Topics

76

Living Room / Zaine's avatar

« on: June 16, 2009, 12:17 AM »

Zaine appears to have chosen one of the most disturbing avatars i've ever seen. if you'd like to see the correct/inverted/negative version of it click below...

Spoiler

and the disturbing version he's using...

Spoiler

77

Living Room / google mail spam crazy

« on: June 12, 2009, 03:35 PM »

anyone else getting loads of fake "cannot be delivered" spam in their gmail account?

everytime i check my mail (about every ten minutes) there's about 50 new spam messages - all claiming to be undelivered emails.

they're all in the spam folder, so no big deal. it's just a bit alarming that they've appeared out of nowhere.

78

Living Room / how to copy code formatted text on this forum? i must be doing something wrong.

« on: June 05, 2009, 06:47 AM »

i was trying to copy an ahk script that czb created and posted on the forum here (4th post down): https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=12935.0

that is, copy and then paste it into blank document. but no matter which editor i use to paste the code into, it does it as one long single line rather than the formatting seen in the code box. (it doesn't make any difference about the settings of word wrap in the editor - the formatting is still wrong.) clicking on the "copy or print" link above the code box doesn't retain the formatting either when copying from the new page that opens.

i've solved the problem by "quoting" the code box in a reply post preview and then simply copying the script from there - this provides the correct formatting when pasting into a blank document.

this seems a strange process, so i'm assuming i'm doing something wrong. surely, you can copy from the code boxes and the formatting stays intact?

79

Living Room / howto: resizable playback youtube and other online vids

« on: June 02, 2009, 06:33 AM »

after becoming frustrated about having only two viewing size choices (standard/small or fullscreen) for watching ALL online videos, i thought it time to experiment...

it looks like you can just take the embed codes for any video, paste it into your browsers address bar, remove any of the embed tags that surround the url, then hit enter.

you'll then have the embedded video playing back in your browser - simply resize your browser to resize the video.

this is so simply it's probably been mentioned hundreds of times online already, but it was new to me. kind of obvious too when you realise pretty much all online vids have embed codes.

80

Living Room / it's been a while since i said those special words...

« on: May 08, 2009, 03:58 AM »

it must be a couple of years since i said how much i love DC. i know it often is said by other members, i just tend to forget that all forums aren't like this one.

i really don't bother with other forums but i have been frequenting another for a few months now. it seemed almost on a par with DC; everyone friendly and willing to help out it seemed. everyone seemed very sensible and amiable.

now, just recently, quite a few of the core members have decided to gang-up on a relatively new member. their methods and remarks have been quite alarming to me - they've shown themselves to be pretty immature and intolerant (i'd jump to conclusions and say they must be children but i know they are old enough to run their own businesses).

also, these same core members found humour in someone's disability - mainly through their ignorance so i was willing to forgive them that.

i'll not go into details of who and where; i just wanted to say that i've just realised (again) how special DC and everyone here is. and mouser, of course. i'm still waiting for the owner of the other forum to step in and provide some calm and reason to the situation - just like mouser would do - but i suspect it won't happen.

81

Living Room / crisis of credit visualized by Jonathan Jarvis

« on: April 10, 2009, 04:09 AM »

Jonathan Jarvis has made a simple to understand video about the credit crunch. (i've ignored all the ones that have been on TV so maybe this is overkill for some of you that are sick to death of these things).

watch it, then you'll be able to transcend your confusion about this mess and simply start being incredibly angry instead.

http://www.crisisofcredit.com/

edit:
here's a more interesting link with background to the video: http://jonathanjarvi...com/crisis-of-credit

82

Living Room / why did i leave my previous employment, ah, now i remember (youtube vid).

« on: March 25, 2009, 02:04 PM »

i sometimes forget just how much i hated my old job. well, not the job so much - just one of the people that worked there.

this clip brought all those (un)happy memories flooding back...

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=NWkDQ3pgfXE

83

Living Room / Android phone - anyone using it?

« on: March 22, 2009, 04:50 PM »

i'm looking at the Android phone thingy. might sign-up for one. question is, is it any good mobile browsing, i don't really care about the rest of it - i won't be watching videos, playing music or even using it like a typical phone. just browsing.

maybe the questions is, is the android thing better than the ipone for the internet? i like the idea of a real keyboard for email so the iphone gets thrown in the bin straight away on that one.

anyway, anyone know what they are talking about regarding the gadget (cos i certainly don't).

84

Living Room / how the hell do i access a xampp virtual host from inside vmware RESOLVED.

« on: February 18, 2009, 02:46 PM »

this is driving me around the bend. i'm i'm assuming it's a simple solution.

i've got XAMPP running a virtual host site on my PC (so i can test things with the site).

so, as it's a 'virtual host' i can access this site with something like "http://www.madeupname.com" from my PC.

this bit all works perfectly fine.

the problem is, how to access this same virtual host site from inside VMWare?

i can access NON virtual host sites that XAMPP is running, i.e. i can access anything in the 'htdocs' folder of XAMPP when accessing it from within VMWare using http://192.168.0.1

i just don't seem to be able to figure out how to access the virtual hosts XAMPP is running - i thought i'd just be able to do something like "http://192.168.0.1/www.madeupname.com"

can't find any explanation online but then i ain't got a clue if i'm trying to do something that's not possible - seems like a simple enough thing to expect to work to me though.

any help, please?

85

General Software Discussion / Screen2Exe - FREE and pretty clever screen casting software

« on: February 06, 2009, 12:27 PM »

i've just been playing about with "Screen2Exe" for a few minutes and it works well for a free util. here's the link...

http://www.screen-re...d.com/screen2exe.htm


seems quite straightforward to set up the area you want to record, all the options are self-explanatory. it can include audio and there are several ways of editing and adding to the recording, e.g. blur parts out, add captions, add images, discard repeat frames, etc.

final output is at it says on the tin - to an exe file. so anyone can watch it back. not something you'll use for putting on a web page but probably the perfect FREE tool for when you need to send the movie to someone.

i wonder if the output files can be converted to something youtube can show.

(i was going to post this somewhere in the old screencast threads but i thought as they are so old i'll just make a new topic.)

86

Coding Snacks / IDEA: the block me (when you are your own worst enemy)

« on: February 04, 2009, 09:51 AM »

i believe this program would help a lot of procrastinators out there (providing they didn't just find something else to procrastinate about). so, it might be something for this years DC GTD experiment.

the idea is that the util would block you from running certain programs, opening certain files and browsing certain web pages - at certain times of the day that you set.

aha, you say, but i could just turn the util off and then i could gain access to everything that is blocked - so it's useless. which is correct.

the crucial part with this new util is that it is password controlled AND YOU DON'T KNOW THE PASSWORD. instead, you let someone you can trust put the password in for you, and they keep it a secret. any changes you need to make to this blocker util requires you asking the password keeper friend (or relative) to enable the program for you.

if it's a family member (or local friend) they just tap in the password on your keyboard. if it's someone you know online they either enter the password via a remote desktop like connection, OR perhaps send an encrypted file that either acts as a key to unlock the blocker util for a limited period of time, or it contains information to actually make the changes to the blocker util for you.

think of it like the buddy system that's used with other people that have addictions - this is just the computerised version of that.

87

General Software Discussion / vista - a simple way to change a file type's associated ICON

« on: January 07, 2009, 07:23 AM »

i actually like vista even if there are a few annoyances. some things are just plain stupid though; how to change a file type associated icon.

i'd been trying to find a simple way of doing it without resorting to editing the registry. plenty of result online stating that there isn't really a good way of doing it without buying a util - which seems a bit too much just to change a single setting in windows vista.

i'd been using Creative Elements Power Tools in demo mode to do the job - which is overkill. http://www.creativel...ment.com/powertools/

but after another attempt at finding a better solution today i finally spotted this - and it's free...

"Types" http://types.sourceforge.net/ there doesn't appear to be much info about it, looks like it's created by Evgeny Strunnikov.

seems to work as you'd expect.



(sorry, if it's already been mentioned on the forum, i didn't check.)

88

Living Room / hmm, looks like a copy of gridmove.

« on: November 28, 2008, 02:13 PM »

this 'AeroSnap' thing http://www.aerosnap.de/index_eng.htm looks remarkably like the original description i made for Jgpaiva's Gridmove, i.e. drag to screen edge to resize window. not tried it yet though.

is it a coincidence, is it a copy. well, it's free so i guess there's no reason to complain.

i'm assuming Gridmove and Dialogmove will be built into windows 7...

...if not, how about getting together, Jgpaiva, and building these into non autohotkey based utils?

89

General Software Discussion / Acronis total dirt OS selector - kills hard drives!

« on: November 25, 2008, 02:40 PM »

i'm still wondering if i'm dreaming this but having pinched myself several times i 'think' i'm awake.

as i've got vista and xp nicely working on the same hard drive (on different partitions) i thought i'd have a go at making things smoother when selecting which to boot.

Acronis OS Selector seemed like a good idea to try. it sort of worked - almost. i was prepared to mess about with it a bit to get it working fully if things didn't go right first off.

so, vista booted fine, xp wouldn't boot.

no problem i thought i'll just disable the Acronis loader and go back to how i had things working with the GAG floppy boot loader.

how nice to find that after loading up vista and checking if all my partitions and drives are there i find that the Acronis loader has completely wiped out a 250 gig hard drive - one where i keep all my data. lovely. thank you Acronis, i will make sure you are first on my Christmas list.

the drive is now an 'unallocated partition'. i've tried a couple of programs to scan for lost partitions and they've found nothing. absolutely fantastic.

so, just an innocent bit of messing about has wiped an entire drive - one that the Acronis rubbish shouldn't have touched anyway - there weren't any operating systems on it.

now, at this point i would normally be preparing a noose to put around my neck after losing all that data (that's everything i've created and saved as reference material), but i was using MirrorFolder to keep a duplicate of everything in realtime on another drive. so i 'believe' everything is safe - if nothing else goes wrong.

there's a moral in there somewhere - possibly a few.

here's the bottom line (literally)... don't even consider using that Acronis piece of sh*t OS loader. how dumb can a piece of software be - Acronis should be ashamed to have created such an evil program. what a load of b*stards.

90

Living Room / keep xp, put vista on 2nd partition on a raid 0 drive - will i regret it?

« on: October 22, 2008, 08:32 AM »

i know this is lazy of me to ask, and i've procrastinated for several months over this...

will i regret installing vista onto a 2nd partition of a raid 0 drive? i want to keep xp on the first partition (of the same raid 0 drive) and then gradually see if i can stick with vista and forget xp. well, that's the theory.

i know vista will install alongside xp but vista worries me about how it appears to take control of everything, so i'm concerned that this will lead to problems if i wish to remove vista and just stick with xp.

like, err, is vista going to go mental if removing it from a 2nd partition on a raid 0 drive - or am i just being paranoid?

anyone know for sure?

91

Post New Requests Here / quick ahk idea: resize window with mouse click and scroll wheel

« on: September 25, 2008, 06:42 AM »

a simple idea (that might be already covered by a small util).

hold the left mouse button down and scroll the mouse wheel to make the current window taller.

hold the right mouse button down and scroll the mouse wheel to make the current window wider.

maybe hold both left and right buttons down and scroll to make the window larger in all directions.

(not thought about this for more than a few seconds so maybe those actions would conflict with other things.)

92

Living Room / Codex Transportica - recognition at InspirationBit.com

« on: August 25, 2008, 07:00 AM »

the Codex Transportica has had a great article written about it over at the Inspiration Bit website. i think Vivien has done a great job (it couldn't have been fun going through the underlying Transportica code) and there are a good list of suggestions for improving the design of the site.

http://www.inspirati...ypography-part-five/

if you are interested in web typography (or just typography in general) then you will enjoy the IB articles. i know there are several tips i've taken onboard from reading past posts.

(i'll be doing a tutorial for inspirationbit.com about how i did the Transportica banner image, but it might take me a while to finish it.)

i'll end just by saying how grateful i am to Vivien for writing the piece.

93

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / new birdy comic website from nudone and timns

« on: August 07, 2008, 04:12 AM »

just a quick announcemet for our new comic strip website. as you'll see, the characters are probably related to Cody, or are his friends, at least. who knows, maybe Cody will make an appearance.

the work is a collaboration between me and another DC member, timns.

there are plenty of strips lined up and ready to go, updates will be on mondays and thursdays. the website itself is not 100% finished but it's close enough for the moment (there's plenty of stuff that needs cleaning or tweaking underneath it all).

i hope you have time to have a look and become a regular reader. there's the usual RSS and email subscriptions services available.

here's the link: http://www.head-in-the-clouds.com

94

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: synchronise and store desktop files online - exclude "large" files

« on: May 09, 2008, 02:54 PM »

as usual, i'm expecting that this will already have been done - but maybe not.

something like a "desktop mirror".

i'd like to have my main 'desktop contents' available on the various computers i use. i don't mean remote access and control to a specific machine's desktop; just the files i seem to collect and leave scattered all over it - but not large files.

the idea works like this:

1. dropping/creating 'small' files like .doc, .txt, .jpg, etc., etc. on the desktop is immediately captured by a monitoring tool that uploads these same files to an ftp server.

2. you move on to a different computer that is also running the monitoring tool and it automatically downloads the stored files onto this machine's desktop.

3. any changes that are made such as file edits and complete file removal is also monitored and shared across the other desktops.

4. there would be an option to specify 'large' file exclusion, and i suppose file 'type' exclusion/inclusion.


hopefully someone can recommend a tool that already does this. i can imagine there are ones that will do something similar but will probably be lacking one of the requirements.

any suggestions or is this a util that needs creating?

thanks.

95

Living Room / Searchme - another visual search attempt

« on: April 23, 2008, 01:30 AM »

here's another Search Provider attempt to return visual results of pages found (i'd guess to be picked up by google if it has any success).

it has a nice way of doing it.

http://beta.searchme.com/

96

Living Room / mysterious Codex Transportica book found - i have the website to prove it.

« on: March 15, 2008, 04:02 AM »

The Codex Transportica



http://www.codextransportica.com

A mysterious book has recently come into my possession (Mr. R. Maximus is the other custodian of the book). It is our belief that the book contains something profound - we simply need time to translate the illegible scribble that accompanies the bizarre illustrations.

You are invited to join us and be part of the throng that will learn the mysteries of the Codex Transportica.

Please make use of the RSS and email subscription services to follow the adventure. Comments are welcomed over at the website, as are questions and suggestions. New posts will be uploaded at least once a week but I will aim to make them more frequent.

As further introduction, Mr. R. Maximus has deciphered the first extract from the beginning of the book.

First diary entry - undated.

The Seizures, as I have come to call them, struck quite suddenly. The first time, I was dining alone in a favourite house, and awoke face down on the linen. The wait staff seemed frightened of me; I had knocked over a water glass and broken a vase of flowers. Before me was the first drawing, sketched carefully in my own hand inside of a notebook I had purchased that morning.

The next time it happened, I was at work. The incident cost me my position, for after I was revived it was shown to me that I’d carefully inked a drawing on the back of an irreplaceable 16th century manuscript. (Trading in the bonds I possessed to pay for my vandalism did not appease my employer. Though I do now own the defaced manuscript.)

Shortly thereafter I barricaded myself at home. The Seizures come upon me a few times a week, then leave me alone for a month or more. Just when I begin to wonder if they have departed me for good, I am stricken once more. Often there are words and descriptions for the bizarre devices I have drawn, left behind as the waking memory of some nightmare. I must hurry to transcribe them before they fade entirely; and transcribe them I must, for I feel they hold a clue to my worsening condition.

It is as if a spider were niggling between my frontal lobes. An odd, foreign presence that sometimes taps at the mental skylight, and finding it unlocked, sneaks in for a visit. My greatest fear is not that the Seizures continue, driving me into complete madness, but that they stop before I learn their secrets.

97

Living Room / the award for most clueless pc user ever - my candidate.

« on: March 01, 2008, 02:27 AM »

i set a new machine up for a retired couple this week as they were tired of their old windows 95 based machine. i knew they weren't really keen on computers nor the internet but they've sent emails and done the basics for several years.

so, i was dismayed when i got a phone call from them one day after setting the new computer up for them...

them: "hello, there seems to be a problem. i can't get the computer to turn on."

me: "so the power button doesn't work?"

them: "the power button?"

me: "the silver button on the front of the tower case."

them: "oh, i have to press the button on the THE TOWER? that's strange."

me: "well, it's the same process to what you did with the previous computer."

them: "oh!"


second phone call...

them: "i'm having trouble with the mouse now. i can't click on anything."

me: "so when you click on an icon or button nothing happens?"

them: "i can't click on anything because there aren't any buttons on the mouse."

me: "er. the buttons are in the usual position at the front either side of the wheel."

them: "oh, let me try again. yes, you are right. i couldn't see the buttons so i didn't think there were any."

me: "no problem, just let me know if you need any further help. good bye"


beat that. they've been using a computer for several years and were completely lost the minute they tried to use a new machine. i expect they'll not be able to do anything at all with it - i've shown them how to connect to the internet and use gmail - something they'll never be able to do ever again i expect.

98

Living Room / free email without frequent login requirement - recommendations?

« on: February 28, 2008, 04:26 AM »

i've been asked if there is a free email service that does not require frequent (monthly) logins to keep it active. it's for an elderly couple that always spend summer abroad for several months and wouldn't have a clue how to access their email unless it is on their own computer at home.

they have lost their email accounts several times because of infrequent use, and they are using a dial-up pay as you go service that does not provide an email account.

is there an email service that anyone can recommend, is free, and doesn't have the restrictions that yahoo and hotmail has (i don't know what gmail's service implies)?

thanks.

edit: i see that gmail's period of inactivity is 9 months. this might be enough but i believe it will be safer to use something that doesn't expire for at least 12 months.

99

Living Room / look at the size of my mouse mat !!!

« on: February 27, 2008, 06:22 AM »

fans of the ridiculous will appreciate my new purchase - an aimb.pad xl mouse mat. (it's 45 x 90 cm.)



(for those of you that are into big things you may also like to see the size of my recyle bin.)

100

Living Room / NEW Cody desert island wallpaper

« on: February 23, 2008, 03:45 AM »

somehow i forgot to post this wallpaper at the end of the 'Draw Cody competition'. the picture was specially printed as a full size poster that became part of the first prize that Audrey Maximus won.

now seems as good a time as any to upload the images so here they are.

a couple of other 'halloween' wallpapers are also available. Click here to view the original post (iff you haven't seen it).

If you don't see the correct pixel width and height dimensions for your monitor but you know its aspect ratio then just download the wallpaper with the same aspect ratio - it should then scale to fit properly. If you aren't sure about the aspect ratio of your screen then you will most likely be able to find it here http://en.wikipedia....Video_Standards2.svg

desert island


dimensions: 1280 x 1024, ratio: 5:4
desert-island_1280-x-1024-(5;4).jpg (237.47 kB. 1280x1024 - viewed 471 times.)

dimensions: 1440 x 960, ratio: 3:2 or 15:10
desert-island_1440-x-960-(3;2-or-15;10).jpg (208.58 kB. 1440x960 - viewed 467 times.)

dimensions: 1600 x 1200, ratio 4:3
desert-island_1600-x-1200-(4;3).jpg (244.27 kB. 1600x1200 - viewed 455 times.)

dimensions: 1920 x 1080, ratio 16:9 HD TV
desert-island_1920-x-1080-(HD-16;9).jpg (369.79 kB. 1920x1080 - viewed 469 times.)

dimensions: 1920 x 1200, ratio 16:10
desert-island_1920-x-1200-(16;10).jpg (305.06 kB. 1920x1200 - viewed 465 times.)

dimensions: 1024 x 768, ratio 4:3
desert-island_1024x768-(4;3).jpg (120.93 kB. 1024x768 - viewed 475 times.)