The computing stuff rant thread

[Mr Larrington]

Having re-ripped, renamed or otherwise jibbled about half the files in the audio bit of the Media Library it is gratifying to discover that DJ Random is still on top of his game.  What is not gratifying is the prospect of having to re-add everything once the new NAS takes root on TowersNet.  Once upon a time iTunes stored everything in a nice simple XML file so you could tell it to look on a different disk just by doing a search & replace with $TEXT_EDITOR.  And now you can’t.  Bah

np: Deadhead (Acoustic Version) ~ Devin Townsend

[Mr Larrington]

Horrible feeling that I've got another SSD about to die on me coz:
• backup of it slowed to a crawl
• Thunderbox – which keeps its data thereon – is playing silly buggers
• the system process appears to be trying to copy a file to it with an average response time > 5000 ms
• Ccleaner doesn’t like trying to empty its Recycle Bin

And so on.  Piss!

[Mr Larrington]

Copy of 60-odd GB of Stuffs onto spangly new NAS has been going all night.  While there are a large number of fiddly-tiddly little files there's also a fair few of more than 1 GB.  I think the technical term is “fsckd”.  Will try reformat once it’s finished and also manipulating cables before forking over Big Zlotys.

The needle of my Whymeometer is bent around the end stop

[Mr Larrington]

While one does not wish to be prematurely triumphant, copying the Photos directory back from the NAS to the freshly-reformatted SSD took about ten minutes.  Copying the similarly-sized Documents folder to the same NAS took about 120 times as long.  Windows estimates < 2 hours for the almost 700 GB of audio files 

[Mr Larrington]

Oi, Thunderbird, no!

Pack it in with the random switching off of message rules, m'kay!

That is all.

[Mr Larrington]

<== Haz horble suspicion that he's going to have to reinstall Thunderbox from scratch on three PC.  Shittens!

[mrcharly-YHT]

I really really needed a pdf link checker. Did some hunting.

pdf-link-checker is a freeware tool that seems to get good reviews.

Blast, can't install on my work linux, because I don't have SU (needed for adding pip etc).

There is a Windows version.
Nearly 2 hours later, I have python and all the prereq installed. Try running it - nope, fails, because it is Python 2 code (not the python 3.6-compatible code it claims).

Start trying to jibble it to python 3, realise I've wasted most of the day on this crap.

Download and use a free trial of some windows software. Takes 5 min to get installed and running.

And this, folks, is why a lot of people don't like open sauce software.

[Pingu]

...And this, folks, is why a lot of people don't like open sauce software.

You probably need an HP machine.

[mrcharly-YHT]

...And this, folks, is why a lot of people don't like open sauce software.

You probably need an HP machine.

I HAVE AN HP LAPTOP AND IT IS CARP!

Never, ever have I had so much trouble with wifi (and I'm not alone, many fellow employees have same problem).

HP does not go with everything. It is fussy.

[ian]

This is why I'm so much happier I got a Macbook back (I still have the Dell, as I've not got around to returning it). I used to run a Linux VM, but these days, every package I need I need is easy enough on a Mac (Python and Anaconda) and it just works, without having to faff with repositories and paths and the like (usually after spending a couple of hours reading various websites, which mostly consisted of people calling other people stupid for asking a question, despite it being 2022, any open source technical forum seems to be 103% male, unhelpfully angry and with the social skills of rocks).

[philip]

Blast, can't install on my work linux, because I don't have SU (needed for adding pip etc).

It is possible to install and run pip without root. Start with https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py, download the script, run

Code: [Select]

python3 get-pip.py as non root and it will setup a pip environment in your home directory.

[Kim]

usually after spending a couple of hours reading various websites, which mostly consisted of people calling other people stupid for asking a question, despite it being 2022, any open source technical forum seems to be 103% male, unhelpfully angry and with the social skills of rocks.

To be fair, many of the sensible non-males tend to use gender-neutral usernames in technical spaces, to side-step the whole not being taken seriously by people with the social skills of rocks thing.  I appreciate it doesn't help with the 103% perception, but, you know, we've got stuff to get done too.

[TheLurker]

... mostly consisted of people calling other people stupid for asking a question, despite it being 2022, any open source technical forum seems to be 103% male, unhelpfully angry and with the social skills of rocks.

Bit unfair on rocks, but otherwise a fair summary of the situation.

[TheLurker]

We don't appear to have a computing grumble thread...

I have some dxf files (cut files for a toy aeroplane parts FWIW) which I need to *cough* rationalise as the svg to dxf conversion from Inkscape is almost but not quite exact.  The UI for LibreCAD is an unintuitive hot mess, the documentation* isn't much better, and I have now spent several hours trying (and failing) to work out out to resize a rectangle. You'd think given all the drawing packages out there this would be a piece of cake, wouldn't you? 

I'd use FreeCAD except... it crashes on any attempt to open a dxf file.  Despite it being a supported format.  *sigh*



*Yes, it is that bad. You actually have to RTFM to have even the vaguest hope of using it

[Pickled Onion]

The screen on my MacBook Air M1 went dark last night. And won’t come back to life.

Diagnosis: fucked.
Damage: 560 notes.
Prognosis: at least a week in a coma.

It’s just under 2 years old so out of warranty so pursuing the consumer rights angle with 🍏

[ian]

I've never had an issue getting Apple to fix stuff out of warranty. But I have a high-wattage smile and a willingness to flirt.

[Pickled Onion]

Yeah I’m fairly confident they won’t quibble, the repair shop confirmed no physical damage, but it’s a PITA being without a computer for a week. No WFH. I’m used to 🍏 stuff just working so no backup option.

[Mr Larrington]

Bloody Farcebok has got it into its “algorithm” that I live in USAnia.  Is there anything in “Settings” that allows you to tell it otherwise?  Well, sort of, but it doesn’t actually take any notice.

Also, the “Report Ad” function on the iOS app is b0rked.

Useless workshy twats.

[ian]

Office rant #546,367. With bonus fuck off points to Adobe.

OK, it was my fault, I made the mistake of zealously removing Adobe CC, which means I'm forever cursed with four error popups ever time I open an office app bleating about VBA not finding a couple of Adobe components related to PDF creation.

Firstly, VBA can fuck right back to 2004 where it belongs.

Secondly, PDF has been integral to MacOS for about a decade now, it doesn't need Adobe components to create a PDF from Word.

Thirdly, the fucking ribbon which is invoking this shit in the first place, via the Acrobat option that I never wanted. And what was under this ribbon option. One fucking thing: Create PDF. Yes, I needed an entire ribbon for that. You took a travesty of UI design and make it worse.

Fourthly, Office, which won't let me remove the add-in or the ribbon component because it comes back like a fucking zombie every time I reopen the app.

I finally though I'd solve the issue by removing office completely and reinstalling from scratch. Run time error 53, ian, ha ha HA.

Honestly, I feel like going Full Liam on this shit.

[ian]

Also OneDrive, because in 2022, Microsoft still can't handle the concept of a drive not called C:

Unts.

So yeah, I have to create a symbolic link. You made me remember Unix. I feel dirty now.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Also OneDrive, because in 2022, Microsoft still can't handle the concept of a drive not called C:

Unts.

So yeah, I have to create a symbolic link. You made me remember Unix. I feel dirty now.

Eh? That makes no sense. I have drives C, H, Z, Y on my machine.

Onedrive isn't a drive. It is cloud storage. The latest iteration seems to use Sharepoint under the hood, which is like caterpillar tracks on an F1 car.

[ian]

On a Mac, it won't let you put the local folder on an 'ejectable' disk, which is any external drive connected by USB. Even a symbolic link doesn't, as I have just discovered, work.

I just used C: so I could make a cheap unt joke.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Onedrive isn't a drive. It is cloud storage. The latest iteration seems to use Sharepoint under the hood, which is like caterpillar tracks on an F1 car.

We use OneDrive. You can get a view of the same files in Sharepoint or in Teams.  I guess the foundations are, as you say, Sharepoint.

[ian]

It is basically Sharepoint, which causes me no little trauma. I spent a chunk of yesterday evening working on some slides and at the end, only as I closed Powerpoint did it bleat 'file cannot be saved.' Some, erm, you've basically not been saving for the last hour and a half but never bothered to mention it other than with a minuscule change to the icon.

I just wanted a nice drag-and-droppable drive between my various computers, à la Dropbox. But I wanted to dump any local storage on the external drive that lives for this stuff. Evidently not possible. No idea why, any other service can use a removable drive.

Anyway, I can survive without it, it's one of those typical MS annoyances that seems designed at source purely to vex, and I'm getting around to returning my Windows laptop to be recycled for some poor sap.

[ian]

Also, fucking webpages that make you create an account, so you do, and your browser diligently saves your ID and password, and then when you try to log back in a few days later using those saved credentials and 'sorry, this doesn't match our records, check your spelling and try again.'

Eternal damnation for everyone involved in that too.