Messages

51

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: PoMTAW - Power Management That Actually Works

« on: May 06, 2010, 06:38 PM »

Hi Coders,

I don't know if this is a problem unique to me or not, but I don't think I've ever had a PC (and I have had many) that fully respected the Power Management settings I've set in Windows. Is it non-standard hardware? Is it wimpy OS programming? Some doltish program I have running in the background that blocks proper PM? Blind luck? I don't care.

I recently moved from Windows XP to Windows 7. On XP, my screensaver would activate about half the time, and the system would go into standby correctly about half of that time. On Windows 7, nothing happens at all. The screensaver never runs, the monitor doesn't even turn off. The bottom line is that I can't really trust what Windows will do and so the settings are basically of no use to me, unless I start a betting pool based on the randomness of its behavior.

What I want is a small app to enforce the settings that Windows just doesn't seem capable of doing. To do this, it will have to:

- be able to monitor mouse and keyboard usage
- be able to monitor CPU usage
- enforce different stages of power management at user-specified times, configured separately
     - screensaver launch
     - spin down hard drives
     - turn off monitor
     - initiate standby/hibernate/shutdown
- MAJOR INTELLIGENCE BONUS: have a configurable 'mindfulness' setting that takes into account CPU usage, network activity, or disk activity.
     - if activity exceeds the above settings, do not initiate standby/hibernate/shutdown
     - thresholds can be user-entered, or the user can tell the program to figure it out on its own by sampling a 20-second period of 'typical' activity and using those values as the thresholds.

Misc Requirements:
- must run on Windows 7, 64-bit, but it does not itself have to be a 64-bit app.
- small exe, since this will have to run continuously. No memory leaks, no 100 megabyte apps.
- Ideally, it's portable: no wacky runtimes or registry diving. No .NET or JAVA, which are already ruled out by the above requirement.
- sits quietly in the system tray, and can be configured to be invisible (not in the tray, taskbar, or alt-tab) as well.
 
Now, I get the sense that something like this isn't very easy to do, especially without relying upon an existing runtime, so I won't be dismayed if there are no takers. But of course I had to give it a try.

Thanks for your time!

52

Living Room / Re: Transcendence: Free EV Nova like 2d space exploration / battle / adventure game

« on: March 25, 2010, 12:19 PM »

Though it doesn't seem like this was a massive leap in changes since .98, I'm pleased to finally be playing the 1.0 version of Transcendence. The most immediately noticeable difference seems to be a more lively galaxy, I see traders zipping in between stations now, presumably engaged in trade, and there's been an increase in action from pirates. I'm looking forward to playing to the endgame, eventually!

53

Living Room / Re: Ars Technica on the problem with adblocking

« on: March 10, 2010, 06:28 PM »

As sympathetic as I am to the folks at Ars Technica, I wasn't too happy at being a guinea pig for them on the story they put up. I just figured that the story had been deleted, and moved on.

If ad companies hadn't saturated every possible square inch of space on or off the net with eye-catching ads, tracking cookies, and assorted dirty tricks, there wouldn't have been quite the arms race between them and those who are capable of blocking them. As it is, this little darwinian struggle has produced best-of-breed ad blocking that just about anyone can use.

It sucks that places from Ars Technica to the New York Times have been caught in between these two forces, but this is their opportunity to be a little creative about how they get people to sponsor their news.

Ars Technica is one of the best sources for decent tech news coverage, and I wish them well. But this cute stunt hasn't earned them much sympathy from me. As one of the Ars community members commented, "Why didn't you just ask us to whitelist you in the first place?"

Also, Ars is a Conde Naste property now, I'd imagine that they're under pressure to perform, but they do clearly have investors, and they're in a better spot than many a web site out there.

54

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: February 27, 2010, 02:23 AM »

Sweet crispy crap, why didn't I think of this?

55

Living Room / Re: Essay - Blogging: a great pastime for the elderly

« on: February 06, 2010, 09:15 PM »

Twitter is the new way of blogging for those who only blogged to spread links or "funny" stuff. It can (and probably will) never be a replacement for blogs. You just can't put too much of a story into 140 characters. Maybe the number of "click these links to see something reeeaaaaally funny" decreased because of Twitter. I don't miss them.

-Tuxman (February 06, 2010, 06:55 PM)

I agree. Offloading linkblogs onto an equally shallow platform designed for such a thing is an overall Good Thing.

I find the rise of twitter and the decline of blogging sad..  It seems like the amount of aggregate writing on the web is staying constant, we're just now getting a lot more one-line off-the-cuff throwaway comments, and less thoughtful considered commentary.

-mouser (February 06, 2010, 12:35 PM)

I'll put forward that this might also be a good thing, there's very little on the internet that's actually worth commenting on, or carrying forth on. Take this article, for instance. I'm spending about three minutes or so replying to this post of yours and this article. Neither my nor your lives are very enriched by this exercise, and these minutes basically contribute nothing to my life or my understanding of anything important. Now, let's say I actually took half an hour to read the article, think about it, then write a long, conversational piece about it, in other words, blog about it. For the most part, this isn't a very enriching exercise for anyone either, I'd just be spinning my intellectual wheels. In fact, I'd be much better off studying and chewing on Shakespeare, and giving that a few hours, days, or years of thought, and then writing about that. So, these minutes I'm using would be better put to use analyzing even a tiny portion of something much more enriching to you and me.

Diffusing serious critical bloggery into little Twitter droplets doesn't result in much of a long-term loss, because most lengthy blogging is fleeting in meaning anyway. I follow dozens of blogs, read a few of them, then instantly forget about them. This doesn't happen when I read a good book and really pay attention to it.

Speaking for myself, if I blog at all, it's very often me avoiding actual hardcore thought and more enjoying the sensation of having written something, anything. It's close enough to Twitter already that if I went ahead and joined the ranks of Twitter Nation, it wouldn't be that much of a loss.

So, let's see those great steampunk pics, youtube videos, and half-baked nutritional breakthroughs. You can still talk about Foucoult's Pendulum or whatever if you want to, but it's not like you were going to anyway.

56

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: February 06, 2010, 12:04 AM »

Awesome. Congratulations, Skwire!

57

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: February 02, 2010, 05:34 PM »

I threw together a quick proof of concept for a tail program for Anuran. I'm not a programmer, so I'm cribbing from other established tools, tail-f.exe from http://cybertiggyr.c...00040000000000000000 and console 2 from http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

All it does is call forth a translucent terminal that tails ..\current.anu. To use it, unzip into a new directory inside your Anuran directory, and run Console.exe. To change how the window behaves, right click on the black space for a menu; I've hidden all of Console 2's widgetry. Also, the program will terminate if it doesn't find ..\current.anu.

This is by no means meant to be distributed, just something I've been thinking about for a bit as an addon for Anuran. It's meant as an always-on-bottom or desktop widget that allows you to quickly refer to your anuran log to see what you've been entering for the past n entries, without having to bring up AnuView.

58

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Faster boots combining hibernate and restart

« on: February 02, 2010, 01:23 AM »

What a marvelous idea.

59

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 31, 2010, 02:37 PM »

Request: Audio feedback when using "Archive now" hotkey. I think two "ribbits" will do for this, instead of just one, since the action is more "momentous."

60

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 31, 2010, 01:02 PM »

Works on my end as well. Nice addition.

61

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 30, 2010, 09:54 PM »

Glad to see CSV export is going to work out. I can see how this will add significant value to the app for some people.

62

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 29, 2010, 03:42 PM »

That sounds like it might be complicated to implement within Anuran, and at that point it starts to become an appointment minder, which I'm always going to try to respectfully argue against.

If you already use an appointment minder like EssentialPIM or Outlook these have the kind of popups you want, plus they can execute programs if you tell them to. If you don't have or want EPIM or Outlook, I use Pegtop PStart's launcher, which very reliably can automatically launch programs based on an hourly, daily, yearly schedule. It's good stuff and I recommend it every time I get a chance to.

So, where I'm going with this, if we program Anuran with the ability to launch the popup if Anuran is ever re-launched when it is already running, we can patch in this behavior without adding to the complexity of the software.

One benefit of this is that if you already have a schedule set into appointment software, there's no need to duplicate it within Anuran. Just add Anuran.exe as a program to run on the appointment.

Of course, if this is a fairly easy thing to implement, that's a different story.

As far as implementation goes, we could do worse than uTorrent's scheduler:

Just substitute "Full speed" and "Limited" with "Popup Enabled" and "Popup Disabled."

63

Living Room / Re: Yea, I won't be getting an iPad anytime soon

« on: January 29, 2010, 02:27 PM »

The iPad looks like a device that mainly facilitates media consumption. Since it is closed, that limits it to media that Apple approves of. Got plenty of media already with the electronic gizmos I already have. I don't like restrictions on things I own. Pass.

Jailbreak the sucker and let me put whatever apps I want on it, and you have a tablet PC with some elegance. Then you're waking me up. Until then, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

64

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 17, 2010, 01:59 PM »

Another build? I need to sleep less.

BUG: Anuran>Archive>Archive logs daily at: I like the "Archive logs daily at" option, but it doesn't seem to work if Anuran isn't running at the very moment the logs are supposed to rotate. On startup, Anuran should check to see if that point in time has passed, and archive the current.anu. This is (or should be) the behavior for the "Archive logs every" option as well. Times should be based on current.anu's origin date.

Might need someone to confirm the above bug.

E: looks like jdm's experience is the same as mine.

65

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 15, 2010, 12:00 AM »

Hm, yes, Anuran still doesn't 'ship' with any sound files.

Request: bundle at least one .wav file with Anuran, and have it pre-selected as the default event sound.

66

General Software Discussion / Re: How to disable Flash from caching to disk?

« on: January 14, 2010, 11:13 AM »

I use Netflix's online player, which is based on Microsoft Silverlight, and it's no better, but at least it doesn't stutter.

-doctorfrog (January 12, 2010, 03:27 PM)

Does that work inside FireFox? Pretty interesting if it does and doesn't stutter, then...

And yeah, flash is kinda stupid, in several ways. But at least it's well-behaved enough to use %TEMP%.

-f0dder (January 13, 2010, 04:02 AM)

Yes, it works in Firefox. There were some speedbumps when Netflix switched over to it, but it's fairly solid now. It does lack the front end feel of Hulu Desktop, but it's not bad.

67

General Software Discussion / Re: How to disable Flash from caching to disk?

« on: January 12, 2010, 03:27 PM »

Using RAM instead of disk is nearly always faster.

-doctorfrog (January 11, 2010, 06:33 PM)

FWIW my %temp%, firefox internet cache, firefox profile dir (including the sqlite databases!) are all on a RAMdisk - and I still get the stuttering when viewing flash videos in FireFox... I think it's pretty safe to rule out disk access as being a factor.

-f0dder (January 12, 2010, 12:21 AM)

Then we're left with my original observation: Flash is stupid. Just make sure that Flash isn't funneling its own cache somewhere else on disk.

I'm sure that eventually this will be addressed by Adobe, but in the meantime, it's still really annoying to have a 'helper' app that basically does things its own way, and hides cookies, cache, and other settings in distant areas of your profile and system directories. I use Netflix's online player, which is based on Microsoft Silverlight, and it's no better, but at least it doesn't stutter.

Well, this turned into more of a rant than a problem-solving session, but thanks for your collaboration, all.

68

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 11, 2010, 07:57 PM »

Website | Download
v1.0.18 - 2010-01-11
    + Added popup statusbar back as an option.
    + Added a second archive method.  You can now set a specific time each day for archiving.  (Thanks, jdmarch)

With the addition of the new archiving method, I hope I didn't break anything with the old one though I'm sure you all will let me know if I did.  

-skwire (January 11, 2010, 08:09 AM)

I like the new archiving addition.  

Suggestion for tagging (which I won't be using, myself. I like this as a freeform mental catchall app.):
Feature requirement: Keep the popup exactly the same if possible, with no new widgets. This keeps things simple for folks that won't be using tags, and (I believe) keeps the popup streamlined for those who will be using tags by keeping all user input in a single box. Dropdowns are speedbumps!
Feature requirement: Retain the dead simple, human-readable format for the logfiles.

With the above in mind: Use a text syntax for tags. Example possibility:

Surround tags in single or double colons, with no spaces (underscores ok). Separate multiple tags with a single colon. Colons are on the home row and easily tappable, which aids quick input.

User input looks like this:
::work:: working on code sample for mr. hapablap
::fun:: played some WoW

Multiple tag example, where work and fun are both applicable tags:
::work:fun:: designed a new title page

The double quotes and lack of spacing should screen out normal human colon usage, if I'm not too much mistaken. Anuran should regard anything string that includes a space as normal user input.

69

General Software Discussion / Re: How to disable Flash from caching to disk?

« on: January 11, 2010, 06:33 PM »

It seems to be a known issue and a known feature of flash players. I admit to making suppositions in the OP, but I'm probably right. Using RAM instead of disk is nearly always faster.

Here, I'll put some money where my mouth is. Here's a sample of some activity:

70

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 09, 2010, 06:53 PM »

Ok, I thought of a way around this:

1. On popup, show the time per usual, static. Do not update. This retains the popup time.
2. When the popup is actually selected, update the time to current. Keep static.
3. Repeat 2 whenever popup is selected, updating the time.
4. NO CHANGE: Retain the behavior that uses the current timestamp upon recording the entry. (ie. the moment you hit ENTER, that's your log timestamp.)

If it's important to someone to know how long the popup hung around waiting for attention, they can see it, since it's always on top. If it's covered by another window that's always on top... well... that's a sign that you have too many windows on top.

Note also that this is possible entirely because Anuran doesn't ever steal your focus (my very favorite feature)

No added jewelry to the popup, no real need for a toggle (I think), but there will be a need to explain this in a readme. Most peeps won't even notice it unless they're looking for it.

71

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 09, 2010, 06:04 PM »

I was expecting this to become an option, not be eliminated altogether! I don't see an alternate solution in place, to the problem I posed earlier: returning to the computer after a long absence, how do I quickly know how long I've been gone? Yes, I can pop up Anuview. And yes, the "show previous entry" might give a clue but there's a difference between knowing what I was last working on, and knowing how long ago it was. If I was working on "big project" and it pops up and says "big project" then I won't get a kick in the pants that says "yes, you were working on big project 2 hours ago and you are about to work on big project, but what were you doing in between?"

-jdmarch (January 08, 2010, 09:11 AM)

My personal preference is to keep the popup (and indeed the program itself) as simple and passive/polite as possible, Spartan, even. In coming up with the idea for Anuran, I was trying to get away from apps that behave as icy taskmasters, and have something that politely perked up and asked what I was doing. I could easily ignore Anuran if I want, because it never gets in the way, and I never feel like I'm watched or penalized (kicked in the pants) for not sticking to an inflexible schedule. There are other apps (and people) that do this quite well. (EssentialPIM for basic taskmastering, ManicTime for all-seeing-eye app watching.)

This spirit may or may not explain why the option was removed, but knowing Skwire, you may see it or a similar option in improved form.

(Now, of course, my personal preferences shouldn't necessarily limit the program's scope as it gains in popularity, and it wouldn't surprise or dismay me if it turned into more of a taskmaster app. Indeed, the very first moment I made the app request, I also gave up control over the idea, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes.)

72

General Software Discussion / Re: How to disable Flash from caching to disk?

« on: January 08, 2010, 02:07 PM »

I hate to have to say this, but my 8-year old daughter Lily showed me the workaround to this problem a few weeks back.
"What you do daddy is you press the play button, then pause it, and you can see the red line keep growing whilst it is paused, so that when you play it again it's behind the red line."

She's right. It works. The caching takes place in advance of your playing the video. No stuttering video now!

-IainB (January 08, 2010, 07:33 AM)

Your daughter says "whilst?" That's adorable (I'm an American, we don't say that unless we're being pretentious nerds).

Yeah, I already knew that trick, it's in the OP. Too bad flash doesn't know that trick though. Again, a user-editable config file would at least partially address this.

73

General Software Discussion / Re: How to disable Flash from caching to disk?

« on: January 07, 2010, 07:01 PM »

I have session store disabled, so I know it isn't that, plus playback is fine once the flash seems to stop caching. It's a setting worth configuring though, especially if you're running Firefox Portable from a flash drive. Actually, if you're running Ffox Portable with any kind of flash app, there's going to be drive litter anyway, which removes the portable part from the equation, nice.

I've dug around settings.sol, Flash's horrible little configuration file, with this app, but haven't been able to find a setting that might change this behavior.

I'm not quite bored enough to do this yet, but I could also run Procmon, figure out where the disk activity is, and find some way to lock down the folder so that data can't be written to it. Alternatively, there might also be a way to use a HIPS program to refuse disk write access to flash entirely, but the only way to do that would be to block Firefox itself, so that would be pointless. Finally, running an entire browser session from within a Sandboxie session might do the trick, since I think it stores everything in RAM and only writes to disk when it runs out of RAM or the session closes.

Of course, I won't do any of these things to alleviate what amounts to a minor irritation.

Hey Adobe, it's 2010 for crying out loud, I'm not asking for a flying car, I just want to access your horrible product's settings without a subpoena.

74

General Software Discussion / How to disable Flash from caching to disk?

« on: January 07, 2010, 04:54 PM »

Please forgive any ignorance I might be displaying here, it's mostly guesswork.

When I watch an online video, I tend to notice annoying little hesitations in the playback, where the video will freeze on a frame for a split second, but the audio doesn't. My guess is that this is Adobe Flash, busily prefetching video for smooth playback, but caching it to disk to be used moments later (and never again). Unfortunately, while this is happening, playback suffers. When disk activity ceases, playback is smooth. In fact, if I pause playback, wait for disk activity to stop, then press play, I don't see hesitation at all. So I think I've pinpointed the problem: Flash is stupid.

It's already pretty ridiculous that this act should affect video playback at all, it reveals either that Flash makes for a pretty lame video playback method, or a problem with the way my OS or hardware is working. The magical forces that play back video from RAM are/should be separate from the forces that store or retrieve data. There should only be interference if the data being retrieved is itself delayed.

Furthermore, I also use Hulu Desktop, an app that's little more than a standalone Flash player. It caches and plays back just dandy without hesitation unless there is an actual problem with retrieving data. (Also, I strongly suspect that in order to appease content providers, they prevent the app from ever storing data to disk, which helps protect streaming video from being freely stored and reused.)

So I know this can be fixed.

What I want to do is force Flash videos to store their temporary nonsense in RAM, which I have plenty of, and leave my hard drive the hell alone. Where do I configure this?

What's equally irritating is that with a web browser like Firefox, I already have plenty of control over how it works with respect to the disk. I can control disk cache, history length, whether or not it stores etc., or run it in a privacy mode that restricts disk caching of any kind. Flash bypasses all of this, like it is its own little fiefdom, it sets its own cache, its own cookies, phones home for updates, without ever presenting the user a way to configure any of this behavior. You can wipe your browser history all day long and flash cookies and goofy flash apps and such will stick around in cache until doomsday.

I know this stuff has to be configured somewhere. Where's it hiding?

75

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« on: January 07, 2010, 01:50 PM »

Website | Download
v1.0.16 - 2010-01-06
    * The popup now updates the timestamp in the titlebar.  (Thanks, mediaguycouk)
    + The intial popup time is now shown in the popup's statusbar.

-skwire (January 06, 2010, 11:41 AM)

Can you add options to toggle these? The titlebar updating causes the window to flicker every second when using bblean+bbleanskin, and I like the cleaner look of the original popup. (Yes, I know I'm one of two, maybe three dudes using bblean and Anuran.)

Minor request: Using hotkey to toggle popup timer pause should trigger sound event (auditory feedback).