That missing mouse feature..

I might have mentioned I roll a Logitech MX Revolution.

There is so much that is great about this mouse, but I'm going to focus on one feature that; unlike many of its other qualities; could be reproduced in modern mice but sadly never is..

Automatic Free-Spin

Okay, admittedly other mice can free-spin their mouse wheel, but the MX revolution can do it in software. That's right; there's a servo or something in there; no button clicking required. When I start scrolling down some long document, my mouse behaves just like a regular mouse, but when I start spinning the wheel fast, it senses this and unlocks itself; starts free spinning, the document scrolling with it.

When I want to stop, I put my finger back down on the mouse, and in a moment I can feel the clutch re-engage; which is a highly satisfying feeling, by the way; and now my wheel behaves like any other wheel, except with better weight, balance and tactile feel than your mouse, guaranteed!

NO OTHER mouse can do this. Even Logitech's later wannabe-Revolution mice can't do this. Why is this? I don't want to find and click a button when I'm in the middle of a document; my spinning fast means get-the-fuck-on-with-it; I shouldn't need to begin a whole other operation to make this clear to a fucking mouse.

I must be thinking about my mouse. Yup, the left button has finally started double-clicking by itself. After what, 15 years of use? Pfff..

Given that it's already at four times+ its rated lifespan and I have (oh the wonder of forethought) three replacement microswitches in stock right now, it's not a big deal.

Gawd, I love this mouse!

And its duplicate which I keep for spares (still 100% intact).

;o)

.torrent files sent to my deluge server with one click

What a great title!

I long ago stopped using a local torrent client in favour of an always-on solution (because seeding is best done 24/7) in the shape of yet another process on my awesome little "local server", which is a mini PC on our network, hosting media files and other services for the family.

I use deluge (deluged, that is; the "d" meaning daemon), and the deluge-web service for tinkering over the web. In fact, every member of the house has their own deluged/deluge-web service pair running, to avoid confusion and embarrassment; each on their own port.

The browser view works as well as any desktop client and it's irrelevant that the actual machine is a tiny box against the wall behind our movie screen. A folder on the desktop is a folder on the desktop, regardless of the actual location of the data (on a desktop, a directory is a "folder"). Anyways..

It's easy to have magnet links from your browser sent to the server (using the Magnet2Deluge Chrome extension which is better than the others). Click and done.

But what about actual .torrent files?

Step 1:

Configure deluge to watch a directory for torrents. Ours is /Q (it's a Linux box running Debian). You can drop .torrent files into it and they get automatically added to the Torrent queue. You will need access to this directory, of course. If you run Windows on your desktop and your server is Linux you will probably access the directory using SAMBA.

Let's say all this is true and you have the remote Linux volume mapped to a local drive "K:", so the watched directory path is "K:\Q".

Step 2:

Create two pieces of plain text:

1. A simple batch script which moves the file you click to your deluge watched directory, which I save as:

C:\Users\Dad\Documents\Scripts\Batch\MoveToTorrentQueue.bat

@echo off
setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

set "torrentfile=%~1"
move "%torrentfile%" "K:\Q"

2. A registry entry to handle the click..

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.torrent]
@="TorrentFile"
"Content Type"="application/x-bittorrent"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TorrentFile\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Users\\Dad\\Documents\\Scripts\\Batch\\MoveToTorrentQueue.bat\" \"%1\""

Save that as "TorrentQ.reg" or whatever you like and merge the file into the registry.

Now, when you click on a torrent file it gets moved immediately to the Queue folder.

It probably doesn't go without saying that you can use this registry-batch pairing to handle all sorts of situations you might encounter.

;o)