Messages

101

N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Pledge/Release: Lucid Dream Inducer

« on: January 01, 2016, 03:41 PM »

I'll sound a cautionary tale on a few diff levels.

This program and the entire intro is in medium-usual "oh look how cute this is". But do you have an equal and opposite program that *blocks* lucid dreams?

When it isn't being presented in a "A, you're a new age loon" or "B, Mouser did some homework", decide if you WANT this, because sometimes you can't turn it back off again.

I've been getting a chunk of lucid dreams lately. I've been a sub-adjunct legislative assistant in congress and could almost read the draft bills, and more.

The mistake I think I'm seeing is people want it both ways, "safe and fun and rated PG and yay" and the full power of lucid dreaming doesn't always have those "governors" like they put in school buses to pretend they're not Mack Trucks.

So if y'all want to go into this realm, think things like the movie The Cell and it nearly messed up Vincent D the actor for a while after filming it.

102

General Software Discussion / Re: YNAB moving to a subscription model

« on: January 01, 2016, 03:13 PM »

I'm starting to get myself in a bit of hot water lately but I don't wish any company "luck" without other things behind it.

I'm getting meta lately so of *any* category of software, for *financial* software devs to get all "I'm bored, we're low on funds, let's go all Saas because the cool kids are doing it" is ... NOT who I want anywhere near my money! It's close to the ONE category you can't do that on and I haven't even checked the six-plus sets of relevant accounting law.

You can play all those games with Gaming, Photo, Music, whatever applications, but when real money shows up beyond "a purchase" the rules change and all the cool kid tricks become illegal.

103

Living Room / Re: pass time during flights

« on: December 26, 2015, 08:47 PM »

...
now any good mp3 player for android please, that will have fast forward while listening to the sound? or maybe automatic detection of songs for single files of whole albums?

-kalos (December 26, 2015, 07:27 PM)

I'd think any good mp3 player has a "skip track" so don't bother "fast forwarding" the actual song, just skip.

In that cheap little player (multi clones of it) I had pre-selected songs I knew were my type, and so even though I had forgotten they were there, I could just hit "next next next play-that next next next next play-that" (my wording for buttons) and off they go.

104

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: InfoQube (IQ) Information Management System Q & A

« on: December 26, 2015, 08:36 PM »

Christmas promotion !

In preparing for InfoQube v1.0 official release, we'd like to create a buzz around advanced information management tools...

In these days of simple single focused apps, isn't refreshing to see a new full featured information manager come to life ?

And what better ways to create a buzz than to offer free stuff... So from now until the end of 2015:

Everybody that likes the InfoQube Facebook page will have a chance to win an InfoQube lifetime professional license ($250 value)
Everybody that likes the InfoQube Facebook page and writes a small "I like PIMs and why" message will be entitled to receive a free InfoQube v1.0 personal license ($50 value).

Share this with as many of your friends as possible, that's what creating a buzz is all about !
 
Enjoy
 
Pierre
https://www.facebook.com/InfoQubeIM/
p.s. I hope this post falls in the "OK to promote one's product, once in a while" category... 

-PPLandry (December 23, 2015, 03:49 PM)

In my view, there might be a step missing here.

DC (DonationCoder.com) has had a few PIM / Info / Task / Work / Flow type threads, and in one of the earlier ones, I glanced at InfoQube, and had trouble making it fit my style. Part and parcel, somewhere along the way is the four year development period.

When you glance at software and it doesn't do X and if you're not drilling down every last speculation, you think it won't ever do X.

So I have remarked elsewhere I as a consumer get nervous when "suddenly" a developer wants serious money ($250 for a lifetime license etc), that's above a LOT of programs! Then you as an example "backdated" a promo for it by a week for "the rest of 2015" before the buying period sets in.

So compared to where you were two years ago, are you now "feature and bug complete ready at V1.0?"

I'll look at it again but if four years ago "it was free to try and use in Beta" I think there needs to be a window to try to find your "evangelist" users before you "flip a switch" and start charging.

Remember, people buy entire computers for the price of two of your Lifetime licenses, so value of money is crucial here. I have only paid for about seven programs that changed my life; all the cool little tools have to be free.

I do come from a business degree. When stuff is free, except "value of my time", people put up with a lot. When suddenly real money is on the line (not $2.88 from some app store), you get ranked in the hardball side of people's minds.

Are you gang as a company ready for that?

105

Post New Requests Here / Re: Replace existing file with zero byte version with slight name change

« on: December 26, 2015, 08:23 PM »

Why would you want to create filenames in advance if they differ from the filename to be used eventually?

OT: Reserving space for future filecontent won't work using 0-byte files, as no actual diskspace is claimed by those files, only a directory-entry. Write at least 1 byte and a single cluster (4 KB on most systems) is used.

-Ath (December 26, 2015, 12:27 PM)

I am curious about the side tangents of all of this.

- I create files I often label (((something))) SHELL to remind me both that something needs to go there but that is a blank file. And since I don't worry about 4-7kb, I tend to use text files, because then I can put in a memo of "what was I *thinking?!*

- Do Zero Byte files show up in Directory Readers?

106

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Tabr: rethinking the way we navigate through multiple Chrome tabs

« on: December 26, 2015, 06:25 AM »

Vivaldi has come a long way and looks interesting now, so I put it in, how do I use it now?

I had some trouble finding a detailed guide on what it does. (Not helped I've never used a Chrome extension before). And I don't know what actual effects "allow access to file URL's" means.

Can you get us started?

107

General Software Discussion / Re: backup strategy

« on: December 26, 2015, 05:43 AM »

hello!

I need to backup specific files and folders in my laptop realtime on cloud. Or maybe there is a better backup strategy in case something goes wrong? Could you advise me please?

If not, then which service would be the best? Easy, reliable, free preferably, secure, etc?

Thanks!

-kalos (December 25, 2015, 08:45 PM)

Sounds awfully like a case of (a variant) of the famous "Pick x"!

For me the dangerous one sounds like "Easy" because if either Reliable or Secure fail, Bad Things Happen. I'd theoretically be willing to pay for Easy on top of a legit backbone.

108

General Software Discussion / Wikipedia "verifiability" and an opportunity for a small business?

« on: December 26, 2015, 03:10 AM »

I know, people hate the word "opportunity" but before sleazeballs took over the word, businesses began with things like you poured a glass of lemonade, made a dollar, and got to eat a burger for lunch. No one said you had to have "minimum sales" (jokes about tax law aside etc.)

You Did Something, You Provided Something, You got Paid Something, then you Spent part / all of the Something to live.

"That's all business is." The rest is a giant Hydra-headed mess of details.

-------------

So I was cleaning up some of my loose ends from my research day and something popped up at me about Wiki with an angle I hadn't thought of before but I've seen twice now and it could be a legit thing for a nice two-person operation to get into (and then grow?)

In a nutshell, among all its *other* issues, one of the disturbing ones is "We don't want to write up part of an article because it isn't verifiable". I know, in general, that keeps a lot of wild theories away, but in software it can change.

About the Russian Yandex browser, people began talking about the nature of Yandex browser vs the search company and so on. Someone wondered "well, there's no reliable sources for that".

Someone else replied, "well, anyone with the old version of the installer could prove it. "Verifiable sources would just not bother documenting this".

So your "first glass of lemonade" is you make your company, you get hold of the old installer, take screenshots and/or video under some kind of authority (to prove it's not all a hoax, for example just with a Notary Public watching in their office and signing it etc), then post the results, especially sending a copy to Internet Archive, and then it's a Reliable Source and maybe Wiki will accept it.

Without getting as fancy as "needing to set up a company", I'm not quite skilled enough to unravel this, but is anyone interested in trying out a couple of these just to see if the concept works? (And if it gets past Wiki politics!)

109

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: December 25, 2015, 04:22 AM »

The social skills of a thermonuclear device

-Arizona Hot (December 18, 2015, 02:02 PM)

Some of this series of blog threads makes me sad.

I'm learning I'm quirky with a quirky setup, but I do try to figure partial stuff out when I ask stuff.

So brusque answers are tough enough on me, as is RTFM types of things. I usually at least poke at the incomprehensible thingie, otherwise I might have found my own workaround.

The fundamental clash of ReadDocs vs AskPerson is the Docs are linear and the user has no idea what his problem is, and likely won't know 13 pages later. Person (if user guessed well) might very well know, and is weighing "whose time is more important and why". No easy answers and "every group of people is part of cultures".

But then this one caught my eye:
(Paraphrased)

"I'm a good speller. When I want to show impatience, I purposely type fast and intentionally leave the spelling errors in."
 
That level of mind game is something I'm not equipped to handle in any fashion, which usually starts with me having no idea I'm making someone blow their top. Then they do, then they won't talk to me, then I can't fix it.

110

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Tabr: rethinking the way we navigate through multiple Chrome tabs

« on: December 25, 2015, 03:02 AM »

Does this work with the "Chrome Spinoffs" like Comodo Dragon and so on?

Plus there's this snip from the Chrome Browser Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia...le_Chrome#Extensions

"As of February 4, 2011, the extension gallery featured more than 11,500 extensions,[149] including official extensions from the Independent,[150] CEOP,[151] Transport for London,[152] Cricinfo,[153] Web of Trust (WOT),[154] and FIFA.[155]

Many Chrome extensions, once installed, have access to the user's data. There are three levels of permissions that an app or extension may request.[156]

On May 27, 2014, Google issued an update to Chrome preventing Windows users from installing extensions obtained outside the Chrome Web Store.[157]"

What unusual info might it want to collect and do things with? How does the Chrome Store interact with the spinoff browsers?

I'm trying to keep track of this addon but I got into research mode this week and each new item spawns 7 other things to do!

  

111

Living Room / Re: pass time during flights / DonationCoder 2016 Indie Music thread!?

« on: December 25, 2015, 02:52 AM »

hello!

my flight is 3.5h and I need something to help the time pass

what could you suggest me?

I was thinking of music. But how can I browse youtube and with one click save the sound of these songs (without having to sit and listen to all the clip) and create a folder with these songs to put in my Samsung Note 2 to listen? I need, in other words, a fast and convenient way to create a folder with songs from free repositories. Any idea?

also will the phone last these 3.5h?

thanks!

-kalos (December 24, 2015, 09:09 PM)

I picked up a while ago a bunch of 4th rate imitation iPod mp3 players for stuff like this. You won't care if it gets lost / dropped (taken by security?! 0.o), so your main player(s) are safe, plus some equally cheap headphones.

Then I suggest you experiment with indie artists who offer free downloads, and skip Youtube for this trip. For ex the ones I have hold about a Gigabyte of music, anywhere from 40-70 songs, and then you just take a spare battery (triple a) and you have music for 7 hours.

Plus I think Indie Musicians *REALLY* need help and I think we could have an awesome "recommend *permissive / creative commons / cool / indie / other" music thread here!

(note to self - get a grip and get back on emusic whose tunes are sometimes permissive.)

(If this idea takes off, after he gets back, a mod can then just split off the remaining posts say in February.)

112

N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Release: Automatic Screenshotter - v1.06 - May 7, 2017

« on: December 25, 2015, 02:47 AM »

A little more exposition on the nature of this tool:
...

• You can also manually trigger a capture with a hotkey.

[...

-mouser (December 24, 2015, 09:40 PM)

By now I've learned (and practiced some language for!) that I often do a lot of "fast and dirty" computing chaining multiple small programs together and get easily overwhelmed by the "bigger brothers" that do the sophisticated features for the experts.

So for various reasons on my now slightly infamous setup, I never really tapped into Mouser's Top-of-the-Line ScreenShot Captor.

But then my eye caught this little thing emerging, and now I'm on my way both making screenshots of data that used to live in my browsers for weeks, and capturing the "1 second flash" of something interesting in an otherwise random video.



Now if I can just manage to unload the 42* browsers/windows that emerged since I was actually able to resume research ... I might be able to reboot for the first time since the woolly mammoths walked the earth!

113

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: December 24, 2015, 08:23 PM »

...
The social skills of a thermonuclear device

-Arizona Hot (December 18, 2015, 02:02 PM)

Kinda a placeholder tag / memo from me here, after glancing at 2 weeks worth of the Interesting Stuff thread, this one had a strange name and it's not "silly humor" (War Games! "Would you like to play a game?") but some likely useful short discussions of topics I could use quick tips on.

114

Developer's Corner / Re: Why Does Programming Suck?

« on: December 24, 2015, 08:09 PM »

To me it's not the programming that sucks but the debugging.  Not necessarily stepping through code but just figuring out what is broken.  My brain feels like a sponge with the fluid violently squeezed out after an hour or so.  But it is tough to let go until you have an idea how to fix it. 

-MilesAhead (December 24, 2015, 04:26 PM)

To me it's all like interconnected Dante circles of hell.

Say the first is total despair like the first time you see the Rosetta stone but don't know yourself how to speak *any* of the three old languages!



Then the archaeologist comes to you and says "But the first one is easy!"


So he does the first one for you. Then you start trying to debug the Ancient Egyptian third one and the glyph for "peace in the Kingdom" (maybe some kind of bird with a branch) gets smudged and comes out "Kill them all!"

115

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Tabr: rethinking the way we navigate through multiple Chrome tabs

« on: December 24, 2015, 08:06 PM »

Hi there,

I just would like to ask try our new extension for Chrome. It's called Tabr https://chrome.googl...plgggpoakjbfdiiiggfa
[ Invalid Attachment ]
We create this extension for those who used to have dozens Chrome tabs open and suffer from Chrome memory leaking and tab clutter. Tabr allows to see al your tabs in all windows in one windows with big thumbnails, you can archive tabs and whole session to retrieve them again. This way you free up your RAM.

Please, share your experience about this extension.

Paul

-onlinewolves (December 24, 2015, 10:28 AM)

I'll have to look into this. I'm not really a Chrome user (before this?!) at all, I'm a FF guy, but I get really grumpy that combos of tab clutter and memory leakage are all over the kind of stuff I do on my comp, so it might not be bad to try out something that can clean them up.

Oh look! I just created a new tab to save in my browser while I investigate this with four more tabs!

116

Living Room / Re: Words fail me - you'll have to read this yourself

« on: December 24, 2015, 07:54 PM »

Anyway, I would have voted to donate it. Mainly because I don't think that anyone should destroy/mistreat art that can inspire future generations. Picasso is definitely not my style, but that shouldn't be a reason to maim his work. After all, the world is full of people that have a different view on the arts.

Honestly, you couldn't accuse me for being artsy fartsy on a good day. If someone made art that cannot stand the test of time on it's own, too bad for that piece of art and/or artist. But for pieces of art that do, keep those in shape for future generations.

We are all standing on the shoulders of giants and art/artists make that anyone enjoys the view.

-Shades (December 24, 2015, 07:38 PM)

I think somewhere in here is the "difficult" copyability of art.

If it was just "any random but competent art" as a performance piece, we wouldn't care. And stories are just text, my copy is as good as your copy from Gutenberg's Mark Twain set. And for music, there's whole cultures (besides the lawsuits of grumpy musicians) of mashup. Same with pics.

So I think Form Factor and notoriety are all over this.

117

Developer's Corner / Re: Why Does Programming Suck?

« on: December 24, 2015, 09:31 AM »

I'm gonna go with "that could generate more complexity than we could possibly embrace and armed with zero experience..."

Because normally to get that level of explosion of complexity required entire college degrees. (Remember the about six sets of standard high school courses before it "got tough in college"?)

Now we get fantastically complicated discussions every year in Nany! And people making Ludum Dare games by inventing frameworks called TurtleBrains!

 

118

Living Room / Re: Words fail me - you'll have to read this yourself

« on: December 24, 2015, 04:09 AM »

150,000 people being able to own a tiny bit of a Picasso is just kind of awesome.  

-Renegade (December 23, 2015, 11:43 PM)

But 150,000 people meeting at a "reassemble the Picasso party" would be awesomer!

119

Living Room / Super Cat 2016!

« on: December 24, 2015, 03:55 AM »

Mouser Sez:

Go Go DonationCoder 2016!!

120

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: December 21, 2015, 09:50 PM »

* Deozaan views google.com source.

-Deozaan (December 21, 2015, 08:24 PM)

Heh yeah I did that too, "Oh look, it only has like seven UI elements and a multi page source file?! OW!"

121

General Software Discussion / Re: Upgrading and slowing

« on: December 21, 2015, 09:49 PM »

@contro: Please disclose the AV product you are using, as some are making a fast system crawl, and a slower system unusable slow.

-Ath (December 20, 2015, 03:53 PM)

I medium soon have to get a grip on my AV, my whole sys is dying, but I have no idea how good any of Win 10's native stuff is, I just haven't read the 7-12 articles.

122

General Software Discussion / Re: Upgrading and slowing

« on: December 21, 2015, 09:47 PM »

Not using the latest version is often the best solution.

Win7, office 2007, Adobe CS2, autocad 2011 will do wonders on your I7. Honestly.

-eleman (December 20, 2015, 11:21 AM)

I'll squeeze Office 2010 here because only that version (earliest / unclear later) combined with a custom add-in, gave me unprecedented control over Excel I have never seen before or since, including a god mode and like 2.5 menus.

But prob is "Win 10" is becoming one of those milestones, where "MS is Doing Things" so I wanna stay current on that one.

My current plan is to give it 4-7 more months to shake out.

123

Developer's Corner / Re: Why Does Programming Suck?

« on: December 20, 2015, 03:52 PM »

Two of the best things that ever happened to programming are code completion, and the nifty code context help that Microsoft abandoned after Visual Studio 2005. In VS2005 you could simply sit down knowing nearly nothing, start typing, and be productive with a little effort and no external resources needed.

-Renegade (December 20, 2015, 03:26 PM)

But ... but ... Renny, ... that was something useful !   It worked! Microsoft can't have that!  They need to be sure they first promise PlaysForSure is marketed, then they make their own Zune that squirts, then kill that off too! And now I can't play Ludum Dare games because XP is too old!

They can't stand to make a product that might be useful and create sales!

Kill it! Kill it now!

 

124

Living Room / Re: No escape from the surveillance state - printers

« on: December 17, 2015, 09:56 AM »

What's an identifier?

125

Living Room / Re: Kickstarter has a problem... the Solution

« on: December 16, 2015, 06:26 PM »

Meanwhile you back 350 projects!? Any quick notes about averages and some special case backing higher amounts?

App stores have crashed our idea of what stuff is worth. I'll pay $6.77 for a McDonald's meal but skies alive if people wanna give $6.77 to a Kickstarter project!

"Anyone" (I know, big exceptions) can fund $6.77 for one fun little thing that caught their eye and seems to have 3 good devs, a passable artist, a passable marketer, and a passable accountant.

It does take passion to (rounding down) build up to $2000 in total kickstarters but it's almost like 21st century entertainment, for 2 grand you get "350 channels of entertainment for years, 350 stories of some shouting, some tears, and sometimes triumph ... and then kewl $hit!"

Even with a bigger fail rate ... now ya got 300 new kewl things to play with and stories to tell for a decade. For two grand.