Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with seek

Typing: from 60wpm to 90wpm

ekpyrotic — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:54:03 -0800

From a reasonably good [60wpm] looking-at-the-keys typist to a reasonably good [90wpm] touch typist. I currently type at ~60wpm. I have to look at the keyboard every 3-or-so words. I want to touch type for 2 reasons,

1. To improve speed,
2. So I can copy text effectively, i.e., not have to look at the keys now and again.

Where's the best place to go from here?

Which SSD drive to buy for fastest seek time?

bottlebrushtree — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:25:13 -0800

Which internal SSD drive to buy for fastest seek time? I use a piece of scientific software which has massive disk based binary database files (>100GB). The application does random seeks into these files looking for a match. It will do millions of seeks, but few long runs of "reads"

I'm looking to buy a SSD drive to speed up this application.

My requirements:
fast seek time
larger than 128GB
commercially available (e.g. I can get it consistently online)
under $1500US, but under $1000 is best
Will be used under Windows

How does Google Video let you jump to any part of a video?

ssmith — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:23:24 -0800

How does Google/YouTube manage to allow a user to jump to any part of a video without having it preloaded first? Is it the player they use or maybe how the video file is hosted? I've got a client with a fairly standard 4-minute demo video they want to put up on their site. They'd like to be able to let a user click on some tabs across the top to jump to various sections. I've got this all working as long as the video has already finished preloading past that point in the video.

I'm not really sure how much it will help, but here's a link to the project.

I'd love to be able to have the same ability that, say, Google video uses where you can link directly to a specific point in the video without needing to have the video preloaded up to that point.

Is there a tutorial or some other resource out there with a good explanation of how to do this?

Back to The Grind

Danelope — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:54:24 -0800

Every night at 12:10AM, the brand new primary hard drive in my computer begins grinding away for a duration of 10-60 seconds. Why? Observations:

1. It's a pronounced sound and fairly loud compared to normal drive seek noise, but doesn't sound mechanically destructive.

2. It occurs every night at 12:10AM on the dot.

3. It occurs regardless of how long the computer's been on.

4. It occurs whether I'm actively using the machine or not.

5. The machine performance seems unaffected by the process.

6. Examing both the running processes via Task Manager and the filesystem activity via sysinternals' Filemon reveals nothing untoward.

7. I don't have any automated tasks (e.g. virus scan, defrag, backup) running at that time.

8. This also occurred on my previous machine using a different operating system (Win2K Pro then; WinXP Pro now) and a different hard drive (though both drives were manufactured by Western Digital.)

Is this some sort of maintenance routine hardwired into the WD firmware? I've been meaning to Ask this question for quite some time, but I've generally forgotten by the time I finished doing whatever was interrupted by the grinding.

Help me find God.

ZakDaddy — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:04:54 -0800

Help me find God. My father's family is Jewish. My mother's family is Catholic. My parents were divorced when I was 4, and mom eventually became what I affectionately call a born-again Native American. I married a Southern Baptist in an Episcopalian church. My oldest 2 girls attend a Waldorf school. My closest friend has joined a United Methodist congregation. In my youth I was aggressively atheist. In high school I decided to hedge my bets and went agnostic. As a young man, I had a private epiphany that brought me to an awareness of God, and for the last 10 years I have been trying to find a ... peer group, for lack of a better phrase.

You may infer from the text thus far that I don't consider Jews, Catholics, Native Americans, Southern Baptists, etc. etc. to be peers, and from the standpoint of religious doctrine you would be correct. However, this is more likely due to my (very) limited grasp of said doctrines than anything else. Would a comparative religions course be at all useful, or is an academic approach the wrong road to take? Do I really need a peer group? Should a personal relationship with God be enough? What do I teach my children?

I understand and accept that this is a deeply personal issue, and my intent is not to incite a flame war, or even a debate. But surely I am not the first person to face this search -- who else out there discovered God and then religion in that order, instead of the other way around? What worked for you?