Messages

151

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Multi Monitor placement tool

« on: January 24, 2008, 12:20 AM »

Thanks for the heads up, Lanux. UltraMon isn't what I need though. UltraMon helps:

* efficiently move windows and maximize windows across the desktop
Already get this with the built-in NVidia utility. Besides, I can count the times I've wanted to maximize a single window across two desktops on the fingers of one hand.

* manage more applications with the Smart Taskbar
Don't need this. I use virtual desktops.

* control application positioning with UltraMon Shortcuts
Not really needed either.

* multi-monitor support for desktop wallpapers and screen savers
I have a multimon wallpaper utility (DisplayFusion) already, and I don't use anything other than the default Windows screen saver, which already supports multiple monitors.

* mirror your main monitor to secondary monitors for a presentation
My laptop's built-in display manager utility already does this. This strikes me as another "hardly ever need it" feature. I'd set it up so that the presentation ran full screen on Monitor 2 while my speaker's notes were on Monitor 1.

Not saying that UltraMon isn't a great app, it's just that I'm not inclined to pay for something that mostly supplies me with features I already have.

It's been a long time since I've done any Windows development, but if AHK can't handle this I may have to bite the bullet and see if I can hack something out myself. I'm hoping not to have to go that route, though, because it'll probably never get past the wishful thinking phase.

152

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Multi Monitor placement tool

« on: January 23, 2008, 10:07 AM »

When working with multiple monitors, it's possible to position them relative to one another, using the Display control panel in Windows XP (and I assume Vista). For example, if your right monitor (2nd) is physically positioned so the the bottom of the screen is halfway up the height of the left monitor (1st), you can adjust this offset in the display control panel by dragging the #2 box upwards. A tooltip shows the pixels offset.



I have a laptop, and it comes with a utility to switch between single monitor (undocked) and multi-monitor (docked) operation, so that's great, but it doesn't remember the offset for screen #2. So every time I switch between one display and two displays, I have to go in to the Display control panel and re-set the offset manually, using the mouse. It's time consuming, fairly imprecise and easily forgotten.

Is it possible to create an app that would automatically re-set the screen offset to a specified value? This would be helpful for other laptop users, and probably also for people who frequently change the resolution of any of their multiple monitors.

My laptop's utility lets me specify an app to run after the switch to 2 monitors occurs, and coding snack that could set these values would clean things up nicely. I checked the AHK docs, and I did see some functions in SysGet (GetSys?) that return screen metric info, but I didn't see any way to set these values, so I thought I'd ask the expert. Thanks!

153

Living Room / Re: Suffering over USB

« on: January 23, 2008, 09:29 AM »

Ok, thanks for the reccommendations.

If I'm going to shell out money for this project (and it's looking more and more like I'll have to) I'll probably just bite the bullet and buy an all-in-one external drive instead of an enclosure. It's more money, but I'd rather spend more on a sure thing than less on a solution that still may not work.

Now, which one to buy? My first impluse was the Maxtor OneTouch 4 mini, but there's a Cavalry drive with built in SATA, just in case. Hmmm....

154

Living Room / Re: Suffering over USB

« on: January 22, 2008, 10:48 AM »

Wow, lots of great feedback. Sorry it took me a while to get back here.

Just some clarification re drive type and power. First of all it is an ATA drive. Haven't made the jump to SATA on any of my machines yet. I go for OLD iron 

Second, regarding power, I knew this was an issue. Actually, I've never been able to run this drive on USB power alone. The enclosure came with an external power adapter that also plugs into a USB port (like the 2nd one you mention, Darwin - USB plug to round hole on the enclosure.) For a while I could only get good results if the drive's power adapter was plugged into the USB hub of a desktop machine.

Clearly, this is a problem when running a portable setup, so I actually hacked together an external power adapter for the enclosure. I took an AC adapter that puts out 5V and is rated for 3.0A and wired it up to an old USB extender cable. Now I've got a portable USB power supply that should be able to dish out enough power for any USB peripheral, and I use this to power the drive prior to plugging it in to the laptop.

(For the curious, I commute mostly by train, and there are always at least 1 or 2 seats that are near an AC outlet. So I can use AC while commuting. Otherwise I'd have given up on this plan long ago.)

I've been considering replacing this drive with one designed for this purpose like the Maxtor OneTouch Mini, and it's not THAT expensive a solution, but even so, the budget's not there for it yet, and I'm not sure when it will be. Plus, I feel like I'm SO CLOSE to getting this setup to work that it's become something of a personal obsession. 

ChalkTrauma, I've seen UVCView.exe mentioned elsewhere, but haven't tried it yet. What does it do? I remember there used to be a USBView app for Windows 98 that would report on certain USB info, but I haven't tracked it down yet to even see if it will work on XP.

Thanks for the input everybody!

155

Living Room / Suffering over USB

« on: January 18, 2008, 10:11 AM »

I've been beating my head against a wall with a USB problem, and I'm hoping someone with more insight and technical chops than I have will see this and throw me a life preserver.

I used to use my personal laptop for both personal and work stuff. Then I got a new laptop computer at work. Carrying two laptops in my briefcase is silly, not to mention heavy, so I've been trying to move all the stuff from my personal laptop onto MojoPac:

MojoPac is a technology that transforms your iPod or USB Hard Drive or Flash drive into a portable and private PC. Just install MojoPac on any USB 2.0 compliant storage device, upload your applications and files, modify your user settings and environment preferences, and take it with you everywhere.

Every time you plug your MojoPac-enabled device into any Windows XP PC , MojoPac automatically launches your environment on the host PC. Your communications, music, games, applications, and files are all local and accessible. And when you unplug the MojoPac device, no trace is left behind – your information is not cached on the host PC.

Great! I have an old laptop hard drive, I have a small USB enclosure for it, and now (I thought) with MojoPac I can carry my personal environment around in a small box without having to lug along a whole laptop. MojoPac is free, so I tried it and it worked just as advertised! The perfect solution!

EXCEPT... except that I can't get the USB drive to function reliably. When I plug it in, XP usually recognizes the device, but the data remains inaccessible for one of several reasons. Sometimes the Disk Managment console shows the drive's partition as unallocated. Sometimes it shows it as an extended partition composed entirely of free space. Sometimes it shows the partition but doesn't recognize it as NTFS (it says it's RAW?). And this is all subject to change based on a bizarre dance of unplugging, re-plugging, deleting entries from the device manager, warm reboots and cold reboots.

I've reformatted and repartioned this drive a couple of times already (and spent the hours it takes to copy over all the documents and settings from the laptop.) It always works great... at first. Even now, if I work at it long enough, I can almost always get the drive to come up and be recognized. But it takes a lot of time, and there's no repeatable pattern I can see that causes it to happen. If I have to spend my whole commute just trying to get the drive to come up, it kind of defeats the purpose of the whole setup. "Plug-and-play" isn't supposed to be this much work! 

The thing that drives me crazy is that I can see XP is doing SOMETHING to the drive, even when it fails to come up. The boot sequence pauses while the drive light flashes irregularly. I can hear the drive working, sometimes for minutes at a time. But there's no indication of what's going on behind the scenes, nothing I can look at to give me an idea of where the problem lies. Nothing shows up in the Event log, other than an occasional "could not read the disk" message, and even that isn't consistent.

When I plug the drive directly into a desktop machine via IDE, there are no issues. I've run SMART diagnostics on it and it comes up OK. So I'm fairly sure it's not a bad drive.

If anyone knows of any tools or resources that I could use to troubleshoot this problem, I'd be very appreciative. I've tried everything I can think of based on what I could find through Google, including adding an external power adapter to the drive. Is there some way to see a log of USB activity? Does Disk Managment report out its inner workings anywhere other than the event log?

I've hit the limits of my limited expertise in these matters. This has be driving me bats for weeks, and I don't need any more gray hairs!

156

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista’s ReadyBoost benefits on your Windows XP machine with eBoostr

« on: December 13, 2007, 12:28 PM »

I too remember when these "RAM boosters" came on the scene.

I think their appeal was not just that RAM prices were high, but that disk compression was a hot technology at the time. Stacker, et al had made a splash, and eventually MS even bundled disk compression into Windows 95.

So consumers knew that disk compression worked and were comfortable with using it. RAM boosters were based on the idea that if you can compress data on the fly and effectively double the capacity of your hard disk, why shouldn't you be able to do the same with your RAM? This seems like a logical conclusion, even to a fairly savvy consumer. The technical barriers to this working were probably lost on most computer users, and perhaps even on some of the people who developed this kind of software.

This does seem like a similar situation, although to me the answer is "it's the bus, stupid!" The flash memory used in USB Drives may be faster than (some) hard drives in the abstract, but the speed of the USB2 bus ultimately limits their performance. So it's probably unlikely that flash RAM caching is faster or better than plain ol' disk caching in most modern machines, even leaving aside the wear and tear on the flash drive.

I think the appeal of this feature is actually simplicity. Most computer owners are still ignorant (or even deathly afraid) of the insides of their PC. Sticking a "RAM stick" into an external port must seem like a far safer and easier way to "upgrade your RAM" than opening up the box and dealing with all those scary circuit-board thingies.

157

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« on: November 14, 2007, 10:33 AM »

Ooooh - I missed it by ONE! I knew I was almost at 100 but didn't think to check my total until after I'd hit the "POST" button!

Where's the "Make it didn't happen" button when you need it? 

Wait, wait - maybe this forum is for AFTER you've made your 100th post?! Are you really eligible to claim it's your 100th post when you've only made 99 "real" posts?

Anyway, here it is, number 101.

158

General Software Discussion / Re: houseforge recommendation November 2007: Pidgin

« on: November 14, 2007, 10:28 AM »

Thanks! Nice summary. Just in case anyone didn't know, Pidgin is the IM client formerly known as GAIM. They had to change their name to avoid legal tangles with AOL.

159

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to track the time you spend on each project

« on: November 13, 2007, 02:43 PM »

I've been using TaskCoach for this (open source - www.taskcoach.org) after evaluating a number of free alternatives.

I like the program so far. It's simple and direct with a decent UI. I like that it handles hierarchical task assignment, which maps pretty well to the way I need to report timesheet data for my company.

The detailed views get a bit busy after you've been using it for a while, but this could be because I dump everything into one big tracking file. Breaking things out into monthly files would cure this.

It's still a work in progress - I've seen a few bugs so far - but it's definitely usable in its current state, and is updated fairly often.

I've also been using the AbstractSpoon ToDoList2 that Dormouse recommended. I like it for its to-do features but somehow I didn't really take to its time tracking features. So I've wound up using the two apps side-by-side for different purposes. That's when I remember to use them at all 

160

Living Room / Re: UK Government wants your crypto keys... by law.

« on: October 04, 2007, 04:04 PM »

WARNING: Off topic alert (but I just had to respond to Carol)...

I've heard before about that obscure provision of UK law that all land ultimately belongs to the government (the Crown) and that no one can really "own" land.

I've also heard that this is also the case in the U.S., despite a general perception to the contrary, and I can't say I can find the flaw in this argument. In fact I'd say it's probably true in just about any civilized country, despite various legal fictions that disguise the fact.

It seems to me it all boils down to the ability to levy taxes on land. Once a government has this power, actual, private ownership of land becomes a legal fiction. Land that is subject to tax cannot be owned, because if you fail to pay the rent (oops, tax) on the land, government agents will come and put you off the land, seize it, and sell it to someone else.

When you own something, it belongs to you free and clear and cannot be taken away. Furthermore, when you own something, you no longer have to pay for it. Neither of these are true for land.

161

Coding Snacks / Create an exit for Java hell

« on: October 02, 2007, 04:00 PM »

Years ago when Sun's Java was brand new, one of its supposed nifty features was immunity from what was then seen as a plague of Windows-based software: DLL hell. Java would avoid the kinds of problems caused by bad ol' Microsoft's conflicting DLL versions. Java will NEVER have this problem, we were told, because it's runtime is monolithic and will ALWAYS be backward compatible.

Fast forward to 2007 and here I am in JAVA HELL. My company's online timesheet program runs on one version of the Java Runtime Engine, our main product's report engine runs on a different one, and neither is backward or forward compatible with the other versions of the JRE.

The latest versions of JRE from Sun give you a control panel that lets you switch between the latest Java versions - but older versions don't get on the list! Actually, I have three control panel icons on my system - A "Java" CPL, a "Java Plug-in 1.3.0_02" CPL and a "Java Plug-in 1.3.0_01" CPL. Java's 1.3.X and 1.4.X don't show up in the "Java" CPL as candidates for running applets. JRE 1.4.2 doesn't have a CPL at all, even though I have it installed, as indicated by the list in Internet Options -> Programs -> Manage Add-Ons.

So I have a several control panels, an IE dialog with enable/disable options, and some environment variable stuff (CLASSPATH?) all of which needs to be fiddled with if I want to switch between Java versions in my browser.

And I DO want to switch between Java versions. I NEED to. I have a passing familiarity with Java, but not enough to feel confident with the kind of under-the-hood and behind-the-curtains tinkering it would take to perform this seemingly simple task on a regular basis. And ideally, I'd like something I could share with my co-workers, who all have this same problem and who are mostly less technically-inclined than I am.

I'm not sure what would be involved in this. Maybe it's not doable, which would explain why I couldn't find an existing utility to do it. It's certainly not a glamorous type of app. But if Skrommel (or someone) could team up with the resident Java guru (whoever that might be) and code me a way out of this nightmare, I'd be eternally grateful.

162

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for an E-Mail Client which can be run on an USB Stick

« on: September 25, 2007, 02:23 AM »

I always go to www.portableapps.com to find "x-on-a-stick". It's all open source s/w, tweaked to run from a USB drive.

163

Living Room / Re: Flowchart and Diagramming Review

« on: September 25, 2007, 02:14 AM »

Don't forget Gliffy! www.gliffy.com - Totally web-based.
Also, if you're including Sodipodi, you should probably also include Inkscape (www.inkscape.org)

164

Official Announcements / Re: DC-IRL DD #5 - BELLEVILLE, NJ

« on: September 11, 2007, 10:17 PM »

Any updates on this? August is over and "early September" is fast a-wanin' 

165

General Software Discussion / RIP Autopatcher

« on: September 06, 2007, 04:07 PM »

For anybody who might not have heard yet, Autopatcher has been "cease and desisted" by Microsoft. Full details at http://www.autopatcher.com

What was Autopatcher? Well, as you know MS distributes patches online via Windows Update. But suppose you have a computer that's not connected to the Internet? Or you've just done an OS re-install on a machine and need to download all the patches since the last service pack, but the machine only has a 56K connection? Or you've got 50 PCs to update and your bandwidth isn't free, so you'd like to download all the patches once and then use them to update all your machines?

In any of these circumstances, Autopatcher was a godsend. It was a community-supported custom installer for MS' patches that was updated on a monthly basis. You could download Autopatcher, burn it on a CD, and then update any machine without hitting MS' servers. The installer was slick and easy to use (MS could have learned a thing or two) and it just worked.

Autopatcher was around for 4 years - long enough for lots of system admins, IT guys and other techie types to find out about it and even come to rely on it. They had a perfect track record of not screwing up patch installation, which is better than you can say for MS. But I guess Autopatcher either passed some popularity/public awareness threshold or else the lawyers got wind of it, and BOOM - down comes the hammer. (Not to be too much of billgco hater here, but does MS even pretend care about their customers at all anymore?)

It's moves like this that make me think that there will soon come a day when we wont have Microsoft to kick around anymore. 

166

General Software Discussion / Re: Family/Household Personal Information Organizer/Manager

« on: August 31, 2007, 12:29 PM »

Well, there are ways to obtain copyrights - sometimes just asking for them!

For inclusion in a not-for-profit project, with an embedded link back to the source site, the copyright holders of these various pieces might be amenable to having them included in the project.

167

General Software Discussion / Re: Family/Household Personal Information Organizer/Manager

« on: August 31, 2007, 09:58 AM »

I think for something you are going to expect other people to access, possibly at some distant point in the future, putting the info into a proprietary, application-based format is probably not a good idea. You'd be better off with something that will be accessible from any machine, using standards-based technology.

I was going to suggest Tiddlywiki from the little bit that was posted on the front page. I've had to give up OneNote at work, and I just finished moving all my data into Tiddlywiki. I find it to be slick and very capable, if not quite as easy to use as OneNote. But because it's standards based, I think Tiddlywiki is actually better for a project like this.

Pros: No special software needed; works in any web browser - Single file for easy backup/distribution (as long as no pictures are used) - Accessible on local hard drive and also over a network.

Cons: Requires familiarity with wiki formatting to create formatted content.

After reading this, I still think it's a good idea, but maybe instead of just starting with the default Tiddlywiki, we could put together a customized version based on the info provided here? That would reduce the reliance on having to format your own content, it could be a lot more "fill in the blanks".

168

General Software Discussion / Re: A "Wiki Word" add-in for MS Word?

« on: August 29, 2007, 11:33 PM »

I'll have some free time later in September where I might be able to help out with a project like this. I'm fairly adept at VB & VBA (although I'm no Skrommel so don't expect anything to be done in 1 hour!)

169

General Software Discussion / Re: Context Menu Editor?

« on: August 29, 2007, 11:16 PM »

NirSoft has ShellMenuView http://www.nirsoft.n...shell_menu_view.html - this might do some of what you want, but it doesn't mention VIsta compatibility.

PC Magazine had a free utility for this, but it's not free anymore and it's too old to have been tested on Vista. But if you're a PC Mag subscriber you can still get it for free and it might be worth a try. It's called ContextEdit. (They also have ContextMenu Plus which is similar.)

170

General Software Discussion / Re: Program (or 2.0 site) to track my life, like a Gantt

« on: August 29, 2007, 11:03 PM »

I don't think you need a PHP-backed web server, or even a web server at all, to use the SIMILE timeline. That's the point. It all runs in the browser, and uses a simple file-based structure for the data. You need exactly two files (web page hosting the timeline code and JSON data file). You can keep it on your hard drive or on a public server.

I came across this myself recently, and it was the first time I'd encountered the JSON concept. Pretty cool stuff.

171

Official Announcements / Re: Site of the Month for August 2007: NirSoft.net

« on: August 28, 2007, 04:11 PM »

Has anyone been to Nirsoft lately? Their front page is still there, but all the links go to 403-Forbidden pages.

172

Official Announcements / Re: DC-IRL DD #5 - BELLEVILLE, NJ

« on: August 28, 2007, 04:07 PM »

Hey, I've heard of JERSEY!

It'll depend when it is, but count me in, I think. I'm not too far from Belleville. Just a few exits down the turnpike.

173

Living Room / Re: New Translation of Teh Bible found!

« on: August 20, 2007, 03:53 PM »

Blasphemers. The Bible should only be read in its original Klingon.

174

Living Room / Re: 2007 Worst dialog nominee, spelling category

« on: August 20, 2007, 03:30 PM »

Hmmm - the site is at a .br domain. I'm thinking English probably isn't their first language. Maybe it's spelled correctly in Portuguese! 

175

General Software Discussion / Re: A "Wiki Word" add-in for MS Word?

« on: August 16, 2007, 02:09 PM »

I originally answered a different question, so I'm now changing my answer. 

This shouldn't be too tough to implement in VBA, as long as you don't need anything too elaborate. Internal links (within the same document) could be managed as bookmarks in Word. External links (to other documents or bookmarks in other documents) might be tougher - I'd have to look into what is supported natively by Word's hyperlinking feature.

Word's got amazing linking/organizing capabilities if you poke around. Look in the help file for "bookmarks", "citations", "table of authorities" or "index entry."

EDIT:

Just checked. You can link to bookmarks within other documents using hyperlinks in Word. So it should be possible to create a web of deeply-linked Word documents - sort of a Word Wiki involving multiple document files. I'd expect the external links to be kind of fragile though - as in they might break if either the source or target document was moved to another folder.