Topics

26

DC Gamer Club / 86% of Gamers Prefer Free Games With Advertisements

« on: April 01, 2014, 02:24 AM »

http://toucharcade.c...free-games-with-ads/

I guess the day when 100% of games are free with ads will be the day I stop playing games. I always cringe when I start reading about a cool new game and see that it'll be 'free to play'.

27

Developer's Corner / Hacking should be about making things

« on: March 22, 2014, 03:29 PM »

Drew Crawford just posted a rant about how hard (impossible?) it is to land patches in many an open source project. It's an enlightening read which will actually make you think twice if you should finally start getting into OSS by starting to create patches for your next favorite piece of open source software.

Another of Drew's posts well worth reading is: Why mobile web apps are slow

28

Developer's Corner / Niklaus Wirth Birthday Symposium

« on: March 05, 2014, 03:29 PM »

Niklaus Wirth turned 80 this last February. ETH Zürich organised a Niklaus Wirth Birthday Symposium to celebrate this. All the talks are available online if anyone's interested. I have to admit that I only skimmed over some of them so I can't say much about how interesting they really are. I watched Wirth's own talk though where he talks about his past career mainly, which really is a look back into the history of personal computing (well, a tiny part of it anyway).

29

DC Gamer Club / Visual comparison between PS3 / 4, Xbox 360 / ONE

« on: February 20, 2014, 01:57 AM »

http://www.joystiq.c...-platform-compariso/

The PS 4 very obviously has much better weather than the other three

30

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / N.A.N.Y. 2014 Release: Text Inspection & Manipulation Utility

« on: November 15, 2013, 02:28 PM »

Application Name	Text Inspection & Manipulation Utility
Short Description	Utility to inspect and manipulate text
Supported OSes	Windows
Web Page	A link to the Application Web Page
Download Link	https://github.com/p...tionUtility-0.20.zip
Review	ilovefreesoftware.com
System Requirements	.NET 4.0 Windows XP SP 3

Version History

0.19 Support capture group references in replacement text for Regex Search & Replace (use \1, \2, etc.) 0.18 Specify escape characters in help Add command line arguments Combine Remove words left/right into Remove words Add Remove characters 0.17 Lines - Split - Add possibility to split by comma 0.16 Added Lines - Remove duplicates & count unique Spoiler 0.15 Fixed incorrect handling of "^" and "$" in regex search & replace 0.14 Fixed last word and space after word problem with Web - Twitter and List - Trim to size 0.13 Added Search & Replace - Highlight word multiplication Added Web - Twitter Added List - Trim to size 0.12 Added Capitalisation - Title Added Capitalisation - Toggle Added possibility to use \t for tab and \n for newline where it might make sense 0.11 Renamed category 'List' to 'Lines' Renamed category 'Search' to 'Search & Replace' Added Search & Replace - highlight non-ascii characters Added Lines - Keep / Remove words at beginning / end of lines (can be used to remove line numbers as well) Added Lines - remove duplicate lines Added Lines - remove extra empty lines Added Lines - delete to tag 0.10 Added Search & Replace Can now specify line number start and increment 0.9 Save window size/position and state of 'ignore case' and 'reverse output direction' Print number of highlights (matches) in status bar (e.g. in search) Highlight filter text Added Web - Remove tags 0.8 Fixed reverse words, scramble within words layout Added prepend line number Added tooltips to the buttons 0.7 Streamlined layout Added ignore case toggle button (and Ctrl + I) Added reverse output toggle button (and Ctrl + R) Some additional keyboard shortcuts Using monospace font for input/output boxes Clicking the link in About now opens a web browser 0.6 Added filter for text manipulation tree Improved keyboard handling Added file open and save 0.5 Input field and parameter field now show a hint right above the respective field Added Order - Reverse lines, scramble lines 0.4 Parameter field is now disabled if it doesn't apply Added List/Remove empty lines, Append, Prepend 0.3 Added sort lines List/Split now splits by words instead of by characters (use , to delimit individual words) Added some buttons for clipboard operations and to copy output back to input 0.2 - Pre-release

Description
Use Text Inspection & Manipulation Utility to gather various information about some text and manipulate it in various ways.


Screenshots
accidentally deleted

Installation
Not required

Using the Application
Double-click the exe

Uninstallation
Delete the exe

Features
Queries & Manipulations

• Case conversion
• Checksum calculation
• Encrypt/decrypt
• Sort
• Search
• Your idea goes here...

Planned Features

• Supply file path and query / manipulate whenever the file changes
• Auto-sync from/to clipboard
• Word wrap
• Save settings
• SetBlanks(int minblank, int maxblank, int threshhold): Changes the number of blank lines between lines.
• Wrap(int columncount, int ignorewords): Adds hard returns to force columns to a certain width.
• CutLeft(int count): Removes count characters from the beginning of each line.
• CutRight(int count): Removes count characters from the end of each line.
• PadLeft(string padchar, int length): Pads the beginning of each line with padchar to extend the length where necessary
• PadRight(string padchar, int length): Pads the end of each line with padchar to extend the length where necessary
• ShortenLeft(int length): Removes characters from the beginning of each line if the line is too long
• ShortenRight(int length): Removes characters from the end of each line if the line is too long
• SizeLeft(string padchar, int length): Pads or cuts the beginning of each line to make it the exact length
• SizeRight(string padchar, int length): Pads or cuts the end of each line to make it the exact length
• possibility to use \t (tab) and \n (new line) to split/append lines
• sentence case
• Open text from file
• Highlighting for filters
• ReverseLines(): Reverses the order of all the lines
• Scramble(): rearranges the lines in random order
• SortCase(): Like sort, but case-sensitive
• AddLineNumbers(string separator, string padchar, int length): Puts the line number on the front of each line, with an optional separator
• AddLineNumbersOffset(string separator, string padchar, int length, int offset): Puts the line number on the front of each line, with an optional separator.  Offset is the number of the first line
• BeginLine(string text): Appends text to the beginning of every line
• DeleteToTag(string tag): For each line, deletes all characters before first instance of tag
• EndLine(string text): Appends text to the end of every line
• Trim(string badchars): Strips all badchars from the beginning and end of every line
• TrimLeft(string badchars): Strips all badchars from the beginning of every line
• TrimRight(string badchars): Strips all badchars from the end of every line
• DeleteDupes(): Deletes any line that is identical to a previous line.
• Replace(string oldtext, string newtext): Replaces all instances of oldtext with newtext.
• Remove HTML tags (with keeping the newlines)
• Remove empty lines
• Make the List --> filter case insensitive

31

General Software Discussion / Disable Win+V in Windows 8

« on: January 17, 2013, 04:06 AM »

I've been using Win+V to activate Paste in ClipX. Unfortunately, with Windows 8 Win+V is used for something else (by Windows itself). But since it's something I don't need, I'd rather disable the functionality for Windows and keep using it for ClipX. Anyone knows if this is possible and how to do it?

32

DC Gamer Club / iOS - Fruit ninja and all other Halfbrick games free today only

« on: December 17, 2012, 02:16 AM »

http://toucharcade.c...e-for-just-24-hours/

33

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / NANY 2013 Release: pdfautomv 0.3

« on: November 29, 2012, 03:04 PM »

NANY 2013 Entry Information

Application Name	pdfautomv (or pdfautomv Robot, haven't decided yet )
Version	0.3
Short Description	Moves PDF files into directories depending on embedded text
Supported OSes	Windows (and possibly Linux)
Web Page	https://bitbucket.org/phitsc/pdfautomv
Download Link	source available following above link. but I'll make a zip too.
System Requirements	Ruby runtime
Version History	0.3 - Fixed a crash. 0.2 - Rule files now have to be UTF-8. Fixed crash with -v 3 option.

Description
pdfautomv will be a simple command line utility (although perfectly usable with a simple double-click on a desktop shortcut) for the paperless office aficionado. Its purpose is to move PDF files from one directory to another based on the text embedded in the PDF file. My own primary use case is as follows:

1. Put invoice, receipt, letter, bank statement, whatever on scanner
2. Start scanning process => this will produce a PDF file in directory A
3. Repeat 1 - 2 until everything is scanned and directory A is full of files like Document.pdf, Document001.pdf, Document002.pdf, etc.
4. Double-click shortcut to pdfautomv.rb => marvel how all the Document bla bla.pdf files get nicely and neatly renamed and sorted into the directories where they belong

Usage
Installation
The application will be written in Ruby. So the Ruby runtimes have to be installed if they are not already. The application itself is just one Ruby file.

Using the Application
The application will rely on some "rule" files which have to be supplied by the user. A rule file specifies what pdfautomv should look for in a PDF file and where to move it and how to rename it if it finds a matching PDF file.

34

Find And Run Robot / FARR mention on lifehacker (in comment only ;)

« on: November 29, 2012, 09:02 AM »

FARR was mentioned in a comment of a lifehacker article about the use of an application launcher:

http://lifehacker.co...u-want?post=54622621

maybe it would be worth considering separating FARR's options into basic vs. advanced?

35

Living Room / WhatsApp - is it really 2012?

« on: September 25, 2012, 10:04 AM »

WhatsApp is really popular here in Switzerland. But what these guys are doing is not only embarrassing, it's becoming suicide.

http://www.h-online....elopers-1716912.html

The preceding article in German is even more concrete on the matter: apparently, it's not possible to cancel your account with WhatsApp (users report that the function to close the account in the app seems to do nothing), but once you have an account everyone that has your phone number and IMEI or MAC (depending on Android or iPhone) can send messages pretending to be you, even after you've uninstalled the app!

36

Mouser's Zone / Chocolatey

« on: September 14, 2012, 02:10 AM »

http://chocolatey.org/

Chocolatey NuGet is a Machine Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get, but built with windows in mind.

Was featured on lifehacker this week.

Mouser: maybe it makes sense for you to upload your applications as packages?

I have to admit that I didn't try Chocolatey and am not even sure I will.

37

Find And Run Robot / New kid on the block - Pipy

« on: September 14, 2012, 02:06 AM »

http://www.pipyapp.com/

Haven't tried it though.

38

Living Room / New iPad owner. Please suggest Apps.

« on: April 10, 2012, 03:37 PM »

Because of frustration about decent Android alternatives I got myself an iPad (assuming the Transformer Infinity will be available around next Christmas  )

So my question for existing iPad owners: which Apps do you consider worth installing / buying?

39

General Software Discussion / Creating thumbnails from AVCHD .mts files?

« on: December 14, 2011, 03:16 PM »

Anyone know some software that can create a thumbnail image (jpg) from .mts files (AVCHD)? Doesn't have to be free, but shouldn't be too expensive either. It should be able to batch process or handle a whole directory tree structure. Should run on Windows or Linux.

40

Developer's Corner / Overhead of cross platform development

« on: December 09, 2011, 08:02 AM »

The team I'm working on is planning to build parts of our system for both Windows and Linux. We're unsure how much overhead we should calculate into our time-estimates.

The relevant parts will be implemented in C++ and probably 99% of platform-dependent stuff we'll need can be covered by boost. Nevertheless, we'll need continuous integration for both platforms and although we're using a standardised programming language we assume there will be stuff that doesn't just compile neatly on both platforms or unit tests that don't just run on both platforms and will therefore need time to sort out. We're also mostly Windows programmers (we have access to experienced Linux programmers for support though).

We're currently calculating with an overhead of 25%. Has anyone here any experience with cross-platform development using C++ on Windows and Linux and can tell me if that is a reasonable assumption?

41

General Software Discussion / Syncing Google / Outlook calendar

« on: August 08, 2011, 04:28 AM »

I'm looking for a tool that will sync my Outlook calendar with two Google calendars. Doesn't necessarily need to be free. I want the following feature though: the tool needs to be able to selectively sync Outlook events with two different Google calendars. I don't care about how it does this (category, keyword, some Outlook flag are all fine).

My situation is as follows: I use Outlook for work and Google for private events. I want to see all of my work and private events on my phone (using two different Google calendars). My wife can see my private calendar on her phone as well. Now I want her to see *some* of my work events too, so I want to selectively sync some of my work events to my private Google calendar instead of the work calendar.

I know and have been using Google's Sync Tool, which is good, but does not offer selective syncing. I've read bad things about OggSync, which would seem to offer the functionality described above but all reports claim that the tool does not work (and will actually f..k up your calendar).

Anyone know about or even using a tool that does this?

42

Living Room / $ vs €. there we have it again!

« on: June 07, 2011, 02:23 AM »

With great excitement I read the announcement of the new portable Playstation Vita.

With great disappointment I read what it will cost in Europe compared to the US.

US:
http://blog.us.plays...ita-starting-at-249/

Europe:
http://blog.eu.plays...ion-vita-at-e3-2011/

249$ vs. 249€   (<= that currently equals to 363$).

That's more than 100$ difference!

43

DC Gamer Club / Cool place for your game console

« on: May 20, 2011, 02:40 AM »

Check this out, looks damn cool. Not sure I could "sell" that to my wife though



http://xbmc.org/nate...e-friday-cords-away/

44

Living Room / Javascript PC Emulator

« on: May 17, 2011, 09:30 AM »

Kind of cool. Requires Firefox 4 or Chrome 11 to run.

http://bellard.org/jslinux/

Follow the tiny Technical notes link at the bottom for the details.

Even comes with a C compiler

45

Developer's Corner / Podcasts of ACCU 2011 conference

« on: May 16, 2011, 10:48 AM »

There are some podcasts of ACCU 2011 conference talks online now. I have not attended the conference (I am a member of ACCU though). I've watched the Move Semantics, Perfect Forwarding, and Rvalue references talk by Scott Meyers. Video is more or less unusable (you can't read the slides), but the audio quality is really good. And Scott seems to be a funny guy . So I guess the talks will be hard to follow if you have no prior knowledge whatsoever about the respective subject.

Podcasts are here: http://skillsmatter....event/home/accu-2011

Info about ACCU is here: http://accu.org/

46

Living Room / After PSN. Who's next?

« on: May 05, 2011, 05:00 AM »

http://blog.lastpass...ty-notification.html

47

Developer's Corner / Endless Projects - Dr. Dobbs article

« on: May 05, 2011, 02:53 AM »

I read this article on Dr. Dobbs yesterday and was asking myself: does the programming language really make such a big difference on productivity.

Obviously, the availability of libraries makes a big difference on productivity. I also think that some programming languages are much better suited for certain tasks than others (e.g. systems programming vs. web stuff). But for something like a desktop GUI application, why would I be 10 times more productive with Ruby than with Java or C#, or even with C++ using a decent GUI toolkit for that matter?

48

Living Room / Nifty Gmail feature

« on: May 03, 2011, 07:29 AM »

I was quite surprised and found this one really clever:



Although I wonder what else Google reads in my emails

49

General Software Discussion / Number of GChrome.exe processes

« on: April 26, 2011, 07:03 AM »

Why does Google Chrome start 11 GChrome.exe processes although I have only one instance of Chrome running, with only 3 tabs?

50

General Software Discussion / Chrome / Firefox tabs in title bar

« on: April 12, 2011, 05:12 AM »

Both Firefox 4 and Chrome can put the tabs in the title bar. But they both do that only when maximised. Anyone knows why that is? Anyone knows if it's easily possible to have one or both of these do that also when not maximised?