Ray Woodcock's Latest

End of This Blog. Transition to WordPress.

2012-06-29T11:41:00.000-04:00

For reasons sketched out in a previous post, I do not presently plan to post any more messages in this blog, and will instead be posting my technical stuff in a new WordPress blog.

Finding and Cleaning Up EMLs That Display HTML Codes as Text

2012-06-22T13:25:00.001-04:00

I had a bunch of email (EML) files scattered around my hard drive. Some of them, I noticed, were displaying a lot of HTML codes. For example, when I opened one (using Thunderbird as the default EML opener), it began with this: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="

Windows Explorer Replacements: FreeCommander and Explorer++

2012-06-22T13:09:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, I looked at replacements for Windows Explorer ("WinEx"), including especially FreeCommander. The runner-up, at that point, was Explorer++. Further experience with FreeCommander prompted me to take a closer look at Explorer++ after all. This post provides further information on these two utilities. As I used FreeCommander, I was surprised to find that a few right-click (

Windows Explorer Has Stopped Working: FreeCommander and Other Alternatives to Windows Explorer

2012-06-21T13:56:00.000-04:00

I was using Windows 7. I installed a new EVGA video card. Immediately, I began getting "Windows Explorer has stopped working" error messages, especially when I would right-click on a file or folder and try to move it somewhere else. A search led to a Microsoft webpage that identified the video driver as the first culprit. I had also had problems with the previous video card (also an EVGA),

How Google Started to Become a Problem

2012-06-21T13:43:00.002-04:00

I guess I have assumed that almost everybody loves Google, and those who don't are the bad guys. Microsoft, for example. Maybe it takes a huge corporation to stand up to another huge corporation. If so, Google is a champion for those who have disliked various things about how Microsoft got its start, what it did to increase its power, and what it has done with that power. There comes a point,

Exporting Thunderbird Emails to PDF - Another Cut

2012-06-19T15:01:00.001-04:00

I was using Thunderbird 11.0.1 in Windows 7. I had accumulated some emails that I wanted to export as individual EML files. An EML would still be readable in Thunderbird, and it would carry any attachments along with it. I had attacked this problem on several previous occasions. As before, I was not sure I would get all the way through from Thunderbird to EML to PDF. This post provides

A Multiboot USB Drive with Windows 7, Ubuntu, UBCD4Win, Drive Tools, etc. - Second Cut

2012-06-18T23:19:00.000-04:00

I had previously worked through the steps to create a bootable USB drive. I had intended to create just a simple alternative to booting the basicWindows 7 system recovery tools from a CD, but it turned out to be easier to make a more powerful and flexible multiboot USB drive. Now I had a larger (16GB) USB drive, and more stuff to put on it. This post contains what I hoped would be a simpler

Excel: Storing the Results of Repeated Calculations

2012-06-17T17:15:00.001-04:00

I had a spreadsheet containing a random-number formula. Each time it would calculate, it would generate a different random number, and this would result in a different output value. I wanted to run that same calculation numerous times, so as to see what values tended to result; and I wanted to save those values for later analysis. This post describes how I addressed that problem. With

Excel Bubble Sort - Arranging Many Cells in Many Columns

2012-06-16T17:12:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, and to some extent in a later one, I worked on ways to sort Excel cells in which data started out in an irregular arrangement, like this: My goal in that case was to get the data items arranged in the original (vertical) order in a single column, like this: This time around, I had a somewhat different objective. It seemed likely to require me to continue past

Batch Converting Many WordStar (.ws) Files to PDF

2012-06-10T22:08:00.000-04:00

I had previously worked out a command that would convert all of the Microsoft Word (.doc) or WordPerfect (.wpd) files in a folder to PDF. Now I wanted to try that on a batch of old WordStar (.ws) files. This post discusses that task. As described in the previous post, I set my PDF printer (Bullzip) to print without opening the resulting files and without interruptions, except that I think I

Batch Verifying or Validating Scattered WAV Files

2012-06-02T08:48:00.000-04:00

I had previously looked for ways to test MP3 files. Now I wanted to test some WAVs. This post describes one approach that seemed to work. Initially, I tried using IrfanView, before rediscovering that IrfanView did not do audio file conversions. After some searching around, I tried the command-line option in Boxoft WAV to MP3 Converter (freeware). This looked promising. To run the Boxoft

Samsung SMX-F34BN Camcorder Software & Accessories: Cluelessness

2012-06-01T18:21:00.000-04:00

I bought a Samsung SMX-F34BN camcorder on eBay. It came without a software or driver CD, cables, or power supply. This was not quite the condition I had bargained for; but now that I had it, I proceeded to see what I could make of it. I already had the cables, but it was a hassle to find the powers supply and software. I decided to record these notes for the aid of anyone else encountering a

Batch Converting Multiple Word DOC Files to PDF in Scattered Folders

2012-05-27T18:40:00.087-04:00

I had a large number of .doc files produced by Microsoft Word. These files were in assorted folders. I wanted to convert some or all of these files to PDF format. This post describes the steps I took. I had already tackled similar problems in several other posts, including these: Batch Merging Many Scattered JPGs into Many Multipage PDFs - Clarified Batch Converting Many Microsoft Word (.doc)

Videos from the Mid-2000s

2012-05-24T12:11:00.004-04:00

For some reason, I saved copies of some amusing videos I encountered along the way. These videos were taking up disk space, and I never watched them. In the spirit of my other posts listing noteworthy videos, I decided to view these saved videos and, where possible, to provide links to their online locations, so as to have no reason to keep them on my computer anymore. Along the way, I ran

Windows 7: Considering a RAID Array for Performance

2012-05-23T23:56:00.000-04:00

It had been more than a year since I had last looked at adding a RAID array to improve performance. I could see that my hard drive light was on very often, and the system slowed way down when that happened. So it seemed advisable to take another shot at RAID. I had a reasonably good backup arrangement. As such, I wasn't too worried about the risk of losing data. My motherboard would

A Million-Day Calendar with Explicit Julian-Gregorian Comparison

2012-05-23T13:54:00.008-04:00

I wanted to look up a historical date. Specifically, I wanted to know which day of the week it occurred on. As I was looking for an answer to that question, I gradually came to the impression that there did not exist a standard calendar. I decided to build one. This post describes that process. Someone may already have created what I was looking for. But I wasn't finding it. What I was

Western Digital: Let the Buyer Beware

2012-05-21T20:01:00.000-04:00

I bought a new Western Digital (WD) hard drive. The drive's label indicated a date (of manufacture, presumably) of February 29, 2012. It was supposed to have a five-year warranty. And perhaps it did. But when I went to WD's Warranty Check site and entered the drive's serial number, it indicated that the warranty would expire on July 11, 2012. That would be a warranty of exactly five months,

Creating a Bootable Windows 7 USB Drive for Installation / System Repair / Recovery - First Cut

2012-05-08T10:15:00.000-04:00

Normally, if I booted a computer from a Windows 7 installation DVD, I could get into System Recovery Options (e.g., Startup Repair, System Restore, Command Prompt) that would let me run various diagnostics. Unfortunately, my laptop did not have a CD/DVD drive. So if I wanted to see those Windows 7 startup repair options, it seemed that I would have to find a way to do so by booting the computer

Blocking Unwanted Websites from Google Searches

2012-05-07T15:34:00.000-04:00

I had been using the Optimize Google add-on in Firefox, and the Search Engine Blacklist extension in Chrome, to keep unwanted websites from clogging up my searches. I especially like the approach of Optimize Google: it would still show the sites that I was blocking, but they would be greyed-out. This made it easier to keep an eye on what I was blocking. I didn't want to be accidentally

Uploading Videos to YouTube without Letterboxes (Big Black Borders)

2012-05-04T20:22:00.000-04:00

I was doing some occasional video editing, mostly using Adobe Premiere Elements. Now and then, when I would upload a video to YouTube, it would have a letterbox. That is, the video would be encased within a wide black rectangle. This made the video smaller. I didn't want it. Getting rid of it was not easy. This post presents a few notes in that direction. One suggestion I encountered in a

Adobe Acrobat Becomes Excessively Disability-Aware

2012-04-17T14:48:00.000-04:00

I was using Adobe Acrobat 9 in Windows 7. Suddenly it developed a sensitivity to diversity issues, particularly in the area of disability. That is, it started offering accessibility services that I didn't want or need. One message come up when I printed a .PNG image file to PDF. As soon as Acrobat opened the PDF, it said this: This page contains only an image of a scanned page. There are no

Windows 7: Shift and Control (not Caps Lock) Key Stuck On - Slow Keyboard Response

2012-04-17T14:41:00.000-04:00

I had a problem, in Windows 7, that apparently afflicted Windows XP users as far back as 2005. For some reason, on a system that did not previously have this problem, I would be typing along and suddenly thE DAMN THING WOuld start and then maybe stop typing in all caps, like that. A search indicated that a fair number of people were having this problem. There was the usual assortment of

Windows 7: Missing System Restore Points

2012-04-17T14:23:00.000-04:00

I was using Windows 7 with System Restore (Start > Run > SystemPropertiesProtection.exe) turned on for drive C only. It was set to allocate 16GB of the drive to store System Restore points. Yet it was storing only two such points. Clicking "Show more restore points" did not increase the number. By way of background, I was not running a dual-boot system and had been making daily backups.

Windows 7: BSOD: Errors 116 & 119: Interpreting the Minidump or Kernel Dump File

2012-04-08T08:15:00.576-04:00

I had been having Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crashes. These were happening on one machine and not the other. This was odd; both machines had virtually identical Windows 7 installations. They also had the same motherboards and same amounts and kinds of RAM. This post is a continuation in the effort to figure out why. Given the similarities between the computers, I suspected the crashes were

Windows 7: Eliminating "This Folder Is Shared With Other People" Message

2012-04-02T05:30:00.041-04:00

I had installed Windows 7. Now, when I would try to move or delete some folders, I would get this message: This folder is shared with other people. If you move this folder, it will no longer be shared.That message was correct: I had, in fact, shared the parent folder (and all of its subfolders, including this one) with my other computer. And I wanted existing and newly created subfolders to