Recently there have been activation errors with Microsoft Office Home & Student 2016 for Mac and Microsoft Office Home & Business 2016 for Mac product keys:
Solution:
UPDATE: Sadly, the activation notification returns 24 hours later, counting down from 14 days. Will update this post once a permanent solution is found.
/mac | Aug 12, 2018
Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world -- even if what is published is not true.
-- Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
A certain devotee asked Maharshi about some disagreeable statements made by a certain man well-known to Maharshi. He said, "I permit him to do so. I have permitted him already. Let him do so even more. Let others follow suit. Only let them leave me alone. If because of these reports no one comes to me, I shall consider it a great service done to me.
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi recorded by Munagala Venkataramiah
He who with equanimity surveys
Lustre of goodness, strife of passion, sloth
Of ignorance, not angry if they are,
Not angry when they are not: he who sits
A sojourner and stranger in their midst
Unruffled, standing off, saying--serene--
When troubles break, "These be the Qualities!"
He unto whom--self-centred--grief and joy
Sound as one word; to whose deep-seeing eyes
The clod, the marble, and the gold are one;
Whose equal heart holds the same gentleness
For lovely and unlovely things, firm-set,
Well-pleased in praise and dispraise; satisfied
With honour or dishonour; unto friends
And unto foes alike in tolerance;
Detached from undertakings,--he is named
Surmounter of the Qualities!
The Song Celestial, Or, Bhagavad-gîtâ translated by Edwin Arnold
/misc | Aug 03, 2018
Metapad has a handy feature called Commit Word Wrap which inserts carriage returns into text based on the current window width (the command to remove them is Unwrap Lines).
The same functionality was available in TextWrangler 4.0.1 (download) but removed as of 4.5. Here's how to use it:
/mac | Jul 15, 2018
SNOW (Steganographic Nature Of Whitespace) [31k] {S}+ Conceal (and optionally encrypt) messages in ASCII text by appending whitespace to the end of lines.
/windows | Jul 13, 2018
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 cannot verify the license for this product. You should repair the Office program by using Control Panel.
Microsoft's own "Microsoft Office cannot verify the license for this product" error when you start an Office app suggests disabling compatibility mode - no change.
Help Desk Geek's Fix MS Office "Cannot Verify License" Error Message offers four methods:
none of which worked initially, as the Activation Wizard unhelpfully offered:
Telephone Activation is no longer supported for your product.
Happily, Microsoft published a new number: +1-866-421-7141. Used with method 4 above to resolve.
/windows | Jul 13, 2018
Notes:
/misc | Jul 05, 2018
/nix | Jun 30, 2018
Rip DVD to VIDEO_TS
Losslessly convert and merge desired VOBs in VIDEO_TS to a single MPG1 via VOB2MPG or ffmpeg, e.g.,
ffmpeg -i 'concat:VTS_01_1.VOB|VTS_01_2.VOB|VTS_01_3.VOB' -acodec copy -vcodec copy combined.mpg
Run DVDStyler and select new project options (e.g., DVD-9 (8.5GB), NTSC 720x480, AC3, etc) > OK > No template
File browser > drag MPG created in step 1 to the Titleset Manager at the bottom of the program window
Right click "Menu 1" in the Titleset Manager > Delete > Yes
Right click "Title 1" in the Titleset Manager > Properties...
Verify that video and audio are set to "Copy" and that "do not remultiplex/transcode" is checked
Delete "call last menu;" from "Post commands:"2
Click the green plus symbol > select your SRT file3 > Open
Click the ... button next to "Subtitle: srt"
Select desired font face/size (the default 28pt Arial worked best, but there are many fans of PT Sans Narrow Bold) and fill color (light gray was more pleasing than the default yellow) > OK > OK
File > Burn DVD... > select "just generate" to create new VIDEO_TS with subtitles > Start
Merely concatenating VOBs via VOBMerge or cat *.vob > merged.vob resulted in problems with the playback timeline and location. See VOB files reporting wrong playing time and DVDVob2Mpg's homepage. The latter states in part, "VOB and VRO files contain the MPEG, but also various other data, and headers may be incomplete or wrong etc. Because of that, VOB and VRO files typically don't play well using media players ... Typical problems are: timing issues, not being able to show the progress properly, no way to skip forward, crashes, missing audio, audio off sync, only showing the first 5 seconds of the video etc."
To resolve "Cannot jump to menu" error.
Had to resave SRT in Notepad with UTF-8 encoding to resolve "Error 42 -- Illegal byte sequence -- decoding subtitle file at approx line..."
SubtitleCreator returned "Error reading subtitle number 3. (Input string was not in a correct format.)". Resolved by converting SRT to MicroDVD / SUB in Subtitle Workshop.
/misc | Jun 28, 2018
Save audio.rm to stream.dump:
$ mplayer -dumpstream -bandwidth 20000000 -cache 30000 -noframedrop rtsp://example.com/audio.rm
Direct audio output of stream.dump to audiodump.wav:
$ mplayer -ao pcm stream.dump
Sources:
Wikipedia entry on RealAudio file extensions:
RealAudio files were originally identified by a filename extension of .ra (for Real Audio). In 1997, RealNetworks also began offering a video format called RealVideo. The combination of the audio and video formats was called RealMedia and used the file extension .rm. However, the latest version of RealProducer, Real's flagship encoder, reverted to using .ra for audio-only files, and began using .rv for video files (with or without audio), and .rmvb for VBR video files. The .ram (Real Audio Metadata) and .smil (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) file formats are sometimes encountered as links from web pages (see Streaming Audio section below).
/nix | Jun 17, 2018
Purchased a NoFan CS-80 PC case after reading that it "offers 9 EZ-SWAP drive bays and screwless installation" and is "conveniently designed so that a drive can be easily attached or detached from a bay without any extra tool":
Should have glanced at the manual first, which shows 2.5" and 3.5" drives being screwed into the caddy:
Was expecting something actually tool-less, like this Corsair hard drive tray, which is at least screwless for 3.5" drives (2.5" drives mount to the bottom with screws):
Even better would be something completely tray-less, like the Corsair Carbide 200R's drive cage (though its plastic tabs should really be metal):
/misc | Jun 17, 2018