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+Extract is a great piece of software that will extract free-to-air programmes from a Sky HD to your PC.

The author wasn’t planning on any further releases but changed his mind so that it could support drives over 500GB in size (which is possible, thanks to Copy+). And, whilst he was at it, he fixed some bugs, made some performance enhancements and gave the GUI a spruce-up.

Not bad for free software… but please donate if you like it.

As standard, Windows will poll USB devices once every 1ms. However, this can cause the issue of laptops unable to enter the C3 processor power-saving state. By increasing the USB polling interval from 1ms to 5ms the processor can enter a C3 power-saving state during its inactivity.

There are also suggestions that decreasing the polling rate will also save energy generally. I’m not sure.

But, anyway, until I hear that all of this is some kind of urban myth, I’m willing to give it a try.

Here’s a couple of scripts (save them with .reg extensions and run them as required) that I rattled off to activate the “idle” (5ms) and also to return to “normal” (1ms)…

Activate Idle Polling Interval…

REGEDIT4 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlClass 
{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}000] 
"IdleEnable"=dword:00000001

Deactivate Idle Polling Interval…

REGEDIT4 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlClass 
{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}000]
"IdleEnable"=-

Or download them from here.

At the moment I’m juggling 3 MySQL databases. It could very easily be more.

I usually use phpMyAdmin for backing them up but restrictions on port forwarding has meant I can’t do this whilst at work (and I have a tendency to forget if I leave it until the evening at home). So, I wrote myself a script to do this. And optimize the tables as well.

An extract of the script is below… mine allows me to choose the database and compression type and then populates the appropriate database fields (username, password, etc) but for generic usage purposes, the script below should be fine for other people to use and build upon.

if ($compression=="None") {$comp_cmd=""; $comp_ext="sql";}
if ($compression=="Gzip") {$comp_cmd=" | gzip"; $comp_ext="gzip";}
if ($compression=="Zip") {$comp_cmd=" | zip"; $comp_ext="zip";}

mysql_connect($host,$user,$password);
mysql_select_db($database);
$query="SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM ".$database;
$result=mysql_query($query);
$num=mysql_numrows($result);
$compressed=0;
$i=0;
while ($i < $num) {
   $table=mysql_result($result,$i,"Name");
   $gain=mysql_result($result,$i,"Data_free");
   if ($gain!=0) {
       if ($compressed==0) {echo "<br/>Compressing tables...<br/><br/>n";}
       echo "Table ".$table." - ".$gain." bytes gained<br>n";
       $query="OPTIMIZE TABLE ".$table;
       $optimise=mysql_query($query);
       $compressed=$compressed+$gain;
   }
   $i++;
}
if ($compressed!=0) {
   echo "<br/>".$compressed." bytes gained in total<br/>";
} else {
   echo "<br/>No tables were optimised.<br/>";
}
$backupFile = "backup/".$name."_".date("Ymd").'.'.$comp_ext;
$command = "mysqldump --opt --extended-insert --complete-insert --hex-blob
--host=".$host." --user=".$user." --password='".$password."' ".$database.
$comp_cmd." > $backupFile";
exec($command, $ret_arr, $ret_code);
if ($ret_code==0) {
   echo "<br/>Database backed up: <a href="".$backupFile."">download</a>.n";
} else {
   echo "<br/>The database could not be backed up - the return code was ".
$ret_code.".n";
};

Before running the above, you need to populate the following fields…

$database – your MySQL database
$user – your MySQL username
$password – your MySQL password
$host – your MySQL host name
$name – used to name your backup
$compression – this is the type of compression you wish to apply and should be either None, Zip or Gzip.

When run any tables that require optimizing will be, well, optimized and the details output. Finally a backup is made of the database and a link displayed so that you can download it.

Downloads are placed in a folder named /download, so make sure you add write permissions for this folder. The filename will be xxx_yymmdd, where xxx is the name you specified in $name and yymmdd is the date. Obviously the extension will be based on the type of compression you requested.

Whilst trying to write this code I came across various scripts and resources which did something similar but often didn’t work (grrr) for one reason or another. In particular, often the backup files are create empty if you have the MySQLdump parameters wrong. One thing you might spot that I’ve worked around – and here’s my tip for the day – is that I’ve placed single quotes around the password. This was because one of my passwords had an ampersand in it and, well, MySQLdump doesn’t like it.

Enjoy, play and let me know how you get on!

On my main PC and at work I use the excellent John’s Background Switcher to randomise my wallpaper and, in the case, of work display different ones across my multi-monitor setup. It works well and, due to the amount of time I’m usually on them, changes regularly throughout the day.

For my Netbook, however, it’s different. Due to its short bursts of use, changing regularly isn’t so important and, at the same time, I need a program that’s compact and uses as few resources as possible.

Step forward Craig’s Random Wallpaper Changer. This has no options, no GUI interface. Nothing. You simply drop it into the folder that your wallpapers are stored in and then create a shortcut to it in your Startup folder. It will then randomise your desktop background on startup. And that’s it. It then finishes and uses no more resources.

It’s a superb idea and I highly recommend it.