Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 February 23

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February 23

3D graphics software

I've looked a little for a good open source program that would be great for 3D architecture. By reading Blender's article, it seems that program's more for artwork than for architecture, but I may be wrong. I want a good, free, 3D program that I can use to recreate my house so I can do some remodeling. Can anyone give me a suggestion as to which one would be good? -- penubag  (talk) 00:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

How about Google SketchUp? The basic version is free. - mako 06:16, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks, but can you suggest one other? I'd prefer open source. -- penubag  (talk) 07:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I hope you'll still catch this since I'm replying to a bit of an old post, but you should take a look at Wings 3D. It's not particularly oriented towards architecture, but it's very easy to use and also quite "no-nonsense". Keep in mind that it does lack some features that may be useful to you - like boolean operations. Most of these can be emulated, if you will, by clever usage of tools like "slide", "intersect", "put on" and "absolute move". I find that its precision and ease of use more than make up for those missing features. --Link ^(t•c•m) 08:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Try looking at www.freewarefiles.com - I think I remember seeing one or two there. 78.149.170.123 (talk) 14:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Sisoftware Sandra - where is systemreport.txt hiding?

I downloaded and installed this. It said it could produce a customised report full of "tips" or fixes to improve the computer. Chose options to make the report a plain text file. Waited a very long time for it to churn through the computer. Waited some more. Nothing happened - no sign of the report anywhere, HD silent. However, looking at the various parts of it eg Motherboard does include some "tips". I must say, its got a badly designed user interface, and the help and faq are bad too. Can anyone explain please step by step how to create and view the system report? Thanks. 78.149.161.52 (talk) 00:36, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Wireless Messaging API hardware

What are the hardware requirements to use the J2ME Wireless Messaging API to send SMS? NeonMerlin 01:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Windows

1. Is Windows XP trademarked as "Windows xp"? That's how the title appears in the logo.

2. You know how when you go into Display, on the Appearance tab, there's a screen preview, including menus entitled "Normal", "Disabled", and "Selected"? Well, on XP, the "Selected" menu isn't really selected. Is this a bug or is it by choice? JCI (talk) 02:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The "XP" stands for experience. The Windows XP article doesn't say anything about XP being trademarked, but I don't think they could trademark two letters that derived from a word they certainly didn't invent. And could you please clarify the second question a little bit? I went to the Appearance tab and I couldn't find anything with "normal" "disabled" and "selected. Unless you mean the fonts, which have "normal", "large" and "extra-large". But I use the Media Center Edition. --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 03:43, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

You can definitely trademark "letters that derived from a word they certainly didn't invent". Trademarks are not about being original, they are about being unique. There is a difference—it is about brand identification, so you can trademark nearly anything in the context of your product (so the color orange is actually trademarked in regards to cellular technology, by the company Orange; it doesn't mean you can't use the color ever again, it means you can't use it to sell tellecommunications in a similar motif). Microsoft has multiple trademarks on the phrase "WINDOWS XP" and I'm not sure the Trademark office cares about capitalization. I don't know if they have "XP" itself just trademarked, but plenty of other companies do for different products, so I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft did too somewhere in the long list. You can look up trademarks on the USPTO's webpage. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:48, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It was a few years since I last used Windows XP, but as you know the UI is themed (the theme is called Luna) by default. Custom settings for UI elements (e.g. custom colours for windows, menus, buttons, title bars, ...) is only effective when Luna is disabled, so that Windows looks more like the Win 9x family of operating systems. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

a way to find max memory consumption of a quick program?

I want to know if there is a way, on linux, to find what the max memory use of a process during a quick run of its program. Since it runs so quick, I cant juggle a "top" process list window and quickly see the line for a split second, I want to analyze this data. I was thinking of possibly using strace, but that isnt showing me anything different for memory on the stack, although it seems pretty straight forward for memory allocated on the heap (I can just look at the mmap and sbrk commands).--yuowin ^tawk 04:28, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

You could use ltrace to count up all the malloc() and free() calls. --Sean 11:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Valgrind can be set to produce lots of memory info, including detailed charts like this Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 14:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Add/remove icons on systray - win98se

How do I customize the systray? I am running win98se. Phil_burnstein (talk) 08:45, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

You can't do that in Windows 98. The general icon options "show", "hide", "hide if inactive" were added to Windows XP. The only way to customize the icons in Windows 98 (SE) is to change the system tray icon setting for each application, if that is possible. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:02, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Matlab Particle in a Box Simulation

Hey, I am working on a matlab project, part of which requires me to write a simulation code for a box with many electrons in it and to track their movements.The following theory is how I can describe the project best as :

In the particle in a box method, you place a large number of electrons in a data structure representing the volume to be simulated. You divide this volume into small boxes that contain n electrons. If we use a 2D rectangular region we can define n(i, j) as being the number of electrons in box {i, j} and N – the total number of electrons is the sum over {i, j} of n(i, j).

What I have come up with so far as to use variables with my convenience is this: The simulator should start at t = 0 and advance delta t each timestep. So t = delta t × k where k is the current timestep.

This is how i started out, but I am trying to get the simulator to do some of the following steps:

To model transport we need a set of rules that govern how the electrons move from box to box. 1. In each time step a given percentage of the electrons in a box will move (diffuse) to it’s neighbors.

2. If we have an applied electric field present the flow (movement) of the electrons to it’s neighbors will be effected - ie the percentages for all four sides will not be the same.

3. Walls can be defined as “reflecting” or “absorbing” or somewhere in between.

The simulator will step through time evolving the distribution of n(i, j) Lastly, Iam trying to get this done in 3d and use contour plots and animate the distribution. I am stuck as I have never learnt Matlab before. Can someone please help me out on this one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.117.188.90 (talk) 13:55, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Generally speaking, simulating behavior using discrete memory cells is neither accurate nor efficient. Each "particle" in your simulation is limited to moving in increments of 1 cell or greater per step, and limited in direction based on the distance per step (for step=1 only 4 directions are possible; for step=2 8 directions). You can model your particles as entities, each with independent position, speed, direction, behavior, etc., in an array of particles. To run the simulation, an iterator updates each particle according to "step size". You can then reduce the step size to achieve a much more fluid animation once you've got the general behavior correct. – 74  17:58, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Preventing software from resizing the window

when i play game thy sometimes resize my screen. how do i make them games play windowed so i can multitask? they do't need to tak the whole screen up because they just streach the picture to fill space. thank you for you're time — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 15:49, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It depends entirely on the game. Read the instruction manual. Most games (not all) have a "window mode". Often, you have to start the game in full-screen mode and then select window mode from the settings. If you are lucky, you can save your selection so you don't have to go full-screen the next time. Hidden in the instructions is usually a method for forcing the program to go window mode all the time by altering an icon on your desktop or registry entry. -- kainaw™ 16:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

no this is for games that don't have that option. i looked and i couldn't find. sometimes when i play them and press the windows key on the keyboard it resized to small version, but as soon as i click on it it goes full screen again. is there a program i can use to force them into a windowed mode? something designed for exactly this problem. thank you for your time — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 16:37, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

How about sticking the game in a virtual machine -- Hoary (talk) 16:48, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Try Alt-Enter. It's a common keyboard shortcut to switch between windowed and full screen modes. --jh51681 (talk) 16:58, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Running the game in a virtual machine is worth a try, but it might not work if it requires graphics accelerator

For some games you can create a shortcut, then right click -> properties and in the Target field add -window or -w after the file path. If that doesn't work you can try DxWnd although I've not had much success with this myself. SN0WKITT3N 22:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

.pdf file size

I have some .pdf files that I need to e-mail. The web site I am using has a strict limit on file size. How can I reduce the sizes of my files so I can send more than one at a time?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.210.239 (talk • contribs) 15:08, 23 February 2009

You can use compression utilities such as 7-Zip or any other choice you want. Alternativly, you can use some available file-hosting companies or webhosts as a temporary means to transfer PDF files. --Sigma 7 (talk) 19:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I tried zip-ing one up and it reduced its size by 50% (from 1.2MB to 0.6MB) -- SGBailey (talk) 19:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

In addition, instead of sending them individually you could compress all the pdfs together with 7-Zip or WinRAR (especially with the solid archive option as they are all of the same file type) and split the archive into smaller parts of your emails size limit. Then whoever you're emailing them too will just have to have all the parts and can extract the entire file set at one.

You could also use a file-sending service like http://www.yousendit.com/. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Send cat to your correspondent. Use split to break up the files. I think you can get both of these for any OS in wide use. -- Hoary (talk) 13:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

But if the OP is having difficulty figuring out how to do something as relatively simple as transfer large files, he/she probably is not going to find using command-line tools to be the most efficient and useful approach. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:32, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

We've interpreted the predicament in entirely different ways. Very possibly it's me who's misinterpreted it, but anyway I see size as the problem. If, say, you must send a 30MB PDF file and you're limited to 5MB a pop, then mere file compression won't suffice, and splitting and concatenating seems sensible. But I do realize that some people are as wary of the command prompt as you or I might be of FDISK. Maybe somebody has created half a megabyte's worth of "GUI front end" for these humble utilities. -- Hoary (talk) 03:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

If you don't care about the "extras" in the PDF files, you can simply select (highlight) the text of the PDF and copy it, then paste it into an email. You'll lose pictures and advanced formatting/typesetting, but you can squeeze in a lot of plain text under an email size limit. – 74  16:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Small freeware game?

Sometimes I like to take a break from working on the computer and play a game for a few minutes. I'm getting rather bored with playing online Reversi for the 1,000,000,000,000th time. I used to like playing Sokoban but have become bored with that. I do not like Tetris. What freeware game would people reccomend please? Something that is not multi-megabytes in size please. Edit: Other games I've enjoyed playing in the past are the freeware game Laser Tank and Quarry by Soleau, but I've played them out. 78.146.9.191 (talk) 21:16, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I really enjoy Fantastic Contraption, which is free online. Indeed, a very great deal of current casual gaming is online, much of it Adobe Flash based. 87.112.17.229 (talk) 21:26, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Jooleem is fun

Those little orbs make me hungry... -- penubag  (talk) 01:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

If you got me started on a list I wouldn't stop. I'll just give you a few good ones though: Dice Wars (great for a quick 5 minute break), dust (great if your creative mind is on), IceBreaker is another good puzzle game. I could continue my list but just drop the word and I will. -- penubag  (talk) 01:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I was playing Ice Breaker to 3am last night. How on earth do you get the Viking to the ship, in the scene where the lone Viking is positioned at the top left, and there is a large unfillable gap down the slope near the ship? Edit - now solved it. 78.145.24.81 (talk) 13:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately level 33 does not load - I've tried a few times. Is level 32 the last level? 78.149.170.123 (talk) 13:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

My wife is addicted to Samegame - my son and I wrote her a custom online version - which you can play here! - it's surprisingly difficult to get really high scores...but you can also just veg-out and play it idly. SteveBaker (talk) 04:35, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

That's quite impressive javascript! Excellent work. – 74  04:57, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

It's kind of you to say so. The code is horribly slow on IE though - play it on Firefox or something. IE doesn't properly support 'canvas' graphics. We should probably have done it in Flash - but I wanted to see how far one could push JavaScript. It was an Xmas present for my wife - we wrote the URL onto a bit of paper and put it in a DVD case so we had something to gift-wrap. We even made up a sleeve that made it look like a Wii game - only with 'Web' instead of 'Wii'! SteveBaker (talk) 03:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I've been playing it. Have you thought of making the balls fall to the lowest point, as real balls would do? It would require more strategy from the player. To me the "score" was getting the smallest number of balls left over at the end. 78.145.24.81 (talk) 13:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't recall what the site is called but there was an online version of Pictionary that can be really quite good fun to play, though it requires other people to be there to play against. Also not so much a game as just a great bit of fun Line Rider is pretty entertaining and once you search on you-tube for some videos of people who've made their own 'runs' you'll suddenly realise that there are people with waaaaay more time on their hands than I could imagine possible. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:03, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably thinking isketch? Or one of the myriad of similar games? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for all answers so far. Apart from Reversi, all the games that I mentioned above involve moving something (tank, boxes, mice) through a moveable maze-like scene to a goal, with no time limit for thinking. Objects often can be moved or have various special properties (eg conveyor belt, mirror, ice) and the puzzle is to find the unobstructed way through to the goal. So can anyone point out some more like these please? Personally I prefer downloadable games rather than flash. Thanks. 78.145.24.81 (talk) 13:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried Enigma? – 74  14:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Boomba is a game similar to your maze description, except it's flash. -- penubag  (talk) 01:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Goforapproval.com

I like the way the buttons (back, forward, etc.) on the computer screen look on that commercial. Is it possible to change your buttons to those (assuming I could find where to get those)?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:51, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

YouTube periodically not available

Earlier this afternoon, while I was watching some clips on YouTube, it suddenly stopped working. Conducting a search at the time, nothing happened until the page timed out, claiming it "cannot display the webpage". Other websites are working fine but YouTube - and only YouTube - is not working. This happens periodically. One attempted fix was to access ca.youtube.com, the Canadian YouTube site but it is also not working. Could this be a problem with my computer or the server or my access to the site? --Blue387 (talk) 22:48, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes.

Oh, you want a useful answer? In general, if other websites work then it isn't your computer. It could be that the server (and I use this term loosely; YouTube probably has hundreds or thousands of servers) is down—trying a local mirror or just returning to the site homepage might allow you to bypass a single bad server. If YouTube is extermely busy or has systemic problems, you might not be able to get *any* of their servers to respond, in which case you simply have to wait for them to restore service. The final possibility is that somewhere on the network between your computer and YouTube's server the connection is being blocked. Your ISP or other network segments might be blocking it to conserve bandwidth, as part of a power play (this is why we need net neutrality), or for technical reasons. In summary, it sounds like you already know how to handle this situation; if nothing works then you just have to wait. – 74  07:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Getting Rid Of Windows Mediaplayer

How do I dtop WMP from playing tracks at random? It is a pain in the arse trying to listen to concept albums!--KageTora (talk) 23:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

There's a button on the control panel to switch the shuffle feature on/off. Here's a screenshot showing Windows Media Player with the shuffle turned off - there's a light "glow" round the button when shuffle is on. The same feature can also be controlled from the Play menu or by typing Ctrl-H. Astronaut (talk) 01:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)