Messages

2926

Living Room / Re: fun links to cool tools and stuff

« on: December 27, 2005, 01:49 PM »

I remember similar devices labeled "Watt-Wizard" being sold about 15 years ago. The premise being that it would restrict your appliances to using only the electricity it needed and would not sit there sucking up power. However any electrician knows that if a device is sucking more juice than required it's got a short, not a watt addiction, so these devices are, in effect, useless for the stated purpose. I think the real benefit would be if you were more aware of how much power some seldom-used appliances use in "standby" mode and you could choose to unplug them when not needed. Now, if such a doohickey could be programmed to actually shut it off when power consumption went to 'standby' levels, that would be cool.

2927

Living Room / Re: The Avenging Unicorn and other Unique Gifts - mcphee.com

« on: December 20, 2005, 11:39 AM »

I used to live down the street from these guys. I once bought one of their life-size foam rubber human heart replicas (painted red, of course) and gave it to my wife for Valentine's Day. And the rubber chicken keyring.

2928

Living Room / Re: Looking for a few good puns

« on: December 19, 2005, 12:54 PM »

And a deep one for Beta testers: (see if you catch the "deeper" meaning)

I know a software engineer who tests new programs by seeing if it's simple enough for his computer-challenged brother to use.

This is known as the "Brother-can-use paradigm".

2929

Living Room / Re: Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 19, 2005, 11:57 AM »

Yeah it always seems a little sneaky, but I'm on vveerryy ssllooww dial-up at home, so it's a matter of playing offline at my convenience or not at all. Traffic to their site is probably preferred, but with games/animations I like, I'm usually back at their site anyway to see what's new.

P.S. I didn't post on the FDM+FG thread, as you'll agree they've discussed it pretty well already.

2930

Living Room / Re: Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 19, 2005, 10:53 AM »

I only wish they would allow downloading their other games - I like to work out the puzzles sitting downstairs with my laptop, and there's no internet connection there.  Also, there are a number of beautiful games mentioned in their forums, and likewise I wish I could download those...

Try (if you're using Firefox) Free Download Manager + FlashGot on the net-connected box, open the game and "FlashGot All". You should have a .swf file in the list. Download that... TaDa! Off-line flash game!

2931

Living Room / Re: gizmodo.com - gadget site

« on: December 16, 2005, 10:17 AM »

The reply from Yankodesign, the folks who sponsored the designer of the Blowfly clock:

Dear Edvard,

Thank you for your inquiry and interests in our design shop. Unfortunately
Blowfly is a conceptual design for now only and is not available to the
public. Therefore we do not know where it would be available for purchase.
However it may go into production in the near future. If it does we will
inform you immediately.

We value your business and if you have any questions please do not hesitate
to ask me.

Best Regards,

Haruka Murakami
Yanko Design Sales Department
 
[email protected] 
www.yankodesign

2932

Living Room / Re: How much ram do you really need?

« on: December 14, 2005, 07:35 PM »

On a side note, I used to have Slackware Linux installed on a 450MHz AMD K6/2 and it sped up like nobody's business when I upgraded my hard drive from 850M/5400 rpm to 2.1G/7200rpm. Same size paging file and RAM, EVERYTHING went faster, not just save/load times.

2933

Living Room / Test your knowledge: Serial Killer or Computer Language Inventor

« on: December 12, 2005, 01:01 PM »

http://www.malevole..../mv/misc/killerquiz/

creepy.

2934

Living Room / Re: gizmodo.com - gadget site

« on: December 12, 2005, 11:31 AM »

But where do I BUY one?... My boss said he wants one for his kid so I thought I'd schmooze and see how much it would hit Santa in the pocketbook. Apparently it won an award in a Korean functional design contest which is where the hype is coming from (google for "blowfly alarm clock" and check out all the blogs that have posted this...) but apparently they are not in production for sale at Sharper Image or wherever else folks get their whizz-bang toys.

2935

Living Room / Re: Make movies using videogame engines - Machinima

« on: November 29, 2005, 09:52 AM »

kind of the video version of mp4, eh? Sounds interesting.

2936

Living Room / Re: OneNote 12 (coming in 2006) beta1 is out now...

« on: November 21, 2005, 12:38 PM »

My second biggest problem is that it's Microsoft... not that I hate Microsoft, but if it's Microsoft it means proprietary file format and that just wont fly for storing data long term

http://www.simpleocr.com/ + Sign the petition.

2937

Living Room / Re: Online "generators"

« on: November 21, 2005, 12:08 PM »

A funny thing happened on the way to the SCI Conference...

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

Generate randomly-worded (yet grammatically coherent) computer science papers and the hilarious results of submitting one to an SCI conference...

Brutally funny sad and cryptic all at the same time. I wonder if this concept could be extrapolated to software. A program that does nothing at all, reveals no useful information, but in it's operation and user interaction, appears to be indispensible or essential. I wonder if it would sell if it was priced high enough.Coding Snack?

2938

Living Room / Re: Looking for a few good puns

« on: November 17, 2005, 01:22 PM »

Pitiful. Rhymes with "Beautiful" 

Give a man an inch, and he thinks he's a ruler.

2939

Living Room / Re: Looking for a few good puns

« on: November 16, 2005, 03:56 PM »

  Good One!!!

If I had been in the same office, I would have sustained minor injuries after that one... Here's another:

A three-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West.

He slides up to the bar and announces: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."

2940

Living Room / Looking for a few good puns

« on: November 15, 2005, 06:14 PM »

I'm talking real groaners to torture my co-workers with. No blonde jokes or the like. I've heard that the "getting" of a pun is a sign of above-average intelligence and since I assume most of you fellows and fellowettes are of that ilk, Puns Ahoy!! May I begin?...

A piece of rope walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender gives him a snide look and says "We don't serve your kind here!" and tosses him out the door. The piece of rope gets up, dusts himself off and walks back in, cheerfully ordering a beer. The bartender again tosses him out with the same remark. This time, the piece of rope gets up, doubles himself into a loop-and-a-half and frizzes out his hair before walking back into the bar and again ordering a beer. The bartender gives him another look of disdain and says "Hey, aren't you the piece of rope I just kicked out of here twice?". "No sir," replies the rope, "I'm afraid not!"

 

Get it?

A frayed knot!! LOL!!

2941

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Locate 3.0 - great HD search tool

« on: November 11, 2005, 03:43 PM »

Funny thing, whenever I'm in windows-land I can't stand flat, text based interfaces. When in Linux (Slackware, natch...) using KDE or XFCE, I reach for Midnight Commander every time. Go figure.

2942

Living Room / Re: I'm not for censorship,but you'd figure google would have a filter.

« on: November 10, 2005, 07:41 PM »

See-I told you I'd yank a few chains...

Innuendo- I'm with you all the way. At our house, the TV's in the trash, and the computer is in our bedroom under password for windows and internet which is dialup on purpose.

I also thank everyone for holding back the personal jabs. I almost made this post into a rant on the real meaning of the first amendment of our constitution, but it got way too long and this thread is already OT enough. Like Mouser says, that may be too much for a coding snack.

2943

Living Room / Re: I'm not for censorship,but you'd figure google would have a filter.

« on: November 08, 2005, 12:51 PM »

Yeah, that is funny, but I wouldn't want my kid to see it. Yes, I know George Carlin's "they're just WORDS..." argument, but seriously, "dirty" words are undeniably used in a context and intent much different from "normal" words, and every culture has them. Look up Semantics, Semiotics, Memes, and check out the authors that speak on such subjects (Although I am not implying that A. Korzybsky's GM arguments are in play here...). Advertisers know full well the power of words, and apparently so do politicians. If a word that is obviously intended to be offensive is not offensive it is because you have made a conscious choice to adjust your conscience to accommadate. The word and it's intent has not changed. Consider the difference between an irate driver saying "Please warn your child of the foolishness of crossing the street without looking both ways"
and the same driver saying "Hey, A**hole would you keep your p**ant brat outta the f**ing street before I splat his f**ing brains on it!!". Which comment would you rather explaing the meaning of to your distressed 7-year-old? I realize I may be yanking a few chains here, but censorship of the kind tinyvillager is hoping for is less a restriction of freedom and more a preservation of basic level-headed decency. My opinion of the politician quoted is now more likely to be one of suspicion. Suspicion of his level of self-control and therefore his ability to effectively administer the office he is placed in and I might even suspect he is trying to over-compensate for the fact that the entire situation is the exact opposite of his vehement (dare I say potty-mouthed) evaluation. If the same headline had the same Politician saying something like "Unfounded..." or even "Preposterous..." I might view him AND the situation with a clearer head and more positive outlook about the whole thing.
Oops, I think I just ranted. Apologies.

2944

Official DonationCoder.com Reviews / Re: Best Anti-virus

« on: November 08, 2005, 11:39 AM »

If Mouser likes ANTIVIR then i guess we'll have to take a close look at it.

-dantheman (November 07, 2005, 02:54 PM)

Glad to hear a kind word from Mouser on AntiVir. I'm sold on it, personally. Updates frequently, has caught at least 5 viruses that others missed, protected me quite handily when I accidentally hit a warez site that promptly lobbed at LEAST 20+ v-bombs at me, doesn't filter my mail, but it'll sure speak up once I get around to opening THAT one. Personal Ed at home, Business Ed at work (cause I'm stuck on a NT4 workstation and AntiVir is just about the only one that works here) One weird thing, it is using (ATM) something like 15 megs or so (I've got 256 sysem megs) but I don't even notice. I've never noticed any difference in performance with it on or off. I checked. And besides, the disk scanner is named "Luke FileWalker"... How cool is that?

2945

General Software Discussion / Re: Anybody use Lua?

« on: November 07, 2005, 11:24 AM »

I used SciTe for a while with AutoIt as they have a custom build for it (http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/scite/) Very nice, Iwill try it for Lua.

2946

General Software Discussion / Re: Anybody use Lua?

« on: November 04, 2005, 01:30 PM »

Thanks!

2947

General Software Discussion / Re: Anybody use Lua?

« on: November 03, 2005, 12:48 PM »

Thanks for the reply, you worked on DogLua? I just downloaded the freeware Dogwaffle haven't got around to playing yet, also Lua has been made into a Litestep scripting module and since I use Litestep... Yep. I found the Tutorial and #3 of the first page fits me...

Programmers who may have used scripting languages, but not Lua

I knew Basic inside and out back when we had mammoth ivory keyboards and more recently have been using Batch scripts and AutoIt/Autohotkey for more uses than I can count. Now on the 5th page...

P.S. LuaJIT appears to be source only. Do you know if binaries are available? I'm also going to eventually need GUI stuff, do you have any recommendations for that? IUP? GTK?

2948

General Software Discussion / Anybody use Lua?

« on: November 01, 2005, 06:36 PM »

http://www.lua.org/
Looks kinda nifty, I've been hearing of a lot of folks using it as an embedded script engine 'specially for games. But apparently you can use it for stand-alone scripting and a brief look at LuaForge seems there's API wrappers and Gui libraries, etc. And what's this about being able to use C functions and call dlls? Hmmm... downloading the manual now. Any thoughts? How easy is it to get your head around for scripting? Can you compile a script ? (Oop.. answered that one, apparently the binary distro comes with luac.exe which will compile your script.)

2949

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Locate 3.0 - great HD search tool

« on: November 01, 2005, 02:24 PM »

Hehe
It does. ScanDir is much nicer...
http://www.skybird.net/ScanDir/scd08.png

2950

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Confessions from a Wiki Hater ??!?

« on: November 01, 2005, 01:45 PM »

To be safe, one only needs to set it to only-allowed-to-edit-when-logged-in.

-brotherS (October 31, 2005, 12:15 PM)

Well, that would cut it, huh? Perhaps I should be set to only-allowed-to-post-when-I-know-wtf-I'm-talking-about
Anyways, I'm all for keeping wiki and sanity on the same page however it works.