Author: Dave Farquhar

How to keep paint from drying out

Dave Farquhar DIY
How to keep paint from drying out

Paint is expensive. And no matter how well you plan, it always seems like you have a significant part of a gallon left over at the end of a project. How do you keep paint from drying out so you’ll have it for touch-ups, or your next project? Here’s a trick an old-timer taught me.

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Resize images in bulk in Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows
Resize images in bulk in Windows 10

In case you haven’t noticed, I blog a lot. And I learned the hard way that if my blog posts don’t have pictures, no one ever clicks on them. Since I have a day job, I tend to write in bulk, and that means I tend to deal with images in bulk. Here’s how I resize images in bulk in Windows 10.

The classic application Irfanview, a favorite image viewer among long-time Windows users, includes a bulk rename feature. Here’s where it hides and how to use it.

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Can a storm damage a modem?

Dave Farquhar Hardware

In early August 2020, strong storms blew through St. Louis, causing power outages and other disruptions. A friend shared a story about the storm causing a modem to burst into flames spectacularly, then asked if it was real. It probably was. It’s entirely possible for a storm to damage a modem, sometimes in dramatic fashion.

Although it’s unusual, it is entirely possible for a storm to damage a modem. The damage can be partial, or complete.

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Can you paint drywall without primer?

Dave Farquhar DIY
Can you paint drywall without primer?

Hanging drywall is a pain, so it’s absolutely tempting to try to skip steps when you can. So can you paint drywall without primer? It seems like an unnecessary step, but is it?

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What is a PS2 keyboard?

Dave Farquhar Hardware

Sometimes you’ll hear references to a PS2 keyboard, or, more properly, a PS/2 keyboard. It’s an old standard, and a fair number of newer computers can’t use them anymore. But what is a PS2 keyboard? And if it was good enough to last so long, why did it go away?

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Was the Macintosh a failure?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Was the Macintosh a failure?

Was the Macintosh a failure? I’d call it a late bloomer more than I’d call it a failure. But in the mid 1980s, industry analysts were calling it a failure. Here’s why, and how it survived.

Analysts in the mid 1980s considered the Macintosh a failure because its sales were disappointing. It took the platform several years to come into its own, and of course, no one would call it a failure today. It was the machine that was supposed to usher in the future, and it took a while for that future to arrive.
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How to change Windows 10’s default image viewer

Dave Farquhar Windows
How to change Windows 10’s default image viewer

Windows 10 is greedy about some of its file associations. My favorite JPEG viewer is Irfanview, but Windows 10 doesn’t make it easy to use it by default. Here’s how to change Windows 10’s default JPEG viewer to something lighter-weight than the default Photos app. I like Irfanview because it’s lightweight and surprisingly powerful, but this trick works for other apps too. Here’s how to change Windows 10’s default image viewer.

With very few exceptions, only applications installed from the Microsoft store are eligible to be set as the default viewer for image files. To set your default picture viewer to something like Irfanview, you have to install it from the store first to make it eligible.

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Windows Explorer is slow? Try this.

Dave Farquhar Windows

On older machines, and even sometimes on not-so-old machines, Windows Explorer can get sluggish, and painful to use. It may happen suddenly and it may be happening all the time. In either case, here’s how to fix it when Windows Explorer is slow.

When Windows Explorer is slow, there are several options regarding how it displays files and what it displays that you can reconfigure to speed things up. And if you’ve been working with Zip files, restarting Explorer frequently makes a big difference.

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How to keep paint brushes from drying out

Dave Farquhar DIY
How to keep paint brushes from drying out

It’s inevitable. You’re painting, and you reach a point where you have to let the paint dry, or you’re just out of time for the day. But you’re going to have to come back and paint again, so it seems like a waste to clean the brush, only to load it up with the same color paint again. Here’s how to keep paint brushes from drying out. Both during a project and at the end of the project.

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What is daisy chaining?

Dave Farquhar DIY
What is daisy chaining?

At my second job at Best Buy, we were taking out a display to make way for flashy new product that needed lots of space. That meant a new shelf layout, and new power strips. “No daisy chaining!” the manager bellowed as we plugged in the power strips. But what is daisy chaining? And is it always bad?

Daisy chaining means plugging one device into another, like tying together a garland from daisy flowers, rather than running wires all the way back to the original source. Daisy chains can be used for transmitting power, data, or both.

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