Messages

26

Post New Requests Here / Re: Display-drivers stretching hack for small screens

« on: January 09, 2010, 12:04 PM »

slowmaker: if GimeSpace doesn't use drivers (or integration with Vista-and-later windows manager) but simply does MoveWindow() on all visible windows, there's a good chance that it won't be a 100% smooth experience with all applications. How does it work wrt. maximized windows, for instance?

-f0dder (January 09, 2010, 03:34 AM)

Pretty well, actually. They scroll off/on the screen just as smoothly as any others.

The thing I don't care for is the fact that, because they remain at maximized size, scrolling them back fully into the screen can be finicky; there's always that last tiny little bit hanging off on one side or the other that I reflexively want to keep fiddling with until I get it all aligned perfectly again. However, I remember that being an issue with the driver-based virtual screens also; I guess that's more an issue with me than with the software .

I believe the software offered some sort of exclusion list as well, though I didn't investigate it.

27

Post New Requests Here / Re: Display-drivers stretching hack for small screens

« on: January 08, 2010, 06:30 PM »

GimeSpace (cheap payware) has an approach that might work for you. It gives the effect of an infinite screen that you are looking at through a monitor-sized portal.

Moving the mouse against the edges pushes your view left/right/up/down, or at least I assume it does (the trial only allows left/right).  Note that I am not referring to discrete virtual desktops, like virtuaWin, dexpot, etc.  When you shove your mouse against the right side of the screen, for instance, everything steadily floats off to the left, just as if you were turning your head to the right slowly.

There is a popup window with a sort of map you can use to find windows if you lose them off in virtual space somewhere.

Pretty light on resources, I think. It doesn't actually hack any drivers or anything; as far as I can tell it just moves all windows as necessary to simulate the 'infinite' desktop.

I've been thinking about buying it myself, but I can't make up my mind whether I like the way it handles maximized windows or not. It's also not portable, or rather the portable version is the limited (left/right only) version.

28

General Software Discussion / Re: What's a good wardrobe management software?

« on: January 06, 2010, 04:38 PM »

Most of the good ones are either online only...

-superboyac (January 04, 2010, 05:07 PM)

Can you give an example of a good one? I mean, as opposed to the ones that are like the first link you said was more of a photo manager than anything. What do the good ones do?

Er, I just reread your first post; I guess you already said, more or less. Still, which part of those specs really constitutes 'a good one'? The scheduling, or the 'preview these things together'? Any other features that make them stand out?

I guess the preview would have to be just a collage of photos, wouldn't it?

29

Site/Forum Features / Re: Should we experiment with google ads on the site for 1 month?

« on: January 04, 2010, 03:11 AM »

<mouser> i guess one problem with doing it as an experiment is
<mouser> people visiting will not know about the experiment
<mouser> they will think its how we always are

-mouser (January 03, 2010, 06:10 AM)

That danger cannot be overstated; I joined because I was blown away by the incredible sincerity of the site and many of its visitors. Had I read your intro pages and the (2006?) letter that was my entry point to the site a few days ago while simultaneously seeing ads, I would  have simply thought 'yeah, right; nice software collection, but no way I'm donating on top of your ad revenue.'

I would not have thought, maybe I've finally found a home on the 'net.

I would not have thought, maybe I've found a place genuinely interested in pursuing a life financed without crudity, crassness, or desperate grasping greed. Maybe they'll fail in the end, but I'm damned proud to see someone trying it. I would not have thought that, had I seen ads.

Seriously, it makes that much difference. No, I can't speak for everyone. I can only speak for me. But...at least some of the other new visitors to your site will be like me.

<mouser> we could put a little message under every ad
<mouser> saying something like
<mouser> "dc advert experiment feb 1 - 28"
<mouser> which can be clicked to read more
<mouser> about how we dont normally have ads, etc

-mouser (January 03, 2010, 06:10 AM)

Would have made zero difference to me. I would just have assumed that either you were lying, or that the original Great Experiment was over and the ads were here to stay. I would not have clicked to read more. Once you see an ad, you already know (or think you know) what you're dealing with. I am sure that I'm speaking for a lot of people there, again assuming we're talking about new visitors.

Please don't do this. Find another way to run the experiment. Run it on another site. Anything but here. Buy the domain 'advertcoder.com' or something, put the experiment there, let it be an anthropological comparison between what kinds of communities grow up in the two places, but I'm begging you not to do it here.

A heartfelt plea shouldn't have to describe itself as such, it should be obvious, but I'm not a good enough writer to be sure what's coming across (and I'm really really sleepy right now, too) so I will state it flatly: this is, truly and sincerely, a heartfelt plea not to change the tone of the site that way, not even temporarily for an experiment.

30

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: BlowUp or Read?

« on: January 04, 2010, 02:19 AM »

I know this is a very old thread, but I'm just a little puzzled; it was in the Finished Programs sub-board of Coding Snacks, and it doesn't actually seem to have ever been finished.

Is it finished in the sense of 'everybody drifted away', or did the guy ever find a solution, or what?

If a solution was found - perhaps in another thread that I missed? - I'd love to see it. The original thread was quite interesting.

31

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: A free laptop mouse replacement software.

« on: January 03, 2010, 09:59 PM »

It would help both if there was a coolkey action that popped up a menu of actions that could be triggered by the next key. If it had that, it would definitely be a keeper!

-JennyB (October 21, 2009, 05:22 AM)

I'm intrigued by this statement. Do you mean that when I press, say, the Ctrl key, then this hypothetical feature would pop-up a listing of all the hotkeys beginning with Ctrl? And the same presumably for the Winkey, the Alt key, and combinations thereof as long as no actual full hotkey sequence is pressed? I think that would be a neat utility in its own right.

32

Developer's Corner / Re: generic form designer

« on: January 03, 2010, 04:49 AM »

Thanks, mnemonic. That looks like a good approach, and it's a darn sight clearer that any of the so-called documentation I found so far. I'll make a note of it.

I guess that anything that comes out of a "drag and drop" designer tends to be messy as it has to worry about the absolute positioning of each component (this might also cause all kinds of issues when expanding the window).

-mnemonic (January 03, 2010, 04:25 AM)

Nope. The drag and drop designer's output tends to be very clean precisely because it doesn't 'worry' about the positioning at all; it just spits out the coords you left the component at, and that's that. My only problem with them is that they are usually for a different language, or the designer had different ideas about code layout than I do. It doesn't cause window-expanding issues for me because these simple little programs I do don't have resizing windows; the ones that do are generally single-component (like Notepad), which is a no-brainer to handle.

My ideal solution would actually be drag-and-drop, absolute positioning, with no code output at all; just a csv text file with the coordinates and properties of each component. Then anyone could script something to mash that data into whatever format they wanted.

Thanks again for all the help, guys.

33

Developer's Corner / Re: generic form designer

« on: January 03, 2010, 03:50 AM »

Whoooosh; been playing with wxformbuilder a bit, and that 'sizer' thing is a bit rough for an old pea-brain like me. I googled for how to just drag the controls around where I want them, didn't find it.

I found a thread where some poor soul had the temerity to mention this might be a good thing for some of us, and they ...  weren't very nice (basically said 'you're an idiot for wanting to do this, all application goals must be the same as ours, etc., etc.'). The thread mentions that absolute positioning is possible, so I'll keep looking.

I can definitely see the power inherent in having a framework that auto-adjusts your widgets, but since I won't actually be using the framework, I'll have to find something else if I can't figure how to use it in a drag-to-position and drag-to-size way. I suspect, though, that what I want doesn't exist (the generic aspect, I mean).

Man, remember NRE? Or the old MS Access form editor? Drop, size, select, align to this, center with that, bing bang boom. Sweet. I miss editors like that.

Don't get me wrong; I can see that if I ever move beyond 'toy' progs I would might need to look at putting in the effort to think in terms of things auto-adjusting, and I would probably be overjoyed to sacrifice a little drag-and-drop comfort in return for not having to manually write all that adjustment code later on. I'm sure I'll be glad to have snagged this prog when that time comes.

Oh, and I read some more in that thread I mentioned; they did lighten up on the second page and start giving the guy some attempts at helpfulness rather than the knee-jerk (emphasis on the jerk) nonsense that was on the first page.

34

Developer's Corner / Re: generic form designer

« on: January 03, 2010, 01:36 AM »

Thanks, I'll check it out.

35

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: "Compress each folder to separate archive"

« on: January 03, 2010, 12:22 AM »

Drag and Drop Robot might do what you're after, but it wouldn't be on the context menu. I only just started playing with it myself, so I can't be sure, but the help file introduction has this in it:

A good example for the use of Drag and Shell Robot is in zipping multiple folders.  First the command line for invoking the zip command is specified, and then folders are dragged from explorer onto the folder queue.  Pressing start will cause the program to walk through the queue, zipping each folder in turn.

Sounds pretty close to me.

36

Developer's Corner / generic form designer

« on: January 02, 2010, 11:33 PM »

Does anyone know if this exists? I've hopped around from one language to the other a lot (I'm sort of a perpetual beginner), and many of the compilers/interpreters I've ended up with did not have GUI designing tools. I end up either doing the run-it-and-adjust-the-numbers thing over and over, or I use the designer from another language and copy the numbers over.

Even when the language does have a designer, it often does not have the flexibility to spit out code the way I want it to, so I still end up picking out the numbers and plopping them into my code.

I've often wished for a form designer that just output the basic information of button locations, text, window dimensions, etc. without trying to write the code for me. I end up having to rewrite it anyway, so most of the generated code is just visual clutter.

So...any ideas?

37

Developer's Corner / Re: micropayments - how are the filesharing people making it work?

« on: January 02, 2010, 02:01 PM »

Why on earth would you use them for that, when there's already reputable download+indexing sites like download.com and friends? Pay people to harvest files from other sources and put them on rapidshare, which is used for... well, what exactly, apart from warez and sending the random file to a friend? O_o

-f0dder (January 02, 2010, 01:48 PM)

What's the thing that got donationcoder started, according to the 'about' pages and the article somewhere on the site (from 2006 or so, I think)? Looking for payment options that work and are unobtrusive to the user.

That's the point of considering whether paid-to-download sites might someday be a reasonable idea for legitimate files.

As stated above, I don't actually think it would work, because of the mirroring thing and the various dodgy methods these guys use to obscure the free download link.

I just think any idea that gives software authors a way to survive while doing what they love should be giving a fair mulling over, not summarily kicked to the curb because we reflexively associate the host with warez or pirated movies.

You know; give it a fair trial, then shoot it.

38

Developer's Corner / Re: micropayments - how are the filesharing people making it work?

« on: January 02, 2010, 01:46 PM »

but I don't know whether it would bother your average freeware hunter or not

-slowmaker (January 02, 2010, 01:38 PM)

Please don't use the term "freeware" for warez.

-f0dder (January 02, 2010, 01:43 PM)

I didn't. The whole point of the thread is to ponder whether filesharing sites might be an appropriate storage/micropayment for freeware as opposed to the nonsense they are currently used for.

39

Developer's Corner / Re: micropayments - how are the filesharing people making it work?

« on: January 02, 2010, 01:38 PM »

Some of these filehosting sites like rapidshit have a subscription plan

That makes sense. I've gone to test one since I first posted (uploaded a gibberish text file), and when I went to the download link they made me wait 60 seconds, plus the link for the free download was made to appear grayed out while the premium membership download was brightly colored (the grey link worked fine). The page I saw while I waited was filled with subscription ads, showing all the different membership tiers and prices.

That wouldn't be a deal breaker for me, as long as a delay was the only obstacle, but I don't know whether it would bother your average freeware hunter or not. Obviously a lot of people do use the file sharers, but I supposed they might be mostly after things which are not normally free.

I just realized that freeware often gets mirrored by about a gazillion freeware sites, so I suppose the paid-for-downloads-by-the-file-hoster micropayment model wouldn't really work that well anyway. Pity.

40

Developer's Corner / micropayments - how are the filesharing people making it work?

« on: January 02, 2010, 02:06 AM »

Recent ramblings led me to sites that talked about 'uploading for cash'. Now, I realize they are probably mostly, if not all, warez doodz uploading pirated movies/software and being paid by the filesharing companies for every 1000 downloads, 10000 downloads, whatever. But how are the filesharing companies making their money? I've never had occasion to download from the ones that claim such high pay rates (some claim $10-15 per 1000 downloads), so I don't know what rigmarole they put the downloader through, but it can't possibly be just ads. Surely if ad impressions paid that high the issue of how to pay for small-shop/side-job software would never even be debated.

Are they requiring downloaders to take surveys or some such thing?

Or am I completely off base in my assumptions? Is $15 per 1000 ad impressions actually normal, and just sounds fantastic to me because I'm broke?

If they are not requiring anything too onerous, might that be a possibility for micropayment of software authors in the future? Host your software with one of these filesharing outfits, the software could remain free, the user doesn't have to do anything but download the software (no digging out the credit card), the download makes the author some money. Maybe not much money; most of the sites I skimmed (like ziddu) did not offer that top end rate, they were more like $1 per 1000 downloads. Still, that would be something; certainly more than you would get hosting pure freeware on your own site.

41

Living Room / Re: Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

« on: January 01, 2010, 01:40 PM »

Being an English-speaking person I often wonder if such blatant and horrid spelling & grammatical errors are being made in other languages in other countries.

-Innuendo (January 01, 2010, 12:41 PM)

I doubt it. I imagine a lot of other languages have more consistent rule sets that prevent it, since they are generally not globbed together from multiple languages the way English is.

I think I remember seeing a post somewhere to the effect that Finnish people don't have spelling bees, for instance; the whole concept would apparently be absurd to them because the sound matches the spelling, every time. I don't know squat about Finland or the language; I'm assuming the poster I remember knew what they were talking about.

42

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking To Improve My Touch Typing of Symbols

« on: January 01, 2010, 10:53 AM »

help me practice in a way that doesn't make my want to hang myself by my thumbnails due to boredom.

-tinjaw (December 31, 2009, 02:33 PM)

I noticed your tag-line mentioned music (breakbeat techno), which reminded me of a semi-obsession I had a few years ago with the idea of 'tune typing'. I never implemented it, but the idea was to tie MIDI notes to keys and ... well, do something. Never did figure out what, it just seemed like such a neat idea I almost couldn't let it go.

Is there anything out there that does something with music and the computer keyboard that would constitute customizable practice? Maybe even just a limited set of notes with a limited few practice keys, like 1 2 3 - 0 9 tied to C Eb F Gb G Bb (blues scale), so that any sequence would have an interesting sound. That way you could type practice sequences without it being quite so boring?

43

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« on: January 01, 2010, 03:12 AM »

Hello, everyone. I like what I've seen of this community so far, so I'll have a go at this self-introduction thing:

I'm from (and still in) the Southeastern U.S. I've been a peach picker, a radio dispatcher, a roofer, a library assistant, a low-tech demolition crewman (think hammer+crowbar+sweat), a math tutor, an HVAC installer, an industrial electronics troubleshooter, an assembly-line worker, a programmer for a small RFID shop, a retail worker, a computer repairman and a television repair shop driver (not necessarily in that order). I'm 40 years old and I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, but it's been an interesting ride so far.

I'm a husband and father too, but I'm not planning on giving those jobs up  .

I like projects, both low and high tech, but I tend to do a lot more reading than doing. If a position at Mythical Dream Jobs, Inc opened up for reading back issues of Popular Mechanics and writing programs on alternate days, I'd probably be willing to commit some fairly heinous acts to get that job, up to and including animal sacrifice.

44

General Software Discussion / Re: MIDI to MP3

« on: January 01, 2010, 12:49 AM »

I used WinAmp for this in the past; it converted my midis to wavs, then another prog (dbpoweramp I think it was called), converted the wavs to mp3s. Two stage process, not speedy, but free and mostly hands-off operation.

I think current versions still support it, or at least the portable version did last time I tried it. If it's like it used to be, you have to fiddle with the settings a bit (setting output to be a midi plugin, or some such thing), but once it's set, you're golden. Set the output directory, shove all the titles into a playlist, and let it 'play' them all into wav's.

It's realtime, so it can't compete with the speeds mentioned above unless WinAmp has added some new capabilities to the plugin or whatever it was. 

YMMV; as I recall, WinAmp was also very quirky and a wee bit buggy, so I did have to occasionally adjust the playlists to skip problem midi's that crashed it for some reason.