Recent Posts

1176

General Software Discussion / Re: Making the switch-01: My journey from Windows to Linux

« Last post by urlwolf on June 06, 2007, 06:23 AM »

This sounds like a really promising series of posts.
A software-guru, who knows the current windows landscape and has a website with the best picks I've ever seen, has the balls to leave all that behind.

Me, I'm impressed that you actually want to start from scratch trying to find the best software for your needs yet again. I can imagine how many hours you have invested in finding it. And I'm not even talking about the price of the licenses you own (time is more important than money).

Best of luck!

1177

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« Last post by urlwolf on June 06, 2007, 05:42 AM »

Opera browser opens MHT files, they call it Web Archive (single file)

-justice (June 05, 2007, 02:49 AM)

How?
I tried file > open, then selected web archives from the dropbox, and tried to 'see' a .chm file. But nothing shows up.

1178

General Software Discussion / Re: how to reduce pagefile usage?

« Last post by urlwolf on June 05, 2007, 12:28 PM »

Thanks to all who contributed.
I ended up buying 1gb ddr 333 ram for an outrageous 76 euro (!).
This is probably more than what I paid for my installed 1gb when I bought it in the US 1.5 years ago.

You gotta love EU prices.

Lashiec: I cannot install DDR2 on my dell 600m. It's not that cheap, though, I asked and it's 50 euro.

1179

Living Room / Re: Why do so many micropayment systems fail?

« Last post by urlwolf on June 05, 2007, 04:19 AM »

hey! That sounds about perfect! (DonationMusician, and DonationBlogger). But isn't it covered by paypal already? Pavlina makes a lot of money out of donations with paypal. You can send as little as you want (er.. microdonations), and there's no big chunk of money you have to deposit first -it's tied to your bank.

1180

General Software Discussion / how to reduce pagefile usage?

« Last post by urlwolf on June 04, 2007, 01:02 PM »

Is there a way to to reduce pagefile usage?
Lately, with only a few apps running (I have 1 gig of ram) I hit the limits and see a general slowdown.

I spend quite a lot of time checking the process manager

Right now, I'm not running that many apps, and I'm about 1 Gb of PF usage (third tab in process manager).

Any idea why?

1181

N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007 / Re: Backup Revision Folder

« Last post by urlwolf on June 03, 2007, 06:50 AM »

quick question... is Backup Revision Folder overlapping the functionality in filehamster? If so, what are the advantages of Backup Revision Folder over filehamster?

1182

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« Last post by urlwolf on June 03, 2007, 06:47 AM »

See:
http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
http://www.paulgraha...com/cliffsnotes.html

-urlwolf (June 02, 2007, 03:12 PM)

Ummm... what does this have to do with the discussion at hand?  Not saying it doesn't... I just can't see the correlation to a review on OneNote.

-wraith808 (June 02, 2007, 08:50 PM)

I was talking about vendor lockin and Microsoft, and Graham says that the business model of M$ is dead. So I was wondering if anyone has found anything that comes close to OneNote (I have read the long notetaking thread, mind you) but is not using a proprietary format.

1183

General Software Discussion / teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by urlwolf on June 03, 2007, 06:43 AM »

Copy your files faster and easier

TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, also providing you with a lot of features:

Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.

Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.

Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.

Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.

Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.

from lifehacker

NOTE: I have not benchmarked it.

1184

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« Last post by urlwolf on June 02, 2007, 03:12 PM »

See:
http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
http://www.paulgraha...com/cliffsnotes.html

1185

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« Last post by urlwolf on June 02, 2007, 03:11 PM »

Actually, Zaine, if you could document your transition (and what programs you are suplanting with what programs in linux) here at DC, that'd be great.

1186

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« Last post by urlwolf on June 02, 2007, 03:08 PM »

Now, How difficult would it be to have a clone of oneNote under linux?
Maybe by openOffice?

Zaine, I'm sure you have been looking for a replacement for onenote if you moved to linux. Or are you happy with just text files now?

1187

General Software Discussion / Re: google developer day reporting: google gears (better than AJAX?)

« Last post by urlwolf on June 02, 2007, 10:50 AM »

Sleeping with the enemy, huh?

Why the best things in Spain always happen in June when everyone is flooded with exams? Well, at least we have you to keep us informed!

-Lashiec (May 31, 2007, 12:21 PM)

Since when is google the enemy?

BTW, they gave us (participants) a remote control helicopter at the end of the day (!). How's that for a treat?

1188

General Software Discussion / Re: google developer day reporting: google gears (better than AJAX?)

« Last post by urlwolf on June 02, 2007, 10:49 AM »

Yes, I hope this makes it to gmail as well.
That's about the only thing remaining for gmail to be perfect: offline access and backup.

This is a serious response to adobe's flex: now AJAX can be taken offline and work, while being a lot more efficient online too!
----------

Report on the search API talks.

Basically, the old search API, limited by 1000 queries/day is being replaced by a new system.

Google is pushing the idea that you can just stick snippets of code (good for nonprogrammers) and get super-cool funcitonality.

They have invested heavily on gadgets, maplets, and all of this can be generated using a wizard.
e.g., you can get a feed showing recent news on any topic, and being actualized by google. Same for videos, pictures, etc.

You can crack up a decent site on any topic in five mins.

Of course, this is all javascript-driven. I anticipate books on js will be selling like dougnuts in the next few months.

Google really wants to have developers cracking up cool stuff with their technology.

1189

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« Last post by urlwolf on June 02, 2007, 07:08 AM »

I use oneNote everyday, and love it.
However, I'm starting to get concerned about vendor lockin.
I used to have a big text file to scratch ideas, now I have a proprietary file format that makes me nervous.

1190

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on June 01, 2007, 08:35 PM »

hmm, the more I play with musicIP, the more I like it. But as a player, it has many minor usability issues (that I'm reporting in their forum).

It feels like they may care only about getting good mixes -which is probably a very good goal-... but the player is really close to beating everything else out there! If only they put some more development time into the interface...

For example:

adding a new column to the playlist view will reset my carefully resized column witdth for exisiting columns. that should not happen.

Many central features have to be activated using the command line (e.g., replaygain!)

The tagging is really slow, and the editing screen is an usability blasphemy where one has to aim at checkboxes.

Normal things like making enter click the default button in a dialog box don't happen at all (example: box accepting artist corrections).

There are no way of 'accepting all years' in the 'tag fix' dialog... one has to click all suggestions one by one... doh!

1191

General Software Discussion / google developer day reporting: google gears (better than AJAX?)

« Last post by urlwolf on May 31, 2007, 12:14 PM »

Hey,

I'm at google developer day, Spain right now (GDD) so I though tI'd report a bit on what's going on...
Sorry about my telegaphic style, but I have to pay attention to talks while typing.

In general, 2007 seems to be the year of the map.
All talks were about maps. KML is a markup language to interact with maps.

One of the most impressing things I saw was:
http://gears.google.com/

Talk given by the guy who wrote google reader.
The whole point is to make AJAX applications more fluid, with even less server connections.
This time it seems they'll make google reader very responsive.

Gear It's a browser plugin

It gives you access to a local SQLlite db (!) on the client
Seeing a SQL query in javascript is kind of cool.

workerpool
It gives you thread-like functionality for javascript

When we are offline, reader (or any other AJAX app) will query the local SQLlite db.
How does it figure out if we are offline? It's not as obvious as it seems.

It kind of runs alocal server,  synchronized with the remote one.
Imagine gmail being even more responsive…

You have search technology of course on the entire local db.

Next: search API.

1192

General Software Discussion / CBS buys last.fm for $280 m

« Last post by urlwolf on May 30, 2007, 05:33 PM »

http://news.bbc.co.u...chnology/6701863.stm
Well, it really looks like a second dot com boom, only that this time the technology is really cool.

1193

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on May 29, 2007, 05:27 PM »

Try this:

http://blog.musicip....preview-constraints/

Basically, the most powerful music search engine available to date.

PS: I agree, vorbis is the best lossy format, and I have converted my lossless format to ogg for my portable. I may have around 20gb of ogg alone.

1194

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on May 29, 2007, 01:00 PM »

Note: I think the time it takes to analyze a track may depend on the size of your collection. I analyzed a ~460 ogg collection, and it was super fast. I wonder why that is. Again, the MIP forum is full of people reporting long analyzing times.

1195

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on May 27, 2007, 04:49 AM »

Oh, for those considering going for the registered version, jump in!
The new power search features, moods, etc are really cool.

Basically, you can create a playlist that you really like, save it as binary mood, and send it to a friend. Even if he doesn't have the same songs, this binary mood will select similar ones from his library.

You can generate as many playlist from your library as you want using your mood settings.

There are many more features, but it seems that musicIP is one of the most under-documented applications out there. No wiki, no comprehensive help (just pages scattered over the site talking about different topics), some blog posts, and that's it.

Maybe we need to create a wiki?

1196

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on May 27, 2007, 04:45 AM »

I have estimated that, at ~ 20 sec analyzing each track, my >35000-track collection will take about 15 days to get fully analyzed at about 10hr of CPU per day (I want to use my computer for other things, mind you).

I still think that the most 'bang for your CPU buck' is after the initial scan (~ 1sec per track). Having phase 2 done takes a lot of CPU and it'll help you only with mistagged tracks (which is nice, but still). I might be wrong (please correct me if I am).

The mixing should be about as good before/after phase two.

1197

General Software Discussion / Pistachio: windows usability addon

« Last post by urlwolf on May 27, 2007, 04:35 AM »

Pistachio is one of those little applications that does a lot:

• Minimize to systray
  
• tweak transparency using the mouse wheel on the title bar (!).
  
• Lock two windows so they can be moved together
  
• etc

It's free.

1198

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on May 24, 2007, 12:16 PM »

Note: at 10-20 seconds per song, completing the analysis of my collection will take about 15 days (assuming 10hrs of processing). This is quite a lot of CPU usage.

It's not clear to me what advantages we get once our collections are completely analyzed. when a song is mixable, it turns green. In my case most songs are green already, *before* the analysis. It seems that the first pass (about 1 seconds per song) is enough to get most of the advantages. The only thing I know for sure is that the 'correct tags' feature will work only after the full analysis is done.

1199

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on May 23, 2007, 02:02 PM »

Hi whicken,

Welcome!
A minor issue. I don't think APE is supported.
No big deal, since as you may know, there is an emerging new format that is as fast as FLAC in decoding/encoding, and as space efficient as APE. It's TAK:
http://www.thbeck.de/Tak/Tak.html (in german)
http://www.losslessa...k-101-beta-released/
http://www.hydrogena....php?showtopic=53291

It's making quite a stir in the hydrogen audio forums. Some people there have converted entire collections of flac and apes to tak already.

I'd love to see support for this format. I can see that xmplay does support tak already, and the engine is the same, so I'd guess it's doable.

Now that I'm in 'feature request' mode:
- having winamp plugin access would be a terrific feature.
- support for non-standard tags (visible in the columns interface would be good.

I'm actually converting all my cue files to independent tracks just so MIP can 'see' them . If I could move to tak as well in the same effort, so much better

1200

General Software Discussion / Re: musicIP (as a player): wow

« Last post by urlwolf on May 23, 2007, 08:29 AM »

@urlwolf:

CUE Splitter - A CUE file splitter for Windows. Support: MP3, APE, FLAC, WAVE.
CUE Splitter is a freeware tool that split a single big audio track, mostly an album or a compilation, into the relative individual audio tracks, using informations contained in the associated "CUE" file. Sometimes you can find a big compressed audio file (for example MP3, APE, FLAC, OGG, WAV, WMA, etc...) equipped with a small "CUE" text file that contain informations about tracks title, artist and length. Usually these couple of files are generated by programs like EAC (Exact Audio Copy), CDRWin, BPM Studio, GoldWave or similar.With CUE Splitter you can obtain splitted audio track files without burn any CDR or decode/re-encode any audio data! Moreover audio files are automatically named using a user-defined "file mask" string, it's tags are filled with informations extracted from "CUE" file and, optionally, an M3U playlist file can be generated (option enabled by default). CUE Splitter is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

http://www.shareup.c...-download-30218.html

-justice (May 23, 2007, 05:28 AM)

Thanks justice.

I'm using the almighty foobar for that. It's the only one that understands all file formats, incluing .TAK (latest and fanciest lossless format, that of course I tried).

Foobar can even transcode to more than one format at the same time (e.g. FLAC to TAK and OGG) using MAREO:
http://www.webearce.com.ar/

Note: MusicIP seems to be able to even auto-fix your tags.
If this works half-way decent, it'd be like picard done right... which would be huge. My collection is in pretty good shape, but I know people who have tremendous messes, who would be blessed by such a thing...