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Terrific Windows Tip of the Day: “No to all…”

After an operating system like XP has been out for — what is it now? 17 years? — it can seem as though all the great little tricks and tips have been exposed. Well, it can seem this way to me, anyway, since I do this for a living.

But sometimes there’s a little nugget that happens to arise out of the blue making you wish you had know about it years ago. To wit:

When copying a folder from one location to another, if any files at the destination (x) have the same name as files that are being copied over (y) Windows will present a nifty dialog box:

Confirm File Replace dialog box

Would you like to replace the existing file x with this one? y
The options you are given as an answer are:

  1. Yes
  2. Yes to All
  3. No
  4. Cancel

But wait! Don’t you sometime wish there was a No to All option, so you don’t have to keep clicking the No button for each file?

Here’s the tip: Hold down the SHIFT key as you click the No button. Windows takes this as the equivalent of saying No to All and goodbye all those extra No clicks.

I’m thrilled.

via Online Tech Tips by way of Lifehacker

Posted 15 April 2008 † dricker § Tips & Tricks § Windows ‡ Comments (0) °

Thayer Computing Projects

In between keeping all things computing running at Thayer, we always have several projects in the works. Here’s a quick overview of projects we’re currently working on or planning. In no particular order…

Email and collaboration tools

Dartmouth’s Council on Computing has constituted a task force to determine Dartmouth’s requirements for future email and collaboration tools. Thayer School’s Director of Computing Services is on the task force and seeks your thoughts on the subject.

Hard drive based back up server

We are a “belt and suspenders” computing staff. To reflect our paranoia of making sure all your ThayerFS data is safe, we’re adding another layer of redundancy to our data back up plan. We just started setting up a new “online backup server”. It consists of fifteen 1 Terabyte hard drives which we’ll use to back up ThayerFS. This system will eventually be located off-site. We’ll continue to use our tape library which will be located in yet another off-site location.

Weather station and Solar Panel monitoring

We’re in the middle of a project to get a weather station installed on the roof of Murdough. We’ll be using the same system to monitor the output of the Solar Panels which are already installed on the roof. The plan is to make the data available on the web for those interested in local conditions and for research purposes.

Spanos lighting improvements

We have been working with our building manager and FO&M to add special lights to properly illuminate presenters. This should improve the quality of our lecture capture video and should reduce the harsh shadows the current lighting causes on the speaker’s face.

A/V system improvements, documentation, and repairs

Collaborating with Instrument Room personnel, we have been working for some time now to make our classroom and meeting room audio visual systems more user-friendly. This includes simplification of touch screen controls or even their replacement with pushbutton controls, enhanced documentation about how to use the systems, improved image quality in Spanos and C200, a combination white board/projector screen in M210, additional microphone options, improved/repaired audio, etc. Some of these improvements are finished, but we still have a long way to go on others.

New Intel compiler available

We purchased two floating licenses of Intel Fortran and C++ compilers for Linux. They are available on any of our Linux clients or compute servers. Also included with these licenses are the MKL and IPP libraries.

For more information about these new compilers and how to use them, please see our Linux Services page.

New lab computers

In the next few months, we plan to deploy new lab computers for the Linux lab in Cummings and to replace the ten oldest computers in MacLean 210.

Adobe Contribute rollout soonish

We’ve purchased licenses of Adobe Contribute, which will allow the Thayer Community to create and edit web pages in a simple WYSIWYG editor. The experience is similar to a word processor. If you are interested in using this software, please contact us.

Vista planning

While we’re content with Windows XP, Windows Vista is an inevitability as XP support is dropped by Microsoft. We’re going to start looking at the best way to image and deploy Vista on lab, desktop, and laptop computers.

Blade servers

We recently took delivery of a new blade chassis and some new blade servers. The chassis can accommodate up to 16 servers. The preliminary plan is to replace our aging babylon compute cluster with a couple of blades. This will reduce space, electricity, cooling, and administration time, while increasing the computing power over our current cluster. We’ll have several empty slots available for faculty with research projects that need extra computer power.

Condor High Throughput Computing

We’re investigating the use of Condor High Throughput Computing on our linux clusters. This would allow the Thayer community to submit compute jobs and have them distributed automatically to our compute clusters.

Currently, we are testing this on our limited-access sisyphus cluster, but hope to roll it out to an upgraded babylon cluster after the Spring term. Jobs run on either cluster will be able to use the other cluster’s CPUs if they are available.

Hardy Heron is coming…

The new version of Ubuntu, version 8.04 (hardy heron), is scheduled to be released at the end of April. This new release features many enhancements to the version we’re currently running on our linux clients, and is also the next of Ubuntu’s “long-term release” versions, which will get security updates for a longer period of time than their other versions.

We have been alpha (and now beta) testing this to ensure that any bugs related to our systems are reported and corrected prior to its official release. We plan to upgrade the Cummings 227 linux lab with the new version (and new computers, too!) after the Spring term. We will also be in touch with faculty and staff who have linux clients to schedule their upgrades.

ThayerCups server upgrade

We just upgraded the CUPS print server that handles print jobs from Mac and Linux clients. There should not be any change in the way you print from these platforms.  The new server is now easier to back up.

Application Virtualization

We are testing, “Application Virtualization”, a new technique for encapsulating applications to ease deployment to lab computers and client computers.

Atrium Help Desk continues

We continue to hold our “Atrium Help Desk” from 3:00-4:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Come by the atrium if you have any computing-related questions.

Posted 03 April 2008 † jared § Backups § Energy § File Storage § Linux § News and Announcements § Printing § Servers § Software § Video § Windows ‡ Comments (0) °

Canopus TwinPact 100 versus Epiphan VGA2USB

As I described in a previous blog post, “Video Recording with Synchronized Slides“, we use a Canopus TwinPact 100 framegrabber to capture the presenter’s screen. This is recorded right along side video of the presenter speaking. The TwinPact 100 converts a VGA video signal to Firewire.

side by side photo

Recently I came across the Epiphan VGA2USB frame grabber. While simpler, it looked like it might shed features we don’t really need, while providing better video quality.  We decided to order one, and yesterday it arrived on my desk.  I decided to do a very quick side-by-side comparison with the TwinPact 100.

Here are some findings.

The Epiphan VGA2USB lacks features found on the TwinPact.   It only accepts VGA as input and USB as output.  The TwinPact has VGA, Composite, S-Video, and Firewire based input and output.  It also handles audio. Other than the audio, we’ve never had the need to use these alternative inputs.

VGA2USB front and back

The lack of additional inputs and outputs means the VGA2USB is much smaller.  It also doesn’t need an external A/C adapter.  It gets power from USB.

The biggest reason for my interest in the VGA2USB is quality (sharpness, color, contrast) of the video.  We often have presenters that put tiny text and diagrams on their slides.  Such items are usually not readable with the TwinPact 100.

To compare the two frame grabbers, I connected the outputs from both the VGA2USB and the TwinPact 100 to a MacBook Pro Core Duo running Wirecast under Mac OS X 10.4.11.  I then connected the inputs to another Mac using a powered VGA splitter.

In Wirecast, I arranged the output video from each unit side-by-side, and set Wirecast to record an h.264 video at high quality at 1280 x 720 pixels.  Using these settings, the Wirecast Mac was only able to muster 6.5 frames per second, but for this test I’m not really interested in frame rate.

Quicktime LogoHere is the QuickTime video of the results.

I’ve pulled some interesting stills from the video…

Side-by-side comparison of a web page  - This shot shows the comparison of a web page with text and images. The Epiphan is clearly brighter and easier to read. For reasons I’m not sure, the video from the TwinPact is vertically squished.  The right side of the TwinPact is also cropped.  It is possible to do some basic resizing and positioning with the TwinPact remote.  The process is kludgy and if you plug in a different computer, the size and position often need to be fixed all over again.

Screen Motion comparsion - The biggest issue with the VGA2USB is that the video is interlaced. The interlacing is very visible for any motion in the incoming video (presenter moves a window, uses slide transitions, or shows a video clip). Epiphan does make other models of the VGA2USB with progressive output, but they start at twice the cost.

Text quality close up

In the above comparison, you can see the quality of the text.  The Epiphan VGA2USB is on the top, the Canopus Twinpact 100 is on the bottom. The VGA2USB is much easier to read.

VGA2USB noise - In this image, you’ll see some noise from the VGA2USB.  Not sure if this is the problem with the driver, hardware, or something else.

There are some other possible issues with the VGA2USB.  At one point in the above video, the output appears blank. This along with the random noise I mention above  At higher resolutions, the frame rate on the low end VGA2USB model goes way down.

In our case, the benefits of a simpler and smaller piece of  hardware with higher quality video out make the VGA2USB an excellent new tool for our Wirecast recording systems.

Posted 21 March 2008 † jared § Video ‡ Comments (1) °

Find people fast with Firefox

There are numerous ways to look up Dartmouth community member’s phone number or email address. The one I use the most for phone numbers uses Firefox and its built-in “Smart Keywords” feature.

Setting it up is really easy, no special plug-ins are required.

First load the Dartmouth People Finder web page. (click the link to open in a new window)

Now ctrl-click or right-click the search field.

In the contextual menu, select “Add a keyword for this search…”

screenshot of Dartmouth People finder

Firefox will now ask you to give the bookmark a name, a keyword, and where to store it. I’m calling mine, “Dartmouth People Finder” and I’m using the keyword, “dnd”. When you’ve filled yours in, click the Add or OK button.

Dartmouth People finder smart keyword bookmark

Now it is time for the magic.

In the location bar of your Firefox window, type “dnd” (or whatever you used for your keyword) and the name of the person you want to lookup.

People finder

Hit enter and boom… you’ll be brought directly to the results page of your lookup.

People finder results

The DND People Finder supports fuzzy name matching. So you can enter as much or as little of the name as you want. If there is more than one result, it will return all the matches.

That’s all there is to it. This same technique can also be used for many other sites that you frequently search such as IMDb, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc.

Posted 01 March 2008 † jared § Tips & Tricks ‡ Comments (0) °

Friday Feed Xtra Special

What comes once every 4 years, is eagerly anticipated country - even world - wide, and gives us a glimmer of hope for a better tomorrow?

The US presidential election, of course! Oh, wait. Sorry. That was for an entirely separate blog post…

Leap Year Day, February 29th, of course! February, normally the shortest month of the year, on leap years remains still the shortest month of the year only one day less short. If only all planetary orbital time adjusting could be this fun!

And so, to help all you folks caught off-guard with this extra day and wondering how to fill it, we in Computing Services have been saving up a truckload-full of interesting links, news, articles, and general internet hoohaa to help make this rarest of February days that much more fun.

At long last we present….The Friday Feed, Leap Year Day Edition:

Freshly unboxed Apple IIc
Freshly unboxed Apple IIc

Posted 29 February 2008 † dricker § Friday Feed ‡ Comments (0) °