Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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A Useful Tip for Advanced Win7 Users

If there actually be such critters. 😉

Create a new folder on your desktop. Rename the folder anything you want, followed by

.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

(Yes, the period begins the text to copy-paste in the file name, just like a hidden file or folder in Linux.)

It’s that part I’ve included above in the blockquoted section that’s important, because it creates a folder that’s chock full of user controls that are not otherwise easily accessible via the GUI. Sure, some–even most–of them can be accessed via various buried dialog boxes, but quick and easy access to 15 “Action Center” applets/controls, 10 Admin tools, management for all attached devices and much, much more all in one location is pretty neat.

Warning: some of these tools and applets can get the naive user in trouble, so don’t come crying to me if you fit the bill and go ahead and play in this sandbox. But if you have a good idea what you’re doing and make fairly frequent Restore Points, back up your system regularly, nothing in this collection will toast your Win7 install.

And it’s just too handy for words to have it all in one place. Especially in a Windows box. Very nice.

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Minor Gripe With Win7 Disappears

The chief appeal of Windows 7 for me has been the much-improved Windows Media Center. In fact, WMC is what convinced me to finally bid farewell to all my travails attempting to make an HTPC work right in Linux.*

But.

The proprietary “wtv” format WMC uses to record television shows has been the one and only gripe I’ve had. Every now and then, I’ve made desultory searches for a way to deal with the issue of burning off DVDs from WMC, since doing it “the Microsoft way” results–at best–in archive copies that are good for that alone, copies that cannot be played in an ordinary DVD player.

Now, that’d be OK if I had also gotten off my lazy butt and finally built a media server and connected it to TVs that we want to view the files from, but I’ve not, and my schedule looks to become hectic in the coming months, so something to convert the files would be nice.

Here it is. Simple really. Win7 already has a built-in .wtv-to-.dvr-ms file conversion facility. From there, it was a simple thing to find a free (yeh, I am a tightwad) utility to convert the file to something usable on an ordinary DVD player.

Bob’s your uncle.

Of course, later on, with file storage on the NAS I’ll build when I get a round toit (I lost mine somewhere and need a new one) and a media server the files can be accessed through, this will become less of an issue, but for now, DVD-Rs are cheap and easy to burn.

Finally.

It’d still be nice if M$ didn’t cause this kind of thing with its proprietary file formats, but the workaround is actually simple enough, and WMC is still far, far easier to implement and use, and more “complete” than any other approach I’ve found.

*Don’t get me wrong. I still use Linux Mint for a primary work platform (and other OSes for other uses), just running in a Virtualbox VM on a Win7 host. It’s just easier that way to have the advantages of Linux and still use WMC to record those shows we do want to watch, but in “time-shifted” mode–in better-than-hulu quality.

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Poor “Mother Earth” Just Can’t Catch a Break…

Treehuggers may doom the environment:

Will Vegetarian Humans One Day ‘Emit’ More Carbon Dioxide & Methane Than Cows?

In a suppositional 2060,

“…the relative significance of direct human flatulence to the total carbon dioxide and methane loads was shown to have increased dramatically by a massive human shift to a highly legume- and cabbage-dependent diet. More vegetarian farts, in other words.”

At least folks’d have the wherewithall to perform CPR w/o having to get up close and personal with a stranger’s lips… well, in one sense at least. (OK, I’m linking the video, but I’m not posting it here. *heh*)

This video, OTOH, just begs to be posted with this topic:

(Of course, this all presupposes that CO2 is “bad” for the environment. Plants don’t seem to think so, though, and even if it were to cause “global warming” it’d just extend growing seasons, etc. Methane? Yeh, well, we could bottle that… )

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New to twc central

Well, the old hand mill burr grinder we’ve been using for coffee has pretty much bit the dust. Oh, it still works, after a fashion, but I’ve been unable to fix the “loosy-goosy” action as metal parts begin to fatigue and wear out, because I cannot find proper replacements. So, it’s now relegated to decorative status and been replaced by:

Nice coffee mill, and the grind is easily modified, unlike our old handmill. I like the auto-shutoff, though I rarely need the feature since I make most of my coffee by the mugfull with the neat lil Bodum French press s-i-l-to-be gifted me with at Christmas.

12-oz is just about right for one of my fav mugs, but 2Tbs of beans–about what it takes to brew a robust cuppa joe in the lil Bodum after being nicely ground by the B&D mill–isn’t enough for the auto-shutoff to kick in on the coffee mill. Big deal. So I press a button twice.

O Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree!

Addendum:

Gourmet/Gourmand: is coffee “good drinks” or “good eats”? Doesn’t matter to me, cos I’m about to offend both.

In a tightwad’s never-ending search for the most value possible from EVERYTHING, I have settled on a compromise of good taste/value (of which, frankly, “good taste” is a value consideration) in my Fp coffee brewing. I’ve settled on two brewings (like two pressings of olive oil, I suppose) from the same grounds in my lil French press. The first is pretty much as instructed in the Bodum lit, except that I do no pour hot water over grounds in the Fp; I pour cold water over ’em, stir and then microwave the mixture. Then I do let it sit and brew up for another couple of minutes before pouring the first cup.

Then I commit my crime: I pour another load of cold water over the grounds and let that simply steep until I’ve finished my first cup and am ready to brew another. Then, microwave and steep.

The first cup: robust but certainly not “too strong” (whatever that means; how can coffee–great as simply beans chewed plain–be “too strong”? :-)). Second cup: more flowery and certainly a tad lighter, but still really coffee. Yes, I did try a third cup. *blech* Please trust me. It’s not an experience I’d wish on you. My worst enemy, sure, but not you. Of course, folks that think stuff brewed from a Folger’s can is coffee would probably like it well enough.

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Troubling Information About “Higher Education” in England

Note: The Underpants Bomber’s technical incompetence reflects badly on his alma mater, University College London. After all, The Underpants Bomber “Complete[d] a three-year engineering and business finance degree at University College London”1

If his former professors aren’t hanging their heads in shame and the dean of his college hasn’t hung himself (no comment on whether or not the dean would have the engineering competence to do the job right), then they ought to.

Shame on the University College London! Dreadful incompetence run amok…

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The 0! Establishes The Newspeak Method of Dealing With Terrorisim

“How to Handle the Terrorists” (someone needs to write new lyrics to “How to Handle a Woman”… or maybe not. Perhaps under The 0!’s White Cafe-au-lait House rules a simple word change from “woman” to “terrorist” will do.)

  1. Buy more “stuff”
  2. CYA for so-called “counter-terrorism community”
  3. Free porn for TSA employees!!!
  4. Rearrange the deck chairs.

Go ahead. Watch the speech by TOTUS linked above (as “glibly” er “ummed” through by The 0!). Read between the lines and translate from Dhimmicrappic Newspeak. I submit that my analysis is an accurate summation of the “steps” The 0! announces to “deal with” the problem of “man-caused disaster” (to use HIS DHS appointee’s terminology)–all on the heads of a “small band of violent extremists” not, of course having anything to do with a broadly-based worldwide jihad. Of course, TOTUS’s speech would have been much more convincing (though still as stupid) had TOTUS gotten someone who’s a competent public reader to deliver it.

Or, as Small Dead Animals put it:

The War On Man-Caused Disaster

Bringing a monthly status report to a Semtex fight.

Continue reading “The 0! Establishes The Newspeak Method of Dealing With Terrorisim”

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A Right Attitude When Dealing With Willful Idiots

I imagine there might be one or two–perhaps even more, though I can scarcely imagine such a thing–among the congresscritters, Mass MEdia Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and the whole gaggle of Loony Left Moonbats, etc., who actually intend good toward their fellow citizens.

It could happen. Well, it could. And so, I should note,

” …the right attitude to take toward well-intentioned people who didn’t have the advantages of education and intelligence, but who nonetheless insisted on opening their mouths… “

…is to smile at the idiots and simply ignore them. No, it won’t help anyone to attempt educating them, to try to lead them out of the darkness of their willful ignorance. After all, such attempts are akin to giving a pig voice lessons. The pig won’t learn to sing and you’d just be wasting your time while annoying the poor thing.

Of course, the pig does at least have the excuse of being useful. Yum! Bacon! Sadly, no such excuses can be found for congresscritters, Mass MEdia Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and the whole gaggle of Loony Left Moonbats, etc. Even those who might–might, I say–be stupidly intending good are just useless oxygen sinks. At best.