A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own

[Gattopardo]

How many downloads?  So I have downloaded 8.1 and it is setting up.

Can't be long now?

[Gattopardo]

Well that was several hours I won't get back but I have a lappy with win 8.1 pro and so far nothing installed.  So microsoft office starter and  libra office?

[Mr Larrington]

I am setting up my NAS.  This involves plugging the laptop into the router.  This in turn involves babbaging while simultaneously standing up and bending over.

For Christmas, a three metre notwork cable plz.

[David Martin]

A tweet from our Uni IT service. "Unlimited file storage for all your work and devices... Coming Soon!  The Countdown begins..."

Is that a threat, a promise, or a challenge?

Have they ever met bioinformaticians with a point to prove?

[matthew]

A tweet from our Uni IT service. "Unlimited file storage for all your work and devices... Coming Soon!  The Countdown begins..."

Is that a threat, a promise, or a challenge?

Have they ever met bioinformaticians with a point to prove?

I can see it coming, the full DNA sequence of every member of staff, student, plant and lab rbat

How many terrabytes of data can your team generate in a yearweek?

[David Martin]

In a week? If we don't include the microscopists then not much, only about 10 Tb. 

[Kim]

A tweet from our Uni IT service. "Unlimited file storage for all your work and devices... Coming Soon!  The Countdown begins..."

Is that a threat, a promise, or a challenge?

Sounds like something just got outsourced...

Have they ever met bioinformaticians with a point to prove?

They may already have their own point to prove.  Only seems fair that you help them along a bit.   

[Pingu]

I've just found out that the application I look after at work has a user role called SCI_FI. Should I create a user called James T. Kirk or somesuch and wait to see how long it takes for anyone to notice?

[David Martin]

Our IT people are keen for us to test it. Maximum file size 5G. Looks like some wrappers to fragment files over many smaller files may be in order.

[Somnolent]

Bugger damn and blast !
Changed out a thoroughly prehistoric router that had been giving sterling service since some time in noughties for one that is only slightly less long in the tooth ( I bought as an emergency replacement some time back and then found I was able to resurrect the old one.)
Hoping for slightly better speed & range but no luck, still at least I can go to WPA2 security.

Start thinking about range extenders, decide they are probably a waste of space and far better bet to use the old router as an access point plugges into an ethernet port sited fortuitously at the other of the house.
 
Bugeration 1 : it seems I need same encryption on router and AP .... oh well, all back to WEP then (to the frustration of family who've just got over change to WPA2)
Buggeration 2: Old router decides it doesnt want a static IP all of it's own and goes off in a huff... and now cannot be accessed from browser.

Research of t'internet reveals the magic incantation needed to restore it's factory default and it can now be accessed.

Bugggertion 3:  not only does it not want to save a static IP but it refuses to save any settings when you select Disable on the DHCP

Half a day after reading  "Turning an old router into a wireless access point is simple and takes about 15 minutes"....I give up in disgust
 

[Mr Larrington]

Re-populating an iPod Classic with the thick end of 14,000 tracks takes a Very Long Time when they have to be fired wirelessly across the room before slithering down the USB cable.  I started at 13:00 and there's still nearly 3,000 to go

[Dibdib]

I've been playing with my Doxie scanner today, after digging it out of a box earlier. I think I'm going to give "going paperless" another crack in the new year, so I'm trying to figure out the perfect workflow.

I think I'm going to have to stump up some cash... The problem is that I'm in a mishmash of ecosystems - iOS for a phone, Android on a tablet, Win7 on the desktop, Google Chrome, and so on. So it's either a few grand's worth of new FruityTech or however much Evernote Premium costs.

I just want everything to talk to everything else, is that so much to ask? 

[TheLurker]

I just want everything to talk to everything else, is that so much to ask? 

Yes. Yes it is.  All that bollocks about connectivity is just that, bollocks.  Companies want to lock you into their particular walled garden so that you'll keep giving them your money rather than giving it to a.n.other company.  Some, like Apple, are quite blatent about it.  Others, less so.

[Pickled Onion]

Bugeration 1 : it seems I need same encryption on router and AP .... oh well, all back to WEP then (to the frustration of family who've just got over change to WPA2)

Not sure why this would be so - I run WEP from an AP for my squeezeboxes and WPA2 from the router.

Buggeration 2: Old router decides it doesnt want a static IP all of it's own and goes off in a huff... and now cannot be accessed from browser.

That is odd behaviour from a device you need to find by IP address!

Research of t'internet reveals the magic incantation needed to restore it's factory default and it can now be accessed.

Bugggertion 3:  not only does it not want to save a static IP but it refuses to save any settings when you select Disable on the DHCP

Half a day after reading  "Turning an old router into a wireless access point is simple and takes about 15 minutes"....I give up in disgust

You could turn off DHCP from the new router and use DHCP on the old one. But then again it does sound like it's suffering from the strange behaviour old tech mysteriously starts to develop with age.

[Kim]

I just want everything to talk to everything else, is that so much to ask? 

Yes. Yes it is.  All that bollocks about connectivity is just that, bollocks.  Companies want to lock you into their particular walled garden so that you'll keep giving them your money rather than giving it to a.n.other company.  Some, like Apple, are quite blatent about it.  Others, less so.

You can religiously stick to open standards, of course.  Given a Stallman beard and enough mucking about with decades-old technology you'll probably arrive at a system that mostly works.

But it won't have any of the Shiny! that the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia are famed for, and you'll be permanently out of the loop as everyone you want to communicate with uses their proprietary but oh-so-easy FriendFace/Twatter/Outhouse/Bloated Goats/etc systems.

[Mr Larrington]

Apparently [my] Yahoo! Mail! Box! Has! Exceeded! The! Storage! Limit! Is! 1GB! and Am! Running! At! 99.8! Gigabytes! And! Cannot! Send! Or! Receive! New! Messages! Until! Re-validate! My! Mailbox!

Does anyone ever fall for this kind of nonse?

(I may have exagerrated the punctuation.  A! Bit!)

[ian]

There's a virus doing the rounds of the mothership (nice little misnamed exe in a zip file, probably uploaded by Mssrs Goldblum and Smith). The kind of thing that couldn't be more obviously a nasty if it kicked you in the shin. Hey, random person in the company has sent me a file and 'please look your attached document'.

The number of people who are trying to open the damn thing...

So now I have inbox full of messages telling everyone not to open them. And idiots then reply-all'ing to say they have.

[Afasoas]

Bugger damn and blast !
Changed out a thoroughly prehistoric router that had been giving sterling service since some time in noughties for one that is only slightly less long in the tooth ( I bought as an emergency replacement some time back and then found I was able to resurrect the old one.)
Hoping for slightly better speed & range but no luck, still at least I can go to WPA2 security.

Start thinking about range extenders, decide they are probably a waste of space and far better bet to use the old router as an access point plugges into an ethernet port sited fortuitously at the other of the house.
 
Bugeration 1 : it seems I need same encryption on router and AP .... oh well, all back to WEP then (to the frustration of family who've just got over change to WPA2)

WEP? If you live in an area that's got any population density you might as well not bother!

Buggeration 2: Old router decides it doesnt want a static IP all of it's own and goes off in a huff... and now cannot be accessed from browser.

Research of t'internet reveals the magic incantation needed to restore it's factory default and it can now be accessed.

Bugggertion 3:  not only does it not want to save a static IP but it refuses to save any settings when you select Disable on the DHCP

Half a day after reading  "Turning an old router into a wireless access point is simple and takes about 15 minutes"....I give up in disgust

My answer to this is always DD-WRT, which does just mostly work.

[Kim]

My answer to this is always DD-WRT, which does just mostly work.

+1

It's a bit feature-heavy, perhaps, but once correctly set up it just gets on with it without any obvious stupid bugs.

[Basil]

Much happier with 5.0.1 or bleeding lolipop or whatever the fuck its called now that I've discovered how to set the keyboard back to how it used to look.  Hurumph!

[Biggsy]

There is a now a triple tuner version of BlackGold's PCI-e DVB-T/T2 DVB-C card tempting me.  It can receive up to three Freeview HD channels at once, which you can record via Windows Media Center or alternative.  They still seem to be having problems with the quad version, which remains unavailable.  The dual version I have already works very well.



http://shop.blackgold.tv/epages/BT3159.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/BT3159/Products/BGT3655

[Canardly]

I would really like a new card along those lines, whilst still soldiering on with an old Avermedia USB stick.

[Biggsy]

Not necessarily in stick form, but I suppose there's no reason why a USB tuner can't be just as good - as long as it can take an external aerial.  But perhaps the bandwidth of PCIe (or USB 3.0) is needed for multiple simultaneous HD?

Anyway, the BlackGold BGT3620* PCIe card I have works flawlessly.  Shame that Windows Media Center doesn't.  Many channels are missing from its program guide - until you fix it with http://1geek1tool.com/guidetool/ - and it stutters with live TV, though recordings are fine.  www.progdvb.com manages live TV ok, but its interface is not as slick, and the free version doesn't record.

For low noise storage, I can recommend the Seagate "Video" ST500VT000 500GB 2.5" HHD (off eBay), or a WD Green 4TB 3.5" HDD, or even a Samsung 850 Pro SDD (guaranteed for 40GB writes per day for ten years).

* Seems to have been replaced by the BGT3635 (includes a Freesat tuner).  BGT3620/3635 is tiny; the triple version is taller.
http://shop.blackgold.tv/epages/BT3159.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/BT3159/Categories/%22Retail%20Products%22/PCIe_Tuner_Products

[tiermat]

Today I got to work and realised I hadn't set my laptop's wireless card up.

I can only connect to the internets using the wireless.

My phone is already connected to the wireless, so I used that to download the required files, then BT them across the laptop and do the stuff and away we go!

Yippee for multi-stage file transfer shenanigans

[Mr Larrington]

In the red corner, a Win 8 laptop bought last summer.  In the blue corner a Win XP laptop bought in 2009.  Guess which one is faster at reading and exporting a metric fuckton of mp3 tags from/to a NAS