Messages

101

General Software Discussion / Re: The Outlook is disappointing

« on: September 01, 2016, 01:37 AM »

My webmail solution of choice, for quite a few years now, has been Fastmail. Their interface / design / ergonomics are lightweight, responsive, efficient and -- in my view -- Just Work. (They were owned by Opera for a while, largely I think because of their massive levels of expertise in making mail fast, simple and efficient, but are independent again now.)

So my various email addresses -- gmail, yahoo, outlook, so forth -- are all fetched from their providers into Fastmail (which also allows me to set aliases to the addresses I own so I don't have to interact with anything I don't enjoy interacting with!)

The downside: although there IS a free offering, you'll probably want one or other of their paid accounts.

The web end is good, they support several forms of 2FA if that's your thing (I have a yubico key but they have several other alternatives) there are mobile apps too... I don't evangelise them as much as I should but I've tried a lot of webmail solutions over the years and nothing else comes close.

And does it matter which browser you use? Apparently not. Fastmail lives up to its name, generally.

102

General Software Discussion / Re: Was Firefox 47.0.1 the end of the line for you as well?

« on: August 30, 2016, 01:56 AM »

I haven't tried this, but our friends at gHacks have an article up describing how to disable Firefox's feature:

The following guide walks you through the steps of overriding the add-on signing enforcement in Firefox Stable and Beta. You will be able to install unsigned add-ons in Firefox versions in which this should not be possible.

-CWuestefeld (August 18, 2016, 12:39 PM)

I HAVE tried this, and it works. I don't use many unsigned addons but one that I do -- DownloadStudio -- I sort of rely on, now... and I've invested so much time and effort in getting Firefox "right" that jumping ship is more of a deal for me than just making a decision.

103

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« on: August 02, 2016, 09:21 AM »

I have mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, I agree that forcing paid upgrades by stealth is, on the face of it, a sharp practice. However, expecting the supplier to keep downloadable copies of your specific version of the installation media for free, indefinitely, just in case you might have the need to reinstall (and bear in mind that GS-Base can be installed portably and therefore reinstalled just by copying it on from your backup, what do you mean you don't have a backup?  ) seems a touch unreasonable too.

And while it's certainly the case that a $10 / year "subscription" isn't exactly free, even ignoring the fact that you only have to pay it if you want new functionality after the first year or you didn't keep backups, for a piece of software that can do what this does for the price remains pretty remarkable. The developer is responsive to requests for new features and bugfixes, to a greater extent than most commercial software I've ever encountered.

I grant you might not see the appeal over -- say -- various spreadsheet programs that pretend some database functionality but this is the only (reasonably) affordable and user-friendly "proper" database program I've seen in a very long time. (I've used Lotus Approach for a long, long time but I can't make it run on a 64-bit PC -- there are things I miss about Approach but GS-Base ticks more boxes than anything else I've tried.) So I'm consequently inclined to be a little more forgiving than I might if it were operating in a more crowded arena

104

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« on: August 01, 2016, 12:57 PM »

finding out that this is basically a subscription by another name

-wraith808 (July 31, 2016, 12:27 PM)

Can you clarify that? The purchase page says that the version you buy is good forever.  You don't get free updates after a year, but you don't need to pay again to keep the version you bought working (as I understand it).

-mwb1100 (August 01, 2016, 12:42 PM)

Pretty sure your understanding is correct.

105

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« on: July 31, 2016, 04:09 AM »

That made me wonder whether the CAPTCHA wasn't deliberately off-putting, to dissuade casual use of the forum.

There may be some truth in that. I registered on the Citadel5 forum in May 2014 and found the captcha so hard that I had to ask in email (to [email protected]) for the account to be created for me. It's not a very busy forum. Can't think why...

I do get the impression that Jarek is a sole operator and might believe that managing a busy forum might take more time than he wants to devote to it. At least emailed requests from known users is likely to keep noise down.

106

General Software Discussion / Sleeping

« on: May 28, 2016, 06:03 AM »

Windows 10 seems to be a little buggy around the automatic maintenance front. In particular, it often doesn't respect the instruction to Automatic Maintenance to wake your computer from sleep if necessary.

In particular, if it's running on an unplugged laptop, it can result in a machine that's woken itself up, performed maintenance and then stayed on until the power available has dropped to a point where it's forced back to sleep again.

There are two main solutions.

The first is to go look at the automatic maintenance setting and, if the checkbox allowing it to wake the computer at the specified time is clear, check it, click okay, then go back and uncheck it.

That seems to work for quite a few people.

Not for me, though.

The next solution is to go into the power management (powercfg.cpl) choose advanced settings for the power plan(s) you're using and, under sleep, change the ability to wake from sleep to "disabled", at least in battery mode.

Final caveat: if you're a Process Lasso user (and why wouldn't you be?) you should be aware that the "Bitsum Highest Performance" scheme gets updated when Process Lasso is -- which means, that if that's the scheme you use, you'll have to either use a different power scheme or change the wake setting in that scheme back after updates. (But I've told the developer about this issue and he's usually pretty good at fixing things!)

If the above isn't quite explicit enough, let me know and I'll come back with screenshots and more detail.

107

Find And Run Robot / Aliases in aliases

« on: May 07, 2016, 05:44 AM »

Just found a tiny issue.

I have an alias in FARR -- edit -- that has all my most-used editors listed in it.

I added a new editor to it today. (I collect them. It's a condition. Don't bug me about it, I may growl.)

So I spotted a bit of text on the "edit alias" screen: above the "Results" edit box, it says at the end of the description line, "prefix descriptions with "|" (see help for more info)"

So I went through the list, following that suggestion, adding a pipe to the end of the line and a description after it.

And, after a while, found out what I would have discovered if I'd read the help first: the description followed by a pipe should prefix the command, as opposed to a pipe prefixing the description.

This keyboard's an odd layout: the Home, End and Del keys aren't where they are on the keyboard I usually use, so the process of moving the description from the end to the beginning was slow and painful. Just sayin'

One other thing: I did try to get help from that screen by hitting F1, and Windows (10) chose to ask me what I should use to open a CHM file with. Gulp. Really? What have I broken? Messed around for a while, did something that didn't work, invoked help again (from the FARR menu this time) and it Just Worked. So I'm not sure if you invoke help differently from an F1 at that point, or if Windows 10 is slightly borked, or if I've broken something -- probably best to assume it's me, not FARR, that's at fault here but just in case a heads-up is helpful...

108

The Form Letter Machine / Re: Variables

« on: September 14, 2015, 11:29 AM »

But I've always had a lingering feeling that it could do a lot more..

-mouser (September 14, 2015, 10:25 AM)

For what little it's worth, I suspect it's always going to be a bit niche. For me, I like the idea of a sort of halfway house between building documents with boilerplate sections chosen as required -- my first experiences of wordprocessors back in the <cough> early 1980s included interacting with the bits of them that allowed such things, even if I didn't use them very often -- and full-on mailmerge. But I'm not an ordinary user, and I quite often find myself diving headlong into things I don't know much about in order to solve a specific problem. TFLM was what seemed to be the best fit to a problem I was trying to solve at the time, and even with its limitations was very helpful. I haven't needed to do anything else like that since...

The Form Letter Machine is one of my apps that I regularly think about rewriting from scratch to be much more powerful and flexible.  In fact I have rewritten it once as a fully working web app (tfdocs.com) that was pretty sophisticated, but that was abandoned due to lack of interest/funding/etc.

I did go look at the time, I think, but couldn't see a good reason for moving the sort of things I could envisage wanting to do off my local PC.

More flexible support for custom scripting and variables would be a key focus of any rewrite, and probably making it cross platform (mobile?), along with multiple output formats (pdf).

I think if you could do variables and (basic) formatting -- text enhancements, tabs -- and output in .doc format, or plaintext too, I guess, most people who'd have a need for something like TFLM would be able to take it on from there, wouldn't they? And the cross-platform thing -- you could be right but it doesn't strike me as an obvious need.

Anyway, the difficult dilemma for me is deciding whether its worth the effort to write a new version, and how much time I could spend on the project...

I guess if it's a "from the ground up" sort of a problem, it's probably never going to justify the extra work. It IS pretty good as it is, for the six people in the world who use it

Thanks for thinking about it, anyway!

109

Screenshot Captor / Re: Controlled cropping

« on: August 25, 2015, 11:48 AM »

Last question first -- you can nudge the selected region using cursor keys. Combine with alt/shift/control for different ways of moving/resizing.

-mouser (August 25, 2015, 11:24 AM)

Aha. That helps -- thanks!

110

Screenshot Captor / Controlled cropping

« on: August 25, 2015, 11:13 AM »

I've been using the scrolling capture feature today in pretty much fully manual mode to capture a scrolling window that's really, really uncooperative.

Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.

The last bit of margin setting, that lets me set the margins to exactly where I want them prior to the final assembly is particularly lovely, if a little slow when the desired edge is a long way in from the captured one.

So a suggestion and a related question: first, might it be possible to put a slow accelerator on the margin adjuster, so if it's held down for a while -- more than a couple of seconds, maybe? -- it speeds up a bit?

And the question: any possibility of adding a similar sort of manual margin edit mode to other images? (I use the freehand region capture frequently, almost always overcompensate by a bit, and the ability to remove the extra bit round the edges without the shaky-handed mouse-driven selection+crop routine would be useful, I think! (Or is it there already and I just haven't found it? )

111

Found Deals and Discounts / RightNote 50% discount to August 31

« on: August 18, 2015, 07:59 AM »

There's no special link for this, but my favourite bit of note-taking software is on sale (50% discount) to the end of the month.

Seems to be a reasonably regular offer but it's my favourite structured note organiser (the other one I use and rely on is Cintanotes, for what it's worth) so I thought I'd mention it here.

http://bauerapps.com/rightnote/

112

The Form Letter Machine / Re: Variables

« on: August 17, 2015, 11:32 AM »

Pleas excuse my delay in replying

-mouser (August 16, 2015, 05:41 AM)

Absolutely excused No worries at all!

113

The Form Letter Machine / Variables

« on: August 06, 2015, 11:03 AM »

Trying to do something clever with TFLM -- effectively mailmerge-to-email with all the usual section choice stuff.

As usual, I did my planning in my head three microseconds before entering information into the config tree.

Renaming and deleting variables is entertaining

(What's the dropdown above the variables box for? It never seems to have any content in any tree I make...)

Copy/paste into variables has some aggravating results if you accidentally copy in a <return>. Might it be possible to ignore <return> characters unless explicitly specified with \n or somesuch?

I'd like to be able to point the variables at a comma-separated list. So, for instance, I might have:

Code: Text [Select]

1. names.csv
2. ========
3. recipientname,recipientemail,username,userid,validfrom,validto,userpwd
4. Fred Smith,[email protected],Eric Jones,jonese,Aug 15,Feb 16,PA$5w0rd
5. Fred Smith,[email protected],Jane Dough,doughj,Aug 15,Feb 16,PA$5w0rd
6. Jim Gumby,[email protected],Jim Gumby,gumbyj,Aug 15,Sep 15,Gjfd8^51

and TFLM would let me reference those variablenames in the tree and populate the variables a record at a time, so I could concentrate on getting the boilerplate content matched to the recipient without having to fight with the variable data too... so the workflow would be "choose sections/copy to clipboard/next record/choose sections/copy to..."

...I'm asking for the moon and the stars, aren't I? Again.

114

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Show us your LaunchBar Commander Screenshots

« on: July 21, 2015, 01:51 PM »

I have found that LBC doesn't support %APPDRIVE% in the path to a background image file...

i can fix that.

-mouser (July 21, 2015, 12:31 PM)

I hoped you'd say that  

Thanks!

115

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Show us your LaunchBar Commander Screenshots

« on: July 21, 2015, 11:43 AM »

As a result of playing with this, I have found that LBC doesn't support %APPDRIVE% in the path to a background image file... 

Nice work -- I may need to steal your idea and make some more colours, though.

116

General Software Discussion / Re: Comodo Internet Security -- a cautionary tale?

« on: May 17, 2015, 03:50 PM »

I've bought into F-Secure for a year. It's genuinely low-impact, doesn't annoy me too much (occasionally the deepguard program jumps up and asks me if I trust whatever program it is I've just started but it does that very rarely -- it's cloud-based so there must be quite a few people with similar tastes in weird software to me populating their "this program's okay" list.

I use Process Lasso to monitor cpu usage on here. The lowest level cpu usage drops to when the system's idle is as close to zero as I've ever seen it.

I'm aware that F-Secure isn't quite at the top of the detection tree, but despite that they have some of the most well-respected AV researchers on the planet AND the product ticks all the boxes for being unobtrusive and low-impact.

I'll come back here if I pick up a virus, or if something happens to change my mind. However, this was a lot of work and I freely admit it was more subjective than objective (if my system feels sluggish, then I'm not going to be happy even if some bit of paper somewhere tells me it ain't so). I would also say that a full-blown internet security package might well have been evaluated differently and other people might well want that rather than just AV, so I won't try to suggest this is an unqualified endorsement of F-Secure. YMMV, in other words -- but I'm happy with it so far.

117

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Judy's TenKey (10Key) award-winning calculator

« on: May 17, 2015, 11:37 AM »

I'm not sure how many licenses OpalCalc is going to sell at $15, though, even with evangelists such as yourself.

-ayryq (May 16, 2015, 06:45 AM)

I rarely evangelise -- I am told often enough that my taste in software is "a bit weird" that I certainly wouldn't want to insist that a particular thing is best. But the traditional calculator, however good they are (and my experiences of the things goes back to the 1970s and I still own several) is specifically designed to be finger-friendly in a relatively restricted space -- something that computerised calculator programs don't, it seems to me, need to emulate.

I tried a couple of the wabbitemu TI emulations and was thoroughly impressed with the quality of them -- and I completely get that a smartphone host for one of them would be a good idea. The restricted space and keyboard facilities apply again, so it makes sense.

For me, Opalcalc sits nicely between the input complexity of the calculator (infix or postfix? Do I start with a number and apply a trig function to it, or start with the function as if I were writing the formula on paper? How do I get at the stats functions again?) and the big iron of the fullblown spreadsheet, and it needs me to have a full-size keyboard I can use with it without having to grope for symbols.

And some of the things it can do would need Google, otherwise. How many days to Christmas? (@ 25 dec 2015 - @ today as whole days) What's $15 in euro? ($15 as euro) How many centimetres in 12 fathoms? (12 fathoms as cm)

And the developer is still tinkering with it, and that $15 is a lifetime license. Personally, I think it's worth every cent. But then, I'm a bit weird.

118

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Judy's TenKey (10Key) award-winning calculator

« on: May 16, 2015, 03:48 AM »

I guess it might not be the most traditional looking calculator, but I discovered OpalCalc here and ...

...well, all I can say is that I have a FARR alias CALC that loads it.

Follow the trail... https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=40528.0

Well, maybe it's not all I SHOULD say. It looks basic. But it's very configurable, can be as minimalist as you want, and I've never used another calculator that hides so much power under the hood.

119

General Software Discussion / Re: MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64

« on: April 30, 2015, 11:57 AM »

I couldn't remember the name CompuServe until about an hour later. 

-MilesAhead (April 30, 2015, 09:56 AM)

...and the cost of Compuserve is one of the main reasons (for me, anyway) Fidonet existed. <sigh>

120

General Software Discussion / Re: MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64

« on: April 30, 2015, 09:35 AM »

It's weird the stuff you find in drawers.  I had a stack of 10 CD caddies left over from around 1993.  I assumed CD drives would all use caddies so I bought a 10 pack from Computer Shopper.  I think 7 of them were still in the cellophane in 2013. 

-MilesAhead (April 30, 2015, 09:30 AM)

Not quite the same thing, but I keep tripping over the 5-CD changer I used to have in the BBS I ran back in the late 90s. I can't quite bring myself to get shot of it, "just in case" but really... too much nostalgia is probably bad for you. (See previous comment re fingers. )

121

General Software Discussion / Re: MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64

« on: April 30, 2015, 09:18 AM »

Heh heh.  5 1/4" floppy sounds much easier than trying that surgery on a 3.5" plastic jobber. 

-MilesAhead (April 30, 2015, 08:34 AM)

I have a boxful of 3.5" disks that are waiting for me to get round either to destroying them or suddenly discovering a use for the things: perhaps I'll give it a try.

I might see if I can find someone with more than the usual complement of fingers to do the scalpel-work, though.

122

General Software Discussion / Re: Comodo Internet Security -- a cautionary tale?

« on: April 30, 2015, 08:44 AM »

I have given up on free solutions, for the time being.

Mostly because the only one that even got close to being acceptable really does seem to be a bit of a pain to work with.

So I'm now trying F-Secure AV (not any of the more comprehensive solutions they offer) in trial mode.

I like F-Secure the company -- have done for years -- but have always regarded the product as more corporate- than home-friendly. But most of the other likely commercial offerings are either too bloated or past their best (or both) and some have blotted their copybooks so badly in the past that I won't go there (anything Symantec or McAfee I freely admit massive bias against!) so the available options are decreasing rapidly. So F-Secure claim to be low-impact and if that doesn't work out for me I may have to try Kaspersky, rather against my better judgement despite their popularity and apparent effectiveness (I gather it's hard to remove.)

I should say that Avast tried very, very hard to persuade me not to uninstall but went away nicely when I insisted.

123

General Software Discussion / Re: MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64

« on: April 30, 2015, 08:23 AM »

If you feel adventurous, on the websites there are a number of other emulators, for example one for CP/M. 

-Mark0 (April 29, 2015, 06:36 PM)

A CP/M emulator? My first serious taste of the command prompt that, arguably, is still with us now? Brilliant! Let me at it!   

[Just because I have the urge to reminisce: my first proper computer job was Z80-based systems that were primarily turnkey word processors but ran CP/M 2.2 if you had the right boot floppy. I got given the push from that job because the -- now defunct -- company decided that a computer department just was never going to be a useful thing to have. The last thing I ever did there, before they told me I was leaving, was recover some valuable but not backed up pharmaceutical research data from a 5.25" floppy disk that had been used by some twit as a coffee mat. I used a pristine new floppy disk, the case from another, a scalpel and a disk sector editor called, if memory serves, DU. First time I ever did the (apparently!) impossible, over 30 years ago, and that's a bug that never really leaves you.]

124

General Software Discussion / Re: Comodo Internet Security -- a cautionary tale?

« on: April 27, 2015, 10:58 AM »

Just an update, for what little it's worth... I'm still using Avast Free.

I don't like it much -- occasionally it's clearly doing something behind the scenes because the computer becomes unresponsive, but it's hard to see what. One of the more positive points of Comodo Free -- however sluggish it might have been in comparison -- was that you could go and look at the tasks it was running and, if appropriate, tell them to stop. Avast, in comparison, is positively secretive.

I guess I have no right to complain about the adverts it throws up, but (and I have no real evidence for this assertion) it feels like it decides it's going to put an ad on the screen come what may, whatever else might be going on, because responsiveness will just go away entirely for a few seconds, then an ad will appear, then it'll be nicely whizzy again.

A side-issue: I've never really felt comfortable with Readyboost but I bought one of those tiny Sandisk things that hardly sticks out of the USB socket at all, 8Gb, reformatted it to exFAT (having seen a suggestion elsewhere on DC) and gave it all to ReadyBoost and it actually seems to have done something useful. The netbook is still occasionally sluggish but when Avast isn't busy doing anything in the background it actually feels faster than it's ever been. So... well, we'll see. I'm still open to suggestions!

Oh, and by the way:

https://addons.mozil...addon/ublock-origin/

125

General Software Discussion / Re: Comodo Internet Security -- a cautionary tale?

« on: April 16, 2015, 09:48 AM »

Panda's interface is very metro-y. (You may like this. I don't.) And although the install and initial scan went smoothly, it eventually put a "select Panda account" dialog onscreen and wouldn't let me fill it in, or even close it. Flickering pointers and no response to anything. Not a great start.  

The upshot: Panda properly panda'd my netbook.   So much for lightweight, cloud-based security... it tried quite hard to stop me unloading it so I could take control back and uninstall -- which might be a point in its favour, I guess, sort of -- but whatever it thought it was doing around the "select Panda account" dialog didn't actually achieve anything except an awful lot of disk thrashing and an all-but-unresponsive system. It has therefore been consigned to the bit bucket.

(In the process of cleaning up after Panda I discovered that a couple of Comodo addons -- a version of Chrome called Chromodo, and a remote support tool called GeekBuddy -- weren't removed when Comodo went. So they've gone too, now. Scrubbed with Revo. )

f0dder's advice notwithstanding, I've managed to get quite paranoid about the "good enoughness" of MSE and so I'm giving Avast a go, based on Ath's suggestion.

Looking good so far.  Not counting chickens, though.

I get that everyone's mileage varies, but a word to the wise (and an underlining of f0dder's warning above) my experience with Panda was bad enough that I actually wondered for a while if the disk thrashing was ransomware and I'd been taken in by some sort of diverted download that was only apparently from their site.

Another failed experiment, while I think of it, and only because they (a) offered me a good price if I ran the trial and liked it, (b) use two AV engines and (c) claim great speed and performance was   Ashampoo. The only good thing I can say about it is that the uninstallation process was straightforward and uncomplicated. (Everything in between only served to demonstrate that people occasionally make inflated and unverified assertions about their software.)