A thread for boring computer questions.

you could futz around with tabs (make them closer first) to do the ellipses

(but doing this manually is crazy and setting up the document so word can do the contents page automatically is pretty easy, as long as you have fewer than like 200 sections.)

they're called leading dots, btw. see, e.g. for how to set them up: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070611120305AAQLLKF

oooooooh, that link is helpful. Thanks caek and harbl!

i have a wmv file i'd like to convert to mp4, for playing on my phone. what's the best converter for this?

im using a program called Format Factory at the moment and it's not very good, no matter what settings i put it at, or whatever file i try to convert the wmv into, it always results in a crappy jerky file. is there any lossless way of doing this or have windows done the unimaginable and created a digital file format that will ONLY EVER degrade?

one workaround i have, which isn't very efficient is to use a program called 'Replay Video Capture' which captures the stream of whatever is playing on your desktop. bit useless if you're converting a 45min doc to play on your phone at a later date. im not quite sure how good quality this is, and it's a bit of a faff so if there's a v good program to use instead, that does batch operations too, i'd love to know.

Anything you do is going to look worse than your original, but it is going to be so small anyways it probably doesn't matter. Try handbrake, it is free and cross platform.

http://handbrake.fr/?article=download

a couple of people have told me that they've sent emails which i've never received. they are people i believe. i'm wondering if i'm operating some kind of over-zealous filter.

i'm using a virgin.net email address and have norton internet security.

any ideas?

thanks.

.

One of the kids has been fiddling with the computer and they must've done some weird keyboard shortcut shit or something, cos now everything is being displayed on the screen sideways, writing and all. I'm sitting here trying to do stuff with my head sideways on the desk. Anyone know how to flip it back again? It's Windows XP btw.

Okay: ctrl + alt + pointy-uppy key, all fixed. Thanks anyhoo.

You've never witnessed a grown adult trying to turn an LCD monitor upside down beacuse they accidentally hit that key combo? Well I have.

Wow, that's fun! I just flipped the HR computer screen while my co-worker went to the washroom.. mwahahaha

The really evil thing is that the mouse pointer gets buggered up as well.

I know, it's very disorienting

um... why is my virtual machine (xp via vmware fusion) failing to pick up my wireless network and then when it did apparently 'see' it and connect it didn't have any traffic up or down

possible help here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/111646

I seemingly held my finger on the <Shift> key for two long and now my keyboard has some kind of delay on it that makes typing almost impossible. It clears if I hold down the shift key for 10 seconds or so ... but how can I resolve this permanently?

Question 2: My subscription to Norton has lapsed. I've noticed that if I buy it new from PC World this works out cheaper than re-knewing my subscription online ... would it work to do the former?

get Avast.

free version?

yeah

If you want to pay get NOD32.

Any thoughts on the shift key question?

Maybe you somehow changed the default, have a look at it with regedit and see what it says.

If you can look at User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard] the default should be set to 1.

> Any thoughts on the shift key question?

settings are under Accessibility somewhere (control panel? accessories?) but they've never made much sense to me.

Control Panel --> Accessibility Options. In the Keyboard tab, UNCHECK ALL THAT FUCKING SHIT!

cozwn: do you have an IP address conflict between your vm and your host pc?

thanks mr snrub, was posting from linux so didn't have that information to hand but i know it sometimes bites me due to my habit of pressing shift and then forgetting which other key i was going to press.

(keyboard problem resolved - thanks)

is there any advantage (on windows xp) to using a fully installed version of a program rather than a portable version?

FYI: There's a fault on virgin.net, whereby the spam filter is being ridiculously over-zealous. It's apparently being fixed but in the meantime you need to go to your webmail (ie. online) and check the spam box to see what has been intercepted.

anyone have any idea why i cannot access ilx from my home computer? it appears to be the only site (at least i haven't encountered any others) that i can't reach.

windows xp sp2
doesn't matter which browser (tried firefox, ie, opera) -- firefox says the connection has been reset
pinging ilxor.com from the command line returns 'no response from host'
winmtr gives me a lovely list of ip addresses that seem to be working fine, then 'no response from host' on the last one
trying 72.249.72.243 gives the same result
looked at my hosts file, nothing appears to be amiss
nothing on various virus/spyware scans
nothing unusual looking on a hijack this scan
wtf

sp3, actually, i guess

i have rebooted, reset the router/modem, all that shit

this isn't a good fix, but have you tried using a public proxy server in your browser settings and see if it works that way?

yeah, i was gonna try that at some point i guess. it is v. strange

What do you get when you go to http://sandbox.thehold.net/ILX/ ?

i think i tried that and could not connect, but i'm not sure. will try when i get home.

yeah, sandbox doesn't work either

did your wife install netNanny?

a probing question

i am able to connect via a proxy. uh, what does this mean?

there's probably some blocking software on your end

unless your ISP decided to block ILX for some reason

same problem here. it was fine until the server outage, now i can't connect except via proxy. tried the whole reboot/restarting router/modem/clearing cache etc.

weird. no other sites are affected. i wonder how many people think it's still down..

out of curiosity, is your isp v3r1z0n?

The hosts did do a network reconfigure recently, which could potentially be causing this. We had a problem not long after we moved there with some machines (mostly Linux iirc) not being able to connect. I'll dig up the emails and see what changed.

serious qn

how do I make my internet faster? is upgrading the only option? I was in the apple store today and ws like woah

If you can get virgin cable there's a 50mb option which is wau fast. Otherwise try adsl2 (o2/be).

oooh I'm on virgin; I'll give them a call