Messages

1

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: August 09, 2010, 09:55 AM »

gtoal, can we call this one done after the latest changes?

-skwire (August 09, 2010, 09:01 AM)

Yes of course, sorry I didn't realise we did a formal sign off.  (This is the first time someone here has implemented one of my suggestions.  Actually it may be the first time I've actually posted a suggestion now I think of it :-) )

Yes, it's done, and it's a good piece of code which I really hope other folks will also find useful.  Much appreciated, thanks.

Graham

2

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: August 06, 2010, 05:59 PM »

Picasa does this!
I upload photos that have been geotagged by my Eye-Fi card.
Then, when viewing them in an 'album' on the Picasa web site, I can select one and a small Google map appears that shows the 'pin' for that location.

I hope I did not burst anyone's bubble.  I just saw this post for the first time.

-parkint (August 06, 2010, 05:01 PM)

It's OK, it's not the same thing at all.  You're talking about photos on a web site (or possibly inside the Picasa program) - What Jody wrote for us does thie same thing but for files on your disk in a regular directory.

regards,

Graham "It takes more than a prikkelpop to burst my bubbles" Toal.

3

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: August 05, 2010, 11:31 PM »

Before I start my report, I need to explain that I missed the automatic notification that you had posted on the 3rd, and only spotted your post with the download this morning when I was checking up on the site to see what was new.  My apologies, it must have looked rude not to reply for a couple of days after you released the program.

So... for me it worked great, exactly what I asked for and I'm delighted with the results.  Unfortunately it's my wife who has the most geotagged photos and there was a problem when she tried it.  Running the exe to register and create the uninstaller didn't work - both dialogues popped up fine and it appeared to work, but the uninstaller wasn't created and there was no handler added to the right-clicks.  We're guessing it's because she's running 64bit Windows 7 - either a 64 bit issue or something to do with Windows 7 security and that she was trying to run it in a Program Files subdirectory.  (I'll experiment more with that tomorrow when I can borrow her machine for more than a few minutes...)

That was the only failure; there were also two usability issues that are very minor, one of which I've already mentioned so I'll gloss over (which is that the option shows up for all files, not just image files.  But I appreciate that writing something like the setup of photoshop where you get a chance to associate the program with various extensions is way overkill, although personally I'ld be happy it if were only associated with jpegs as those are the only ones I'm ever likely to tag); the other usability issue is very minor indeed: the report for an image with no exif info is "No exif data found in file. Aborting".  To me it's more a null success than an error - saying 'Aborting' sounds like something is going wrong in a more serious way.  I would just have it say "Image does not contain map coordinates".

So overall, very good piece of code.  It'll come in very handy for me when I copy our family photo collection from my wife's machine to mine this weekend.

Thank you,

Graham

4

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: August 05, 2010, 03:32 PM »

Thanks!  I'll try it at home tonight (don't have any geotagged images at work).  Unfortunately I have to be out late this evening so I'll report back tomorrow morning.

Graham

5

Post New Requests Here / Re: Auto save any data from any (running) program at regular intervals.

« on: August 03, 2010, 08:28 AM »

is what you're looking for the new(ish) "hybrid sleep" mode of Windows Vista/Windows 7 perhaps?

  http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/10/29/what-is-hybrid-sleep-and-differences-with-basic-sleep-mode-in-vista/

Graham

6

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: August 03, 2010, 08:22 AM »

Any preference on the context menu entry text? 

-skwire (August 03, 2010, 01:41 AM)

Assuming the context menu only shows for jpegs (.jpg and .jpeg, i.e. we don't need to put the word "photo" or "picture" in the text to explain what we're geolocating), then simply "Geolocate" would be enough. I was in two minds about something in more plain English such as "Locate on map" but with all those other services available at the geohacks site, such as finding photographs taken nearby, it might not always be as simple as placing it on a map; whereas 'geolocate' is vague enough to cover all the options.

I don't expect the right-click menu to know in advance whether an image has a geo tag or not, that's too fancy and I doubt it's even possible.

If there's no latlon info in the file, will you be putting up an error box, or just bringing up a map with no pointers placed?  (If there's a choice I think I'd prefer an error box but whatever is easiest...)

thanks,

Graham

7

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: August 03, 2010, 01:28 AM »

You pick one - I'm not going to ask for any 'scope creep' when you're doing this as a quickie favour! :-)

-gtoal (July 31, 2010, 02:46 PM)

It's your software so feel free to chose the one you like.  Either one is the same work to implement (which is to say, hardly any work at all).   

-skwire (August 02, 2010, 10:51 PM)

Well, for the sake of simplicity I'll pick the plain Google version (one less click to get to the map).

(The 'scope creep' option I had at the back of my mind was a registry entry which if present would be used in preference to the default URL format string - which would also add a little future-proofing in case Google changed their URL.)

Graham

8

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: July 31, 2010, 02:46 PM »

Wow - either would be great!  I wasn't familiar with the geohacks page, and my suggestion was exactly your first link with the Google map, but now that I've seen your alternative suggestion I think I may prefer it.  You pick one - I'm not going to ask for any 'scope creep' when you're doing this as a quickie favour! :-)

Thanks

Graham (TX :-) )

9

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: July 30, 2010, 11:32 PM »

Looks like the image I tried to upload failed, so I've put one on my web site which you can find at this directory:  http://www.gtoal.com/for_dc/ - right-click and 'save as' to save the jpg image once you've visited that link.

Thanks

Graham

10

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: right-click to display geotagged image on map

« on: July 30, 2010, 10:24 PM »

I've googled hard for this and couldn't find an implementation.   I'ld like to be able to right-click on a geotagged image (prob jpeg with exif) within the windows file/image viewer, and select off the context menu an option to go to somehing like google earth/maps at the geotagged location.

Anyone here know how to do this kind of hack?


Thanks


Graham

11

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: virtual drive driver

« on: May 22, 2009, 11:21 AM »

I'd love an app that would create a virtual drive that would hold the contents of selected directories on multiple drive volumes.

Would be great for media servers..  I tried creating junction links, but it doesn't work on multiple volumes...


Example, you have a directory on C: , d: , E: , F: , and G: drives with music files, you could create a virtual drive that would somehow contain all files from those directories so you could tell your media server software (xlobby, mediaportal) just to look at the virtual drive for music files..

Is it possible?  It sounds possible..  just no idea where to start coding.. 

-gotrootdude (April 29, 2005, 10:40 PM)

This exact program was posted today on giveawayoftheday.com (original is payware, at http://www.virtualdisk.net/ )

G

12

General Software Discussion / Re: List of newbie questions regarding software

« on: October 07, 2008, 11:12 PM »

Thanks gtoal but how do you use it?

-Paul Keith (September 11, 2008, 12:52 AM)

compile it, then write a batch file with commands in it like

hakihaki < file.txt > file.html

any time you update file.txt, just double-click the batch file.

13

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Photo Downloader Kiosk

« on: October 07, 2008, 11:06 PM »

Canon Camerawindow just downloads from chip to directory, sounds like what you want?

14

General Software Discussion / Re: Copying files to a series of DVD

« on: September 10, 2008, 05:29 PM »

I want to back up a series of files to DVD. In total, there is about 20 GB of files. I want the files to be on the DVD in original format, not zipped or any other format. In the past I have just selected a group of files that would fit on a DVD and burn that, but this gets fiddly.

I have checked the forum discussion on backups but none of the programs seem to do this.

Is there a program that will allow one to select a range of files and directories, break them into DVD sized groups so that they can be burnt to DVD ( or burn directly to DVD)?

-Chris (September 07, 2008, 08:19 PM)

that takes me back... many years ago, Acorn had a floppy archiver called "far" which was basically tar for floppies.  But it suffered from the deficiencies that you're complaining about.  So Pieter Schoenmakers and I came up with Far Two which did a first-fit algorithm on files to pack as much content into floppies as possible.  Remarkably, the first-fit heuristic was incredibly effective.  Anyway, the code is still around ( http://www.gtoal.com...src/fart/fart.c.html ) although clearly it's specific to the Acorn RiscOS; but it might give you some hints about what's needed if you want to write something similar to create staging directories for copying to CD or DVD...

One thing you need to be careful about is the overhead caused by the directory hierarchy which you're creating, which adds to the expected size that you'ld think you needed from just the file sizes alone.  And of course remember to account for block sizes.  Probably for a DVD imager, you'd want to make a rough guess first and then create an iso, and maybe iterate a few times adding or removing the last few Kbs to the files until you get a perfect fit.  If your system is fast enough to allow that and you don't do it too often...

15

General Software Discussion / Re: List of newbie questions regarding software

« on: September 10, 2008, 05:14 PM »

How do you use Wiki-style notetakers? (I can’t seem to get my head around on how a wiki-style’d note is easier to read than other kind of notepads. In Wikipedia alone I can find myself clogging my browser with 100 tabs opened all from starting with one Wikipedia article)

Personally I made wiki-like notes with a text editor, then run a makefile to convert my notes into HTML with a little utility I wrote.  It's lightweight but it does all I need.

http://www.gtoal.com...haki/hakihaki.c.html (drop the .html for the plain source)

G

16

General Software Discussion / Re: Time to reinstall Windows? Or get a new desktop?

« on: September 10, 2008, 05:09 PM »

> I built my current desktop back in December 2001

You're to be congratulated for running a windows-based OS for that long without needing a reinstall or being overrun by viruses for years without knowing it!

Dude, treat yourself to a new computer.  You'll get more compute power and less electrical power.  And if you don't already have one, get an LCD display :-)

G

17

General Software Discussion / Re: G.ho.st - A Free Virtual PC/WebOS

« on: September 10, 2008, 05:05 PM »

This isn't a virtual PC or even a remote desktop, this is one of those DHTML/AJAX browser-based pseudo-desktops that can only run applications (usually web applets, sometimes remotely hosted AJAX apps) that the hosting system pre-installs.  There's actually quite a lot of these around now.  I've signed up for several at various times, but they're all so useless that I've stopped using any of them.  The most recent one I tried was Jooce but it was no better than the rest.  Here's some names to google: Jooce, Goowy, XINdesk, OODesk, Orca, craythur, desktoptwo, eyeos, glide, purefect, ssoe, YouOS, astranos, bedesk, cmyos, doxboard, glide, mygoya, oos, parakey, psych, startforce, webdesk, webdows, zimdesk, fenestela, zkdesktop.

Best solution: get yourself a 24x7 net connection and allow remote access to your home system. (ssh, VLC, or Remote Desktop)  All the comforts of home and the convenience of accessing it from anywhere on the net, and you don't need to entrust someone else with your data.


Graham

18

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« on: September 10, 2008, 03:52 PM »

I'm a Scots ex-pat living in South Texas, been programming since around 74 (at high school, we used to send coding sheets off to the local poly where students were paid to punch them on to cards - a compile/edit/run iteration took about a week), and I write code for fun probably more than I do for a living (although I work in a 'computer center', we generally don't do a lot of coding here, and what we do isn't very interesting).  At the moment my hobby project is writing a book on how to write a compiler (and writing a compiler to go along with the book).  But I usually have half a dozen different projects on the go at any one time.  And a backed-up queue of others that'll see me through retirement!  I can easily see myself contributing the odd quickie utility here, as long as you're OK with command-line stuff written in C.  If you want gooey flashness, someone else will have to add that...

Graham

19

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: registry change detector

« on: September 10, 2008, 12:33 AM »

Thanks!  It looks like the Russian (or is at Ukrainian?) variant of regshot is what I was looking for, with undo.reg and redo.reg files.  Unfortunately when the russians took the open source program and modified it (or is it a reimplementation?  if so they should have used another name.  But I suspect not...), they didn't release their updated sources (it would seem, my Russian is a bit rusty).  And frankly I've been bitten by too many Russian mafia keyloggers to trust running an executable from that part of the world without compiling it myself from source.  However the sourceforge source of the older version is available, and for a change, in a language I know well, so I might just have a hack at writing my own version this weekend... (unless someone beats me to it!)

I also found this page that lists what seem like add-ons to the original regshot, which do what I want: http://bbs.betabbs.c....php?showtopic=61050 - I'll give those a try too.

thanks for all the posts, guys, you look like a friendly bunch; I think I'll hang around here.  Hopefully I'll be able to contribute a few utils myself in the coming months.  (I generally have time to program at the weekends - but not this weekend - with Hurricane Ike heading straight for me, I'll be lucky if I even have electricity by this weekend, never mind networking..!)

Graham

=========
One of the most important things missing from the Regshot tool, is it's inability to output it's traced changes into .reg files.

Paraglider then made a Regshot-mod which could output .txt logfiles using REGEDIT4 format.

Now a Regshot alike freeware tool named Regshot 2.0 unicode has emerged which resembles the old Regshot very much, while adding some nice extra capabilities...


It can output directly to REGEDIT4(ansi) or REGEDIT5(unicode) .reg files.
It can make both REDO.reg and UNDO.reg files.
It can output directly into INF files.
It can make both REDO.inf and UNDO.inf files.
It can auto-translate 'HKEY USERS\S-1-5-21[...]' into 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER'.
It includes a registry exclude list.
It includes an folder exclude list.
It features much more advanced configurability than the original Regshot.


The homepage and tool is in Russian, but the tool can be changed into english from a drop-down box..

http://czechcup.com/regshot/

20

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: registry change detector

« on: September 09, 2008, 03:39 PM »

I've looked for something like this with no luck.  I bet it's a contender for a quickie snack:

1) on the first run, the program dumps the registry
2) you do something that affects the registry.  (eg install some program)
2) on the second run, the program dumps the registry again

At this point, it diffs the previous registry with the current registry, and outputs all the changes in the form of two .reg files:

  one reg file, when run, will undo all the changes and make the registry look like it did on step 1 - it'll delete new entries, and it'll reinstate anything that the user code had deleted.

  the other reg file, when run, will re-apply the changes that were made between 1 and 2, whether that was adding a new key, deleting an old one, or just changing the value of one.

This will be really useful for making a 'reinstaller', ie you install a program, register it etc, then want to move it off your disk to save space and then put it back some time later.  Or you may want to move it to another computer.  Sometimes you just don't want to go through the laborious installation process again, especially when you have to register online and you've already filled out all the forms once before...

Graham

21

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Create a containing folder by right clicking on a file

« on: September 09, 2008, 03:21 PM »

Here's a quick template for how to write a C utility that you can invoke from a right-click, and below that are the contents of a .reg file that would point to the binary.  I've called it "bury" in this example, since it would bury a file one level deeper in the file tree...  It does show a command window for a few seconds, then it closes. (code extracted from a utility I wrote to gpg-encrypt a file on a right click.  That one unencrypts it on a double-click)

-------
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <errno.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  char command[4096];
  char *s = command;
  int rc = 0;

  if (argc != 2) {
    fprintf(stdout, "syntax: bury filename\n"); exit(1);
  }

  /* strip file extension, create subdir of that name, rename file to be inside subdir */
  /* take care when file has no extension or the rename fails or it is a link or a drive root */

  //rc = system(command);
  //if (rc != 0) exit(rc);

  exit(rc); return(rc);
}



----------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\bury]
@="Bury"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\bury\command]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
  00,5c,00,67,00,70,00,67,00,65,00,6e,00,63,00,72,00,79,00,70,00,74,00,2e,00,\
  65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\bury.exe]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\bury.exe\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\bury.exe\shell\open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\bury.exe\shell\open\command]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
  00,5c,00,62,00,75,00,72,00,79,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,\
  31,00,22,00,00,00

22

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: finding external USB drive contents (eg making a video catalog)

« on: September 09, 2008, 02:47 PM »

I hacked up a quick program last week that lets me plug in my external hard drives, one at a time, and scans them to extract the file names which it writes to a CSV file.  (The code is specifically looking for video files and DVD images, but remove that restriction and it could catalogue anything).  It works well enough and was just what I needed (finding something on an external drive is tedious when you have more than a handful of them and can't plug them all in at once...), but it's a command-line utility and it would be more friendly to release it as a Windows GUI program.

If anyone feels like wrapping a Windows GUI around this thing, here's the source code.  There's a tiny amount of documentation in the top of the C file as comments.

http://www.gtoal.com/src/videocat/

I looked fairly hard and I couldn't find any existing utility that scans drives like this and outputs in a form that a DVD Library Manager could import.

I'm a fairly experienced old-time programmer but I'm sticking with command-line stuff and algorithm development; I really don't have a lot of interest in learning GUI programming myself and from what I've seen of the M$ interface, nowhere near enough free time to learn it all either :-/  However I write *lots* of utilities and would welcome working with people who enjoy M$ programming and find the GUI side of things easy...

Thanks,

Graham <[email protected]>