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Topics - mouser [ switch to compact view ]

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201
General Software Discussion / OpenSCAD is a game changer for 3d printing
« on: April 01, 2018, 02:13 AM »
This is a post about a (free) program called OpenSCAD:
Screenshot - 4_1_2018 , 2_00_50 AM_ver001_thumb001.png


I recently bought a 3d printer.  Mostly just because they've gotten good enough and cheap enough that I woudn't feel too bad if it mostly sat on a shelf.

I've been having quite a bit more fun with it than I expected, mostly because of the amazing site thingiverse.com where people have uploaded thousands of printable things you can just download and print (it's not *quite* that easy yet, there's plenty of tinkering and troubleshooting still required with today's cheap 3d printers).

Mostly I've been printing things to bling out my board games.

But this past week a couple of people teamed up on the DonationCoder forum to help make a model of our site mascot (Cody the Bird), and a customizable base for him to sit on.  You can follow along with that thread here: https://www.donation...ic=45256.0;topicseen

A photo: codyherald.jpg


I've tried experimenting with doing 3d design using tools like Blender, and my brain completely shuts down, which is a shame because it would be fun to be able to DESIGN models not just print models that others have made.

Which brings me to the reason I'm posting, OpenSCAD.

OpenSCAD has been a revelation for me.  It's basically a CAD (computer aided drafting) programming language and development environment, which makes it easy for a programmer to design and model 3d objects for printing, using algorithms/code.

It's a joy to use -- you can write programs to create 3d objects and instantly preview and study them and then save them for printing.  And most of the models on thingiverse that are customizable are made with OpenSCAD, which is a great way of getting started.

My mind is swimming with the idea of creating both useful and precise objects, but also useless and mathematically interesting objects...

Here is a video talking about OpenSCAD:



202
Living Room / On Medical Research Bureaucracy and the Institutional Review Board
« on: March 29, 2018, 07:47 PM »
I read this story about a doctor trying to get permission to do a harmless research study by giving people a simple questionnaire, and the loopholes he eventually gave up trying to jump through.

I have had some limited experience with big government bureaucracies, and his conclusion here really mirrors my thoughts:

I sometimes worry that people misunderstand the case against bureaucracy. People imagine it’s Big Business complaining about the regulations preventing them from steamrolling over everyone else. That hasn’t been my experience. Big Business – heck, Big Anything – loves bureaucracy. They can hire a team of clerks and secretaries and middle managers to fill out all the necessary forms, and the rest of the company can be on their merry way. It’s everyone else who suffers. The amateurs, the entrepreneurs, the hobbyists, the people doing something as a labor of love. Wal-Mart is going to keep selling groceries no matter how much paperwork and inspections it takes; the poor immigrant family with the backyard vegetable garden might not.

Bureaucracy in science does the same thing: limit the field to big institutional actors with vested interests. No amount of hassle is going to prevent the Pfizer-Merck-Novartis Corporation from doing whatever study will raise their bottom line. But enough hassle will prevent a random psychiatrist at a small community hospital from pursuing his pet theory about bipolar diagnosis. The more hurdles we put up, the more the scientific conversation skews in favor of Pfizer-Merck-Novartis.


from http://andrewgelman.com/

203
Developer's Corner / Update Drupal ASAP - Over a Million Sites Can Be Easily Hacked by Any Visitor
« on: March 29, 2018, 06:17 PM »
If you are a server admin and have a Drupal installation, you need to update it immediately.

A dangerous Drupal flaw could leave your site completely compromised if you don't patch the flaw immediately.

Developers of popular open-source CMS Drupal are warning admins to immediately patch a flaw that an attacker can exploit just by visiting a vulnerable site.

The bug affects all sites running on Drupal 8, Drupal 7, and Drupal 6. Drupal's project usage page indicates that about a million sites are running the affected versions.



204
Official Announcements / New article posted about the DC Remodeling in 2018 -- server changes, cms, etc.
« on: March 28, 2018, 03:10 PM »
Here it is, as promised.  You can read my new article on the major DC server remodeling here: https://www.donation...frastructure-remodel

I'm not sure it's of much interest to anyone but I thought I would write everything down before I forgot it.

It has a little bit of everything: Some DC history, discussion of the options we struggled with, why certain decisions were made, some lessons learned, etc.


205
Post New Requests Here / MOVED: FINISED: Muting focused program with a key press
« on: March 26, 2018, 05:10 PM »
This topic has been moved to Finished Programs.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=44133.0

206
Post New Requests Here / MOVED: FINISHED: Play a sound when a color appears on screen
« on: March 26, 2018, 05:10 PM »
This topic has been moved to Finished Programs.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=44051.0

207
Post New Requests Here / MOVED: FINISHED: Speed It Up, or Slow It Down
« on: March 26, 2018, 05:09 PM »
This topic has been moved to Finished Programs.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=44291.0

208
Post New Requests Here / MOVED: FINISHED: Folder Icon Generator - Customize the picture inside your folder icon
« on: March 26, 2018, 05:08 PM »
This topic has been moved to Finished Programs.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=44297.0

209
Post New Requests Here / MOVED: FINISHED: Reopen file after Wifi reconnects
« on: March 26, 2018, 05:01 PM »
This topic has been moved to Finished Programs.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=44593.0

210
Post New Requests Here / MOVED: IDEA: Hourly chime software (like Cuckoo for Mac)
« on: March 26, 2018, 05:00 PM »
This topic has been moved to Finished Programs.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=44048.0

211
Living Room / The future of Ghacks (2018)
« on: March 23, 2018, 06:51 AM »
Martin Brinkmann over at ghacks.net has posted an essay about his site moving forward in 2018.  I've actually been appreciating ghacks more lately.  Definitely a site that should be in your bookmarks for daily reading and deserving of your support.


212
Living Room / Photographer Tutorial Company Release Satire Version for Pirates
« on: March 21, 2018, 09:38 AM »
When it comes to content producers reacting to the pirating of their works, we've seen just about every reaction possible... They decided to release a version of Photographing the World 3 on several torrent sites a few days before it went to retail, but the version they released was much different than the actual product. It was close enough to the real thing that many people were left wondering just what the hell was going on, but ridiculous enough that it's downright funny.  “The whole time we were thinking: ‘This isn’t even on the market yet! You guys are totally stealing this and emailing us and complaining about it,”


213
Living Room / Artists: Share your artwork with the forum!
« on: March 19, 2018, 07:48 PM »
I know we have some artists out there on the forum (painters, sculptors, illustrators.. digital or analog).  One of the best things about this site is when members share their lives with us a little bit.

Please share a little bit of your artwork with us, and tell us a little bit about what motivates you and when you enjoy doing, etc.

And I'm not talking about professional artists, just people who enjoy creating art... We just want to share a little in your life!

So, who has the guts to go first?

214
Developer's Corner / Google opens Maps to bring the real world into games
« on: March 14, 2018, 03:44 PM »
I have flirted with some ideas of games based on real world large-scale map data, so this is pretty cool news.

The search firm is both opening its Maps platform's real-time data and offering new software toolkits that will help developers build games based on that data. The software includes both a kit to translate map info to the Unity game engine as well as another to help make games using that location data.


from https://tech.slashdo...eal-world-into-games

215
Official Announcements / Fundraiser scheduled for April 2018
« on: March 09, 2018, 08:52 AM »
Our next fundraiser will be held during April 2018.   It's been 3 years since our last one(!).

We hope to have some giveaways and discounts and special things..

If you have any ideas -- especially ideas you can volunteer to do the work on -- please let me know!

216
Developer's Corner / Article: 20 months tracking down an elusive bug in code
« on: February 27, 2018, 12:44 AM »
Nice article on tracking down an elusive unpredictable problem that was related to an operating system bug.

Flaky failures are the worst. In this particular investigation, which spanned twenty months, we suspected hardware failure, compiler bugs, linker bugs, and other possibilities. Jumping too quickly to blaming hardware or build tools is a classic mistake, but in this case the mistake was that we weren’t thinking big enough. Yes, there was a linker bug, but we were also lucky enough to have hit a Windows kernel bug which is triggered by linkers!


from OsNews.com

217
Developer's Corner / Design difficulties of making the stealth game Thief
« on: February 24, 2018, 06:33 PM »
Nice short video on the design difficulties of making one of the early first person stealth games, Thief:
https://arstechnica....g-almost-didnt-work/


218
Living Room / The remains of the anonymous exhibitionist site Chatroullette
« on: February 14, 2018, 01:03 PM »
For those who weren't around when Chatroullette came about -- it was (is) a site that matched random webcam users up for anonymous connections, where you would randomly meet people from across the globe.  It quickly turned into a random online exhibitionism tool.

In 2010, Chatroulette was the “it” site. It was profiled religiously, as was its eventual rise and decline in popularity. By June of that year, reporters had gone from singing its praise as “the future of the internet” to writing its obituary (“Cause of death: penises”)... The men who remain — and make no mistake, they are overwhelmingly men — still consider it a place to waste a little time online... Between the occasional, curious user who is truly interested in just chatting, are the ones everyone has come to expect: the on-cam men jerking off.


from https://boingboing.n...rvives-as-a-mas.html

219
Screenshot Captor / Gathering suggestions for improving region select mode
« on: February 13, 2018, 01:39 PM »
Region select mode seems one of the most common ways people use Screenshot Captor.

So I'm ready to make some improvements to the region select mode, including more hotkeys to do different things..
I'd like to hear some requests and suggestions.

Right now region select mode has the following features:
1. You can mouse-down and then drag and let go for the fastest way to capture a region.
2. You can click mouse once (or hit enter or spacebar) for one corner and then again on the second corner to select a region, using cursor keys* to adjust points, and escape to change your mind and go back to previous corner.

Current hotkeys:  Cursor keys by themselves nufge the current cursor pointer location, shift and alt can be used to move the other corner or the entire selection; C key toggles cursor capture AND places cursor (try it!); Z toggle zoom box.


Currently planned improvements:  Keyboard shortcuts in region mode to increase speed of nudging; hotkeys to cycle through some preset sizes.

I was also thinking about adding a simple way to allow region select mode to allow you to easily make a selection size and then move that selection around with the mouse.. Right now if you want to capture a specific size region you use a different capture mode, but it might be nice to merge the two.

Another thing I could do is show hints for the list of keyboard shortcuts for region select mode in the zoom panel overlay, to make it easier to remeber them..

Thoughts and further suggestions?

220
Living Room / MOVED: Since Website-Watcher's Forum Closed, Where are Users Meeting?
« on: February 13, 2018, 09:02 AM »
This topic has been moved to General Software Discussion.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=45062.0

221
Developer's Corner / The hands-free creation of a full video game
« on: February 10, 2018, 05:26 AM »
Nice article on coding using voice recognition without the use of your hands.  Where there is a will, there is a way.

Longtime developer and Austin resident Rusty Moyher was diagnosed with Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) roughly five years ago... Moyher wanted to prove that his dream—of making legitimate video games without using his hands—was possible. For him, the only true answer was to make and launch a good, working game—and to tell the world how he did it so that others might follow suit.


222
Developer's Corner / Essay: Designing Windows 95’S User Interface
« on: February 09, 2018, 09:06 PM »
The OSNews blog once again brings us a fascinating article on the modern history of user interfaces.  This time it's an older essay about the user interface design for Windows 95.

However you feel about Windows 95, there's no denying that its user interface is probably one of the most iconic and well-known user interfaces ever designed and developed. Literally everyone knows it and has used it, and it singlehandedly defined what a personal computer's UI should work like. It's incredibly fascinating to read about the thought processes behind its development.


from http://www.osnews.co..._95_s_user_interface

223
General Software Discussion / An Adobe Flash 0day is being actively exploited in the wild
« on: February 03, 2018, 04:10 AM »
Talos said the exploit is being distributed through a Microsoft Excel document that has a malicious Flash object embedded into it. Once the SWF object is triggered, it installs ROKRAT, a remote administration tool Talos has been tracking since January 2017. Until now, the group behind ROKRAT—which Talos calls Group 123—has relied on social engineering or exploits of older, previously known vulnerabilities that targets hadn't yet patched. This is the first time the group has used a zeroday exploit.


224
Developer's Corner / The Faery Tale Adventure: A personal history of making a video game
« on: February 02, 2018, 09:35 AM »
Nice 3 part article about the early days of personal computer game making..

The Faery Tale Adventure was a computer game that I created for the Amiga in 1987. It was moderately popular for it’s day, and was ported to a number of platforms, including MS-DOS and the Sega Genesis.  I decided to write this account because, much to my surprise, there is still interest in the game — I occasionally get fan email or inquiries as to whether there will ever be a sequel. And so I thought it might be interesting to tell the story of how the game came to be, and what happened afterwards.


from http://www.osnews.co...e_a_personal_history

225
General Software Discussion / Microsoft releases update to disable Intel's Spectre mitigations
« on: January 29, 2018, 06:23 PM »
Microsoft releases update to disable Intel's Spectre mitigations

Intel recommended that customers stop deploying the current microcode version on affected processors while they perform additional testing on the updated solution



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