Topics

1

Living Room / XCCR--what's it about?

« on: May 09, 2006, 01:30 AM »

Has anyone seen this website?

What is its purpose?

Cheers.

2

General Software Discussion / Neat little disk space visualizer

« on: April 20, 2006, 07:10 PM »

I just found this program OverDisk, and I urge you all to check it out.



It scans your hard-drive (~30s for the 85k files on my main HDD) and maps your files/folders into a sort of multi-leveled pie-chart, starting from the center at C: (or D:, etc. depending on which drive is selected) and shows the proportions of space taken.  Clicking on a subfolder "re-centers", showing the size distribution of its children.

   The best way to understand what I'm trying to say is to try it yourself!

I just used it to find 7GB of Protected Files left over after uninstalling Norton.  I could also see it as being very useful to determine which directories to back up or even better in the all-important spring cleaning!

3

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: remap extra keyboard keys for other tasks

« on: March 22, 2006, 01:33 PM »

This is probably a quick thing to do in AHK, but I have not yet learned all the necessary commands so I'd really enjoy some help.  On to the task!

I own a MS Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard (stolen picture, click to zoom):

The bundled software does not allow many changes, so I was thinking that I could use AHK to alter the functionality of a few things.  In particular, the zoom slider (in the middle) and the back/forward keys (at the bottom).

Firstly, the slider.  From AHK's Key History view (which is only showing the key strokes), I believe it works by sending Ctrl+Scroll wheel up/down every ~.1s or so.  Since zoom is not very useful to me, I'd prefer this combination be mapped to just the scroll wheel up/down.  Is this doable?

Secondly, the back/fwd keys.  My mouse is already equipped with such buttons so the keyboard is redundant.  Instead, I'd like these keys to map to left/right mouse buttons (a throwback to my lappy).  Again with AHK, I see these keys are mapped to Alt+Left/Right in the following way: Alt d, Left d, Left u, Alt u--but all sequenced without delay.  The problem I'm running in to with coding is translating this to the analogous mousing.  That is, I'd like to be able to hold down the back/fwd keys and drag files/folders.  Is this doable?
 

(This is more useful than it sounds.)

I've found that the mouse can be moved around more freely when the fingers are loose, so using the alternate hand to control the buttons makes repetitive mousing a breeze.  E.g. big file operations, simple Flash games, AutoCAD, etc.

I should also like to note that my mouse uses RightAlt+L/R, so there shouldn't be a conflict there if the script just recognizes LeftAlt. 
Thanks for reading, any help you can provide would be most appreciated.

Cheers,
noth(a)nk.you

P.S. Thanks for tolerating my playing with the spoiler tag!

4

Post New Requests Here / DONE: Trigger on Mouse Hover

« on: January 12, 2006, 04:32 AM »

It's a pretty confusing title, but it could probably be done pretty easily.  The idea is to sense the presence of the cursor in certain [defined] areas of the screen for some [defined] duration, then perform some [defined] action.  I think that this program exist[s/ed?] as Green Screen for power settings, but I have not been able to find much.

I'd like this program for that same purpose (e.g. turning off the monitor when going to bed, starting the screensaver when walking away, shutting down at the end of the work day, etc.), but I can see usefulness for launching programs.

It could be customized at first by calling some text file, but it would ideally exhibit:
-rule customization in GUI, selecting parts of a current screenshot
-context sensitive (i.e. only work while looking at the desktop so as not to shut down while watching a movie)

I'm thinking it could use rectangular areas, based on pixel/percentage coordinates of the UL and LR corners, then check for the cursor's presence in that area for some amount of time.

No doubt there is someone who has a better way of doing this, but I was thinking something along the lines of: Check Cursor Good -> Wait for x seconds (while checking) -> Perform action.  Along the lines of this sub-par pseudocode:

[Select]

const N;
int action[N] UL LR;
int main ()
{
    while(1)
        for ( n = 0; n <= N; ++n %= N)                        //counts modulo N
            action[n] += ( check(n) ? 50ms : -action[N] );    //check position against 'rule n'
            if action[n] >= 5000 ms                           //if it holds out long enough
                perform(n);                                   //go for it!
            end
        end
    wait 50ms                                                 //don't eat the processor
    end
}

bool check (n)
{
    switch (n)
        case 0: UL = (900 700); LR = (950 700); break;        //define span
        case 1: ...
        ...
        case N: ...
    end
    return ( (mPos[0]>=UL[0]) && (mPos[1]<=LR[1]) && ... ) )  //is it in there?
}

void perform (n)
{
    switch (n)
        case 0: ScreensaverStart ()
        case 1: Hibernate ()
        ...
        case N: ShutDown ()
    end
}

I shudder to think what would happen with overlapping zones. 

Thanks for your time and thoughts, Ben