Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 November 20

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November 20

Google Streetview out of focus\cool effect

I discovered quite a cool effect when using Google Street View. After moving the camera, pressing 't' on the keyboard makes the whole camera image become somewhat out-of-focus. The red and blue do not line up in the image and really reminds me of old plastic 3D glasses. Is there any purpose to this or is it just an easter egg? Simply south...... cooking letters for just 7 years 13:56, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting find! It certainly seems to be a stereoscopic image, specifically using anaglyph_3D. Here's a blog article on the topic [1]. So, the purpose seems to be: to let users see street-view images in old-fashioned 3D. Kinda neat :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Google Street View mentions this in the second paragraph: "By using Google Maps, users can turn on stereoscopic 3D mode by right-clicking in Street View to get an anaglyph version of any Street View images". Astronaut (talk) 15:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah - cool! I have a selection of 3D goggles to hand - it uses the left-eye-red/right-eye-cyan convention - seems to work pretty well - but not when I zoom in. SteveBaker (talk) 03:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

On my Samsung Galaxy Victory, I partitioned the SD card w/ TWRP so I could transfer apps to its new partition. I still can't. What else do I do?

I was told long ago to partition my SD card with TWRP before I transfer all my movable apps to my card.

You see, my last Android phone, the Xperia Play, allowed me to transfer apps to the SD card.

However, my current phone, the Samsung Galaxy Victory, does not. I've had it since late May, and still haven't figured out how to transfer apps.

I was told to root the phone, install TWRP, and partition my 32 GB SD card.

Thankfully, I backed up the phone + card before formatting, so my media are now in a laptop's hard drive.

But not only did "partitioning" half of the card not help about my apps, but I can't find the other half of my storage.

I had hoped to use one half to store my media, and the other half to store apps and many other traditionally "internal-only" items after tricking the system into believing the card's half-space was part of the internal memory.

(And how do I get the other half to be visible again?)

I must be missing some steps. If I learn what it takes to finally trick my phone to let my SD card store my apps, and let me use said apps from said card, that'll be great. --99.179.74.108 (talk) 16:58, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

TL;DR: Partitioning SD card halved storage; did nothing to let me transfer apps to card to relieve internal storage. --69.77.96.200 (talk) 19:54, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

You still haven't worked out how to search and follow instructions or a better place to ask? Anyway presuming you partitioned the card properly (i.e. created 2 partitions, one FAT/32 and one EXT/whatever), the problem may be the partition is not mounted (either that or you're just bad at finding where it's mounted or check space of that mount point). I'm not entirely sure that most Android phones with stock firmware will mount 2 partitions in an SD card by default, heck I'm not sure if they will mount an EXT one by default at all. As for moving apps, you will likely either need to manually move them there and then created a suitable symbolic link or you will need to use a tool like possibly app2sd or link2sd which can do this for you. I'm not sure your custom recovery will make any difference to either the partition issue or the moving issue (although you may need root). Note what you are trying to do is quite different from what has been available in most Android phones since 2.2 where you can move allowed apps on a FAT/32 partition of the SD card in the '.android_secure' directory via the system settings. Nil Einne (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Penmanship

In the early grades of grammar school – at least in my day – students were taught penmanship, both cursive and non-cursive. There was always a standardized example of each letter that students were supposed to model. The non-cursive letters looked like those at this link: [2]. The cursive letters looked like those at this link: [3]. So, my question is: are those exemplar letters available as a font that one can use in, say, Word documents? Thank you. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:47, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I found a free version of the D'Nealian script, here [4]. For the print example, apparently Zaner-Bloser (who are still around...) will sell you some fonts here [5], maybe with a free trial or something. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Educational Fontware sells many of these fonts, both print and cursive varieties. It is interesting to note that there are multiple styles of standard cursive. The Frank Schaffer variant is closest to the one I learned as a child. --Mark viking (talk) 21:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

You might want to try http://dafont.com - they have thousands of fonts - most of which are free. There is a whole class of Cursive fonts - and a sub-class called "School" - which has many possible candidates. http://Google.com/fonts also has a bunch of free fonts - some in their category "Handwriting" look like plausible candidates. But dafont.com is by far the best place to go for free fonts. I wouldn't consider paying for fonts these days - if you can't find something decent on dafont - I'd be incredibly surprised. SteveBaker (talk) 03:40, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I reviewed both websites. There are many similar candidates. Thank you. But, in the Google fonts web page, how do you find the "Handwriting" category ... or any category, for that matter? I could not find where, on that website, I could search for different categories. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

It's somewhat confusingly under "filters", on the left. Un-check all boxes but "handwriting" to see only those fonts. But, if you want to best match the examples you posted, I do recommend you use the free D'Nealian font I linked above, because it is made to emulate that specific famous, and well-known technique of teaching penmanship. If you just want a generic "old-fashioned cursive" look, then anything you like will serve fine :) SemanticMantis (talk) 17:35, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

SD Card for LG Phone

I recently bought a refurbished LG45 phone, and either it didn't come with an SD card, or I didn't see the card and accidentally threw it away. I know it is a microSD card from the manual, but the Wikipedia article Secure_Digital talks about different file systems, different speeds, and so on. I'm not a power user, and I just want to buy a basic SD card, but since my phone is older I want to be sure that whatever I buy will work with it. Do I need to match the file system, access speed, and so on, or can I just buy whatever card shows up first on Amazon and be reasonably confident that it will work? Thanks! OldTimeNESter (talk) 20:20, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Many phones use the SD card to store the phone's fundamental identity - your phone number and the more important number that identifies the phone to the cellphone tower. So just sticking a blank card in there won't make the phone work. Generally, you get one with your phone service that's programmed with the network's identity and such. If it's already working for you as a phone (and you just want some additional memory), then any old "basic" SD card should work just fine...if it's not working as a phone, then probably you need to get a pre-programmed SD card from AT&T, Sprint or whoever is providing your phone service. Because the card was missing, I'd bet $$$ that the previous owner removed it to put into his/her new phone and thereby continue to get service. If you have an old phone that you're replacing, then perhaps that has an SD card you can just transfer. SteveBaker (talk) 03:31, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

SD card, not SIM card... Steve is wrong in this case! Unfortunately, I don't know quite enough myself to answer the question. MChesterMC (talk) 10:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was puzzled by Steve's reply (the first and last parts refer to a SIM card), and I began to wonder if American mobile phones were fundamentally different from British phones. His advice is good, though, that if the phone works then it already has a SIM card (you should be able to see it, possibly under a cover), so just buy any (optional) microSD card and fit it in the SD slot for extra memory. The cheapest ones seem to work OK, though they might be slightly slower. (If your phone doesn't connect to any tower, then it probably lacks a SIM card and you need to buy one from your chosen network provider [or from the provider that the phone is locked to in the UK].) Dbfirs 14:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, this is what I needed to know. I have a SIM card, so I'll just get a basic microSD card. OldTimeNESter (talk) 19:36, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

"Windows 8.1 is now available in the shop"

Can someone tell me what this means? Simply south...... cooking letters for just 7 years 21:19, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

It would help to have some context, but I would guess they have it available internally at MS and are testing it out there. StuRat (talk) 22:22, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

A search doesn't find that specific phrase anywhere that's been indexed. That said, the phrase seems fairly self explanatory i.e. that you can now buy Windows 8.1 in shops. Microsoft typically release their major software products in 2 basic stages. They first make them available to MSDN and various other channels for OEMs, partners, companies, early adopters etc (not all at the same time) who have some sort of agreement/deal with Microsoft in some way. In the meantime they also produce optical media etc. Then about a month or two later, they release them on retail, so anyone (well except those forbidden by the EULA) can buy them in any store which chooses to stock the product (nowadays this tends to include the online and offline Microsoft Stores). OEMs (and Microsoft nowadays) can also start selling hardware with the software installed at this time. Note that this is only talking about the final software. Prior to that, they also have various different test releases, with differing levels of official availability. Note Windows 8.1 is a little different from most in that it was also made available to free for all Windows 8 owners, so when it was released to retail, it was also made available as an update to them. Nil Einne (talk) 22:34, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

[6] 87.112.74.205 (talk) 22:44, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

SSH to a machine on home network from outside world

I'd like to be able to ssh to a machine on my home network from anywhere. I know the local IP (e.g. M_IP=10.0.0.X) and the external IP of my router (e.g. R_IP=65.83.95.ZZZ). From other devices on the home network, I can "ssh D_IP" and everything is fine. I'd like to be able to "ssh R_IP -suffix -flags" etc and get to the one specific machine when not on my home network. Previously this machine was available through DNS from my old employer (e.g. "ssh mydomain.workdomain.edu"), but now it's not part of that network. I've seen somewhat tedious instructions on port forwarding, but is there a simpler way? One other potential wrinkle is that what I really want access to is a virtual machine running on the machine. The VM is set up to work on a specific port, e.g. "ssh mydomain.workdomain.edu" got me to the physical box, but adding "-p XYZW" would get me straight to the VM. (All the IPs in question are technically dynamically assigned, but are fairly stable, and I'm not too worried about that part)

Anyway, shouldn't this be fairly easy by now? Thanks for any help, SemanticMantis (talk) 23:15, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Your router is performing NAT. This is almost certainly required because almost all residential internet service providers will only allocate one single IP address for each customer. So, your residential gateway must use network address translation and additionally act as a DHCP server for your local area network. All these features are typically wrapped up in a single "box" that acts as the "top controller" for your home network.

When NAT is on, you must use one external IP to speak to all n devices; so port forwarding is a necessary evil - there is no simpler way. I can think of several more complicated ways you can work around the issue: you can set up a proxy-server inside your network, for example; but that will be more difficult than setting up a port map on your router. Most residential gateways and home routers have friendly user-interfaces that let you configure port-forwarding.

If you have virtual hosts (inside virtual machines), you might also need to navigate a second layer of NAT translation that is managed by the virtual machine software. Nimur (talk) 23:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

It's fairly straightforward, if a bit of a chore, to configure that port forwarding so each ssh capable machine behind the NAT gets its own custom port on the WAN. So if the local machines are 192.168.0.10, 11 etc., you might set it up so that you'd ssh in to tcp/10010, 10011, etc. Or it's pretty easy to have a trivial proxy (even a simple machine like a Raspberry Pi running Debian, which one stuffs in a corner and never turns off) so one doesn't have to have an entry in the NAT box's port forward. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:07, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks Finlay and Nimur, you've helped me understand why port forwarding is necessary here. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and do it :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

SpeedFan

My computer was really dusty inside and shut itself off a few times because it was overheating. So, I cleaned it out and now it's fine. I got SpeedFan to keep an eye on the temp. Here are the readings. Is this normal? I don't even know what's what and why one is minus 128C.

• Temp1: 53C (little flame icon)
• Temp2: 41C
• Temp3: -128C (this is the only reading that never changes)
• HD0: 37C
• HD1: 40C
• Core 0: 41C
• Core 1: 39C

Many thanks, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:18, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Not all computers have three temperature sensors - when one is absent, the software reads a minimum value. Since it's an 8 bit temperature reading, it goes from -128 to +127. Hence, the minimum value is -128. So, we may deduce that you don't have that third sensor - so ignore that reading. Temp1 is a little high (Hence the little flame icon) - but not outrageously so. In addition to cleaning out the fan, you might want to check that there aren't any bulky cables blocking the outlet or inlet of the fans. It's easy for a fat ribbon cable from a disk drive to droop over the CPU or graphics card fan and block some or all of the airflow. SteveBaker (talk) 03:24, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Okay. The 128 thing makes sense. As for the rest, I opened it up again. I blew all the dust out and removed the fan thingy attached to the metal block from the future. I paint brushed all the dust away without touching the square in the middle with the face cream on it. Then I screwed the fan thingy with the future block back on to the face cream square. When I turned it on, the flame went away and was 40 something for a while. Now it's back to 53 jumping to 60 from time to time. I also brushed dust away from everything else inside and ensured cables were out of the way. Will 53 mean a dead computer and a house fire or can I rest comfortably? Best wishes, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:35, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Given that temp 1 is considerably higher tha core 0/1, I'd guess that it is for a component other than the processor (which is under the face cream square), not sure how possible it would be to work out which one though, unless you know the brand/model of your motherboard? My rough guess would be the northbridge, and you might be able to get a fan designed to fit your motherboard, or shift cables out of the way (are any of them covering a largish chip on the motheboard itself?). At 50-60 degrees, it's not essential though. Did core0/core1 change significantly after you removed/replaced the fan? If not, you're fine, but if they did, you might want to get some thermal paste (the "face cream", should be available from any decet store that does computer parts), clean off the old paste, and put some new paste on. MChesterMC (talk) 10:16, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

The cores stayed the same temp. Maybe the below info that this program tells me will help. No cables in the way. Perhaps things aren't hot enough to worry about? Thanks for the thermal cream tip. I'll see if I can buy a jar and apply some.

collapsing system info
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Win9x:NO 64Bit:NO GiveIO:YES SpeedFan:YES I/O properly initialized Linked ISA BUS at $0290 Linked Intel 82801GB ICH7 SMBUS at $0400 Scanning ISA BUS at $0290... SuperIO Chip=IT8772F Linked ISA BUS at $0A10 Scanning Intel SMBus at $0400... Scanning ISA BUS at $0A10... IT8772F found on ISA at $A10 Found ST1000DM003-1CH162 on AdvSMART Found WDC WD5000AAKX-001CA0 on AdvSMART Found Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU E3400 @ 2.60GHz End of detection Loaded 0 events and this from SIW (some bizarre programme I have): Property Value Manufacturer Onda Technology corporation Model G41L Serial Number To be filled by O.E.M. Chipset Vendor Intel Corporation South Bridge 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Controller SMBus Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller @0400h CPU Intel Core 2 Duo Cpu Socket LGA775 [CPU 1] Processor Upgrade Slot 2 Max CPU Speed 2600 MHz Memory Summary Location System board or motherboard Maximum Capacity 4096 MBytes Memory Slots 4 Error Correction None Use System memory Maximum Memory Module Size 4096 MBytes Warning! Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed

Again, many thanks. This is very educational. I'm not just a dummy looking for help. I'm learning. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:38, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

And here is SIW's CPU info. Is the cpu the thing under the face cream or that funny slanty thing with vents beside it?

collapsing system info
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Property Value Number of CPU(s) One Physical Processor / 2 Cores / 2 Logical Processors / 64 bits Vendor GenuineIntel CPU Full Name Intel Core 2 Duo CPU Name Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU E3400 @ 2.60GHz CPU Code Name Wolfdale Technology 0.045µ Platform Name LGA775 Type Original OEM processor FSB Mode SDR Microcode ID A07 Type ID 0 CPU Clock 2593.85 System Bus Clock 199.53 System Clock 199.53 Multiplier 13.00 Original Clock 2600.00 Original Bus Clock 200.00 Original System Clock 200.00 Original Multiplier 13.00 L2 Cache Speed 2593.85 MHz L2 Cache Speed Full CPU Family / Model / Stepping 6 / 7 / A L1 I-Cache 32 KB L1 D-Cache 32 KB L2 Cache 1024 KB RDMSR 43480000 00000000 00000000 00000000 MMX Yes SSE Yes SSE2 Yes SSE3 Yes SSSE3 Yes DualCore Yes HyperThreading No IA-64 No Intel 64 (EM64T) Yes XD Yes VT Yes SpeedStep Yes Architecture x86

SIW also gives info on my BIOS. I don't know what BIOS is, but am not sure it would be neutral. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

If the core teperatures have not changed significantly, I wouldn't bother reapplying the thermal paste. It is used to make sure the heat sink (the metal block from the future, most likely) is in good contact with the processor (which is under the face cream). Sometimes, it can dry out, which is fine for normal operation but can make it flake off if the fan is removed, meaning the contact between the processor and the heat sink isn't as good. You'd have noticed a temperature change if this had happened though, so there's no need to reapply any thermal paste. I've also hatted your system information, to make the thread more readable. MChesterMC (talk) 11:50, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

The E3400 is a 65W processor, which gives it a maximum temperature of 74.1 degrees C, measured at the geometric center of the surface of the CPU. I assume the reported temperature is being measured near that point, but I didn't see that mentioned in the datasheet. Thermal considerations start on page 75. [7] Katie R (talk) 12:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all for the very thoughtful replies. I learned a lot. I have no idea how you all learned about this. I'm very impressed. Much obliged. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)