Extracting image files from Google Chrome Cache

I wanted to save a local copy of an image on a webpage I was viewing in the Google Chrome browser on a Windows 10 system, but I couldn't right-click on it to download it, so I thought I could look for it in the Chrome browser cache, which is located at C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache where username is the name of the relevant account on a Windows system. I had the ChromeCacheView program from NirSoft on the system, which provides a command-line option to copy image files from the Chrome cache for a user, so I used it. Since I was logged into a regular user account, I opened a command prompt as the administrator and then made the working directory the directory where the ChromeCacheView program was located with cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Network\NirSoft\ChromeCacheView. Then from that directory I issued the command below:

chromecacheview -folder "C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache\" /copycache "" "image/png" /CopyFilesFolder "c:\users\johndoe\documents\temp\chrome" /UseWebSiteDirStructure 0

You can use the -folder option to tell ChromeCacheView which user's cache file you wish to use while the /copycache option can be used to specify the directory where you want images, such as PNG files, to be copied—in this case I was looking for a .png file because when I examined the HTML code on the webpage I thought that the the image was a PNG file. I created a temp\chrome directory under the Documents directory for the user account prior to issuing the command to hold the images stored in the cache. After the command completed, I could see all of the PNG files that had been in the Chrome cache in that temporary directory I had created.

When I didn't see the image I was looking for, I thought I might have misidentified it in the code, so I copied all of the image files from the cache directory, not just the PNG ones by changing "image/png" to "image" in the command. I.e.:

chromecacheview -folder "C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache\" /copycache "" "image" /CopyFilesFolder "c:\users\johndoe\documents\temp\chrome" /UseWebSiteDirStructure 0

That copied AVIF (.avif), BMP GIF (.gif), icon (.ico), JPEG (.jpg), JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) (.jfif), SVG (.svg), and WebP (.webp) files from the cache as well as the PNG ones.

[/network/web/browser/chrome] permanent link

Book Collector lock file

When I opened Book Collector version 20.5.2 today, I saw the message "Failed to open database, because your license key (xxxxxxxxxxxx) is already in use on computer "YYYYYYYY" by another user (zzzzzz). Do you wish to unlock your database file and open it here?" I could choose "yes" or "no" with the "no" answer opening Book Collector with a new empty book database. The computer the message referenced was the one on which I was currently trying to open the program. Since the system I was using had crashed earlier in the day, I realized that Book Collector was likely finding a lock file that would be deleted when the program is closed normally. I saw a file with the name I had given to my book collection, but with a .bkclck filename extension in the directory where I stored the book database. When I opened the file I saw the file conained only one line:

<lockinfo><writable><client pcname="YYYYYYYY" name="5c22840efc7a3db854c44b0b780f8abc" key="xxxxxxxxxxxx" username="zzzzzzzz"/></writable></lockinfo>

In cases where Book Collector was not closed normally, you can either choose "yes" at the prompt or delete the .bkclck file before opening Book Collector as its presence is what causes the message to appear.

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Downloading Panopto videos

To download a video hosted on Panopto, such as a class lecture, you can take the following steps in the Firefox web browser:

1. Right-click on the video in Panoptoo—you may need to click on the small video in the upper, left-hand side of the window rather than the one on the right side of the window—and select "Inspect Element (Q)." In the "Search HTML" field, type .mp4 and hit Enter—this presumes the video is an MP4 video.
2. You should see the area in the HTML code where the MP4 file is referenced highlighted. Right-click on the highlighted area and choose "Copy" then "Outer HTML."
3. Then paste the information copied into the clipboard into Microsoft Notepad or some other text editor, depending on your operating system and preferred editor. You should see the URL for the video listed in the content pasted into the editor. Copy the URL starting with the "https" up through the ".mp4"—don't copy the information after the ".mp4."
4. Paste the copied URL into a browser tab. You can then right-click on the video in that browser tab and select "Save Video As" to download the video to your local system. You can give the video a more meaningful name than the long string of hexadecimal digits used for the name.

[ More Info ]

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Your electricity will be cut off in 30 minutes

At 11:55 AM EDT this morning, my wife received a recorded call stating our electricity would be cut off by Delmarva Power, our electric utility, in thirty minutes. She called for me to pick up the phone, but by the time I got to a phone in another room, the call was disconnected. She said the message had instructed her to hit "1" to speak to someone. The call sounded like a scam to me, since I didn't know of any issue with our electicity payments and also because I would have expected a letter well before a cutoff date and more than 30 minutes to pay any past due payment if someone called. It seemed to me an obvious attempt to panic a called party into providing a credit card to a scammer engaged in fraud, but I checked our bank account anyway and saw the last payment due had been deducted from our checking account about two weeks before the call and when I logged into Delmarva's website to check the status of our account, I saw the last payment credited and a balance of zero dollars.

Using *69, I was able to determine the listed calling number was 1-443-739-1747, but a search online for accounts of others receiving a call from a scammer using that number did not reveal other such activity. I called the number back to see how the scammer operated or to see if it might be a spoofed number, but just got a recorded message that the called party was not available, so I should leave a message. It sounded like a generic voicemail message. So, perhaps, the scammer spoofed the calling number as they often do to make it difficult to track down their identity.

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Placing timestamps at ends of lines of a transcript for Panopto videos

After watching lectures for classes that are stored on the Panopto website, I like to save the text listed for a video in the Contents and Captions that Panopto provides in a text file. However, if I copy and paste the text into Windows Notepad or some other text editor, I see the timestamps appear beneath the relevant text on the following line. To address the problem, I paste the text into the Vim editor on a Microsoft Windows system and apply the command v/\d:\d\d\n/s/\n/ / that replaces the end-of-line character at the end of all lines that don't have a timestamp with a space, instead.

[ More Info ]

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Codes for Short and Long Vowels in Latin

If you wish to insert vowels used in Latin in a document, such as a Microsoft Word or WordPad document, on a Microsoft Windows system to indicate vowel length, i.e., whether the vowel should be pronounced as a long or short vowel, you can use the Unicode values shown in the table below — Unicode is an encoding standard for characters in most of the world's writing systems. For Latin, a macron, which is a diacritic mark, is placed above the letter to indicate a long vowel. Sometimes a breve may also be used to indicate a short vowel. In addition to the Unicode codes, the corresponding Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code is listed as well for displaying the characters in a web page.

To insert the characters using a Windows keyboard on a system running the Microsoft Windows operating system, type the numeric code (the numbers are hexadecimal numbers so "A" through "F" represent the numbers 10 through 15) and then hit Alt-x, i.e., hit the "Alt" and "x" keys simultaneously, after entering the numeric code. Note, you needed to have a space before the number you enter, otherwise if you attempt to put "ē" in "fēmina," by typing "f" with "0113" immediately after it, the "f0113" will be replaced with a small box with a question mark within it. So place a space after the "f," type 0113, hit Alt-x, then when ē appears, remove the space before it. Also note that though Microsoft Word supports this method of entering vowels with a diacritic mark in a document not all Microsoft Office applications allow you to enter Unicode characters by this method. E.g., for Microsoft Powerpoint, you will need to use the Character Map method of entering such characters, instead.

[ More Info ]

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Resetting the password for a Comcast Business Router

I needed to reset the password on a Cisco router provided by Comcast for Internet service for a local business, since I needed to update firewall rules in the router, but when I tried what I thought was the password it didn't work. The model number for the Cisco router was DPC3941B (the model number is on the bottom of the router). I also needed to reconfigure the subnet used by the router for the Local Area Network (LAN) after resetting the router, since the computers on the LAN were using IP addresses from a 192.168.0.0/24 subnet rather than the 10.1.10.0/24 subnet used as the default one for the router.

[ More Info ]

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Turning off McAfee AntiVirus Plus realtime protection temporarily

To temporarily turn off the realtime antivirus protection in McAfee AntiVirus Plus, e.g., so you could move a file to another system for analysis that it might deem malware or to scan the system with other antivirus software, you can take the following steps:

1. Open the program and click on the gear (cog) icon at the upper, right-hand corner of the window.
2. Under the PC Security section of the Settings, you will see "Real-Time Scanning." When you click on "Real-Time Scanning" you will have the option of turning off the real-time monitoring for 15 minute intervals from 15 to 60 minutes or you can select "When I restart my PC" or "Never."

If you select a timed option, the protection will automatically turn back on after that period of time. You can also turn on protection again prior to that time by modifying the "Real-Time Scanning" setting again.

If you wish to view or restore items McAfee AntiVirus Plus has quarantined, you can click on "Quarantined items" under Settings, which will show you all files in the quarantine area, if any.

Note: these steps were tested on McAfee® AntiVirus Plus version 16.0

[/security/antivirus/mcafee] permanent link

Configuring Outlook 2010 to check AOL email

To configure Outlook 2010 to check an AOL email account, take the following steps.

1. Open Outlook and click on Next at the startup window.
2. When prompted as to whether you would like to configure an E-mail account, maintain the default option of "yes" and click on Next.
3. At the Add New Account window, choose "Manually configure server settings or additional server types" and then click on Next.
4. At the Choose Service window, maintain the default option of "Internet E-mail" and click on Next.
5. At the Internet E-mail Settings window, you will need to provide the relevant information for your AOL email account. In the username field, include "@aol.com" as part of the user name, e.g., jdoe@aol.com. You will also need to choose whether you will access your AOL email account using the Post Office Protocol (POP) or the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). The default option is POP3, version 3 of POP. With that option, the email in your inbox will be downloaded to Outbox and deleted from the server after a specified period of time; by default Outlook will leave it on the server for 14 days. If you log into the AOL website to check your email after you've downloaded it with Outlook and delete a message while viewing your email in a browser, it won't be available to download with Outlook, if you subsequently check your AOL email with Outlook, although that may not matter to you. A disadvantage of using the POP protocol is that it only downloads email from the inbox, not any other folders you may have created to hold specific email messages. Also, by default email is deleted from the email server after you download it to Outlook, so email you've already downloaded won't be visible to you if you check your email through a web browser at a later time—by default Outlook will leave the email there for 14 days, though. You can change that setting, though, once you've filled in account information by clicking on the More Settings button, then clicking on the Advanced tab and choosing how long a copy of messages should be left on the server.

   If you select IMAP for the account type, you can view email in other folders besides the inbox and Outlook's view of the email in your account is synchronized with the email messages maintained on the AOL email server, so you can check with a web browser or with Outlook and see the same messages in your email folders. You could also set up Outlook on another system and select IMAP there as well to see the same email messages on a separate system where you are using Outlook.

   The information you should put in the incoming mail server and outgoing mail server fields is as follows:

   Protocol	Server	Port Settings
   POP3	Incoming mail server (POP3): pop.aol.com Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.aol.com	POP3: 995-SSL SMTP: 465-SSL
   IMAP	Incoming mail server (IMAP): imap.aol.com Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.aol.com	IMAP: 993-SSL SMTP: 465-SSL

   Put a check mark in the "Remember password" check box, if you don't want to have to enter your password every time you open Outlook to check your email.

[ More Info ]

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Book Collector - Adding an author or publisher image

If you are using Book Collector to track your book collection and wish to add a photograph of an author to the information about the author, you may be able to do so by taking the following steps:

1. Download the image of the author. If you wish, you can place the image in the location where book cover images are stored, i.e. the images directory beneath the Book Collector directory where you store the book database.
2. If you are editing an entry for a book by the author, you can right-click on the icon of three horizontal bars to the left of the author's name while editing the book entry and select "Edit this author entry." Or from the main Book Collector window, you can select "Edit" then "Manage Pick Lists" to select the author picklist where you can select the relevant author—you can double-click on the author entry then to edit it.
3. In the Edit Author window, click on the Images tab.
4. For the "Template Image" field, browse to where you downloaded the image of the author. Once you have selected the image, click on OK. Leave the "Image (will be scaled to 16x16)" field blank. You can then close the entry where you are editing the author's information. When viewing the entry for a book by the author from the book list in the home screen for Book Collector, you should then see a small thumbnail picture of the author.

If you don't have an image, but want to add a picture to the author's entry, check to see if there is a Wikipedia entry for the author or if the author has a website.

You can use similar steps to add an image for a publisher's entry in the database.

[ More Info ]

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