MS Windows, the ultimate freakin' laxative

I keep forgetting how frustrating it can be.

The Task: get two MS-Windows machines to talk to one another to verify that a piece of software doesn't break simply due to being run from a Samba share. Simple, no?

The Result: finally, the first (XP) and fourth (XP) machines talk to one another.

The Path There: Nothing can connect to the first’s share. The second (2000) machine won’t talk to or share with anybody. The third (XP) keeps prompting for a guest user password, and nothing will satisfy it. Yes, I have enabled the guest user. On each end and both ends, just in case. Yes, I have tried giving the guest accounts a password, and making real accounts that match. No, we’re not on a domain or AD setup... although the first (now working-ish) machine thought it was joined to (a nonexistent, never-existent) one when I first sat down to it.

The Remaining Problem: the application still breaks just as badly XP-to-XP (which is exactly the situation the developer has set up for testing, and there it works flawlessly) as it did Win2k-to-Samba.

The “diagnostic” (hah!) is a segfault in kernel.dll — XP tells you this if you insist, ’2000 just tells you that it died and a log has been written, but where? I can’t find it, and I’ve looked everywhere, menus and filesystem alike. Do I miss not being able to simply strace the sucker? You bet. Hmm. Maybe under WINE?

Comments

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

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