RGdot

Author: R G

  • Tip: Save RAM, Lower CPU Usage By Playing Youtube Videos In PotPlayer

    Tip: Save RAM, Lower CPU Usage By Playing Youtube Videos In PotPlayer

    Youtube and videos in general are notorious resource hogs. For years the main culprit was Flash but the promise of a more efficient HTML5 is largely forgotten now as most browsers handle videos poorly. A computer with more than enough power can still fall prey to a browser grabbing more and more of its memory and processor when watching videos.

    One way to save more than just resources, even help a solid state drive lifespan, is to install the PotPlayer video player and a corresponding browser addon/extension to open and play videos outside of a Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and others. The program is lightweight, feature rich and regularly maintained but its best use is perhaps watching online videos. After the addon/extension is installed buttons will appear under videos or a link added to the right click menus on YouTube’s front or other pages. Links below.

    • PotPlayer https://potplayer.daum.net/
    • Chrome extension (For Google Chrome, Opera and other Chromium based browsers) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/potplayer-youtube-shortcu/cfdpeaefecdlkdlgdpjjllmhlnckcodp
    • Direct Opera version https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/potplayer-youtube-shortcut/
    • Firefox extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/potplayer-youtube-shortcut/
  • Champions League – Round Of 16

    Champions League – Round Of 16

    Atletico beat Liverpool 1-0 in the round of 16 1st leg and Liverpool’s winning streak (17 in the premier League) comes to an end.

    Borussia Dortmund beat Paris Saint-Germain 2-1 and Erling Haaland continues his amazing form with two more goals. He has now scored 10 Champions League goals and 11 goals in seven match since joining Borussia.

  • Manchester City Banned And Fined

    Manchester City Banned And Fined

    Manchester City banned from the Champions League for two years and fined 30 million, the team will appeal.

    Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 – 0 Leicester City – Hamza Choudhury red card.

    Valencia 2 – 2 Atletico Madrid – Fight for top four places ends in draw.

    Borussia Dortmund 4 – 0 Eintracht Frankfurt – Erling Haaland keeps scoring.

  • Dopamine Is A Donationware Audio Player

    Dopamine Is A Donationware Audio Player

    Dopamine v2.0 is now available and it is a simple and attractive audio player that has both dark and light modes. The former is the default look.

    The program supports wav, mp3, ogg, flac, wma, ape, opus and m4a/aac formats. Upon first install – using either the exe or portable formats – an initial set up is initiated. The program will ask for the root music folder, the aforementioned mode and colour preferences.

    The program will list the audio based on artist, album and song title alphabetically in three columns. Dopamine features tabs to change the view somewhat. For example the genre tab categorizes songs by their type. The playlist tab will show any playlists, if none exist the user can create or import ones to list and listen that way. The supported formats include m3u, zpl, wpl and dspl.

    Via its settings (top right hamburger menu) the program can recheck and reload album covers. Other settings control the program colours, visibility of ratings, system notifications, and other features like automatically checking and downloading lyrics from sources like google.

    Playing modes are supported and Dopamine also has a equalizer with 18 presets from its default manual controls to dance to full bass and more.

    Keyboard controls such +/- for increasing and decreasing volume and ->/<- for moving ahead and back in songs are very useful of course New v2.0 features like playlists, sorting (see top right of columns) have improved Dopamine to the point of it being a worthy default audio player.

    Newly released v2.01 adds support for m3u8 playlists

  • Microsoft Edge Chromium

    Microsoft Edge Chromium

    Microsoft Edge launched in 2015 as a replacement for the fading Internet Explorer. It initially used EdgeHTML which is a proprietary browser engine made by Microsoft. In 2019 the decision was made to the Blink engine which runs Chromium based browsers such as Chrome and Opera.

    The switch over of regular Windows 7 and above users to the new Chromium version will now happen as part of the January updates (due to happen on January 15). This new version will support Chrome extensions that are ported over to the Microsoft Store and have some features exclusive to Microsoft such as access to Microsoft account access built in and PDF notes within the browser, among others.

  • Complete Network Tools With NETworkManager

    Complete Network Tools With NETworkManager

    NETworkManager offers a comprehensive set of tools to gather information about the network your computer is on and about external networks and the internet. The program is available in executable and portable formats and the user can set profiles to save IP addresses and other info to reuse again.

    The configure tab provides a interface to configure local connections such as IP addresses, static and DNS entries and most everything network related on a Windows computer.

    The information tab provides info on the local network and features a network scanner to search for and find local IP addresses, wireless access points and Address Resolution Protocol entries. It can also query local ports and listen for open and active ports and TCP connections. Additionally SNMP is available to look for info on devices and list info like printer or router Object Identifier. It can also turn on compatible devices using the Wake on LAN message. It can

    A set of tools for non local devices include ping, traceroute, Whois, DNS look ups and inspecting HTTP headers of a site.

    If all that is not enough NETworkManager has a subnet calculator. Useful for network managers and just as a simple learning tool.

    Upon first run it asks for permission to check for program updates and grab the public IP address of your network. It can also be configured to run PowerShell, PuTTY and VNC to connect securely to websites and networks via SSH, Telnet or other protocols.

    The current version of the program is 2019.12 and requires Windows 10 Build 1809 or later and the .NET-Framework 4.7.2. The older 1.11 version is available and compatible with Windows 7 and 8.1. Practically every setting has options to work with desired values as does the program’s looks and colors.

  • New Image Viewer: Mouser’s Media Browser

    New Image Viewer: Mouser’s Media Browser

    Mouser at DonationCoder has restarted work on an image viewer that will be part of the site’s annual NANY (New Apps for the New Year).

    Mouser’s Media Browser is not aimed at competing with well known image viewers such as IrfanView and others but when running the program it does better than most in generating thumbnails for example. Its development has been fast in recent days with many releases and it has already improved in several ways, including the speed in which it generates thumbnails and how fast it scans recursively to find images within subfolders.

    The program shows a navigation tree with the user picking the folder to view, either via the tree or by browsing to a folder. It is also possible to filter files, for example showing only gifs by just typing gif in the filter bar. There is also a grid mode which eliminates the image preview pane. The program options (File —> Options) has settings with minimum and maximum thumbnail size.

    By default it comes with a thumbnail strip open. Another open by default view is the virtual tree which divides images by date showing how many by month and year. Future releases may include other virtual trees that divide media by tags or other attributes. These can be turned off via the Tree menu.

    The program can open an image using an external image viewer and it also integrates with Mouser’s other tools like Screenshot Captor and Automatic Screenshotter.

  • Keyword Tracking With Rankaware

    Keyword Tracking With Rankaware

    Search engine optimization remains crucial to all those who own or manage websites. Rankaware is one user friendly tool to keep a tab on a site’s performance on search engines.

    Rankaware installs easily and it is available for both Windows and Mac computers. The first step is to add a website to monitor. The program works in that it checks the position of a keyword on search engine results pages (SERP). The process starts by adding the site address of course, keywords that Rankaware will check on and up to three search engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo are available with their various country domains. The program allows the user to pick one, two or three engines.

    It is possible to set a schedule to run the program again and look for any changes that occur to the site’s keywords positions on the aforementioned search engines. Once a day, a week or month are available with the time of day to run as well. Optionally it is possible to run the check everytime the program is started.

    All that is left to click apply and wait for it to scan the engines and generate the results. The results page is simple but attractive with a pie chart showing the keyword position on the results page. Any position above 100 needs work and is not really considered a useful SERP.

    RGdot used to rank relatively high in several freeware keywords but that has changed with the inactivity on the site. Rankaware can track changes and will show them in the CHG column in subsequent runs of the program.

    Rankaware is available in three licences. A free version which only checks one site on one computer. The expert version can be used to monitor unlimited number of sites and generate reports with white label branding. The business version can run on more than one computer. The two paid versions currently cost $49.97 and $99.97 respectively, these are per year.

  • Five Best Under-21 2019 Transfers

    Five Best Under-21 2019 Transfers

    Another busy transfer window is coming to an end, it has already ended in England. Here are five of the best and top under 21 years old transfers for the summer of 2019.

    Joao Felix is probably a very obvious name for such a list. His €120 million transfer from Benfica to Atletico Madrid comes with huge expectations. The 19 year old Portuguese second striker is more or less the replacement for Antoine Griezmann who left for Barcelona. Atletico have made a lot of change this summer and Felix is obviously the most important of the long list of changes.

    Moise Kean left Juventus for Tottenham, a somewhat surprising move. Marco Silva, Everton’s Portuguese coach, has stated that the 19 year old was bought to play the center forward position and provide the goals that Everton were sometimes lacking in previous season. His relative cheap transfer of under €30 million may allow him to fulfill his ‘next Italian star’ potential with a bit less of pressure.

    Tammy Abraham is technically not a transfer as he was on loan at Aston Villa, from Chelsea. With a transfer ban on their heads Frank Lampard, the new Chelsea coach, has had to rely on some of the many players that Chelsea would keep loaning to build his 2019-2020 team. The 21 year old forward scored 26 goals in 40 games for Aston Villa and now will often lead the line in the premier league.

    Ryan Sessegnon was able to escape the clutches of Fulham after the heavy spending team flopped last season and go relegated back to the English Championship. The highly rated left sided player is a rising star in English football and will play for a coach that is not averse to use young players often. He cost Tottenham around €27 million and Poch and Spurs have strengthened well this summer.

    Merih Demiral is a young Turkish defender that was transferred twice this sumer. The first transfer was made when his loan to Sassuolo from Alanyaspor was made permanent only for Juventus to buy him from Sassuolo for €18 million only days later. The 21 year old will have veteran presence to teach him the art of defending and will grow and learn fast defending in the Serie A.


  • Is Manchester United The Loser Of Summer 2019?

    Is Manchester United The Loser Of Summer 2019?

    The summer 2019 transfer window is now closed in England. Though in many other European countries the older timeline of letting it run until the end of August or beginning of September is still on. The decision to close the window before week 1 matches is a very sensible idea. The coaches and mangers know what they have on hand before the season is on and any disruptions, even if only for the first two or three match days, is gone.

    The multi-billion dollar television deals that have enriched English team to the point of bizarre and expensive transfers and wages continues unabated. So called smaller teams like Watford and Leicester outspend most European teams and attract players easily. Manchester United have of course always been one of the biggest teams and under the ownership of the Glazers have never stopped spending. Notwithstanding the lack of recent – post Alex Ferguson era – success the team keeps drawing from the debts, financing and riches of the American ownership and TV deals to add and spend.

    Hiring Jose Mourinho was a mistake and titles have eluded the team, the Portuguese’s firing and eventual replacement with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a success at first but United faded and finished 2018-2019 in sixth place. The new coach was given a permanent job during his early and brief success and was set to embark on a rebuild. Now that summer 2019 window is nearing an end it is arguable that the first phase of (any) rebuild has been mishandled or at best wasted. Fans rightly criticize the Americans and vice chairman Ed Woodward and the player movement this summer shows why. The team does not have a director of football but that in itself is not very unusual but this summer’s transfer have left the team bare up front.

    The team did sign young winger Daniel James, the very good Aaron Wan-Bissaka (right back from Crystal Palace) and of course the expensive and excellent defender in Harry Maguire – for €87 million. However, after a protracted saga Romelu Lukaku was sold to Inter on deadline day for an initial €65. A look at the screenshot above (thanks transfermarkt.com) shows that virtually all of the team’s choices up front are either aging, ineffective or have long been off form. United do have the means and needed to replace Lukaku, the team was long aware he wanted to leave. He was even reportedly training separately in the past few days.

    Time will tell if United have done enough to leap above Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea. At least two of the teams immediately above them last season have strengthened more significantly.