs / Re: tv_out: a shortcut for quickly turning extended desktop on/off

« Last post by Nod5 on January 18, 2009, 06:24 AM »

techidave: tv_out is not made to be always running so the current script can't have built in hotkeys. I could add that as an option but it might also be confusing to build in such a "always running" mode. I'll think about it next time I update the script.

In the meantime, here are two quick, external ways to get a hotkey:

1. right click the tv_out icon on the desktop > properties: set up a hotkey. I think that should work, though there are some limitations in what hotkeys that can be used.

2. use a custom autohotkey helper script (save code as somename.ahk, compile (requires autohotkey installed), put in some folder, then add a link to it to your autostart folder) :

[Select]

#1::
Run, %A_Desktop%\TV_OUT
return

The example above uses win + 1 as hotkey. But any hotkey can be used by changing the row "#1::" above, see http://www.autohotke...com/docs/KeyList.htm  for details on hotkeys to use.

838

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Everything plugin for FARR

« Last post by Nod5 on January 17, 2009, 06:23 PM »

This sounds really promising! Everything is so darn fast. It will be really interesting to see in what ways FARR and Everything can be used together now. Up until now I've launched Everything searches via a FARR alias. I have used it mostly for when I know that I need something in a folder that I've excluded in FARR or a folder with so many files that it will take FARR longer than Everything to find the results. But if a plugin like this can be enhanced then maybe more and more of the basic FARR search capacities can be aided by Everything (the same goes for Locate32 and the FARR plugin for that).

Two extreme scenarios seem clear enough:
1. minimal scenario: use Everything only in rare cases, through a special alias (for example "ev"; "ev filename")
2. maximal scenario: use Everything for all FARR searches, without any special alias. (Though clear enough as a scenario there can of course be a lot of problems with implementing that and so reasons against going for something like that. This also ties in with previous FARR discussions concerning indexing.)

Here's a possible inbetween scenario that I can think of: as a step in a regular FARR search FARR uses Everything for searching some folders (as specified in FARR options) and does a regular FARR search in other folders and then combines and presents the results.

839

Finished Programs / Re: tv_out: a shortcut for quickly turning extended desktop on/off

« Last post by Nod5 on January 17, 2009, 08:43 AM »

Thanks!
I've uploaded version 090117: it removes the msgbox-bug that glove99 found. No other changes. The msgbox only showed up when using the alwaysturnon=1 .ini option so I missed it before.

840

Find And Run Robot / Re: AHK script for easy FARR win resize

« Last post by Nod5 on January 16, 2009, 10:45 AM »

But why is that better?  I'm at 1280x1024. If I moved to higher resolution I can't think of a reason to also want to increase the FARR window size.

Anyway, the relevant autohotkey variables are:
A_ScreenWidth
A_ScreenHeight

841

Living Room / Re: 7.7.7.0 Browser Hijack Virus

« Last post by Nod5 on January 15, 2009, 01:03 PM »

@app: I didn't know that Foxit had JS activated by default. Deactivated now. Thanks!

edit:
Edvards first post states that a symptom of the problem is if sysaudio.sys or wdmaud.sys exists in C:\WINDOWS\system32\

It is then best to add that files with those names exist in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\ , at least on my (supposedly clean) Win Xp Pro system. The files with the MD5 values below passed the test at http://virusscan.jotti.org/ a minute ago:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\sysaudio.sys
8b83f3ed0f1688b4958f77cd6d2bf290

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\wdmaud.sys
6768acf64b18196494413695f0c3a00f

I also have a registry entry very similar to the one Edvard talks about at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\drivers32
But the difference is that my (again supposedly clean) computer has a "aux" key with the value: "wdmaud.drv" (NOT "wdmaud.sys")

I guess it is yet an example of the common practice for malware to have deceptively similar names and locations as legit Windows files. A good way to counter that is to post and check file hashes.

842

Post New Requests Here / Re: Audio output device manager

« Last post by Nod5 on January 13, 2009, 02:36 PM »

@calvindienern: Great that it works for you. I use the script daily myself.

But even better would be to get something like pulseaudio working so that we can change audio output on the fly, with no application restarts needed (see my failed attempt to get that up and running in this thread: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=14100.0 )

843

Living Room / Re: make family tree in Visio - manually or automated via db?

« Last post by Nod5 on January 13, 2009, 02:15 PM »

This is great! Informed answers just keep coming in this thread.

@raybeere: ok, I hear you. I WILL move to some sort of database software. I guess it is my general hesitance towards becoming locked into this or that format that has stopped me so far (and the fact that there seems to be a lot not so good genealogy programs around too). But given at least partial interoperability through GEDCOM then that shouldn't be such a big worry. I have cleaned up my large .txt file by now so that some of it will probably also be possible to autoimport (I'ts only a matter of getting some thorny regexp stuff just right). I don't have time to do it now but I'll make an attempt later this spring.

I have been very careful with sources. Here in Sweden the church records for almost every part of the country are available through online subscription services that have high resolution color photos of every page, usually dating back to somewhere around the year 1700. It is amazingly convenient. Maybe something similar is available in other countries? Anyway, I've written down exact references and have also screenshots of the actual church book pages. One thing I've learned the hard way is the importance of taking notes of what you DON'T find i.e. what texts you have searched and found no matches in.

@4WD: the screenshots from Personal Ancestral File looks impressive! Great with many output formats. That said, the Pedigree chart has the same drawback that most examples of such chart/tree outputs from tools like these that I've seen: it is too spaced. I want to cram as much as possible of the tree onto one sheet of paper. In my manual, Visio made tree I could squeeze in 11 generations on one sheet of paper (I've trimmed away a lot of people on the "sides" to make that fit).

So, in the end I will probably BOTH keep that manual tree manually updated AND migrate the data into some real genealogy software database. The manual "main tree" won't have so many details anyway and so it will not need updating so often. Just name and date of birth/death/marriage and lines to mark relations. Please keep the discussion on pros and cons of various software solutions flowing!

844

Find And Run Robot / AHK script for easy FARR win resize

« Last post by Nod5 on January 09, 2009, 04:04 PM »

Here's a small AHK script for easy toggling the FARR win width between two sizes. Very convenient if you like me prefer a small FARR win as default but still often need to increase the width to see long file names.

[Select]

; AHK (Autohotkey) script for easy FARR win resize, by nod5
^CapsLock::
WinGetPos, , ,w,H,A     
WinGet, active_p, ProcessName, A
if active_p = FindAndRunRobot.exe
 {
  if (W != 258)
   WinMove, A, , , , 258,
  else
   WinMove, A, , , , 450,
 }
Return

Things you can tweak: The widths 258 and 450. The hotkey (but control + capslock is pretty handy!)

845

Living Room / Re: make family tree in Visio - manually or automated via db?

« Last post by Nod5 on January 07, 2009, 04:34 PM »

I was very late with my reply to the above... And to make things worse, I posted it in the wrong thread! https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=14100.0 And to make things worst, I didn't notice the mistake until just now. Here it is, in the right place, at last:

Thanks for the replies. Though I already picked the manual path (   ) and completed a tree the day before christmas. It took a fair amount of time to say the least so I'm still very interested in more programmatic ways to do this in the future.

@Deozaan: I've testdriven Geni and it seems excellent for collaborative work. But last time I looked at it I couldn't find any easy way to print the tree in a compact way (i.e. cram as much of the information as possible into one or a few sheets of paper). Has there been improvements in that regard? Or are there any third party apps to export to and then print from? I'm asking since my older relatives will want to see my tree and they are not keen on (to say the least) to access it through a computer.

@sword: thanks! Lots of things for me to look into in those links. The second one seems dated though (some of the comments on that page claim that the advice does not work in Visio 2003 so I suspect it will not work in Visio 2007 either).

846

Post New Requests Here / Re: Audio output device manager

« Last post by Nod5 on January 07, 2009, 10:10 AM »

zYx, did you try my AHK script above? I don't have Vista and so can't check if it works there (please post feedback here if you try it!)

In this ( https://www.donation....msg144877#msg144877 ) sibling thread an autoit script was posted that explicitly works in Vista so another alternative is to try that.

847

Living Room / Re: boardgamegeek - all things boardgame site

« Last post by Nod5 on January 07, 2009, 09:46 AM »

Good sites, both.

A very simple yet strangely addictive card game is SET. Highly recommended! Children can play it at suprisingly young ages. If the complexity is too high for some child then just remove one or more layers of pattern for the time being.
http://www.setgame.com/set/
http://www.boingboin...eeky-cardgame-t.html

848

General Software Discussion / Re: output audio to two devices in Win XP? (PulseAudio?)

« Last post by Nod5 on January 01, 2009, 05:53 AM »

(posted in wrong thread)

849

Living Room / Re: Gift-giving season cometh. What computer hardware/peripheral would you like?

« Last post by Nod5 on December 26, 2008, 04:34 PM »

Thomas, maybe an iphone or other mobile phone together some software could work as well as a standalone scanner?  Look here for an example of 1D barcode scanning on the iphone: http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=r5EY8b09sHw
So maybe you even have a device capable of doing what you wish for already!

850

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Outpost 2009 – A lifetime license for 3 PCs for the price of a 1-year!

« Last post by Nod5 on December 26, 2008, 12:59 PM »

This sounds like a good deal! I was leaning towards going for Best Firewall (http://www.tallemu.com/ ). They have a 15$ discount until 31 december (40$ - 15$ = 25$). But now I'm unsure. Anyone here who have experience from using both and can make a recommendation?