a giant notepad

Searching for a Google Reader replacement - Part II

2016-11-13T08:08:00.000-08:00

I'd been using Feedly for a long time but haven't really been happy with it for a number of reasons.

I came across another alternative reader I hadn't tried before: BazQux Reader

It's not a free option, but they do have a 30 day free trial. If you like it you can purchase a subscription.

It is FAST, and has features like

being able to subscribe to public Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds!
fetch the full text for a feed
and ties in with other services like Evernote

Paired with Feedme for Android, and it's what I've been missing for a long time!

uTorrent: Run batch programs after torrent finishes

2016-04-01T07:47:00.000-07:00

We will use a batch file to run the previously mentioned programs all at once

1. Open Notepad to create a new batch file

2. Enter this text:

:: Run when uTorrent finishes downloading item

@echo "Notify via pushbullet"
python "pushbullet_torrent_download.py" "%3 => %2"

@echo "Downloading subtitle"
start subliminal download -l en "%1"

@echo "Removing file from uTorrent"
python "remover.py"

3. Save batch file

4. In uTorrent, under Advanced > Run Program, enter
"[PATH TO BATCH FILE]" "%D" "%F" "%N"

uTorrent Remove After Torrent Finish with Python

2016-03-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

1. Download Remover.py

2. Enable Web UI

Preferences > Advanced > Web UI > check Enable Web UI.

3. Disable Web Token Auth

Preferences > Advanced > webui.token.auth *false.

4. Set authentication to use: admin / admin.

5. In uTorrent preferences, enter c:\pythonw.exe remover.py in run this program after a torrent finishes

** See how to run in a batch with other programs

uTorrent download subtitles with python after torrent finishes

2016-02-28T07:42:00.000-08:00

1. Install Subliminal

2. In uTorrent preferences, enter subliminal download -l en "%D" in run this program after a torrent finishes

** See how to run in a batch with other programs

uTorrent download notification in PushBullet + python

2016-02-23T07:40:00.000-08:00

1. Create API key on PushBullet site under account settings

2. Install pushbullet.py

3. Create a file called push.py with the following:

import sys
from pushbullet import Pushbullet

api_key = "API_KEY"
pb = Pushbullet(api_key)
pb.push_note("Downloaded", sys.argv[1])

4. In uTorrent preferences, enter "push.py" %N in run this program after a torrent finishes

** See how to run in a batch with other programs

PotPlayer: MUCH better alternative to VLC/MP-HC

2016-01-30T08:52:00.000-08:00

I used to use VLC and Media Player Home Cinema (MP-HC) as external players for Kodi/XBMC.

Both of those have their short-comings:

MP-HC: When playing videos at a faster speed, subtitles get out of sync. And sometimes the audio as well, depending on the file.

VLC: Gives me gray screens when playing at a faster speed or fast forwarding on >= 720p files. I tried a bunch of solutions but nothing worked.

Enter PotPlayer. Works fantastically, without the above listed issues!

Hard drive stress test (setting up new computer)

2016-01-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

Full test: Western Digital Lifeguard Tools

1. Run an extended test
2. Write zeros
3. Run another extended test

Do a quick format

Run a surface test: Macroit Disk Scanner

** Tests can take several hours depending on size of drive

uTorrent WebUI causing high CPU usage

2015-12-23T16:07:00.000-08:00

After upgrading to the latest version of utorrent (3.4.5), I noticed a big spike in CPU usage and unresponsive desktop GUI when uTorrent AutoLabeller (uAL) was on.

When I turned it off, the desktop client became responsive again when I closed uTorrent Autolabeller, and the CPU usage went down as well.

After fiddling around for a bit, I realized this only really becomes an issue if the uAL is monitoring uTorrent to stop/remove completed torrents.
Changing that setting to "N" fixed the issue.

* In order to remove torrents automatically, I have it set to run a script after the torrent finishes.
uTorrent > Options > Preferences > Advanced > Run after torrent finishes.
This causes a high CPU usage as it accesses the same WebUI url but it's for a brief period in time till the script finishes running.

The issue seems to be with WebUI.

bookmarklet to nuke elements from page

2015-11-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

Drag this link (Nukeit) to your bookmarks bar.

It will allow you to easily remove unwanted elements from the webpage.

Not mine. Grabbed from somewhere on the interwebs

A simpler readability bookmarklet

2015-11-13T18:33:00.000-08:00

than the (slower) official one

Drag this bookmarklet (Readability) to your bookmarks bar

UPDATE: Readability has shut down it's service.
An alternative is to set up your own readability clone

Flatten windows directory structure

2015-10-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

My car stereo system allows for playing mp3 files off of a USB stick. When mp3s are in subfolders, it makes it difficult to jump songs predictably. Easiest way around it is to flatten all mp3s under a single folder.

I found this post describing how to use powershell to do it. Here is what I'm using for my own reference:

(ls -r -include *.mp3) | % { mv -literal $_ $_.Name}

TP-Link Archer C8 wired bridge / access point

2015-09-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Finally decided to replace the Apple Time Capsule with a better router because of the many issues.

I replaced it with the TP-Link Archer C8. TP-Link Archer C8 does not have a bridge mode. The unofficial way to do it seems to be:

Connect internet cable modem/router ethernet cord to one of the LAN ports. Don't connect anything to the WAN port
Change Archer C8 LAN IP address to one on the cable modem/router's subnet.
If the cable modem/router is 192.168.0.1, set the Archer C8 to 192.168.0.2
Disable the DHCP
Reboot

VMWare Tools fails to install or update in VM

2015-08-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Go to http://softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds/vmw-desktop/player/
Select latest version (7.1.2 as of this writing)
> your host OS
> Packages
> your guest OS

Download the file to your host OS, untar and execute. This then silently installs the VMware Tools ISO Image into the VMware Player working directory.

Now try re-installing VMWare Tools as usual.

Fix slow LAN transfer speed of files in Windows 7

2014-01-14T17:56:00.001-08:00

Disable “Large Send Offload (LSO)”

Large Send Offload is a technique of improving network performance while at the same time reducing CPU overhead. Apparently it does not work very well, so it was suggested to disable it (ref MSDN).

Follow these steps:

Open Start Menu, right-click on Computer and select Properties
Under Control Panel Home located on the left side of the window click onDevice Manager
You will get a list of all devices on your machine. Expand Network Adapters.
Find your Network Card and double-click on it.
Select Advanced tab. You will get a list filled with different options.
Select Large Send Offload V2 (IPv4) and set the value to Disabled
Do the same for Large Send Offload V2 (IPv6) if it is available
Click OK

Disable Large Send Offload V2 on the other computer and everything will work as expected.

ref: http://www.howtosolutions.net/2013/06/fixing-slow-sending-or-receiving-of-files-through-lan-network-using-windows/

MPC-HC Increase Playback Speed Adjustment

2013-12-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: I've started using PotPlayer instead. It's a MUCH better solution!

You can customize the frame rate increase steps that Media Player Classic Home Cinema takes with the hotkeys (Ctrl+Up / Ctrl + Down).

Under View > Options > Playback > Speed step, set your percentage.

I've set mine to 8%, meaning each jump will be 1.08 times normal speed.

Unfortunately, I've noticed that when playing videos with speed adjusted, external subtitle files (srt/sub/...etc) fail to keep in sync. I've tried the internal filter, external DirectVOB, and ffdshow without success.

The alternative is to use VLC for playing videos with subtitles at a rate faster than normal speed.

Unable to delete file from XBMC - Windows

2013-11-24T11:17:00.004-08:00

I was unable to delete a few files from XBMC. The folder permissions were set correctly, but turned out the culprit was utorrent.

The fix:

Preferences > Advanced > bt.read_only_on_complete

change this to false

Searching for a Google Reader replacement

2013-07-02T10:51:00.003-07:00

Trying out Feedly
The interface takes a bit getting used to, with the wasted space and their non-contrasting color scheme.

I would prefer to have:

the unread count stand out more
categories disappear after I've read all items within (this only happens at full page refresh)
it let me scroll through items instead of automatically scrolling to next "page"
feeds outside a folder
it not let me accidentally click through to another site by making images clickable
better sharing to Google+ (instead of the crippled item with a link through feedly)

Also, there's a bug in their "keep unread" counter.

But they have a semi-decent android app, support from IFTTT.com, and they're fast.

As of 31 July, 2013, here's what didn't make the cut:

* Digg Reader
I really wanted this one to work, but they haven't had time to get their shit together well enough.
The biggest issue is marking/unmarking items as read:

When scanning through, items don't get marked as read so I keep seeing items I've already read through
This means no marking as unread either
There are also no unread counts

* The Old Reader
This is pretty much exactly what I want!
The only downside is that it is SLOW

* Hive Reader
Same deal as The Old Reader

Mapped drives: Disconnected until double clicked

2013-05-18T15:46:00.003-07:00

I have a few scripts that transfer files to my Apple TimeCapsule, which I've mapped as Z drive on my HT-PC. A lot of times the mapped Z drive will show as "disconnected" until I double click it. Then everything starts working as expected.

Obviously this defeats the whole purpose of automating things...

The solution is this little gem: MapDrive

Set it up as instructed, and you're good to go. Easy peasy.

I've got mine set up in:

Windows startup folder
A file that runs before starting up XBMC

ES File Explorer: Mount Dropbox as Virtual Drive on Android

2013-05-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

On Android, instead of using the official Dropbox app, you can use ES File Explorer (free) to mount the cloud storage as a virtual drive.

This means that you can now copy/paste/delete as usual and use those files like you would any other on the device.

For RetroArch, playing games stored in the cloud or transferring game saves is a piece of cake! You can carry on playing from where you last left off on another device.

This also works for other cloud services like Box.com and Google Drive.

DosBox Portable on XBMC with RomCollectionBrowser

2013-05-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

To get DosBox Portable working with RomCollectionBrowser, I ended up making a separate config file for each game and setting up RomCollectionBrowser like so:

<RomCollection id="12" name="DOS">
    <emulatorCmd>D:\DOSBoxPortable\DOSBoxPortable.exe</emulatorCmd>
    <emulatorParams>-noconsole -conf "%ROM%"</emulatorParams>
    <romPath>D:\DOSBoxPortable\Data\settings\*.conf</romPath>

...

    <useEmuSolo>True</useEmuSolo>

...

</RomCollection>

You HAVE to use solo mode.

To disable the PortableApps splashscreen, copy the ini file from Other\Source to root
and change DisableSplashScreen=true

These settings would probably work for other add-ons/front-ends (like AdvancedLauncher or Hyperspin)

uTorrent Watch Folder: Auto Labelling

2013-05-11T19:49:00.001-07:00

uTorrent allows you to specify Watch Folder: Any torrent files in this folder will automatically get added.

If you set a Dropbox folder as a watch folder, you can now remotely add torrents to download!

The problem is though, that these don't get labelled and thus, they do not get sorted into separate folders.

This is where the uTorrent Auto Labeller comes in
https://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=100212
https://github.com/nesler/uAL

Stick the torrent files inside nested folders in the main watch folder and it'll automatically label them according to folder name!

* Note: the forked repositories have fixes the main one has not pulled in yet, so grab the program from the last updated fork

UPDATE: uTorrent Version 3.4.5 Web UI causes high CPU usage when monitoring for deletion
http://miscee.blogspot.com/2015/12/utorrent-webui-causing-high-cpu-usage.html

RSS + uTorrent: automatically download torrents

2013-05-11T17:32:00.002-07:00

Autodownloading torrents using RSS is dead simple.

Select Feeds on the left bar

Click Add RSS Feed button.

Paste the URL in, give it a name, and make sure "Do not automatically download all items" is selected.

I use the following as feeds:

http://www.dailytvtorrents.org/rss/allshows

http://www.ezrss.it/feed/

http://showrss.karmorra.info/feeds/all.rss

When the feeds have loaded, right click and add your favourites

(more details: http://www.utorrent.com/help/guides/rss)

100% disk usage in Windows 8

2013-05-10T09:57:00.005-07:00

Using a clean install of Windows 8 x64, I've been noticing an unusual behaviour recently: 100% disk usage at random times for varying periods.

This meant that everything would become completely unresponsive!

The culprit turned out to be the Windows Update background service. While installing updates in the background the disk usage would spike up to 100%.

The only way around is to change the option in Windows Update to download the updates, notify you, and then let you install the updates when you want to.

I tell windows to install the updates when I'm not going to be using the laptop for a while or at night before shutting it down. No more random disk usage spikes while I'm trying to work!

Update:
The issue can also arise from a failed process in a Hyper-V machine running in the background. Rather than showing it as it's own process, Windows simply encapsulates it under System (which can cause confusion).

A Better Offline Mapping Application for Nexus 7

2013-05-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

I used to use OsmAnd, but it really sucks for a number of key reasons:

offline address search barely works
you need to specify the municipality instead of the general city

I came across a much better app: CoPilot Live

There's a 14 day free trial, and then you can purchase the app for $10.
After the free trial, the voice guidance and turn-by-turn navigation get disabled. The rest of the app continues to function. I purchased it because I want those features, and it's really inexpensive for what you're getting!

I've probably wasted more in gas in the last few days trying to use OsmAnd for offline routing.

Having used CoPilot Live for 5 days in 4 different cities in Canada, I'm VERY happy with it.

There are some things I've noticed:

Odd routing at times (but that may just be due to tricky intersections or one way roads)
When a street name changes from one to the other over the course, it won't always tell me the name I see on the street. (but then when I miss the turn, it recalculates the route!)

Some minor annoyances:

When looking at the map, it doesn't easily show me green patches for parks (like on Google Maps)

I wanted to stop and enjoy the day at a small park and couldn't find something nearby easily on there, so I switched over to Google Maps offline cache to find it

I can't rotate maps to any direction using two fingers like on Google Maps

UPDATE:

When you purchase a license, it is associated to the device.

I purchased the license while on my tablet, and when I loaded the application on the phone, it wouldn't recognize the license. So either purchase a separate license or continue use the free features on the secondary device.

Automatically close crashed "not responding" applications

2013-04-22T07:29:00.003-07:00

My HT-PC is pretty much a stand alone windows box with no input other than my remote control. On occasion XBMC or some other application will crash, leaving me without a way to End Task. I have to jump on the Remote Desktop Application to kill the application.

This is less than ideal.

I found a free solution that works brilliantly: Restart on Crash
http://w-shadow.com/blog/2009/03/04/restart-on-crash/

Restart on Crash is tiny app sits in the system tray, monitoring specific applications. It will then either close or restart any application that has crashed or is not responding for a certain period of time.