David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Besides all the changes to the GUI that happened post-Windows XP, they also made one useful change to the command prompt. When you run a command, it’s now possible to pipe output to the clipboard.
If you’re like me and write a lot of documentation, or you just take a lot of notes while doing computer maintenance, it’s a big boon.
Antivirus software can be among the hardest software to uninstall, because its hooks dig so deeply into the operating system. I’ve seen it fail to uninstall for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it requires a password, which was entered by someone other than you and never written down. Or sometimes something gets corrupted, and the program’s uninstaller fails. If you need to remove stubborn antivirus software, there’s a solution.
Enter Appremover.
Needing a secondary case fan for my current PC build, I picked up an Antec Tri-Cool Double Ball Bearing fan, the 92 mm size. Even on its highest speed, I found it to be quieter than the fans in the PCs on my desk at work. On its lowest setting, you pretty much can’t hear it at all. At its full retail price of $25, I wouldn’t bother with it, but when it’s on sale for less than $10, that’s not bad.
Google announced this week that it’s defaulting to https (secure) searches, and not passing search queries on to the sites its user clicks anymore. It’s the end of an era, I guess, and I’ll miss it.
Yeah, I looked at the search queries that come into this site. I’ve been doing it for years.
So I thought I’d experiment with a plugin to help me better manage the ad blocks on my blog. The WordPress plugin Awesome Ads looked promising, so I tried it. Not only did it not work, it also threw my admin page into an endless loop of errors. This function not found in this php file. That function not found in another php file. Line 175 seemed like a problem.
Here’s how I fixed it. I won’t say it’s the right way, but it worked.
I had a Compaq Presario S5140WM case that I wanted to reuse for a new system build. There’s nothing really wrong with the case, but in the 8 years since the S5140WM was a mainstream PC, we’ve started putting things like card readers and audio jacks on the front of the PC. This machine only had USB in front.
Rather than replace the case, I installed an internal card reader that includes audio jacks, an eSATA port, a Firewire port, and three more USB ports, bringing it right up to 2011 standards. It fit in a 5.25″ bay, which is fine. The system has two bays, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever want to put another 5.25″ device in the second one.
But installation wasn’t as straightforward as it could be. Wouldn’t you know it?
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Sometimes people ask me for help with their finances. And I’ve seen the effects that debt can have on people. I believe having no debt is best. Having debt that you’re paying off is second-best. Festering debt, however, is crippling. That’s what you want to avoid, before it catches up with you. Not only can bad debts keep you from borrowing more money, it can also make it more difficult to sign a lease or get a job.
Here’s how to make a plan to pay off that debt and improve your credit score.
Here’s a good, timely Google search query: scraping by advice.
I looked, and I’ve never written anything that matched that query well. I know a lot of people are hurting right now. I’ve been in some tight spots and I’ve gotten out of some, so let’s talk about what I would do, on a really practical level, if I ran into another tight spot next week.
I found this short guide today to troubleshooting Windows 7’s power management.
You can use powercfg.exe, a command-line utility, to figure out what programs are keeping your computer from suspending, and if your computer is waking up at weird times, what program is waking it up. Useful, and non-obvious.
My name is Dave. I am an Amigaholic.
I thought I was recovered. But I don’t think you ever recover. Not really.
You see, this week I was trolling Craigslist for garage sales. I look for trains, toys for my boys, and other things that strike my fancy. I spotted a sale that advertised an Amiga computer. I shouldn’t have put it on my list, but I did. I didn’t want to buy it, but I had to see it. I had to. Like I said, you don’t recover.