How to extract Windows Explorer thumbnail previews

How to extract Windows Explorer thumbnail previews from a specific Windows folder, using old-school desktop freeware:

1. Install the freeware Q-Dir, a quad-view Windows Explorer replacement. This has a useful “print the folder as you see it” feature, something lacking in Windows Explorer.

2. Use Q-Dir to navigate to your chosen folder. Show the folder with medium or large thumbnails, as you prefer. Then print the folder view to a Microsoft .XPS file, using Q-Dir. The .XPS format was Microsoft’s attempt at a .PDF rival, and all Windows installations should be able to print to it.

3. Now install the little freeware utility STDU Extractor and load the .XPS file you just printed. This utility can extract images inside several formats, including from .XPS files. STDU will show you a preview of the available thumbnails and let you extract as .PNG files or in other image formats. For some reason its batch extract is very slow, but the individual select-and-extract is fast.

For batch processing of a folder with thousands of Windows thumbnail previews, you’re probably looking at an overnight job — due the slowness of batch in STDU Extractor. The workflow is more useful if you just want a few dozen at a uniform size, and without faffing around trying to manually take exactly-sized screenshots. As you can see from the above final-output example, the drop-shadow is also extracted. But neatly so.

What you don’t get is the extracted thumbnail being given the name of the file it represents. So far as I can tell, no such software exists for that sort of extraction.

So long as you have software that gives you Windows Explorer previews for its file-types, the above workflow can work even on files that are not images. For instance, the above test is with an E-on Vue 2016 3D scene file.

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Saving the .XPS to .PDF and extracting images from that will not work. The preview thumbnails become fragmented into strips by the PDF printing process.

There are also freeware extractors that will attempt to load the Windows thumbnails .db database in the Windows ../System folder and extract from that. But that’s ‘pot luck’, even if you can get them to open. The above can target a specific folder and a few specific icons.

How to ignore certificate errors in your browser

Total refusal to visit a normal website.

This common Web browser problem is usually related to only a handful of sites and is incredibly difficult to troubleshoot, and for most people will be impossible to fix. I tried everything, and I know Windows and browsers inside-out. Nothing worked.

The ‘nuclear’ cure, which works with Opera and apparently other Chrome-based browsers, is then to simply add the following to your browser icon’s launch path. This path is found by right-clicking on the launch-icon and then looking in its Properties path. No more problems, if you add there…

-ignore-certificate-errors

The site will now load fine. Tested and working with the Opera browser and theguardian .com

Obviously this will not be the same browser you use for Internet banking, PayPal etc. Or in such cases you will at least launch the same browser from another un-fixed launch icon.

How to block by keyword with uBlock Origin

Google Search is now adding “People also searched for” pop-down panels, placed under individual search results. These often appear on using the back button to go back to a page of former results.

I don’t want any kind of ‘pops’ in my search-results. Block them all in your uBlock Origin filter list, by adding this filter…

The above is also a working demo of how to use an xpath command to block any keyword inside a DIV’s ID. In this case the filter blocks all HTML DIVs with an internal ID containing the letters “eob”. This blocking is not constrained to just these letters, meaning that the command will also block “eob77” or “eob_34”, without the need for a wildcard * symbol. This is required for Google Search, as all the “eob” instances have a number after them.

How to enable hyphens to mdash in Word 2007

For some reason my fresh install of trusty old Microsoft Word 2007 does not do the autocorrect for converting two typed hyphens – – into a long — and the mdash autocorrect thus setting had to be applied manually. For future reference, and perhaps useful for others, here’s how to do that…

As you can see here I’ve already added it, and it’s been saved to the options below. Word is supposed to do thus autocorrect automatically but if that fails, the above will set the behaviour manually.

Block the Google Doodle from search-results pages

Google is trying to creep its Google Doodle visual-messaging, often unwanted and usually distracting, into the top-left corner of the actual search-results page. Block it in the Web browser with the UBlock Origin addon, and this simple filter command pasted into your custom ‘My Filters list’…

http://www.google.com##.BA0A6c

If your Web browser insists on adding http:// to the www. bit of the above address (and thus making it a clickable link) then remove this from the copied line. It should look like this…

Apparently targeting .logo.doodle will also work, but the above works for me on Opera.

There’s also a No Google Doodle UserScript, to remove the doodle from the main landing page.

One-click to remove a verbose site from Google

One-click to remove a verbose site from Google Search results, a new UserScript. Preset for Wikipedia, but the URL can be easily changed to be any verbose website. It should ideally be a website that you usually regularly want to remove from search results, but sometimes want to keep. The script is thus more flexible than a regular list-based site blocker.

It works by re-running the current search, but only an instant after some regex has cunningly inserted the command    into the URL.

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Also, yes, I’m aware that my ‘add JURN as a link to Google Search’ UserScript has stopped working. Google has re-labelled the divs on the text links just below the search box. A similar script that allows the current search to be passed to Scholar has also stopped working, as have several similar menu scripts. I’m waiting for one of these scripts to update, and thus to show me how it needs to be fixed.

Twitter to Nitter

There’s a useful and unique new UserScript. In search results, always redirect the links on Twitter hits to Nitter. Useful if you’re not a Twitter user, but may occasionally want to peek at a perhaps-useful Twitter hit in search.

If the main Nitter is being “rate limited” by Twitter, there’s another script that’s a Nitter Instance Switcher and offers a link to a random mirror site.

A full Instance (mirror) list is here at GitHub, if you need to find a few fresh ones.

Sweep away the breadcrumbs

Got nasty breadbrumbs in your Google Search, again? An update to the free UserScript Google Search restore URLs (undo breadcrumbs) fixes that, restoring full human-readable URL paths in your search results. Having URL paths visible is vital for instantly detecting and blocking spam, something which Google’s mega-mind AI seems unable to learn to do. After a while, the experienced searcher learns to spot the half-dozen common types of spam URLs. An obvious example…

A garbled hash forms part of the URL + an .it domain + a movie ‘download’ offer = definitely robo-spam and likely dangerous too. Why is it even in Google Search, and for search terms that have nothing to do with Thundercats?

Seamless height-maps for the whole world

Seamless and free height-maps for the whole world, now at Tangram Heightmapper. It’s very easy to use. Once you’ve dived down to your location, and exported such a map, these height maps can be imported into 3D software. There they can then be used as the basis for making new elevated terrain maps, and as pretty as you care to make them.

How to use…

1. Go to Google Maps. Find your chosen location, and position it. Copy the current Google Maps URL to Notepad.

2. Now use this Google Maps URL co-ordinate data to craft a new URL for the Height Mapper. An example Google Maps URL would look like…

../maps/place/Your_place/@53.0220219,-2.2297826,12z/

Therefore the needed Tangrams Height Mapper URL would be…

https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/#12/53.0220/-2.2297

The #12 appears to be the zoom-level, with #13 zooming the satellite down another mile or so nearer to the ground. It appears to correspond with the ,12z bit of the Google Maps URL. It thus seems someone could easily cook up an URL-converter UserScript for Google Maps, but for now it needs to be done manually.

3. Paste your newly-crafted URL into Tangrams Height Mapper. Allow time to load. Once you’re happy, press “Export” to get the heightmap in PNG.

If needed, zoom-in further and grab multiple adjacent sections for export, then stitch these with the free Microsoft ICE. Although this does not appear to add detail. It just makes the final image larger. Nor can the upres-er AI Gigapixel add much new detail.

4. View in your chosen 3D landscape software by loading up your new height map. For a quick look, the Aerialod freeware is simple and will do the trick.

You will then likely find the height map has “terraces” (aka “stairsteps” or “steps” or “zippers” or stepped “waterlines” or “tidelines”). These look like the tiny lines following the contours of a drawn map. These are not actually drawn-on contour-lines, but rather the unwanted artefacts of the relatively low-resolution heightmap. If you want high-resolution heightmaps you’re assumed to prospecting for oil or gold and you generally have to take out a mortgage to afford them.

Seen here in Aerialod, this “stepping” effect is actually not unappealing when rendered crisply. Though here with a bit too much of the Minecraft game about it. You can hide this effect somewhat by switching Aerialod to display in ‘Poly’ or ‘Surf’ mode, but these modes make the terrain look like a plaster-cast and seem far from ideal.

5. Most will then want to find a method of smoothing these tiny terraces, but without removing too much detail from the real bits of the terrain. Sadly it appears there’s there’s not really any way to do that, without smushing the other details, other than to cover the terrain with a satellite map or apply textures.

One simple free option that I find works for mesh export is Height Map to OBJ. This gives a smoother 3D mesh as it exports, though also regrettably smushing fine details, rather than trying to smooth the height-map pixels first. It’s old but, like most good Windows freeware, still works and it will get rid of the ‘terraces’. Just note that the height maps you feed it must have exactly square dimensions. On import of the resulting OBJ into 3D software you may find you have to re-set the scaling, to something like 700% on the Y axis.

With a vastly steeper learning-curve, TerreSculptor is now free and will also import a height map and export an OBJ.

Time for YouTube

There are two useful YouTube addons for wrangling YouTube, without needing the services of some third-party online outfit in Whereizitagin.

Youtube Playlist Total Duration is a UserScript that shows the total duration of the playlist. Useful for those who need to know how long a software-training or hardware-setup playlist will take to view. Tested and working, but note that you must re-load the page to see the correct time for the playlist.

Got a slow presenter, and need your learning playlist running a little faster? The Chrome browser addon Any Youtube Playback Speed does the job nicely, and with fine increments on a simple slider. Again, tested and working.

Small changes re: time and speed, but both are very useful.