Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with index

How do you index your Ray Mears clips?

verisimilitude — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:39:26 -0800

How can I add summary data to my video files? I've recently started a project to put all of Ray Mears's survival tips into some sort of idexable format. At this early stage I'm taking the hour long TV episodes and splitting them into 20 or so short avi. clips. To do this I'm using Windows Movie Maker to view the show and strip out all the content that isn't pure Ray wilderness gold. The output avi. I then put through a simple wmv/avi. splitter.

My question is in two parts. The first general, second specific.

1) Am I going about this project in the best way? This is the first video editing Ive done, so if there is better software for stripping the useful content out of TV shows then please let me know.

2) I'm going to finish up with about 1000 clips of educational wilderness survival, and I'm not quite sure exactly how I'm going to organise them ... but I'm sure that the tagging needs to be done now. For example, a clip with Ray demonstrating how to build a pit oven I would tag "cooking" "woodland" "meat preparation" - I'm sure you get the idea. But how do associate these tags with the file? I assumed I would just be able to open each of the avi file's properties and add the tags as summary data. Alas no. The summary data is 'greyed out' so my plan appears to be foiled.

My concern about this greyed out quirk led me (via a google search) straight to those infuriating bastards at 'experts exchange' where my question has been posed:

"I'd like to enter some descriptive comments for some of my files, to view in explorer (via My Computer), but when I rightclick/properties/summary/simple, everything is greyed out (well, greened out)."

So google as fails me, my faith in the Hive Mind grows.

Thanks for reading all this.

Keep my Wordpress blog out of search engines!

Drohan — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:38:05 -0800

Why is my Wordpress blog showing up in Google when I have specifically chosen the option to keep it private from search engines? I have a new Wordpress blog, hosted by Wordpress, that I'd like to keep from being indexed by search engines if possible. Under Settings: Privacy, I have selected "I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors". I have also password-protected all posts.

Yet the blog is showing up in Google. I put my own name in a post to see if it would show up, and a Google search for my name brings up the post, plus the usual Google blurb of one or two lines before or after where my name appears in the post. When you click through, you cannot read the post because of the password protection, but I'm troubled that the blog posts are being indexed b y Google when I've specified that they not be, and also that excerpts from my password-protected posts are showing up in the Google results. Please help! (Hosting the blog on my own server is not an option.)

Scanning folders?

Shakes the Clown — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:12:03 -0800

At work, we have an extensive amount of applications that are just dumped, seemingly randomly, into various folders on a network share. Is there an application that can scan or index these folders in some way, and present the results in a way that can be sorted by name, date, etc.?

Offline Drive Indexing For Macs

ransom — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:41:03 -0800

Offline Drive Indexing for Macs? I have a mac and I generate a lot of media that i need to keep track of when a drive is disconnected. Basically, I need to be able to do a keyword search and be pointed to the drive/path where files that match the criteria could be found.

Peanut Butter Cups with less sugar?

cda — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:13:37 -0800

Can you tweak this Nigella Lawson peanut butter cup recipe to be lower on the glycemic index? I saw this great recipe online and I was wondering what I could substitute for the sugar without changing the outcome too much.

I'm very sensitive to sugar so I can tell the difference between sugar and honey to my system. So any small change to the glycemic index would be worth the trouble to me.

Turbinado sugar? Honey? Wouldn't honey make the recipe to gooey? Is there another sugar I don't know about that would work?

Have you successfully made sugar substitutes in a candy recipe like this?

Is there such a thing as a currency-neutral measure of prices?

Nelson — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:03:08 -0800

Is there such a thing as a currency-neutral measure of the price of a commodity? The price of oil has gone way up in dollars. But the dollar is also way down against other world currencies. I'm looking for a graph that shows the price of oil in a way that's currency neutral. Ie, a graph that filters out the fluctuations in the US dollar. I'm not just interested in oil, really what I want is to translate dollars to "world currency" for a variety of things.

Naively I think you could do this by creating a virtual currency, an average of various world currencies weighted by the currency's economic influence. Ie: "30% USD, 20% EUR, 20% CNY, ..." But I'm not an economist and I'm not sure what I'm asking for even makes sense.

I did find a set of graphs of oil prices in various currencies, including vs. gold. The comments include a discussion about exactly what I'm asking for, with inconclusive results. The most interesting was a suggestion to look at oil vs. the CRB index. I don't really understand the CRB index, but what I do understand suggests it's not the right thing to normalize against.

Is there a way to force Google to reindex a webpage right away?

ssmith — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 11:26:43 -0800

Is there a way to force Google to reindex a webpage right away? I've got a client with a really embarrasing error that they had in the title tag of their homepage. We fixed the error pretty quickly, but not before Google had gone ahead and indexed the page while the error was still up there. Now, in the Google results the error shows up as the "byline" beneath the search result.

I used the Google webmaster tools to request that they reindex the site and I added a sitemap. I tried to set the indexing speed to "faster" but it's grayed out and it's not an option.

Is there anything else I can do to try and get Google to reindex the page faster? It was last indexed on June 26th, 2007. All of the changes I mentioned happened about 6 weeks ago and my client is getting understandably frustrated.

Where can I buy the world's most amazing index cards?

mdonley — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:06:16 -0800

Index card quest! I'm looking for a very particular kind I've seen in the past: a small (smaller than standard 3"-by-5", like 2"-by-1"!), possibly pastel-colored set of cards that come on a single, small binder ring (not spiral-bound!) and are enclosed in a plastic cover (not a fabric one!), almost certainly with a snap. I lived with someone in college who used them to practice foreign vocabulary and they were fantastic because they were interchangeable, cheap, easily portable, and readily available at our campus (UC Santa Cruz) bookstore in 2004, which I can't reach this weekend as they're closed. Now I'm moving to Latvia at the end of the month (whoo!) and I'd like to be able to keep key words on the same kind of cards so I can practice my sveikas and paldieses on the go, or when I've got a down moment, or anytime when carrying a big stack of cards is otherwise less-than-good. Ideally the ring would be on my keychain all the time, so it'd be really quite small, and I'd cycle new cards in and out.

I've been to a Staples, an OfficeMax, and a Target, and I've looked all over the place online, and I CANNOT find them. It's not a hipster PDA, and it's not part of the Real Simple organizational stuff sold at Target. It is also not the Mead RingDex, which is too large for what I want to use it for, lacks a cover, and has an extra ring.

I have a hunch that if these exist anywhere, they'll be at a university bookstore, but not having access to one is hampering my search.

If you need an image, this is really close though they're too large, but imagine that the cards are held tightly closed with a snap of some kind. The size I'm looking for is about the size of a keychain-sized supermarket loyalty card.

Finally, I would really, really prefer to just buy them instead of making my own, because I'm super-busy this month getting ready for my move. Thanks for your help!

Not quite enterprise, but further-reaching than Google Desktop...

ostranenie — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:17:16 -0800

Help me find a Windows-based cataloging program that can handle indexing of Word documents and can crawl network (SMB) shares. I'm looking for something like one of the enterprise-level solutions (LiveLink, Cumulus) offers but without involving a centralized server. It has to store its catalog in a file or set of files - not a web server or dedicated database. Sort of like Google Desktop, but for my LAN and not quite as sophisticated.

WhereIsIt is the closest thing I've found so far; it meets nearly almost all of my criteria but won't index Word documents (although it does pull in attributes from them) and does allow me to write a plug-in that will import text (so I can sort of work around the indexed text limitation) but that's just a workaround.

Thanks!

401(k) with index funds?

bananafish — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:12:05 -0800

Help me find a 401(k) plan or retirement plan managed through a payroll service that offers index funds. Currently, we have a 401(k) plan at work that offers only mutual funds with high fees (100 basis points). We only have four employees. We'd like to switch to a 401(k) provider that offers index funds as an option. The catch is that my boss would like the 401(k) plan to be offered through a competent payroll service (Paychex or similar). He is worried that without having a payroll service involved the contributions will not be transferred immediately and he will incur substantial penalties (he's had problems with this in the past). I understand that ADP does offer an all index fund 401(k) plan, but I've had two friends who have had horrible experiences with ADP (as in one friend didn't get paid for a month), so I'm leery. Has anyone had a good experience with ADP's all index fund 401(k)? Does anyone have good experience with something similar?

Finding a physical folksonomy for flimsy files

ajp — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:38:02 -0800

Is there a way of tagging paper? Is there a way of applying "folksonomy" (yuck, awful word) to physical paper? In other words, is there some robust method of labeling papers within a sheaf of printed material (such as a book or set of college notes) in a way analogous to "tagging"?

Specifically, I have a large set of printed and hand-written notes from college classes. They are all categorised appropriately, e.g. "human anatomy", "human physiology", "human pathology" and so on. However this has the same drawback as "folders" with email systems: one file can only exist in one folder, unless the whole file is duplicated. I'd like to be able to tag files and individual pages. Specific tags might include "hip" and "muscle", thus allowing me to rapidly locate anything to do with the muscles of the hip.

I'd like to find a tried-and-trusted method, although if anyone's got an idea about how to implement a system, feel free to post here (maybe we'll take it to chat if it gets convoluted). But I would prefer pointers to well-defined systems.

One question: am I actually looking for an indexing system? I would prefer a quick, robust, visually-oriented system that requires little maintenance.

I'm using docs.google.com to create and edit documents, and to tag them. So far so good. But I'd like something that I can apply to a physical bundle of papers.

I've searched MF and the web, but it's a tricky one to track down. "Physical tagging" and "physical folksonomy" yields lots of RFID and geotagging stuff, not what I'm after. Standard apology applies to anyone shrewd enough to find previous threads.

help me index my backup media

mattr — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 10:36:44 -0800

Is there a smart way of indexing/cataloging my offline media? This has been partially asked before (I can't work out how to establish a link in here) - but the links that were in the post (diskbase), were mostly dead (and I didn't like 'Cathy' much). There is of course more inside. I have 40 or 50 DVD's which serve as my backup media - full of a variety of files (mostly MP3s, videos and pictures) - I'd like to be able to put each one of these into my drive and for some software to index the files and make a searchable list of them.

I'm using a PC and I don't want to bring them back to 'online' media (hard drive etc) if possible to do this. I don't access the files often - but particularly for music I'd love to be able to search and find 'offline' files as well.

I don't need to index the text inside documents - most of my filenaming is pretty good.

Bonus points if the application that can do this is a) free and b) cool.

Auto-indexing files on a hard drive?

lionelhutz5 — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:27:50 -0800

Is there an easy way to automatically generate an MSWord (or text) document that contains the titles and folder structure for all files on a hard drive? In other words, to create an index of a hard drive's contents? I am trying to create a clean, polished index of everything on a hard drive. The idea is to have a Word document that lists all of the files and includes the folders/subfolders in which they sit (links to the files would be great, but not necessary). This seems like it should be easy to do, but I have not been able to figure out a way. If there is a way to do this without the need to apply any real technical expertise (which I generally lack), all the better.

Professional looking index tabs?

tucsongal — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 13:27:15 -0800

I am trying to make index tab dividers for a group of three ring binders I am producing for a training class at my work. I would like to have them look as professional as possible. The image below illustrates how I am creating them now.. and how I would LIKE them to look. (These are for 5.5 x 8.5 size sheets): http://cybis.indirect.com/AskMeta/IndexTabs.jpg Aside from spending a zillion dollar with a professional service bureau, does anyone have any ideas how to achieve good results 'at home'?

A query connundrum.

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 05:51:38 -0800

Attention SQL gurus. This has me completely stumped. How can I find the index (position) of a row in a table without querying the entire set? Here is the situation:

I have a web application that has some ajaxified tables on many of the pages. These tables show various slices of data. Most of the tables are about 10 rows per page, so for example, if the table was a list of all Customers, and you've got 10,000 customers, that would be 1,000 pages of customers.

To initially show the table, I have to do two queries: one is the initial 10 rows that are to be displayed, the other is a count(*) to get the total amount of rows.

Here is the problem:

I have a particular customer ID in my hand. I'd like the webtable to take this ID and jump to the correct page that will show that customer. Naturally, it has to take into account sorting.

Hypothetical simplified example:

ID    NAME

1102  C_D's Tavern

1294  Bob's Discount Dairy

1299  Chico's House of Wicker

...

9309  Larry's Llama Emporium

If I sort by ID (natural order), the index of Bob's Discount Dairy would be 2, Chico's Hosue of Wicker would be 3, etc. If I'm displaying "page 1", that means the first 10 indexes, so I know those two would be on the first page. "OK, so what page is ID# 5129 on?" That's the problem.

What I want to know is if there's a way to figure out the index of a particular ID without having to query the entire dataset. Or if I do have to query the entire dataset, I'd like it to be as painless as possible. Another important note: some of these queries are being run off of VIEWs, which could complicate things.

This is on Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

Where did I read that before?

MrMulan — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:00:06 -0800

Does a meta index of books that reference each other exist? For some reason, it's always a pleasant surprise when I am reading and it references something I have previously read. But sometimes I have no idea where I read it. Googling it is hit or miss.

Create Collapsible Index

russmail — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 17:58:02 -0800

Can I create a collapsible index of hard and soft documents? I'm doing some training at the moment and I have tons of documents - folders and folders of hard copy that I received at training sessions and also a whole bunch of pdfs.
To help me find the information I want efficiently, I started creating an index of all the documents as a text file. Then I started adding the TOC of each document. And then it struck me that it'd be really neat if the index was collapsible, functioning like Windows Explorer. Can this be done?

Why does Windows Desktop Search keep "forgetting" my Outlook items?

JudgeBork — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:30:48 -0800

Why does Windows Desktop Search keep "forgetting" my Outlook items? I've got about 20,000 "items indexed so far." I open up Outlook (2003), let Windows Desktop Search index my .pst files, then I've got 40,000 items indexed. Problem is, by tomorrow, those 40,000 items will be back to 20,000 and I'll have to index Outlook again. What a pain in the butt. Any ideas?

How do I get swish-e to index the contents of a specific HTML tag (not a meta tag)?

expialidocious — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:19:51 -0800

How do I get swish-e to index the contents of a specific HTML tag (not a meta tag)? I'm working on a site where the contents of the tag are generated at runtime based on the contents of an tag. Is there any way to use swish-e configuration directives to index this and use it exactly the way swishtitle is used by default? I've played with MetaNames, but I can't get it to do what I want. Do I have to turn on some kind of XML mode? Or should I give up and spider?

Why is Spotlight a bit dim?

words1 — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 15:06:55 -0800

Spotlight in OS X 10.4 -- doesn't seem to index the actual contents of files and emails. Searching for known terms produces no hits. Mac Mini, 3 mos. old. Any ideas?

Reverse-linking wiki?

joaquim — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 13:13:50 -0800

Is there a reverse-linking wiki? I'm looking for an indexing feature in a wiki. In a "normal" wiki, you create links to pages inside the wiki using CamelCase, brackets, etc. If the linked page doesn't exist, the wiki flags it with a question mark, colored text, whatever. I'm looking for a wiki that will index or search its pages and automatically create links when a new page is created. Ex., I can write several pages containing the term "Maine lobster" without links. When I create a page titled Maine Lobster, the wiki will automatically (or even on manual command) search all pages in the wiki for that term and insert the links. Is there such a beast?

Question number 10740

Mars Saxman — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 11:25:08 -0800

I am looking for an index data structure and query algorithm to solve a specific problem. Each row in the table represents a range, with a start/end value; I want to look up all the rows that overlap a certain value.

Question number 9939

blueshammer — Sun, 05 Sep 2004 08:54:22 -0800

I know, I know -- not another web photogallery AskMe question, but: I've actually settled on the gallery itself. I'm using JAlbum. Having made the choice, though, I'm left with two questions:

1. JAlbum makes nice galleries, but doesn't create a top-level index page. (I could hand-code it, but my wife will be doing most of the updating and I don't want her to have to go mucking around in HTML.) The easiest solution, I'd think, would be just to reformat the directory listing into something attractive -- all I really need to communicate to the user is descriptive folder names and upload dates, but I'd prefer to make something more handsome than the standard Apache page. Can anyone recommend a particular PHP file system manager or other solution?

2. JAlbum's auto upload is ridiculously slow -- better just to FTP it. When JAblum makes a gallery, though, it includes a lot of stuff I'm not using -- icon sets, borders, etc. It's not a ton of space, but I'm going to uploading a lot of these galleries, and it'll add up. Is there a programmatic way I can stop JAlbum from including all this, instead of weeding it out before each upload? (I'm using the BluPlusPlus skin.)

Question number 8945

hobbes — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 12:38:29 -0800

Does anyone know of any search engines that will also index non-plaintext documents (i.e. PDF's and Powerpoint)? Google has a search appliance, but we're looking to spend less than $2K.

Question number 7805

specialk420 — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 16:41:15 -0800

anyone know where one might find a visual index of the linotype gold collection? meaning a list of each of the 3,000 fonts rendered? tall order i know. (more inside)