Recent Posts

101

Living Room / Re: Be prepared against ransomware viruses..

« Last post by oblivion on October 07, 2016, 01:42 AM »

I do not find any information on dealing with ransomware once it is installed.

-terribleterryc (October 06, 2016, 09:58 PM)

TechSupportAlert recently suggested https://www.nomoreransom.org/ but I personally don't have any helpful experience.

102

Living Room / Re: HP "timebomb" prevents HP inkjet printers from using non-HP ink cartridges.

« Last post by oblivion on September 27, 2016, 02:10 AM »

Not trying to be an apologist here but I remember when the first H-P Deskjet appeared. I went to a launch, in fact (why, where and how are now lost in the mists of time.) At the time, laser printers were priced well into four figures and the Deskjet was (still nearly into four figures) the only other way to get (nearly) laser-quality output.

So now the machines cost -- at the low end -- nearly nothing, often still include scanners and enough onboard smarts to be able to function as a standalone copier and all sorts of other stuff and, barring the sudden realignment of the manufacturers into the charity sector, apparently it's unreasonable of them to try to make money from their customers.

The right way to handle the costs of this stuff is to factor everything in then assess the cost per page for your printed output over the life of the printer. If it's now the case, particularly at the consumer end, that the majority of the cost is in the ink cartridges then that just makes the calculation easier, surely?

[Devil's Advocate Mode OFF]

Disclaimer: I also own an HP printer, and also complain bitterly about the cost of the ink cartridges, particularly as I print little enough that the blasted things dry out before they empty...

103

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014 Release - Wallpaper Welder

« Last post by oblivion on September 23, 2016, 04:38 AM »

I lost the old wallpaper Wallpaper Welder made for me and can't now make it repeat the trick.

It looks fine (demoing with a couple of VladStudio images):


but the wallpaper it actually makes looks like this:

so when the image is tiled the left hand monitor is as it should be but the right has a truncated image and a lot of background!

I don't change wallpaper often on this machine and the last time I used it was probably a couple of years back, and Windows has been reinstalled at least once if not twice since then (Win 7 x64, before you ask, and the representation of monitor arrangement shown in the capture of the Wallpaper Welder window is accurate.)

Have I messed up the settings somehow?

104

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: Super-sized Newsletter for Sep 18, 2016 - Codename: Catching Up with Cody

« Last post by oblivion on September 20, 2016, 06:23 AM »

Yes it's fun to see a burst of activity on the forum whenever a newsletter comes out 

-mouser (September 19, 2016, 07:31 PM)

Is there an emoticon for a guilty look? Ah. Possibly this.

Is anyone finding that the newsletter is being marked as spam by your email provider?

Not here either: neither gmail nor fastmail.

Particularly good newsletter, I should say. Thanks!

105

Android Apps / Re: Other app ideas based on WhenLast code

« Last post by oblivion on September 20, 2016, 05:35 AM »

Looking at this thread for the first time as a result of following a link in the newsletter.

So When Last looks good, but I'm not necessarily always very good at inferring the underlying architecture of a program from my experience of it. So I'm going to say the first thing that came into my mind for a database-type Android app: something like CHS.

Having said which, I have no need of the "S". But I properly dislike the Android clipboard and I miss the history that CHS gives me on every PC I use. A configurable and searchable database of textual clipboard history would be good, particularly if it allowed editing of entries and similar scripted transformations to those offered by CHS.

I've looked at clipboard managers for Android before and generally found nothing better than disillusionment.

106

General Software Discussion / Re: The Outlook is disappointing

« Last post by oblivion on September 01, 2016, 01:37 AM »

My webmail solution of choice, for quite a few years now, has been Fastmail. Their interface / design / ergonomics are lightweight, responsive, efficient and -- in my view -- Just Work. (They were owned by Opera for a while, largely I think because of their massive levels of expertise in making mail fast, simple and efficient, but are independent again now.)

So my various email addresses -- gmail, yahoo, outlook, so forth -- are all fetched from their providers into Fastmail (which also allows me to set aliases to the addresses I own so I don't have to interact with anything I don't enjoy interacting with!)

The downside: although there IS a free offering, you'll probably want one or other of their paid accounts.

The web end is good, they support several forms of 2FA if that's your thing (I have a yubico key but they have several other alternatives) there are mobile apps too... I don't evangelise them as much as I should but I've tried a lot of webmail solutions over the years and nothing else comes close.

And does it matter which browser you use? Apparently not. Fastmail lives up to its name, generally.

107

General Software Discussion / Re: Was Firefox 47.0.1 the end of the line for you as well?

« Last post by oblivion on August 30, 2016, 01:56 AM »

I haven't tried this, but our friends at gHacks have an article up describing how to disable Firefox's feature:

The following guide walks you through the steps of overriding the add-on signing enforcement in Firefox Stable and Beta. You will be able to install unsigned add-ons in Firefox versions in which this should not be possible.

-CWuestefeld (August 18, 2016, 12:39 PM)

I HAVE tried this, and it works. I don't use many unsigned addons but one that I do -- DownloadStudio -- I sort of rely on, now... and I've invested so much time and effort in getting Firefox "right" that jumping ship is more of a deal for me than just making a decision.

108

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« Last post by oblivion on August 02, 2016, 09:21 AM »

I have mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, I agree that forcing paid upgrades by stealth is, on the face of it, a sharp practice. However, expecting the supplier to keep downloadable copies of your specific version of the installation media for free, indefinitely, just in case you might have the need to reinstall (and bear in mind that GS-Base can be installed portably and therefore reinstalled just by copying it on from your backup, what do you mean you don't have a backup?  ) seems a touch unreasonable too.

And while it's certainly the case that a $10 / year "subscription" isn't exactly free, even ignoring the fact that you only have to pay it if you want new functionality after the first year or you didn't keep backups, for a piece of software that can do what this does for the price remains pretty remarkable. The developer is responsive to requests for new features and bugfixes, to a greater extent than most commercial software I've ever encountered.

I grant you might not see the appeal over -- say -- various spreadsheet programs that pretend some database functionality but this is the only (reasonably) affordable and user-friendly "proper" database program I've seen in a very long time. (I've used Lotus Approach for a long, long time but I can't make it run on a 64-bit PC -- there are things I miss about Approach but GS-Base ticks more boxes than anything else I've tried.) So I'm consequently inclined to be a little more forgiving than I might if it were operating in a more crowded arena

109

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« Last post by oblivion on August 01, 2016, 12:57 PM »

finding out that this is basically a subscription by another name

-wraith808 (July 31, 2016, 12:27 PM)

Can you clarify that? The purchase page says that the version you buy is good forever.  You don't get free updates after a year, but you don't need to pay again to keep the version you bought working (as I understand it).

-mwb1100 (August 01, 2016, 12:42 PM)

Pretty sure your understanding is correct.

110

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« Last post by oblivion on July 31, 2016, 04:09 AM »

That made me wonder whether the CAPTCHA wasn't deliberately off-putting, to dissuade casual use of the forum.

There may be some truth in that. I registered on the Citadel5 forum in May 2014 and found the captcha so hard that I had to ask in email (to [email protected]) for the account to be created for me. It's not a very busy forum. Can't think why...

I do get the impression that Jarek is a sole operator and might believe that managing a busy forum might take more time than he wants to devote to it. At least emailed requests from known users is likely to keep noise down.

111

General Software Discussion / Sleeping

« Last post by oblivion on May 28, 2016, 06:03 AM »

Windows 10 seems to be a little buggy around the automatic maintenance front. In particular, it often doesn't respect the instruction to Automatic Maintenance to wake your computer from sleep if necessary.

In particular, if it's running on an unplugged laptop, it can result in a machine that's woken itself up, performed maintenance and then stayed on until the power available has dropped to a point where it's forced back to sleep again.

There are two main solutions.

The first is to go look at the automatic maintenance setting and, if the checkbox allowing it to wake the computer at the specified time is clear, check it, click okay, then go back and uncheck it.

That seems to work for quite a few people.

Not for me, though.

The next solution is to go into the power management (powercfg.cpl) choose advanced settings for the power plan(s) you're using and, under sleep, change the ability to wake from sleep to "disabled", at least in battery mode.

Final caveat: if you're a Process Lasso user (and why wouldn't you be?) you should be aware that the "Bitsum Highest Performance" scheme gets updated when Process Lasso is -- which means, that if that's the scheme you use, you'll have to either use a different power scheme or change the wake setting in that scheme back after updates. (But I've told the developer about this issue and he's usually pretty good at fixing things!)

If the above isn't quite explicit enough, let me know and I'll come back with screenshots and more detail.

112

Find And Run Robot / Aliases in aliases

« Last post by oblivion on May 07, 2016, 05:44 AM »

Just found a tiny issue.

I have an alias in FARR -- edit -- that has all my most-used editors listed in it.

I added a new editor to it today. (I collect them. It's a condition. Don't bug me about it, I may growl.)

So I spotted a bit of text on the "edit alias" screen: above the "Results" edit box, it says at the end of the description line, "prefix descriptions with "|" (see help for more info)"

So I went through the list, following that suggestion, adding a pipe to the end of the line and a description after it.

And, after a while, found out what I would have discovered if I'd read the help first: the description followed by a pipe should prefix the command, as opposed to a pipe prefixing the description.

This keyboard's an odd layout: the Home, End and Del keys aren't where they are on the keyboard I usually use, so the process of moving the description from the end to the beginning was slow and painful. Just sayin'

One other thing: I did try to get help from that screen by hitting F1, and Windows (10) chose to ask me what I should use to open a CHM file with. Gulp. Really? What have I broken? Messed around for a while, did something that didn't work, invoked help again (from the FARR menu this time) and it Just Worked. So I'm not sure if you invoke help differently from an F1 at that point, or if Windows 10 is slightly borked, or if I've broken something -- probably best to assume it's me, not FARR, that's at fault here but just in case a heads-up is helpful...

113

The Form Letter Machine / Re: Variables

« Last post by oblivion on September 14, 2015, 11:29 AM »

But I've always had a lingering feeling that it could do a lot more..

-mouser (September 14, 2015, 10:25 AM)

For what little it's worth, I suspect it's always going to be a bit niche. For me, I like the idea of a sort of halfway house between building documents with boilerplate sections chosen as required -- my first experiences of wordprocessors back in the <cough> early 1980s included interacting with the bits of them that allowed such things, even if I didn't use them very often -- and full-on mailmerge. But I'm not an ordinary user, and I quite often find myself diving headlong into things I don't know much about in order to solve a specific problem. TFLM was what seemed to be the best fit to a problem I was trying to solve at the time, and even with its limitations was very helpful. I haven't needed to do anything else like that since...

The Form Letter Machine is one of my apps that I regularly think about rewriting from scratch to be much more powerful and flexible.  In fact I have rewritten it once as a fully working web app (tfdocs.com) that was pretty sophisticated, but that was abandoned due to lack of interest/funding/etc.

I did go look at the time, I think, but couldn't see a good reason for moving the sort of things I could envisage wanting to do off my local PC.

More flexible support for custom scripting and variables would be a key focus of any rewrite, and probably making it cross platform (mobile?), along with multiple output formats (pdf).

I think if you could do variables and (basic) formatting -- text enhancements, tabs -- and output in .doc format, or plaintext too, I guess, most people who'd have a need for something like TFLM would be able to take it on from there, wouldn't they? And the cross-platform thing -- you could be right but it doesn't strike me as an obvious need.

Anyway, the difficult dilemma for me is deciding whether its worth the effort to write a new version, and how much time I could spend on the project...

I guess if it's a "from the ground up" sort of a problem, it's probably never going to justify the extra work. It IS pretty good as it is, for the six people in the world who use it

Thanks for thinking about it, anyway!

114

Screenshot Captor / Re: Controlled cropping

« Last post by oblivion on August 25, 2015, 11:48 AM »

Last question first -- you can nudge the selected region using cursor keys. Combine with alt/shift/control for different ways of moving/resizing.

-mouser (August 25, 2015, 11:24 AM)

Aha. That helps -- thanks!

115

Screenshot Captor / Controlled cropping

« Last post by oblivion on August 25, 2015, 11:13 AM »

I've been using the scrolling capture feature today in pretty much fully manual mode to capture a scrolling window that's really, really uncooperative.

Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.

The last bit of margin setting, that lets me set the margins to exactly where I want them prior to the final assembly is particularly lovely, if a little slow when the desired edge is a long way in from the captured one.

So a suggestion and a related question: first, might it be possible to put a slow accelerator on the margin adjuster, so if it's held down for a while -- more than a couple of seconds, maybe? -- it speeds up a bit?

And the question: any possibility of adding a similar sort of manual margin edit mode to other images? (I use the freehand region capture frequently, almost always overcompensate by a bit, and the ability to remove the extra bit round the edges without the shaky-handed mouse-driven selection+crop routine would be useful, I think! (Or is it there already and I just haven't found it? )

116

Found Deals and Discounts / RightNote 50% discount to August 31

« Last post by oblivion on August 18, 2015, 07:59 AM »

There's no special link for this, but my favourite bit of note-taking software is on sale (50% discount) to the end of the month.

Seems to be a reasonably regular offer but it's my favourite structured note organiser (the other one I use and rely on is Cintanotes, for what it's worth) so I thought I'd mention it here.

http://bauerapps.com/rightnote/

117

The Form Letter Machine / Re: Variables

« Last post by oblivion on August 17, 2015, 11:32 AM »

Pleas excuse my delay in replying

-mouser (August 16, 2015, 05:41 AM)

Absolutely excused No worries at all!

118

The Form Letter Machine / Variables

« Last post by oblivion on August 06, 2015, 11:03 AM »

Trying to do something clever with TFLM -- effectively mailmerge-to-email with all the usual section choice stuff.

As usual, I did my planning in my head three microseconds before entering information into the config tree.

Renaming and deleting variables is entertaining

(What's the dropdown above the variables box for? It never seems to have any content in any tree I make...)

Copy/paste into variables has some aggravating results if you accidentally copy in a <return>. Might it be possible to ignore <return> characters unless explicitly specified with \n or somesuch?

I'd like to be able to point the variables at a comma-separated list. So, for instance, I might have:

Code: Text [Select]

1. names.csv
2. ========
3. recipientname,recipientemail,username,userid,validfrom,validto,userpwd
4. Fred Smith,[email protected],Eric Jones,jonese,Aug 15,Feb 16,PA$5w0rd
5. Fred Smith,[email protected],Jane Dough,doughj,Aug 15,Feb 16,PA$5w0rd
6. Jim Gumby,[email protected],Jim Gumby,gumbyj,Aug 15,Sep 15,Gjfd8^51

and TFLM would let me reference those variablenames in the tree and populate the variables a record at a time, so I could concentrate on getting the boilerplate content matched to the recipient without having to fight with the variable data too... so the workflow would be "choose sections/copy to clipboard/next record/choose sections/copy to..."

...I'm asking for the moon and the stars, aren't I? Again.

119

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Show us your LaunchBar Commander Screenshots

« Last post by oblivion on July 21, 2015, 01:51 PM »

I have found that LBC doesn't support %APPDRIVE% in the path to a background image file...

i can fix that.

-mouser (July 21, 2015, 12:31 PM)

I hoped you'd say that  

Thanks!

120

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Show us your LaunchBar Commander Screenshots

« Last post by oblivion on July 21, 2015, 11:43 AM »

As a result of playing with this, I have found that LBC doesn't support %APPDRIVE% in the path to a background image file... 

Nice work -- I may need to steal your idea and make some more colours, though.

121

General Software Discussion / Re: Comodo Internet Security -- a cautionary tale?

« Last post by oblivion on May 17, 2015, 03:50 PM »

I've bought into F-Secure for a year. It's genuinely low-impact, doesn't annoy me too much (occasionally the deepguard program jumps up and asks me if I trust whatever program it is I've just started but it does that very rarely -- it's cloud-based so there must be quite a few people with similar tastes in weird software to me populating their "this program's okay" list.

I use Process Lasso to monitor cpu usage on here. The lowest level cpu usage drops to when the system's idle is as close to zero as I've ever seen it.

I'm aware that F-Secure isn't quite at the top of the detection tree, but despite that they have some of the most well-respected AV researchers on the planet AND the product ticks all the boxes for being unobtrusive and low-impact.

I'll come back here if I pick up a virus, or if something happens to change my mind. However, this was a lot of work and I freely admit it was more subjective than objective (if my system feels sluggish, then I'm not going to be happy even if some bit of paper somewhere tells me it ain't so). I would also say that a full-blown internet security package might well have been evaluated differently and other people might well want that rather than just AV, so I won't try to suggest this is an unqualified endorsement of F-Secure. YMMV, in other words -- but I'm happy with it so far.

122

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Judy's TenKey (10Key) award-winning calculator

« Last post by oblivion on May 17, 2015, 11:37 AM »

I'm not sure how many licenses OpalCalc is going to sell at $15, though, even with evangelists such as yourself.

-ayryq (May 16, 2015, 06:45 AM)

I rarely evangelise -- I am told often enough that my taste in software is "a bit weird" that I certainly wouldn't want to insist that a particular thing is best. But the traditional calculator, however good they are (and my experiences of the things goes back to the 1970s and I still own several) is specifically designed to be finger-friendly in a relatively restricted space -- something that computerised calculator programs don't, it seems to me, need to emulate.

I tried a couple of the wabbitemu TI emulations and was thoroughly impressed with the quality of them -- and I completely get that a smartphone host for one of them would be a good idea. The restricted space and keyboard facilities apply again, so it makes sense.

For me, Opalcalc sits nicely between the input complexity of the calculator (infix or postfix? Do I start with a number and apply a trig function to it, or start with the function as if I were writing the formula on paper? How do I get at the stats functions again?) and the big iron of the fullblown spreadsheet, and it needs me to have a full-size keyboard I can use with it without having to grope for symbols.

And some of the things it can do would need Google, otherwise. How many days to Christmas? (@ 25 dec 2015 - @ today as whole days) What's $15 in euro? ($15 as euro) How many centimetres in 12 fathoms? (12 fathoms as cm)

And the developer is still tinkering with it, and that $15 is a lifetime license. Personally, I think it's worth every cent. But then, I'm a bit weird.

123

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Judy's TenKey (10Key) award-winning calculator

« Last post by oblivion on May 16, 2015, 03:48 AM »

I guess it might not be the most traditional looking calculator, but I discovered OpalCalc here and ...

...well, all I can say is that I have a FARR alias CALC that loads it.

Follow the trail... https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=40528.0

Well, maybe it's not all I SHOULD say. It looks basic. But it's very configurable, can be as minimalist as you want, and I've never used another calculator that hides so much power under the hood.

124

General Software Discussion / Re: MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64

« Last post by oblivion on April 30, 2015, 11:57 AM »

I couldn't remember the name CompuServe until about an hour later. 

-MilesAhead (April 30, 2015, 09:56 AM)

...and the cost of Compuserve is one of the main reasons (for me, anyway) Fidonet existed. <sigh>

125

General Software Discussion / Re: MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64

« Last post by oblivion on April 30, 2015, 09:35 AM »

It's weird the stuff you find in drawers.  I had a stack of 10 CD caddies left over from around 1993.  I assumed CD drives would all use caddies so I bought a 10 pack from Computer Shopper.  I think 7 of them were still in the cellophane in 2013. 

-MilesAhead (April 30, 2015, 09:30 AM)

Not quite the same thing, but I keep tripping over the 5-CD changer I used to have in the BBS I ran back in the late 90s. I can't quite bring myself to get shot of it, "just in case" but really... too much nostalgia is probably bad for you. (See previous comment re fingers. )