Recent Posts

901

General Software Discussion / Re: getting empty video files via Firefox > DownloadHelper?

« Last post by app103 on February 26, 2014, 12:07 PM »

I've managed to solve part of the problem, but not the problem itself. Go to http://www.youtube.com/html5 and click "Use HTML5 Player when possible", and YouTube will then offer one more file for downloading. This one DownloadHelper will grap, even if it originates from Vevo.
 (see attachment in previous post) (see attachment in previous post)

-Curt (February 26, 2014, 08:12 AM)

Oh, this is fun! This is what I get when doing as you instructed:



And the longer the video plays while I keep that menu open, the more it grows.

Also, when visiting another page on Youtube, the list from the previous video doesn't clear, and you don't get any links for the video on the current page. You have to refresh the page to get those, and the links from the previous page are still there, too.

902

General Software Discussion / Re: getting empty video files via Firefox > DownloadHelper?

« Last post by app103 on February 26, 2014, 12:02 PM »

I have not visited VEVO for sooo  looong  that I completely had forgotten that VEVO is synonymous with "Sorry! The page you are looking for is not available in your region."

-Curt (February 26, 2014, 08:44 AM)

You don't have to actually visit VEVO to end up with a VEVO video that you can not download. Those videos are all over the place on Youtube and I run into them quite often when performing searches for music.

For example, that Youtube video link in your original post is a VEVO video.

903

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

« Last post by app103 on February 26, 2014, 01:44 AM »

^I guess I'm a bit late, but I just discovered this...

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=048fBXwc1tI
or,
a little tweaked:
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=HnPJg8_lzls

-tomos (February 25, 2014, 04:03 PM)

Or you can listen to him sing for real:

Or how about these:

I loved his vampire character when I was a kid.

904

General Software Discussion / Re: getting empty video files via Firefox > DownloadHelper?

« Last post by app103 on February 26, 2014, 01:10 AM »

Yes, I have been experiencing this issue. Always seems to occur if attempting to download a Vevo video. Also occurs at other times, as well. I just assumed that Youtube did something recently to prevent people from saving the videos and they haven't finished fully rolling it out, yet. I never thought it could be an issue with DownloadHelper, itself. Hmmm... 

905

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

« Last post by app103 on February 24, 2014, 09:58 AM »

What it's like to click a link in the DC IRC channel, when MouserBot goes nuts:

906

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

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2014, 10:08 PM »

A headline you never thought you'd ever see...



http://www.uproxx.co...gas-station-robbery/

907

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

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2014, 09:56 PM »

Meanwhile, in Florida...SPIDERGATOR!

908

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

« Last post by app103 on February 21, 2014, 04:03 AM »

Cleaning woman in Italy throws out artworks

A cleaning woman in southern Italy has unwittingly thrown away contemporary artworks that were supposed to be part of an exhibition.

Lorenzo Roca, head of the cleaning company, said the woman "was just doing her job" when she thought two artworks were part of trash left behind by those setting up for the show that opened Wednesday in Bari.

Show organizers said one of the works she gave to a city sanitation crew before dawn included pieces of cookies, which were scattered on the floor, as part of an artistic arrangement.

Roca said the cleaning company would use its insurance coverage to pay for the trashed art works, whose value was estimated at 10,000 euros ($13,700).

http://news.yahoo.co...works-204817818.html

That's some expensive cookie crumbs!

909

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

« Last post by app103 on February 21, 2014, 01:28 AM »

Be more frugal, save tape and ink - just lift the lid occasionally.

If it smells, it's passed it's use by date.
If it doesn't, then it isn't or it's so far passed it that it looks dessicated.

-4wd (February 20, 2014, 07:14 PM)

The tape and ink are cheaper than the paper towels and cleaning supplies required to clean up the vomit.

910

Living Room / Re: Hard Drive Brand Reliability Data

« Last post by app103 on February 20, 2014, 05:17 PM »

I have never had a hard drive die on me yet, but recently had issues with one and decided to replace it...and it was a Hitachi:

http://www.hddstatus...erification=49B3E62B

I still have Quantum Fireballs that are running just fine.

911

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

« Last post by app103 on February 20, 2014, 03:53 AM »

Right on top, with masking tape and a Sharpie, of course! 

-app103 (February 20, 2014, 03:36 AM)

And why the masking tape  ?  Sounds temporary  .

-barney (February 20, 2014, 03:40 AM)

Because I am the frugal type. Once the contents hit the expiration date, you dump it, remove the tape, wash it out and reuse it. 

But if you are the wasteful type that considers these kind of containers to be disposable, by all means, write directly on the lid and toss the whole thing when it hits that date. 

912

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

« Last post by app103 on February 20, 2014, 03:50 AM »

(see attachment in previous post)

-Giampy (February 19, 2014, 08:42 AM)

There is a town like that, not too far from me, where something like that is actually possible. Imagine standing in Passaic and facing the direction which would put Clifton left, right, and straight ahead.



When I was a kid, I thought there were 2 different towns here named Clifton, because we'd go through Clifton, then Passaic, then Clifton again. And I thought that was really stupid, because how would the post office know which Clifton you lived in, if there was two? (This was before the use of zip codes on mail was required.)

913

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

« Last post by app103 on February 20, 2014, 03:36 AM »

Ziplock storage container casket:
...

-app103 (February 17, 2014, 01:41 PM)

And where do you indicate the "expiration date" ?

-MerleOne (February 18, 2014, 03:11 PM)

Right on top, with masking tape and a Sharpie, of course! 

914

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

« Last post by app103 on February 17, 2014, 01:41 PM »

Ziplock storage container casket:



And the first thought that popped into my head: Is it microwaveable? 

915

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

« Last post by app103 on February 17, 2014, 12:32 PM »

deja vu

Doh! I forgot that's where I got it from. Was in a huge rush and tidying up my image files and didn't think to check first.

-IainB (February 17, 2014, 12:45 AM)

With 105 pages, it's easy to forget what has been posted or where you acquired your images from.

When saving images, it helps to create a subfolder for every domain, just to make it easier to remember where they came from. Of course this sometimes means having to run a duplicate file finder on those folders, every so often.

916

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

« Last post by app103 on February 16, 2014, 07:25 PM »

This probably wouldn't be permitted speech in current PC-controlled education:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-IainB (February 16, 2014, 12:45 AM)

deja vu

917

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

« Last post by app103 on February 14, 2014, 09:34 PM »

Ya even many other countries have employed tax for using solar energy.. It is wrong as it will discourage people from using solar power.

-ElliottMallet (February 14, 2014, 03:23 AM)

Dunno that it's funny, but it is definitely silly humour   .

-barney (February 14, 2014, 03:39 AM)

It is funny, if you think about the logic they didn't consider when they implemented that. Solar panels aren't the only things that can collect photons for personal use. What about lawns & gardens? Tanning?

It will be easy to spot the law breakers in a few years. They will be the ones whose kids don't have rickets.  

918

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

« Last post by app103 on February 11, 2014, 08:09 PM »

The Difference between Bluegrass, Old Time and Celtic bands, now finally explained!

The Music

Old Time and Celtic songs are about whiskey, food and struggle. Bluegrass songs are about God, mother and the girl who did me wrong. If the girl isn’t dead by the third verse, it ain’t Bluegrass. If everyone dies, it’s Celtic.

Old Time and Celtic bands have nonsense names like “Flogging Molly’, “Fruit Jar Drinkers’ and “Skillet Lickers” while Bluegrass bands have serious gender-specific name like “Bluegrass Boys,’ “Clinch Mountain Boys’ and ”Backwoods Babes.”

The most common Old Time keys are major and minor with only 5 notes (modal). Bluegrass uses these, plus Mixolydian and Dorian modes, and a Celtic band adds Lydian and Phrygian modes.

A Bluegrass band has between 1 and 3 singers who are all singing about an octave above their natural vocal range. Some Old Time and Celtic bands have no singers at all. If a Celtic band has a singer, it is usually either a bewhiskered ex-sailor, or a petite soprano. A Bluegrass band has a vocal arranger who arranges three-part harmonies. In an Old Time band, anyone who feels like it can sing or make comments during the performance.

In a Celtic band, anyone who speaks during a performance gets “the look’, and songs are preceded by a call for silence and a detailed explanation of their cultural significance. Bluegrass tunes & songs last 3 minutes. Old Time and Celtic tunes & songs can be any length, and sometimes last all night.

The Instruments

Banjo

A Celtic banjo is small and quiet. An Old Time banjo is open-backed, with an old towel (probably never washed) stuffed in the back to dampen sound. A Bluegrass banjo has bell bronze mastertone tone ring and a resonator to make it louder.

A Celtic banjo weighs 4 pounds, an Old Time banjo weighs 5 pounds, towel included and a Bluegrass banjo weighs 40 pounds. A Celtic banjo has only 4 strings. A Bluegrass banjo has five strings and needs 24 frets. An Old Time banjo needs no more than 5 frets, and some don’t need any. A Bluegrass banjo player has had spinal fusion surgery on all his vertebrae, and therefore stands very straight. If an Old Time banjo player stands, he slouches. A Celtic banjo player has a brace to relieve his carpal tunnel syndrome and remains seated to maintain stability while cross-picking as fast as possible after several pints. An Old Time banjo player can lose 3 right-hand fingers and 2 left-hand fingers in an industrial accident without affecting his performance. A Celtic banjo player flat picks everything. A Bluegrass banjo player puts jewelry on his fingertips to play. An Old Time banjo player puts super glue on his fingernails to strengthen them. Never shake hands with an Old Time banjo player while he’s fussing with his nails.

Fiddle

The Bluegrass fiddler paid $10,000 for his fiddle at the Violin Shop in Nashville. The Celtic fiddler inherited his fiddle from his mothers 2nd cousin in County Clare. The Old Time fiddler got theirs for $15 at a yard sale. Celtic and Bluegrass fiddles are tuned GDAE. An Old Time fiddle can be in a hundred different tunings. Old Time fiddlers seldom use more than two fingers of their left hand, and use tunings that maximize the number of open strings played. Celtic and Bluegrass fiddlers study 7th position fingering patterns with Isaac Stern, and take pride in never playing an open string. An Old Time fiddle player can make dogs howl & incapacitate people suffering from sciatic nerve damage. An Old Time fiddle player only uses 1/8 of his bow. The rest is just there for show.

There's more...plenty more!

919

Post New Requests Here / Re: Does "DimScreen" work under GNU/Linux?

« Last post by app103 on February 10, 2014, 10:57 PM »

The AHK source (DimScreen.ahk) is available, but unfortunately, there is no AHK for Linux, as far as I know, or at least nothing that can run an AHK script. It's kind of a Windows only thing.

Although in some cases, with limited success, a compiled AHK script (.exe) can be run with WINE. It really depends on what it does. I don't think in this case that it would work out very well (although I could be wrong).

920

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by app103 on February 10, 2014, 07:05 PM »

On SBS World News here, we sometimes get stories with subtitles for interviews with people in Africa - who are speaking understandable English.  They might then have a news story from somewhere in the UK where, because it's Scotland, Yorkshire, etc, you have to wonder wtf they saying even though it's meant to be English

-4wd (February 10, 2014, 06:44 PM)

I have relatives that make Facebook posts that seem like that, loaded with misspellings and bad grammar, completely void of any punctuation and capitalization. I often wish that the "Translate this post" option would show up underneath. 

The other day, when someone mentioned it to one of my relatives, remarking that it was the longest "sentence" that he had ever seen, begging for some punctuation, the relative replied "Really [redacted] u run a train all night an ur telling me i have to put dot in there so u no when to take some air in come on ur smarter then that lol ok if i have to tell u take some air now read U just want me to say ur smart again stop take some more air lmao just joshing u"

I'd also like to point out that I am a high school dropout...and she is a college grad.

921

General Software Discussion / Re: Why didn't anyone tell me I could make the Windows 7 taskbar height non-obscene?

« Last post by app103 on February 08, 2014, 09:43 AM »

OIC. Very similar colours to the XP Rose theme - per this screenshot. (I guess you can find it in the OS settings yourself.)

-IainB (February 08, 2014, 09:16 AM)

That's more pink than purple.

What I did was pretty close to the Lilac theme, as it looked to me on my old WinME machine with the crappy 2mb onboard graphics, running in 16bit color mode. That machine had issues with red and never displayed colors quite right. Working on photos was hell on that machine. You always had to turn down the red in them after getting them to look just right, otherwise everyone would look like they had sunburn, if you printed them or viewed them on another machine. I once created a website theme that was a really nice shade of brown, or so I thought. It turned out to be quite pink and girly looking, unsuitable for the guy I was creating it for. 

WinME's Lilac:

922

General Software Discussion / Re: Why didn't anyone tell me I could make the Windows 7 taskbar height non-obscene?

« Last post by app103 on February 08, 2014, 07:45 AM »

@app103:[/b] Oh! It's my old XP Taskbar, and, unless I am much mistaken, it looks like it's the "Rose" colour theme as well - is that so?

-IainB (February 08, 2014, 03:50 AM)

Not the Rose theme. It was a color I picked out of the first wallpaper I had on the desktop of my first XP machine and then tweaked it a bit to create an entire custom theme that was purple, but as easy on the eyes as the default gray.

This is the palette it uses:



And this is the wallpaper it is based on:

923

General Software Discussion / Re: Why didn't anyone tell me I could make the Windows 7 taskbar height non-obscene?

« Last post by app103 on February 07, 2014, 08:06 PM »

...  Love the purple, too!

-app103 (February 07, 2014, 10:16 AM)

Well, it's all about ergonomics as far as I am concerned. It's not a bad colour, I agree, but it's a rather poor compromise - what I was actually trying to do was replicate the standard optional XP "Rose" colour scheme, as that:

• was really easy on the visual perception (good ergonomics);
• was a reddish tint (balances your circadian rhythms affected via your photoreceptors);
• was close to pink without being too bright (good ergonomics - calming effect);
• included a seriffed font (good ergonomics as it is an aid to faster reading comprehension) - I forget the name of the font, but it was similar to Times Roman;

Anyway, trying to replicate the standard XP "Rose" theme was just too hard. I did manage to get closer to it by disabling a lot of the Win7 Vista/glassy/transparency stuff and sticking with the "Classic" display, but the result looked/was kludgy and mis-proportioned, and was not ergonomically satisfactory. So I ended up getting as close as I could using the standard features and left it at that.

The best thing about using a vertical Wn7 Taskbar is that you can pack all that useful content because the graphics display resolution was better and enabled smaller objects - except you really did then need good eyesight or specs to be able to read that laptop display!   

-IainB (February 07, 2014, 06:29 PM)

Let me introduce you to my purple, vertical, autohiding taskbar (XP)...the one that has a reputation of scaring most DC members:



Now you know why I like your taskbar. 

924

General Software Discussion / Re: Why didn't anyone tell me I could make the Windows 7 taskbar height non-obscene?

« Last post by app103 on February 07, 2014, 10:16 AM »

I use small icons on a vertical taskbar so that I can easily access it between two monitors.
This lets me "stack" more taskbar buttons than I could have horizontally.
 (see attachment in previous post)
I've got 16gb of RAM, so it is easy to have so many apps running in the system tray,too.  On a horizontal taskbar I would never be able to see them all at once.

-BGM (February 06, 2014, 07:32 PM)

Ditto. For years now - in XP and Win7-64 - I have used a vertical Taskbar configuration with auto-hide ON. Current example:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-IainB (February 07, 2014, 03:14 AM)

  Love the purple, too!

925

General Software Discussion / Re: Continuing with XP

« Last post by app103 on February 06, 2014, 11:52 PM »

You know, even if she stays on XP, on the hardware she is currently using or a VM, there is going to be a learning curve involved.

She will not be able to continue "life as usual" on an unsupported operating system. She will have to learn new software, she will have to learn safer browsing habits, safer email habits, etc. And accept that some things she will not be able to do any more, or software she will not be able to use any more.

• If she is used to using IE, she will have to change to another browser that's still supported with security patches, when needed.
• She will have to learn how to properly use things like NoScript, Flashblock, Adblock. She will have to learn to discern when she can allow something and when she shouldn't.
• She will have to have a much tougher firewall and deal with alerts from it
• a new email client (that's still supported)
• She is going to have to develop the habit of manually scanning everything she downloads for malware with a secondary anti-virus.
• She will have to get used to file extensions showing (if they aren't already)
• and a lot more.

Essentially, she will have to learn to become a security savvy power user.

I know what is required to safely use an outdated version of Windows. I have done it before. It's really not fun, in the long run, and not something I would recommend to anyone that can afford the cost of a new OS and the hardware needed to run it. And I am already a security savvy power user and saying this.

Don't run an outdated, unsupported version of Windows unless you are dirt poor and are willing and able to pay for your choice to do so with your time and frustration, rather than paying money to upgrade your hardware and OS.

If you fear having to learn new things, this goes double, since you will have to learn a lot more just to stay safe, than you will have to learn to use a new version of Windows. And someone else can NOT do the learning for you.