[CauseISaidSo]

Elsinore, I’m having problems with the “Keep me logged in on this computer” checkbox. I’m using Chrome and I cleared my browser & cookie cache recently and ever since I’m having to log in each time I bring up the forums, regardless of whether I check that box or not. Could you ask Zeke if he’s got any ideas when he’s got a couple of minutes? I’ve got Fiddler installed so I can get him header traces if he wants. I can still get in, so it’s not critical, but it’s kind of a pain to login every time.

[CauseISaidSo]

Sorry about that. Again. Not Fark’s fault this time. I really need to get the scraper more automated so it’s not subject to the memory faults of its creator. Did I mention I’m turning 50 in a couple of weeks? 😉

I was really looking forward to this contest as I hoped to use it as an excuse to dig out the old Heathkit H8 and see if it still fires up, but time was not on my side this week.

[CauseISaidSo]

That is a seriously cool photo, rav. And I think it’s better that there aren’t a bunch of sunspots as the ISS would otherwise tend to get lost in it; as is, you’re drawn right to it.

[CauseISaidSo]

Nikon service has had my D600 for 5 weeks now for oil spots on the sensor. Supposedly they are replacing the mirror assy & the shutter but the parts are on backorder. Needless to say I’m not real happy about that.

Rethinking our decision to switch to the darkside, are we? 😉

[CauseISaidSo]

Congrats to Linguine on your individual win and to oddmind on your combined win!

[CauseISaidSo]

Apparently the script does not like Zenfolio, all I keep getting is “Images cannot be smaller than 9 by 9 pixels.”

I took a quick look, fluffy, and yes, it’s due to the way that Zenfolio displays your images so that they can’t be right-clicked and saved. For example, here’s what an image element on your thumbnail page looks like:

<img class="pv-img" id="ctl03_PhotoGrid_i1-img" width="200" height="106"

style="background-image:url(/cdn/pub/lhkaey3gc5zx/0/null/m/lxf9tmowbjy1lj3n7xcd/s8/v76/p1466129156-11.jpg?sn=&tk=fdqXOQzQgw9snO8XDde4CdQ9rhslCIdutexGqaRyQbs=);"

src="https://cdn.zenfolio.net/zf/img/null.gif">

I don’t know if you know any HTML, but what they’re doing is telling the browser that the image source is “null.gif” (a small empty image, which is why Google complains about its size). They explicitly set the size of the image and then set its background to your actual image. Since null.gif is small and transparent, your image shows through like usual but if you right-click it, you’ll save null.gif. Rather clever, actually.

You can try the thumbnails for your contests at Bibliostats. It seems to work really well regardless of image size (see for example the small avatar-sized version of a shot it found in my previous post).

I can tell you that your liquid tulip is on the pinterest site. There seems to be a collection of Fark-related pinterest boards like that one, so it may be something “officially” tied in with Fark. But I don’t know who chooses what gets “pinned”.

[CauseISaidSo]

Does this work in chrome for anyone?

It worked for me in Chrome, but I did notice that if the image is large enough to be resizable (where Chrome displays the magnifying glass cursor), it won’t work on that page.

[CauseISaidSo]

Whoa, very cool! Thanks for the link, ennui. I tried it on a select few of mine and I suspect I’ll end up wasting a lot more time running most of them through it.

So, based on the few I tried it with:

• Who’s responsible for the “Farktography Masterpieces” section on pinterest? I had no idea this existed, but 4 of my shots are pinned there.
• My Lego shot seems to have made the rounds. From what I can tell on this page, it was either tweeted by HuffPost or by someone in response to that article. It’s not embedded, but it’s linked under the tweet “This LEGO sculpture will make you dizzy and amazed all in one! (sick bag maybe required) #lego #sculpture”.

  It also shows up on this Russian site, Impossible Sculptures (seems to be safe). I gotta give the guy credit – he tried to give me attribution, but he used the name I’ve got in my Fark profile, Richard Hertz (not my real name – from an old SNL skit, and also the name I used for my first fake ID WAY WAY back when).

• Someone with the username SuperJETT from Lousville, KY who appears to be an admin on the forums at X-H20 (which looks to be a site for SeaDoo & jetski enthusiasts) has appropriated my bacon pic from last week as his forums avatar!

[CauseISaidSo]

I’d try that last tip before breaking out the meter, Yugoboy. That’s what’s happened to every power brick gone bad that I’ve come across. Never actually seen the brick itself go bad.

And fear of electricity is a good thing. When you stop being afraid of it is when you start being complacent around it, and that’s when it’s gonna bite ya.

My plugging-things-into-the-wall story: This wasn’t me, but a childhood friend. Y’all remember those race cars that had a small rechargeable battery in them and a thing that looked like a gas pump that you recharged them with? They were about the same size as but weren’t slot cars; the track didn’t have any metal or guide rails and you couldn’t control the speed of the cars. I think maybe they were called Sizzlers. Anyway, the gas pump thing held like 4 D batteries and you’d stick this cord that looked like a pump hose into the side of the car and press down on the top of the pump for 30 seconds or so and it’d give the car a charge good enough for several runs. And these things would really fly (usually right off the track if it wasn’t perfectly set up).

Well, my friend got the idea that if 4 D batteries were good, then surely juice from the wall was better, so he stripped a cord, wired it to the terminals where the batteries normally connected and plugged it into the wall. To say he let the magic smoke out of the car would be a severe understatement; there wasn’t just magic smoke, he conjured up the magic fire as well.

[CauseISaidSo]

CISS, so you’re taking it easy on Yugoboy by not telling him to set the dial to amps and “test” the meter by putting the leads into the 110v socket? Where’s the fun?

I thought you put it on MegOhms and stuck one lead into a open cut on each hand?

Remind me to never lend a meter to either of you two! Besides, everyone knows you shouldn’t risk a nice meter to check the mains when a fork will work perfectly fine. 😉

[CauseISaidSo]

In general:

1. On the meter, there should be a socket labeled Ground or Common (or some abbreviation thereof). Plug the black lead into that.
2. Plug the red lead into the remaining socket on the meter. If there are 3 sockets, likely one of the remaining is labeled something like “High Current” or high amperage. Ignore that one and use the other.
3. Look at the label on your “charging box”. It should state the input (110 VAC) and the output. For most laptops, the output will be either 12 or 15 volts DC.
4. Your meter may be auto-ranging, so this step will depend on what the dial on your meter looks like. On mine, there are two sets of ranges: one for DC voltage (V with a couple of straight lines over it) and one for AC voltage (V with a couple of wavy lines over it). Within each of those ranges are multiple max voltages. Select the right type of voltage (most likely DC) and if applicable, select a voltage max that’s greater than or equal to the output of your charging box. For my laptop and meter, that would be the 40VDC setting since the next smaller is 4V and my power output is 12V.
5. Plug in your charging cord (to the outlet, not to the laptop) and BEING CAREFUL NOT TO LET THE LEADS TOUCH, insert one lead into the hole in the barrel plug (the plug that goes into the laptop) and touch the other lead to the outside of the barrel. If it’s a modern meter (which it sounds like it is since it’s just a few years old), then the actual polarity won’t matter and your meter should read close to either positive or negative 12 volts (or whatever the output says). If you’re sure the leads are making good contact with the metal parts of the barrel plug and you’re not reading any voltage (or significantly lower than it should be), you might have a problem with your power converter (charging box).

Something else to try that’s frequently the problem with laptop power converters: If there’s a light on the cord or the laptop itself that indicates that it’s receiving power and charging, look at that while you flex the cord at various places up and down its length. The most likely candidate for a problem is not the cord from the outlet to the box but from the box to the laptop (since it’s thinner). If it flickers when you do that, you’ve got a bad/flaky cord. This happens frequently since laptop cords are always being flexed (coiled and uncoiled) and pinched and rolled over by chairs. If this is the case, it’s easy enough to fix, but will require some basic soldering skills.

[CauseISaidSo]

Thanks Els, just caught that myself. Does Drew have a guy on staff whose job is exclusively to tweak little non-visual elements on the contest pages? Everything else is apparently the same, but all of the sudden this week someone decided that a bunch of tabs before the vote count string would be nice. 😕

[CauseISaidSo]

Nevermind, I found one. Not sure it’s the “architected” means of doing so (had to dig through page source), but I found a link.

[CauseISaidSo]

orionid, I’d be happy to OBO, but I don’t know anything about flickr – how do I find the direct link to the image?

[CauseISaidSo]

…most Texan’s are from Texas because their parents had sex there. 😛

Like me. As we say around here, I’m a Texan by birth but an Oklahoman by the grace of God! 😆

Of course, that’s mostly said by Oklahomans to Texans. Usually replied to by the Texans with, “Man, what’d you do to piss off God so badly?” 😉

[Author]

Posts