Topics

26

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Kyrathaba's Source Code Line Counter has been updated

« on: June 27, 2016, 03:21 PM »

I've updated my Source Code Line Counter program so that it can also count .cpp, .cpp|.h, and .xaml or .xaml|.cs file types.

About:
https://www.donation....msg275272#msg275272

Download: http://kyrathaba.dcm...count/click.php?id=1

27

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Working on a game for N.A.N.Y. 2017

« on: June 18, 2016, 08:56 AM »

I'm coding a text adventure using Ren'py, "Scions of Kel-Tek", and hoping to have it suitably ready for N.A.N.Y. 2017.

It takes from genres of RPG, visual novel, and CYOA books, and uses images and sounds as well. Ren'py is a pleasure to script in, and the developer frequently updates the software.

28

General Software Discussion / How long does it typically take Google to remove cached URLs that are outdated?

« on: October 02, 2015, 10:25 AM »

We've run into this situation at work, recently, where a site was taken down but various URLs are still cached from Google's crawlers. The company has used the Request Removal tool to submit these links for removal. Anyone had any experience with this and how long it typically takes for removed sites to be re-indexed?

29

General Software Discussion / What online services do you pay for?

« on: September 05, 2015, 05:17 PM »

I've always been very frugal when it comes to software purchases, whether they be installation CDs, one-time purchase/download via Internet, or online services. But, lately, I've been paying for two services, and am very pleased with both - LastPass, and PIA (a VPN provider). I am not affiliated with either and am not advertising for them.

LastPass, at $12 for a year of service, is more than worth it, for me at least. I frequent about two dozen websites, both at home and at work. Using the LastPass add-on for Firefox Portable, I only have to log-in to LastPass once at the beginning of my work day (or my online session, if at home computer). In the case of my home PCs, I could have the browser remember passwords, but that's not as secure, and I especially don't like the idea of doing that for financial sites. At work, I've got to have privacy protection. I love that, after logging in to LastPass, a single click on a stored site in their database, and the add-on applies my very strong password and logs me in. I admit I had been guilty of password reuse across various sites, before using LastPass.

I've been really pleased with Private Internet Access VPN. Works great across my PCs, iPhone, and Android tablet.

The family has had Netflix for years, and there are seven of us tapping into it constantly, so no question we're getting our money's worth out of it.

What services do you pay for, and what makes them worth the cost, to you?

30

General Software Discussion / Pls recommend 32-bit software for old WinXP machine I'm giving an elderly woman

« on: August 01, 2015, 01:43 PM »

A coworker gave me a Dell Dimension 4600. She was gonna throw it away, and I was like, "NO!!"

Naturally, it was garbaged up. I installed a fresh copy of Win XP on it, downloaded and installed Service Pack 3, and it's doing okay. I've ordered RAM to upgrade it from 512Mb to 1.5Gb. The lady I'm giving it to is not very computer savy, but likes to watch DVDs, listen to music, and play games. She's particularly fond of 50s and 60s music, so I'm getting a bunch of that ready, and putting some rotating 50s/60s-era desktop images on the machine.

Any suggestions on software she might enjoy or benefit from?

I put the whole 5-CD Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia on it (she loves that sort of thing). It has Power DVD 4.0.

Note: the lady is indigent and cannot afford internet, so that isn't an issue. I'll get the machine as tuned up as possible and make a backup image in case I need to visit her in future and restore the PC.

What I'm after is suggestions on ways to modify the machine, software suggestions, etc., bearing in mind that this is an older person (in her mid-70s, of sound mind but has been ill for many years).

31

General Software Discussion / Nothing working to get FUBAR PC to boot

« on: August 01, 2015, 01:37 PM »

I inherited a little mini-PC. No CD drive. Just has a small SSD. Problem is: won't boot. I've tried manipulating BIOS. Got it to look at USB keys first in boot order. And I have a USB key with WinXP Pro 64x installation files (which would be fine, for this little PC, though naturally I prefer Win7 which I don't have an installation disc for). It obviously tries to access the USB key. I see the key light up and flash, but I get a Missing Boot Manager screen. I take it the Win7 installation that was originally on the SSD is dorked. It's a Lenovo ThinkCentre M53 Tiny. The OEM Lenovo Restore software runs from the Recovery partition, but is unable to fix the problem. And when I try to access a 500Gb USB removable drive (on which I have a backup image), Lenovo Recovery won't detect the removable drive.

Any ideas on how I might restore this little machine? Never again will I fool with a PC that doesn't have a CD drive...

32

General Software Discussion / Can Casper really create bootable clone of my Windows disk?

« on: July 26, 2015, 04:42 PM »

I've successfully cloned my active partition "Windows 7 OS" using Drive Image XML, EaseUS Todo Backup's clone utility, etc., but none of the clones are actually bootable (go into BIOS and choose the newly cloned drive as boot disk). Someone told me Casper truly does create bootable cloned operating disk. Anyone know?

http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/

33

General Software Discussion / set disk space quota for users WebDAVing into a local disk via Tonido?

« on: July 23, 2015, 09:48 PM »

I have a few friends/family who backup important documents and the occasional system image to one of my hard disks via Tonido. Anyone know if there is a way, from within Tonido, to set a quota on a particular guest user's assigned share? Can't find anything about this via search, and I'm thinking you have to upgrade to the paid FileCloud for this feature. If that's the case, I was thinking of whipping up a quick directory watching app in C# that would run in the background and email friends and family when they're approaching their quota. It would, of course, email me as well.

34

General Software Discussion / What's living in your taskbar notification area right now?

« on: July 22, 2015, 03:44 PM »

Avast Free
Faststone Capture 5.3
Bluetooth (connects iPhone to PC)
PortableApps.com Platform
Tonido
PBOL
AIMP

35

General Software Discussion / Ooh, CarotDAV portable ROCKS!

« on: July 17, 2015, 03:05 PM »

Just discovered this app, CarotDAV. Single interface from which I can access my ftp accounts, Box.com, Google drive, etc., etc. Nice!

http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2342

36

Living Room / How do you resist buying ever more powerful PCs?

« on: July 14, 2015, 10:26 AM »

So, recently I purchased my stepson a serviceable refurbished Win7 machine. And while shopping, naturally I find a unit or two that I sure wouldn't mind having:

Intel Quad Core 3.4GHz i7-4770 32GB 1TB SSD + 2 x 3TB 7200rpm RAID 1 HDD Windows 7 Professional...

Thing is, my current setup (Win 7 Ultimate, 6 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD with a 2.8 GHz cpu) is more than adequate for my simple needs: a bit of programming, web browsing, proofreading for pay, emailing.

So I've learned over the years to resist these urges and usually in 2-4 weeks they pass. How do you deal with them?

37

General Software Discussion / Question re archiving/retrieving directories and subdirs using Mercurial

« on: July 11, 2015, 03:10 PM »

I was thinking of using Mercurial to keep revision history of the various manuscripts I proofread for various Kindle authors. The image below shows a screen shot of the main directory, /manuscripts/ and the /.hg/ repository that I created for it with TortoiseHg Workbench. Here's my question. If I zipped that /.hg/ repo directory and uploaded it to my website, and then... say... a year later my hard drive crashed (assume I don't have backups on removable media), could I (a) download and unzip the /.hg/ repo and, (b) using cmdline or Workbench, reconstitute the original directories inside /manuscript/ ? If so, any brief explanation about how?

38

General Software Discussion / Any web devs looking to make a few bucks?

« on: July 09, 2015, 03:31 PM »

A buddy of mine over at moonlightingapp.com says someone needs a 5-page website worked on. Maybe 2-3 hours of work. Pays $100.00 (negotiable). If interested, you'll have to log an account and email Michael (admin).

39

General Software Discussion / How to specify remote folder (on SFTP server) in Free File Sync

« on: July 08, 2015, 04:56 PM »

Using Free File Sync and like it. Does great with local drives. Find and connects to my website okay via SFTP. However, I can't figure out how to correctly tell it where to look for the remote backup folder. I have a directory named /Proofreading/ that is located at the same level as .cpanel, public_ftp, public_html, etc. Anyone know how to fill in the info correctly in the circled area in the screenshot below?

40

Developer's Corner / AutoHotKey text replacement question

« on: June 27, 2015, 04:05 PM »

I belong to a forum where a lot of amateur writers gather. They're wanting a script that will catch misspellings as they type. I'm developing a simple script that replaces the wrong wording with the correct wording. For example:

::good advise::good advice

The above works flawlessly: as soon as a user types "good advise" it gets changed by the script to "good advice" and the user just keeps on typing.

I want the script to detect anytime the writer types the article 'a' and the next word begins with a vowel. In that case, I want the script to change 'a' to 'an'. So, below shows what the author types and then after the arrow I show the correction made by the script:

a otter -> an otter

a icycle -> an icycle

Any help would be appreciated.

41

N.A.N.Y. 2015 / NANY Entry: Galaterra

« on: December 04, 2014, 12:23 PM »

My entry this year is a brief, proof-of-concept game implemented in JavaScript. It demonstrates an implementation of loops, commands, etc. all processed via the browser. This entry was created using Twine (http://twinery.org):

http://williambryanmiller.com/game.html

42

Developer's Corner / Data not being written to MySQL DB

« on: July 21, 2014, 03:33 PM »

I have a very simple web form that collects firstname, lastname, and email address from someone visiting my Proofreading Services page and wanting to contact me regarding me doing some proofreading work for them.

I'm quite sure that my username, database, password, and host are set correctly, and my attempt to write to the database doesn't trigger a die(), and yet...

No data gets written to the MySQL database table. Furthermore, I get the following error-log info:

[21-Jul-2014 16:24:38 America/New_York] PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20100525/php_xslt.dll' - /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20100525/php_xslt.dll: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0
[21-Jul-2014 16:28:38 America/New_York] PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20100525/php_xslt.dll' - /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20100525/php_xslt.dll: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0

43

Developer's Corner / searching the web (in particular, Amazon.com) from c# program

« on: July 04, 2014, 07:54 AM »

Does anyone know of a free class or control I can use that abstracts away the nitty-gritty details of the search implementation and will simply allow me to search for eBook titles on Amazon.com? Ideally, user could enter a search string in my program (e.g., "Kyrathaba Rising"), and the program would then search Amazon.com for that title.

44

Developer's Corner / friend can't run progs made with .net 4.5 on his XP machine

« on: July 03, 2014, 08:19 PM »

I'm trying to collaborate with a friend on an idea for an app. Im building on a Win 7 machine using C# on top of .Net 4.5. He's running WinXP and gets a Not a valid win32 app message when he tries to run my program. Even when I use the x86 build configuration. I think it's because .Net 4.5 is for Vista forward (per Stackoverflow.com). Any solution so he can run my progs?

45

Developer's Corner / Need help with some string manip in C#

« on: June 21, 2014, 05:54 PM »

Maybe someone can help me with this. I'm needing C# code that reliably does the following: given a string of characters, it returns a substring of characters. If the substring has an improperly formatted decimal number, that is the returned substring. Otherwise it returns a zero-length string.

So, as examples, it would detect the following in string "abc3. 04xta": -> returns "3. 04"

And for this string: "3bcd4 0.  25z10": returns "4 0.  25"

What I'm ultimately wanting is for the code to do a string.replace( ) that fixes the misformatting:

"abc3. 04xtra" becomes "abc3.04xtra", and "3bcd4 0.  25z10" becomes "3bcd40.25z10".

I know regular expressions is probably the way to go, but I'm having trouble getting my head around them.

The method I'd like would either return the poorly formatted "decimal number" substring; or, optionally,
it could fix the formatting in that substring and replace all occurrences in the larger string.

The end result is that it would turn this sentence...

"The bread was $3 .49, and it had always been $2 .15 before."

...into the following...

"The bread was $3.49, and it had always been $2.15 before."

46

Developer's Corner / GitHub Gist links for six C# utility classes totaling 26 methods

« on: June 02, 2014, 06:59 AM »

Console formatting (5 methods):
https://gist.github.com/kyrathasoft/2292a9719517246786af

Boolean tests (4 methods):
https://gist.github.com/kyrathasoft/3946dbdb6de7dc1d20bf

Time formatting (1 method):
https://gist.github.com/kyrathasoft/3e6b808a31fe2a4a5145

String manipulation (6 methods):
https://gist.github.com/kyrathasoft/5933ab0b9f125751bbe9

Forms and Controls (4 methods):
https://gist.github.com/kyrathasoft/7774ac031dc6d8a01cb2

Files (6 methods):
https://gist.github.com/kyrathasoft/e0dc96b13679ff452139

Note: thanks to Deozaan for putting me onto Gist!

47

Developer's Corner / Small utility class with methods for manipulating C# forms, controls, and fonts.

« on: June 01, 2014, 05:44 PM »

Four methods in static class MyForms.cs
(1) center and size a form
(2) center a control on a form
(3) center a control horizontally only on a form
(4) change the font and font style of a control

Sample project included as attachment.

See this link: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=38081

48

Developer's Corner / I'm posting a small utility class I wrote for files, in C#

« on: June 01, 2014, 03:59 PM »

The attached zip file can be extracted and then the project can be run with Visual Studio (Express or higher editions).
The text file just lists the method signature for the six methods of the static class, and comments them.
As demonstrated in the project, use a "using" statement to reference my namespace.

Demonstrates:
(1) converting file size (number of bytes) to string description, e.g., "7.405 Kb"
(2) reading a file into an array of type byte
(3) writing string data to a filepath
(4) returning number of files in given directory matching a given pattern
(5) returning total size of those pattern-matched files, in bytes
(6) obtaining the directory of the currently executing assembly for a C# console application

See this link: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=38081

49

Found Deals and Discounts / two 32GB Lexar jump drives for $22 and free shipping

« on: March 21, 2014, 06:29 PM »

Thought this might be of interest: buydig.com is currently selling a pair of 32 GB flash drives for $22 and shipping is free.

50

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / N.A.N.Y. 2014 Submission: Kyrathaba's Text File Line Item Duplicate Finder

« on: November 28, 2013, 05:42 PM »

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=36640.0

I wrote this utility (link above) to help ferret out a problem on a FB group for which I was monitoring membership.

Downloads so far: 108 as of 5/1/2014