Another thread for boring computer questions

I have a fuckload of names and addresses attached to all my email addresses in Outlook. I want to export them all and turn them into the corerect format for printing onto sticky labels to stick on envelopes. Is there an easy way to do this? Or do I have to copy them all by hand into excel or filemaker or something?

Anyone? Please?

any ideas?
just had a thought, would I be able to copy the file, rename it and amend it then rename it again and delete the original. would this work?

The solution to your problem is to find out what stuff is running at boot, and stop it. Stuff that runs at boot is listed in the Registry somewhere, but I can't remember the exact key name

Uncheck any suspicious looking processes - it'll be one of these.

thanks for the help guys

then convert that selection to mp3 yo!

Not wanted to go down in the "Stupid User" hall of fame, I consulted the online help and found the following:

Using another authoring tool [check-bbedit, nothing exotic]

You can use any HTML authoring tool to create the pages for your .Mac member site.

Prepare your pages using the tool of your choice, then copy the completed site to the Sites folder on your iDisk. [can't seem to accomplish this, at least not by drag and drop]

If you have already created another .Mac site, create a new folder within the Sites folder on your iDisk [done], and then copy the completed site to this new folder.[can't]

If you name your start page index.html and place it at the top level of your Sites folder, your site's address is homepage.mac.com/yourmembername/.
[huh? if my index for the new site is in a separate folder, this shouldn't apply, right?]

IMPORTANT: HomePage uses index.html in the Sites folder as the start page for sites it creates. If you use HomePage to create a page, any other index.html you have placed in your Sites folder will be overwritten. [ditto above]

If you gave your start page a name other than index.html, [no] or copied it to a subfolder within your Sites folder [am trying to but can't] , be sure to include the name and path in your site's address. For example, if your start page is home.html in a folder named School inside your Sites folder, the address is homepage.mac.com/
yourmembername/School/home.html.

Er, help?

What?? Is that some wonky thing they do to UK copies of OS X? I use the command line ftp program in 10.2 all the time to upload. You just cd to the folder your file is in, then "ftp servername.domain.com" then "put myfile.foo" -or mget/mput *.html/*.jpg ....it's not a graphical client, though. Transmit is pretty decent for that, although it is shareware.

Make a Site Menu page for a new site on Homepage, and where you can edit the URL for the link, type "Click here" and put in the URL path to your idisk Public directory, where you put the html files in a folder of your choosing. Viola! (and since I'm using this with URL forwarding, (masked) no one will see the clunky mac.com/idisk address. Woo-hoo!

i'm sure most newer mobos are capable of operating in dual-channel ram mode, which would require two matching sticks of memory. so in that case, it would be much better to have 2x512

Well, that wouldn't be the Finder, then, would it. ;-)

<TT>chsh -s /bin/bash username</TT>

Will I ever get back all the pictures and stories and songs I have on there?

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?q=Y&a=tpc&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=190005950121&p=4

That's the best thread I've been able to find on it after some digging.

It HAS always happened when I run Safari and iTunes at the same time, but I use those apps about 80% of the time I am on my Mac.

I can't afford more RAM yet.

Also, doing a safe-boot seemed to help me. Don't know why. Apparently it fixes some stuff that fixing permissions in Disk Utility doesn't really get around to. So you can give that a shot.

That site seems to explain some of the basics of keeping Panther clean and sleek.

That's the best thread I've been able to find on it after some digging.

This is what it's like when worlds collide.

My g3 power book started freezing , then the screen started winking out. I took it to get fixed, they dismantled it, couldn't find anything wrong put it back together and It's worked fine ever since. I put it down to a loose connection.

So, I used Diskwarrior and my computer was trying to mount the drive from an entire week, there was somthing like 5000 overlapped files. (this was after trying norton and it failed)
Finally in the end I connected it to another computer and made a disk image of about 10GB of my 20GB hard drive, and most of the data is unreadable. I've succesfully recovered some files that I didn't want at all and thought I had already erased. And all my other files I want are either lost or somewhere in the jumble of that disk image. I guess I'll try to use another computer to open that up.

http://www.google.com/search?q=can't+delete+avi&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

for the solution you're most comfortable with.

I also found another piece of information that will be useful if anyone else in here has one of the old G4s with the falling-out-battery problem. Any Apple store will attach a plastic shim to the battery to keep this from happening. or so I was told by the nice geek at the counter.

Alternately you can burn the ISO/BIN files to a CD and watch them that way.

mplayer / mencoder comes with a little script in the tools directory called mencvcd which takes things from avi to vcd and if you have the bin/cue files then you're most of the way there anyway. looking at the code it just uses cdrdao to burn them to the disk:

for cue in ${NAME}*.cue; do
bin="`basename $cue .cue`.bin"
[ -f $bin -a -f $cue ] || exit 1

echo "please insert a cd in your cdwriter, after a keypress we start:"
read -n 1 i

if [ $blank -eq 1 ]; then
cdrdao blank --reload $CDDEV --driver $CDDRV --blank-mode minimal
fi
cdrdao write $overburn --reload $CDDEV --driver $CDDRV $cue

done

so, er, man cdrdao 8)

andy

(NB it has randomly worked ONCE and ever since then I've had to indulge in fannydangling)

Did you not see my answer to this? I'm sure I remember writing one.

(basically, it depends entirely on what window manager you're using; but if you're using Metacity, which is (currently) as close to an Official Gnome Standard Window Manages as you get, it should be set up to work by default. Which one are you using?)

try here:
http://www.gnome.org/learn/access-guide/latest/keynav-36.html#id279250

So far, I've only been trying it on simulation and I've yet to carry a full simulation to term, having aborted whenever I hear that awful sound.

If the latter, I think you might be fuxored. Sorry :-(

For video files normally I use windows media player 8.0 for xp + divx codecs and it does the job but this time it cannot play the file, saying it might not have the right codecs. If that can be of any help, in the title of the file in question is written: (SVCD 2 Pass VBR) ... I don't know jack about all this yet and couldn't find a quick anser with google so here I am.

(movie behemoths if you are reading this, the film in question happens to be debord's _the society of spectacle_ so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it)

mary, bittorrent is a p2p file sharing program that can download different parts of the same file from different places. and whilst this is happening other people can download the parts of the file that you already have from you. helps spread the load.

ok, new question. new Mandrake 10 install (kernel 2.6) and everytime i boot i have to modprobe the nvidia drivers (5336) even though they are listed in /etc/modules.

i have to do the same with my VIA 82cxxx sound drivers too and even after this alsa fails to start (but sound is fine) and alsamixer aborts but aumix is ok. (sound was fine for the first couple of reboots after the install but suddenly stopped, around the same time i installed the video drivers as it happens...)

i have a (access) database containing course outlines and need to make each one into a separate word document, rather than one big mailmergy type document. i don't really do programming so am finding it VERY HARD INDEED and it is ALMOST MAKING ME CRY

links to good places to ask questions like this also welcome thank you please.

ok, new question. anyone know jboss?
17:48:49,468 DEBUG [ThreadPool] Getting new thread data
17:49:01,727 ERROR [LogInterceptor] RuntimeException:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: createBeanClassInstanceCommand == null
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.cmp.jdbc.JDBCStoreManager.createBeanClassInstance(JDBCStoreManager.java:542)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.CMPPersistenceManager.createBeanClassInstance(CMPPersistenceManager.java:119)
at org.jboss.ejb.EntityContainer.createBeanClassInstance(EntityContainer.java:226)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.AbstractInstancePool.get(AbstractInstancePool.java:168)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.EntityInstanceInterceptor.invokeHome(EntityInstanceInterceptor.java:77)
(two more pages like this...) sigh.

well I was about to say yes, if you have version tracking turned on as default, but looking at my mac now, I can't see how you do that. It seems like you have to enable versions for every new document. In any event, did you check "versions" under "view"? Maybe you got lucky.

I am getting the iBook 12", upgrading memory to 512K, is that enough?

It comes with 30 GB, is that enough? If I upgrade to 40 or 60, it will take 10 days!

Please answer ASAP, I am writing from the Evil Apple Overload Store.

Please advise...

(haha)

anyway:

Is it really worth it to get a PowerBook over an iBook

Be sure to get a educational discount!

dude, what is it? gold?

512M is fine. more than enough.

30G is enough. especially in a laptop. run out and you can always buy a usb2 add-on.

I can't get an educational discount, as I am not a student, mail address to the contrary.

I don't regret it. yet.

I also made a decision to wait 9 months before I get Applecare.

you can have your cake and eat it too!

I hate to buy my computer from these spineless gnorms at the Apple store, but it's a quicker ride home than Tekserve, and the money all goes to the same pockets eventually...

There is a middle-aged man next to me with a pale pink Pringle golf polo; I need to hang out here more often. Thanks again, guys.

If you have set up a website, how do you get google to crawl through it (without paying, preferably) so that it will appear on people's search results?

If you want to pay, you can get them to do it quicker. It'll help having lots of links from other peoples' sites; both in it finding you in the first place and your ranking once it does get you.

They already do.

Apparently its all about creating an icon called favicon.ico and sticking it on your web space, but it's never worked for me.

There's something out there called Favorg which sorts this but only from your own browser viewpoint, as it were.

It's a Soyo SY-K7VIA mobo and I believe an IBM HD.

xo

Could this be anything to do with installing the infamous SP2? It automatically enables a firewall that manages to kill off most apps that require internet access...

BUT, I am reading it as: it's not booting even though it was just doing so a few days before, correct? Questions then... did you install it at exactly the same place on your IDE chains? If you mistakenly installed it on the same chain as your CD/DVD, it might give you an error. Also, make sure you didn't remove the jumper on the back to specify it as primary/secondary...make sure it's set primary or it may not work.

Could Ian's problem be that his neighbours have wised up? I hope he's checked for horse-pr0n.

also i do not have a house phone anymore, can i get a cable connection without a phone? where do i start?

(googles)

http://www.abc-view.com/articles/article5.html
http://sylvana.net/jpegcrop/exif_orientation.html
http://studio.imagemagick.org/pipermail/magick-developers/2003-June/001528.html

it's kind of a new thing and a lot of imaging software just doesn't know how to handle it yet. my camera (bought last feb) doesn't seem to set the orientation flag either.

I can't get certain special characters to work in AppleWorks. I have no idea why. I need to type out o's and u's with the thing that looks like a sideways, upwards facing paranethesis over it (that's the best way I can describe it, I have no idea what it's actually called--you see it in Korean transliterations, ex Choson, the second "o" should have one of those things over it). It is showing up in the character palette but when I try to copy it into the document it isn't working, they're becoming either an upper case O (for the o with thingy) or the letter m (for the u with thingy). Help? I can't find any keyboard shortcuts anywhere online for typing these letters either so I'm assuming character palette is the only way.

It's working just fine with OTHER special characters.

I have added third disk drive to my PC - It's on the same IDE cable as the CDROM drive (Actually, it *was* .. I removed the CDROM drive.) The drive is shown in the bios - so it seems to be working, but when windows (XP/home) starts, the new drive is not listed (in the My Computer/ file manager.) Do I need to add this drive somewhere in the windows configuration? The second drive I added required no action from me to show up (and it is partitioned into 2 drives - so adding this third one would be the "fourth") ...

Or is windows XP not capable of having three physical drives ???

Go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management, and then choose the "Disk Management" option from the left-hand pane. The right-hand pane should then open up with all of the drives attached to your system, and should tell you whether or not the disk is formatted. You can right-click the bar corresponding to your disk, and choose "format". Obviously, if there's supposed to be something on it already, don't format it. If it's fresh from the store, go for it.

This doesn't sound like the problem though.

It was taken out of another computer, so it is formatted - although, I don't remember if it has anything on it.. I can reformat it though if I end up needing to..

I'll try all of these suggestions, thanks. It helps just to know that it should be possible - so I'll keep screwing with it. ...

I have another stupid question...

How can I get a list of MP3s that are all on a disc, into a text file? I want to import all of the metadata from the MP3s to a database ..

http://mp3bookhelper.sourceforge.net/

Reason for question: I need to transfer stuff from one PC to a newer one. Files/data etc are no problem, but how do you transfer programs? Copy the folder in 'Program Files' and maybe registry entries? Or is there more to it? I have some .exe installer files and .zips from downloaded apps that I never deleted, but I don't have them for everything I've installed, and I really want to avoid starting from scratch.

Thanks - but why? I mean, I would be interested to hear a simple account of what installation actually means.

some programs run without being "installed" properly but i'd say that's mostly true for smaller and older utility-type stuff. you could try just copying some of the things over and see if they'll run

Here's the thing: the PC has a printer attached to it by USB (a local non-networkable other than by sharing printer). Is it possible to share that printer with the Mac?

Yes. Definitely. I've never actually *done* this, but I have done a) sharing a Windows USB printer with a Linux machine b) sharing Windows fileshares with a Mac. Sharing a printer should work just the same as sharing files (it uses the same network protocol).

(but don't ask me how - I haven't touched a Mac for a couple of years now)

So fuck knows how software gets installed on Windows, but it's quite happy to wreck the damn thing.

in winamp5 it looks like
Preferences / General Prefs / Filetypes / Explorer Settings
is what you're talking about.

I needed to get the data from the 80gb Samsung HD installed as a second drive in my previous computer. I decided it would be easiest to just take this out of the old computer and put it in the new one.

It was hard getting the Samsung HD into the new PC because of the cables layout - it doesn't fit fully in the bay either but in my experience they never do. I think I managed to get it connected without damaging it (cutting my finger in the process, bah) but I had to swap the two spare connectors around so that the one previously connected to the pre-installed master drive was now connected to the slave.

When I turned the new PC back on it listed the Samsung drive as the Primary Slave so I figured all would be cool. But Windows XP failed to boot and the PC just seemed to stall after getting past the initial Windows startup/loading screen.

I managed to get XP to boot by resetting the PC, going into Setup and changing the setting for the Samsung drive from Auto to None.

Problem is now I don't know how to get XP to recognise the drive properly. Windows lists it as D: (previously this was the DVD-ROM, which is now E - E was previously the Maxtor external drive!) but says 'this drive is not formatted. do you want to format it now?'

Any idea how I can get XP to recognise this drive properly AND retain the data on it (it was practically full with mp3s, images, video)? Thanks for any help.

(ho ho my sides etc.)

Okay, it's not obliging. To demonstrate, this is wat happens.h

WTF? Any ideas?

I hated the way that Windows imposed itself at every step back then, it usually felt like I was fighting the OS to do anything I wanted to do - has that gotten better?

Where's the best place online to design your own system (US) - the best deals I could find at Fry's were Sony P4/3GHz/1GB RAM/200GB HD for ~$850.

Hah. No.

Windows XP SP2 isn't that bad. IT's pretty stable and as long as you are anti-virused and firewalled up to the hilt and don't use IE or click on anything stupid then it is reasnobly secure. (XP1 was a joke security wise, we had to put an SP1 machine outside the firewall recently, with only a couple of ports open on it's own firewall; McAffee security whatsit trapped two attacks within 10 minutes of turning the thing on).

Apple script or anything like it is completely missing from windows and I find that there is much less standardisations or ven widespread use of keyboard shortcuts across a lot of apps (Adobe apps are OK in this respect though). Outlook is an unwieldy pig of an email client but there are others out there you can use (I like eudora).

firefox is a good browser, better than safari in some respects and there is a good safari like skin called saferfox which tidies up the interface a treat.

Having said all that I still run into wierdnesses on some of our machines all the time, driver incompatibilities, IRQ conflicts, multiple instances of drivers running and other strangeness, none of which is particularly down to windows/microsoft. Also the ammount of time it takes windows to get to a state where you can boot any apps is horrendous. If I hit the outlook, firefox and Access buttons immediately after log on (the first three things I need in the morning) I can go and have a cup of tea before I'm ready to work. Admittedly this is not on the most spritely of systems, but even on a dual Xeon I'd wait a couple of minutes after log on to fire up any apps just to let windows do it's gangsta shit or whatever it actually does.

Adobe Acrobat Reader on Windows is the bane of my life. Clicking on a PDF link on a website is like mogadon to my system. Preview in OS X is a breath of fresh air.

The interface is all wrong in Windows.

and don't even think of searching for a mail message in outlook without having something else to do.

- Command files - a lot more powerful than one would think (they're streets ahead of where most people think they are; DOS batch files)

- Windows Script Host + VBScript or JScript (or any other third party language that can call COM components). Object-oriented scripting.

Bad luck! I haven't seen an IRQ conflict since Windows 3.1!

I use command files a bit, however nothing is quite as elegant as the way Apple script handles things and Automator has some real promise once people start getting busy writing actions for it.

Adobe need to do a code clean up on Acrobat or even a complet rewrite, there is nothing inherrently wrong with pdf (although it is used moronically by loads of people; don't just scan in your print document and convert it to a PDF morons, use the original layout to generate PDF)

do you mean firefox grinds to a halt or just pdf in general? you can get firefox to NOT open pdf internally which i find a lot better - it downloads in the background and then brings up acrobat rather than using its plugin. (firefox options, downloads, filetypes, plugins and disable acrobat)

I'd add a third option: Perl, with the Win32::OLE module to do inter-app integration. I know it's not installed by default, but it's easy to put on.

Problem is, whichever idiot designed the form has made it so that as soon as you put anything in some of the boxes, half the table jumps onto the next screen. It is looking very ugly.

Since the employer is only accepting forms on paper, I thought I might be able to tidy things up by hitting 'Print Screen' a few times at the end and rearranging everything back as graphics. But, for me, that would be dull and painful.

Anyone have a better idea?

Another question: does anyone else find that Firefox, good browser that it is, every so often just stops working? By stopping working, I mean that I find I click the icon and it just doesn't load (although the process is sitting there doing nothing).

I have to reinstall it to get it to work again. Reinstalling it is reasonable enough, in that at least it doesn't wipe out all my settings, but it's a pain; it's happened twice in the last week.

i've been having this problem and i find that if you end the process (that is sitting there doing nothing) then firefox loads when you next click the icon. dunno why

Slumpman, I get that too, from time to time, but it's worse than that, the case I'm describing; it actually won't load at all, regardless of killing processes/trying again etc. Maybe it's just me, but I had a hard disk crash of late and it's happened before and after reinstallation, which makes that seem a little unlikely that it's just my machine.

Third party, I like Everest:

http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

I have a g4 Powerbook and yesterday lost all of my preferences, software registrations, internet bookmarks, and everything in my "home" folder -10gb worth! I ran Data Rescue and it all seems to be somewhere in there (broken driectory, I'm guessing) but what is the best way of retrieving it? If I choose an external HD to dump all of these untagged recovered files onto, how do I then remove this 10gb of data from "virtual" space?

Robinson

I'm currently using ACDSee but it's slow as death for some reason and I can't go on with it for much longer.

That took me about five seconds to type, which is quick enough for me.

any suggestions?

I'm currently using ACDSee but it's slow as death for some reason and I can't go on with it for much longer.

What's wrong with iPhoto for this?

Normally, you enter the amount, the description and the account category and that's it. But because some people use cars, we have a mileage category.

If someone enters car mileage, it automatically calculates the mileage rates and stuff. I want it to automatically enter in the 'travel' account code, but I'm having trouble as whilst I can do a formula to auto enter this, the downside is that if the person isn't entering car miles, they'll have to overwrite the cell contents to do so.

So, in a nutshell, I'm after something that can enter information into other cells depending on the value of another.

Something like - having a formula in cell A1 like =IF(B1"",C1="1",C2="2). Is this possible without a macro?

Others ideas include a macro triggered upon data being entered in a cell - is that possible? The other one is to have a data entry sheet, and a formatting sheet that can do all the calculations. I'd rather avoid macros TBH and would rather not have people needing to move between sheets.

Heyolp!

Is there a way to have the value of cell A1 change based on the data in cell B1 using a IF formula in cell C1?

Do you know how you configure Opera to run with Freeserve Anytime? They keep sending me instructions for Outlook Express, which I don't have on my computer.

Next step, broadband, I think. Not fucking Wannadoo this time.

Plus, it doesn't work if you just type it in the normal dial-up connection box, because it starts 1470 and then the number. If you take the 1470 off, it works, but apparently then you're paying.

I think the solution is just tell Wannadoo to take a running jump.

sorry

i think (at it's years since i had to do this so i could be wrong) it's a 5 digit number rather than a prefix.

doesn't 1470 just turn your cli on (ie lets them see your number)?
various other isps use the same method but all of them just seem to think that adding 1470 is a simple matter of just typing it in:

http://www.seg.co.uk/support/freeisps.htm
http://www.aardvaak.co.uk/
http://www.birminghamuk.com/isp.htm

maybe this'll help (has detailed instructions for win2000)
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/help/connectionsettings/win2000_scratch.html

Reviving this thread AGAIN...

I don't think there is a sensible answer to this, but could there possibly be a sensible reason why a cartridge that is compatible with my computer will work in the man in Cartridge World's printer (same model as mine) and not in mine? The printer isn't broken, other cartridges work fine in it. This particular one, though, which I've forked out 20 quid for and isn't empty, will not.

Any thoughts?

If I was going to start a blog on an intranet, how do I do it, technically? Blogger would need access to a web server that can't be accessed from outside our firewall, no? How do I get around this?

Sorry - bit clueless about blogging technology - the last time I blogged was 2001!

how do i prevent google from remembering everything i've ever searched for and listing it all whenever i start another search? it's infuriating, but i can't find the "off" switch.

(mine helpfully remembers my credit card number, type 1 digit in the right form field and it'll display the whole thing. thanks for that.)

my question: where best to learn abt regedit?

Is it possible to set up images on Powerpoint (specifically, tables) so that one row or column of the table appears at a time - ideally, when you click the mouse?

Powerpoint help is being about as much help as you'd expect.

Ta.

Ta

so yeah, it worked!

the cops haven't exactly cracked the case yet.

tried to switch the locations of my memory sticks last night. Now, the computer clock speed/timing is all-a-fucked, my PC now takes 10x the amount of time to boot up, find any IDE drives, run any command, etc. Ever going thru the CMOS settings doesn't help anything. I tried unplugging everything and yanking the mobo battery to let the settings reset, but now that hasn't changed. Is my mobo fried, or is there some button i accidentally switched or what?

halp

Resetting bios(trying the "load fail/safe" or "optimized" defaults") in the cmos screen offers no changes, aside from occasionally starting up the onboard anti-virus bits.

My shut-in habits can now continue. Huzzah.

requirements have been changed to 'return the first five most popular first, ordered by popularity. rest are to be listed alphabetically'

any easy way of doing this without doing the query* twice? (post-sorting the result array is a possibility). who thinks up these things anyway? what benefit is there? grrr.

*i say 'query' but it's actually a union of up to 8 separate queries. is complicated.

<? include("links.htm") ?>

where you want the links to go, and make sure the including file has a .php extension.

I want to get the current date in apple script to write into a url to send to safari, how can I do this?

am i rite?

xp

The forces of truth are compelling me to tell you that you could accomplish this in html with an iframe; the forces of goodness on the other hand are crying out that this would be a crime against web design.

But the daughter needs to run Windows. I've never used Virtual PC. Is it really really clunky? Also, can old G3 (2002) iBooks run Tiger?

G3 iBooks can run Tiger, but make sure you've got the maximum amount of RAM you can have. Even with that, watching fullscreen DV video won't work very well. (I seem to remember that one of the RAM modules in those iBooks is actually soldered in, which pretty severely curttails how high you can go.)

When I try to download a pdf it opens in Safari rather than in Adobe Acrobat (I have the version 7 reader). Why? I've looked in the Acrobat preferences but there doesn't seem to be any 'use as default' type thing.

The more I think about it, a 2002 iBook running Tiger and Virtual PC sounds like a bad idea. Mainly because of the cruelly foreshortened RAM possibilities. It will all run, but it will run real slow.

Euai - thanks for the reflection... I'll pass that one on.

OK, my laptop crashes frequently, sometimes within a few minutes of booting up, sometimes it'll run for an hour or two. I can't find any real pattern as to when it happens. Though it always crashes when I try to run Disk Cleanup (XP of course). Have downloaded Passmark Burnin test diagnostic software and it doesn't come up with any errors.

Again, could be overheating.

Assuming it is overheating, how do I fix it? Is it a straightforward task or is it one where I'd better get a technician to look at it?

Download a ubuntu cd and run that for your OS for a few hours and see if it crashes. If it doesn't something is wrong with XP, if it does crash and freeze up it will be your hardware.

Mac dilemma, hopefully somebody will have insight.

My daughter was home for spring break, no problems accessing internet. (Mac Mini G4, 10.3.9 I believe.) Shuts down yesterday, goes back to school, hooks everything up, no internet. In the Network Prefs pane, Built-in Ethernet is suddenly missing. Tried changing out ethernet cables, moved the computer to a different dorm room where suitemates have no problems...no use. Repaired permissions, nothing.

Next step?

bump

;_;

ok i'm trying to watch a streamed video on parliamentlive.tv on a mac, it says to download the flip4mac plugin. i had already done this but downloaded it again, made sure customise streaming etc. go back to the original page...i still need to download the plugin wtf? i tried with a few other windows media applications for macs and nothing works

Did you restart the web browser?

i restarted the whole computer!

i also tried in safari and that didn't work (am in firefox)

it used to work fine until i had to have the HD replaced last week.

Next suggestion make sure you have a the latest Quicktime by running software update. (Apple Menu->System Preferences-> Software update)

Run that install updates and if necessary install flip 4 mac again..

oh ok - i've been reluctant to do that on new HD as the last time i did it, it killed the old HD

That didn't kill the HD.

ok now software updater is saying it can't connect to the internet!!!! must this machine wreck my life at every turn. the one time i'm doing something actually time sensitive.

ok i installed the latest quicktime manually. still doesn't work.

Did you reinstall flip4mac afterwards?

some people shouldn't be allowed computers

This appears to be a MIME type problem.

Hope someone can advise me.

I have a Mac with Tiger OS x 10.4.9 and am thinking about using the "software update" tool to go to 10.4.11. I haven't done or thought about doing this till now because I have Pro Tools LE installed, which has only recently become fully compatible with anything above 10.4.9.

My dilemma is: Software Update also says that my current Quicktime (7.2) could be updated to 7.5, but I have heard that there are compatibility issues with this version and the Pro-Tools LE.

My questions are: Does the Quicktime 7.5 come as part of the OS X 10.4.11 package? Or can I simply put a tick in the box next to the "OS X 10.4.11 update", whilst leaving the box next to QuickTIme unlicked, meaning that the new OSX will run with my current Quicktime 7.2?

Secondly, if I can just install OS X 10.4.11 without the Quicktime update, would version 7.2 work OK with it?

If Digidesign has certified PT compatibility with 10.4.11, then they mean 10.4.11, not 10.4.11 minus any QuickTime updates that are part of it, wouldn't you think? I realize that music geeks have their own catalogue of perhaps justified superstitions regarding PT, but if you trust Digi to say you can go to 10.4.11, you might as well trust Digi to say you can go to 10.4.11.

On the other hand, if you don't have a compelling reason to update, don't update.

hi. im trying to have a voice skype with my bro and he can't find the mic socket on his mac mini. where is it? is a little pink hole as with a pc?

Macs are not color-coded for the icon-impaired. Upper-left corner.

Oh, wait, mic, not line. He's SOL.

I use this with Mac & skype.

i use that very mic with my pc, and i bought it for him too.

so upper left front corner there should be a socket? is it labelled?

That's line-level input, which means that there has to be a preamp between mic and Mac.

oh. obviously we're ging to have to purchase that seperately?

Just get that USB mic I linked. It's like $25 and works quite well.

Oh, sorry, I missed one post. If he has a USB mic, he should just plug it into the USB slot.

ah, no it doesn't have a usb. so hopefully we can buy a widget which will have a usb and take the socket.

4 USB slots:

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/6813/indexports20060229lf3.jpg

i mean the mic doesn't have a usb.
cheers for your help.

I have a fuckload of HUGE (12gb) mp4 video files, digitisations of 6hr VHS tapes - which I need to carve up into multiple files (films, episodes of TV series, gigs etc).

The software that came with my VHS digitiser is fairly limited, in that you can't use it to create multiple files, only cut sections out of the existing file (it doesn't keep the bit you've cut).

I'm aware that I could just copy the file multiple times and edit out the bits I don't want each time, but it takes ages on account of the huge file size and I'm running out of disc space anyway.

Can anyone recommend a freeware/cheap digital video editor for me? I guess I'm basically looking for "Vidacity", an apparently non-existent video equivalent of Audacity! Ta.

mplayer

my old computer kicked the bucket and I bought a new one, but my old hard drive with everything on it is still sitting in the old one. I've been meaning to stick it in the new one for ages, but fear 1. it being the thing that's broken on the old one and 2. fucking something up. So, ignoring 1. for now, as long as I set it to slave is there anything that's an obvious likely fuck up? I've installed things before with no problems but this seems more like it has the potential for there to be something I wasn't aware of ruining everything.

mplayer, the Hungarian mainly linux thing? does it work ok on a pc? it looks a little techy for me...

but you didn't say which operating system, so i assumed you meant linux 8)

i use mplayer on work pc for transcoding stuff. yes, command line only (and quite tricky at that) but you don't really need a gui to say 'cut the first hour out of this enormo video file into this other video file'. (i use mplayer / mencoder for the recording / heavy lifting, avidemux for frame-perfect edits)

i'm sure there are 100s of similar thing on windows, i just don't know what they are (virtualdub? videodub? i had something bundled with my tv card once. ulead something?). (actually, avidmux has a windows build now. have never used it - http://avidemux.razorbyte.com.au/ )

what's a command line? what's a gui? i suspect i need something a 12-year-old could use, rather than something... harder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_line_interface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface

i think you need help from someone who does this stuff on windows. what version of windows are you using? and what type of files do you have?

I think what I actually need is an idiot-proof app I can work myself! And apparently I could do with learning some shit about my own laptop. Thanks anyway, Koogs...

Anyone know how to set up a system that allows multiple users to text photos to the same blog? I'm hoping to have such a gimmick wonderful thing set up in time for my wedding in a fortnight but I'm buggered if I can find anything online that'll do it...

Right so.

I've investigated Blogger.com (because we've got a wedding blog already) but it apparently only lets you post pics from one registered number.

I've also investigated (and indeed signed up for) http://moblog.net but only now do I find apparently I can't post from a mobile number, only from an email address attached to my mobile number on my phone.

GRRR!

Since I can mms pics from my phone straight onto Facebook, surely there's a blog-based way to do the same?

Does it have to be MMS? A few carriers resize images to 160x120 for MMS, which you probably don't want.

I just want anyone who's at the wedding to be able to send a text message, with picture attached, to the same blog. I'm aware I may have to add all their mobile numbers to the system to enable this, but I'm happy to do that if it works.

I'm (probably) insufficiently au fait with the terminology to know whether I mean SMS or MMS or something else; all I know is I can take a picture on my phone and immediately send it via, um, something or other to Facebook. It seems to be going to an email address, admittedly - so I suppose if not everyone at the wedding has an email account attached to their phone it won't work anyway...

Ugh.

oh right. Yeah, I can't think of a really easy way to do this

Word is LiveJournal has a facility that might be able to help, but I've never been near LJ (too much internet) and I'm loathe to dive in to that particular bottomless pit now...

If you somehow managed to wreck your internet connection (by pulling a socket out of the wall) and you were told by your phone provider that it would be weeks before an engineer could come out but you needed the internet for work-from-home, what would be the best plan?

well my company provided me with a 3G dongle which connects my laptop to the internet when i work from home (which is all the time these days).

so can your company not provide something like that?

other option is to try and (not really a nice thing to do) piggy back onto any surrounding wireless connections in your neighbourhood.

someone else with more knowledge on the matter may be able to give more options.

8000 or so emails just seem to have "disappeared" from Outlook Express. Any ideas?

(I couldn't open any of the emails just before they disappeared and closed and re-opened Outlook Express ... to find them gone.)

to me my problem is actually pretty interesting but i think this is the best place to ask all the same.

ok deep breath. few months ago i read bonfire of the vanities and it blew me away. it became a massive obsession and i soon read all wolfe's stuff and that superb devil's candy book about the film. i heard how wolfe published a sort-of first draft in rolling stone magazine, 27 installments starting in 1984.

all the back issues of rolling stone are available to buy, so i got them. you have to use a tool called 'bondi reader' to view the pages. it's not copy and pastable text, just high quality scanned images. a double page spread looks like this and you can zoom in to make it more readable, like this.

my initial plan was to go through each issue in turn, take screenshots of the page (it'd be two screenshots for each page), edit them together in photoshop then do text conversion using omni page. annoyingly, rolling stone uses a fancy font so many many words came up wrong and it'd take an age to correct them. but even if they came up correct it's still a massively time-consuming task.

so my question is, is there some way of going into this bondi reader program or the RS issue files (they're .djvu files) to extract the full hi-quality images of the relevant pages so i can make them into a pdf to read on my kindle?

i'm aware that wolfe has dismissed these installments as a 'very public first draft' so it won't be as good as the 1987 book but i'm fascinated to see how much has changed and how this first draft actually reads. it seems like an important document and i'm kindof amazed it isn't out there online anywhere. if anyone has any other ideas or is willing to help then i'd be really grateful. thanks!

there are (i am surprised) many linux tools for handling djvu files. and others for creating pdfs.

but reading about djvu it seems to be a *low* quality image format, or much better compression than jpgs, so you might be out of luck.

can you send me one and i'll have a look.

oh, oddly, the files from here: http://djvu.org/gallery/documents/books/lacy/ open in standard ubuntu pdf viewer when double-clicked. and image-magick convert will convert them to pngs without blinking (although they go from 42KB to 1.2MB!)

and 25MB for the same page as PDF

thanks koogs! i've uploaded the issue with the first 3 chapters here: http://www.mediafire.com/?vgo2ok8svhdq9dv
not sure if there's some kind of drm in the file though.

meanwhile i took some screenshots of a page of text, pieced it together, converted to pdf and put that onto my kindle to see if it would be readable. sadly not. even on horizontal view the text is that bit too small to make out so it means having to use the kindle's clunky slow-as-hell 4-way cursor thing to scroll about the page.

i'm still hoping to create a RS BotV pdf file using jpegs of each page, just so this exists for people curious about it. so frustrating how it won't convert to text properly - though if i extract hi-quality images from the djvu file and tell omni the name of the rolling stone font maybe that'll prove more successful.

if you can help out here koogs that'd be great, thanks!

yep, think those are drm'd: http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/390

mine:

0000000: 4154 2654 464f 524d 0003 cbbc 444a 5655  AT&TFORM....DJVU
0000010: 494e 464f 0000 000a 0b13 0d29 1600 2c01  INFO.......)..,.

yours

0000000: 5344 4a56 464f 524d 0131 974e 444a 564d  SDJVFORM.1.NDJVM
0000010: 464f 524d 0000 00b4 444a 5649 5349 4e46  FORM....DJVISINF
0000020: 0000 00a8 4456 444b 424c 4653 0000 0080  ....DVDKBLFS....

and they won't open in the tools (am guessing the S is for Secure). "Unknown Document Format"

throw me a couple of hi-res images and i'll try ocring them though.

elsewhere they say there's a 'print' option within the program that'll let you 'print' a copy and using a virtual print driver this'll create an undrmed copy.

2nd post here, short on details... (and is talking about new yorker which uses the same scheme)

thanks for your help with this. i wasn't aware of that 'print to file' function but i've done it and here is the xps file: http://www.mediafire.com/?27waajvtoj5m7rt

for some reason, this won't open on my computer so i used a website to convert the file to pdf, this is here: http://www.mediafire.com/?lpn11wxu64adlp3

if somehow these ocr perfectly then that'd be excellent as i can print off a bunch of pages at once to xps files (do this 27 times for each issue) then somehow convert them to high quality jpeg (can xps be converted to jpeg easily?) and do a big bulk blitz of OCR on all those. follow up with some basic subediting to chop out any stray text from pull-quotes or adverts, tidy up and boom, tom wolfe's first draft of BotV can be gifted to the internet. if not then i'll just have to read the whole thing on my pc, which will be crappy but hey.

fingers crossed!

having trouble downloading those here (linux? firefox? adblock? annoying over-involved webpage bristling with dodgy adverts?). will try again at work.

xps files are apparently zipped xml files. so try unzipping it using pkzip or 7zip or something.

ok, those downloaded here and the clicking on the xps brought up some windows 7 viewer perfectly ok.

if anything the quality is better with the much smaller xps file but still don't think it'll be enough (both are quite small and have jpeg fringing around the letters). also, as you point out, the font is a bit odd. but i'll have a bash at ocr when i get home.

are there options on the 'save to file'?

no dice with the ocr.

the unzipped xps file has a 1.JPG file in it (Documents/1/Resources/Images/1.JPG) which is as good as the pdf is and a fraction of the size. but not good enough for my ocr program despite cutting it into columns and boosting the contrast a bit.

gah, damn. thanks loads for all this though. i'll just collect all the jpegs using 7zip and work out how to make a pdf for it so it exists in some form at least. that 'print to file' thing has saved this project in some form so i'm v grateful. do you want to actually read this early draft of BotV or are you just one of the good (helpful) guys?!

what ocr program did you use btw? i'm on omni17 i think and i'll give it a go anyway. it's worth one last punt for this ostensibly pointless superniche project. wolfe will be livid if he finds out, in a 1988 interview he said about it:

"One of the great things about journalism is, it's thrown away. I don't think many people were aware as I was of how many times this thing was going offtrack in terms of structure. I was making mistakes. And I was acutely aware of it."

thrown away eh? you didn't count for the internet and a single dedicated fan with a yen for completism, did you tom? soz

i use tesseract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract_%28software%29 ) on linux which was, i think, the second search result when i was looking for an ocr program. in fact, i ended up compiling it myself as it wasn't available as a package. it's pretty minimal.

i've used it to ocr my copy of Gibson's Count Zero that got water-damaged. have all 336 pages scanned and half of them ocr'd. does a decent enough job, probably 95%+ on the 2000x4000 pixel images. has trouble with starts and ends of lines, sees imaginary characters from time to time. doesn't seem to like 'f's but that might be the font (you are meant to train it with an initial known sample but i just went with the default). for instance

this file http://www.koogy.clara.co.uk/cz.tif (which is 2480x576 greyscale tif) gives me

------
s ‘Because I’ve got money there. I’ve got credit lines
in four different names, no way to link ’em back to
me. Because I’ve got a lot of other connections I may
be able to use. And because it’s always cover, the
Sprawl. So damned much of it, you know?’
------

which is perfect apart from the initial 's' and lack of italics on the 'of'

and thanks but no to the reading btw, haven't read the original, probably wouldn't enjoy it.

surprisingly, omni18 has done a fairly decent job of ocring that hi-res page. the os come out as 0s sometimes and there's a few other blips, like when there's a run of mmms but overall i think this will work. i think it'd be better if i knew the font rolling stone used so i'm going to post a sample on the 'name this font' ilx thread, if there is one. almost there! thanks a lot for your help heere koogs, it's been invaluable.

heard a dj playing this song out the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifh3lwtK3j0
Rhianna - Word Love (4 Hero Soul Mix)
check it out, it's incredible. nowhere to be found online, to buy or download. so i used the 'nab it' site to download the mp4 video file, stuck it in soundcloud and saved the music as an mp3 so i can dj out with it and put it on my mp3 player. the mp4 file downloaded is 11.5mb and the song length is 4mins. there's not a video with it, just a single image.

the file size and song length suggests that the audio is of fairly high quality, is that likely to be right? how can i find out what the actual bitrate of it is? i stuck it in sony vegas and checked properties but it just said AAC and nothing else. same with soundforge.

similar position with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP8bBP37eCc&feature=related
Bang Bang Machine - Geek Love (original 12" mix)
the file is 25mb and the song is 10mins long, no video, just an image. also amazing song, also not available to buy anywhere.

i did the same thing with this michael jackson/kelis song on youtube, song is 3.5 mins long but the mp4 file is only 4mb, which suggests that the audio for that is more around the 128kbps level.

am i guessing right with all this or on a hiding to nothing?

if it sounds ok i wouldn't worry about bitrate, it's just a number. re-encoding like that is going to degrade the quality but just trust your ears.

(i have that geek love 12", in the original shitty sleeve (A4 photocopy stuck on plain lp inner) - lived near them and the local record shop had the first batch they pressed)

yeah they both sound pretty great, but i'm obsessed with knowing if they actually *are*! going to play them out and see, but i'm guessing they'll sound fine. either way is there no simple technique to finding out the bitrate of the sound of a video file?

that geek love track is superb, a friend posted it on facebook yesterday. said he got speak to the drummer recently who said that the song is all tangled up in rights issues and that's why you can't find it on any compilations or anywhere. he didn't have a copy of the song either!

backed up my friends 10.6.8 mac - doesn't qualify for an upgrade to newer OS - any idea how to wipe this clean and reformat without an installation disk?

Did the rolling stone issue ever get resolved? I'm running into the same problem now...

Message me again, ilovesalmon, but leave your email! I tried to respond and it sent me to an error.

Oddly enough, I've had a bunch of people all message me about this since I posted my article in the Independent about the trials and tribulations of tracking down this rare Tom Wolfe article, so you can all team up like a Fantastic Nerd Four, who exist to unearth old, forgotten literature.

Reading back, if you have a bunch of JPGs then you can convert them to cbz easily enough (cbz is a comic book format and there are readers readily available).

Hello. Might have asked similar before but my PC is showing

Local Disc (C:) - 4.48MB free of 111GB.
Local Disc (D:) - 1.80TB free of 1.81TB.

Can I just drag loads of stuff from C: to D:?

I'm at a point where Outlook freezes loads.

Ta

Windows?

Yes.

Doh, obviously

Yes you should/can

But also well worth considering cleanup of yr OS, up to and including fresh install in possible

Im now at the stage where I'm loath to store anything at all in c: except purely temp stuff, based on a particularly stingy OS drive i was stuck with (soldered in ffs) a few years back that required constant cleaning (windows updates eventually scuppered even that)

Just for fun, have you any idea what is taking up all that space and is it legit

Windows updates can go fairly fuckin haywire

Ah, what should I be looking out for that might not be legit?

I have quite a bit of music on there. I'm terrible at deleting emails from Outlook (I've deleted 50000 emails over the last week ... though that hasn't seemed to help).

I've used "Disk Cleanup" a lot and the tools on Norton 360 that are supposed to help.

Strangely, I dragged all my photos (not actually that many) from C: to D: and ended up with less free memory in C:

Check the "system protection" setting for that drive, if it's creating regular restore points it could be filling up.

Ta, both. Looking at things I could plausibly uninstall, Microsoft Silverlight is 746MB and I don't even know what that is.

And there are a few things with names like:

Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (x64) going back to 2005.

empty that recycle bin too

746MB is not a lot

I'll look up a few things ito cleanup regime, its handy enough

Better ilxors than i will advise whether you need your music on yr main drive, id have said not

x-post

Ha! That is about the one thing I know how to actually do ...

Windows 10?

Just in terms of using up 11TB, its not going to be a program as such, so install/uninstall aint it

Its either tons of content (which would probably be fine on yr other drive depending on whether you are niche use case like video editing software or not, or whether yr D: is particularly slow) or a program gone haywire (including, as above, windows updates/restore points)

111 Gb, obv

i think leave those c++s alone.

Disk Cleanup, if memory serves, has a button for advanced or admin you'll want to click so that it can clean up Windows Update stuff for you.

Dragging stuff over, the default is to copy rather than move, so hold Shift down while you do it (or like do a cut and paste)

Might want to disable hibernate if it's on, that's probably taking a few GB.

there's a free program, windirstat, that'll give you a good visual of what's using space

Just went and googled windirstat, have used before and its certainly useful

Id still guess restore points and updates.

Right click yr c drive, properties, disk cleanup, option at botton to clean up system files

That will run and you can then select the groups of files to delete, it will take another while to run but you'll be told how much space youll clear

Not sure that even takes out the old restore points tbh but its a good first step

After that, do this

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-remove-all-system-restore-points-except-the-most-recent-one-d43d697b-09ac-bef6-8a02-1000a18a9b82

If you're still in the red, windirstat will show you (very neatly too) what the jam is

For instance, just in looking that up on my own pc (which i keep pretty trim tbh) the old windows updates alone freed up almost 10GB so if nothing else it will buy you time

Um ... Windows 7.

I'm trying to remember what it was that was eating up a couple of gb daily on my system drive. I think it was the automatic system protection restore points. I disabled it on that drive and just make a restore point before doing anything drastic. The hibernation file can get quite big as well I think.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-power/windows-10-hiberfilsys/1b8de4f7-3a73-4238-aad3-e51194f2075e

what was that about music on the main drive? Nah, that's what the big one is ideal for.

I wouldn't be surprised if Outlook actually retained the space of your deleted mails.... somehow!

Um ... Windows 7.

― djh, Monday, 1 February 2021 21:09 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just checked, looks identical process

tbh im itching for a screengrab of yr windirstat run, thats a loooot of space taken up

Is there any reason not to share such a screen grab???

I cant remember if the detail would include a anything incriminating tbh, use yr better judgement tho

Showing anything initially interesting as far as you can tell?

You can probably safely just move the music unless you're using some bullshit like iTunes or Google Music.

x-post

I haven't actually got as far as that bit yet!

Music wise, I use Media Jukebox (probably on the recommendation of someone on here, tbh).

Listen now if you have time to be posting you couldve had the updates and restore points cleared and we'd all be off our tenterhooks

As long as the music files aren't tied to proprietary DRM stuff then moving them *shouldn't* mess anything up. The player might need to reindex them. But take it under advisement, I can't say for sure.

So the biggest things seems to be Outlook Data File (38.6GB), Application Extension (21.4GB), Windows Installer Patch (9.3GB), JPEG Image (8.1GB) and System File (4.4GB).

You could do the two steps above and move all yr content files with no risk and some reward to at least buy space for outlook/OS stuff

Im off to nerd up a bit on how to reduce an outlook data file

No idea if yr mailbox is genuinely that enormous but:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/reduce-the-size-of-your-mailbox-and-outlook-data-files-pst-and-ost-e4c6a4f1-d39c-47dc-a4fa-abe96dc8c7ef#:~:text=Often%2C%20the%20cause%20of%20a,in%20a%20folder%20called%20Conflicts.

Thanks - appreciated!

Dont tell anyone but cleaning c drive space is fuckin catnip to me tbh

Ah, ok.

Mailbox size - 1569680KB.

xp lol

Thats not a huge mailbox tbh but ive no experience with how effective compacting the file using the steps above is or whether that file size is so abnormally large as to point to an issue (but frankly would suspect it)

Like Deems I'm itching for a FolderSizes/WinDirStat screengrab. It will scan your drives and give you a visual presentation of the folders taking up the most space. It's not unusual for this to be a folder of cache/temp/log files, files without a single need.

Having looked at WinDirStat, a lot of it seems to have been years of friends and (in an old job) PRs sending photos that I hadn't bothered to delete ...

Go on, give us some closure, anything!

Any breakdown you feel like sharing?

lolwtf. Random jpegs, let's go!!

Is there a youtube genre for "very satisfying c: drive cleanups".

Was only thinking last night that if dr pimple popper exists then surely....

Why does the shitty £5 WiFi woggle I got off eBay keep crashing?

Update: I have got to 20GB of 111GB free - the first time my computer's memory hasn't been showing as "red" for an age.

I have managed to lose my music, I think (Not really sure how - I'd moved it to the D: drive) ... but that's largely replaceable.

I've deleted at least 60000 emails, possibly more ... though I don't think that made as much difference as I'd have liked.

WinDirStat was helpful - I was bemused that MP4s were taking up so much space. This was random shit video from a Bloggie (slightly pointless Sony camera) that could largely be deleted without any sense of "Oh, awesome memories".

Felt too paranoid to post any WinDirStat detail!

Thats fair

Does the music show up under a windirstat scan, ie is it just gone missing from whatever program you use to access? That shouldve been a very low risk manouevre tbh

Listen i absolutely do mean to bug u but did you do the steps above im mad to know

When im deleting from outlook the single most useful step i make myself take is to sort by size and if its attachments (always is) and i need them (rarely do) then i make myself bother to save the mail in a recognisable folder/name structure

Bit of a slog if youve not done it in a while but ime you delete 90% of the big mails without a second thought this way and can handily enough free up a few gigs

I think I did everything. Will go back and check. There weren't restore points. Disc clean up doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference though maybe because I already do that. I've quite often felt like I've deleted things (and removed from the recycle bin) and the memory had shrunk. Weird.

Did something similar with emails. I put things in "from" order and deleted things from people/organisations I had no interest in until the whole deleting thing actually became quite compulsive ... and then went in for attachments! It's probably only something I would have got around to doing as a failing computer and lock down boredom aligned.

I thought I'd moved music from the C: to D: drive (and had checked that) but might have been over zealous in just deleting *stuff*.

Thanks, btw.

Not at all as i say this stuff is catnip to me after my own limited space c: disasters in times past

I've had a great experience with Avast over the years but the pop-ups are becoming kind of aggressive of late. Do I still need it or is the stuff built into Windows 10 decent enough for the job?

SSL security question here, from someone with at most rudimentary understanding of such stuff:

I have an old Windows Vista box, no longer updated, with a database of various sports results and stats. A couple of times a day, a Python script starts up, makes an HTTPS request to a stats site for a certain JSON file which they use to display the data on the website; this file is scraped by the script and any new data entered in my database.

Just the other day, the script started throwing an error, which on further examination turned out to be a "bad handshake" SSL error, with the report "certificate verify failed". Given the timing, I'm assuming this may be related to the recent expiration of Let's Encrypt certificates.

What I should really do is surely to get around to moving this stuff to a more up-to-date computer. But as a temporary hack, it appears that the library I use for the web requests allows turning off verification by a verify=False keyword. Needless to say, this is heavily discouraged, with warnings popping up all the time. My question is: what exactly am I risking if I turn off verification? I guess a third party could pose as the stats site and feed me bogus replies? I see this as pretty improbable and mostly harmless anyway (my scraping is very conservative and bails at erroneous formats); what, if any, are the graver risks I'm running?

I should add that verification will be turned off only for these specific requests, not across the board on this computer.

I think that turning it off for that specific site, if no sensitive information is transmitted (in either direction), is pretty harmless. By turning verification off, you are basically turning off verification by a trusted authority that you are actually talking to who you think you are talking to. It seems unlikely that somebody would try to spoof your old vista box.

Right, then it appears I haven't fallen victim to any huge misunderstanding. Thanks a lot for your answer! :)