Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with close

Gotta get away--Now!

GeniPalm — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:36:05 -0800

I am in Georgia and I need to get away before my head explodes. I want a quick, inexpensive, but out-of-state vacation, no more than a week. What nice vacation spot is near Georgia and will allow me to enjoy myself without breaking the bank?

Examples of unclosable computer programs

aerotive — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:08:46 -0800

I'm looking for examples of legitimate, non-malware programs that do not allow the user to close them in any normal way. There is no way to close a minor system utility included with a PC I recently got. It's a basic self-help type program. The normal close button is there, but it minimizes the program to the tray. No right-click option to close it is available. I have confirmed with the manufacturer that this is the expected behavior.

I'm wondering if there are other examples of this sort of design out there. Doesn't have to be a utility, any sort of program for OSX or Windows.

As an aside, even Task Manager can't close the program--I think the program has been hardened to resist that in the way some antivirus programs are.

How do you find a new best friend?

Talez — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 06:00:51 -0800

As the title says, how do you find a new best friend? Just over a year ago my ex broke up with me and ever since then I feel like I've been lost. Not only was she the love of my life but she was my best friend. She used to want to know everything about what was going on in my life, how my day was, how I was feeling and, as much as that used to annoy me, now that I'm without it I realise what I had and would now give anything to get it back.

I've been trying different approaches but nothing seems to work. Is there any way you can seed a friendship to go in that direction when you think you've found someone you can get close to and open up to? It doesn't neccessarily need to be in a romantic sense. I guess I'm just looking for a little validation as a human being now and then.

How to Achieve a Clean Face and a Clean Scalp?

WCityMike — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:10:09 -0800

I could use some shaving tips, with regards to two specific questions: (i) how to achieve a much closer facial shave; and (ii) tips, anecdotes, etc. on headshaving. First, whenever I shave my face and neck, I always seem to leave a slight stubble behind: enough so that the skin is slightly rough to the touch, and is not colored the same as "normal" skin, but not enough that we're talking outgrown hair. In the area of where a mustache would grow, there sometimes seems to be to be stubble "coloration" without any feeling of stubble. I would instead like to have an utterly clean shave -- in other words, the shaved face resembling the coloration and texture of skin where hair does not grow. How do I go about that?

Second, I have decided I really don't care for where male pattern baldness is taking my hair, and am planning to shave my head clean at some point in the next month. I am wondering if anyone has any advice on this, or any anecdotes. Did you make the same decision? Did you regret it, or did you enjoy it? Good change in your life, or bad? If you decided to "go back," how long did it take you to regrow? How did people react? Minor or major changes in your daily routine? Etc., etc., etc. ... just looking for a primer on the experience, basically.

I'm using a Gillette Mach 3 sport razor and Barbasol aloe shaving cream.

Is closed circuit HDTV a possibility?

nickerbocker — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:01:57 -0800

Is closed circuit HDTV a possibility? My company has had video upgrades in discussion for a little over a year now and we still haven't found a solution that we are satisfied with. We initially were going towards an all digital camera network run through GigaBitE and Cat6 cable. After looking over some configuration, I have not been all that impressed with the quality or the ease of use.

I have brought up that it is getting to the point that if we are looking at anything new that it should be HD compatible.

From my home use experience I can get HDTV signals through a simple RG59 coax cable that runs from my HDTV (w/ tuner) to my antenna on my roof. I've been very pleased with the quality that comes out of this and am now wondering if implementing something similar for our work camera network is feasible.

My question is, are there any close circuit HDTV setups available on the market today? My vision is to be able to plug in each of our cameras into a encoder/modulator/broadcaster device that is able to set each camera on a digital channel in the VHS band and available to an HDTV tuner on this coax network.

This seems to have 3 big benefits that I can see right now:
1. Our existing camera hardware, even though not HD currently, can be used on this network. Over time we can upgrade cameras to produce true HD video to broadcast on this network.
2. Ease of use for the employees. Everyone knows how to flip through channels on their television and the end result would be a similar interface.
3. I'm assuming that the coax HDTV network can be daisy chained so that the cable goes to each encoder/modulator/broadcast box and out the other end. With the Cat6 network that we were looking at each camera had to have an individual wire going to a centralized gigabit switch. This would mean a lot of wires.

The only downside that I can see to setting things up this way is that the signals will be a one-way thing. W/ the Cat6 network we had the option of pan/tilt/zoom cameras that could be controlled from a monitoring station. This may not be possible with close circuit television.

Thoughts and ideas are really needed badly here. I would also like any links to equipment that has implemented what I have in mind. We may even need a consulting group to bring in on the project so that it is done "right."

Bonus question: what would be a good DVR that has HD tuner capabilities and where video files that are recorded with the DVR are accessible over a computer network? The video files need to be computer accessible as well, as in no nasty DRM on top of the files or a horribly proprietary format. We produce our own video here.

Thanks for all your input!

What does the phrase "early close of stdout" mean?

nomisxid — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:35:40 -0800

In the context of OpenSSH, what does the phrase "early close of stdout/stderr" mean? I am looking at the regress tests in OpenSSH portable, and one phrase I keep seeing over and over is "...with early close of stdout/err". These tests will have something that looks like:

ssh -1 -n somehost
exec sh -c \'"sleep 2 ; exec > /dev/null 2>&1 ; sleep 3 ; exit 9"\'

I understand I'm calling ssh, and expecting it to run the exec command on the destination machine, somehost.

I understand the sh -c means only execute a single command, in this case everything between the quotes, though I'm not clear why it's an escaped single quotes surrounding native double-quotes. Unless that has something to do with the early close, I don't care too much.

I understand the exec > /dev/null 2> &1 means a No-op with stdout and stderr redirected to null.

I don't understand how the two sleeps fit in to create the "early close" condition, or what that really means in this context. Can anyone clarify?

auto close pop up window

wsg — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:36:13 -0800

How do I alter this piece of code to make the pop up window close automatically after exactly 37 seconds? Here's the piece of code with { } substitued for <>:

{script language="javascript"}
timer=setTimeout("window.open('video_popup.html',','width=550,height=400')",5000)
{/script}

what to do about close talkers

Lisa S — Sun, 07 May 2006 17:54:24 -0800

What to do about close talkers? I feel rude inching away, but it always makes me acutely paranoid. Why do they do it? And what can be done about it? Should I pass on some subtle hint that they're making me uncomfortable? Or just grin and bear it?

Help me restart a .jar application

kc0dxh — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:19:23 -0800

I have an errant .jar file that seems to hang from time to time. I would like to automate it's restart. I know how to perform a close or kill of a standard windows application, how is this done to a .jar file within the Java environment?