Software: On & Off the Web

[Spastic Hamburger]

Got a tip. The web cache on Android has always tended to bog down the phone as, being a smartphone, it’s intimately connected to the browser. What I like to do is use private browsing for all web use where possible so that the cache is cleared automatically when I’m done, keeping it from building up and requiring manual intervention. This tip probably applies to other smartphone platforms as well but I have no way of testing them at this time.

[DeVaultSetter]

Did play The 7th Guest once, found it to be well presented and very playable, do remember consulting a hint sheet towards the culmination of the mystery. It’s still playable, of course, and if the rig has no CD drive, try an emulator for the Wayback version, or even the special ed on offer over there.
Do you use Chrome on there or the inbuilt browser. Not a frequent user of Chrome on the Android, so haven’t tested the limits enough for any helpful assessment. On the PC, the cache “self manages” on Chrome and Edge so that manual intervention hasn’t been required for years. As a consequence of intensive browsing episodes, cookies could do with some trimming after a while. 🙂

[Spastic Hamburger]

Yep, will need an external disc drive. Sadly, a lot of systems are forgoing drive bays now. Not really sure why as they’re incredibly useful. They also take less space on the desk than all these external hubs we now need as we keep running out of USB ports 😛

Yep, Chrome. The tablet didn’t come with a browser at all, it was pretty bare bones but there were no bones about it. Yeah, haven’t had any issues on the desktop at all with the cache. I used to clear it after every session but haven’t done that in ten years and haven’t noticed any slowdowns like I thought there’d be.

[DeVaultSetter]

We’re all going to be wafted up to the cloud(s), where the future promises a safe haven for our souls, thoughts and aspirations. leaving all earthly concerns, and hardware behind. 🙂
Meanwhile, after a kind lady asked me to re-install OneDrive, had absolutely tons of hours of fun with it, completely free of charge. That is, all charge of energy has been drained from this form, leaving a lifeless OneShell of OneNess in OneLimbo! 🙁

Edit: The notifications dropdown on youtube used to have clipped text for the first words in the video description, they have now replaced it with “For you”. Even though it’s very nice of them to say that, it’s futile attempting to stave off the advancing notion that something has been (un)intentionally barfed. 😛

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by DeVaultSetter.

[DeVaultSetter]

Chasing up a distant relative on Facebook regarding the family tree, and pasted the Gramps link in the message body. The link icon in the posted Facebook message resolved as Zoidberg. There’s no doubt he’ll be thinking twice about reaching out to this rather wonky end of the tree. 😀

[Spastic Hamburger]

A Zoidberg a day keeps the doctor away! 😀 Of course, he’s not a very good doctor 😛

[DeVaultSetter]

He looks great, at least, yet the dithering effect on FB as a result of attempting to enlarge the image is not complimentary at all. Zuck, make yer rendering more endearing m’dear (alternate lyrics to Have Some Madeira M’Dear):

NexusMods have a few issues with their new SW package over the holiday season, which I fear has started to grate on Picky. The search we can live with, the uploading of mods is something else!

[Spastic Hamburger]

😀

Yeah, my mom complains about the image quality all the time! 😛

Yeah, we had similar migration issues with IPS 4 back at DC but, with a much smaller site, it was much easier to work through the issues. Not everything converted nicely but uploads being down is a big problem!

• This reply was modified 11 months, 2 weeks ago by Spastic Hamburger.

[DeVaultSetter]

The forums migration at CPanel still burns hot in some memories, the post formats were not carried through in every case, and a few posts that were made around the time of migration were lost forever!
Signing up with FindMyPast probably won’t help as much as desired, even with a subscription. Their free services include:

1881 England, Wales & Scotland Census (transcripts are free)
All Irish censuses 1821-1911
Irish Roman Catholic Parish Registers
Britain, Campaign, Gallantry & Long Service Medals & Awards (transcripts are free)
All BillionGraves cemetery records
All Canadian censuses 1851-1911

Meagre pickings for some, no doubt, in the Stearn case, the 1881 census did help a bit. In the meantime really hanging out for “free” 1891 and 1901 censuses, (which should be free anyway, thus curated by the government in its own website, as the census has, is, and always will (or should) be a state run initiative.)

[Spastic Hamburger]

🙁 The Internet Archive may have some of them!

Yeah, old records like that are generally free if digitized. If not digitized yet, there’s usually a very small fee for tracking them down (small as in 5 USD or about 1 GBP) with the alternative being to go to the Hall of Records. I do wonder if I can track down some of my ancestors. Some of them did come over from Ireland, just not sure when

[DeVaultSetter]

Checked the IA for the time, no dice – even posted the links to them, the only response was from our ever present friend Mr. Nokandu.
At first spec FindMyPast has quite a few nice features albeit somewhat intrusive, did a search for a name on their site while logged on, and promptly in came an email entitled “We’ve discovered something just for you…”:

Is this your ancestor?
We did some digging after your last record search – and we found something interesting. If it’s relevant, you could use the details to start a family tree.
Have we found a match?
…
<Details of person searched>

The person details obviously relate to a later census, so clicking the embedded link naturally gets their subscription offer paywall page. 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

if we moved posts back to the beginning of the forums era, it would be like having Windows 98 books on the shelf.

I strongly disagree! Even old content like that can be useful. Often, Microsoft removes documentation for features that still exist but not used very much. Also, there are a lot of features they don’t document at all. It’s also helpful for the rare times that someone is still using Windows 98 (it does happen! I have an old 98 disc around here somewhere….)

Yeah, those paywalls can be annoying! They need to be upfront about things!

[Spastic Hamburger]

I need a new way to keep track of articles that are of interest. I had been using Pocket but they made some changes under the hood so it’s now extremely slow on mobile (sometimes it takes over ten minutes to launch if it does at all). Any ideas? Been saving things as bookmarks but that quickly gets out of hand. 😛

Still need to sift through them at some point and start sharing again.

[DeVaultSetter]

Might be best to consider open source alternatives like Omnivore or Wallabag where there’s a facility to port data over. How big is your database? Some cross platform rtf files can have a tendency to bloat – is it possible to convert them to something else?
Not quite the same thing though – certain sites which provide personal favourite sections – (e.g watchlists on IA or Wikipedia, or bookmarks on programming sites – e.g. AHK or Stack Exchange) seek to foster such a reliance on their services for users. Something else that cheers each time reminded, the personal YouTube favourites list exceeds well over 1,000 already, and newsflash, Pichai/Zuck won’t be introducing categories any time soon. 😛

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by DeVaultSetter.

[Spastic Hamburger]

Great, thanks! Omnivore looks interesting 🙂

Not entirely sure how much stuff I’ve got saved. Sadly, the old Google Reader archive was lost some time ago when that HDD died and I didn’t back it up first (really should have). Got other bits and pieces lying around, as well.

Yeah, I always like to manually save the links when I can instead of relying on the built-in lists. That way, I can always go back to the page if I need to without having to log in and it makes sharing things much easier 🙂

[DeVaultSetter]

Purchased a single use licence for AceMovi (no Wikipedia article yet) some time back, not a bad program to use, found out later the licence is per machine, not user. To use the licence on a second machine, PM them for a new key, so that the old key on the old machine won’t work anymore.
They, like most other editors have common video techniques documented, including the Ken Burns effect, used prominently in the 1990 Civil War documentary.

Surprised it got the name and attribution so late in the century – still-panning goes back to at least my DOB. 😛
NMM will now become the NMA – No Mean App, if all goes well. 🙂

[Spastic Hamburger]

Cool! Most video editing stuff is beyond me as I’ve never really messed with it 😛

The periodic name changes to xMM (First OBMM, then TESMM (or something), and then NMM) are rather problematic. The general name change was understandable but the latest one isn’t all that necessary. The issue is that other programs that rely on the current name could be thrown for a bit of a loop, especially older ones that aren’t updated as frequently.

[DeVaultSetter]

They also rather sparingly used the Ken Burns effect on a shot of a car with thugs all shot up towards the finale of Unleashed. 😛

Chrome tabs have memory usage now, there’s an explanation here. Get a feeling we’re moving towards the milestone of a dedicated Chrome memory stats summary page, as distinct from F12 memory which has specific memory info. For this page there is:

7.2 Mb 2.9kb/s stearnvault:main
104 mb 12.9 kb/s http://www.youtube.com.XXXXXXXXXXX
http://www.youtube.com.YYYYYYYYYYYY

The embedded youtube flicks are greedier than first supposed! Wonder if it’s possible to load a snapshot taken from there into VS?

[Spastic Hamburger]

We have that feature! Shift + Esc brings up a detailed Task Manager with all kinds of statistics! You can right click on the header for even more information. Pretty useful at times 🙂

Yeah, embedding takes up quite a few resources on the client side. The music thread is using 125MB! Outside of limiting how much stuff to post, the best solution would be to limit how much of the content is embedded with the others just showing up as links. Not ideal but does help to a large degree

[Spastic Hamburger]

Is there a way to disable the news ticker on the Windows taskbar? In finding it quite distracting and tend to glance at it. I’ve looked around in the various settings but couldn’t find it. I’ve always had difficulty finding my way around Windows, which is part of why I mostly use Linux 😛

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