Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Yegolev]

Well, this conversation is already much more productive than any of my other technical questions.

So, TerrariaServer.exe does indeed pop a console window into which commands can be typed.  In fact, without editing the config file, you have to enter some parameters just to get it going.  After editing the conf file, it pretty much just pops up a console window which acts as STDIN/STDOUT (does Win have STDERR?).  It then will sit there, waiting on you to type "exit" which saves the world and quits.  If not for the required step of saving the world, I'd pretty much say "fuck it".

Sounds like "piping to a command line" is a thing in... what?  CMD.EXE?  Powershell (which is POSIX compliant)?  Maybe not what I need here but I'd like to see an example of whatever Ironwood was talking about.  I might be thinking of it incorrectly, but I'd love a batch file (in the Shutdown gpedit thing) which would tell TerrariaServer.exe to "exit" so it would save the world state before dying.

Or a proper linux port.

[Chimpy]

In a CMD (or powershell) window, type the following:

C:\<DIRECTORY THAT TERRARIA IS IN>\terraria.exe /?

Typically that will tell you what command line switches you can run with the exe. From the sound of the behavior you mentioned, it probably will take a terraria.exe /exit command directly from the command prompt (you could even try that).

If that is the case, you can just put the full command you want into a text file, rename it whatever.bat, and then use the Shutdown scripts in local group policy to run that.

[Lantyssa]

The problem will likely be that the command has to be entered into the existing command window.  Once the first instance is running it's possible that running TERRARIA.EXE with a switch will work, but more than likely it will either say "Terraria.exe is already running" and shut down (gracefully or not) or it will spawn a second instance with whatever flags you have.

That's why I was saying use AutoIt.  You can grab the window name, make it the focus, then have it enter text or do mouse clicks.  (This way even if other windows are open and the focus, the Terrarria one is used.)  Presumably the Auto Hot Key that Goreschach suggested will too, I'm just not familiar with it.

[Sky]

Scary thing is I think I could actually do that on a mac with scripting. And I'm a big dummy.

But I had to do a thing like that once (basically what Lant said about giving focus to the correct window and interacting with it's menus).

[Yegolev]

Yes, if this was not Windows then this entire conversation would not exist.  Lant's solution seems most likely, and I'll get around to trying it sooner or later.  Until then, I'll have to RDP into the instance and shut her down gracefully, which is only a minor annoyance really.  Having the OS trigger a world save when I told AWS to stop the instance would just be icing on the gravy.

[schild]

I want to remap my break key to paste the text string: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How do? Also, if you say Autohotkeys, just slash your wrists with a butter knife.

[ezrast]

what

edit: that post reads like, "I want to edit my ugly cousin out of this photo I took; what software do I use? Don't say Photoshop; I don't need any of that fancy stuff."

[Trippy]

He wants a keyboard macro so when presses Break it types out "¯\_(ツ)_/¯".

[MahrinSkel]

He wants a keyboard macro so when presses Break it types out "¯\_(ツ)_/¯".

He wants a programmable keyboard, but since he insists on using mechanicals, I don't believe such a beast exists. It's Auto Hotkeys, or something equivalent. I used to use a clip-board utility that might be able to do what he wants, but now I can't even remember the name of it.

--Dave

[Yegolev]

Am I allowed to say "shell aliases" instead of AutoHotkeys?

[Hawkbit]

Probably not the right place, but it's tech related, so...

Fitbit - my wife wants one. She's been using the app on her phone and she's a pretty active person. Pros/cons? Model differences?

Any advice is helpful! Thanks.

[Trippy]

Why does she want one? Or, stated another way, what is she trying to track?

[Hawkbit]

That's a great question.

She's been good about putting her calories in the app, along with her exercise info. The app already seems to calculate steps and such, so I'm not sure what else the wristband is providing that the app on her phone isn't.

[Viin]

It can count steps without the phone (maybe more accurate) and I think it does something with sleep cycles too. But with the stuff in the phone, if she always carries it, she probably doesn't need a wrist band. I'd give you mine but I think my wife wants to use it for some reason.

[Sky]

I don't like the whole steps thing. We've been using Runtastic's free app to track our walks, turns out we usually walk 3 miles in the evening. Also like that it maps out the walk.

[Venkman]

It can count steps without the phone (maybe more accurate) and I think it does something with sleep cycles too. But with the stuff in the phone, if she always carries it, she probably doesn't need a wrist band. I'd give you mine but I think my wife wants to use it for some reason.

Yea that's kind of it. My wife has the entry level fitbit and likes it. It's not even a wristband, but a belt clip. Woe be the days she forgets to put it on . But my iPhone 6 does all the same stuff and I'm usually carrying it around anyway. There's also an app for sleep cycles.

[MahrinSkel]

DNS Servers: My ISP's DNS is prone to bouts of flakiness, where suddenly it just stops responding for a minute at a time or more. Although I can work around this by configuring each device to use the Google DNS servers as backups, they will first wait for my ISP's to time out, and they (the google servers) are fairly slow to respond themselves. What I would like to do is configure a DNS server on my NAS, but as this is not something I have ever messed with before, I don't know where to start. It seems like the normal use for this is designed to be the DNS server for a domain, forwarding routing information to other DNS servers, I don't need this, I just need it to provide DNS lookups for systems on my LAN.

Any pointers, even a link to a *useful* "How do I?" listicle would help?

--Dave

[Chimpy]

Have you checked your router to see if you can set the DNS servers given out via DHCP in the DHCP options?

[MahrinSkel]

Have you checked your router to see if you can set the DNS servers given out via DHCP in the DHCP options?

Yeah, not possible, it's hardwired to get them from the ISP's DNS servers.

--Dave

[Yegolev]

I don't want to be That Guy, but what is the reason to not use Google DNS as primary?

[Chimpy]

I don't want to be That Guy, but what is the reason to not use Google DNS as primary?

I misread his post, I thought that is what he was doing but was not wanting to do it manually.

[Yegolev]

More toward the question, my ISP-supplied gateway does not have any facility to change the DNS servers, which is expected since that's how AT+T keeps some control of where you go.  I had to alter the DNS entries on individual equipment.  I believe this was easier than setting up my own DNS.

[Trippy]

Get your own router and change the DNS servers in the DHCP settings in there.

[MahrinSkel]

Get your own router and change the DNS servers in the DHCP settings in there.

Tried that, unfortunately, that breaks the TV receivers (yes, they're on the same network, unfortunately they won't work if I put the modem into Pass-Through mode, even if they are plugged into the modem and not the overall network). I think I got it working, I set up the NAS' DNS server to operate in 'Forwarding' mode, with caching (so it only depends on the exterior DNS servers the first time each 24 hours that it is requested for a particular hostname). Been testing it out overnight with my personal machine, seems to work acceptably.

--Dave

[Trippy]

Don't put the provider's modem/router into pass-through mode -- have your router create a separate network. E.g. your provider's modem/router will create, say, 192.168.0.X, and your router will be on that network at, say, 192.168.0.2, then your router will create a separate network at 192.168.1.X with the gateway address 192.168.1.1. Your TV receivers can stay on 192.168.0.X but your other devices will connect to your router on 192.168.1.X.

[MahrinSkel]

Well, that worked for the DNS problem, but the wireless TV set-tops went out and the DVR got flaky. They've got those things loaded down with all kinds of hyper-paranoid security features so people don't use them in a VPN, and apparently having two IP networks on the same LAN is one of the things that sets them off.

--Dave

[Trippy]

Huh, weird, okay.

[Strazos]

So for the last two weeks I've been trying to upload a video to Youtube. I've used different resolutions, codecs, etc via the GoPro studio application.

Every time, it uploads fine, but then fails to convert after an extremely long wait. Any idea why, or what I might be doing wrong?

[Trippy]

Download a tool like Mediainfo that will show your container and codec info and post that info here:

http://mediaarea.net/en-us/MediaInfo/Download/Windows



YouTube can handle a bunch of formats but to make it easiest on their system you'll want your video to be in the MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 container type, with the video using the H.264 codec and the audio using AAC, MP3 or WAV.

[apocrypha]

Is it a GoPro 3 or 4? I seem to remember that the GoPro 3's do some funny shit with their videos and that their MP4's aren't quite standard. You may find you have to convert it to a different format before uploading it.

[Strazos]

It's a Hero Silver 4.

All the videos play just fine on my system, so no idea why Youtube is having a stroke when trying to convert them.

Here are a few versions I've tried to upload. The upload goes through, but they all fail to convert (whatever that means):

https://flic.kr/p/wc8H3K

[Trippy]

Still need video specs inscluding codec and container info.

[Strazos]

Trying again with more info:

https://flic.kr/p/wUSmDb

[Trippy]

Yeah...those are not standard formats. See if the editor tool that can view/edit that file can export/reencode to an MP4 container with the H.264 video codec. The audio is fine as PCM (same as WAV format) or you can convert that to AAC to make the file smaller when uploading.

For the video format you'll want to keep the native 1280 x 720 resolution (720p), for H.264 bitrate pick something around 5 - 7 megabits per second and keep the 16:9 aspect ratio and 29.97 frame rate.

For audio if you want to switch to AAC pick either 256 kilobits per second or 384 kilobits per second, stereo, 48 KHz.

[Strazos]

Weird - I was hitting the right options in the software, but for whatever reason...they were not being acknowledged. But we're good to go now!