Merc's Useful Tools of the day

[Mercutio]

I was googling for random crap I wanted to hand out to my students for a class tonight and I ran across some guy's repository of collected "cheat sheets" on various topics. Lots of useful things there and they might be worth a peak.

 

[Handruin]

I was googling for random crap I wanted to hand out to my students for a class tonight and I ran across some guy's repository of collected "cheat sheets" on various topics. Lots of useful things there and they might be worth a peak.

Those look pretty neat. I've only looked at a few but there is some decent info in them which at the very least I can hand to family and friends if needed rather than trying to explain those various topics.

 

[mubs]

Wow, the guy's all over the place. 'nix, Windows, apps, what not. Thanks Merc, this will come in useful someday.

 

[Mercutio]

Not so much a tool as a discovery: Thunderbird told me the magic settings to make Yahoo e-mail work with IMAP, something that I didn't think was possible.

Incoming Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
Outgoing Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Incoming Port: 993 SSL
Outgoing Port: 465 SSL
Username: Full address (@yahoo.com @sbcglobal.com or whatever)

This is incredibly useful since Yahoo Email is a black hole of suck.

 

[CougTek]

Thanks. It will indeed be easier to manage mine from Thunderbird rather than having to sustain Yahoo's crappy interface.

 

[CityK]

This is incredibly useful since Yahoo Email is a black hole of suck.

That is useful!

 

[Mercutio]

If you are lazy and need a Windows VM, Microsoft makes these available free and legally. For non-Windows platforms and non-Microsoft Hypervisors, even.

 

[P5-133XL]

Do those VM's work for general applications or are limited to just testing IE?

 

[Mercutio]

I only tried an XP/IE6 VM, but it looks fully functional to me.

 

[timwhit]

I've used these in the past for testing old versions of IE. I looked at the terms of use and it says they will only work for 90 days. Do you think that's true?

 

[Mercutio]

Video Downloadhelper is a ridiculously handy Firefox add-on in the first place, but I just noticed something that makes it even better:

In Firefox, if you right click on selected text that contains Youtube links, you'll see that you have the option to "Download video from selected Youtube link(s)" at the bottom of your context (right) click menu. This is particularly powerful if you happen to be, say, on a Youtube channel page and the text you have highlighted is the channel playlist. It saves to whatever default folder you set for Video Downloadhelper (it defaults to something retarded but hopefully you've changed it), but it's painless as can be.

 

[sedrosken]

Not so much a tool as a discovery: Thunderbird told me the magic settings to make Yahoo e-mail work with IMAP, something that I didn't think was possible.

Incoming Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
Outgoing Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Incoming Port: 993 SSL
Outgoing Port: 465 SSL
Username: Full address (@yahoo.com @sbcglobal.com or whatever)

This is incredibly useful since Yahoo Email is a black hole of suck.

Thanks, you just made me download Thunderbird. Previously I didn't have an IMAP email.

Also, being thrown for a loop as Thunderbird is drastically different from anything I'm used to.

 

[Mercutio]

GetMacApps.com requires a little more work than using Ninite, but it's the same basic idea, only more OSX-y.

 

[P5-133XL]

JScreenFix LCD image persistence and stuck pixel fix

 

[Mercutio]

JScreenFix LCD image persistence and stuck pixel fix

Have you tried it? Does it actually do anything?

 

[P5-133XL]

http://techreport.com/news/26315/how-to-reduce-or-eliminate-lcd-burn-in-and-stuck-pixels

and yes, I did try it and it did remove some slight image persistence on my monitor. I did not have any stuck pixels to fix.

 

[sdbardwick]

To my surprise, it did reduce burn-in on my circa 2004 Ultrasharp. I think I let it run for 2 hours.

 

[Howell]

Hard to understand how it works. Would it work through a terminal server session or is it doing something directly to the electronics?

 

[sechs]

and yes, I did try it and it did remove some slight image persistence on my monitor.

Can't this be fixed by just displaying blank white for an extended period?

 

[P5-133XL]

Can't ever say I've tried that, so I on't know.

 

[Mercutio]

I finally got sick of having to manually select my Google Drive folder structure while Saving stuff in Office 2013, so here's a script that adds it as a "Place" just like Onedrive and Sharepoint.

 

[Mercutio]

This Universal USB installer is pretty handy. Yes, it'll turn a random Linux .ISO into a bootable thumb drive. But I also noticed that it will do a lot of techie tools and rescue CDs without a whole lot of work.

Also, here's a Lifehacker tutorial on making a Live Windows install on a thumb drive without using an Enterprise Windows edition. Though you need Windows 8 if you want to use a USB3 drive at full speed.

 

[sedrosken]

I found something pretty useful... I mean, if you like using Gadgets...

8GadgetPack reintroduces the Gadgets feature from Vista and 7 that MS axed from 8+ in favor of Live Tiles. I use it to put a bigger clock and the date on the desktop while my taskbar is set to show small icons, as well as a few system meters. You'll find that this pack contains many more gadgets than what shipped with Vista and 7, that's one of the ideas.

 

[Mercutio]

The Sidebar was removed from Vista and 7 because it was found to have horrific security problems.

 

[sedrosken]

Really? ... Well then. Anyone know of any widget-type thing for the desktop that doesn't have those security holes? I like to know what day it is... and being able to see my cpu, ram, and hdd usage is nice. Weather info is nice but not entirely essential.

 

[Howell]

As long as you trust the 3rd party who made the gadget to secure it and not abuse you, you are fine.

 

[Mercutio]

Chome is now a quasi-runtime for using Android applications on any platform that can run Chrome according to this Lifehacker guide.

 

[sedrosken]

That's very interesting. Perhaps now I can ditch my aging Galaxy Tab for Clash of Clans?

This is the kind of app support MS should be baking into Windows. Instead of creating an entirely new ecosystem, why not run off a more mature and diverse ecosystem that already exists? I know that MS and Google could come to some kind of agreement, even if they don't want to. Their profit margins won't be suffering too much. The demand is tangible, seeing as someone's made libraries to let Chrome run Android apps.

 

[Mercutio]

Microsoft already has a high level universal run time of its own.
I think Android-as-run-time is potentially interesting mostly because it might be able to bring about a degree of desktop/mobile device integration that Microsoft itself has not.

 

[sedrosken]

That's what I was referring to. Instead of relying on the half-dead Win8/RT/Phone ecosystem, why not integrate with Android? This runtime proves it can be done, the greedy bastards just have to pay Google a hefty-enough sum for them to officially include it.

You'd think it'd be less work to port directly from Android to Linux, but that isn't going to happen until a lot more people use desktop Linux distros.

 

[Mercutio]

Microsoft's high level run-time is .NET, which is implemented on other platforms as Mono. It's more of a competitor to Java than a full application ecosystem. I have no idea how widely used it is to develop software for *nix or game consoles, but if you write C# for a living I guess it's better than nothing.

Android is a framework that basically runs java code on top of Linux. As far as I know, Android applications can't actually see down in to the underlying OS, at least not in such a way that having Linux as the underlying OS actually matters.

WinMo and WinRT are already out of the running for this stuff because one thing that neither of them have is actually access to Chrome, which is a requirement for using this technology. It'll work on desktop OSes and someone may eventually get it running on iOS, but since Google isn't developing for Windows-on-ARM, it's SOL.


All that said, a couple more days of hacking and someone has streamlined the process of repackaging .APKs and have given us a better tool for installing and launching them.

 

[Mercutio]

Here's a kind of handy article on how to set up cloud storage folders on a PC so the data from one gets synchronized to the others.

 

[Mercutio]

Gaffgun is a literal, rather than software, tool. I don't know if anyone needs one but it's actually just cool to watch.

 

[Stereodude]

Okay, that's pretty cool. :thumbleft:

 

[sedrosken]

T-Clock is a replacement for the standard taskbar clock in Windows. Don't quote me on it but I think it works with XP/Vista, and it is confirmed to be working on 7/8/8.1/10. It allows for much more customization than the standard clock does, much in line with most panel clocks offered by the various DEs usable under Linux. Personally I use it to give myself the date on the taskbar when I have it set to small icons, but then I don't have much imagination. Even if it could only do that, it is a very useful tool. Despite all this, it isn't very popular, in fact at the time of writing the page for the tool has only received ~4000 hits in the past few years. One thing it does not have, however, is a function in software to make it run at startup, so under 8+ you'll have to go on a wild goose chase for your startup folder (found it for you, it's %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup) and place a shortcut in it. It's a very lightweight utility, as it should be for a clock replacement, but sometimes I notice that it isn't very quick to start up when your computer starts - probably a side effect of being in the startup folder instead of somewhere given more priority during bootup, but that's easily ignored. Just being able to see the date on a small taskbar makes it a must-have in my book.

 

[Mercutio]

Since, for some reason, not everyone views copyright law as optional, the MPAA now has a handy web site to let everyone know where they can legally watch the things that were keeping them from stopping their cable TV or satellite service.

 

[ddrueding]

Since, for some reason, not everyone views copyright law as optional, the MPAA now has a handy web site to let everyone know where they can legally watch the things that were keeping them from stopping their cable TV or satellite service.

That's fun. Typed in my two favorite shows just for kicks:

Grand Designs: "not available"
Match of the Day: "not available"

The UI can be much cleaner without any data.

 

[Mercutio]

Speaking of, hey, here's a brief introduction to using RSS feeds with uTorrent. I leave the question of how that might be related to the preceding two posts to the reader.

 

[sedrosken]

I know what you're doing there. I see it.

 

[sedrosken]

There's a small utility included with Windows called mklink. It's a command-line utility that requires admin privileges to run, and it makes a symbolic link to the target. Usage is about what you'd expect, but it defaults to making file links so to make a directory link you have to use the /D switch. I used it to make my local user content folders (Pictures, Videos, Music) symlinks to my personal NAS share. I know that if the network goes down, I lose access to my media, and I'm okay with that. I was tearing my hair out because it was refusing to let me add the network share to my libraries, as it wouldn't let me index it. There wasn't anything in the local content directories anymore anyway. I have yet to see if Windows keeps them as symlinks on a reboot, but when I finally get around to doing it (I've just been hibernating it lately rather than shutting it down, I have tabs open in Firefox and for some reason restoring my sessions doesn't always work) I'll let you guys know how it does.

For as useful as it is, you'd expect the IT people at schools and such to make that default. Eliminate any and all problems with saving on the local computer vs. on their network share. Don't know specifically what versions it's included with, but I can say for certain that it's included with 7 and 8.x.