Messages

76

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - v4.16.1 - Dec 12, 2015

« on: March 06, 2017, 04:51 AM »

I'm currently considering emigrating in order to avoid the whole problem... 

-oblivion (March 06, 2017, 04:38 AM)

Been there, but eventually never done that drastic measure...

-Ath (March 06, 2017, 04:47 AM)

I suppose I could quit the job too. Or develop a dreadful disease.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - v4.16.1 - Dec 12, 2015

« on: March 06, 2017, 04:38 AM »

Mouser is hibernating and procrastinating

-mouser (March 04, 2017, 09:13 AM)

Hey everybody, mouser's human after all!! 

Since I'm here... I've foolishly volunteered to put together a presentation that will cover the whole process that resulted in me writing an autohotkey program to plug a few gaps in a bit of commercial software our maternity department uses. ("Foolishly" because my default attitude is to spend as much time as I can working behind the scenes rather than standing up and making a public spectacle of myself. What can I say? I'm British and introverted.)

Er, anyway, so this presentation's going to happen in a lecture theatre (aaargh) and I'm playing with the concept of making a screencast to do most of the work, so I can just do the Q&As and handovers to the other people who had a hand in it.

I have EasyScreenCastRecorder and ScreenshotCaptor and a microphone and, because I enjoy procrastination too and I have until early May, I'm wondering how (or if!) to make ESCR and SC work together and, if I do, if I can mix stills into my screencast (so I can put up screens that I might want to blur bits of) or if I should bite the bullet and learn something completely new.

Any suggestions or advice welcome. I'm currently considering emigrating in order to avoid the whole problem... 

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Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - v4.16.1 - Dec 12, 2015

« on: March 04, 2017, 06:46 AM »

Ok I am making some progress on improving SC for use on high-dpi monitors; options look a lot more readable as does text.
Need to do a little more tweaking though for some oddities, and need to scale up the button images.

Hope you are making some progress on FARR too !

-nitrix-ud (March 04, 2017, 03:30 AM)

When ordinary coders are sleeping, mouser thunders on, tirelessly adding features to everything, only stopping to worry occasionally if he's doing enough...

79

Living Room / Re: Do you use a Portrait mode monitor?

« on: January 31, 2017, 12:00 PM »

I'm still using a landscape+portrait configuration. Landscape still works best for many things but email and anything involving text generation where A4 / letter is conceptually or actually the output target tends to get done on my portrait monitor.

Where I've got just one screen to work on, it's always landscape. But -- particularly with widescreen monitors -- I often find the lack of vertical realestate annoying.

I do try to arrange screens and chairs so that I'm looking down -- if only slightly -- rather than up. The top of my portrait screen is about at eye level.

I would say -- probably an irrelevance to many -- that I had to recalibrate the colour of the portrait screen as a direct result of rotating it. I can't say I ever really understood why, but the whites are more yellow when the screen's portrait...

Don't know if this is in any way helpful... I think this really is one of those things where what works for one person won't necessarily work for another!

80

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 30, 2016, 07:02 AM »

 

I've just realised that I wasn't paying attention to the dimensions of the last couple of uploads -- so I'll sort that out with these two -- one black, one dark grey. (Software remembers last used values, not last used values for a given document, so the last few went out at 200dpi instead of 96 as a result of something else I've done recently. Oops!)

Black:

Dark grey (80%):

81

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 29, 2016, 02:33 PM »

This design is really looking good.

-Ath (December 29, 2016, 01:40 PM)

Thank you, kind sir ☺

82

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 29, 2016, 11:40 AM »

Stephens eyes are now happy! 

-Stephen66515 (December 29, 2016, 11:34 AM)

Excellent!

Now: while taking the point about multiple colours on board, would it be worth maybe considering a couple more versions of the text colour -- or shall I just leave it that if someone wants the mug design with different coloured text they can ask me and I shall reproduce it to order?

83

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 29, 2016, 11:32 AM »

I think what seems to be missing, is the "bit" (can't remember wtf it is called) from the end of the antenna on the controller - soft of like the round bit from the top of the antenna on the dudes head - the antenna right now looks like it's had it snap off (hopefully that makes sense)

-Stephen66515 (December 29, 2016, 11:23 AM)

Aha.

Is it like the bit at the back of your knee, that there's no proper name for? 'Cause I have no idea either. Still, a small ellipse with a tiny 3d effect that you might need a magnifier to see...

84

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 29, 2016, 11:18 AM »

From what I recall, the Cody I used here was brazenly stolen from an image somewhere on the site. I think (I really should keep notes!) I used an image extractor to pull him from the original background and, as often happens, some of the edges got a bit blatted. I did a rough cleanup and then I probably forgot to go back and do it properly.

Because I've used a vector editor to produce this and some of the things I might have done in a raster editor aren't available, and my artistic skills aren't particularly high (what do you mean, you'd noticed!?) I've done my tidying with a paintbrush and a colour picker. So if you look closely enough, it's probably still not going to be beautiful right now -- so here's the current version and if you still think it could use more work before it'll look good on a mug, please let me know and I'll push the whole lot into a raster editor and see if I can make it better still.

85

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 29, 2016, 10:46 AM »

Some slight "annoyances" in the image:

1. Right "hand" looks a little strange with the white - not sure what's happening there
2. Random yellow bit under the left "hand"
3. Missing shadow on the left "hand"
4. Random Grey line connecting the controller to the wing
5. (Not Circled - Just noticed) - to the right of the above random gray line (following on the controller) the outline of the controller goes missing for a moment almost like a chunk has been removed from it

-Stephen66515 (December 29, 2016, 10:41 AM)

Hm. I last played with that part of the design ages ago, and I hadn't noticed. Sorry -- I'll clean up.

86

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 29, 2016, 10:37 AM »

Now the DC ad text should be less blurry and we're happy.

-Tuxman (December 29, 2016, 10:33 AM)

Doesn't look blurry to me -- it's a direct, non-resized, export of actual text. Can you refresh (since I removed the version with transparency) and see if it looks any better, please?

87

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 29, 2016, 10:26 AM »

I think a version with black text for both would be better.

-skwire (December 27, 2016, 05:33 PM)

While I often try to avoid the starkness of black, who am I to argue? 

Your wish, therefore, is my command!

88

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 27, 2016, 02:12 PM »

I'm hopeful that it'll be ready for release on the same timescale

-oblivion (December 09, 2016, 04:02 AM)

It was, too.
In case anyone cares... there's a maternity application in use in the UK that has a few issues I decided I'd try to remedy.

First, a message of the day at login to remind midwives (in a reasonably cheerful way) that some of the shortcuts they often take with the application are a Really Bad Idea.

Second, assign an F1 key to a .CHM file that's pretty much an FAQ for the application. (The supplier's documentation is all but nonexistent, and entirely nonexistent within the program itself.)

Third, make a facility where a Consultant of the Week could be chosen from a menu by a select few and would appear to anyone needing to be reminded of who it was, at login or when desired at a press of the F2 key.

And for everything to look like it's an integral part of the application itself.

As I said, it's of relatively limited use: however, the techniques I used to achieve everything could probably be adapted to a variety of other (networked) applications and if anyone's interested I'd be willing to share lumps of code.

89

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 15, 2016, 01:31 PM »

Some potential designs here. I've spent a little longer on choice of font than I think I expected to need and (naturally) I can continue to modify anything here as required.

Main font: Stencil
Main font: Newform
Main font: Quartz
Main font: Keyboard
Ditto (alternate design)

I dropped the quality settings down slightly to keep the filesize down but can also produce higher quality output if required.

90

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 09, 2016, 12:22 PM »

For what it's worth, the main DonationCoder.com font is Arial Black.

-mouser (December 09, 2016, 12:00 PM)

Thanks -- I'll plug that in too

91

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 09, 2016, 12:20 PM »

Wouldn't a monospaced ("coding",  as weirdos call it) font make more sense?

-Tuxman (December 09, 2016, 12:11 PM)

Probably.

I was just trying not to be too obvious, when I put the first draft together. Maybe there's an argument that says we should keep what works! 

92

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 09, 2016, 12:18 PM »

^ this all just personal taste, others will vary!

-tomos (December 09, 2016, 11:58 AM)

Of course

But finding something that appeals to your personal taste probably means -- unless you're very unusual indeed -- that it'll work for others too. Design is about both form and function, after all!

I dont like the 'plasticky' feel of it, and I dont like the way the numbers are done in the font.
Afraid I'm not good at creative suggestions, just able to say what I dont like :-/

Okay, that's probably more helpful than you think! As far as the number style is concerned, I don't disagree. The 3D style is just one more option amongst many -- I applied that style to the font, it didn't start out that way!

I've done some work to consolidate my font collections in one place since I designed this initially, which makes browsing options quicker and easier; I'll go away and play.

93

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 09, 2016, 11:50 AM »

me, I love the right-hand-side, but not the font used for the big 'NANY 2017' text -
any chance you could do a couple different versions with different fonts?

-tomos (December 09, 2016, 11:34 AM)

Sure. I was trying to do something decorative but not flamboyant (the fixed-pitch meme to represent coding has been done to death, I feel, but maybe that's just me!) and I pretty much grabbed the first thing I didn't hate, if memory serves. But I have hundreds if not thousands of fonts available and no particularly strong views. [Some, though. I'm not going to do it in Comic Sans. However much you plead.  ]

Just to help me choose things you might like better, what do you dislike about this one? (Berlin Sans, for what it's worth.)

94

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 09, 2016, 11:26 AM »

Okay... I think I still need to tweak this a bit -- there's at least one major error! -- but just to be going on with -- and any suggestions for less obvious modifications or changes will be welcome, naturally

95

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2017 Announcement

« on: December 09, 2016, 04:02 AM »

perhaps with a nice alternative mug design and maybe some other "rewards".

-mouser (September 15, 2016, 05:33 PM)

While I'm currently occupying a lot of my time writing a program in Autohotkey that's completely useless for anyone who doesn't use a particular piece of software at my workplace -- no NANY possibilities there although I'm hopeful that it'll be ready for release on the same timescale I got at least some of the way to making a new graphic for the legendary NANY mug a couple of years back -- is it too late to offer to update it?

96

Living Room / Re: Be prepared against ransomware viruses..

« on: October 07, 2016, 01:42 AM »

I do not find any information on dealing with ransomware once it is installed.

-terribleterryc (October 06, 2016, 09:58 PM)

TechSupportAlert recently suggested https://www.nomoreransom.org/ but I personally don't have any helpful experience.

97

Living Room / Re: HP "timebomb" prevents HP inkjet printers from using non-HP ink cartridges.

« on: September 27, 2016, 02:10 AM »

Not trying to be an apologist here but I remember when the first H-P Deskjet appeared. I went to a launch, in fact (why, where and how are now lost in the mists of time.) At the time, laser printers were priced well into four figures and the Deskjet was (still nearly into four figures) the only other way to get (nearly) laser-quality output.

So now the machines cost -- at the low end -- nearly nothing, often still include scanners and enough onboard smarts to be able to function as a standalone copier and all sorts of other stuff and, barring the sudden realignment of the manufacturers into the charity sector, apparently it's unreasonable of them to try to make money from their customers.

The right way to handle the costs of this stuff is to factor everything in then assess the cost per page for your printed output over the life of the printer. If it's now the case, particularly at the consumer end, that the majority of the cost is in the ink cartridges then that just makes the calculation easier, surely?

[Devil's Advocate Mode OFF]

Disclaimer: I also own an HP printer, and also complain bitterly about the cost of the ink cartridges, particularly as I print little enough that the blasted things dry out before they empty...

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N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014 Release - Wallpaper Welder

« on: September 23, 2016, 04:38 AM »

I lost the old wallpaper Wallpaper Welder made for me and can't now make it repeat the trick.

It looks fine (demoing with a couple of VladStudio images):


but the wallpaper it actually makes looks like this:

so when the image is tiled the left hand monitor is as it should be but the right has a truncated image and a lot of background!

I don't change wallpaper often on this machine and the last time I used it was probably a couple of years back, and Windows has been reinstalled at least once if not twice since then (Win 7 x64, before you ask, and the representation of monitor arrangement shown in the capture of the Wallpaper Welder window is accurate.)

Have I messed up the settings somehow?

99

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: Super-sized Newsletter for Sep 18, 2016 - Codename: Catching Up with Cody

« on: September 20, 2016, 06:23 AM »

Yes it's fun to see a burst of activity on the forum whenever a newsletter comes out 

-mouser (September 19, 2016, 07:31 PM)

Is there an emoticon for a guilty look? Ah. Possibly this.

Is anyone finding that the newsletter is being marked as spam by your email provider?

Not here either: neither gmail nor fastmail.

Particularly good newsletter, I should say. Thanks!

100

Android Apps / Re: Other app ideas based on WhenLast code

« on: September 20, 2016, 05:35 AM »

Looking at this thread for the first time as a result of following a link in the newsletter.

So When Last looks good, but I'm not necessarily always very good at inferring the underlying architecture of a program from my experience of it. So I'm going to say the first thing that came into my mind for a database-type Android app: something like CHS.

Having said which, I have no need of the "S". But I properly dislike the Android clipboard and I miss the history that CHS gives me on every PC I use. A configurable and searchable database of textual clipboard history would be good, particularly if it allowed editing of entries and similar scripted transformations to those offered by CHS.

I've looked at clipboard managers for Android before and generally found nothing better than disillusionment.