Messages

201

Find And Run Robot / Re: Portable suggestion

« on: July 31, 2013, 02:00 AM »

Don't know if it helps, but take a look at Horst Schaeffer's ShortExe:

-rjbull (July 30, 2013, 05:44 PM)

Thanks -- one for the toolkit!

It's an interesting approach, but it's not a portablisation problem I have here: FARR already makes finding and running programs from portable media brilliantly easy. The issue is just, when you're configuring aliases (or shortcuts in LBC, as the logic's similar) the program defaults to using the drive letter instead of the completely available but apparently eminently forgettable %APPDRIVE% variable. So I was trying to suggest a tiny tweak whereby FARR / LBC could look to see if the drive letter and %APPDRIVE% match and, if they do, use the latter in the created shortcut / alias.

Just trying to save work for me and make some for mouser. Surely no harm in that, he whined, winningly.

202

Find And Run Robot / Portable suggestion

« on: July 30, 2013, 04:39 AM »

I was tweaking aliases in FARR when I thought of this but something similar might also be considered for LaunchBarCommander...

How about a tiny change to the logic that says, when you're adding an alias to a portable copy, via the “search for an executable” button, something like (very pseudo code)

if alias_executable_drive = %APPDRIVE% then replace alias_executable_drive with "%APPDRIVE%"

I get that there will be times when a hard-coded drive letter is a Good Thing, particularly when you’re running portably but expect to be able to find something on the host’s system, but I can’t think of a single instance where the drive letter of the portable device might need to be referred to explicitly rather than expanding the %APPDRIVE% variable instead. (Which might be a statement about my lack of imagination, I guess )

I'd also like to be able to ask FARR / LBC to search for all uses of a drive letter -- even if a search-and-replace option would be too much of a blunt instrument, a report I could work through just to make sure I hadn't missed anything stupid would be really useful

Partly, this is because I can go for several weeks without needing to remember how to refer to the drive letter variable and by the time I need it again, I’ve always forgotten it!

203

General Software Discussion / Re: The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« on: July 29, 2013, 04:17 AM »

Plain text files are tremendously useful... I never did understand why people felt they needed fancy word processors to keep notes and lists of stuff.

-ander2255 (July 28, 2013, 05:31 PM)

Probably because they like text enhancements and automatic formatting. But at the very least, something tiny that does richtext is good enough for most people’s needs most of the time, I’d have said.

But if you’ve been out and bought a PC with an evaluation copy of Office on it and you don’t understand that there are low-cost or free alternatives, you’re probably also not going to get (a) that you don’t need Word for a shopping list or, for that matter, (b) that emailing .docx files is Irritating, for all sorts of reasons.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I also use a text editor for composing email replies (I don't trust online editors).

It does require that you remember the syntax for text enhancements -- or not use them, of course. (Said the chap writing from inside Jarte )

And RJ TextEd is also worth a look.

Not one I’d come across. So I’ve downloaded the portable version.

HOW BIG??!! 

Nearly 100Mb once extracted from the (slightly less than half that) zipfile? Good grief. It’d better be good!

(There are times when I remember that the first PC I had regular use of had 640k RAM and a 20MB hard disk -- and that WordStar ran comfortably from a small fraction of that disk space Okay, okay, [/old fart mode] )

204

General Software Discussion / Re: Vim 7.2 - Vista compatible!

« on: July 23, 2013, 11:46 AM »

I'm a text editor junkie, I admit it. I've got probably a dozen lying around within easy distance and probably the same number in zipfiles just in case I find something they'd be ideal for.

An ex-colleague of mine (with a far more unix-y background than me), back in the 80s, used to swear by emacs and vi, but as my main experience of text editors at that time consisted of edlin and WordStar (in non-document mode, natch) and editors that had to be told how to edit seemed far too complicated for my simple needs, emacs scared the pants off me and vi just looked like you needed a degree in computer science even to think about it. An editor for nerds, I privately thought. (Said the man who, even now, will often knock up a quick batchfile using "copy con foobar.bat". I know. It's not big and it's not clever. But you can do it with nothing up your sleeves...) 

So vim is vi with extra vim, right? But it's still a commandline editor? More in common with edlin than notepad++?

So -- and this is a genuine query, because I honestly can't give up looking for a better mousetrap -- why would I want vim? (Be warned, though: if your answer is something like "it's the best editor there is for supporting regular expressions", I'm not gonna bite -- I get the point of regular expressions, I just know mastering the syntax is never going to happen!)

205

General Software Discussion / Re: The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« on: July 22, 2013, 12:42 AM »

What about VIM? If you like FARR, try VIM.

-daanvink (July 21, 2013, 06:30 PM)

It's not exactly small and simple...

206

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for July 9, 2013 - Codename: Summer Slowdown

« on: July 12, 2013, 07:36 AM »

Thanks, mouser -- I also found some bits I'd missed that I enjoyed or found useful or both!

207

General Software Discussion / Re: The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« on: July 12, 2013, 07:09 AM »

For plaintext, I generally use Boxer -- partly because I won a DC drawing for a copy, but I've been aware of its reputation for general wonderfulness for years and years and years. I'm also quite fond of notepad++.

For richtext, I'm also very fond of Jarte. It's idiosyncratic but once you get used to the way they've implemented the interface -- particularly the clickless controls in Compact mode -- it's hard to give up on. Fast, effective and extremely solid, in my experience.

I try a lot of this sort of stuff out -- I spend a lot of time hammering my keyboard, one way or another -- and these three have floated to the top of my go-to list of things to use and pretty much stuck there. In case that's any sort of recommendation.

I’ve also recently discovered TextEditorAnywhere which rather nicely lets me use Jarte to type things like this.

208

Webcam Video Diary / Re: Recording and post-processing problems

« on: July 04, 2013, 10:36 AM »

I have to say that I find getting the compression settings correct in any video recording program is a frustrating and confusing process, and Webcam Video Diary is no exception.

-mouser (July 04, 2013, 07:13 AM)

Okay, I'll continue to experiment and

My lack of a systematic approach for this probably didn't help: I picked settings that I thought looked sensible, got results I didn't like, tried others, got worse, tried to go back to what I thought the previous settings were and got different results again and the more frustrated I got the less systematic I became -- particularly as I was up against a looming deadline, so there was a certain amount of panic involved too 

I have a DivX codec installed -- I think it arrived when I got bought the first of the new Star Trek movies on a special-edition usb key -- and that was actually okay except the audio was slightly out of synch so I ditched that idea too and it was as if my system thought fine, chum, you don't want that I'm not going to give you anything else at all.

I have a tiny suspicion that rebooting between experiments might be necessary. That's more painful than I'd like, but I'll post any helpful results as and when.

It's also not a program that very many people use so it has some rough edges.

Really? 


I don't remember the context now but it's here because I had a problem to solve -- capturing a still from a usb webcam into ScreenShotCaptor was, I think, what I thought I ought to be able to do and couldn't -- and you suggested WVD yourself. So this is (a) your fault and (b) definitely the first time I've tried to use it for actual moving video-and-audio. If I get it working, it'll definitely be useful while I do this MOOC, at any rate. If I don't, I'll probably have to rig up a camera and tripod instead. Which is probably going to use something nasty like Quicktime  and be a lot harder to physically manage

Thanks for the advice, anyway. I WILL crack this.

209

Webcam Video Diary / Recording and post-processing problems

« on: July 04, 2013, 05:03 AM »

Having not used this for a while, I dusted it off yesterday for the first time in ages as  I've signed up for a MOOC in public speaking and need to be able to record and upload videos of me waxing lyrical to an imaginary audience.

My first attempt, I got a short way into a recording then my Win7 netbook started beeping at me, alarmingly. I stopped the recording and discovered that the minute or two I'd captured had created a 400Mb file. Oops, I thought, no compression.

So I picked a codec and tried again. One of the Intel ones. Results were stripy. Try again...

...and again...

...and again...

Look, I don't know anything about video recording and codecs and the like, but the more I try to more weird results I get. Including a saved video that claims to be 0 bytes but nevertheless has a shot of me reaching across to switch off recording.

The help file doesn't contain anything under most of the headings.

I'm quite sure it's me rather than the software but HELP! Is there a basic set of settings that are (a) pretty much guaranteed to exist on most PCs -- to save me listing all the codecs listed -- and (b) likely to work -- bearing in mind I have to upload to Youtube?

210

Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« on: June 10, 2013, 09:45 AM »

^^ I don't recall reading anything by Iain Banks. He didn't have a very long innings, did he?

-IainB (June 10, 2013, 05:16 AM)

30 years?

His first novel, The Wasp Factory, was odd, affecting and unsettling: I remember the disconcerting feeling, after I'd finished it, that I'd never really been made to feel sympathy with a complete psycho before.

His SF output, written as Iain M Banks, started with Consider Phlebas and introduced The Culture, a system that housed most of his later SF. (Actually, Walking On Glass was sort of sf too, but I might be the only person in the world who liked it -- it's often forgotten.)

Non-SF novels included The Crow Road (which was televised) and Complicity (which was filmed).

I haven't read all his books, by quite a stretch, but I haven't read anything of his that I didn't like, at least to some extent. He often didn't create characters that were easy to sympathise with, or even like, but you couldn't complain about the quality of his creations, which were almost always stunning.

Oh, and you might remember the fuss about Feersumm Enjinn.

I think he grew in importance with every book, and as The Wasp Factory was pretty important from the get-go, I think he was a major loss.

The notice in The Scotsman might remind you of some things you've forgotten about him.

211

Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« on: June 03, 2013, 04:59 AM »

This is another.    R.I.P. JV.     

-IainB (June 02, 2013, 10:02 PM)

Definitely one of the greats.

212

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

« on: May 24, 2013, 11:22 AM »

Now I am privileged.

Posted to me:



31,000. Wow. 

213

Screenshot Captor / Re: Portable mode

« on: May 24, 2013, 11:14 AM »

In the portable mode try just setting screenshot directory to: Screenshots

-mouser (May 24, 2013, 11:07 AM)

That would work -- sorry, braindead Friday.

214

Screenshot Captor / Portable mode

« on: May 24, 2013, 10:52 AM »

I bumped into a spot of weirdness earlier today.

I was running SSC from a thumbdrive, copied from another portable install. The latter is always G: so SSC gave me an error about not being able to find that drive to drop screenshots into. Recovered nicely: created a screenshots folder and suchlike and wrote the latter's address into the settings. Thing is, it set a drive letter on it. So I looked in the help for a useful current drive variable and didn't find anything, so I just deleted the E: and hoped that'd work.

I was documenting a delete and reinstall process at the time, and the final part of the delete process was a reboot.

On SSC's next start, it seemed to be looking at the correct folder, but it was empty. Odd. No matter; finish what I'm doing, worry about it later...

...so eventually, I'd discovered that the initial folder it had created was

E:\PortableApps\ScreenshotCaptor\Screenshots

and when I'd told it to use

\PortableApps\ScreenshotCaptor\Screenshots

it had created

E:\PortableApps\ScreenshotCaptor\PortableApps\ScreenshotCaptor\Screenshots

instead of continuing to use the initially-created folder.

So... dear mouser, please can I have some portable-friendly variables I can use in path specs in SSC configs, please? (Or if there are some already, can they please have a prominent bit of the Help file so I can find them when I need them?)

Er, and although I hate to bring this up, I found this in the help:

"Miscelaneous Tips and Tricks"

Should, of course, be "Miscellaneous"

215

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: XYplorer Lifetime License 51% discount on BitsDuJour on Monday 8 Nov 2010

« on: May 22, 2013, 03:51 AM »

*** Great News! XYplorer has agreed to extend this deal for another day - Enjoy! ***

Lifetime License and half the price at > http://www.bitsdujou...rer-lifetime-license

-AbteriX (May 21, 2013, 02:37 PM)

Looks like it's going for three days in a row, as it's still available today

216

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

« on: May 20, 2013, 09:14 AM »

Not an achievement, but still, 1962 is the year I'm born,

-Ath (May 20, 2013, 08:30 AM)

My birth year too. Which means I'm going to have to stop pretending to be older and more venerable than everyone else here. Hmf.

I CAN go on being grumpy, though, I think. I'll probably have to do a bit more of it if I'm going to reach a similar number of posts to yours. Congratulations -- and 1962 is 100 in base 196.2, of course.

217

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Show us your LaunchBar Commander Screenshots

« on: May 15, 2013, 11:48 AM »

Nothing terribly clever going on here. The machine my portable HD spends most of its life attached to has its taskbar autohiding at the left edge (I like the extra space you get in the notification area in XP) and the LBC menu autohides at the bottom. I have many menus -- and submenus -- containing portable apps, the default control panel and start menu shortcuts bracket a menu that autostarts a dozen other programs [note to self: ask Mouser about maybe putting a configurable and interruptable delay on such things so I don't have to worry about hitting it by accident] and the "most used" list get icons on the main bar.



It's not pretty, it's functional.

218

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Importing and Exporting Configs for Manipulation

« on: May 15, 2013, 04:38 AM »

A +1 from me for something like this. LBC is a massively useful way to keep track of my portable apps but when I set it up, I cleverly dragged and dropped and ordered and tweaked but never thought to replace the drive reference to %APPDRIVE%.

My main install of LBC on my portable hard disk has 286 nodes.  

Some of them are separators.  

Just not very many.  

So I force my portable HD to be G: everywhere I use it. But I tell myself off every time I do it.

[edit]

And I've just realised, when I edit a node that only has a local reference to an icon (because it's a menu, say) changing the drive reference to %APPDRIVE% doesn't result in the "save changes" button becoming available unless some other change (to the comment, say) is made.

219

LaunchBar Commander / The spelling bee stings again :)

« on: May 15, 2013, 04:29 AM »

So there I was, wanting to come here to check if there was a way to do something, used LBC's "visit forum" option in the Help menu only to discover that, apparently, this isn't a forum.

It's a "fourm".

Sorry, mouser. Trivial, I know.

220

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

« on: April 21, 2013, 06:56 AM »

regarding Speed Dial - maybe test "FVD Speed Dial with Full Online Sync":
https://addons.mozil...ddon/fvd-speed-dial/ ? I don't remember why I don't use it.

-Curt (April 20, 2013, 12:44 PM)

Nor do I. But I tried it a while back and there was something about it that made me want to switch back to the original Speed Dial. So I did.

Speed Dial does get occasional updates -- the last one was fairly recently -- and although FVD is definitely prettier, SD has all the functionality I need (and possibly more than FVD has?)

221

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

« on: April 19, 2013, 04:37 AM »

I have quite a lot of favourite extensions in common with various other suggestions posted here and I'm not going to list all of them because of the yawn factor. However, a couple of less common suggestions that I'd like to +1:

Possibly my favourite Firefox extension is Speed Dial. I don't do bookmarks, I do dials. I can categorise sets of places into dial "groups" and I really like the way this works.

I'm also extraordinarily fond of Newsfox. I've tried all sorts of RSS readers but this one just works for me, and I use it all the time. There are a couple of minor idiosyncrasies -- sorting is slightly counter-intuitive -- but I've stuck with it for some years now and it's yet to disappoint me.

222

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

« on: April 17, 2013, 11:04 AM »

Cor blimey mate, you mean you can't tell?

-pilgrim (April 17, 2013, 10:48 AM)

I am NOT Dick Van Dyke. There's more to English accents than cartoon cockneys, y'know...

223

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

« on: April 17, 2013, 11:02 AM »

Yay for Non American accents. So which accent is it?   

-TaoPhoenix (April 17, 2013, 10:38 AM)

It is English. The one that I think sounds completely normal and Americans think sounds either old-fashioned and quaint, or like a criminal mastermind.

224

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

« on: April 17, 2013, 10:59 AM »

You mean you was 'oblivious' to it?

-pilgrim (April 17, 2013, 10:36 AM)

My online name has quite a long history. I used to run a FidoNet BBS; I called it "Oblivion and You" after a song called "You And Oblivion" by a musician called Robyn Hitchcock. (The latter's been doing stuff with Peter Buck of REM lately, but he tends to be regarded as obscure, sadly.)

Then I discovered a rollercoaster called Oblivion at a British theme park called Alton Towers. It trumpeted itself as the world's first vertical drop rollercoaster. (100 feet in freefall, effectively, and it holds you over the drop for just long enough for you to wish you'd never got onboard.)

So the BBS gained a subtitle. The world's first vertical drop BBS. Nonsense, of course, but as I never had more than a handful of users, nobody much cared.

When the BBS' hard disk died, I spent a while wondering whether it was worth resurrecting the machine, but reluctantly decided it was more work than it was worth. (I think it was one of the last handful of FidoNet nodes in the UK: it wasn't quite me turning out the lights as I left but I was pretty close).

So the name lives on, sort of. I still miss Fido...

The avatar is a shameless copy of the Oblivion (rollercoaster) logo that I built a small animation with, mostly because I wanted to see if I could. (A close inspection will reveal that my animation skills are not exactly brilliant, but I think it's probably okay for a beginner )

(And modest too.)

My modesty, as you have clearly indicated, is just one of my fine attributes.

225

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

« on: April 17, 2013, 10:25 AM »

I just discovered I never noticed my 100th. <sniff>

Still, just to commemorate the fact that I must have written a hundredth post at some point (and, of course, it must have been perfectly crafted, beautifully enunciated and carefully delivered in a non-American accent) I've just updated my avatar.