Messages

1676

Living Room / Re: hahahaah - what if microsoft clippy was in vim editor for unix

« on: July 23, 2006, 04:12 PM »

 
Looks like a re-ellaboration (ripoff?) of vigor:
http://vigor.sourceforge.net/
http://vigor.sourcef...rge.net/screenshots/

Note that it is a geeker clip, it has glasses

The parody...!: "are sure you want to move left?" Wasn't clippy always asking for confirmation of very obvious things?

1677

Living Room / What is the best way to keep two computers syncronized? preferences. etc

« on: July 22, 2006, 03:16 AM »

As recommended in this forum, I use syncBackSE to do incremental daily backups.
I also make an image of the system partition monthly.

I have been going without a clean XP reinstall for more than a year and a half.

However, now I'm experiencing lots of problems, and am considering a clean install.

But the huge list of programs to install, keys to track, and config files + plugins etc to set in place is staggering, and it's putting me off. We are talking of maybe a dozen hrs of productive time (i.e. > 2 days!), and then I'll be catching gltiches (things that I didn't install or configure ok) for at least the first couple of weeks.

I'll have the same problem if I want to keep two laptops (from different make) synchornized in terms of programs installed and configuration options for those.

I'm sure most of you maintain more than one computer.

What do you do? What programs do you use? Is there any way around the 'reinstall everything' ceremony?

1678

Find And Run Robot / Re: Thoughts of a new comer

« on: July 20, 2006, 01:43 AM »

Here is one thing that I do to move around the filesystem...
it is not FARR what I use, but Dopus, and it is slightly inspired on how vim works (switching modes with esc).

I have a few aliases. They are called by typing "/' before the name.
I have mapped 'esc' to 'go to the "file:" command line. This was not possible from within Dopus, because esc was not an option, but I could do it with autoHotKey.

Everytime I need to go somewhere, I type 'esc' and the alias that is the closest, then move around the file list by typing the first letter, second letter, etc, and enter.

This is the fastest and most visual way of moving around I have being able to think of. It even combines the niceties of a shell apprach and a visual point-and-click approach. I/m very happy right now, although I'm sure there is room for improvement.

As it is based on aliases, any other program i. e. FARR, slickrun, etc can do it too.
I use slickRun. I don't have the same approach on SR because I would miss the visual part of a file browser and because the autocomplete list is littered with other non-filesystem related queries.

What do you think?

1679

Living Room / Why is Microsoft software so unreliable?

« on: July 19, 2006, 04:28 PM »

Why is microsoft software so unreliable?
How did we grow used to it?

My recent examples:
Hibernation and laptops:
Everytime I close the lid in my laptop, I have a good chance of not seeing my laptop come to life again. Having to reboot makes me miss some info and time.

Visual Studio:
No autosave, no temporary files
(but see http://www.codeguru....s/article.php/c3123/, solution pointed out here in this forum!)

Powerpoint:
Even with autosave 'on' and saving every minute, no temporary files. For the love of Pete, I cannot find temporary files anywhere. The 'autosaved' files offered in the left menu (we are used to those, right? that means we see plenty of crashes) are from several hours ago.

The intergalactic police should come and execute the responsables for so much suffering. Humanity would be better off without the careless programming that Microsoft practices.

Rant mode *off*.
PS: I have tried to move to Linux and actually spent about a year using it exclusively. But being a tweaker, I spent too much time doing unproductive things such as recompiling kernel, finding drivers, and looking for programs. It's not a solution for me.

1680

Living Room / memory faulty? why some programs work on one comp. but not another

« on: July 15, 2006, 06:31 AM »

Hi,

I'm stumped. I have 3 laptops. I just installed macromedia flash 8 pro on them and in my main one (dell 600m), it simply crashes when I try to open the 'actions' window. The error message is useless. The other 2 laptops work just fine.

That same dell had problems installing different programs. E.g., backup4All showed a memory leak and eneded at >400mb after a few seconds.

I wonder what could be wrong. Could the memory on my dell be faulty? Would it be worth it to test for it? A clean win reinstall is out of question as it'd take forever for me to get everything back to how it is now. A 'repair' install, I'd consider, but I did one less than 1 month ago...

Maybe there is something wrong with the fonts, the registry, or any other OS-wide thing that affects flash?

thanks

1681

Living Room / Help with Visual studio 6 "crash" and lost changes

« on: July 12, 2006, 02:33 AM »

I was using Visual studio 6 (don't ask), and after 4 hours of updating my code and being done (not using sourcesafe nor any other versioning system), I closed the IDE and answered "NO" to 'save changes' by accident.

I now face the prospect of having to recreate all changes from memory.

I didn't do the periodic file > save project.

Remember, I'm a vim guy and don't like IDEs. I would never expect and IDE from microsoft be so dumb that it doesn't automatically save a backup.

Question: are there any temporary files for "current project" that I could check? Any visual studio gurus around?

Times like these make me think: (1) not to touch a M$ product again for anything important like coding. (2) install some kind of real time mirroring (I have daily backups with syncbackSE, but clearly not good if you lose one day of work (!).
Thanks a lot

1682

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Uninstallers (a very short look at what I've tried!)

« on: July 10, 2006, 03:27 PM »

I use smarty uninstaller...
http://www.winnertweak.com/uninstaller/
it takes quite a while to remove all the stuff but it is very thorough. I like it better than the few others that I tried before.

1683

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: July 05, 2006, 04:14 PM »

I vote willyram, for bestest first post ever

1684

General Software Discussion / multiple desktops

« on: July 02, 2006, 05:08 PM »

I'm considering multple desktops but it may be more trouble than it's worth.
I have seen this:
http://www.goscreen.info/

is anyone here using it? Any suggestions?

1685

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Research Note-Taking Program (MindMapper)

« on: July 02, 2006, 03:20 PM »

well, any software that works with text can do the copy-paste trick from endnote. The only problem is that to get thie 'finished' format where the bibliography is added to the end of the page, etc you need to go to word and use the endnote plugin there.

So I'd say that any text editor/notetaking program would do the trick.

1686

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: maybe using a game editor: generate a graph of a room full of people

« on: June 29, 2006, 06:40 PM »

Just did the tutorial and it's fantastic.
Not sure how to bring objects/people and use the scripting to do that.
Dajo, are you good at google SketchUp? If you want to take up the job, I can pay you (donationCredits, for example?)

1687

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

« on: June 28, 2006, 05:07 PM »

Update: I asked "how to set Locate to 'activate' the first found file when the search is done (like in the Windows search) or maybe even already when the first file is found." - thanks to the nice coder this features has been added!

-brotherS (November 01, 2005, 09:17 AM)

How do you do that? I have v. 3.06.6060 but cannot see it in the options...

1688

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera and Gmail users might like this

« on: June 25, 2006, 02:02 PM »

Well, for me the most annoying thing is that I cannot use advaced mode and hit ´back´ becaue it gets stuck on "loading". I use gmail in standard html mode... or I have to hit reload after back everytime. Do you have that problem?

1689

Post New Requests Here / Re: [Idea] Research Note-Taking Program (MindMapper)

« on: June 25, 2006, 01:56 PM »

HI Vevola,

I´m sure you have seen this, but just in case:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=2362.0

As you see, notetaking is a hotly debated topic. I wouldn´t expect somebody here to start a large project to create all the functionality that you mention. Having said that I think you have some really useful ideas that I haven´t seen anywhere. I really like the idea of keeping the reference together with the note, and exporting to word.

I tend to do all you mentioned using simple outiles as text files, and endnote reference formats: {like this, 1990, #234}. Since it is plain text, when I finish I can just cut and paste into word and use endNote to get any kind of formatting (e.g., APA) for the references.

Hope this helps

1690

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use any GTD/calendar system to get organized?

« on: June 21, 2006, 04:57 AM »

Ok I think this thread is relevant here:
https://www.donation...pic=3287.0;topicseen

1691

Skrommel's Software / Re: Problems with Ghoster

« on: June 20, 2006, 06:32 PM »

Thanks a lot skrommel.

I think this idea is a huge improve in usability of any OS.
Unfortunately in my system (dell 600, crappy video card) the screen redraw is too slow to make it work. It takes maybe .5 seconds. I do alt/tab a lot so I need snappy windows changes. A pity...

1692

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: maybe using a game editor: generate a graph of a room full of people

« on: June 20, 2006, 04:58 PM »

Thanks dajo,

Actually I have generated the random matrices and dot clouds already (using R, my favorite prog. language).
What I want is to actually have a graph of a room with little characters (taken from a game maybe?) to make sure that they are all different and memorable...

I did the experiment already with random dots as your screenshot describes. It failed beacause people cannot remember them well.

This is the reason I want to make the "room" idea. Rooms should be a lot more memorable, since the random location of characters are... well, not simple dots, but people.

Any ideas for something that takes the coordinates and generates a graph of people (or objects. whatever)? I'm thinking about some isometric view of a room but a bottle full of marbles would do too.

Thanks a lot

1693

Living Room / Re: Browser discussion

« on: June 20, 2006, 03:29 AM »

I've really enjoyed the changes in the 9.0 version and use it as my secondary browser, which is quite a lot during the day. The biggest thing I miss is hitting the ALT+D to jump to the address line (F2 is what Opera uses). And here's the funny thing: I use Opera to go to sites that don't render properly in IE! Go figure.

-zridling (June 20, 2006, 12:43 AM)

You can change that in tools > preferences > shortcuts
do a search for 'focus address field', or 'go to page' and change the shortcut.
I just did.

Shortcut flexibility is second to none in opera.

1694

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: June 19, 2006, 08:45 PM »

superT seems to be simiar to tab mix pro
http://forums.mozill...ewtopic.php?t=389479

Note: I don't use firefox so I haven't tried it.

1695

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: email follow-up reminder

« on: June 19, 2006, 05:30 PM »

I'd like to have an application/plugin that does the following:

(1) it gets a list of contacts
(2) let's me assign a time deadline (e.g. a month) to them
(3) monitors when I last mailed that person, and starts counting
(4) when the deadline arrives, it notifies me

Is there any program out there that can be configured to do this?
Ideally, the program used to mail should be capable of implementing this kind of reminder. I use Opera M2... so no plugin capability.

This may require then an external program that monitors email. Some are discussed here:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3365.0

This idea is useful for those people that you want to keep in touch, but for some reason you keep forgetting to mail them...

1696

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use any GTD/calendar system to get organized?

« on: June 19, 2006, 04:49 PM »

Another Rainlendar user here. This little jewel covers all my needs. I've also tried EssentialPIM and Mozilla Sunbird, also great programs, but a little too much for me. EssentialPIM has some features more oriented to real busy people, and I'm not one of these. The same could be said of Mozilla Sunbird, but it lacks some of the advanced features of EssentialPIM. Also, both are full-screen programs, while Rainlendar sits nicely in a corner of your desktop, and it consumes less memory. It's a lovely application

-Lashiec (June 19, 2006, 12:18 PM)

Lashiec, have you tried syncing google calendar and rainlendar? it is described in the forums:
http://ipi.fi/~rainy...9&highlight=gcal

but not sure how well it works. I'm looking for a 'local' copy of gcal. I use MLO but it has no calendar whatsoever, and I love the quick add feature of gcal. Ideally, gcal would be the center and MLO/rainlendar would sync with it...

1697

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is so much software cracked?

« on: June 19, 2006, 04:36 PM »

Nice post, Carol.

I live in the UK -previously lived in the US for 4 years- and this is news for me. How can an entire country ignore this? Can an economy be this inflated without offering anything of value in exchange?

One of the most important questions for me right now is to decide where I want to live/settle down. I'm an academic so I have quite a lot of mobility (I'm in that moment of your life where you have to settle in a place). This post helped me in that sense. If you have any more info/links on this phenomenon (that you call 'ripoff Britain' ), I'd love to hear from it (if it's not too political for this forum).

1698

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is so much software cracked?

« on: June 18, 2006, 07:26 PM »

But then UK Prices are generally up to 50% higher than US prices.

-Carol Haynes (June 18, 2006, 11:24 AM)

And the reason for this being? I mean, there is no shipping cost, no difference in material availability, no need for translation (if written in US-english)... I honestly don't know how companies can justify this.

Hardware is also %50 higher, but here I can see *some* reasons (shipping, smaller market, small differences -e.g. keyboard on a laptop....)

1699

General Software Discussion / gmail and opera... maybe general SMTP problem?

« on: June 16, 2006, 03:21 PM »

Hi,

I know some people here (at least Allen) use both gmail and opera's M2.
Since yesterday, with no changes in my configuration at all, gmail stopped sending mail from opera. I have double-checked that all the options are set as they should.

I have two installations of opera and 4 gmail addresses and none work.

I checked this forum:

http://www.gmailforu...dex.php?showforum=13

But noone seems to be complaining.

Is anyone else useing SMTP from google? Are you experiencing problems?

Thanks a lot

1700

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use any GTD/calendar system to get organized?

« on: June 16, 2006, 02:10 PM »

jdd,
The last edition (1.7) of MLO seems to do reminders AND talk to outlook well (dunno how well as I don't use outlook).