General Computer Thread

[Marc]

FedEx says I have a package coming. I click on the delivery map button and it says I have to log in to see it but I am logged in. So I log in again, it shows the map button again, I click again and it tells me I have to log in again. And this keeps happening over and over. Meanwhile, if I click on something else instead of the map, the site clearly shows that I'm already logged in. Anyone know what's going on here? Other sites don't make me do this.

the usual suggestion it to clear cookies and caches but it could also be the fedex website is currently borked or it doesn't like your browser today for some reason.

I've had times when it's played up for me when using Firefox and other times it's worked well but then I've also got some adds in running with to protected against nasties.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

had an odd one about 30 minutes ago. I leave a usb cable in my front usb ports for my phone and nothing else is usually plugged into the other end of that and today turning on the pc got an overcurrent warning which I had never ever seen before. it was that front port. Unplugged cable and boom everything worked as expected and the cable worked too when I transferred pictures from pc to phone so not sure what is going on. Used a small air blower on the port and connector on the cable.

 

[Santaman]

Linux Mint 22.3 has been released, this is the last point update for the 22.x series

Home - Linux Mint

Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up to date and comfortable desktop operating system.

www.linuxmint.com

I've updated most of my Linux Mint machines to this version, there were no hiccups or problems or anything else to report so far.

I've been testing other distros as well and over the years the other distro that I have become to like is Manjaro and then mainly the XFCE versions since most of my test machines are no speed demons, XFCE is nice and clean and you maybe need to adjust a few things here and there a little more than on Mint but so far it's been a really solid OS for me.
From a software point of view I've got nothing to complain, you can set the software manager to install flatpak etc if you want it to do so which means you can get about everything you need if the normal repositories don't have a specific program you want to use.
If you want a more sleek and modern graphical userspace then there's also a KDE Plasma version of Manjaro and of course a Gnome version too, community respins also enable you to have a Cinnamon desktop version for if you like that specific Linux Mint desktop flavor and also there are i3 and Sway WM versions which I have never tried befor btw...
Manjaro is a rolling release distro so it will keep itself up to date all the time.

Manjaro Linux Official

This page provides an overview of Manjaro Linux, an open source operating system designed for ease of use. Learn about its features, installation, and support options. Get the most out of Manjaro Linux with the latest news, downloads, and tips from our helpful community.

manjaro.org

Manjaro Image Downloads

Choose from major Linux Desktop environments to run Manjaro on your computer.

manjaro.org

 

[John Clark]

Mint 22.3 popped up for me a few days ago too. Haven't upgraded yet but it's likely to be fairly soon, though 22.2 has been fine.

 

[bdub76]

Getting playable Torchwood rips has been my weekend activity along with a sick dog.

Fighting with Hybrid to get playable versions of my Torchwood season 3 blu-ray rips to play via my ROKU ultra media app. No idea why they're interlaced at 1080i, so I'm using QTGMC bob and doubling the frame rate and keeping the sharpen setting at 0.1. I ended up with Main10/4.1/Main as Main10/4.1/High wouldn't play properly. CRF of 23 seems to be working too. I'm ending up with about 1.7GB files compared to the rips of 15GB.

No idea why ROKU media app couldn't play the straight mpeg2 rips.

It's so much more convenient to play via my media server and not worry about my discs going bad.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Getting playable Torchwood rips has been my weekend activity along with a sick dog.

Fighting with Hybrid to get playable versions of my Torchwood season 3 blu-ray rips to play via my ROKU ultra media app. No idea why they're interlaced at 1080i, so I'm using QTGMC bob and doubling the frame rate and keeping the sharpen setting at 0.1. I ended up with Main10/4.1/Main as Main10/4.1/High wouldn't play properly. CRF of 23 seems to be working too. I'm ending up with about 1.7GB files compared to the rips of 15GB.

I believe the BBC broadcast Torchwood in 1080i25 back in 2007-11. That is also the format used on the Region B Blu-rays. I use MakeMKV to rip and then transcode to H.265 MKVs using Topaz Video Enhancer AI with the enhancer turned off. It's a lot more convenient than the AnyMP4 converter I used to use as it performs the transcoding and audio and subtitle remuxing in one go. With AnyMP4, I had to do the remuxing myself using MKVToolNix GUI.

 

[bdub76]

I believe the BBC broadcast Torchwood in 1080i25 back in 2007-11. That is also the format used on the Region B Blu-rays. I use MakeMKV to rip and then transcode to H.265 MKVs using Topaz Video Enhancer AI with the enhancer turned off. It's a lot more convenient than the AnyMP4 converter I used to use as it performs the transcoding and audio and subtitle remuxing in one go. With AnyMP4, I had to do the remuxing myself using MKVToolNix GUI.

I used MakeMKV to rip. Then, I used Hybrid to remove the interlacing with QTGMC bob (custom: slower and sharpen set to 0.1) via Vapoursynth, so it doubled the frame-rate. Then, still using Hyrbid, I passed thru the audio and converted to H265 with Main10@L4.1@Main setting. I also set it slower and CRF to 23. It turned out okay. Took me a bit to figure out the settings for H265 that I wanted to use. I mostly use H264 since I'm usually ripping DVDs. I did this since it's much easier for me to use ROKU media player and stream than to put disc in my PS5 to watch. I'm getting lazy.

I still need to do this for my Blake's 7. The good news is that it's already 1080p.

I do want to use Topaz AI to upscale my Forever Knight, but the quality isn't all that good. Lots of grain and artifacts since it's shot really dark.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I have a really shaky copy of Lensman (1988, directed by Kazuyuki Hirokawa and Yoshiaki Kawajiri) that I ripped from my VHS and upscaled using Topaz AI. It's a very loose adaptation of E E "Doc" Smith's story, and despite perhaps too many elements copied from Star Wars, it has some charm, and the animation is interesting as it was one of the first to make use of CGI, I have no idea why the anime was never made available on either DVD or Blu-ray. I'd buy the Blu-ray in a heartbeat,

 

[bdub76]

I have a really shaky copy of Lensman (1988, directed by Kazuyuki Hirokawa and Yoshiaki Kawajiri) that I ripped from my VHS and upscaled using Topaz AI. It's a very loose adaptation of E E "Doc" Smith's story, and despite perhaps too many elements copied from Star Wars, it has some charm, and the animation is interesting as it was one of the first to make use of CGI, I have no idea why the anime was never made available on either DVD or Blu-ray. I'd buy the Blu-ray in a heartbeat,

There is a lot of cases, where I'd love stuff on blu-ray. And some stuff goes out of print and isn't available for streaming anywhere. This leads me down rabbit holes trying to track stuff down. For example, there was a short lived series called Sable based on the comic book. I found really rough copies of it on YouTube, but each episode is split in half. It has never been released on DVD. Another show that I really like is Midnight Caller. It's never been released on DVD. I have found some really rough TV rips of it on YouTube and Dailymotion. I'd love for it be released. The other problem is that it's released but done really poorly. Dead Zone comes to mind. The DVD masters are terrible. Thus, even though it's now streaming, it still looks awful.

It's especially a problem with fiction, where there is a story that I'm looking for that isn't available by any publisher, but it's too new to be in public domain. This happens with a lot of science fiction published in magazines in the 50s and 60s.

Sable (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Midnight Caller - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

There is a lot of cases, where I'd love stuff on blu-ray. And some stuff goes out of print and isn't available for streaming anywhere. This leads me down rabbit holes trying to track stuff down. For example, there was a short lived series called Sable based on the comic book. I found really rough copies of it on YouTube, but each episode is split in half. It has never been released on DVD. Another show that I really like is Midnight Caller. It's never been released on DVD. I have found some really rough TV rips of it on YouTube and Dailymotion. I'd love for it be released. The other problem is that it's released but done really poorly. Dead Zone comes to mind. The DVD masters are terrible. Thus, even though it's now streaming, it still looks awful.

Another series that featured Nicole de Boer is Mission Genesis from 1997, which was called Deepwater Black (like the original novel) in the UK. I gave up trying to track it down. I only managed to catch a couple of the 13 episodes on the Sci-Fi channel whdn it was aired. It probably wasn't that good and likely didn't have a resolution. The premise is somewhat similar to Frank Herbert's "Destination: Void" as far as I recall.

ETA: Seems Mission Genesis is available on YouTube now. Wait long enough and it will appear, I suppose. The problem is that I'm no longer as interested in watching it as I once was.

 

[bdub76]

Another series that featured Nicole de Boer is Mission Genesis from 1997, which was called Deepwater Black (like the original novel) in the UK. I gave up trying to track it down. I only managed to catch a couple of the 13 episodes on the Sci-Fi channel whdn it was aired. It probably wasn't that good and likely didn't have a resolution. The premise is somewhat similar to Frank Herbert's "Destination: Void" as far as I recall.

ETA: Seems Mission Genesis is available on YouTube now. Wait long enough and it will appear, I suppose. The problem is that I'm no longer as interested in watching it as I once was.

Another one that comes to mind is the Burning Zone. I remember the virus in the first episode have sentience. But then it became a series of tracking down viruses. I can't find this show anywhere, and I'm not all that interested in finding it now. A much better show called Regenesis came out later.

 

[Santaman]

Think you two might have more result in the TV and Media forum concerning this subject, if there are people who know more then I think the posters in there might know more than old computer hackety people in here.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Think you two might have more result in the TV and Media forum concerning this subject, if there are people who know more then I think the posters in there might know more than old computer hackety people in here.

Yes, I agree the discussion is not directly related to this thread. I have a solution that works for me anyway so I'm done.

 

[Santaman]

Oh, it wasn't about the thread going a bit sideways but more that some people in the TV forum might know where to find the series etc you were looking for.

As for computing, really not the best of times if you need to replace a machine, the last few months I actually have been looking at and buying some refurb office machines since I needed them for testing and as a handy backup.
For a mere 149 Euro a piece I obtained two Dell Optiplex 30360 mini PC's, they came with Win 11 pro but I made images and then put Manjaro Linux on them, they're replacing a much older Optiplex 745 which is actually 20 years old now and a Core2Duo E6600, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon 1300 Pro and a 250GB WD Blue HDD don't cut the mustard anymore.
The 3060's have a Coffee Lake i3 8100T which is a lot faster than the C2D and the on chip graphics are faster than the Radeon, the 3060 have SATA NVME drives, just 128 GB but that's enough, also they literally fit in one hand.