Messages

2951

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Locate 3.0 - great HD search tool

« on: November 01, 2005, 01:31 PM »

Since experimenting with replacement shells, I have been on a hunt for file finder apps for a long time. I am familiar with the Unix thingummys, I'll give Locate 3.0 a try. If you like the Unix way of doing things, you might also try the tools from the CygWin Project and pipe your Locate through Grep to get multiple 'hits'. On the other hand, things I have found so far as useful replacements for file finding:

the ever-venerable Agent Ransack
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

newcomer ScanDir (and current favorite...)
http://www.skybird.net/ScanDir/

supposed-to-be-really-cool-but-never-worked-for-me XFind (from the makers of power tool X-Setup)
http://www.xteq.com/products/xfnd/

$.02

2952

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Png Painter

« on: November 01, 2005, 12:38 PM »

Ok, ImageMagick comes through, but in a way not entirely but almost, intuitively. First, I tried a batch file so I have an editable drop target that would make both pngs and bmp for testing:
(WARNING: the following will make most sense to those familiar with ImageMagick)

[Select]

convert.exe %1 -background "rgb(213,204,187)" test.bmp test.png

Ok, the bmp turned out black on the proper background (not good) and the png looked good but there was something... I opened up the png in Ultimate Paint and there was my original png simply pasted on a background with alpha channel so it looked right, but it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted it mapped on the background so there was no alpha channel left, but the transitions to the background present. I tried all kinds of -channel operations and looked at the forums and in TFM stumbled on:

[Select]

convert.exe %1 -background "rgb(213,204,187)" -FLATTEN test.bmp test.png

This is supposed to work on multiple images pasted on each other, so I thought I'd try it to 'flatten' my png on the background. TaDa. But the bmp was fuuunnnkkkyyy. Seems as though it was trying to write a 32-bit bmp when I can only deal with 24-bit or less. Tried -colors, -depth, nothing worked. Once again some rummaging around brought up:

[Select]

convert.exe %1 -background "rgb(213,204,187)" -flatten +MATTE test.bmp test.png

apparently this had nothing to do with what I wanted to do, but it DID remove alpha channel information completely, so my bmp was properly 24-bit. Also, I discovered that the alpha channel HAD to be removed before the -colors option did anything. So now I have my batch code

[Select]

convert.exe %1 -background "rgb(213,204,187)" -flatten +matte -colors 65536 test.bmp test.png

which can now be imported to a script where I can properly selectify my every whim. Thanks all for the encouragement to stick with IM and when I get a proper code worked up, I'll post it.

2953

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Folder Cleaner

« on: November 01, 2005, 11:58 AM »

If you'd like to try your own hand at scripting, I have an Autohotkey script (can't swing a dead cat around DonationCoder without hitting one...) that might get you started. It's quite a bare-bones script I use to clean the temp folders here at work that basically sends to the recycle bin all files inside all folders in z:\temp\dir. For walk-in customers we use a directory of temp folders labeled temp1-temp9 in the temp dir and it was such a pain to go in and clean out every one at the end of the day I did this:

[Select]

msgbox,52,Clean Folder,Are you sure you want to clean Temp folder?
if msgbox,no
exit
loop,z:\Temp\Dir\*.*,0,1
{
filerecycle,%a_loopfilefullpath%
}

msgbox,0,Clean Folder,Temp Directory clean!

This probably isn't exactly what you need, but take a look at the "File Loop" entry in the AHK help file and there you'll find that you can sequentially select files for action (delete,recycle,rename, whatever) based on their creation or modified date or anything, really. And settings can be stored in a standard .ini file and subsequently read using the IniWrite/Iniread functions or even store values in the Registry with RegWrite/RegRead like the Pros do!  Check it out.

2954

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Confessions from a Wiki Hater ??!?

« on: October 31, 2005, 12:04 PM »

apparently wikis are suffering from huge amounts of spam lately and part of the problem is no one anticipated this or decided that it might be useful to have some moderation over content

No one anticipated this? The one thing that keeps amazing me about human nature is the denial that such human nature exists. All over the internet, forums and 'shout boxes' are now being spammed into non-usefulness. Come on folks, think of how many Usenet forums are now wastelands of spam and have been for nigh on a few years now. Without some form of access restriction, how is Wiki to fare any better? Like you Mouser, I appreciate greatly the usefulness that Wiki promises, but had no idea that it required such sql kung-fu for a basic lock-out. Yeesh.

2955

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Png Painter

« on: October 31, 2005, 11:30 AM »

I have not found imagemagick to be any kind of useful 'cause I never could get the darn thing to work. Exhaustive as the documentation is, I still could not get it to do exactly what I had hoped, but perhaps I should try again. As wonderful an app as IrfanView is, I cannot do what I hope from the simplicity of a command line. I will try the WinSet prog. Stay Tuned!

2956

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Png Painter

« on: October 28, 2005, 12:44 PM »

Ok, let me explain. I am intending this for skinnable button images and etc. in Litestep and other skinnable thingummys, but it'd also work great for webpage graphics or graphic whatevers in general. The first problem is, I am on NT4 which can't handle png alpha channel natively, so I use an Autohotkey script to send a png and a background color to rpng.exe which paints a png on top of my intended background color with alpha-blend, Alt-PrintScreen to capture the window, and open in MSpaint or Ultimate Paint ('cause it handles png's and it's got a funky interface) to snip the graphic out and convert to png bmp or ico from there. Cumbersome to say the least.
Here's the Challenge: to shorten this process.
Sources and binaries for rpng are available at http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/book/sources.html
Hack the source or code your own which will do pretty much the same as rpng.exe But...
send output to file (png,bmp,jpg,etc.) or graphics editor (too many to list)
I've tried simply piping rpng.exe output to a file (rpng.exe > foo.bmp) but to no avail. rpng is intended only as an example thingamabob for coders and it appears they meant it.... Perhaps someone has an idea on how Autohotkey or some similar script prog can simply wait for the window to open and automagically cut out the contents of the window and save it rather than copying a picture of the entire window as Alt-PrintScreen does now.

2957

General Software Discussion / Re: Just how bad is IE?

« on: October 28, 2005, 10:40 AM »

Dunno about most of you guys, but I can't count how many times I was browsing with IE looking for clipart or stupid .wav files or e-cards,etc. and a popup window came to ask me if I want to install plugin foobar.exe in order to view the website correctly, I push "NO" and voila!... My brand new plugin is installed and ready to spy on my surfing, slow down my surfing, make my surfing very insecure, etc. etc. With the re-strategizing of many companies who made such things, it not so bad (remember Gator?  ) but still, I like staying behind my Firefox and it's apparent ignorance of Activex controls and things that install when I'm not looking. Of course, it could have been AOL the whole time...
$.02

2958

Living Room / Re: Top 100 toys of the 70s and 80s - what were your favorites?

« on: October 21, 2005, 05:59 PM »

Hmmm... and still available in a slightly different form...

Those funky handheld LED Sport games
http://www.peterhirschberg.com/handheld/ledhead/
Hugo - Man of a Thousand Faces (I remember the hair on the back of my neck standing up when I saw this in the Sears christmas catalog in '77 or so...)
http://www.secretfunspot.com/virtual.htm
VertiBird! (
http://www.peterhirschberg.com/vertisim/
Video Games!!
http://www.mameworld.net/
and speaking of video games, I should mention the world's smallest Pac-Man game! (goto guimp.com for the whole banana; pong, pinball, tictactoe, piano, drums, breakout & more at 12x12 pixels!!)
http://www.guimp.com/pacman

2959

Living Room / Re: Want to wet my beak with Linux,need suggestions on distro.

« on: October 18, 2005, 12:23 PM »

Yes, Linux is still behind a few months with the hardware issue, but that is getting better EVERY DAY because more and more people are downloading Linux EVERY DAY and some of them are actually contacting the hardware companies and asking hard questions concerning Linux compatibility. Not to mention standard rants concerning Microsoft's monopolistic practices, etc. etc. (Please let's NOT rant about that ONE MORE TIME?)
Seriously, try Knoppix first. Chances are, if Knoppix recognizes your hardware, most major distros will too. And Knoppix is Debian so if you find you like Knoppix, save yourself from downloading Debian and read up on how to install Knoppix to your hard drive. All the major distros have their pros and cons and fortunately, most are available as 'Live' systems like Knoppix so you can 'test drive' without commitment ('cept for the time to download and burn them all). My personal fave? Slackware and it's live little half-brother Slax. Why? It claims to be the most 'Unix-like' distro which in my experience means a very no-frills distro that actually works on most points (I've never had networking NOT work on a slack machine) and is ready for whatever 'customization' I throw at it because the developers are actually concerned with how it works than with how it looks. Seems like a lot of distros get caught up making pretty gui's for everything and end up breaking stuff (In My Humble Opinion...). Not that I am a command line junkie, but many of the standard tools included with most distros are just fine the way they are in all their CLI glory. Go ahead, dive in, the water may be chilly at first but you'll get used to it.

2960

General Software Discussion / Re: Good UI design blog: flow|state

« on: September 28, 2005, 05:00 PM »

Also take a look at http://www.symphonyos.com/ and Jason's Laws of Interface Design. I think the Mezzo Desktop concept of desk-wide menus might be confusing at first, but it kinda looks like what M$ may have originally had in mind with Active Desktop. Also a similar idea was asked for in the IDEA: giant start menu Coding Snack request. Hmmm...
Also for those interested, there is the OpenUsability Group (working for usability in Open Source projects) who ran GIMP through the ringer.

2961

Living Room / Re: Online "generators"

« on: September 27, 2005, 01:24 PM »

w00t! Lookah my new avatar from the neon sign generator! Man, those sign generator thingies are addicting. I went on a binge a few months back and now I gotta stop all over again

2962

General Software Discussion / Re: Rebirth now free

« on: September 21, 2005, 12:21 PM »

No problem. Mouser, should this be in the Deals and Discounts section? I'm not qualified as a reviewer for this particular piece of software (never could afford it... 'til now ) although its status in the "scene" is nothing short of legendary.

2963

General Software Discussion / Rebirth now free

« on: September 15, 2005, 11:43 AM »

For those of you who were (not sure if any one REALLY is now) into the techno/industrial scene a few years back, you probably had this or wanted it very badly. Since Propellerheads sold out, they've dropped ReBirth but since it still WORKS for what it was intended, here it is fo' free:
http://www.rebirthmuseum.com/

This is what I spent a lot of time trying to emulate with freeware trackers, samplers, wave editors, etc. 'back in the day'. I relive those heady days of yesteryear every now and again at http://www.soundtrackers.de. Archive of free/share ware music and audio apps from before a thousand coders started doing Zip apps

2964

General Software Discussion / Re: Good UI design blog: flow|state

« on: September 12, 2005, 03:31 PM »

Oh great, now I'm Fitts-izing all my PowerPro thingummys and running everything full screen. THANKS GUYS!
What am I talking about? read where flow|state took me: http://www.asktog.co...gnedToGiveFitts.html

2965

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst. Interface. Ever.

« on: September 09, 2005, 02:09 PM »

Much as I love Powerpro, the configuration interface is akin to flying a space shuttle to get down the block. (what do I want it to do, how do I make it do it, can it even DO that? and what do all these OTHER buttons do?) and ZoneAlarms control panel looks more like a CNet advertisement for it than a way to configure it.
[soapbox]
AND MAY I ADD A BIG FAT BOO AND HISS to applications that do not include a full complement of icons and cursors? I mean really NOT EVERYBODY is fortunate enough to have XP for their daily work, and making at least two sizes of each as well as 8- and 24-bit icons is not asking too much in my opinion. I can't reshack everything just to have usable cursors. I find it ironic that the most annoying culprit in this department is SnicoEdit, an Icon Editor, fer pete's sake.
[/soapbox]

2966

General Software Discussion / Re: LAST Freeware versions of good programs

« on: September 09, 2005, 01:22 PM »

Some caveats on a couple of softwares I have got from those places...

jv16 powertools is great, but don't EVER update if you wish to keep freeware status.
Popcorn full version works great for single client, here's latest announcement from the website:

The Popcorn e-mail client will not be sold or further developed by Ultrafunk, but it might live on in another form.
If you'd like to be notified when an announcement is made about Popcorns future, please send us an e-mail. 

The latest freeware demo release (1.74) of the Popcorn e-mail client can be downloaded here: Tucows.com.

2967

General Software Discussion / Re: For Developers: Do Donations Make a Difference?

« on: September 08, 2005, 07:07 PM »

Anybody heard of this idea (copy\pasted from a maillist)

The way most bounty setups work is that you post a bounty and specify what
work you want done. Others wanting the same work done will add to the bounty
until someone acomplishes it.

and take a looka here...

http://www.markshutt...orth.com/bounty.html

Bountyware? Hmmm...

2968

General Review Discussion / Re: Free PDF tools review?

« on: August 26, 2005, 06:27 PM »

Not much of a review, but I have tried quite a few of these things, and this (IMHO) is the cream of the crop. Should I post more in 'mini-reviews by members'?

PDF995 is VERY easy to use and the trial version is only limited by popups that ask you if you are tired of the popups yet (and so pay $9.95) This is what I recommend for my CAD customers who can't afford Adobe. No complaints yet.

PDFCreator is what I use. Nice and techy, like I like it. Choose from GPL Ghostscript or AFPL Ghostscript for the encoding. Also does .ps .tif .png .jpg .eps .bmp .pcx. Free

PdfBlender I use for... DUH! merging multiple PDF's. Next version promises pdf splitting. Minimal, clutter-free but intuitive interface. Free

That's my two cents and in my honest opinion, a pretty darn shiny two cents.

2969

General Software Discussion / Re: Good Folder Printer

« on: August 25, 2005, 02:33 PM »

In the meantime... to automagically print the output; make a .bat file with this code:

[Select]

@echo off
tree /F /A %1 > "%temp%\dirlist"
start /w notepad /p "%temp%\dirlist"
del "%temp%\dirlist"
exit

call it "Dirlist.bat" or something, and save it to your c:\ dir then make a .reg file:

[Select]

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Dirlist\command]
@="C:\\dirlist.bat %1\\"

(you could also replace "C:\" with a path to wherever you really want to put the .bat file, and remember to double the slashes...)
and right-click Merge.

Now, right-click on any directory and select "Dirlist"
 

Context Menu Commander?!? Oooh, I can't wait!... (no more digging in the registry, whew!)

2970

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite ZIP/RAR application?

« on: August 25, 2005, 01:02 PM »

i hear really good things about 7zip but it's definitely a feature i personally consider one of the most important.

*ahem*

4.26 beta FINALLY supports right-click drag-n-drop.

c'mon give it a shot...

2971

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite ZIP/RAR application?

« on: August 24, 2005, 05:14 PM »

Insane? Well, the author was many times accused of various degrees of incompetence. One guy even said he was 'retarded'. I would hardly associate in-depth knowledge of various data compression/decompression algorithms with mental disability. Igor (the author) is also very helpful in the forum if you really need help.
I agree that right click d-n-d is a very useful function, but the level of bile that it's lack inspired was truly alarming. (did that sentence just almost not make sense or what?)

2972

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite ZIP/RAR application?

« on: August 24, 2005, 11:41 AM »

7-zip is what I use. Fast, small, efficient, can make sfx, 64-bit zips, doesn't include kitchen sink
Only creates 7z, tar and zip but can read most other formats. I'm not a zip "power user" so sfx options and such aren't really what I look for. 4.26 beta FINALLY supports right-click drag-n-drop. You should have SEEN the forum discussions about this one simple function that wasn't included because the Author claimed to never use it. Some guy even wrote a patch for ver. 4.13 to force right-click d-n-d. Arguments for it went from 'it's convenient' to 'every other zip app in the universe does it, so get with the program'. Arguments against it went from 'I don't use d-n-d' (author) to 'I'd rather have killer compression ratios and expanded compression formats support before I boo-hoo about drag-n-drop'.
Anyways, great zip app.

2973

Living Room / Re: emulating xdrives skip download plugin

« on: August 19, 2005, 11:13 AM »

Hmmm...
[url]https://www.xmailharddrive.com/beta/about.xmhd]
So for those of us without the ftp space...
Seems like a plugin could be written that adds "send link to XMHD" to your choice of browser and your smtp service does all the work, bypassing your home box. This should be quite possible, but would require some knowledge of how smtp works and how it would handle an attachment which is coming from a remote location rather than local.

2974

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: mouse location launcher

« on: August 16, 2005, 07:20 PM »

I was just gonna say that!

I can't remember (my hd is toast so I'm posting this from Slax, so no poking around Powerpro) but I think you can define "hotspots" (which would do for 'mouse position launching')and if you use your Powerpro as a launcher bar, you can set it to switch bar configs on switch of virtual desktop. Configing Powerpro is a bit of a bear, but go ahead, read the help file and good luck.

2975

General Software Discussion / Re: startup/tasks manager?

« on: August 16, 2005, 05:11 PM »

Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel
I need say no more...

Except, I have found pcmag software like so...
go to their mag's site, find the software you want and pretend like you are going to download it, at some point it will tell you that you can't download whateveritis.exe unless you have a subscription. Now you have the file name, go Google.