it’s been many years that i’ve relied on FSCapture for my screen capturing needs. but it doesnt appear to support recent browsers, and some display drivers well. so, a newer software is needed. googled, and DuckCapture came up. d/l and tested, and it worked for my needs. there’s some ‘jittering’ when capturing a scrolling screen though. may need to look for another software that doesnt produce the jitter. but for now, it’s good enough (:
maximising network file transfer speed
on a 1Gbps LAN, the theoretical transfer speed is 1024/8=128MB/s. but my experience of copying files between PCs and/or NAS through LAN is in the range of Kb/s or a few MB/s, an extremely far cry from the theoretical speed. my guess is that the limitation is in the software or OS. did a quick search on how to improve network transfer speed, many “solutions” out there, but the tip from howtosolutions.net appears to effect some improvement in speed:
1. Disable LSO (Large Send Offload) found in Advanced settings of network card in Windows Device Manager.
2. Enable and maximise the value of “Jumbo Packet” in Advanced settings (this is found in the comments within the above post)
works on physical LAN. not sure if it works for WiFi connections though.
voice transcription software
it’s been a while since i needed this. a search quickly turns up Express Scribe Transcription from NCH. installed and tried using it. but found its Play with Stopping function’s not good enough for my poor memory.
hunted for a much older software, and found the good old VoiceWalker. there’s 2 versions, according to Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. you can download version 2 or version 1 from the local mirror. but i think i have been using version 2 all along.
simply love and cant do without the Walk (F5) and Looping function.
the only catch is, VoiceWalker only supports wav; mp3 is a no go. but fret not, just download dvdvideosoft’s Free audio converter will do.
another thing to note is the file size of .wav. i just witnessed a 134mb mp3 converted into a whopping 984 wav. that’s not too environmentally friendly 😛
google talk going into history
the google talk client on windoze is going to stop functioning from 16 Feb onwards. another IM desktop client that i’m so used to is going into history after the beloved msn messenger.
on a side note, i still dislike the skype client till today, ever since after micro$oft forced msn msgr users to port over to it.
kindle paperwhite chinese english dictionaries
kindle paperwhite has many built-in dictionaries. for a learner of both English and Chinese language, you may want to make full use of this feature. if you have a kindle running in English (US) as your default language like me, your should have no difficulty locating the “Modern Chinese-English Dictionary”. This dictionary is hardly enough for a keen learner, for e.g. it doesn’t even have the pronunciation (hanyu pinyin) of the words!
Sometime having access to a full Chinese-Chinese dictionary is useful. To get this, you will need to do a ‘workaround’. The option for 现代汉语词典 (Xian Dai Han Yu Ci Dian) appears in my case after I:
1. set the language of my kindle to 简体中文
2. reboot into 简体中文 interface (with internet connection enabled)
3. go to ‘default dictionary for each language and you should now see 现代汉语词典 under the Chinese section.
4. select 现代汉语词典 as default dictionary
5. set the language of my kindle back to English (US)
6. reboot back to English (US) interface
and you should now have access to BOTH 现代汉语词典 and Modern Chinese-English Dictionary (:
a photo of my kindle with English interface with 现代汉语词典 activated:
[update 27/7]
i may have found a FASTER and easier way to install the dictionaries.
1. logon to your amazon account
2. go to “Manage your content and devices”
3. click on Show –> Dictionaries and User Guides
4. select the dictionary you want, and “Deliver” it to your kindle
5. enjoy (: