Recent Posts

11626

Post New Requests Here / Re: Portable clipBoard program that does the following.

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 06:59 PM »

hmm that's an interesting point -- it won't show on the grid at a glance but it will show when you select an item that has an image, and you should have a virtual group which only lists the clips with images.

11627

Official Announcements / Re: So we gave up the March Ad Experiment Idea - What about a 7day mini fundraiser?

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 06:24 PM »

We could actually try combing the ads and run ads during the fundraiser with text saying "this ad only shown during fundraiser month".

You have the fundraiser because the donations are not covering the expenses, correct?

I need to say that this isn't quite true.  The only fixed costs the site has are the hosting costs, everything else is done on a volunteer basis.  The hosting costs for the site are large ($420 a month); BUT we raised enough from the fundraiser last year to pay for over 2 years of hosting, and we get get a little in donations every day.  So it would not be fair to say that we need to have a fundraiser to pay for our explicit expenses.  The principle we have always followed is fundraiser or not, we will always keep running -- we can always just downgrade hosting if we ever don't raise enough to cover them.

So I think the more accurate and honest way to describe the motivation for the fundraiser is that the money raised above our hosting costs helps me and the other coders who receive donations be able to spend more time working on site stuff and site projects.  I know I would give anything to be able to work on DC stuff full time -- and if DC could raise enough money to pay my bills I would do so in a heartbeat and be the happiest person in the world.  While there's no real hope of that, the donations that I do receive through DC are what makes it possible for me to spend the time I do spend.

Hopefully that's something people still feel good about supporting.. Perhaps a better way to think of it is that the fundraisers can be devoted to raising funds each year for hosting costs, and then any extra money coming in over the course of the year can go to the other site-related projects or to offset time spent working on the site.

11628

Official Announcements / Re: So we gave up the March Ad Experiment Idea - What about a 7day mini fundraiser?

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 04:26 PM »

40hz said it all well about why we should avoid ads and stick to fundraising.


You guys know I have a hard time pulling the trigger on things..

The last fundraiser was last year and at that time the opinions seemed split whether we should hold a small fundraiser every year, or a bigger one every 2 years.

But I think I have decided we will have a two-week fundraiser for the first two-weeks in April, and try to raise a few thousand dollars.

I think in an ideal cases, we could have a yearly fundraiser that would raise about $5000 per year, which is about our yearly hosting expenses -- but I think that's a bit ambitious for this year, so perhaps we can aim for half that much.

This is also the year I really want us to move to a CMS-based system, and maybe shortly thereafter move servers again -- perhaps moving to a less expensive server setup which is every bit as fast.

I recognize that having a fundraiser every year may be just too much to tolerate.. And it may turn out to be wiser to not have it more frequently than every two years, and keep it a rare and special thing.  On the other hand, maybe there are some benefits to making it a less ambitious yearly event.

Anyway, there you have it: Small fundraiser starting on March 31 lasting for about two weeks until April 15.

If anyone has any small ideas for ways to celebrate it -- let me know!

11629

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 02:24 PM »

Nothing fancy, but an early screenshot of administration view of users:


I will be adding a lot more information to that page, but the point I wanted to emphasize was that the whole focus of this codebase is to give administrators a rich set of tools for managing their userbase.  Thus the focus on bulk/batch operations, sortable and searchable grids, etc.

Ditto with providing a top quality logging system.

Again, I think that where YUMPS has a chance to shine is that every single forum, cms, blogging system -- they ALL RE-implement basically the same kind of foundational infrastructure for managing users.. but it's usually not their primary focus -- their primary focus is on the specific kind of CONTENT that they manage.  But with YUMPS, the primary focus *IS* this foundation of user management.

So YUMPS should have the best user management/registration/tracking/logging/usergroups/coding api.

11630

General Software Discussion / Re: How to execute MiniCap with aguments from Start->Run?

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 12:27 PM »

try

"C:\Program Files\MiniCap\MiniCap.exe" -captureregion 590 400 1200 740 -save "C:\1.jpg" (Says windows could't find C:\Program)

11631

General Software Discussion / Re: Screenshot Captor... cm vs. in

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 11:57 AM »

I did a little test that makes me think PSP is a bit schizophrenic about this suff.

I created a new image in PSP, saved it as PSP, PNG, JPG.

Then i opened each and view the "image information" from PSP.

The PSP and JPG formatted files both showed image information in inches.. The PNG showed them in centimeters and mm.

SO: My conclusion is that PSP treats all PNG files as if they were created by sane Europeans using the metric system.  While jpgs and psp formatted files are treated as if they were created by crazy Americans.

 

Bring on the next question!

11632

General Software Discussion / Re: Screenshot Captor... cm vs. in

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 11:50 AM »

crabby there is no reason to feel sorry for starting the topic (or to hesitate before starting a new one) !

Perhaps there is some misunderstanding and you think that someone is upset about your question/request -- not at all.

I'm just trying to understand why paint shop pro thinks that the screenshot was in centimeters -- whether there is something that Screenshot Captor is storing in the files telling it so, or whether PSP is configured to assume that all PNGs are in centimeters, etc.

If anyone can shed any light, let us know.

11633

General Software Discussion / Re: Screenshot Captor... cm vs. in

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 11:04 AM »

Well like i said, you can change the DPI of captured images, as stored by SC in the image files (you'll find that in options on the Image File Format tab) -- but i don't know that the image files specify whether they were captured in inches or cm.  Unless someone tells me they do, it sounds like your problem is with your image editor not SC. 

11634

General Software Discussion / Re: Screenshot Captor... cm vs. in

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 10:41 AM »

You can change the DPI number, but that doesnt seem to be the same thing.

Can you tell me which program you are using that is showing the images are "captured in centimeters"?

11635

General Software Discussion / Re: Screenshot Captor... cm vs. in

« Last post by mouser on March 25, 2012, 07:35 AM »

Assuming you mean for the print dialog, yes you can.  Go to the "Print Options" tab in the options:

11636

Post New Requests Here / Re: Portable clipBoard program that does the following.

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 10:28 PM »

One thing i could add to CHS is a kind of "persistant" tag that you could set whenever you wanted.

So if you were going to spend a few hours on project X, you could tell CHS: tag everything from now on with a tag of "project x"
And when you were done you would clear the persistant tag so it would stop being applied.

Not sure if that would be of use to you or others, but it would be similar to the "Quick Field" that Screenshot Captor has.

11637

General Software Discussion / Re: wordpress is unacceptable

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 06:23 PM »

really, is there a cms without any hassle?

no.

11638

Post New Requests Here / Re: Portable clipBoard program that does the following.

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 06:09 PM »

it just means that CHS was designed to let you easily quickly search your clips, no matter how you organize them -- just type in some text at the top in the search field and it will filter your clips.  you can filter by application captured from or by text in the clips.

i wouldn't pay too much attention to the hierarchical part -- though you can arrange hierarchies of groups, CHS has not developed into a full fledged notetaker, at least by my way of thinking.

however you can manually add tag fields to your clips, and create virtual groups that automatically show all clips with certain tags, etc.

11639

Developer's Corner / Re: Invoicing & inventory problem for my business.

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 03:52 PM »

I think its a wise decision to do more planning and move to a more automated online system.

Setting up an ad hoc mechanism that uses your desktop mail program to send out serials would work but eventually you are going to have to move to an online system for handling this kind of stuff so you might as well do it that way to begin with.

11640

Post New Requests Here / Re: Portable clipBoard program that does the following.

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 03:50 PM »

My Clipboard Help+Spell  will run portably, will save each captured image to its own image file, will capture all text.  but will does not save text clips in plaintext files, does not prompt for tags.

11641

General Software Discussion / Re: Screenshot Captor Default Image File Format Issue

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 03:09 PM »

Just to confirm:
The problem is not that you cant select jpg in the save as -- just that the DEFAULT is not jpg right?

I can fix that.

11642

Developer's Corner / Re: The tricky issue of structuring a database log table for your web service

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 07:54 AM »

To mitigate the impact of a log growing excessively large, old or uncommon events can be moved to an ancillary 'archive' table.

Yes i am considering building in such auto archiving functionality into the log system of YUMPS.. it does seem like a reasonable way to trade off daily efficiency with long term storage.


The use of additional tables for additional specialized fields though.. thats part of what i'm still struggling with -- whether that is the right way to do it.


I am thinking right now that I will have 2 main KINDS of log tables though.. One for system events, and one for user events.  The former being mostly things that a site coder would care about, warnings and errors, etc.  The latter being something that moderators of a site might care about, to track what users do.


The idea of automatic archiving is connected to the questions of what to store.. As part of the stuggle is clearly that there are cases where you'd like to log voluminous detailed information -- but keeping it around indefinitely is too costly in terms of disk and memory and cpu usage.  So maybe the idea of building a system that allows voluminous logging but performs regular automatic maintenance on the log file is the way to go.. Archiving some old stuff, and deleting really old big content that is unlikely to be needed in the long run...  But that's a lot of work for a log table..

11643

Screenshot Captor / Re: Scrolling capture is not working

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 03:00 AM »

Skas, what version of Screenshot Captor are you using?  It sounds like you are still using v2.

There are a series of videos on how to use the completely rewritten scrolling capture feature in version 3 at the bottom of this page.

11644

Developer's Corner / The tricky issue of structuring a database log table for your web service

« Last post by mouser on March 24, 2012, 02:58 AM »

I've been confronted by this problem before and am being faced with it again while working on a new big project (YUMPS).

The question is how to best structure a logging database table.

It seems like it should be a trivial issue.  You want to keep a table of events that an administrator can browse to help identify problems.  So you obviously need fields for date/time stamp, and some text about the event, maybe the userid# responsible.

Now if you're only going to log unusual rare events, and you're never going to need to search it, then there's nothing to worry about.

But if you would like to log a lot of events to help you keep records and track what users are doing, and want to be able to search it easily, then it starts to get a little tricky because this log table might start getting huge, hundreds of thousands or even millions of entries.. So do you really want to be storing large text blocks?  Some of these events you might like to preserve indefinitely, while others are just going to be taking up huge amounts of wasted space..

And do you need to reserve some fields in the table corresponding to object ids relevant to the event.  For example if there is an event like "User X did operation Y on Blog post Z" and you ever want to be able to search for all operations on blog post Z, then you need an integer field for Z so you can search and filter for all events on that column=Z.   But its not going to be a specific column for BlogPostId because blog posts are only 1 of the kinds of objects you work with.  So it gets messy.

An alternative solution would be to use multiple log tables, one for each kind of event.. I guess this has some pros and cons.

Anyone know about any good discussion of this kind of thing?  Or any particularly elegant solutions? It's obviously something that the big guys (facebook, etc.) need to deal with well, but i've not seen any good discussions of the issue.

11645

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer - LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.11.01 - Apr 23, 2009

« Last post by mouser on March 23, 2012, 09:04 AM »

I'm definitely considering adding some memory watching and "taming" options for the next version.

11646

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor Auto Tool Configurations

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2012, 11:34 AM »

Thanks for sharing!

11647

Screenshot Captor / Re: Links to Reviews and Comments - Add yours!

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2012, 05:46 AM »

PC World has a really nice review of Screenshot Captor this week, especially loving on the new Scrolling Capture features:

If you don't mind the initial learning curve, you'll find Screenshot Captor 3 to be a very capable screenshot application that makes things as simple while still providing enough tools to obtain professional-looking results... The end result was a beautiful screenshot of a page containing an animated GIF. Screenshot Captor 2, Snagit 0.

http://www.pcworld.c...r,4/description.html

11648

Screenshot Captor / Re: Using Ctrl+C to Copy to Clipboard

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2012, 10:09 AM »

All I'd like now is a hotkey to copy the file path.

Yeah there is no hotkey for this currently, though you can do this from the Edit menu, OR by clicking the clipboard icon button near the filename at the bottom of the SC window.

11649

Screenshot Captor / Re: Using Ctrl+C to Copy to Clipboard

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2012, 09:33 AM »

There is a Hotkeys tab in options.

But I'm confused about what you are saying now -- are you saying that when you use the menu to copy the current screenshot to the clipboard it's not working?

Here's a tip that could be affecting you.  By default CHS will not grab super large images -- if you are using the CHS capture sound to tell you when an image is copied to the clipboard, make sure you don't have that value in CHS set too low.  The CHS option you care about is here:

11650

Official Announcements / Re: So we gave up the March Ad Experiment Idea - What about a 7day mini fundraiser?

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2012, 06:46 PM »

hmm, well march is our normal fundraiser month, so i initially thought that we would do the ad experiment instead of having a fundraiser -- and that it would annoy people to the same degree

but if we're not doing the ad experiment, i was thinking we could maybe do a week of fundraiser.. or else i guess do nothing till next march.