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10551

Developer's Corner / The unique excitement of coding something emergent

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2012, 10:21 PM »

I've been meaning to write this post for a while -- a post aimed at new coders.

I want to write a little about the unique excitement and satisfaction that comes from writing code with the capacity to surprise you.

I think fiction writers often get this kind of satisfaction when the characters in their stories start to take on a life of their own and the writer can stand back and marvel at what happens.

There are lots of programming projects that have this flavor of emergent interactions with the ability to surprise.  Most games have this flavor, where enemies and non-player characters interact in ways that you didn't anticipate.  And of course most simulations have this flavor.

So this is my post encouraging new programmers to find a little project that is like a little simulation -- interacting components that can product outcomes that you can't predict.

Some good places to get started might be implementing Conway's Game of Life, or the Mandelbrot set, or just pick any simulation-based game like sim city and try to code the absolute simplest little form of it.

10552

General Software Discussion / Re: Two classes of membership here?

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2012, 08:33 AM »

do not poke at servants or gods

10553

General Software Discussion / Re: Two classes of membership here?

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2012, 07:42 AM »

Thank you for such a nice post, Daleus 

10554

Living Room / Re: Funny Animal Videos

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2012, 06:24 AM »

Cat high jumping in slowmotion:

10555

Living Room / Re: ~$300 Laptop/Netbook recommendations

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2012, 05:57 PM »

Also keep an eye out for sales and specials.

I am usually not one to pay attention to sales, but isn't there some big sale day coming up for electronics in the US (Black Friday)? Might be good timing.

10556

Living Room / Re: ~$300 Laptop/Netbook recommendations

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2012, 03:12 PM »

Whether the laptop is for you or daughter, my advice is the same: The primary deciding factor is the form factor.

If it's going to be used 95% at home on a desk, go for big screen (15.6" or even 17") and don't worry about weight or battery.
If it's going to be carried around constantly, go for small and light, and don't worry about the rest.

10557

General Software Discussion / Re: Two classes of membership here?

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2012, 02:00 PM »

What app said.  

However.. A word on censorship.  I will add that in the 7 years we've been in operation we haven't had to confront any really truly hard censorship decisions.  That's in part because we are still pretty small and in part because of the nature of and reasonableness of the community. It's always possible that we will find ourselves in a situation in the future where someone insists on repeatedly posting stuff that is completely off-topic and disruptive and offensive to the community, which we feel we can't in good conscience even leave in the Basement area.  It's hard to imagine that happening in anything but a direct attempt to test our limits, but you never know.

We *do* have general rules about content -- we try to avoid political and religious discussions and we've talked at long length about why (-- and the issue of censorship came up at that time), and we insist people are respectful of each other.

Now that we have the Basement area, we have a place we can move threads that cross that line without removing them.  But I do think it's worth "admitting" that we have some informal amorphous community standards here, and if posters start trampling on those we do try to nudge things back into our lane.  Some people might consider that censorship..

My view is something like this:  People have the right here to say things that upset and offend you.  People have the right to complain and criticize our site here without fear of their posts being deleted, and no user should fear reprisals or attacks for voicing their opinions.  The only time I start to feel like intervention is needed is when people are arguing back and forth ad nausea and just trying to get the last word in.

10558

General Software Discussion / Re: Two classes of membership here?

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2012, 12:55 PM »

Apology is not needed, but do message me with details of what you think was deleted so I can look into it.

10559

General Software Discussion / Re: Two classes of membership here?

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2012, 11:35 AM »

Some time ago, under another avatar, I had dared to make some posts where I had related bad experiences with software, and instead of triggering other posts on these subjects - perhaps with better experiences than mine -, I got deleted my posts within minutes, AND got my "account" deleted, i.e. no further posting possible, without getting the slightest explanation, which would have perfectly been possible since I had given my real mail account

In the 7 years we have been online, I don't think we have ever deleted anyone's account for any other reason than them spamming advertising.  That's something we are pretty proud of around here.

Could you message me and let me know when this was supposed to have happened and some idea of what you were meant to have posted about and what username it was?  I will try to find the deleted posts and see what this is about.

When discussions start to go off the rails or become personal attacks we occasionally step in and try to get people to get back on topic or stop arguing politics or religion, and sometimes in the worst of cases lock the thread or move it to the public "Basement" forum section, and we occasionally edit a post to remove personal information like phone numbers, but we've never deleted posts just because we didn't like them.

It's always possible something happened by mistake or an over-eager moderator got you, or that your posts were incorrectly assumed to be spam.. but please do shed some light on what exactly was deleted.

As for me, my personal information is available on any site that shows registrar information for the domain, or on our About Us page.

I'm the one who started the forum, and I tend to be the one who makes "final" decisions if/when they are needed -- but they almost never are -- we tend to have very consistent agreement here among the users and the moderators about having a very light touch on the forum, except when it comes to spammers.


A note about different "classes" of membership.. You'll see under username labels that we actually do make a few different kinds of distinctions between users -- mostly between those who have donated to support the site and those that have not.  But we try very hard to treat everyone equally here.  If people are treated differently it's inevitably in two different ways:  First, we have higher expectations of long-time members who have made lots of posts to treat newcomers with respect and to act in a way that reflects well upon the site, and try to cut more slack to new people who don't know the informal etiquette of the site.  And second, it's inevitable that brand new members are scrutinized a bit more carefully for being spammers; the internet is filled with spammers and we delete a dozen accounts every day from bots that sign up just to spam the site -- that's the nature of the internet and it's part of what we have to do to keep the place clean.

10560

Easy Screencast Recorder / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - Easy Screencast Recorder - v1.12.01 - Apr 22, 2015

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2012, 02:51 AM »

Thinking about an ideal final tool:

It seems to me that what would be ideal for ESR is to have a standalone helper tool interfaced with the program, that will take the current video (regardless of what format it was recorded in), and do two things:

1. Convert it to desired format for actual use.  Depending on what format the file was recorded in, this could be as simple as leaving the file as is, to converting it to multiple formats for different uses.  In an ideal case, one would record the original using a lossless codec specialized for screen capture, and then convert to format for the desired end use.  Common target uses would be youtube, email attachment, or a format suitable for web upload, like webm, mp4, flash.

2. Help user share final video.  This could include some combination of email, upload to youtube, upload via ftp, prepare html web page for showing the video (using something like FlowPlayer).

As I see it, this is really a standalone tool, not something to be built into ESR itself.  ESR already has a system for configuring 3rd party tools and invoking them, so the work their is already done.

Based on my preliminary investigation, it seems to me the best candidate backend commandline processor for this stuff is a combination of ffmpeg and avisynth.  Unfortunately while ffmpeg can be used portable, avisynth has no such easy option, but is needed if one wants to be able to process arbitrary codec encodings.

So now what's left is to decide whether it's worth me (or someone else here) writing a custom tool for this, or whether ESR should simply recommend that users install some other 3rd party converter tool for this task -- god knows there are enough of them already.

If anyone feels like writing this tool, let me know -- I'd be happy to lead the cheers from the background.

10561

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013: Carbon - website / blogging framework [alpha]

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2012, 11:35 AM »

My own site is now carbonated (still adding content)

Congratulations, that is a serious accomplishment  

Theme Comments:
I like the semi-transparent top banner look.. one comment though -- i am all in favor of minimal themes, but it feels a tiny bit too much just like its just all one big page of text without differentiation between elements..

10562

Easy Screencast Recorder / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - Easy Screencast Recorder - v1.12.01 - Apr 22, 2015

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2012, 10:32 AM »

I just figured out how to use AviSynth with FFMpeg, and it seems to be able to convert the proprietary codecs now -- the trick seems to be that you use AviSynth to parse the video files and provide them to FFMpeg..

So i *think* I should now be in a position to add a feature to ESR that will let you ask the program to prepare the convert the video file to a format for easy uploading to web for sharing, without worrying about what codec you recorded it with, and hopefully with some sample html code for embedding the video on a page.

10563

Easy Screencast Recorder / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - Easy Screencast Recorder - v1.12.01 - Apr 22, 2015

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2012, 02:00 AM »

It looks like, from what i read, the ffmpeg solution for handling these codec encoded files is going to be to use avisynth..

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Easy Screencast Recorder / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - Easy Screencast Recorder - v1.12.01 - Apr 22, 2015

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2012, 05:08 PM »

v1.06.01 - November 11, 2012
[Improvement] You can now set an option on Capture tab that will let you move the region window during capture.

v1.05.01 - November 11, 2012
[Improvement] Will now remember your last chosen audio device+mode, and restore it even if it is plugged in after program starts.
[Improvement] More tweak options for advanced users.
[Improvement] You can now save and load settings into named files.

10565

General Software Discussion / Re: Synergy Virtual KVM

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2012, 12:39 PM »

Let's just try to pull it back on topic now -- everyone's had their say.

I do agree there is no reason these threads should get pulled off topic.  But on the other hand, we can't expect someone to not post in a thread where someone says their product "is bad".  I think there has to be some leeway given to people to defend themselves when their product is criticized.

Having said that, there is no need for us to spend more time talking about something that is off topic, so let's try to keep this on topic now.

10566

Living Room / In honor of Veteran's Day 2012 - Thank You

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2012, 12:28 PM »

We try not to talk politics here on DC -- this isn't a political post.

This is a post to recognize the individuals who have contributed to society by serving their country.

We all have prejudices and stereotypes about people -- where they come from is sometimes a mystery.  One of the best things about this site has been meeting different kinds of people who have challenged those stereotypes and opened my eyes to the uniqueness, humour, creativity, foibles, generosity, and general unpredictability of the human character.  We have quite a few military folks here on DC, both retired and active -- and we are made better and more human by their presence.  Folks, you will always find a home here.  As you were.

10567

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Real World Icon Editor to be on BDJ -- 72% off...

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2012, 11:34 AM »

Nice 

10568

General Software Discussion / Re: It's about ... TechRepublic's TR Dojo paean to FARR

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2012, 12:16 AM »

Great! 

Thank you so much for sharing that discovery!
I'm going to merge this post into the FARR review thread eventually if you don't mind.

10569

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: N.A.N.Y. - New Apps for the New Year - 2013

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2012, 08:59 PM »

 

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Easy Screencast Recorder / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - Easy Screencast Recorder - v1.12.01 - Apr 22, 2015

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2012, 01:56 PM »

I could use some help from someone who has experience with commandline conversion of video files and hosting video on the web..

Here's what I'd like to do.. I have added support in ESR for running commandline tools on the current recorded video file.  What I'd like to ultimately do is bundle in a free commandline tool for converting recorded video files to formats suitable for hosting on the web.

I originally thought this was going to be straightforward using ffmpeg, but I'm having no luck at all, and I don't understand enough about this stuff to know what I'm doing wrong.

Ideally I'd like to be able to record files from the program using non-standard AVI codecs like this lossless one or in ASF format, and then be able to invoke the commandline tool to convert them to standard SWF files or other formats that could be easily uploaded to the web or emailed, etc., without requiring the recipient to have that non-standard codec installed.

I uploaded two sample short videos so anyone who wants to experiment with conversion can do so without needing to play with ESR itself:

• https://www.donation...ads/samples/asf9.asf - ASF WMV9 format (windows media encoder codecs here http://www.microsoft...etails.aspx?id=17792)
• https://www.donation...samples/msucodec.avi (REQUIRES codec here http://www.compressi...apture_codec_en.html)

So to summarize:

I'm looking for help in finding and testing and finding the right settings for a FREE commandline tool that can convert these two files to something suitable for generic sharing on the web without user needing any special codecs.

10571

Easy Screencast Recorder / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - Easy Screencast Recorder - v1.12.01 - Apr 22, 2015

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2012, 01:03 PM »

V1.04 is up, with minor improvements.

10572

Official Announcements / Server down briefly Fri Nov 9, 2012

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2012, 07:54 PM »

Server was rebooted briefly on Fri Nov 9, 2012 -- and could be again shortly while some maintenance is done on it.  Hopefully all will go smoothly.

10573

Easy Screencast Recorder / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - Easy Screencast Recorder - v1.12.01 - Apr 22, 2015

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2012, 06:21 PM »

I'm secretly hoping you'll someday make a full-on editor version.

The other possibility is that I could increasingly perfect this to be a tool that would work hand-in-glove with another editing tool that someone else writes.  i could certainly add the recording of mouse movements and keyboard activity into a separate datafile for use by such an editor, and not record cursor in the screencast.

I think splitting the tools up in this way would make a lot of sense.

Now who wants to write a full-blown movie editor with annotations, callouts, cursor stuff, etc.?

10574

Living Room / Re: Animal Friends thread

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2012, 05:48 PM »

Keep in mind he's not just using a twig someone put in his mouth -- he actually goes and breaks off twigs and cuts them down to size so that he can use them for this task.

10575

Living Room / Re: Animal Friends thread

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2012, 05:42 PM »