Random Tech Questions you want answered.

Vargen wrote:

What I'm looking for is a solution that will send one presentation to one monitor and a second presentation to a second monitor, with both of them advancing with the same button. Not requiring a second computer would be nice too. In this age of hybrid meetings you'd think someone would have built such a tool.

If it's two monitors connected to the same computer, seems like the thing to do is make a single presentation with slides that are two screens in size, and fiddle with whatever settings in Powerpoint to display the presentation split across both monitors.

That was my thought Legion. The only issue would be if the screens were different sizes or resolutions.
For ease of facilitating, you could put a black bar splitting the presentations to make sure stuff doesn't get cut off or be horribly off center. It's much easier to shrink expand a black bar to center things versus graphics or text.

I appreciate the update PurEvil. As usual, FedEx sucks

Another issue is one of the screens needs a background that's easy to chromakey and the other needs a background that's actually pleasing to look at.

(Also one is 1080p and the other is 4k).

I did find a guide to using Automator to control 2 different presentations, but it's dated 2009 and modern versions of Keynote don't seem to like playing more than one presentation at a time. Even if I turn off the presenter display to confine it to a single window, any other open files get hidden when I start presenting one.

On a completely different note, anyone got any tips for how to de-coffee a Razer Tartarus v2 keypad? It got unplugged immediately and quickly wiped down, and it and spent 24 hours inverted and drying, but when I plug it in the keys fire like crazy...

I an sorry, but I had to laugh. It sounds like you have had the worst day. I could imagine you swearing and testing and trying things then on top of it all you tip your coffee cup all over the keyboard. Mr Bean level chaos.

Take off all the keys and anything else you can disassemble. Then use compressed air to get all the wet out. Then let it dry for 24 hours. Good luck.

Vargen wrote:

On a completely different note, anyone got any tips for how to de-coffee a Razer Tartarus v2 keypad? It got unplugged immediately and quickly wiped down, and it and spent 24 hours inverted and drying, but when I plug it in the keys fire like crazy...

So I have cleaned similar devices. Here's some stuff to try, and you can bail out at any time as long as you are careful.

First, use a keypuller to pull the keycaps. They should come off easily. Might need a flat-head screwdriver to help with the larger keys. If it's obvious that for some reason the keycaps can't come off, then I think you're done, but I believe that the "mecha-membrane" system Razer uses allows the keycaps to be pulled. Your risk, though.

Once they are off, take a look at the keycaps and see if any have obvious gunk in them. The big ones may have tricky metal bars to attach to the bottoms; if those are sticky you will need to pull and clean them too. Clean everything with Q-Tips dampened with a small bit of water, that usually is enough for sugar-based problems. Same thing for the switch posts - see if you can get them to go up and down again with a bit of cleaning. Don't let the water get inside the switches. You can use tweezers to pull the switch posts up and down, hopefully. If some are just kind of gelled in place by the dried coffee, you'll need to kind of work at them with damp Q-Tips till they loosen up.

Clean around the switches too, the area between them.

Then you can re-insert the keycaps. Make sure they have the right travel and don't stick, and you should be good.

If you have not done this before, be cautious. Try one key to make sure you can pull and replace it without damaging anything. If it freaks you out, take it to a computer repair shop or find a friend who knows how to do it.

But basically, the keys are repeating because the sugar has stuck them in the down position. You have to correct that without pouring water into the whole electrical system in the device. So just keep that principle in mind. You don't want drops of water soaking into crevices. Just a bit of damp will let you clean pretty well.

Good luck!

Oh the coffee incident wasn't connected to the powerpoint/keynote troubleshooting. That was my almost-2-year-old climbing up on my desk and knocking it over. It could have been much worse; the coffee could have been near the MacBook Pro instead of the $80 keypad.

I've got a replacement on the way, but I figure I might as well try to also fix the one I've got. Razer's stuff wears out on me pretty quick anyway. I wish someone else would make something with the form factor I like.

I do have another Razer with a dead D-pad that otherwise works fine. I might look into transplanting the section with the thumb buttons from the coffee-drenched unit. Those connections are really fragile though. I definitely damaged several bits of that old one when I opened it up to see if I could re-seat the pad and get it working again. But moving the whole section over wouldn't involve disassembling the fiddly bits that I broke last time. Well, not most of them...

iFixit has some excellent tool kits for opening stuff like this without damaging it. Not very expensive, either.

Have you looked at the Azeron keypad controllers? It's a bit much for me, as it turned out, but high quality and extremely configurable. Easy to clean too (although I never dumped coffee in it so I guess I'm referring to the surfaces rather than the actual switches). And I must say, it's an eye-yanker, sitting there on your desk like it's waiting to be screwed into your wrist...

They have a new one call the Cyro that's probably exactly what you are looking for, done with minimalist style. Cyro is a one-handed controller device, so it's intended for people who can work with WASD, mouse and all the other controls on one hand, although because it's fully configurable I'm sure you could use it just for mouse and keys you need to hit quickly, with your other hand working movement or whatever.

All of their controllers do reward, if not require, excellent dexterity and control of the fingers.You might have to rewire your brain to use them fluent, with a few weeks of practice. That was my experience.

+1 on Azeron, i've got a cyborg and it is by far my preferred gaming device for anything that can make use of an analog stick. might get a cyro to go with it when i can get some cash together too.
on the coffee spill thing, if it's not powered when it gets soaked it would probably clean really easily, you can disassemble it with just a few screws. it does look kinda funny so the only hazard i can see is that your kiddo might want to turn it into a toy and it's not quite tough enough to survive the gentle hands of a small child. 3d printed parts are not the toughest in the world, fine for normal use, but there are limits.

I've seen those, but haven't seriously looked into them. I like the theory behind it but haven't been €130-180 curious. Though when I made that decision the exchange rate with $ wasn't as favorable. Hmm...

The Razer-style controller has the advantage that I've been using keyboards and d-pads for at least 4 decades now, while the Azeron looks like it takes a bit of new learning. But I do like to tease people who complain about anything that isn't a Playstation controller, and I'm a huge Steam Controller fan, so I really shouldn't fuss about that.

Having put a few hours into WoW without the Tartarus, I've realized that it's less of an upgrade over my nice current keyboard than it was over the old cheap one I had when I started using a gamepad. Really the only advantage it currently has is I'd rather use one digit than three for movement. Maybe I can put a Switch JoyCon under my thumb and move with that analog stick while using the keyboard for the other inputs...

My attempt at cleaning the Tartarus didn't go so well. The keys came off without any trouble, but removing them didn't stop a bunch of the key signals from continuously firing. From what I can tell it looks like the coffee got under some of the membranes. I think it got in from the seam on the side of the unit.

On to plan B! I grabbed my old one with the busted D-pad. This time I knew what to look for and where some of the fragile connections are. I got the D-pad from the coffee soaked pad transplanted to the old unit, and it seems to be working great.

that's good, because from what I can see, getting the membrane off is second-level stuff. More knowledge and experience needed. That's why I did not recommend it.

At a minimum you'd need the blunt bladed tools to break the seal. Still, once you get the membrane off, the actual cleaning would be easy.

I soooo want to see a review of the Cyro from someone here. It looks like a minimalist keypad with analog stick and VR 360 degree controller capability. Not sure I'd want to commit to learning it - my Azeron is in a drawer at the moment - but man does it look good.

If anyone cares, the Azeron is very high quality 3D printed plastic with some metal parts and *infinite* physical customization to fit your hand. I mean, like, down to the millimeter in position, distance from skin, etc. You can set it so the activators are so distant you will get tendonitis sweeping your ring finger out and up to hit a control, or so close that one surprise from, say, very hot coffee will send your spacecraft spiraling out of control firing missiles and running through playlist entries as it goes...

deleted, posted in wrong thread.

What kind of plant? Right now it's sort of a "I got a pet. What do I feed it and when?" situation.

And yes... I can deduce why your previous plant was murdered from that. Different plants need different things.

Oh I put this in the wrong question thread. I'll repost it in the correct place. My old plant died because I knocked it over and notice it didn't have any roots so it was just sitting on top of the dirt. I cleaned it up a bit and then notice there were some small roots still on it. So I got some new soil and replanted it. Then I watered it which I believe drowned it. Besides not having roots the Aloe plant looked completely healthy but after I replanted and watered it it died quick.

New plant is a Dieffenbachia.

What to do if your aloe plant's roots are torn off.

Remember that Diffenbachia are poisonous to humans and pets. It's why they are called "Dumb Cane".

Vargen have you looked at PowerShow yet? It is a Powerpoint add-on (Windows only sadly) that lets you do exactly what it sounds like you want to do. It isn't free though so that might be an issue.

I had not seen that yet. I'll have to give it a look. Thank you.

I've been poking at Qlab and used that a couple times. It's getting the job done, but it definitely feels like overkill. And exporting all my slides to image files makes it a lot harder to change something a few minutes before we go live. In theory it can control our sound board too, but in practice that requires learning a lot more about MIDI than I was planning to.

Is there a way to auto-delete cookies after X number of days of inactivity? Firefox itself only seems to have delete all when closing. I'm always wary of installing extensions in privacy-related area's...

I’m in the market for a new external hd. I recall there being some kerfuffle several years ago about one particular brand and model of hd (wd reds?) consistently failing prematurely.
Is there anything like that going on at the moment? Or am I good to just grab whatever is on sale from a big brand (wd, sandisk, Toshiba, sea gate etc.)?

WellAdjusted wrote:

I’m in the market for a new external hd. I recall there being some kerfuffle several years ago about one particular brand and model of hd (wd reds?) consistently failing prematurely.
Is there anything like that going on at the moment? Or am I good to just grab whatever is on sale from a big brand (wd, sandisk, Toshiba, sea gate etc.)?

The last drive I have had fail was a WD My Book 6TB external that I ordered in December of 2017. I have a Seagate one from 2016 that is still going strong (Seagate Backup Plus 6TB) and I have 5 2 TB WD Green drives from 2013 and before that are still trucking along. I have 5 8TB drives (3 Seagates and 2 WD (one WD Red Plus)) purchased starting in 2018 and a 12 TB WD that I have had no issues with. And yes I may have a data hoarding problem, but I have redundant storage so I don't have to worry about losing stuff anymore

WellAdjusted wrote:

I’m in the market for a new external hd. I recall there being some kerfuffle several years ago about one particular brand and model of hd (wd reds?) consistently failing prematurely.
Is there anything like that going on at the moment? Or am I good to just grab whatever is on sale from a big brand (wd, sandisk, Toshiba, sea gate etc.)?

I run a plex server with multiple HDDs in it. I always use the WD EasyStore. BestBuy has sales on them quite often (Currently $209 for a 14TB). I take them out of the enclosure to put them in my PC, but I've never had one fail on me in many years. The plex community in general seems to love the drives so I'd put my vote in for them.

I have a general question about servers. Why is it that in 2023 are game companies like Blizzard still having such massive server issues? I would think that things should have improved 10 years after the Diablo 3 debacle.

Is it increased demand, cheapness/incompetence on Blizzard’s part, or are there just physical limits which better server coding and design can’t fix?

jdzappa wrote:

I have a general question about servers. Why is it that in 2023 are game companies like Blizzard still having such massive server issues? I would think that things should have improved 10 years after the Diablo 3 debacle.

Is it increased demand, cheapness/incompetence on Blizzard’s part, or are there just physical limits which better server coding and design can’t fix?

The way it was explained to me (when I complained once) is that they have to try to guess between how many servers they need under normal load, and how many extra servers they will need when expansions drop or the beta opens or the game drops, and try to get the best RoI, as well as the best thing for a sense of community.

If you have so many servers that everyone gets in immediately, and people don't see ANYONE around them in the social hub, people will think the game is dead.

That makes more sense now. The tech is available but it’s still a thorny business issue to solve.

I wish more companies would take a page from Guild Wars 2 or Elder Scrolls Online and make mega servers.

When my friends/relatives ask me if they can upgrade their PC or anything like that it’s always a struggle for the less technical ones to tell me what hardware they currently have. Especially things like power supply. I’m not usually able to drive to their place and check myself. I need them to send me some digital summary of their system with enough detail I can answer. Sometimes it’s enough for them to tell me make/model but not always if it’s not some off the shelf prebuilt.

What’s the go to app these days for someone to create a summary of their computer hardware to share/email?

Steam hardware survey?

But that still doesn't tell mobo/PSU stuff.

There is CPU-Z, but not sure that reports the power supply.

As useless as UserBenchmark is as an actual benchmark at least it was a very fast and easy way for people to send me a hardware summary. It’s not good enough tho.

A long time ago I used Speccy for my own stuff.

These days I use far better tools but they aren’t very friendly for a non-technical user.

Use the stores they bought from and look up their transactions.