new boring computer questions

also:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/php_iis.html

http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/cocoabooklet/

have been designing cd sleeves for a friend. simple images with text overlaid. but i'm not sure of the final text and figured i'd do it in a way that he'd be able to modify the text himself. so, html. a table containing two cells, with the front and back images as backgrounds to these cells, text goes over the top. looks fine on screen, text aligned nicely and easy enough for lay-person to edit without having to worry about photoshop layers and having the same fonts etc. images are 710x710px each, 120mm square @ 150dpi. (oops, the fold's on the wrong side, nevermind)

unfortunately, when i come to print these i don't have any control over the dpi of the output and it just scales them to fit the page, makes them about 20% too big.

any suggestions?

example here btw
www.koogy.clara.co.uk/cd_cover.html

does your friend have illustrator, or acrobat?

even if he has illustrator or acrobat i don't 8) i don't think he's technical at all. have done all my others just using gimp (usually they don't have any text anyway) but i know the text isn't final and wanted him to be able to change it himself.

i thought css was designed to handle more than just web layout. can find the odd thing about @page but not enough (seems to let you specify borders and margins, not absolute size. could be wrong. why doesn't google let you search for @page without removing the @?)

I've got a problem with my laptop in that there is a problem with the screen. Picture below shows the logon screen. Once logged on the text appears fuzzy, however it is not like this all the time, it's an intermittent fault. At the moment I'm using it and the screen is fine, but it could come back any time.

So do I need a new screen, or is it just a dodgy connection? If so how difficult or easy would it be to fix it?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1120/574730046_9b6332f0c7.jpg?v=0

Are you running at the native screen resolution?

(FP2 did you ever get flash working on your 64 bit linux box?
i tried this and it seems fine: http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/nspluginwrapper/)

Yes koogs - but clunkily. I installed both the mozilla-firefox and mozilla-firefox-bin packages; and I switch from one to the other whenever I want to watch Youtube or whatever. It has the side effect that I am protected from annoying Flash when I don't want it.

xxpost
Yes, I haven't changed any of the settings. I'm going to download the driver to see if that makes any difference, but as I said in my earlier post the fault is intermittent so I suspect it's a hardware problem.

hard drive question. i have two hard drives in my pc, one a boot disk with all my windows and program files on, the other a simple storage for all my documents

i turned it all off at the wall socket while i went on holiday recently, and now it won't recognise my second hard drive. I have to unplug it otherwise it takes my computer ages to boot up.

both SATA drives. is it fooked? why?

(sorry, should have been clearer, "I have to unplug the second hard drive now from the motherboard, otherwise it takes ages to boot up")

My computer died on it's arse a couple of weeks ago. Mostly fine now, but the @ and " symbols have switched around, so when I press the " key I get @ - minor, but pretty irritating. Any ideas how I can switch them back?

If you go to the control panel you can change your keyboard layout there, I think. You'll have to choose a UK layout instead of a US one. I could be wrong though. I'm sure somebody'll be along in a minute to give you the correct answer.

Audio CDs are occasionally prompting my PC to bring up the "autoplay" thingummy as if they are data disks, then nothing happens. Thereafter the machine refuses to recognise anything but datadisks until it is rebooted.

How to fix?

nate is correct, anna. Go into Control Panel->Regional and language settings

Holding down left shift when you insert the disc bypasses autoplay. Symptomatic treatment at best, dunno about a cure.

onimo, find your disk drive in my computer, right click and select properties. somewhere in there is the option to disable autoplay for audio cds. you can also disable it entirely if you like.

Thanks guys, will try that tonight. I think the computer just doesn't like Julian Cope or Public Image Ltd tbh. Maybe it's rejecting anything recorded before Windows...

You still have the whole of music from 1985 onwards to choose from!

> find your disk drive in my computer, right click and select properties. somewhere in there is the option to disable autoplay for audio cds. you can also disable it entirely if you like.

i do this and connecting my mp3 player still tries to autoplay it (and as it's a 20G player with about 3000 files on it, the initial scan takes a while). have just noticed, however, that you can get it to treat 'music', 'pictures' and 'mixed' devices differently. maybe that'll help.

realplayer has started adding stuff to its playlist whenever i so much as glance at them. gah. everything tries to take over everything. bad enough that i have 6 of the bastard things installed.

will stop now before i turn into the woman who writes Technobile in the guardian.

(i'd usually say that linux is so much better but i've started seeing the same thing in gnome lately)

You can turn that off in gnome though.

Right, now it isn't autoplaying but it still isn't recognising that there's an audio cd in the drive. The disk spins and the "DVD-RAM Drive (D:)" icon becomes "CD Drive (D:)" and that's it. I still can't play the CDs or rip them to mp3.

How can I do these two things which are so obvious they must be possible?

1. Make 'Paste unformatted text' the default CTRL-V action in Word.

2. Change the mouse pointer when looking at PDFs in Acrobat between the 'text select' and 'hand' versions without clicking near the top of the screen... i.e. I want to have the hand, but when I hold CTRL or something have the pointer switch to select text... like you can do in Quark.

PDF: you need to enable single key accelerators in preferences->general, then H for hand tool, V for "current selection tool". More under help->keyboard shortcuts

Thanks -- that's handy.

Earlier tonight this dipshit tech who came to my house said that whatever had happened to my computer, the best thing was to wipe the drive, reformat it and reinstall Windows XP. So anyway, it is done. And for awhile Windows XP runs normally. But when I RESTART the computer, XP does not start, it just has a black screen saying "no bootable device...press F1 to retry" and that's it. Does anyone have any ideas? What is going on here? Even if I reinstall Windows XP, the same thing happens if I restart the computer.

Was he a punk? I hear they dislike goths.

Hahah. No and he was ugly as hell, too. Thankfully this morning I decided to push F12 or whatever got me into the setup menu and when I looked around I figured out that the list of bootable devices didn't have the hard drive enabled, so I just enabled the hard drive as a "bootable device" and wallah, the problem was fixed. Still lost all my data and paid through the nose for an idiot's advice, but hey, live and learn. I really had no idea how stupid that guy was until he'd been at my house for awhile, and by then it was too late.

A fool and his money are soon par.

Eh, fuck you too.

um how do you get AV out (whatever that even is) from a macbook? is there an... adapter?

lol get a oh hang on

Macbooks have mini-dvi output for video. You get adaptors to full dvi, vga, s-video and composite from the Apple store. They're ridiculously expensive given what they are.
Audio is just headphone socket to phono or whatever.

i believe MacBooks ship with a MiniDVI to DVI adaptor. They used to.

there are adaptors, depends what the connection is on the other end. i have a mini-dvi to vga connector that i bought on ebay for a tenner (like this) and a male to male vga cable that connects to my tv.

If you got one of the brand new model Macbooks, though, you'll need one of their new mini-DisplayPort to X adapters. I think Apple is the only source for these adapters at the moment.

I have an old-gen macbook with mini-dvi

this is for my li'l bro who just has a pc (complicated by the fact tht he might get a macbook) so dunno what connections he has (what's standard?) - he is getting an optoma pico pocket projector which connects to ipods/phones/pdas whatever via their av out - I can't find any info on the www on how to connect a pc to the pico to project from tht... I dunno wht "av out" is but do know wht composite/component/dvi/mini-dvi/vga/hdmi etc are

http://www.unplggd.com/uimages/unplggd/061908optoma-pico02.jpg

^^wht is equivalent stylish white cable for the metrosexual male to go in pc/poss future macbook, is my qn

its audio/video out. how you connect to a tv.

thanknig u

wait, I don't think I've ever seen a connection to a tv with a pole jack socket; the most common low-fi method wd be s-video wouldn't it, and all the current av ninjas would connect a computer to tv via vga/hdmi. looking around it doesn't look like you can get a mini-dvi to "1 x 2.5mm 4 pole jack" adapter

looking at this shit really raises my blood pressure

yeah usually the av cords are the ones that go to the composite in of yr tv (split into 3 or 5 lines of audio/video). obv that thing is way different.

iPod video out is composite which usually goes over RCA (yellow jack) but can be routed over 2.5 mm jack ended cables mostly for small video devices.

DVI is not going to be compatible, for a computer you'd need a TV-out to make a composite signal and have RCA out or possibly and S-Video connector with a RCA convertor and set to composite in the drivers, there are RCA to 2.5mm jack cables.

That Optima Pico projector only has composite in using tha aformentioned 4pin 2.5mm jack.

http://www.optoma.co.uk/optomapico/PicoIntro.aspx

thanks, I think I understand tht; think my little bro's computer has s-video/VGA outs for video

it was composite in the end

tht little pico thing is pretty nifty

my bf's laptop screen won't work. it makes a hissing sound and sometimes flashes briefly. it's been doing this off and on, usually working after closing the computer then opening it again, but tonight it refuses to work at all.

any advice?

ok, so we figured we probably need a new cfl tube: but where do we get one?

Pricewatch.com

or you could have a look at http://www.lcdpart.com/doc/ccflinstallation.html

http://search.pricewatch.com/search?q=ccfl&totalcost_min=min&totalcost_max=max

A quickie:

How does one upload a pic to ILXOR if it's not a web link? (e.g. from your hard drive). I've never been able to work this out.

flickr account! www.flickr.com

But will the pic be displayed within the tread or will that just allow me to post a link to a flickr page?

you upload yr pic to flickr account, click on the pic till you get option above it that says 'all sizes' - click that and it gives you size options, each one having a link down the bottom of the page you can copy and paste.

then you post that link using the image tags in formatting help below the post box on an ilx thread.

Got it! Thanks so much.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/24639436@N06/2959507261/"; title="Hinodeyama hike"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3241/2959507261_fa4f791149.jpg"; width="500" height="385" alt="Hinodeyama hike" /></a>

haha maybe not

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3241/2959507261_fa4f791149.jpg

what was i doing wrong? i pasted the link code as suggested...

flickr, photobucket, etc.

There are a ton of image hosting sites around.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6234/imgrl3.jpg

Thanks all.

he gets the picture

I'm on OSX 10.4.11 and between ISPs at the moment so using a 3G Huawei dongle from T-Mobile. Does anyone have any idea why my internet connection might be fine in browsers and Software Update but not working at all in iTunes? I just get an "iTunes could not connect to the iTunes Store. Make sure your network connection is active and try again." message.

I tried turning my firewall off.
I tried updating iTunes to the latest version.
I tried deleting all trace of the Huawei modem and T-Mobile software and starting again (not sure if I managed this, as when I reinstalled it, it said "Upgrade" on the installation process button.
I tried deleting various .plist files from Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.

try deleting some more .plist files from Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration

No.

Trying to back up some music I have on an old laptop with an external hard drive (lolz I know). Is there a way I can do this? Something I can install that would recognize it?

The old laptop has Windows Me (hence the lolz, above)

iirc Win Me has issues with USB - you might want to check that Plug and Play is enabled (http://www.helpwithwindows.com/windowsMe/tip-0010.html), also check if there are any 98/Me specific drivers for your external disk, as it may want them before it will work properly. Good luck.

Enabled and it still doesn't work :-(

What are these specific drivers (or where to get them?) Any more info would be appreciated.

Otherwise I guess I could transfer to a windows XP machine via an mp3 player, since its only about 15 gigs - a pain but that might be the only option.

>What are these specific drivers (or where to get them?)

Might be worth checking the manufacturer of your external drive's website in case they have USB drivers for 98/Me. If not, and it doesn't even attempt to install it when you plug it into the PC, then yr mp3 player may be the only way.

Oh it definitely attempts and it has unplug hard drive button at the bottom corner.

Checked the webpage they have nothing

I was looking at this page. I can't see the USBNTMAP.SYS file under the CABS folder.

Unless I can d/l it from somewhere it looks like I'll be d/l onto mp3 player then transferring it onto a Windows XP laptop and then backing that. *phew*

Thanks for your help, btw

So when it attempts to install the drive, does it show up with a drive letter in Windows Explorer at all? Possible that your external HDD is formatted with NTFS, and your Win Me PC with FAT so the disk will not show up properly. If there is nothing you want to keep on the external drive already you could right click and format the drive to FAT (but *only* do this if you can stand to lose all the data on the external disk!).

(Regarding USBNTMAP.SYS, if it's pestering you for that and you don't have a Win Me install disk then you could try downloading the file and dropping it into the CABS folder.)

Hope you can work it out.

No drive letter but it detects the USB. If I go to system under control panel and device manager it does list it as USB device with a question mark next to it.

What odes FAT stand for? There is nothing on my external drive at the mo (I have another laptop with XP, and I intend on using the external drive to back the stuff in that laptop with it)

ah right, first thing to do is check what kind of problem the question mark relates to (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/tp/device_manager_error_codes.htm) - assuming it's a yellow question mark of course. If it's green then I've no idea. This might well be to do with that .SYS file above, so if you can download that from somewhere and drop it into the relevant folder so much the better.

FAT (File Allocation Table) and NTFS (New Technology File System) are just different types of Windows file systems. Win Me uses the (older) FAT system, XP etc use NTFS - this is not backwards compatible so a device formatted with NTFS will not work on a PC using FAT.

Not really,

XP can use FAT32 on its system drive and still read NTFS partitions.

It's true that only Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 can read and write NTFS though.

NTFS has many advantages over FAT32 the main one being security and the ability to have files over 4GB.

It sounds like Windows ME has no drivers for your USB mass storage controller, this may or may not be resolvable depending on the make/model USB drive in question.

I'm pretty sure Windows ME had a generic USB mass storage driver though.

However it may not work with your USB drive, your best bet is to take the HDD out of the laptop and use a USB HDD chassis to copy the music to another PC.

That's a fair suggestion, but xyzzz should bear a few things in mind: You'll very probably need a 2.5" IDE USB caddy for the laptop HDD to go into. And there will be some unscrewing of covers and disconnection of cables involved in removing the HDD from the laptop.

Under the circumstances the original idea using an MP3 player is probably less hassle.

btw, Bill, it was green not yellow - going with the mp3 idea for now

No idea how a laptop is built generally so I'm not gonna mess. Again, for now.

hope the mp3 idea works. I really do.

Again - good luck. If the MP3 player has been recognised over USB on the laptop before then you should be ok to drag and drop files onto it, and to do the same onto your XP PC.

One final suggestion: 16GB USB pen drives can be bought for about £15 these days (and maybe less if you have a look around). afaik Win Me only uses USB1 so the data transfer onto the drive would be a pretty slow, but once it's off the laptop your XP machine should have no problems. And you can obv reuse the pen drive for other stuff.

"a pretty slow process" !

boring computer questions: how to i capture the audio on a streaming website, if i wanted to do such a thing

Silentbob works ok?

hmmmm is that for macintosh

some streaming websites are just widgets that are embedded into web pages and if you look at the page source one of the arguments is often a link to the proper mp3. so i'd look at that first.

normally you'd just have to pick 'stereo mix' or something similar in your recording software (audacity is free and capable). but increasingly pc manufacturers are disabling this kind of stuff either in the drivers or in the hardware - my new laptop for instance. the work computer does. is kinda dull because it has to be real time and any noises the computer makes whilst you're recording (incoming email, say) will also get recorded.

Anyone know much about packet loss and how to reduce it? I bought COD: Modern Warfare 2 the other day, and although my connection is great (usually my average ping is <10ms), I realized I have a pretty shitty packet loss problem. I hadn't realized until now because I hadn't played an online FPS since moving to Maryland and starting up with Verizon. Basically, the problem is that every 6 or 7 seconds, consistently, the action freezes for about a second, and then resumes, no matter which server I'm on. After dying for about the billionth time because of this, I'm resolved to try to fix this.

Here is a link to a quick line quality (packet loss) test I ran last night: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2612980

The 100% packet loss hops I'm not too worried about, according to some random stuff I read last night while attempting to research this (I know next to nothing about computers, networks, internet connections and especially packet loss). The 12% loss at the closest hop, and the 7% and 9% on the Verizon hops, is the one that probably needs to be addressed, and that maybe I can do something about.

Can anyone suggest router settings, settings for my network card, additional tests I can perform, troubleshooting, or anything else?

You need to talk to your ISP, the packet loss is very unlikely to be the fault of your equipment, oh and dump MW2 and get the BFBC2 beta.

Remember that MW2 has no dedicated servers and runs hosted on other peoples PCs this is why there was such a huge backlash by PC gamers about it.

Try another game that has dedicated servers (COD4, BF2, TF2) and see what your connection is like.

Remember that MW2 has no dedicated servers and runs hosted on other peoples PCs this is why there was such a huge backlash by PC gamers about it.

Yeah, I'm def aware of that, but the pause in gameplay happens in the exact same way, every time I play - perfectly smooth for 6 or 7 seconds, a one second pause, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I'll give Verizon a call tomorrow, I suppose. I'm just dreading it because I know I'll have to go through an hours worth of troubleshooting before they finally agree that it's a problem with packet loss.

sorry man, i feel for you. hate going through that song and dance

It's ok, I actually haven't had to deal with it for a very long time, so I guess I'm due!

tbh I knew that I was probably going to have to call the ISP to fix it, but I'd kick myself if there was some quick fix I could do on my own instead.

HELP!!!

When I switch on my monitor I get the logo of the hardware supplier for about a minute, then nothing - a blank screen. It can't be the picture tube on the monitor because otherwise I wouldn't get the logo either. The last time I was able to use it I had just done the malware and spyware checks and the anti-malware had found stuff it was not able to get rid of. I had recently been trying to download RAR files.

For the last few weeks I had been runnung exclusicvely on Firefox because the firewall had gone up for IE.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Hi there,

I haver a pretty old G4 aluminum Powerbook that doesn't seem to want to connect to the internet. It seems to accept Wifi signals (and broadcast itunes on my home network) but will not connect no matter what browser I use.

Any ideas? Thanks!

is there any way to check the internet connection with any other device?

open system preferences, click network, click ethernet. do you ahve a valid IP address?

i bet your DNS address is wrong. find out what ISP you have, figure out what their default dns server is and put that address in the dns field.

or use a public dns server like 8.8.8.8 (google) or 4.2.2.3

(or both, you have multiple slots)

if you have a router it will do DNS forwarding, just let DHCP set it up for you.

Hi there,

I haver a pretty old G4 aluminum Powerbook that doesn't seem to want to connect to the internet. It seems to accept Wifi signals (and broadcast itunes on my home network) but will not connect no matter what browser I use.

Any ideas? Thanks!

― admrl, Wednesday, June 2, 2010 2:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Pour. A Pint. Of Beer. In It.

admrl - is the airport saying that it has a 'self-assigned ip address'? if so, you may need to trash your network, airport, &c. prefs which are located in... uhh... /libraries/preferences/network or something?

don't worry as your mac will create new, virgin pref files upon a reboot

Thanks all! Trashed the prefs and it seems to work. I'm extremely grateful.

OK I got a new one for you.

I am trying to install Vidalia/Tor using Firefox and running SNow Leopard, but always get the message that "Vidalia is unable to start tor" and that I should check my executable settings. Could this be a firewall issue? I also use a static ip and am wondering if this could be an issue...Just want to watch the World CUp on the BBC!

only a guess, but maybe you need to run as admin, or
chmod 755 path_to_tor_executable
under terminal wherever the tor executable is

This one's simple: my mom wants to buy a new computer but I haven't followed current computer hardware technology in 5+ years and have no idea what to even look for these days. Are we at a point where everything's sort of a level playing field and you just pick up the cheapest thing you can find at Best Buy?

She uses it for email, word processing, and the like. No one really uses it for gaming or anything. I mean, are there any specific things I should avoid?

i suspect the easy answer is still just to get a Dell or HP, but take anyone's word over mine

you can't go wrong these days, get a Dell/HP cheap is fine.

I had better luck with a refurbished cheap computer from Micro Center than I had with a similarly priced new Dell in the last several months.

You still have to remove all the crapware, and you still have a warranty, but some of the parts are better and less likely to fail and if there is a problem, the shop and employees are local. If there is one in your area, it could be worth a look.

are there any major brands that don't preload crapware and plaster stickers all over the device as a courtesy?

www.apple.com

:D

I backup all my video projects to a second drive, but on the last attempt, I get the error code -36 file can't be read or written for my capture scratch file. I tried using Disk Utility to fix it but the backup still hangs once it gets to this file. All my project files, etc are safe, so it is really just the capture scratch/raw video files that are the issue. What's the best course of action for a potentially corrupted file like this? Delete the whole thing and recapture? I seem to be able to still open the file and work from it/save to it, it just will NOT copy over.

need more details. operating system, disk format, file size.

i have a sneaking suspicion that the file is too large for the destination disk (either due to lack of space there or because of file system limits)

OS 10.6.4, two 500gb G-Drives bothextended Journalled. Drive 1 has 140gb being used. Drive 2 (backup drive) about 300gb used (this includes the last backup of drive 1 which should be replaced by new backup). Capture Scratch (the file that cannot be transferred is the biggest folder I am trying to move, so perhaps it is a space issue? Maybe I should erase old backup before making new one, but of course this seems risky and not clever.

is the file over 16GB? maybe it is hitting some maximum filesize barrier. compress before backup perhaps?

Compress before backup - that's a neato idea. Will try.

Is there a smarter way to backup from one drive to another other than copying all the files over once a week? Should I be creating an archive of the first disk instead maybe?

incremental backups (which is what time machine does, i believe) - saves everything the first time, saves differences from then on. (using hard links so that you can nuke early versions to free up space without losing files. am using dirvish on linux to do this (which uses rsync under the covers), takes 15 minutes a week)

i've got a frustrating problem with my pc at the moment. whenever i'm playing a processor-intensive game, like assassins creed2 or just cause 2, it'll run fine for 15 mins then BSOD on me, with various reasons. it's done this for months but i've recently worked out that it's due to my graphics card overheating. i installed SIW and flipping between the 'sensor' tab on that and the game shows how the card temperature slowly increases, and when it gets to around 78 degrees it just switches off the entire pc. i guess it's a safety precaution so it doesn't burn out the card completely.

this usually takes about 15-20 mins, so i play the game for a bit, switch back to desktop for a couple of minutes to let it cool down then begin playing again. it's a bit annoying but manageable. however i installed mafia 2 yesterday which must use up even more power than the previous games because when i play this the temperature of the graphics card rockets up much faster, so it reaches BSOD level in about 5 minutes or less. this makes the game pretty unplayable - it's like watching a film and pausing it every few minutes!

does anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with this? i'm not too clued-up on the inner workings of my pc but i'm looking for a cheap and easy way of cooling down my graphics card. would another fan help? is a water-cooling system a pain to set up?

remove the side panels and point a fan at your internals

also suck up all the dust inside with a vacuum cleaner (careful to not damage anything, I sucked off a few resistors from my MacBooks logic board)

i was wondering about that fan thing, is it safe? i wondered if it might end up firing more dust into the inner workings of the pc and screw it up. will definitely try it though, and hoover it often. cheers!

it's safe - airflow more important than dust imo

winner, i've taken the side panel off and moved it to a place with more airflow and it's already loads cooler. thanks again dayo!

best way to dust is to use a compressed air can and a vacuum cleaner, spay the dust of with the can and hoover it up as its in the air.

sounds like your case needs more airflow, what case do you have.

php/css pros:

I'm almost done with the retooling of barrylutz.com (a wordpress joint), which has taken me about 1000x longer than it should due to me having next to no knowledge about how coding actually works. I only have one nagging thing left to fix.

I've got it set up so that the main page displays a 10x10 block of thumbnail images at the bottom. By clicking on any of those thumbnails, it takes you to that image (duh). But when you get to the page for that image, I'd like for the 10x10 block to highlight the thumbnail you're currently viewing. Just a simple black border around the thumbnail.

For example, take the page for this image: http://www.barrylutz.com/2010/08/john-d-2/
What I would like is for the thumbnail of this image (4th from the left, top row) to have a black border around it, to basically let the user know "u r here in this block of thumbnails". It should be so simple, I know. Here is the php code for the "current" thumbnail:

foreach ($cur_results as $cur_result) {
		$post_title = stripslashes($cur_result->post_title);
		$permalink = get_permalink($cur_result->ID);
		$post_excerpt = ($cur_result->post_excerpt);
		$output.="<div class=\"current-thumbnail\"><a href=\"" . $permalink . "\" title=\"Permanent Link: " . $post_title . "\">" . $post_excerpt . "</a></div>\n			";
	}

I'm almost certain that I just need to throw some html tag in or around the

<A HREF>

I think you would put the border in the style part of the div, not the image link?
but if you doing that, i think there's some cooler css thing that's about as easy that lets you also do a transparency over it,
so it is slightly more shaded than the other pictures too.

I was looking at some advice on that a few minutes ago (using a style within the DIV to do fancy things), but I wasn't able to get it to work. I'm having horrible flashbacks to BASIC and PASCAL fails in 8th grade

see, I just tried this:

$output.="<div style="border: 3px coral solid; class=\"current-thumbnail\"><a href=\"" . $permalink . "\" title=\"Permanent Link: " . $post_title . "\">" . $post_excerpt . "</a></div>\n			";
	}

and got the following error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /blablabla/blablabla/etc/blablabla/functions.php on line 58

I think you have to escape the quotation mark before "border like put \"border

Also close the quote after solid;\"

phew, I think that fixed it, thx a bunch philip!

is there a program that goes through a folder or hard drive and makes a record (that can be converted to text) of the name each file on that drive? or even better, the name of the folder?

on windows?

find . -type f > files.txt

oh, windows...

dir /s ???

find . -type d > dirs.txt

on windows yeah. does that dir/s thing convert everything there into text? hm, actually it might look quite messy and confusing. is there anything that replicates the folder layouts and names of the files, but without the filesize? on a big databasing kick at the moment and trying to think of the most comprehensive and easy to navigate way

this may or may not help http://www.jam-software.com/filelist/

that looks handy for now until i find the kind of folder-layout-mirrorer i'm after, thanks very much everyone who replied

dir /b /s > filelist.txt
(from a command prompt)

/s = include subdirectories
/b = different format which includes full path but no date/size information

> filelist.txt = redirect the output to a file called filelist.txt (change this if you like)

Oh, that starts from whichever directory you happen to be in when you run it. I guess command prompt opens itself somewhere in your profile by default, which is probably not helpful. Put the folder name or drive somewhere after the "dir" and before the ">", e.g.

dir /b /s c:\ > filelist.txt

will do your entire C:\ drive

Err, there's probably some software to do it for you in a more user-friendly Windowsy manner too, I expect.

yes, man page here: http://www.computerhope.com/dirhlp.htm

couldn't live without generating lists of files and using those as inputs to other commands. dunno how windows users cope sometimes. maybe they're too busy with their spreadsheets 8)

As a Windows user who pipes text files into Perl scripts and redirects the output probably hundreds of times every work day, some of which ends up being injected into Excel spreadsheets (since the other half of my job is Excel VBA monkey), I don't know whether to be offended here or not...

there are windows users and there are windows users 8)

got given new pc at work last week (ie had new pc forced upon me), windows 7. installed cygwin within 30 minutes of booting it...

(we all develop java server code destined for linux clusters, why they make us develop on windows boxes is a bit of a mystery to me. outlook is probably the only windows-specific thing we use (toad, skype?). could've saved ourselves a shedload on licences)

I have a single monitor and will be getting a high-end graphics card. I don't need two DVI ports like most of the cards have. Is there a performance trade off when the card offers two ports vs one? Any reason not to go with the two ports, even though I will only be using one?

no, digital signals are more "all or nothing" than "half strength" on stuff like that.

you know what?, ignore that answer, I was going with gut feeling more than specific knowledge.

i think you only need the two DVI ports for dual-link DVI, very high res throughput for 30' monitors and the like, but you should double check that

is there a significant price diff. between cards w/ 1 slot vs. cards with 2?

Pretty sure modern cards are smart enough not to devote graphics memory/processing resources to an extra port that's not in use. You don't need to worry.

Dual DVI vs single DVI will make no difference to performance.
There might be a small cost saving in buying a single DVI card, but probably not enough to make it worthwhile.
Getting a dual DVI card now makes it easy to add a second monitor later.

Sure we've done this but - any easy way to convert a small PDF to Word on Windows?

Here comes another boring question:

Is there a keyboard shortcut on Safari for the Mac for Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button when using the standard google.com search page?

with firefox typing your search terms into the url bar at the top gets you the 'i'm feeling lucky' results.

Installed the new version of Skype only to discover it isn't compatible with my Mac OS. How do I get back to the old one?

I have two laptops on the same home wireless network and I need to transfer my music folder (~160GB) from one to the other, but I have no external HD. What is the easiest way to do this? Much thanks.

What operating system are you on?

also what ports do you have on the laptops (hoping you have FireWire if a Mac)

They are both Windows, one Vista, and the other XP, standard USB 2.0. Searching around it looks like I'll need to invest in an external HD?

you can definitely just send them from one to the other across the network, it's getting them to recognize each other's existence in windows that's the annoying part. and it could be slow if it's wireless.

Yeah I figured it might be kind of a mess setting it up on the network, and I only have wireless g. HDs are cheap, think I'll go that route. (I'm so naive I thought you could run a wire b/w the 2 computers haha)

if you had a mac you could run either a firewire cable or an ethernet cable between them, you sure that's not possible with your machines?

xp You can actually connect them w/one cable, using a crossover ethernet cable or special USB cable. USB's a lot easier to setup, but it'll take many hours to get all that over. I wouldn't bother w/wireless for a transfer of that size, too unreliable.

HDs are cheap, think I'll go that route

This is the easiest option, also probably a good idea to get an external HDD anyway so you can back up stuff.

Been thinking about a new laptop for a while now. Should be a Mac, but I do potentially need some of the less know Microsoft packages (i.e. Project, Visio)). How do they work on Macs?

They don't -- there aren't Mac versions. There are Mac apps that do similar things; OmniGraffle is nice for visio-type stuff, but you'll have to virtualise Windows if you want to run the real deal.

Just checking here -- there are Mac versions of Excel, PowerPoint and word right?

Oh yeah what does virtulise mean? Is it to run a version from the web?

of course, and in this iteration they are feature for feature compatible with the windows one (last version didn't do macros o add-ins).

Omnigraffle is way better than visio imo.

virtualise means to work a virtual copy of windows and the apps within it. I use it for the rare occasions I need to use Access or a few other things. It can be sow but not painfully slow.

That really puts a dampener on things - Will have to think about this, but thanks.

Is there a way to specify a resolution for a Internet Explorer or Firefox window?

I just bought a win 7 laptop from the pawn shop and was trying to restore the HD to factory setting w/o recovery disks. After some failed attempts, I booted in safe mode and selected some option (can't even remember which) and now when I boot I get a "no operating system found" message. Can you help me?

Borrow a friends installation disc, or torrent the right version of windows 7 from demonoid and activate it with your laptop's authentication product id code.

thank you, zachary

Hi all,

I really need to find some kind of site for uploading fairly large amount of media (sound, images and HD video) that is:

a) secure and password protected
b) easy for non -techie types to use (REALLY important)
c) looks pretty so that clients actually want to spend time on it, can be organized into folders/sub-folders, etc.

Save from buying my own webspace, is there anything that would serve these needs that I can set up in like, a day? I just need some kind of online portfolio for sharing this stuff on a regular basis where people won't feel like their material is in public view.

oh and b) refers to the fact that the folks I am showing this to may not be particularly savvy. As for uploading, organization, formatting, etc. I regard myself as moderate-to-average in savviness.

So I don't want to send a shitload of links or file paths, I would love something that is like Flickr, with sets and contact sheets that are pretty and easily navigable.

Anybody tried http://carbonmade.com/ or http://dripbook.com/?

how would a site make their money providing a service like this? would you be okay with ads on it?

How does any site make money? Ads or subscription, I guess. I'd be fine with paying a monthly fee. But Vimeo has password protection for example + no ads and looks nice and is free. Can you make sets or thumbnail contact sheets on it?

i think you could set up a tumblr that makes contact sheets that link to vimeo, and if vimeo doesn't have ads, and tumblr doesn't have ads, you'd get it all for free, but it's still puzzling that these services can be offered without charging anything.

Can tumblr host an hour of hd video?

so one "secret" about tumblr (which isn't really a secret) is you can edit their template to be anything you want. you can make it into a regular html page. so you can set up a portfolio site any way you like, and have it link to your videos on vimeo (do they let you upload hours worth of HD? -- for free? -- that's just mindboggling)
You could probably do something fancy, where if you click on it, the videos popup so you never actually leave your tumblr page.

dropbox?

and tumblr doesn't have ads, you'd get it all for free, but it's still puzzling that these services can be offered without charging anything.

FWIW, Tumblr announced today that they will be embedding ads... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17769043

Blogging platform Tumblr is to introduce paid advertisements on its service, despite its owner once saying that online ads "turn our stomachs".

The site's founder David Karp said brands would be offered space within the site's "dashboard" from 2 May.

Many brands already use Tumblr, but this will be the first time they can pay for added exposure on the platform.

Tumblr has been seeking extra revenue streams after enjoying rapid growth over the past 12 months.

The adverts will appear in the service's pre-existing "radar" slot which is currently used to showcase popular posts from other users.

Speaking at Ad Age's Digital Conference in New York, Mr Karp said he was an "idiot" for telling the Los Angeles Times that he was "opposed to advertising" during an interview in 2010.

He had accused ad platforms on rival services such as Facebook and Google of being "devoid of creativity".

In an another interview with Ad Age earlier this month, he said Tumblr could monetise itself immediately by displaying Google's advertising, but that this would be "a complete last resort".

Since launching in 2007, Tumblr has grown massively, now boasting over 40 million individual blogs.

Dropbox is a good call, but some laymen are weirded out by it not being a "site"

I know...

wtfff, dropbox is beautifully transparent most of the time

haha you'd think so, wouldn't u? =)

I think as soon as some people see file structures, etc instead of thumbnails or pretty designs they just glaze over

I love Dropbox FWIW

Yeah, I live out of mine

they have a web interface don't they?

they have a web interface but yeah, i guess it doesn't have pretty thumbnails or anything

pretty thumbnails is the first thing i turn off...

I'm looking for a program that will automatically zip files and name the compressed package after folder names. For mac preferably. Does this exist?

automator lol?

depends on what you mean by automatically? in os x if you ctrl-click a folder you can choose "compress" and it will make a zip file named after the folder

I guess what i need is something that will name the packages by the folder path (two levels of folder), but i think i can make with the ctrl-click. Thanks.

you mean like if you have photos/myeuropeanvacation/eurodisney/*.jpg, you want the zipped file to be myeuropeanvacation_eurodisney.zip, but not photos_myeuropeanvacation_eurodisney.zip ?

ok I have no idea how it works or what it even does but I read the blurb and thought of adamrl's recent question so:
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-yes-really.html

it's a usb drive in space

i'm looking for an online organizer thing, as simple as possible, don't even really need scheduling but just a place to keep todo lists

i've heard something called "astrid" is pretty good?

http://workflowy.com

i can't wait to re-immanentize my entire gestalt

http://app.asana.com

Word files both with doc and docx extensions have started opening in Word 2007 by default on my laptop and I want them to open in Word 2010.

This happened without me knowingly changing anything - they used to open in Word 2010 by default. How do I change it back?

start button ---> Settings ---> Control Panel ---> Default Programs ---> Associate a file type or protocol with a specific program

click on .doc, then Change Program. It may find the Word 2010 location by itself; scroll around if it doesn't. Repeat for .docx

may work slightly different depending on which version of Windows you have, etc.

Ok, so I want to be able to work from home more easily via remote access. I login to my work pc using the standard windows remote access thing. My home computer is a Dell laptop. At work I have a double-monitor setup, whereas at home I just have this crappy laptop screen to work off, and that makes working harder since I often have to have a few documents open at once. Could I just buy like a 22" monitor for home use and hook it up to my laptop? Would I actually get a wider view or would it just enlarge everything?

if you are talking windows remote desktop, there's a display option to 'use all my montiors'. never tried it though. you could probably try it off an hd tv if you had one.

In terms of second monitors most can plug into laptop vga(?) ports and you can create a double wide desktop or pull all your docs over to the "big" screen, don't know a lot about remote access though

Or yes if you have a newer tv you should be able to run a hdmi cord from the laptop to it.

Remote Desktop doesn't just mirror what's on your work screen, it actually gives you whatever resolution you want. So if you have a larger monitor at home, you'll get more screen real estate. I have no experience using multiple monitors on the client side remotely, though.

Oh yeah, actually I have an HDMI out on my laptop and I already run it to my TV to watch movies, but it didn't occur to me that I could change the settings so the TV would be a double-wide monitor instead of a bigger version of my laptop screen. But apparently there's a windows 7 setting that lets you do that, says the internet

yeah, just turn off mirroring or w/e

How do I get this stupid appbario12 toolbar out of my system (Windows 7 Home Premium)? Uninstall is not working. I think it may be the root of other problems I've been having the past couple of days.

idk but if you google "appbario12" all the results are removal instructions

Tried three or four, no help. I think one of them was even a trap for more mischief.

have you tried running combofix?

Ugh I got some stupid MyPCBackup thing on my system that only finally disappeared when I uninstalled Chrome! Every other suggestion I could find didn't work. Also manually deleted the files it put in the program files directory. It went away, but I've been meaning to log on to that laptop again and check registry entries and all that. I run Spybot S&D and Malwarebytes anti-malware usually, but this laptop also has a Norton account.

Maybe I should try that--uninstall Firefox. Combofix seemed to clean up some stuff, but appbario's still there, and I still can't get my mp3 cover art back.

Appbario messed with your iTunes cover art, or something else? Either way: new low for viruses/hijackers when it comes to music fans. I'd never heard of that!

I don't know what caused it--it all started when I stupidly/idly accepted a download for something called "Codec Performers." Much weirdness after that, including mp3 files that all carry that ugly, generic musical note icon, instead of the cover art I wasted hours and hours chasing down. I feel stupid for caring. (It's not iTunes, just stuff I keep on the hard drive/Media Player.)

Un/reinstalled Firefox, but that didn't do anything. I think I'll just live with it until I buy something new in a year or two.

About a year ago, I don't know why, things I typed into the address bar on Firefox no long defaulted to a Google Search page--Yahoo became the default page. Is there a way to switch this back to Google? I hate the Yahoo search pages.

go to Menu (3 horizontal lines thingy in the upper right corner), click Options, then choose 'Search' from column on left

Thanks--worked.

Any thoughts on this, if I swapped in more memory?

Basically its for office work, music and the internet.

https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-diploma-i3-10100-slimline-office-pc.html#product-details-tab-customise

Any thoughts on this, if I swapped in more memory?

Basically its for office work, music and the internet.

https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-diploma-i3-10100-slimline-office-pc.html#product-details-tab-customise🕸

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rge17TciHfU

Would you really see much impact in throwing more than the existing 16gb into that?

Ive not been looking for a while tbh

See, this is why I have to ask basic questions on here. The person at the shop said ...

"If the default storage of 500GB is a little small for your needs, that can be customised (via the link provided) to either upgrade the 500GB Seagate BarraCuda Q5 M.2 PCIe Solid State Drive to something larger, or additional storage can be added too."

(Thanks for the answers, btw).

When you say music are you talking about creating or what, exactly

Storage wise for office work and internet you arent going to fill 500gb and its def quick enough

I dont know enough about the i3 to know what would be the likeliest limiter as it is configured there between processor (128GB maximum memory suggests not tbh), storage and RAM but id guess its the RAM so if you think youll be maxing that out in your usage then another 16GB might be no harm to throw in

Thats really up to you and whether you want to spend that now, could always retain the option to do it later at negligible extra cost or effort too

Storing music rather than creating.

500GB might not go far in that case (depends on volume and quality, obv), but external 4tb drives are cheap (and you'd want a backup anyway)

(which several people have said now!)

I've been using the same desktop pc to make music since 2011 (fully offline, which I think really extended its lifespan), but it's starting to show its age (windows 7, 8gb Ram, processor is Intel i5 2.80 Ghz, whatever that means, etc).

Do I:

1) Upgrade this same computer? Get new more Ram, swap out some other stuff? I would have the local place that looks like the Lone Gunmen's hangout do this.

2) Better to just get a new machine?If so, where do people do this these days? Do I still just go on New Egg like I did over a decade ago? I could also talk to that local place about building something.

Gonna jump like 7 versions of DAW software too, lol.

How about this? Would I need/want more than 16gb Ram if all I care about is running my DAW (smoothly)?

https://www.costco.com/dell-inspiron-desktop---13th-gen-intel-core-i5-13400---windows-11.product.4000139132.html

Just saw this

https://www.howtogeek.com/887938/inexpensive-ways-to-breathe-new-life-into-an-old-pc/

....just be careful that your new daw most likely won't be able to open any of your old projects...

adding more RAM and adding an SSD are the two easiest ways to improve your old computer's performance.

if you decide to get a new machine, building a PC is easy and fun. i'd recommend doing that. newegg is kinda scammy nowadays, kinda like amazon where you need to make sure the part is shipped and sold by newegg. check out pcpartpicker. if you have a microcenter near you, check it out, i like them a lot.

What kind of DAW is it? A lot of people steadfastly maintain old computers/OS just because they can't abide the new version of whatever (usually adobe software). If you don't want to open up your machine, apparently you can plug in an external SSD for more swap/storage. Also, laptops have gotten bizarrely cheap relative to standalone PCs, if making music on the go is a plus.

Cubase, lol. Hopefully I'll like the newest version but it seems pretty similar, which is a pro and a con for different people.

Thanks for the tip re: new egg, I'll check out pc part picker. After doing some more research I'm pretty set on building something.

I have a couple old Macbooks I need to get rid of. I'm not sure I can get them to boot, and I can't remember if the hard drives are encrypted. I basically want someone to tell me it's fine to take them to the local ewaste dropoff business, but what should I really do?

Oh hm maybe I should just bring them to an Apple Store

if they're ewaste anyway then might as well rip 'em open and take the hard drives out and drill through 'em a few times

you can always use the disks as backups, you don't need to trash them if you've got a use for them (and who doesn't need more space?)

Yeah I've been dreaming for years of a zfs setup where old drives just get added to the array. Sounds like work though.

Yeah I've been dreaming for years of a zfs setup where old drives just get added to the array. Sounds like work though.

bookmarked because i have the same issue and need a good solution

My question: why does it look like windows defender is taking up a shit ton of memory and slowing my computer and how can I fix this

re: old macbooks -- if they don't boot outright, depending on vintage you might be able to boot them in target disk mode so you can see if you can read them from another mac.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/transfer-files-mac-computers-target-disk-mode-mchlp1443/mac

re: plug and dump, I think the old mac XServes did this -- shame they discontinued the line!

re: win defender, these guys seem to have the same issue:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/615949/windows-defender-high-memory-usage

I did that target mode thing once

This confirms all my worst suspicions about USB-C

https://www.xda-developers.com/the-state-of-usb-is-a-mess/

Can't they put a coloured dot on them or something ?

I've only glanced through the article as I am lacking in technology knowledge. But is the outlook really that pessimistic? I thought the EU is requiring a 'common charger' based on USB C from the beginning of next year that will need to meet detailed technical standards for the port itself, the power supply, and for fast charging if the charger supports it. In the EU at least, I thought it looked reasonably hopeful that you'd be able to use the same USB C charger across products.

if i'm understanding right, it sounds like it's a mess much like micro USB (nevermind this being a connector and not a standard, I guess?) when you care about doing anything other than charging. Any cable ought to charge your phone (albeit sometimes slowly).

think the worst part is that i own a few things with usb-c ports that can only be charged if the usb-c cable is connected to a usb-a port on the other end

Oh that's weird! Haven't come across that. That part of the charging equation is a mess for sure. In an effort to not moot everyone's existing chargers, we've got all this A to C business and not the ideal C to C? I got a phone with a C charger, that was handy. Next phone had a C to C cable and no charger.

Good luck out there

Yeah, it feels like you need to check a compatibility table to figure it all out (like old Nikon lenses or smthg) but with the extra twist that the cables (esp cheaper ones) are usually completely unmarked and could be anything.

I know I can't charge my camera with A->C (only C->C) but that makes sense from a PD protocol PoV, I suppose. Found out the hard way, obv.

I was just having USB-C adventures yesterday. I have a new piece of music gear that only has a USB-C port to transfer data, and I realized that all of my myriad flash drives and cables are incompatible. So I went to the husk of an Office Depot and got a USB-C flash drive, cool.

Luckily I have one USB-C port on my new desktop PC. Weirdly, I noticed that the screen would go black for a second and then come back on when I plugged the drive in, but it worked fine. But then the next time I plugged in the usb drive, it went black, the fan started spinning up, and I couldn't shut down the computer by any means except turning the power off. Next time it worked fine. Wtf.

I wonder if your PC thought you were plugging in an external monitor? There are USB-C-powered monitors. Little tiny things. Perhaps the PC thought you were plugging in an external monitor - for some reason - and decided to switch off your main monitor. Or perhaps it had to install some drivers, and it got confused.

I have an old MOTU 828 audio interface. It uses Firewire, which was its big feature in 1999. It didn't require a PCI card. Modern Macintoshes don't have Firewire... and notice how I'm writing Firewire. Not FireWire. I've done my research! I've done my research. It's Mac mini. Mac mini. Firewire. Firewire. Thunderbolt, not ThunderBolt.

Done my research. I've done my research. I've trained myself. Two-two. Trained myself to spell millennium correctly. Two-two. Like accommodate. Two-two. I'm sorry, I'm digressing here. But I have trained myself to spell millennium correctly. I have done that. My point is that in order to use this audio interface with my 2013 Mac Pro I had to buy an official Apple Firewire->Thunderbolt adapter. For £29! For a little adapter. And now Apple no longe sells that adapter, so they're only available on eBay, for £140! I suppose I could sell mine, but I have an emotional attachment to Firewire.

See, I was a PC person in the 2000s. Which means that I was a USB person. But I was aware of Firewire. It was the interface that Apple people used with their iPods. I was vaguely aware of it. By "Apple people" I mean skinny, chic young women who wore jeans and owned iPods. Good-looking Apple people. Young, well-off Apple people. Healthy, good-looking Apple people. People who were outside my league.

And like so many things in life I didn't get to experience Firewire until it no longer had any meaning. Apple stopped including it on their computers circa 2012. I didn't become an Apple person until several years after that. And so I sit here surrounded by Firewire peripherals, using them, and it's just meaningless and I don't feel anything any more. Curse you, Firewire. You demon. You wound my heart with a monotonous langour. No other digital interface hurts me this way.

jordan it may even be trying to boot or find a power source from that usb c port, i had a similar issue with a hub i got

changing boot order seemed to sort it

laptop touchpad just stopped working. booted into windows and it was the same there. looking to take laptop apart but it's under the motherboard so it would be a chore.

googled. turns out f7 turns off the touchpad on this model (acer). and the option persists. so sometime in the past month i've pressed f7, turned off the touchpad, and didn't realise. IN MY DAY the function keys were for me, they didn't have anything assigned to them

anyway, working now.

I’ve been having some Dropbox and Backblaze issues. It seems that Backblaze may have quietly stopped backing up cloud based files such as Dropbox and iCloud… So I may need to rethink my current document/sharing arrangements across my Mac devices - but I haven’t come across an elegant solution online as yet.