Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 September 6

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September 6

Laptop cooling pads

Can anyone recommend some reliable brands of cooling pads? Thanks in advance. 70.52.79.25 (talk) 04:38, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I have no specific recommendations, but I recently fixed a friend's computer that had massive overheating issues by setting it on top of a 8" fan while I worked on it. Seemed to do the trick. Many laptop overheating issues have to do with build ups of dust on the heat-sync components, so you might start there (some vigorous canned air can sometimes work wonders). Beyond that I'd just suggest getting something small, quiet, and preferably powered by the USB on the computer. Shadowjams (talk) 06:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Can you clarify "on top of" ? I picture the fan either blowing away from the computer of blowing no air at all, if it's intake side is flush to the floor. StuRat (talk) 10:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

A lot of them are just short flat platforms the laptop is meant to sit upon. I agree they're not usually very efficient, but results are results. You could also get something that attaches to a side vent port and cycles air rapidly in/out, which seems much more logical to me. They're pretty annoying whether they're quiet or not, get a desktop for heavy computing. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:14, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Just propping up the laptop only helps slightly. For compute-intensive tasks on a laptop, you need something with fans (the fan usually plugs into a USB port for power). I have one by Rosewill (newegg.com house brand) and it works, but there are a lot of models to choose from and I don't have a specific recommendation. 67.119.15.30 (talk) 04:56, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

1. An overheating laptop will usually shut down to protect your CPU. If it is not shutting down, verify that it actually is overheating before proceeding using Speedfan.
2. Place the laptop on a flat, hard surface. That should be enough to allow air to cool the device. If the laptop still overheats, proceed to step three, below.
3. Verify the fan works. If it never runs, replace it. Laptop fans aren't always on, but it should come on from time to time.
4. Disassemble the laptop and remove any dust inside.
5. Remove the CPU, clean it off, and apply a fresh coat of thermal grease to it. Then, insert the CPU back into the socket.

Laptops often feel hot. This is normal as hard drives always get very hot to the touch -- even in desktops. The difference is that desktop hard drives aren't touching your lap, so you never know how hot the metal is enclosing them. In other words, just because a laptop feels hot doesn't mean it's too hot.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 05:49, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

iPhone apps exit immediately after opening.

So one day, I got a quick succession of notifications on my Facebook iPhone app, and after that, every time I try to open it or all other third-party apps, it closes immediately. Apple apps work fine however. Is there a way I can solve this without wiping it clean? Trying to close them in the multitask thing doesn't work. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Try downloading a new app or replacing an existing app. Or connect it to a computer and select the restore option in iTunes. They (talk) 17:39, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

CloudFlare: how big is the cache per free account?

I assume free accounts are unable to use infinite amounts of cache-space, so I was wondering, is there is an upper limit to the size of the cache-space used per site (for free accounts)? My website is well over 300 gigabyte... They (talk) 17:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

The terms of use says:

SECTION 10: LIMITATION ON NON-HTML CACHING

You acknowledge that CloudFlare's Service is offered as a platform to cache and serve web pages and websites and is not offered for other purposes, such as remote storage. Accordingly, you understand and agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of hosting and serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other application and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) protocol or other equivalent technology. CloudFlare's Service is also a shared web caching service, which means a number of customers' websites are cached from the same server. To ensure that CloudFlare's Service is reliable and available for the greatest number of users, a customer's usage cannot adversely affect the performance of other customers' sites. Additionally, the purpose of CloudFlare's Service is to proxy web content, not store data. Using an account primarily as an online storage space, including the storage or caching of a disproportionate percentage of pictures, movies, audio files, or other non-HTML content, is prohibited. You further agree that if, at CloudFlare's sole discretion, you are deemed to have violated this section, or if CloudFlare, in its sole discretion, deems it necessary due to excessive burden or potential adverse impact on CloudFlare's systems, potential adverse impact on other users, server processing power, server memory, abuse controls, or other reasons, CloudFlare may suspend or terminate your account without notice to or liability to you.

Exactly how this section should be interpreted probably strays into legal advice territory, and hence is unsuitable for discussion here. Contact a lawyer if you need to be sure how this affects you and your site. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:55, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

4G LTE = simultaneous voice + data?

Does 4G LTE technology allow simultaneous voice and data? If so, do all US mobile carriers features simultaneous voice and data on their 4G LTE networks? I'm coming from a 3G phone, where only AT&T's US network has this functionality (Verizon and Sprint cannot do simultaneous voice and data on their 3G network). --157.254.51.253 (talk) 18:29, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't give a precise answer, but can provide some relevant background. LTE and 3G handle voice in a fundamentally different way. In 3G it's carried on a dedicated circuit. In LTE, it's just regarded as another form of data, and is carried as VoIP. So there's no fundamental reason why voice and data can't be carried simultaneously on 4G - it would simply depend on the 'phone's capabilities and how the network has been designed.--Phil Holmes (talk) 08:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Downloading website

I've been informed that a website containing lots of information, which I use daily, is going to close down shortly and that I should download as much of it as I can before it goes. Is there a simple, non-geeky way to do this? I should make clear that I have the owner's permission to do this by the way. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Do a Google search for "website grabbers" or "website rippers". If you are using a Mac, check out SiteSucker. --157.254.51.253 (talk) 18:49, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

httrack is probably the best option. The filter system is quite complex, and if you do not specify the filters correctly it may start downloading other websites as well, or miss the pages that you wanted to download. If you post the website I can post filters which should ensure a good download. AvrillirvA (talk) 19:10, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

www.aetw.org is the site. Thanks for the offer, I'm really totally ungeeky. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Download this and extract the folder contained in zip file. Open notepad and copy the following;

Extended content
@echo off httrack.exe -F "Mozilla/5.0" --footer "" -#L20000000 --sockets=2 -%%c35 -T60 -R3 -s0 -C0 -I0 -z -v --near http://www.aetw.org/ -O ".\download" "-*" "+http://www.aetw.org/*" "-*?*=*" "-http://*http://*" cls & echo Download complete! & pause

Save this file to the httrack folder with "download.bat" (without quotes) as the filename and "all files" as the save type. Then double-click the "download.bat" file and the download will start. The site seems relativly small so the download should not take long, maybe half an hour depending on your connection speed. And that's it! The entire site should now be saved in the "download" folder AvrillirvA (talk) 19:51, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much! --TammyMoet (talk) 21:18, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Image processing question

I have 92 PNG images that I have taken as screenshots from my computer. Every single one of them contains the same window at the exact same position and size. I want to mass process these images, taking only this window in the resulting images. In other words, I want to mass process 92 PNG images, cropping a rectangular area, which has the exact same coordinates and size in every single image, as 92 resulting PNG images. Can, for example, ImageMagick do this, and how? JIP | Talk 20:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I usually resort to chopping off edges, but there are many other ways you could go about it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

No personal experience here but sounds like Irfanview can do that sort of thing.. Vespine (talk) 23:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

It won't help with your current problem, but in Windows Alt+PrintScreen will just take a screenshot of the current window, not the whole screen. It could help you avoid needing to do this step in the future. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 12:52, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

& in Unixland you could use gtk-recordMyDesktop et al.. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:27, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

It’s sound like a problem to resolve with photoshop …

In photoshop, open one of the pictures and look for the toolbar “actions”, in the window menu

Then in the actions toolbar click in “create new action” … put it a name that you can easily remember and identify and click “record”

The next step is to crop your image just the way you want, and save the image with a different name (in case that you want to replace each image instead of keep the originals, just save it whit the same name), and when you finish click “stop” in the action toolbar.

Now that you have your action, you can go to the “file” menu and click in the “automate” submenu and once here click in the “batch” option.

The first thing you’ll see in the batch window give you two options, I don’t remember very well, but you only have to change the one with the “action” label; click in the list and select the action that you have just created:

Below all this, is the “source” label, make sure that the “folder” option is selected and then click in “choose”, to… choose the folder where all your images are, click in “OK” and all your images will be automatically cropped.

How do I post a link on Facebook?

How do I post a link to a webpage on Facebook these days? Earlier, entering a URL in a Facebook status automatically added an extra box in the status update offering a link to the page, with a preview of the target page, including part of the text and one image. Earlier still, there was an explicit "add a link" option. Now, entering a URL in a status update only adds the URL (which Facebook automatically turns into an HTML link), and adding any text after it adds the text as normal. Of course, there is no explicit "add a link" option any more. It seems still possible to post links from external sites who have a "post on Facebook" option, but do I have to create an external web site and install "post on Facebook" functionality just to post a link on Facebook? JIP | Talk 21:01, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

My Facebook does the "automatic" conversion you mention in the beginning when pasted into the status bar. Sometimes the AJAX fails to recognize when I've pasted in a link, but usually a refresh fixes that. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:31, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

As Mr. 98 said, I just add the link in the status box and FB autogenerates the link and, usually, a thumbnail. (Though sometimes I'm flummoxed as to where it gets the image) After the link and thumbnail are generated, I generally delete the URL in the status box and put in my own comment. After hitting Post, both my comment and the link are posted. I don't know why there needs to be a paste and delete step to the process but that's the way it is. Dismas|^(talk) 01:42, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Just as an aside, the image is either some image on the page (typical outcome) or an image specified in the metadata of the page as the image Facebook should use that may not display on the page at all. So some of the weirder images are actually ones that the site master have suggested FB use, though perhaps unwittingly. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:53, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Recovering deleted songs on iPod

I attempted to sync a friend's iPod to my computer, completely forgetting that doing so requires erasing the songs on the device, as my intention was to transfer the files from the iPod to the PC. Since it's been so long since I used iTunes for that purpose, I couldn't even figure out how to sync it, it would only play the music from the iPod while it was connected. I thought this was an error on iTunes' part, so I uninstalled then reinstalled the program several times, then finally gave up on it. So I turned to Windows Media Player and installed MGTEK dopisp on it to enable syncing with an iPod. I did the whole process, it asked if I wanted to erase everything on it, and I specifically selected NO. So after it finished syncing, all the songs showed up in the Media Library and played fine. Well, I unplugged the iPod, then replugged it again as soon as I noticed that the playlist disappeared when it wasn't connected, then to my horror saw that the music on the device was completely gone. I don't know how that happened, but I have to rectify this error quickly as it isn't my iPod. 70.52.79.25 (talk) 21:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure the audio isn't on the computer? Sometimes those iPod syncing apps can really hide the data well. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:41, 7 September 2012 (UTC)