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Messages - Ruffnekk [ switch to compact view ]

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51
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: SlickRun
« on: March 12, 2007, 02:57 AM »
It sounds like SlickRun is exactly like my Fixed Run Dialog application. You might want to give it a try to compare them ;)

52
Mini-Reviews by Members / Einstein Puzzle 2.0 by Flowix Games
« on: March 09, 2007, 10:03 AM »
Basic Info

App NameEinstein Puzzle
App URLhttp://games.flowix.com/en/index.html
App Version Reviewed2.0
Test System SpecsWindows XP Pro SP2 on Intel Pentium 4
Supported OSesWindows, Linux, MacOS
Support MethodsWebsite
Upgrade PolicyN/A
Trial Version Available?N/A
Pricing Scheme$ 0.00 (€ 0.00)
Reviewer Donation LinkDonate to Ruffnekk the Author
Relationship btwn. Reviewer and Product I, the reviewer, am in no way affiliated with this game or its creators.


Intro:

Einstein Puzzle is a neat little game created by Flowix Games for people who like challenging puzzles. I have played it for a long time already and have solved it on several occasions, but definitely not every time I play it.


Website quote:
Einstein puzzle is a free cross-platform open source remake of old DOS game Sherlock which was inspired by Albert Einstein's puzzle. Einstein said that only those with an intelligence quotient of 98 percentile and higher should be able to solve it.

Einstein1.png

Please note that the text "Happy birthday, Ann!" appeared after a certain date, most probably Ann's birthday, but never disappeared after that ;)

Gameplay

The game is a puzzle in which you must determine the value of each card in a 6 x 6 grid. Each card can have one of six values to start with. To help you a bit, there are hints given on the screen. It's your job to use these hints and solve the entire puzzle. It's not as easy as it sounds though, the hints often seem to be of little help.

There four types of hints:

1. Vertical hint
Hint1.png

In this hint, the + sign must be in the same column as the B.

2. Neighbour hint
Hint2.png

In this hint, the domino 6 must be in a column neighbouring the column of the = sign, but it may be on the left or right side.

3. Left hint
Hint3.png

In this hint, the domino 3 must be in a column left of the column with the II roman numeral 2.

4. In Between hint
Hint4.png

In this hint, the square must be in a column that is in between the columns of the = sign and the number 5. It does not mean that the number 5 is on the left or the right side however.

Here's another shot of the game in action:

Gameplay.png

Who is this game designed for:

People seeking a challenging puzzle to relax for a while.

The Good

Intuitive interface, great replayability value and very challenging. The game is open source, so you can port it to your favourite platform if you like.

The needs improvement section

It think the author(s) is/are Russian, and spelling errors in the help sections reflect that. But it's not disturbing in any way during gameplay.

Conclusions

All in all, it's a great game, well worth the time, and terrific for those times you need some distraction from work :P

53
Curt, I guess when you start Firefox you can take the dog out for a walk before it's finished loading?  :P

54
Well, welcome back ;) And thanks for putting Argus in the lime light :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: <ad>Very soon I will release the first production version.. many changes and new features :)</ad>

55
My favourite and most useful is StumbleUpon 3.03, and I also use GreaseMonkey, FasterFox, Web Developer, VideoDownloader, UserAgentSwitcher, RefControl, ImageZoom, Download Embedded, DOM Inspector and of course AdBlock Plus.

56
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Filename Randomizer
« on: March 08, 2007, 09:49 AM »
The attached utility (no install needed) will rename a selection of files randomly for you. I hope it does what you wanted ;)

57
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Reverse Regex Generator
« on: March 08, 2007, 08:10 AM »
Wow nice idea! I wonder if it's feasible though... *crunch crunch* :Thmbsup:

58
Developer's Corner / Re: Detect unused code (C#)
« on: March 08, 2007, 06:39 AM »
Thanks for the info mouser.

I'm now checking the assemblies with FxCop and so far I had over 1000 issues, which I will solve before 1.0 comes out :D. Good learning practice and very useful! I just hadn't thought about it before until PhilKC reminded me ;)

59
Developer's Corner / Re: Detect unused code (C#)
« on: March 08, 2007, 04:37 AM »
And to think I already have FXCop installed  :-[ Thanks PhilKC!  :P

60
Developer's Corner / Detect unused code (C#)
« on: March 08, 2007, 01:29 AM »
I am looking for a tool/trick/technique to detect any unused methods/functions in my C# application. It's quite a large application (Argus) and it has over 37 code files, totalling about 25000 lines of code. I want to run a tool or something to see if I have any code that is unused (never called). When I'm coding I'm in another mindstate and tend to forget to delete subs or functions I don't need anymore. I organize my code into regions and comments them, but still it's a tedious job to do this manually... Using "Find all references" has helped me already, but that's not very useful if one unused method calls another unused method and so on... Any ideas about this?

61
Living Room / Re: Drawing with 2 mice
« on: March 07, 2007, 11:11 AM »
I guess if you have enough buttons, you could even type a letter by using two mice and pressing different button combinations. That would be neat, but not as fast as typing I guess...

62
General Software Discussion / Re: Argus v0.1 First Beta release
« on: March 06, 2007, 10:01 AM »
You 'other reply' was a personal message which I received ;)

I hope Argus will be useful to you Bruce!

Where did my other reply end up? Oh well, vaporized I guess, dumb me, but again...

Hello John,

Thanks so much for taking the time to make or add functions for seaching to your utilities!! I will download and give a try. Can't do it today because I must travel but I will save the files to install when I get back. I will try to leave feedback after some testing!

thanks again!

Best,
Bruce

63
Excellent! I can really use this :D

64
General Software Discussion / Argus v0.1 First Beta release
« on: March 06, 2007, 07:26 AM »
Please see the first post of this thread (https://www.donation...22.msg53794#msg53794) for an updated version of Argus and a change log.

65
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Little Setup Builder Reviewed
« on: March 05, 2007, 09:55 AM »
Seems well worth a try. I've been using ClickTeam Install Creator as well, but this might be another good option. Thank you for the review dhuser.

66
The programs that come to my mind are:

DOS:
- Norton Commander
- BlueWave (BBS Message Reader)
- ARJ Compression
- NE (No Edlin Ever)
- LXPix Image Viewer
- VGA Paint (Image Editor)
- DOSStart
- Directory Freedom
- QuickBasic
- IBM DOS

WIN 3.x:
- Netscape Navigator
- mIRC
- Paint Shop Pro
- Visual Basic 1 & 2
- PC Tools (my absolute favourite software at the time)

I don't have any of these anymore, so I can't tell you any version numbers. I must've used many more apps, but these I remember now...

67
Thanks a lot ravenlaughs! I'm glad you like it. I'm working on the speed issue, but that's not easy without compromise ;) And I will not compromise results.

68
Developer's Corner / Re: Stratagus: A real-time strategy engine
« on: March 02, 2007, 10:09 AM »
I'm going to check this out :D It's looks spiffy enough...

69
Phonetic: Will match all terms that are phonetically identical. Optionally, you can use Phonetic Near to match any term that is phonetically similar to the search term.

Is that for when you don't know how to spell what you are searching for? or would it work with words you can spell but might be mis-spelled in the document?

Both I guess. If you misspell the search term, then the result may be the correctly spelled word if they are similar. For example, if I type 'instullation' as the search term, it will match 'installation' phonetically. It also works the other way around

Using Extensive search yields the most results though, and it will match in both cases as well.

70
In addition to my first post, I'd like to stress that searching is not limited to text files. You can search any kind of file, even binaries, as long as textual data is stored in it. I have now started using it to quickly locate Word and Excel files as well as Access databases that are not encrypted. The Context View may be a little screwed up though.

71
Interesting article on online office collaboration tools that allow virtual teams to work together despite being physically separated

The way you put it, it sounds like it's not an option for siamese twins ;)

72
For anyone still interested, please look at my application in development: https://www.donation...22.msg53794#msg53794

73
General Software Discussion / Argus v0.1 First Beta release
« on: March 02, 2007, 02:06 AM »
Following the early Alpha release now comes the first Beta release of Argus. Download link below.

Please note that the screenshots are now outdated. I want to see some reactions to the new look before I decide to keep it permanently.

Change log

0.0.1.4 > 0.1ß

 - Fixed Filter Template dialog code to properly edit and add templates.
 - Fixed Search Template dialog code to properly edit and add templates.
 - Added option to save the current state
 - Added option to load a saved state
 - Added option to clear the search history
 - Changed version numbering from x.x.x.x to x.x
 - Added a blue theme to the forms, not sure whether it's an improvement or not...
 - Form size and location are now restored on next start

What is Argus?

Following up this earlier post on DC by Riposa, I've made a freeware search utility for Windows that will search inside one or more files for a given search term. The application is called Argus, and you can download the 0.0.1.4 ALPHA version from the link at the end of this post. I recommend you read this post before you try the application.

Argus is a search utility that will search inside one or more files for a specific search term. What makes Argus unique is the capability of matching terms that are not an exact match. I.e., misspelled words, derived words and words that are phonetically identical can be found with this tool.

Because of the lack of documentation in Argus, I will explain the main functionality in this post. In the future a help file will be included with Argus.

Usage

After installing Argus, you can launch it from the Start Menu folder Argus and you will be presented with this screen:

ArgusStart.png

The main screen consists of four sections, Search Options, Search Scope, Results and Context View. You can expand and collapse a section by clicking on its header. However, you cannot collapse the Results section.

At the top, next to the menus, you will find the text field to enter your search term and the button to start a search. Argus keeps track of your used search terms and you can use the drop down button to quickly look up your previously used terms.

Before you start a search, you may want to set some search options. Argus uses Search Templates that will hold a set of settings that are used for a search. By default Argus has four defined Search Templates: Exact, Phonetic, Extensive and Regular Expressions. You can click on the 'Manage Templates...' button to view, edit or add Search Templates:

ArgusSearchTemplates.png

In the above example the 'Exact' template is shown and you can see that a search conducted with this template will only return exact matches, with exact letter casing and whole words only. It also ignores any words that are written in all uppercase and words that contain digits. You can add new templates or edit the existing ones to suit your needs.

Once you have defined the method, you must define a scope to search in. The Search Scope section allows you to define the files to search in. Argus uses Filter Templates which defines the type of files that are included in the search when you add one or more folders to a search scope. There are three default Filter Templates: All files, All but executables and Text files. You can click on the 'Manage Filters...' button to view, edit or add Filter Templates:

ArgusFilterTemplates.png

Here the 'All but executables' template is highlighted. You can see that the include filter contains *.*, which results in all files to be included. However, the exclude filter contains some entries. Files that match one or more of these exclude filters are not included in the search scope.

The filters are basically the same as what you might use on a command prompt. You can use the wildcards '?' and '*' to match any one or more characters. Please mind that your are not limited to extensions. You may also define a Filter Template that has an include filter 'readme.txt' to only search in files called readme.txt located in any of the folders you specify.

Clicking the 'Add Folder(s)...' button allows you to browse for a folder to search in. You will be prompted to include subfolders or not after your selection.

Clicking the 'Add File(s)...' button allows you to browse for one or more files to include in the search. The Filter Template has no effect on these files!

You can clear the search scope by pressing CTRL+DEL or right clicking in the search scope list and selecting 'Remove all'.

Once you have chosen your search method and scope, you can enter a search term and hit Enter or click the Search button to start searching.

ArgusResults.png

I've started an example search in the above screenshot. I used the extensive search in all text files in my C:\Temp folder and its subfolders. The Search Scope header reports that 31 files match the used Filter Template. I searched for 'install' and the Results section header reports 42 items that match my criteria.

I've highlighted one of the matches. The match is in the C:\temp\ClearTemp folder, the filename is readme.txt. The match is located on line 11, column 152 in the file. In this case the match is 100%.

The Context View section shows the entire line this match is located in and highlights the match itself.

You can right-click any search result and run a macro on it. There is one macro defined: 'Launch file...'. This will launch the file with its associated application. You can use the 'Tools' > 'Macro Editor...' menu to define your own macros:

ArgusMacroEditor.png

Above, the default macro 'Launch file' is selected. All it does is launch the application %assoc%, which is a shorthand term for the associated application. You can define your own macro and launch any application you wish. You can use the various shortcut terms to pass them as an argument to the application. For example, if you set the launch application to Notepad.exe and use the argument %path%, Notepad will be launched and open the selected file. Most text editors have an option to scroll to a certain line and column position from the command line. You can use %line% and %col% for this.

Search Methods Summary

Exact: Will match only exact terms, case sensitivity is optional, whole words is optional.
Phonetic: Will match all terms that are phonetically identical. Optionally, you can use Phonetic Near to match any term that is phonetically similar to the search term.
Extensive: This method will usually result in the most matches, but it also the slowest method. It searches for the extact term, but it will also match misspelled versions. For example, if you search for 'install', it may return 'instal', 'nstall', 'isntall', 'unstall', 'instoll', 'enstill', etc. This is most useful if you are looking for a name that may be spelled differently or you don't remember exactly.
Regular Expressions: This search allows you to enter a RegEx pattern in the search field and it will show all matches across the files. This can be useful to extract email addresses, phone numbers, etc from multiple files. You can toggle case sensitivity in the Search Template Manager.

Dictionaries

Argus comes with 9 dictionaries: English (US), English (UK), English (Canada), English (Australia), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico), French, Italian and German. For now, the dictionaries are only used for phonetic based searched. In the future they will be used for spell checking pusposes as well.

You can change the default dictionary (English US) by using the 'Tools' > 'Dictionary' menu. The available menu items are based on the files in the 'Dictionaries' folder of the Argus installation folder.

Planned Features

In the future I plan to add:

  • Spell checking
  • Search for multiple terms using boolean identifiers
  • Searching inside compressed archives

Please let me know about any features you may feel are useful to add or modify.

Download

Please use the links below to download and install Argus. In the future, I will make a home page for Argus. I hope you will test the application thoroughly and report your findings in this thread. Many thanks in advance!

ArgusInstaller.exe is the main application installer
The other files are optional dictionaries (Italian, French, German / Spanish / Other English). They are not required for the program to run properly (the US English dictionary is included by default). The dictionaries are only used for phonetically searching.

74
I just played (and finished) Gateway II. I love the game  :Thmbsup: I find it better than the first one, but not enough puzzles. The puzzles are not too difficult either, but just enough to drive you crazy at points.

75
Skrommel's Software / Re: Run
« on: March 01, 2007, 03:19 AM »
I don't need it any way, I'm just wondering why I can't do it :D I'm using my own Fixed Run Dialog for the functionality ;)

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