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Latest Forum Posts
It was driving me madIt was driving me mad. My laptop would sporadically run at 100% CPU utilization and lock up. It defied all attempts at analysis as the PC was seized and I couldn't do anything. Only a hard reboot was possible, but on rebooting the problem was gone.
Eventually I solved it with a superb little utility called Process Tamer, written by "Mouser" over at Donation Coder. Process Tamer is a monitor that watches the CPU utilization of all running processes. Once the usage of a single process gets above a certain level (by default 70%) Process Tamer reduces the usage by lowering the process priority.
It's a simple idea and Process Tamer implements it immaculately. With Process Tamer installed, the next time the problem occurred on my laptop it didn't totally lock up but rather just ran very slowly. This allowed me to do a quick diagnosis. The problem turned out to be simple but non-obvious. Two programs, Diskeeper and X1, had been accidentally scheduled to start at the same time and were getting into an embrace of death. It was unexpected, as these two normally peacefully co-exist. Simply re-scheduling the programs to start at different times solved the problem.
I couldn't have solved the problem as easily without Process Tamer. However Process Tamer has much broader application than just this kind of problem.
It's a great tool for preventing any one program from hogging your processor. Every user has experienced the situation where their PC has been slowed down to the point of being unusable, by a background program such as a desktop search program, that starts and takes all the resources. Process Tamer will stop that from ever happening again.
I was so impressed with Process Tamer that I've permanently installed it on my laptop. It takes only around 6MB of memory space and its own CPU usage is so low I could barely measure it.
Process Tamer is available for free from the Donation Coder site. They use a novel licensing system: you have to register to get a free license key which allows you to download any number of programs on the site. This key lasts six months after which you must return to the site to download another free license key. After a year you are given a permanent license. Alternatively, you can make a once-up donation of any size and get a permanent key straight away. It's a clever and ethical way to encourage users to recognize the work done by freeware authors and I support it fully. I donated generously and I hope you do too.
Our daily Blog
This page spotlights the most interesting posts collected from our forum every day.
Astyle: A Free Visual CSS EditorI know everyone is wild about CSS. If you DO want to make it easier though, give Astyle a try.Astyle is a visual CSS editor. http://www.athlab.com/Astyle/ |
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FlashForge Screensaver Maker - Now FreeFlashForge is a program that creates screensavers from flash files and, as stated above, is now free. FlashForge, the well known and popular screensaver creator, converts Adobe/Macromedia Flash files into a screensaver plus an installer. http://www.goldshell.../flashforge/main.htm |
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Desktop Tower Defense: Flash Game of the DayWe have posted a few tower defense games previously. Here's another fun one to add to the list. A live action puzzle game written for fun in flash. You have to stop your enemies, or 'creeps', from travelling all the way across the screen. Tower pieces can be purchased and placed on the map to kill the creeps before they make it across. Inspired by a Warcraft 3 tower defense map called Autumn Crossing and a few other TD Warcraft III maps. http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/ |
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TextPad updated to 5.0After two years or so, my favorite editor has been updated, just when I was about to give up hope: www.textpad.com The list of new features isn't all that impressive, but the author says it is the first in a series of new releases to come. The update is free to registered users of TextPad 4.x. Enhancements: While TextPad didn't do too well in DC's Best Text Editor review, it's still my favorite editor. It has served me fantastically well over the years, and it's unmatched in manipulating huge files, 50 MB upwards. Within the last year I've evaluated plenty of other editors, including some over the $100 mark; I've purchased EmEditor (I needed an editor that handles *all* Unicode files correctly; otherwise it still has a long way to go) and EditPad Pro (for its general neatness, but the more I use it, the more it disappoints me). TextPad remains the fastest, leanest, most streamlined in my daily use. It has only one annoycance that I can think of - the tab navigation scheme. Otherwise, of all the editors I've seen, TextPad is the one that never gets in my way and is by far the most productive. |
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Browning's 20 top tips for surviving life in the workplaceIf only I'd known while I was still part of the corporate world... 1 Never offer to make coffee http://www.guardian....y/0,,1924681,00.html |
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The limits of attentionHere's an interesting article that discusses the impact of increasing amounts of information on attention. It is no secret that we live in an information overload age. The explosion of new types of information online is a double-edged sword. We both enjoy and drown in news, blogs, podcasts, photos, videos and cool MySpace pages. And the problem is only going to get worse, as more and more people discover the new web. Consider the two charts below, illustrating the growth of the Blogosphere at large... http://www.readwrite...economy_overview.php |
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If you DO want to make it easier though, give Astyle a try.

