“Off-road / not maintained” is used for the sort of road that needs a serious 4WD.
“Street / unpaved” can be used for just dirt roads.
Beware of
Two segment loops, particularly when creating Service Stations.
Category Archives: How To
How to do things
Operating instructions for camping-boxes
Gebrauchsanweisung für Kühlboxen
Mode d’emploi pour réfrigérateurs portatifs
The front cover mentions the following models
- B 501
- RC 110/A
- RC 150/A
- B 533
- KK BA 400
The below manual was included with this Electrolux portable refrigerator:
The manual itself
Adobe PDF printer hangs on Windows 10
with Adobe version 9.5 –> 11.
The fix is to grant all "Users", "Full Control" to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat PDFMaker Registry Key
(on a 64-bit system, this will be HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Adobe\Acrobat PDFMaker) 
Disputed computer ownership is …
a thing in large corporations.
And one way to find out who has the computer, is to flag it at next logon.
I used this idea at a few organisations, and it always works well.
How I setup my external backup drive.
I use VeraCrypt to create a encrypted hard drive. That way, if I lose the drive, the lucky finder won’t be able to read the data.
The steps are as follows:
- Using DiskPart and Clean the drive
- Start VeraCrypt and select the VeraCrypt Volume Creation Wizard
- Encrypt a non-system partition/drive
- Standard VeraCrypt volume
- Select the external hard drive
- Create encrypted volume and format it
- Select the default encryption options
- Volume size is the entire drive
- Select the NTFS Filesystem AND the “Quick Format” option
- Click format
Using PowerShell to ZIP something.
I needed to ZIP-up some log files in a number of subdirectories. In the past, I have used the PKZIP utility.
I couldn’t find my copy of PKZIP 
“Doesn’t PowerShell have a compress-archive command?”
’Why, yes it does!’
Two commands later:
$files=get-childitem *.log -Recurse
compress-archive $files -DestinationPath c:\data\AllTheLogFiles
I had my AllTheLogFiles.Zip file.
Backup date/time and SyncBackPro
My backup tool of choice is SyncBackPro. It’s a quality product at a reasonable price.
One of the things I backup is my Apple iPhone and iTunes folders. I take a snapshot of these by using the Compression feature, with a custom filename.
You can generate a custom filename this by creating your own variable in the Profile Setup/Variables area.
In the screenshot (about) you can see that I’ve created the Variable Name DATETIMENOW with the Value %YEAR%%MONTH%%DAY%_%HOUR%%MINUTE%%SECOND%
In the screenshot, this translates to 20180717_213656
I then use this in the Profile Setup for the actual backup:
As simple as that.
Fixing the pull cord on an IXL Tastic
As far as I can tell, IXL do not make the IXL Tastic with a Pull Cord Switch any more.
The Pull Cord uses a Ball and Socket arrangement.
ie. the knotted cord sits in a socket.
After some years of use, the ball socket can break:
(the “blue tack” was a previous repair)
A replacement for Jasc Image Robot?
Had an email recently from a reader
I found your page on Google (Jasc Image Robot – October 2009) and was just wondering if you still have Image Robot or if you know where I can get a copy of it?
No, and no.
But a quick look at Google shows that XnConvert might do what they want. It will read 500+ image formats, and output to 100+ formats.
And it’s freeware.
I also briefly looked at Advanced Batch Image Convertor, but the two problems I had with it were that a) it won’t read PaintShop Pro images (PSP) and b) only 5 export formats.
That picture looks odd …
I was looking at the picture on the right, and was thinking, there’s something wrong with it.
But I didn’t know what.
So I did a check on TinEye*, and found several close matches.
This one is the closest, it’s from shutterstock.
By the looks of it, the first image was rotated left, so the display board was level; and it has been cropped.
* yes, I wrote about TinEye 3 years ago. I’m still impressed with the service.