Messages

1

Living Room / Re: Do Not Buy a Smartwatch Right Now

« on: December 03, 2018, 09:23 PM »

RE the AmazFit BIP, I use my Pebble to bluetooth control my Android phone's music apps when I teach Argentine tango. Does the AmazFit BIP have that ability?

2

General Software Discussion / Re: Are there any simple graphic editors?

« on: May 20, 2014, 09:38 AM »

What a lovely demo for Faststone Capture, Dirhael. Impressive.

3

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: FINAL: The Official WriteUp for the NANY 2012 Event!

« on: January 08, 2012, 08:46 PM »

I'm overwhelmed at the amazing demonstration of creativity and productivity. Kudos to all the contributors. You're an inspiration.

4

Living Room / Re: Is "Thank you for your service" enough for veterans?

« on: December 20, 2011, 09:03 AM »

Josh and Renegade, thank you both for expressing well the same things that I have thought on the matter.

(Is there a recipe somewhere for doing those reveal buttons? Oh well, rather than be coy . . .)

My feeling is that if you have a nicely running, freshly sharpened chainsaw you just have to find a tree to cut down. There's something so satisfying about using that power. If you have a gun you want to shoot it at something. If you have a large standing army and more weapons that anyone else on the planet . . .

I respect our people in uniform (aside from those very few I can imagine who just wanted an opportunity to go kill someone). Whether they did it for economic, family duty, country duty, or whatever reason. They made an honorable choice. At the same time I feel that having a large standing army is an excuse for politicians to take bad, stupid, immoral actions. So when I see what we spend on and how we use our armed forces, I kind of want to say, "Thanks, but no thanks."

5

Developer's Corner / Re: Style guidelines for how to structure helpfiles?

« on: July 14, 2010, 10:50 AM »

I liked Steeladept's list in Reply #6.

Much of what passes for Help these days (including screenshots) resembles a useless programming comment that merely echoes what you're already looking at, e.g.,
  i++ # increment the index

Two of the most useful help resources I've ever had the pleasure to use are the Permuted Keyword In Context (KWIC) index for the Unix manuals (can someone supply a link for this?) and the online PHP Manual.

Permuted KWIC indexes are SO much more useful than either regular indexes or searching.

6

General Software Discussion / Mint.com gets manual transactions

« on: April 02, 2010, 08:07 AM »

Haven't tried it myself yet, but I learned from a forum thread I monitor that Mint just added manual transactions. Outstanding.

7

General Software Discussion / Re: Mint.com vs Wesabe.com vs buxfer.com

« on: March 08, 2010, 11:00 PM »

I currently have accounts with both Mint and Wesabe. Both have limitations, but of the two I prefer Mint. I'm keeping Wesabe because I have a year of transaction classified there. I can export those, but Mint can't import them! One of its limitations. Also, Wesabe promises (and promises) to improve.

For evaluating any of these I recommend checking the forums. See what the current hot gripes and wish list items are. Are those things you care about? See what the communities are like. Are they anywhere near as friendly and knowledgeable as DonationCoders, for example.

Wesabe
 + Able to enter manual transactions
 - Horribly slow, painful user interface. It helps if you start with a fresh browser session and restart when things get slow. Seems like they are doing something that exercises Firefox's memory leak. They've taken lots of heat on the user interface and say that they have improvements in the works, but I haven't seen the things I've been looking for.

Mint
 + Highly capable of connecting to all my financial institutions. Easy, quick set up.
 + Much more intuitive, faster user interface.
 + Better at automatically classifying transactions.
 -- Can't enter manual transactions.
 ? Recently acquired by Quicken. Google "mint quicken".

I've barely scratched their abilities to present graphs, do budgets, make recommendations, etc. I can't stand accounting activities, so I'm looking for something stone simple that will do as much of the work as possible automatically. Nothing is quite there yet.

Good luck. --David

8

Developer's Corner / Re: Check this out - Videos on how to protect your website against hackers

« on: March 29, 2009, 09:53 AM »

I am hard of hearing, and I find videos difficult to understand if there is background noise in my surroundings or in the video (such as for your introduction in the car), and especially when I can't see the face of the speaker. (I guess no face to see will be most of the time with these videos, since you talk about being introverted and finding it helpful to read your notes.) You can see that I am able to catch some of the verbal material, because your voice pitch and enunciation work well for me.

Any chance of producing transcripts? I wish everyone would do that, and not just for the hard of hearing. I find it highly desirable for purposes of skimming the material and for extracting notes.

9

Living Room / Re: Android phone - anyone using it?

« on: March 29, 2009, 09:29 AM »

I've been using the Android G1 since soon after it came out. I use it for all the usual smartphone functions, as well as browsing.

The thumb keyboard works well for me, and the browser seems fast and easy to use. Panning around on pages not formatted for a mobile device feels intuitive and easy.

This phone replaces a Palm Treo 650 that I used for many years. The G1 is much lighter in weight and better in form factor. Keyboard is a little better to use, too.

I had become hugely tired and annoyed with syncing my contacts/calendars/email across platforms, so some years ago I moved everything to Gmail. When the G1 came out I jumped on it. I'd rate it 7 out of 10 for my purposes. There are a number of usability features that can, and will, I expect, improve with software maturity. For example, only way I can see to get camera pictures to my computer is to tediously email them one by one.

I'll be happy to reply to followup questions.

10

General Software Discussion / Re: Awesome article re: organization and notetaking

« on: January 30, 2009, 02:44 PM »

DREAMING IN CODE: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software, by Scott Rosenberg, tells a wonderful - and cautionary - tale of struggles by ex-Lotus guru Mitch Kapor and his team to define and implement Chandler. As a Lotus Notes practitioner, a student of information organization, and an ages old programmer on projects large and small, I could relate to and enjoy the tale.