I recently tried to install the plugin “Use Google Libraries” for WordPress but it didn’t work because all its URLs where rewritten by the plugin “Root Relative URLs”. This can be solved with a black list url…
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Concretely, the plugin “Use Google Libraries” uses URLs like src=’//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/…’. Those were rewritten by mistake into src=’/ajax/libs/…’
I couldn’t disable the plugin “Root Relative URLs” as it’s the only way to make my blog accessible seamlessly from both internet and my intranet, using either the netbios name of my NAS, its IP or its dynamic DNS name.
So, I tried to add //ajax.googleapis.com in the “black list urls” of “Root Relative URLs”. Those can be set in the Dashboard > Settings > General > (scroll to the bottom) “
Unfortunately it didn’t work… Until Hube2, who wrote a hack of “Root Relative URLs”, told me how to set it correctly: one may not use the domain name in the black listed URL’s.
Conclusion, in my case, I had to black list “ajax/libs”, et voilà!
Since a few months, I couldn’t “Add Media” or “Insert/Edit Link” anymore within the Visual Editor of my WordPress, when editing existing Posts. Everything was however working fine when creating new Posts… According to me, it is due to the use of a too recent version of ajax/jQuery, not compatible/conflicting with WordPress 3.8.2’s libraries. I found indeed some plugins recently updated/installed that had to be removed to solve the problem.
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Concretely, Modal Popups didn’t open anymore…
I didn’t get time to investigate that issue before this week-end. But it took me only a few minutes to discover that everything was working again when disabling the plugin Akismet 3.0.0 (updated by the way from 2.5.9 a few months ago).
Instead of disabling all the plugins and re-enabling them one by one, I did compare the html source of the pages used to create a new Post and to edit an existing Post (As the problem only occurred when editing). I noticed immediately that the main difference was the inclusion of some Akismet’s javascripts. Reason why I tried first to disable that plugin…. and Bingo!
As suggested on WordPress’ forum, I tried to installed the plugin “Use Google Libraries”. But it didn’t solve the problem. Actually, using that plugin while Akismet is disabled also results in Modal Popups not opening…
When the problem occurs, there are errors logged in the Chrome’s developer Console (F12 > tab “Console”) : Uncaught TypeError: undefined is not a function. This error occurs in scripts from jquery-ui.min.js
So, IMO, both “Use Google Libraries” and “Akismet” use a too recent version of ajax/jquery for WordPress 3.8.2. But as I didn’t want to upgrade to WordPress 3.9 or 4.0 beta (as long as Synology don’t provide its own package) I did simply rollback to Akismet 2.5.9. I had fortunately a backup… And did uninstall “Use Google Libraries”… Et voilà !
I always wanted a good device to scan all my negatives. I finally decided to buy an Epson Perfection V550 Photo…
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I didn’t want something like those small “film scanners” at ~80€ because those are actually camera taking a photo of the negatives. As a consequence, the quality of the output is only good enough to published the photo on the web or to watch them on a screen… Even with a higher DPI, the quality is still far from amazing.
Film Scanner
However, a real semi-pro film scanner cost at least 500€ and much more (1200€, 1500€, ..). As that was out of my budget, I was therefore looking for something as a “Reflecta CrystalScan 7200” (~200€), a typical great compromise between price and quality; the high quality of the output being mainly due to the feature named “Ice Techonology”. This one is amazing when used to remove dusts and scratches on photos. Unfortunately, it only scans the negatives one by one and one has to move the film manually. I would have needed ages to scan all my negatives…
Reflecta CrystalScan 7200
So, I finally decided to go for the excellent EPSON Perfection V550 Photo, the smallest in its family, but with all the features I needed. It uses the ICE Technology and scan up to 2×6 negatives from 35mm films at once at 6400 dpi. Here is an excellent review for details.
And here is a demo of an automatic scratch and dust removal with EPSON Perfection V550 Photo’s ICE Technology:
Demo of ICE Technology
Here after, how I process to scan negatives from 35mm films into 10×15 photo, each one around 5MB, 7200x4800px, 24 bit depth (online documentation here and good guidance here and tutorials)
Turn on the EPSON and wait until the « Ready » green led on the front panel stops blinking.
Start the “EPSON Scan” software on the PC
Choose “Home Mode”
If the “Configuration” was changed in the past, reset the settings via the “Configuration…” button > tab “Other” > “Reset All”
As far as I am concerned*, I go to the “Configuration…” button and in the “Color” tab, I select the option “ICM” with
“EPSON Standard” as a “Source”
“sRGB” as target (“RVB” in french)
and the option “Display preview using Monitor Compensation” ticked
As “Document Type”, choose “Color negative films”
As “Image Type”, use “Color”
As “Destination”, use “Other” and
set 1200 as “Resolution”
with 10×15 cm as “Target Size”.
Under “Adjustement” select the option “DIGITAL ICE Technology…” (The only one enabled when one choose “ICM” in the “Color” tab of the “Configuration” windows.
* I noticed that the result was often (but not always) better on my display screens. However, switching between the option “ICM” and Color Controls results in something weird… The background color of the photos become blue:
Once all the steps above are done:
Click on “Preview”
Select the “negatives” to be scanned in the “Preview” window.
Back into the “Epson Scan “ main window, Click on “Scan”
In the new window (“File Save Settings”) select
The location for the output (Ex.: My Pictures)
A prefix for the images
The “Type” of “Image Format”: “JPEG”… Then click on “Options” next to the “Type” and be sure that you kept:
“16” as compression level
Encoding Standard
Embed ICC profile
Set the other option according to your preferences and click “Ok”.
When the operation ends, it will open the destination folder if you did ask for it in the options above..
To scan one negative, it takes close to 3 minutes on my PC (a Quad Core I7 3.6GHz, 16GB Ram) although 8 minutes are announced. The negative used for this test is a 14 years old AGFA film. Here it the outcome: a picture of about 5MB, 7200x4800px:
If I choose next “Printer” as “Destination”, still with “DIGITAL ICE Technology” enabled, it takes a bit less than 2 minutes to get a picture of about 2MB, 1800×1200.
If I choose “Color Controls” in the “Configuration…” window instead of ICM with a “Display Gama 2.2” and a mean “Continuous Auto Exposure”, I have other options in the “Image Adjustment” pane. NB.: whenever you change an option in the “Image Adjustments” pane, look at the “Preview” pane to see what’s the results…
Ticking then the options “Color Restoration” and “Backlight Correction” in addition to “DIGITAL ICE Technology”, I get this ugly output:
Ticking the option “DIGITAL ICE Technology” with the “Backlight Correction” only, I get something better:
And ticking only the Image Adjustment “DIGITAL ICE Technology”, the output comes resp. in a bit less than 3 minutes at 1200 dpi (picture on top) and in a bit less than 2 minutes at 300 dpi (for printer, picture bellow):
Far from an expert in photography, I have my own preference for the results with only the “DIGITAL ICE Technology” Image Adjustment enabled…
If I select 10 negatives (2 slides of 5) to be scanned at once with “ICM” selected in the “Configuration” and “DIGITAL Ice Technology” enabled, EPSON Scan announces 21 minutes for 300dpi, 1800×1200 (“Printer” as a destination)…. But it takes concretely only 16 minutes. With the very same options, but targeting 1200dpi, EPSON Scan announces 51’ and takes 30’.
Now, instead of using the “Home Mode”, one could use the “default” mode, which is a the “Full Auto Mode” – used when one presses the rightmost button on the front of the scanner. Here is a result, a ~2MB picture, ~1800×1200 full of dust and scratches (as you can see in full size):
NOTICE: if getting noise and grain in the picture, read this tutorial to use the advanced mode and fix this issue.
Final interesting touch: the scanner will automatically switch off when not in use anymore (Ex.: if the PC enter any standby mode due to inactivity).
Another tutorial here to scan on a V550 with professional settings.
[EDIT 07/2020] to scan B&W negative films, I had good results with
Type of image: 16 bits grayscale.
Resolution: 2400 dpi.
I do not use Unsharp Mask – I prefer to do it later with another software.
Grain Reduction – I use it with level medium.
Color Restoration – I disable it for black and white. If enabled, the images are less dark but this remove interesting shadows.
Backlight Correction – I disable it as it adds too much light. Try it to see if you like the results.
Dust Removal – I use it with level low. It can produce weird results (like removing closes eyes). Usually there is a trade-off in absolute image quality (sharpness) and effort you’ll have to expend later removing dust.
Digital ICE Technology – I disable it for Black and White. This setting uses an Infrared channel to detect and remove scratches and dust. The silver in B&W film interferes with this function. The results is really awful!
As a memo (but this info can be found on Beyond Compare website), here are my settings to compare and merge sources from Visual Studio, with Beyond Compare.
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Go to Tools > Options… > Source Control > Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
Click “Configure User Tools…”
In the “Configure User Tools…” window, click “Add…” to configure the Compare Operation… then Type:
Extension: .*
Operation: Compare
Command: D:\Tools\Beyond Compare 3\BComp.exe
Arguments: %1 %2 /title1=%6 /title2=%7
Click “Ok” and then again “Add..” to configure the Merge Operation… Type now:
In order to support “Wake on Lan” from “Power Off State (S5)”, I had to enable “Wake On By PCIe/PCI” in the bios of my Asus P9X79 Pro. A consequence seems (?) to be that moving the mouse or pressing a key from the keyboard also wakes the PC from “Sleep States (S2/3/4)”. This can be solved by disallowing those devices to wake the PC via their “Power Management” properties.
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Disallow the Mouse to wake up the PC.
Open Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers
Double-Click on your Mouse or on your receiver if you use a wireless Mouse (Ex.: Logitech Nano Receiver).
Go to the “Hardware” tab and select the device named “HID-compliant mouse” with type “Mice and other pointing devices”. Then click on the “Properties” button.
In the “HID-Compliant mouse Properties” pane now opened, click on the button “Change settings”. This will add a tab “Power Management”. Open that tab.
In the tab “Power Management”, uncheck the option “Allow this device to wake the computer”
Disallow the Keyboard to wake up the Computer
Open Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers
Double-Click on your Keyboard or on your receiver if you use a wireless Keyboard (Ex.: Logitech Nano Receiver). NB.: my Bluetooth keyboard is displayed as “Logitech Elite Keyboard”.
Go to the “Hardware” tab and select the device named “HID Keyboard Device” with type “Keyboards”. Then click on the “Properties” button.
In the “HID Keyboard Device Properties” pane now opened, click on the button “Change settings”. This will add a tab “Power Management”. Open that tab.
In the tab “Power Management”, uncheck the option “Allow this device to wake the computer”. NB.: if there is a “Sleep” button on the keyboard, it won’t work either to wake the PC from Sleep State !
My PC built on top of an Asus P9X79 Pro can be waked up from Lan when it is in Sleep Mode (=S1 state) but not when it has been completely turned off (=S5 state). Googling a bit I found the exact solution on Ryan’s Bliggity Blog: enable the “Network Stack” in the Bios.
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So, as a resume, here is my configuration:
Windows Power Options
Open Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options
Click on “Change what the power buttons do” on the left
Click on “Change settings that are currently unavailable”
Uncheck the option “Turn on fast start-up (recommended)”
Bios
Enter your UEFI bios (I am using the latest version when posting his)
Click on “Exit/advanced mode” button in the upper-right corner and enter the advanced mode
Go to the “Advanced” tab and select the entry “APM”
Enable the option “Power On By PCI/E/PCI”.
Enable also the “Network Stack”
Possibly go next to the “Boot” tab and
Either disable the option “Fast Boot”
Or if you enable it, enable its sub-option “Network Stack Driver Support”
Network adapter settings:
Open Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center
Click on “Change Adapter Settings” (on the left)
Right-Click the Network Adapter “Intel(R) 82579V Gigabit Network Connection” and select “Properties”
In the “Networking Tab”, click “Configure”
In the “Power Management” tab, yous should now see and tick the option “Wake on Magic Packet from power off state”
Keep the “Wake on Magic Packet” option ticked too (to wake from Sleep State).
All about System Power States can be found on Intel website:
System Power State S0 the ON state: The system is completely operation, fully powered and completely retains the context.
System Power State S1 the Sleep state: The system consumes less power than S0 state. All Hardware & Processor context is maintained.
System Power State S2 the Sleep state: The system consumes less power than S1 state. Processor loses power and processor context and contents of the cache are lost.
System Power State S3 the Sleep state: The system consumes less power than S2 state. Processor & Hardware context, cache contents, and chipset context are lost. The system memory is retained.
System Power State S4 the Hibernate state: The system consumes the least power compared to all other sleep states. The system is almost at an OFF state, expect for a trickle power. The context data is written to hard drive (disk)and there is no context retained.
System Power State S5 the OFF state:The system is in a shutdown state and the system retains no context. Note that in power state S4 the system can restart from the context data stored on the disk, but in S5 the system requires a reboot.
I was recently unable to format a SDHC card with Windows Explorer or the Disk Management console (diskmgmt.msc). I did apply the same trick as when I was unable to delete a volume of a SDHC card.
The symptom was the same: in the Computer Management > Disk Management console… the “Delete Volume…” menu was dimmed (disabled)…
The solution was to format or delete the volume using command ‘Diskpart’ in a Dos prompt.
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See here how menu is disabled when I want to delete it:
To solve this, I used the solution published on Internet by Salty Wagyu : diskpart. Here is the list of commands to be used in a dos prompt run as Administrator:
Diskpart
List Disk
Select Disk x (where x is the number corresponding to your SD Card)
I have a plugin for TFS 2010 that reads a config file containing custom section handlers. When I deployed my plugin on TFS 2013, it thrown the following error when trying to instantiate those section handlers :
A first chance exception of type ‘System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException’ occurred in System.Configuration.dll
Additional information: An error occurred creating the configuration section handler for xxxxx: Could not load file or assembly ‘xxxxx’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
The problem was that there was no adequate probing path defined for .NET 4.5 in the TFS 2013 Services’ web config.
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TFS 2013 Services are loading plugins from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 12.0\Application Tier\Web Services\bin\Plugins.
But once those plugins loaded, they can only load their own dependencies from the GAC or from the TFS 2013 Services’ bin folder (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 12.0\Application Tier\Web Services\bin). I.e.: the sub-folder ‘Plugins’ of that bin folder is not probed…
In my case, when my plugin read its custom section, it needs to load the assembly containing the related custom section handlers (actually, the plugin and the custom handlers are in the very same assembly…). It works fine if I deploy the assembly in TFS 2013 Services’ bin folder (or in the GAC I presume) but I cannot bring myself to simply do that. Especially taking into account that it was working fine within TFS 2010.
Having a look at TFS 2013 Services’ web config, in order to specify my own probing path, I noticed that there was already one defined, but ONLY for .Net 2.0. I.e.: here is the <runtime> section of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 12.0\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config
I still have that very old webcam that I wanted to reuse under Win8 x86 on the PC of my daughter… It works fine with the drivers for Win2000 installed in compatibility mode…
Wow, what a fancy look & feel !!! That’s my first impression 😀
But what I really care about, is that all the services I was using on DSM 4.3 are still running fine… And it seems to be the case once a few issues fixed…
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After the upgrade, various packages had to be updated. Unfortunately, the updates did not all passed successfully. I got errors like “failed to download” (notice: I did an update of all my packages before upgrading from DSM 4.3 to 5.0 as recommended by users on Synology’s forum)
I discovered soon that I was actually unable to download and install any other packages. And looking into Control Panel > Update & Restore, I saw the Status “Connection failed. Please check your Internet connection“.
I was unable to play Internet radio within the Audio Station and trying to “Update Now” the DDNS service (Control Panel > External Access > Update Now), I was receiving a message like “Network error occurred. Please check your DNS and network settings.“
As Download Station was still able to download, the internet connection was not the issue. So, based on the hypothesis that it should be a DNS issue, I did force a DNS address manually in Control Panel > Network > General > Manually configure DNS Server. I did set the IP of my Adsm Modem as it’s configured to forward DNS request to my provider. But I could have tried with Google’s DNS: 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.8.4
And it solved all the issues above ?!
As a reminder, my DHCP server is configured on my Buffalo Router to provide the IP of my NAS as a DNS Server (I run the “DNS Server” package of Synology) and the IP of my ADSL model as a fallback. It used to work fine before the upgrade and as I didn’t change anything else in my infra, I thought that some behavior could have change in some Syno’s services. I did try various changes and found one that was solving the issues without manual configuration of a DNS IP on my Syno:
I had to “Enable resolution services” in my Synology’s “Control Panel > DNS Server > Resolution” settings. Simple, no ?
But I discovered then another issue: my Plex Server was not accessible anymore (when opened from DSM’s start menu). It was trying to start on the IP address of an unused Ethernet port – There are two Ethernet ports on the DS713+ and only the second one of mine was plugged on my Switch. The IP used by Plex Server was therefore a default one: 169.254.x.x. So, I did connect the first Ethernet ports on my Switch and did a reboot. I was next able to access the Web UI on the IP assigned now to my NAS’s first Ethernet port.
But it was not solving everything. Indeed, plex.tv was still not able to reach my NAS since my ADSL Modem was forwarding the default port of Plex (32400) onto the IP of the second Ethernet port and not on the first one (I.e.: on the IP Plex Server was actually listening on). As my NAS is only connected to one LAN, I decided to enable the Link Aggregation to merge the two ports into a “virtual single one”. Doing so, I would have only one IP assigned to my NAS and both Ethernet port used together to increase a bit the bandwidth: Control Panel > Network > Network Interface > Create > Create Bond > IEEE 802 Dynamic Link Aggregation. I did complete the Wizard (using DHCP the get an IP) and went to reconfigure my DHCP server (on my Buffalo Router): I.e.: I did update the static leases and assigned the static IP wanted for my NAS on the MAC address currently used by the Dynamic Link Aggregation (It’s available in the Control Panel > Info Center > Network > Bond 1).
Once the DHCP server and the Synology reconfigured, I did reboot both (to avoid caching effect). Unfortunately, when accessing my server via plex.tv, it was still not displayed as “online” 🙁 Also, in the “Plex Media Server”‘s settings “myPlex”, I was unable to connect with my login/password and worst, I was unable to change any settings in my Plex Server: Saving changes was always failing… I found a note about a known issue on the Synology website:
DSM 5.0: Known Issue – Plex Media Server
Users need to manually set read permission for the “plex” user at the User page in Control Panel to allow Plex Media Server to read the shared media folder content.
But trying this fix didn’t solve my issues.
I thought then that there could be a more recent version of the Plex Server on plex.tv than on Synology… And indeed. The version I had was 9.8 and there was a 9.9 on Plex.tv. I did download the spk for my processor (DS713+ = Intel) and did install it manually. And Bingo, my Plex Media Server was now able to connect to myPlex and it appeared as “Online” in plex.tv !!!
So, to conclude, the following services are now running fine:
Download Station (it resumes the download of your the torrent without any issue)
Surveillance Station (the time line is not broken)
DNS Server (once the “Resolution Service” enabled as mentioned above)
Video Station (has been updated)
Photo Station (has been updated)
Webalizer (has been updated)
Plex (After a manual update as mentioned above and some reconfiguration of the IP/Ethernet port used)
WordPress (has been updated)
phpMyAdmin
Changes I noticed:
As usually, after the upgrade of WordPress (If you do so), you will have to reset the permalinks’ format (via Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks > Common Settings > re-select your structure and “Save Changes”). Otherwise, links to your posts (E.g.: found via google or kept as favorites by readers) won’t work anymore..
The DDNS service is now named “External Access”. Nothing has changed and nothing needs to be reconfigured.
MySQL has been replaced by MariaDB (a fork of the original project). Start it once to finalize the update (you will have to provide your password). phpMyAdmin still runs fine and connects automatically to MariaDB with your current root login and password.
You will now get a monthly report by email with the status of the disks. Ex.:
Dear user,
The following is your monthly report regarding the health of disks on <serverName>. You can also check the health of individual disks at Storage Manager > HDD/SSD > Health Info.
