Any computer wizz's here?

[willedoo]

A mate of mine lived remotely and he knew I had a ton of movie files that could be played on a computer. He asked me if I could fill one of those thin USB powered external drives with movies. Next time I talked to him, he'd lost the lot, nothing on the drive, so I bought him another drive and reloaded all the movies for him. So then it happened again, he lost the lot. I finally got the story out of him. Those USB powered drives have a bad habit of not booting properly and throwing up an error message along the lines of the disc is damaged or corrupted and needs formatting, click yes/no to fix it.

 

Usual procedure is to ignore the message, disconnect and reconnect the drive and it would usually boot the second time. The mate wasn't computer savvy, didn't know what reformatting meant and just did what the error message suggested, not realising it would wipe the drive.

[willedoo]

Bloody computers. It's always been a love/hate relationship. I have a laptop connected to a television screen that I use as a second (and main in my case) monitor. I cover the laptop screen to avoid distraction and use the big TV screen as a TV and also main computer monitor. Today I flipped from the TV to the computer screen with the TV remote (select input source HDMI instead of DTV) and windows 10 was overdrawing on the screen all of a sudden. It was making it very difficult to use.

 

I googled and googled Windows monitor issues and spent a lot of time trying all the suggested fixes. I changed the Windows screen resolution multiple times to no avail and even tried rebooting with no luck. The thing I couldn't figure out was that the laptop monitor was normal; only the second (TV) monitor was overdrawing. And then the penny dropped. It was nothing to do with the computer. The TV remote has the button to change input (from TV to HDMI computer input) right next to the button to change the TV screen resolution. If you're not careful, you can bump the wrong button and change the TV resolution. What an idiot.

[nomadpete]

PEBKAC !

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, nomadpete said:

PEBKAC !

Pete, I didn't know you spoke Russian.

[red750]

For the uninitiated, PEBKAC is a derogatory acronym for Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair, in otherwords, operator error. Another error type is Id-10-T.

[nomadpete]

7 hours ago, willedoo said:

Peter. willie had already called himself an ID 10 OT.

 

I thought I was being somewhat kinder.

[willedoo]

PEBKAC !  Well it could pass as Russian (Eng: REVKAS!), only problem is it doesn't mean anything. Maybe we could pass it on to vladimir; he needs all the help he can get at the moment. It could be a new special military word for him.

[willedoo]

I've previously mentioned elsewhere on the forum the use of a javascript switcher to bypass paywall blocks on websites. These are small apps that can be added to a browser as add-ons or extensions. Adding the extension to the browser will place a widget or icon on the browser's url toolbar which can be clicked to disable/enable javascript. Clicking on it will cause the page to reload with javascript disabled.

 

It doesn't work with all paywall sites, only the ones that use javascript to block access, but it still works with probably half of the paywall sites. It's also useful for other things as well, such as getting rid of annoying ads or pop-ups that are covering page content. Also handy sometimes for downloading a photo from a site that has right click mouse function disabled via javascript. One click of the widget, the page reloads, and you have right click function on the webpage.

 

Some webpages need javascript to display the entire page, so toggling javascript off will result in no page content at all. Also most webpage media players need javascript enabled to play video.

 

I use Firefox, but similar extensions are available for Chrome and Brave, and most likely other browsers as well. The one I use for Firefox is called Javascript Switcher. I like it because it only disables javascript on the individual web sites and not the entire browser. That means any other websites open in other browser tabs will not be affected, only the particular site on which you use the switcher to disable js. Some other apps disable javascript globally across the whole browser which I find inconvenient. That means if you disable js on a website in a separate tab, when you go back to other tabs, the page will reload with js disabled as well.

 

Here's a couple of screenshots; the first one shows the Javascript Switcher widget (green icon) on the url toolbar. It's  bit hard to see because of the custom browser background I have in Firefox. The second photo shows the app in the Firefox add-ons manager.

 

[willedoo]

How times have changed. I was looking through a box of old thumb drives and found one with a capacity of 256MB.

[spacesailor]

I still  have  floppies .

I mean the ' original 1.2 Meg or 75 K s. ( about 4 inch  )

But only use the New 150  & 250 Meg ' super floppy ' .

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

9 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

I mean the ' original 1.2 Meg or 75 K s. ( about 4 inch  )

Now you're braggin' 😉

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Floppy ain’t bragging.

[Jerry_Atrick]

at 4" and floppy at his age, it is...

[spacesailor]

Don't forget all our software started on two people getting, two pieces of ' basic ' software to merge into one , that made ' double ' hdd drives obsolete. 

They put their little program onto those terrible little ' floppy disk's ' .

Admittedly it all surpassed my meager knowledge. 

spacesailor

[pmccarthy]

With the CPM machines you had to insert a startup floppy, then your set of program floppy’s. If it was, say, word processing and you wanted to do something really complicated like change font, you had to insert another floppy. And then you had your work saved on a data floppy. But it was heaps better than typing and hand calculators.

[nomadpete]

10 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

at 4" and floppy at his age, it is...

Don't get too cheeky young fella. Your time will come.

[nomadpete]

9 hours ago, spacesailor said:

terrible little ' floppy disk's '

Not so little, the original full height floppy drive took a 8" floppy disk. These were way too large to use as drink coasters for coffee cups so compact FDDs were invented.

[rgmwa]

15 hours ago, pmccarthy said:

 But it was heaps better than typing and hand calculators.

... and 10 figure log tables and slide rules. 

[Marty_d]

13 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Not so little, the original full height floppy drive took a 8" floppy disk.

The Ron Jeremy of disks.

[nomadpete]

9 hours ago, Marty_d said:

The Ron Jeremy of disks.

I don't think I know that person. Is he one of your friends, Marty?

[Marty_d]

Not a friend of mine, Peter - but he does seem to be on very friendly terms with many young ladies!

[octave]

I think Ron Jeremy might have gone a little downhill since his heyday.

 

Ron Jeremy found ‘not competent’ to stand trial for multiple rape charges

[pmccarthy]

How come I’ve never heard of him? I have been watching the wrong sort of movies.

[nomadpete]

28 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

How come I’ve never heard of him? I have been watching the wrong sort of movies.

You must have good taste. And you have been watching the right sort of movies.

[Jerry_Atrick]

8 hours ago, pmccarthy said:

How come I’ve never heard of him? I have been watching the wrong sort of movies.

Looking at your sig, you'e still on Buck Rogers.. need to change the B to an F, and consider what a rogerring means over here, you may get close...