Messages

51

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.26.0 - Oct 8, 2014

« on: October 10, 2014, 01:50 AM »

Thanks mouser. Of course, that's what I thought. Strangely though, DCUpdater offered to update CH+S which is in portable mode.I don't know how that happened.

At that point, I didn't remember my CH+S install was portable, so I agreed to update... but I quickly remembered when the newly CH+S started with an empty DB (as there was now 2 CH+S installed). A first "Oh my... what happened" followed by "hmmm... maybe it just installed a new version somewhere else".

52

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.26.0 - Oct 8, 2014

« on: October 09, 2014, 06:10 PM »

Can DCUpdater detect CH+S original "installation" folder, even if CH+S is used in "portable mode" ? Just asking as -- without noticing -- I let DCUpdater install a separate instance of CH+S. Uninstalled it right after, of course.

I might have missed something: to update the portable "version", should I just download it and unpack it in the folder where it resides ? Or should I use the updater and just change the installation folder path?

(No rush)

53

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.26.0 - Oct 8, 2014

« on: October 09, 2014, 02:04 AM »

v2.26.0 is official.

-mouser (October 08, 2014, 02:34 AM)

Many thanks!

54

Find And Run Robot / Farr periodically accessing external hard drives

« on: July 28, 2014, 05:34 PM »

Hello there.

It's been bugging me for a while, but once every X use, farr freezes and I noticed that my external hard drive starts spinning. If I unplug the hard drive, the problem obviously disappears.

Here are the various folders farr is searching :



Doesn't seem to look in (e.g.) Q:\, which is a backup hard drive. No favorites folder or whatever on these backup drives.

Any ideas why farr would want to access external hard drives ?

Thanks!

55

General Software Discussion / Re: Taming Windows 8's impolite Taskbar with DDMM

« on: July 22, 2014, 12:36 PM »

I've used Taskbar Activate too (beginning of this year), but I found it unreliable depending on the applications running in the background and maybe other factors (?).

I remember running it as admin to circumvent some problems, but was still letting the taskbar show up at inappropriate time, or not showing it all, etc.

It might be something with the combination of services, background applications, etc., if didn't work for me but did for you.

56

General Software Discussion / Re: Taming Windows 8's impolite Taskbar with DDMM

« on: July 21, 2014, 11:39 AM »

Yes, it can help. But I'd still hit the left screen border too many times.
(In the same spirit though, one thing I do is move the applications toolbars and menus to the left to gain maximum vertical space.)

57

General Software Discussion / Taming Windows 8's impolite Taskbar with DDMM

« on: July 21, 2014, 12:04 AM »

I'm sure I'm not the only one to find the Taskbar annoying (see below). So I thought I'd share that silly little trick.

Windows XP allowed me to NOT have my taskbar always on top. That way it would just disappear behind other windows. To see/access it, I just had to press the Windows key.
Windows 8/8.1 doesn't offer that mode so I'm stuck with autohide (+ always on top, of course) to gain real estate on a small screen.

The problem with autohide is that hitting the screen border inadvertently with the mouse will trigger the taskbar. And it'll impolitely get in the way.

Tried many software to either 1- completely hide the taskbar and control it with a key or simply, 2- or constrain the mouse out of screen borders (so that the taskbar won't pop up when it's on autohide). Most of them won't work properly, 100% of the time; i.e. there are always times where the taskbar will show up or not show up at all, etc.

Anyway: for me, the simple DDMM finally solved the problem. Found it thanks to that topic : Looking for a Mouse/Cursor restriction tool ... ?.
With it you can define a limit through which the mouse can't travel. It's been flawlessly working for the last 3 days.

Taksbar is now behaving properly. To access it, I just move the mouse through the defined screen limit by keeping the ctrl key pressed, or by pressing Windows+Z.

(One little bug, maybe -- not enough to be a showstopper : Using Ctrl+Alt+some other key will sometimes make the Ctrl key "stick", allowing the mouse to move freely through the imposed limits. Pressing Ctrl again solves the problem.)

58

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: July 16, 2014, 01:19 PM »

Thanks for the link. Some interesting questions/answers there!

59

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: July 14, 2014, 07:34 PM »

Bought it a while ago; I'm more than satisfied. No problems what - so - ever. It just runs in the background, doing its job silently, quickly, efficiently and without fault. It's very well done.

(PS I still use the real-time sync option, which works well for syncing my multimedia collection over a network.)

60

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: May 14, 2014, 07:49 AM »

"10x longer" is approximately right in my case...  

61

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ? (All about Git, Mercurial-Hg and the like...)

« on: May 09, 2014, 10:55 AM »

 

62

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ? (All about Git, Mercurial-Hg and the like...)

« on: March 28, 2014, 02:06 PM »

A few good tips, yes. For commits I use similar conventions. The key point is consistency. I like to summarize what I did in the first line, then highlight what I changed in classes and methods/functions, if significant (i.e. "knowing it could help in the future").
Of course, in Git all the changes are already easily visible (especially with a nice GUI like SmartGit/Hg), but a little English (or whatever "natural" language) can help... a couple weeks later   .

Summary/title

More details  if necessary

* Class1 : what I did
- method1() : what I did (very briefly)
- method2() : what I did

*Class2 : ...
- method3() :

etc.

63

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ? (All about Git, Mercurial-Hg and the like...)

« on: March 27, 2014, 09:53 AM »

Thanks!

64

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: On importing data into Clipboard Help and Spell

« on: March 07, 2014, 03:04 PM »

I could export in various formats -- CSV, TSV, XML...

In some cases,  I'd have to reformat some of the data to be able to import it. A Simple text "clip separator" as rjbull suggests would then do the job. (Either applied semi-automatically with a regex, in a text editor, or using a common search & replace function, or even by manually pasting the separator in between notes/clips -- this would certainly be quicker than to manually select and copy.)

BTW, mouser, CH&S is again my Clipboard Manager of choice. I left it behind for a while -- when it couldn't clip images -- and I decided to try it again. I'm impressed. It's a great app that does what it's supposed to do very well and has all the options I need, and more.  

65

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: February 20, 2014, 11:01 AM »

>I tested it against a 1.5 million file backup and it kept within about 300 Megs.  

Amazing improvement. Congrats!
Here, the app keeps my desktop and server "in sync", fast, reliably and unobtrusively. Update went without a hitch.
 

66

Living Room / Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant.

« on: January 11, 2014, 10:28 PM »

Dropbox is down
minimaxir 1 hour ago | link

Apparently the website has been compromised: https://twitter.com/...s/421820685766250496
The hackers are also threatening a database leak: https://twitter.com/...s/421822727331131392
EDIT: Dropbox's statement is that it's maintainance issues: https://tech.dropbox...opbox-status-update/

-IainB (January 10, 2014, 10:02 PM)

Yup. Lost 1 hour of my time today thinking it was a Windows 8 issue after a bunch of updates. Then I wondered if... And, yes, that was it. BTW, Dropbox Inc. say they're now up and running, but I still can't access my account and connect with my laptop. Strangely, my mobile device can.

In any case : thanks for the heads up concerning Evernote. I was wondering about its reliability as I was considering using it more for voice memos. I'm getting more and more fed up with software glitches and data loss -- probably an effect of old age. Yes, there are worse cases out there, but data loss is unbearably annoying.

67

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: December 13, 2013, 02:02 PM »

Ah, no. What I can do is have it list all steps, just as it does in the log during the normal run.

-apankrat (December 13, 2013, 01:24 PM)

This seems fine to me.

Second option sounds good to, but is it worth the trouble? Maybe -- can't really say.

68

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: December 13, 2013, 01:21 PM »

OK, that's actually very easy to do. There's a formal planning module that compiles a backup plan, so a dry run would be just a matter of dumping that plan without executing it. The question is in which format should it be dumped - any thoughts on this?

-apankrat (December 13, 2013, 12:27 PM)

Thanks.
I'm not sure I understand your question. Like HTML vs plain text vs xyz ? Or how many details should it show (all operations vs summary) ?

69

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: December 13, 2013, 01:17 PM »

Awesome. How's your copying and updating speeds?

-apankrat (December 13, 2013, 12:27 PM)

I don't have any stats -- yet. However, I tested it across a network (where delta copying will be most useful) and I can say it's fast. I also tested it on USB 3 external hard drive, and it's also fast. Perceptibly faster than what I currently use.

For now I plan on using Bvckup to keep a music collection (stored on a server) constantly updated. Will see if I should eventually use it for other purposes. Probably, since I like speedy backups.

70

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« on: December 13, 2013, 12:19 PM »

Everything works as expected here. Thanks!

A couple things (haven't got the time to delve into other details yet): :
 
1- When setting the paths in "Backup From" and "Backup To", the browse button picks the last opened path. So if, presumably, the last picked path was for "Backup To", setting up Backup From" for another profile will point to the last "Backup To" path.

This could lead to (serious) mistakes if the user just cloned a backup profile with the idea of just slightly modifying a few parameters (like the source and destination) and if the paths are somewhat similar.

IMO, the path for source and destination should be stored/memorized separately by Bvckup.

2- Some kind of "simulated run" option with a log showing what would be done is often useful. Most backup solutions have that feature and I always use it to make sure all is fine. Even if a backup is only a backup, destroying 4TB of data because of a slight mistake could be time consuming.

71

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8's Task Manager -- Slow as Hell.

« on: December 13, 2013, 11:25 AM »

I hate upgrading as it always brakes something. That's why I waited until March 2013 to leave XP.

The 8.1 upgrade (3 weeks ago) broke a few things (now working)

   - Problems with all special folders (Documents, Music, Downloads, Videos, ...) : were reset to Microsoft defaults. So several applications couldn't find their configuration files as they were recreated elsewhere at start-up.
   - Lost Wi-Fi but after rebooting 2 times (presumably after a few patch installations or whatever) it came back. And now it works well... But I lost a couple hours trying to figure out what the heck...
   - Seems like my power management config were lost.

That said, I made 2 images of my drive on 2 separate hard drives before upgrading as I *never* trust any upgrade.

To summarize... Task Manager is now faster. : ) And I don't get to see the useless (for me) tiles at boot time.

72

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8's Task Manager -- Slow as Hell.

« on: December 12, 2013, 11:13 AM »

Reviving an old thread.  
Seems like Windows 8.1's Task Manager running got quicker (coming back from standby/sleep mode)! Something like 10x quicker.
Now you're talking.

73

Living Room / Re: Backing up data without any users logged on

« on: November 29, 2013, 02:57 PM »

Ah Tomos! I didn't think about the service avenue. Let me have a look at Bvckup 2 and maybe Syncovery -- more $$ but if it meets my needs better (some kind of versioning would be handy), why not. Thank you so much.
I will report back.

74

Living Room / Backing up data without any users logged on

« on: November 29, 2013, 01:21 PM »

Hello All

I'd like to be able to schedule a backup to run as soon as the computer is on and/or at scheduled times.

The idea here is to have it happen whether some specific users are logged on or not.

- It's a simple client/desktop.
- The OS is windows Vista.
- The account where this happens (if there needs to be one) should be password protected

Is this possible ? If it is, what's the best way to do it?

Thanks a lot.

75

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« on: September 28, 2013, 03:48 PM »

dtSearch is awesome! I've been using it for years - I like it because the previews and overall interface are nicer than Archivarius (own a license for that, too) and because it is less resource intenstive and produces a small index file. What I like about both dtSearch and Archivarius is that you can opt to run index updates manually, in fact, with dtSearch, that is the default setting. Finally, dtSearch is great because as noted the resource hit is negligible. I recently revisited X1 and wish that I could say the same thing... As xtabber noted, dtSearch is way too expensive for home use, though...

-Darwin (September 22, 2013, 08:57 AM)

Same here. DtSearch is great -- using it at work. There are a few things Archivarius does better (like intelligently managing hyphens and other stuff), but dtSearh overall the best solution because of certain features like RegEx support, filters saving, etc.

Archivarius is very good too-- that's what I'm using at home -- but support has been close to non existent. I've emailed the developper a couple times about what I consider a pretty severe bug, but... Nothing. The bug goes lie this: Archivarius doesn't include file content modifications in its index if the files are locked; and on the next indexing, it won't update them either... The only solutions are: 1- to reindex all files every time from scratch -- which is an absolute impossibility in my case -- OR  2- make sure all files are closed when updating indexes; that's what I do, but it's inconvenient. Once in a while (every six months), I'll do #1, just to be sure nothing is missing from the index. Takes a long long long time.

DtSearch, by contrast, never misses a file and updates ***FAST***. Ideally, I'd like to combine dtSearch and Archivarius. Maybe one day.