Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Chimpy]

Does it have an external brick? You should be able to find one with the same specs without too much hassle.

[Yegolev]

Not sure where to post this, so will start here.

I'm once again re-engineering some scripts, mentioned it in another thread or two.  While driving my son to school today I realized that I'm probably re-inventing a wheel or two by laying out the various functions in a excel sheet and attempting to use that as a way to juggle them around.  Wondering if there is some small guide on programming principles which will speed up this process?  I suppose it might be called refactoring, although I don't intend to change the bulk of functions, instead I'm going to move some into separate files.  Before I do that I need to lay out which ones call which ones, then determine how I want it to look in the future.  There must be something better than napkin sketches and excel cells.

[Salamok]

Not sure where to post this, so will start here.

I'm once again re-engineering some scripts, mentioned it in another thread or two.  While driving my son to school today I realized that I'm probably re-inventing a wheel or two by laying out the various functions in a excel sheet and attempting to use that as a way to juggle them around.  Wondering if there is some small guide on programming principles which will speed up this process?  I suppose it might be called refactoring, although I don't intend to change the bulk of functions, instead I'm going to move some into separate files.  Before I do that I need to lay out which ones call which ones, then determine how I want it to look in the future.  There must be something better than napkin sketches and excel cells.

Some IDE's support refactoring, for example PHPStorm allows you to refactor common boiler plate code into functions or methods, rename stuff, move files and dirs around, etc...  I don't think it has a tool for planning out your refactor but it is pretty handy at helping you orchestrate your grand design.

[Yegolev]

Hmm, I'll see if I can find that.

Anything out there like "Refactoring 101" for people who either didn't take CS or failed out of it?

[Venkman]

Ok, starting to build that barebones PC from a few weeks back. Now a separate question (maybe related):

I'd like to get a projector. It would mostly be used for movies. HD/widescreen but I don't care about 3D. I have no idea what to look for and certainly don't trust Best Buy.

Recos?

[Trippy]

Hmm, I'll see if I can find that.

Anything out there like "Refactoring 101" for people who either didn't take CS or failed out of it?

There's a book by Martin Fowler called "Refactoring", oddly enough, that's the standard. There's also a book called "Design Patterns" by the "gang of four" (Gamma, et al) that ypu may also want to read.

[Hawkbit]

Hmm, I'll see if I can find that.

Anything out there like "Refactoring 101" for people who either didn't take CS or failed out of it?

As a neophyte developer myself, I asked my buddy about this.  His recommendations were the Michael Feathers book "Working Effectively with Legacy Code", with a followup of "Clean Code" by Martin. 

His feeling is that the whole refactoring process is cyclical, in which the best code eligible for refactoring is testable code, but the testable code needs to be in a somewhat decently working state.  And the cycle begins anew. 

I don't really have personal experience with it myself; any web code I've written so far I've left after a week and never touched again. 

[Strazos]

So I ended up getting the Dell...seems pretty nice so far, but haven't gotten a game pulled down on it yet. It's pretty sleek, though I wish there wasn't nearly as many odd bloatware programs installed...

Just an update, but wanted to say that the Dell Inspiron that I purchased last year (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081YPUS4/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1) has been totally worth the $1000 I paid for it. Has great performance, the screen is OK; it just does whatever I want it to. And it's lightweight and sharply designed, to boot. The battery life is pretty OK, though it understandably tanks a bit if it's off the powerpack while you're gaming. It runs WoT and XCOM very nicely without issues.

Sooo, thanks Trippy.

[Trippy]

NP.

[Strazos]

Hmm, so my iPod Nano (maybe 4th gen? Purchased Sept 2009) inexplicably stopped playing music today. It didn't seem frozen, all the menus worked, and I could still get sound (menu sounds, radio). The songs are still coming up, but not playing (the play button works, but shows a track length of zero seconds).

I get back today and read online to remember how to do a hard restart - but now all my songs are gone. Does this sound like a dead iPod? The files appear to still be there, as the iPod reports only about 100mb free.

If it's not actually dead and just needs to be hooked back up to my PC at home to upgrade software or re-download music, that's fine, though I'd rather be able to use it for the remainder of this week.

[Hawkbit]

Anyone try using a Chromebook?  My kid is starting to get to the point where she needs a PC, lots of web math games and Club Penguin.  Google Docs integration for her diary would be great.  Plus, $250 is pretty hard to beat. 

Any advice would be great.

[Strazos]

Anyone been having issues with the new nVidia drivers? Using 314.07 with my GTX 260, and I've started to get fairly frequent driver crashes in Win7...really annoying when I'm trying to play World of Tanks. Occasionally the drivers crash just when browsing.

Not seeing any other video-related problems, so I'm thinking this is a software problem vice hardware.

[Goreschach]

Anyone have concrete info on the rumor that the new GPU's for both NVIDIA and AMD have been delayed until q4? I was hoping to replace my aging 8800 soon. It's been freezing up a lot, and it's probably about to crap itself.

[Trippy]

Anyone been having issues with the new nVidia drivers? Using 314.07 with my GTX 260, and I've started to get fairly frequent driver crashes in Win7...really annoying when I'm trying to play World of Tanks. Occasionally the drivers crash just when browsing.

Not seeing any other video-related problems, so I'm thinking this is a software problem vice hardware.

314.22 is the latest WHQL driver. You should should also clean out your old driver files before installing any new ones. You can do that through the installer by selecting "Customize" during install.

[Trippy]

Anyone have concrete info on the rumor that the new GPU's for both NVIDIA and AMD have been delayed until q4? I was hoping to replace my aging 8800 soon. It's been freezing up a lot, and it's probably about to crap itself.

Which new GPUs? NVIDIA next architecture -- Maxwell -- is delayed until 2014 but that was announced last year.

[Sheepherder]

314.22 is the latest WHQL driver. You should should also clean out your old driver files before installing any new ones. You can do that through the installer by selecting "Customize" during install.

Worth noting: don't use any sort of standalone driver cleaning utility.    Some of them are not very discriminating in what they trash.

[Strazos]

314.22 is the latest WHQL driver. You should should also clean out your old driver files before installing any new ones. You can do that through the installer by selecting "Customize" during install.

Could this be accomplished by simply re-running the installer and doing as you suggest?

[Trippy]

Yes you can do a clean install doing a reinstall of your current drivers. The selection is "Custom", though, not "Customize" like I said above.

[Morat20]

Everytime I have to reboot my router, Windows 7 takes AGES (like I'd have to leave it alone for twenty minutes or so) to detect the wireless connection is back up.

My phone, my xbox, ipad -- everything else sees a solid, regular connection as soon as it reboots. Windows? Nada. I have to manually disable and enable the connection to get it to see it again -- and it's still hosed up a bit. (Tracert finds errors between my PC and the wireless -- lots of timeout problems).

Any idea how to fix this?

[Trippy]

Reboot the Windows box too

Does

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

speed things up?

[Chimpy]

Try Merge or delete network connections Link to instructions.

[Venkman]

Two unrelated:

1. What's a good way to block my kids from seeing explicit content on YouTube? I think there's a setting in Google but I always clear cache on exit of Chrome. If the only way to block content on YT is to be logged into a kids-friendly account on Google then I'd configure the browser on the OS account I have for them to not clear cache.

2. How exactly does iPhone camera - cloud - photo stream work? Like, I thought it was that any picture/video taken went into photostream and therefore wasn't eating space on the phone. But I'm perpetually out of space with no way to limited the size of the photo stream cache, and then recently realized all pictures I ever took are still in the "camera" app folder. What I want is what I thought it did: take picture -> upload to photostream -> take file off phone.
2a. And does photostream keep every picture ever taken? I recall something about only the recent X amount?
2b. And what does backup-to-cloud do? I have that storage space for backups, but not sure what's going there (and my important things are in Google Docs anyway)

[Trippy]

Two unrelated:

1. What's a good way to block my kids from seeing explicit content on YouTube? I think there's a setting in Google but I always clear cache on exit of Chrome. If the only way to block content on YT is to be logged into a kids-friendly account on Google then I'd configure the browser on the OS account I have for them to not clear cache.

Instructions here -- not sure how effective they are, though:

http://www.safesearchkids.com/youtube-parental-controls.html

2. How exactly does iPhone camera - cloud - photo stream work? Like, I thought it was that any picture/video taken went into photostream and therefore wasn't eating space on the phone. But I'm perpetually out of space with no way to limited the size of the photo stream cache, and then recently realized all pictures I ever took are still in the "camera" app folder. What I want is what I thought it did: take picture -> upload to photostream -> take file off phone.
2a. And does photostream keep every picture ever taken? I recall something about only the recent X amount?

Photo Stream is meant to be a synchronization mechanism, not a backup solution, for sharing photos onto a Mac or PC or another iOS device.  If you can't physically sync your iPhone to a Mac or PC (which will sync your photos), you can use Photo Stream to sync that way. Your iPhone will send new stuff to Photo Stream and then a Mac or PC you can download those images locally.

Photo Stream and iCloud only store your photos temporarily. Do not try and use it for as a backup solution.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4486

2b. And what does backup-to-cloud do? I have that storage space for backups, but not sure what's going there (and my important things are in Google Docs anyway)

Nobody else knows so you are in good company there. No seriously, iCloud does not "just work". I wouldn't rely on it to keep even the stuff that's on there now safe.

Edit: article with some of the issues with iCloud:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4148628/why-doesnt-icloud-just-work

[Venkman]

Fantastic thanks Trippy. Seems like a few of their half ripe baked things, but glad I asked before I started deleting pictures. Though, those goddamned Toca Salon images my kids keep saving...

[luckton]

Alright, story time.

Way back in the day of 2004, I picked up a D-Link DGL-4300 for my home wifi/router solution.  Worked magnificently for years as my router for Comcast cable internet, along with LAN parties and other stuffs.

Last year, we switched to CenturyLink Prism for TV and internet.  It's their new version of DSL that uses fiber to get past the 1.5M cap that most DSL people had/still have; the new stuff gives me a 10M pipe.  It works great, but when we got the service, I had to shelf the DGL-4300, as the device CenturyLink installed was a Cisco DDR2200, a modem/router/wifi device that could also handle the video feeds to the cable boxes and such.

For a while, service was great, but then over time I began noticing that whenever I was pulling down anything large, say, a game client off of Steam, the router would start to bog down, the TV video feed would start to get choppy, and eventually the router would just crash and reboot, resulting in a loss of both internet and TV for about 5 minutes while the system got back up.

Finally got to the point where I said "fuck it".  I took the DGL-4300 out of storage, turned off the DHCP, turned off the wifi on the Cisco device, and hooked the DGL back up.  With the wifi offloaded to the DGL, the system works flawlessly.  No lag now when I pull down large files, TV signal is clean, no more crashes.

Now my new issue is upgrading the DGL.  See, for an over-the-counter router, esp. for the number of power surges and such that it's taken over the last 9 years of use, I can tell it's starting to have it's own little hiccups.  I get occasional lag-spikes while gaming and such; nothing severe, but enough to affect my LoL game a bit.  Plus, there's the whole thing of "I'm now two generations behind in the wifi spec" rocking the 802.11b/g mixed mode.  I'd like to get on-board with the new ac spec.

I know I could just pick up a wifi access point device, but most of what I've seen is selective mode; it's either wireless b/g or n, not simultaneous.  If I want simultaneous, I've got to spring for a full-on router, which won't actually be doing any WAN routing as it was intended to do.  My DGL-4300's descendant, the new DGL-5500, can do everything I want it to do (dual simultaneous 2.4/5G bands for both b/g and n/ac support, all the latest in wifi tech and tricks), but I feel like I'm wasting part of it by turning it into a simple access point to handle the wifi-work of the Cisco device.

Any thoughts on this?

[Lantyssa]

Get the full router.  Even if you're only using it as an access point, it off-loads that bit as you say, and you'll still have it if you change service again in a few years.

Plus more ports to mess around with if you get other devices.  Now you can plug your refrigerator and toaster in, too.

[Yegolev]

Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

[Stormwaltz]

I'm posting this in a couple of forums filled with people smarter than me...

I have a PS3. I'd like to run it through my PC, taking input from PS3 and outputting through my video and sound cards, so I can view it on my PC monitor and hear it through my PC speakers. Is this possible? My video card has HDMI connection, but AFAIK it only goes out.

I can hook the PS3 up to my monitor with an HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapter, but since my monitor has no sound capability, this is... not completely helpful.

[Chimpy]

I know of no way to use a PC as an HDMI passthru device.

[Trippy]

I'm posting this in a couple of forums filled with people smarter than me...

I have a PS3. I'd like to run it through my PC, taking input from PS3 and outputting through my video and sound cards, so I can view it on my PC monitor and hear it through my PC speakers. Is this possible? My video card has HDMI connection, but AFAIK it only goes out.

I can hook the PS3 up to my monitor with an HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapter, but since my monitor has no sound capability, this is... not completely helpful.

Yes this is possible but there are other ways to do what you want that are cheaper and easier.

If you really wanted to play your PS3 through your PC the easiest way is to get a capture device that captures component video like this one from Hauppauge. This is typically how people make videos of their PS3 or Xbox 360 game play (that aren't just them pointing a video camera at their screen). You can also, in theory, do the same thing with HDMI video, which would give you better quality (in theory), but that requires more esoteric hardware and you have to work around the HDCP copy protection on the video signal. Note that most of these devices introduce some amount of input lag into the game play. Whether or not it's noticeable depends on the game, hardware device, and software used to display the video.

The other way to do this is to not try and play the PS3 video through your PC (the most complicated part) and just have it connected straight to the monitor. Then the only thing to solve is getting the audio signal through your PC speakers. A simple way is getting an audio mixer to attach to your speakers if your speakers can't already handle a secondary input. You could also pass the audio signal from the PS3 into the mic or aux input on your PC sound system and use it as the mixer but that would mean you would have to have your PC on just to get the audio. Another option, which is what I use for some of my consoles, is to get a KVM switch that includes audio switching and switch your monitor and speaker inputs that way.

[luckton]

I'll vouch for the Hauppauge stuff.  Really simple stuff for getting video feeds into your computer with little hassle.

[Viin]

Apparently my home Win7 install is several months behind security updates from MS. I think moving my Users folder to my RAID drive borked it up, but Microsoft doesn't even know what this error number is. Stupid jackasses.

Has anyone done the trick of moving the Users folder from C: and still have Windows Update work?

Edit: not only is Windows Update borked, Windows Live is also screwed (won't update) which means DiRT3 won't save my progress. 

[Chimpy]

Not being able to run windows updates doesn't sound like something that would be broken by the users folder being moved.

Does your event log say anything about the user profile service having errors?

[Salamok]

So I have a Dell Studio 1747 (Service Tag: 1LJX0M1) and would like to bump the memory up as high as I can for as cheap as I can.  Currently I have 6gb and the largest memory modules Dell recommends on their site for my system are 4gb for $45, Newegg has these cheaper but I am not sure how closely it will need to match what I have in my system.  They also state that my system has 2 slots and the max memory is 8gb.  I assume I have a 4gb and a 2gb module installed and I can just order another 4gb to get to 8gb.

I also noticed Newegg has 16gb kits of PC3 10600 (204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM) will my Dell support them?

[Salamok]

So I took a look at the memory calculator on kingston's site and it too is telling me 8gb is max for this system.  Does anyone know if they are going off the actual chip set used on the MB or are they just taking this from Dell's system specs?'

Also found out it uses the PM55 Express Chipset and looked that up on Intel's site but it does not specify any memory controller specifics.