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Use Number Keys To Jump To Specific Times In YouTube Videos
How To Back Up A Profile Folder With 7-Zip Or WinRAR From The Command Prompt
iCade Turns An iPad Into A Retro Arcade Machine

Use Number Keys To Jump To Specific Times In YouTube Videos

Posted: 10 Jan 2011 03:30 AM PST

One of the lesser-known features of viewing videos on YouTube is that you can in fact use number keys as pre-programmed time markers.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Load up any YouTube video. You have a wide selection to choose from at our YouTube channel, pcmedianet.

2. Start video playback by specifically pressing the play button at lower left:

What this does is give the Flash Player application focus, and that’s needed for this to work.

3. When the video starts playing, number keys above the letters (meaning not the number pad) now act as time markers.

Pressing 0 (zero) will jump to the beginning of the video. 1 is 10%, 2 is 20%, 3 is 30% and goes all the way to 9 for 90%. And yes this will work whether the video is completely loaded or not.

This actually comes in handy when the Flash player decides not to recognize your clicks on the progress bar (which happens from time to time). Keystrokes always work when the player is in focus.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Use Number Keys To Jump To Specific Times In YouTube Videos

How To Back Up A Profile Folder With 7-Zip Or WinRAR From The Command Prompt

Posted: 10 Jan 2011 03:00 AM PST

The first question people usually ask is, "If I can simply right-click and archive a profile folder, why would I bother doing it from the command line?" The answer is that if you use a scheduler, such as Windows 7′s Task Scheduler, you can’t instruct that program to right-click or click anywhere for that matter. You must give it a mouse-less way of doing what you want, and for that you need to use console commands.

WinRAR (paid) and 7-Zip (free) both have console versions that come bundled with their software, and you can use that to easily backup a profile folder elsewhere. With WinRAR there is rar.exe and unrar.exe. With 7-Zip it’s one program, 7z.exe.

For this example, a Firefox profile will be backed up.

Note before continuing: Whenever backing up a profile, it’s important that the app that uses the profile is closed, else files will be missed because they are in use by the app.

Using Windows environment variables for path locations

We use these because it’s a lot less to type.

Using environment variable goodness, the path to Firefox’s profiles and extensions is:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox

The path to WinRAR is:

%PROGRAMFILES%\WinRAR\rar.exe

The path to 7-Zip is:

%PROGRAMFILES%\7-Zip\7z.exe

And the path to your desktop is:

%USERPROFILE%\Desktop

We’ll get back to these in a moment.

Diving into the Command Prompt

Once you learn how to use 7-Zip or WinRAR from the Command Prompt, it will be much easier to configure for use in the Task Scheduler app of your choice.

Open a Command Prompt window by clicking Windows Logo, typing command and selecting Command Prompt.

(Small side note: "Elevated permissions" are not necessary. You can run a "plain" Command Prompt; this is OK.)

For a test, we’ll create an archive of the Firefox profile folder on the desktop to make sure it works. Be sure to close Firefox first so the profile folder is freed up for backup.

Using WinRAR:

"%PROGRAMFILES%\WinRAR\rar.exe" u -r -m0 "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\firefox-backup.rar" "%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox"

…which looks like this on the command line:

Using 7-Zip:

"%PROGRAMFILES%\7-Zip\7z.exe" u -r -mx=0 -t7z "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\firefox-backup.7z" "%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox"

…which looks like this on the command line:

A detailed breakdown of each:

WinRAR: "%PROGRAMFILES%\WinRAR\rar.exe"
7-Zip: "%PROGRAMFILES%\7-Zip\7z.exe"

Launches the archive program.

WinRAR: u
7-Zip: u

Update archive. It’s most likely true you’re going to run this same command to backup your profile folder routinely, so instead of creating a new archive with "a", "u" is used instead. If no archive is present when run (which will be the case when you first run this), a new one is created.

WinRAR: -r
7-Zip: -r

Recurse subfolders. This means the archive created will include the folder and all subfolders/files under it.

WinRAR: -m0
7-Zip: -mx=0

Level of compression. You have the choice of 0 (zero) through 5. 0 is no compression and fastest. 5 is ‘ultra’ compression and slowest.

7-Zip (only): -t7z

This means "type of archive is the 7z format".

WinRAR: "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\firefox-backup.rar"
7-Zip: "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\firefox-backup.7z"

The destination archive you want to create. Must be surrounded in quotes.

WinRAR: "%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox"
7-Zip: "%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox"

The folder you want to backup. Must be surrounded in quotes.

Success?

If all went well, you have a file called firefox-backup.rar or firefox-backup.7z on your desktop depending on whether you used WinRAR or 7-Zip. Double-click to look inside the archive to make sure it backed up everything. If it did, it worked.

You can now modify the line to deliver the destination archive anywhere you wish, because it’s most likely true you don’t want it on the desktop.

Things you can do once you’re satisfied with the line

Once the command line you run archives what you want and places it where you want, you can…

Create as a quick shortcut

Right-click the desktop, create a new shortcut and paste the entire line as the location. It is not required to have this line in a batch file and will work as-is. If you routinely backup a very specific location like a profile folder, it’s actually faster to have a shortcut ready to do the job because it only requires a double-click.

Use the line in your task scheduler of choice

Any task scheduling program whether by Microsoft or not will recognize your line and run it easily at the time intervals you choose.

Important notes

For the proper backup of a profile folder, the app that uses it should not be running while the backup is taking place. If the app happens to be running, this isn’t a problem, but the archive will be missing files because the app has first priority over its own profile folder.

If you elect to use this in Windows Vista and 7′s Task Scheduler, you will have to run the task with "highest" permissions for it to work properly. The first time you run the task, it will execute normally, but the second time will fail unless you have it configured to run with highest permissions because the archive program needs it to update an existing archive.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To Back Up A Profile Folder With 7-Zip Or WinRAR From The Command Prompt

iCade Turns An iPad Into A Retro Arcade Machine

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 01:00 PM PST

Those of you with an iPad looking to add a bit of "wow" factor to the device should take a look at the iCade. This is a combination of both a specially designed arcade stand and a bluetooth joystick. To see the combination in action, check out the video in the page for some classic Asteriods goodness.

Atari has committed to releasing more retro games for the iPad in the future and any game which utilizes a bluetooth input device should play just fine with the iCade. The full kit is not yet available (it is slated for a Spring release) but is something any arcade game enthusiast should take note of as the full setup (iPad, joystick, case and games) should be well under $1,000.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

iCade Turns An iPad Into A Retro Arcade Machine