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1076

Living Room / Re: Anyone using Nuance's 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' or equivalent?

« Last post by barney on November 23, 2010, 07:33 PM »

Update.

Pundits aside, I just made the order.  Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 11 Bluetooth.  Took a while to find out just what Bluetooth meant.  Checked the Nuance site -the nicest thing I can say is, "Boy, is that site disorganized!"  Nothing found there, so back to Amazon, found a revue which 'splained the Bluetooth designation means that it includes the Plantronics Calisto bluetooth headset, the combination being significantly less than buying both independently.  Just in case anyone else is interested.

Oh, btw, the revue was by a medical type, if that matters.  He was basically supportive, although did mention a few disadvantages - which made me more inclined to believe his appreciative remarks.  He did mention the VBS/macro capability, which sound more and more attractive, even though I have an intense dislike for macros in general.

1077

Living Room / Re: Anyone using Nuance's 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' or equivalent?

« Last post by barney on November 22, 2010, 07:54 PM »

subset of VBA, so you can really make it sit up and sing

Now that is an intriguing statement at the very least.  Does the product provide instruction in that capability, or is it something to be researched?  Not a deal-breaker either way, but a definite curiosity.  Sounds as if it would be the equivalent of ShortKeys, which I use for mucho PHP scripting.  If so, could make the learning curve much more pleasant - not less steep, just more pleasant  .

1078

Living Room / Re: Anyone using Nuance's 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' or equivalent?

« Last post by barney on November 22, 2010, 10:37 AM »

4. Read the instructions, do the complete setup, and do all the tutorials.

That was why I dropped it after trying it, but, as mentioned, that was years ago, comparatively early version, and 'tis likely my hardware really wasn't up to the task - I know the [analog] mike was hit-or-miss, mostly miss  .

OK, looks as though v11 is gonna be a go.  Nuance recommends the Plantronics Calisto (I wonder how they pronounce that   ?) USB headset, so that'll be on the list as well.  I'll just have to be patient enough this time around to do proper training  , although patience with software is not always my long suit  .

Thanks for the information, folk, and for the well-wishes.  While this is not gonna be as serious as open-heart surgery, the medicos say it will require a protracted recovery time.  Part of that is due to the fact that they won't do both arms at the same time, their reasoning being that I'd be basically helpless   afterward.  Probably TMI, but the condition is akin to carpal tunnel - the medicos told me to think of it as extended or super carpal tunnel.  Don't care what they call it, as long as they can fix it  .

Once again, thank you all.

(Edited for typos.)

1079

Living Room / Anyone using Nuance's 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' or equivalent?

« Last post by barney on November 21, 2010, 01:55 AM »

Got the results of some tests - which seemed overly extensive to me  - today.  Seems that I'm due for some abstruse carving & bleeding first part of 2011.  Said carving will render my dexterity pretty much absent for some number of months, so I'm looking for alternatives.  (I don't think there is a twelve-step program for the Web, and I prolly wouldn't enroll, anyway.)

Dragon is the only voice control system I've ever used, but that was several years agone, version 2 - 3? 4? - and I was somewhat underwhelmed.  However, some of the latest reviews - not on the vendor's site  - indicate that it has improved significantly with version eleven (v.11).

So I'm interested in first person experiences/opinions of that product ... or any alternative product, for that matter.

While I'd like to keep the monetary outlay as low as possible, I'm not too concerned about it if I can get something that works.  I'll likely get a Plantronics Bluetooth headset, as I tend to walk when I talk, so the product will likely affect the headset choice, and I'm open to advice in that arena as well.

This is not, in and of itself, time-critical ... but the sooner it can be resolved, the more time will be available for configuration and practice - reckon I'll need all the time I can get  .

1080

Living Room / Re: Boxee??

« Last post by barney on November 21, 2010, 01:31 AM »

Can't speak to this personally, and we're US, not Australia, but I've a student who raves about it.  It's just about all he talks about when he's over here - makes me kinda jealous - but he's somewhat less than forthcoming when queried about costs.  He just says, "It varies."  Hasn't yet quoted a price, other than to say, "It's a bunch cheaper than my cable TV was, and the pay-per-view is pretty reasonable."  Have yet to check into it, but he's certainly tempting me  .

1081

Living Room / Re: Ever asked, "Now why did I uninstall that program?" A tip for you...

« Last post by barney on November 19, 2010, 03:21 PM »

So many apps, so little time  .

Thought I was familiar with - read aware of - most of NirSoft's elements <sigh />.  Wonder what else I've missed .

Yep, much easier  .  Use PHP to extract data from the generated HTML file, store in MySQL or SQLite, then create [an] edit form(s) for the data on "Why did I do that?"

Have to research SQLite ... I wonder if it has a built-in server?  Ah, well, I foresee a[nother] trip to Google  .

Thanks, and a tip of the barney bowler to MilesAhead.

1082

Living Room / Re: Ever asked, "Now why did I uninstall that program?" A tip for you...

« Last post by barney on November 19, 2010, 02:03 PM »

Thanks.  I've used it before, but don't think it'll do particularly well for this.

This is the [tentative] list of requirements I can envision:

• file name
• file date/time
• install date/time
• file version
• path, installed from
• path, installed to
• path(s), data and auxiliary file(s)
• install notes (purpose, nature (portable, fixed, temporary, etc.), warnings external requirements)

I think that will cover most information needed.  Then either store in a database or individual flat files that can be reviewed as needed, edited in the event of an uninstall.  I'm kinda partial to a database, mostly for the sort/query ability, so that would need additional fields:

• uninstall date/time
• uninstall reason
• product review
• product recommendation (Think I just creeped my own scope .)

Hm-m-m ... what's been missed?

Really don't know that my skill set is up to this, but should -  - be fun trying .

1083

Living Room / Re: Ever asked, "Now why did I uninstall that program?" A tip for you...

« Last post by barney on November 19, 2010, 12:41 PM »

It still doesn't help with automatic updates, but it should be possible to make a drop target that opens a log file and records date, time and filepath before it runs the file that is dropped on it. Any help?

That would be a consideration if there were some way to derive version information.  At any given time, there may be several versions extant of an installed application.  When troubleshooting, that version info can be valuable.  Total Uninstall does a lot of what's wanted, but is abominably slow .  Inctrl, an old PC Mag utility, is somewhat faster, but I don't think it'll catch everything on Win7.

Hm-m-m ... I wonder if I could create that drop target with VB?  Maybe I need to install it, dust off my VB coding skills ... thanks for the concept !

1084

Living Room / Re: Ever asked, "Now why did I uninstall that program?" A tip for you...

« Last post by barney on November 19, 2010, 02:36 AM »

Having had this heartache before, I started logging every install on a new laptop - even the Firefox extensions   - with CintaNotes.  It's kind of a PITA, but doesn't take much ... just the program name as note title, version - and any other significant data, such as removal date, reason, and more - along with appropriate tags to indicate why/where/how any action was taken.  Doesn't slow me down that much, and has been extremely helpful with some driver issues.

Drawback:  this process does not take into account automatic updates, nor potential conflicts, since it relies upon manual entry.

I've been hunting for some kind of logging system for the last couple of decades - that, my friends, would be worth gold - lot's of it.  Ideally, such an app would recognize several varieties of installs/upgrades, then log time, date, version, name, and optionally, comments.  I suspect that would be a fairly large order, even larger if appropriately cross-platform - I'd certainly hate to try to create something that could keep up with the *nix habit of compiling and installing on the fly  .

All that being said, I'd be really interested to meet the dev that would be willing to tackle such a project  .

1085

Living Room / Re: Why Teachers Drink

« Last post by barney on November 18, 2010, 08:46 PM »

Renegade, that made my sides hurt.  And some of the comments are nearly as good.  One of 'em led me to Robert Brault, a very worthwhile destination on its own.

Thanks .

1086

General Software Discussion / Re: Software idea for speed reading/skimming text by color-coding important keywords

« Last post by barney on November 08, 2010, 03:14 PM »

However I think the algorithm for keyword extraction would not even have to be that complicated.

I'm a bit dubious on that one.  If it's a client-supplied list, no problem.  But if it's based on frequency, that's a horse of a different color.  The critical keyword(s) for a given text might not be as high in frequency as many other words.

For instance, you're reading an article on The Indigent Population of Certain Polynesian Islands.  Indigent would certainly be a keyword, but might never be mentioned save in the title.  References within the article might be native, poor, disadvantaged and the like.  So you'd need a pretty strong thesaurus algorithm to catch the proper keywords, ones relevant to the thrust of the article, for an appropriate summary.

It's fairly easy to condense an article, not so easy to have the condensed version contain the meat of the original article.  We had a team working on that for some documentation several years ago.  Five members, as I recall, and they had difficulty reaching consensus on distillations even when they were involved in open discussion of the material to be condensed.  I'd hate to have to try to write that program, alone or in a dev team.  'Twould be an interpretational nightmare, methinks.

Unlike Web page keywords, frequency in an article is not necessarily indicative of importance or relevance.  I suppose, if the title were true to the purpose of the article, you could extract keywords from it, then do a thesaurus lookup for relevant words, but even that would be a nasty job, since many thesaurus entries would not be meaningful to the article's purpose.

1087

General Software Discussion / Re: Software idea for speed reading/skimming text by color-coding important keywords

« Last post by barney on November 08, 2010, 10:11 AM »

Take a look at this Wikipedia tool. (Note that it works on more than Wikipedia.)  I think it falls short of your requirements, but it has worked middlin' well for me when perusing really long documents.

1088

General Software Discussion / Anyone familiar with Input Director?

« Last post by barney on November 01, 2010, 06:48 PM »

Folk,

I'm running into a problem that doesn't show up in the FAQ, and the forum - if it's still active - seems to be down for last day or three.

When I try to set up the slave names, I'm getting a strange error message.  I can set up win73ggw as a slave from win74g3700.  However, when I attempt to set up win74ggw, the error message returned is that win74ggw is already registered as win73ggw.  Nothing I've read in the documentation - nor in the FAQ - seems to address this, and I'm at a loss as to how to proceed.  I suppose I could change the name of the box, but that requires much more reconfiguration on that box than I'd really like to essay.

I could prolly assign by IP address, but again, that'd be a lot of work as well as invalidating several other configurations.

The boxes in question are all Win7 Ultimate, with win73ggw being a 32-bit slave, win74ggw being a 64-bit [supposed] slave, and win74g3700 being a 64-bit master.  Standard assurances on RAM, disk space, CPU.

Anybody with a suggestion, maybe a cure?

1089

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Synchronise Files in multiple (more than 2) directories

« Last post by barney on November 01, 2010, 09:50 AM »

You might take a look at Syncless, an open source program that uses a slightly different paradigm.  Multiple directories are not a problem, although live updates may be.

1090

General Software Discussion / Re: Pros & Cons of Remote Libraries?

« Last post by barney on October 26, 2010, 07:03 AM »

Chances are people have the javascript library cached already so won't have to download it again

And how do I verify the cached version is the one I'm using on the page?  Wouldn't it be safest to force download each time the page is reloaded?  Or are browsers smart enough to discern the difference(s) 'tween cached and page versions ?

Also, link to a specific version of the library, not the latest

I'd think that would be a given, but prolly worth mentioning, at that .

Google's network infrastructure is probably better than yours.

Yeah, but if the ubiquitous they are loading my page, they have access to a locally-stored file, whereas network traffic could delay the load of a remote one.  In some cases, that could break a page - or am I being paranoid about that ?

Maybe a little background?  This question arose during a happy hour conversation as a result of an event occurring at a young Webmaster's site.  She swears she'll never use a remote reference again, and another agrees with her.  Then a couple of scripters are adamant about remote usage, and two of us just cannot make up our minds - we can see both sides, always a detriment to convincing argument .  Hence, this post.

1091

General Software Discussion / Pros & Cons of Remote Libraries?

« Last post by barney on October 25, 2010, 07:14 PM »

Folk,

Didn't find anything here on the topic, but perhaps did not search as diligently as I might .

I've been reading a book on HTML5, and it seems that there's a lot of use of various JS components.  I'm interested in opinions/discussion on the use of remote libraries, e.g., jquery or modernizr, as opposed to copying them to a local Web site.

One obvious pro is that you'll most always be using the most current version(s) , and an equally obvious con is that you are at the mercy of Internet traffic and remote server up time/availability .

So what other advantages/disadvantages do you see?  Which would you recommend for Web work?

1092

Living Room / Re: The Monitor is a Limiting Form Factor

« Last post by barney on October 20, 2010, 09:14 PM »

Yeah, but once they get those paper-thin OLED displays that you can roll up in your laptop bag, the desktop is DOOMED! Wink

Really?  That's what movies said about VCR - TV as well - and what music execs said about CD/DVD - and ... nope, didn't/won't happen.  No way, with current technology, to get desktop performance with any kind of e-newspaper or pad computer.  They're great for presenting information, not so great for manipulating data.  Kinda like comparing a garden spade to a steam shovel - they both have their place, but neither will ever replace the other.

1093

Developer's Corner / Re: The Inversion of the Open Source - Big Corporation Divide?

« Last post by barney on October 19, 2010, 02:15 AM »

It's likely that I'm misinterpreting Raymond/Stallman/et.al., but I'm developing the impression that they advocate corporately-supplied, free, & open source software, relegating all other software to the hobbyist category.

If my interpretation is true, and should they have their way, then software such as Firefox, most bulletin-board systems, WordPress & most other blogging software, ... none of these would ever have been developed under that aegis.  OK, Google Chrome would have come along, but suggestions for adjustment/improvement would, in large, likely receive short shrift.

I particularly like - not! - the concept that if you can't make money as an independent programmer, you can always become a consultant.  If programs are only corporately generated, just how much independent consulting would be viable?  After all, wouldn't we be contacting the corporate entities for such?

mouser's 2nd bullet particularly strikes home with me.  I'd not care to count the number of times I've mentioned - read whined about - some feature that would have been convenient for me only to find that within a period of days, perhaps a few weeks, the software developer had implemented that feature, or a better implementation of the concept, then informed me directly that it was available.  That's happened as oft with freeware as with shareware, never with commercial ware.  That's a practical result of - precursor to? - that 2nd bullet.  And mouser is a prime example of just that attitude, as anyone who has followed his software threads can attest.

It seems to me that the Raymond/Stallman proposition(s) would put an end to that kind of responsiveness, an agility that no corporation will ever be able to match.  They would also take innovation out of the development arena - corporations innovate only when they perceive a likely improvement to their bottom line.  The Raymond/Stallman proposition(s), barring a significant alteration in corporate structure and attitudes, would curtail or limit, not enable, software development.

On a slightly different note, I'm not convinced that all software should be free.  It strikes me that the usage of some [types of] software should carry a financial burden for the user(s).  Perhaps be licensed, as well.  And, of course, there is the matter of financial assistance to the developer(s).  I like free as much as the next person, but I'm not averse to paying a reasonable [non-exorbitant] fee for software in order to own it.

1094

Living Room / Re: Most important aspect of Info Keeping

« Last post by barney on October 16, 2010, 01:25 AM »

Renegade, you are a cynic .
CodeTRUCKER, while most of us share your attitude(s), many of us have given up expecting the results your wish would mandate.

Give ya a ferinstance. 

InfoSelect (IS) is advertised as a PIM, but my usage is almost exclusively data storage - to the extent of something like 4-5 gigabytes of data (in 20 MB files .)  (I've been using InfoSelect since before it was a Windows app.)  After three (3) years, the 2007 version has been updated to a 2010 version, currently in public beta stage.  One of the things I've loved about the previous version was that you could search on text of a specific colour.  (Incidentally, search within IS is very fast compared to any other such app I've used or even tried.) That enabled me to implement a tagging system for all notes, or search for specific files color coded by type, e.g., Linux, MS, Script, and the like.

In their upgraded system, colored text search is no longer available.  Why?  It was there, but they broke it (along with several other items, but that's another thread).

They simplified the search capabilities because, I suspect, it was too much work to maintain it in the upgrade .  Or, perhaps, they simply overlooked it ?!?

The bottom line, for most developers that have wandered in and out of my experience, is that search is just too damned hard to implement.  Creative or really fast search is well nigh an effor equal to or greater than the effort to create the original program.

It's doubtful you'll ever find the application you'd like to see , although I really hope you do.  Should that happen, please announce it here  .

1095

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming Ennui, Anyone?

« Last post by barney on October 15, 2010, 05:23 PM »

Welcome to becoming a mere mortal  .

1096

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming Ennui, Anyone?

« Last post by barney on October 15, 2010, 02:25 AM »

perhaps the resistance to starting and finishing are connecting in terms of a difficulty in overcoming momentum..

That makes sense for the start, but I kinda see a different outlook for the end.  For me, at least, and for a few other folk, as well, according to past happy hour discussions, the slowdown at the end of a project oft involves the question, "What will I do now?"  

We can get so involved in a project that we don't want to see it end, so even when we have a clear termination in view, we try to delay it.  I found that to be particularly true when I was learning PHP - I was constantly refining pages because I didn't envision any further project(s), so I didn't want the one at hand to end  .

'Course that could be just me, but past conversations lead me to believe I'm not alone  .

1097

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming Ennui, Anyone?

« Last post by barney on October 14, 2010, 11:13 PM »

Hee, hee  .  The last decade I was in corporate America, the hardest part of anything I did, whether report, Web site, program, whatever, was the last 5%-10%.  Seemed as though every time the end of the tunnel - not the light at the end of the tunnel, but the end of the tunnel - showed up, I'd slow down.  Hardest work I did was that last 5%-10%.  Oh, I'd finish ... but it hurt  .

1098

Living Room / Re: I have a very hard announcement to make

« Last post by barney on October 12, 2010, 11:33 PM »

Dear heart, it's always painful to give up a dream.  

But, if you'll pardon a mushy paraphrase, when you let something you love go, it will come back to you ten fold.  

('Course, that sentiment ignores time frame, but it's pretty much true <chuckle />.)  

That said, please don't let a temporary hiatus in focus remove the pleasure of your company from the rest of us.

1099

Living Room / Re: Tortoise SVN and online repositories

« Last post by barney on October 07, 2010, 07:42 PM »

Been a while, but when I was in the corporate atmosphere, I was give very strict - yeah, right! - guidelines on this topic.

The sequence required was version.subversion.revision.build, where

• build was incremented any time the proggy was recompiled, usually for things like spelling corrections in error messages and such
• revision was incremented any time, still using the error msg example, the error procedure was altered, e.g., the error trigger was adjusted
• subversion was incremented when a significant change was made, e.g., a completely new error-handling routine, a different UI presentation
• version was incremented whenever there was a major change, i.e., a totally new interface, a new approach to program application, and the like

However, I don't recall the folk who provided me with that dictum following it very closely  .

As mentioned, it's pretty much a case of personal preference.  Methinks the biggest reason for version.subversion.revision.build was to keep track of changes in a multi-developer/team environment, as well as for the bean counters to keep track and know when to charge for an upgrade or raise the price altogether  .

1100

General Software Discussion / Re: What's a good way to embed video/audio in a pdf-like transferable document?

« Last post by barney on October 04, 2010, 10:57 AM »

Don't know of anything that will meet your needs from a desktop level. 

If a Web-based solution is viable for your purposes, you might take a look at http://wrttn.in/. 

Haven't tried it, since I'm allergic to Web services , but the reviews I've seen look pretty good.

It creates a HTML page with video embedded via oEmbed, so the video would have to be accessible on the Web, a hindrance that may obviate its usefulness as applied to your needs.