Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 February 15

= February 15 =

XBOX 360 - Sign-in Problem
I'm trying to play BF3 online, but every time I click the 'Multiplayer' option, it says, 'You need to be signed in to play online'. Then it gives me the option to say 'Yes'. Then nothing. How do I even sign in on this thing? I have an account (three months subscription came with the box), and it's all set up. How do I sign in? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Press the Guide button (the Xbox logo button in the middle of your controller, between 'Back' and 'Start'). This will bring up the Guide Menu. The sign in option should be visible straight away.
 * If you are the only person who uses your 360, you can enable Auto Sign-in by going to the dashboard (exit your current game by ejecting the disc or pressing 'Y' whilst the Guide menu is open), going to Settings -> Profile -> Sign-in Preferences. CaptainVindaloo t c e 03:37, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Edit: Just noticed a shortcut to the console settings menu through the Guide. Serves me right for not looking around a bit more. CaptainVindaloo t c e 03:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

VBA code for a form field in Microsoft Access
I haven't got my VBA books to hand and I need to do something now - hoping you can help me.

I have a textbox field on a form in an Access database. The field contents can only be one of a limited number of options. I want the data in the field to be red and in bold any time the data is not one specific option.

For instance; the contents might say "monthly" or "60 days" or "Proforma". I want the text to be bold and red whenever it is NOT "monthly".

I know I have to put some VBA code in there somewhere but I don't know where and I don't know how to code it.

Help please???

Thanks,  Gurumaister (talk) 15:41, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * There are two ways to do this. One is to have a little VBA run on every Change event for the Textbox that checks its contents and changes the color if necessary. This is just some messy If Then or Select Case statements plus changing the Textbox's ForeColor property. A perhaps easier way (no coding involved) is to use the interface to set up Conditional Formatting. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:20, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Mr.98 - you are an absolute star!!! And it is so simple (I really haven't explored the ribbon in Access. Grateful thanks. Gurumaister (talk) 16:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

need website monitoring software
I need software to automatically look for changes to websites I specify. It should check the website for changes periodically and then (1) notify me that there has been a change and let me click on a button to go to the website, and (2) store a copy of the page if it has changed.

I used to use a free program called WebMon that did #1. I bought a commercial program Right Web Monitor that used to do #1 and #2. But it quit doing #1 properly - it would notify me of changes, but the button to go to the webpage is gone. I emailed their tech support months ago and they said that it would be fixed in the next version. Since then I've sent two more inquiries about when it would be fixed, but I didn't get a reply to either of them.

So I'm looking for a different program (for Windows) and I don't mind paying $50 or so. Is there such a program? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 18:26, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If you use an RSS reader (I recommend Google Reader) then http://page2rss.com/ will do what you're asking for. It's free. Be warned, though, that I have occasionally noticed that it takes quite a long time for the notification to come through on RSS - sometimes a day or 2 after the page has changed. But I use it to monitor the 'current vacancies' pages of companies I'm interested in working for and it works perfectly for that. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:24, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't use an RSS reader. These pages are not blogs or anything like that.  They are possibly updated each day (certainly need to be checked at least daily), but more typically it is weeks between changes.  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:29, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * In that case, I give you 10 free ways to keep track of changes to any website, without an RSS reader. A couple of these are obviously going to be unsuitable (and one is the aforementioned Page2RSS), but you might find something useful. I haven't used any of the services, so I'm afraid I can't give a recommendation. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 23:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * None of those say that they will save a copy of the HTML. So maybe I should use a dual approach - Right Web Monitor to save the HTML and WebMon to notify me, although it is a duplication of effort.  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:18, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Try Googling. Shadowjams (talk) 19:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I couldn't find anything that said that it would save a copy of the website to my computer.


 * So let me ask about something a little different: is there a way to automatically save a copy of a website (the HTML) to my hard drive, once a day? (It doesn't have to notify me of changes or even check for changes).  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:06, 17 February 2012 (UTC)


 * HTTrack, and assuming you're using Windows, set it up as a scheduled event? Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:58, 17 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It downloaded nearly 500 pages from the website and I only want the main page. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to schedule it.  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:08, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

rsync's "non-regular files"
I have now regularly backed up my Linux PC's hard disk with rsync for several years, but I have become to wonder. rsync claims it is "skipping non-regular files". I would imagine these files include such things as device files, symlinks, files in the proc filesystem and sockets, but rsync also seems to consider libraries and even C source code files "non-regular files". What logic is there to what rsync considers "non-regular files", and is it somehow configurable? J I P &#124; Talk 19:57, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This is spoken out of ignorance of the actual answer, but one useful sanity check would be to do a full restore on a new hard disk and then compare all the files. I know we're all supposed to do this, but must admit that I, like 99% of us, lack the discipline to do such a thing.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:05, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Are you certain those libraries and source files aren't symlinks? You can use rsync with the verbose flags (you may require double verbosity, "-v -v", depending on your rsync); it will tell you which files it is skipping and why it's skipping them.  Use man rsync to verify options specific to the version on your system; rsync may be platform-specific.  There are too many configurable options to list all of them here. Nimur (talk) 23:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It appears that these libraries and source code files indeed are symlinks. The library files I can quite understand (the library files in /lib and /usr/lib also have symlinks in the same directory pointing to them), but why anyone would make an open source project where one C source file is actually a symlink to another C source file I don't understand. J I P &#124; Talk 06:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * For an example from my projects, I like to keep corresponding .h and .c files together in the same directory, but I symlink all .h files into a project-central include directory, so that gcc can find them with just one -I option. Another reason might be that the application offers several different implementations of a functionality (with different speed/memory trade-offs, different levels of debug information, or different licenses), and at configuration time it creates a symlink to the version the user prefers. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Browser page load order
I'm rather disappointed in the order my browser (Firefox 10.0.1) loads a web page. I'd expect something like this:

1) Place text and blank frames for pictures, LATEX renderings, etc., first, so the size of the the page is accurately represented.

2) Activate basic page controls, like the scroll bar.

3) Activate links inside the page.

4) Render static pictures inside the frames.

5) Render animations inside the frames.

But what I seem to get is no usable scroll bar until it's finished rendering all the animations, which may take a very long time. Is there a way to fix Firefox to do a better job ? Does another browser do this better ? StuRat (talk) 20:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * That shouldn't be happening if the page was designed in a sane way. Do you have an example where the effect is noticable? (One thing that can cause problems is that a page that doesn't specify the sizes of its images needs to be reflowed when the images actually load.) Paul (Stansifer) 21:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The page where it's most often a problem is the Pogo Mini Snapshot page: . I can't use the up arrow and down arrow at the ends of the vertical scroll bar until all the animations are fully loaded, if even then. StuRat (talk) 22:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Hm, it seems to work alright for me (Firefox 10.0.0). I don't know what to say. Paul (Stansifer) 02:22, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for trying. StuRat (talk) 22:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)