Recent Posts

1201

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

« Last post by urlwolf on May 23, 2007, 05:01 AM »

Good news.
It support replay gain (album and track), using the command line:
http://www.musicip.c...ixer/commandline.jsp
It uses the BASS engine (same as xmplay).
I'm still amazed at how fast the database searches are... click on the album panel, start typing, and you have 'live' search...
It is portable, i.e., you can copy the folder to an USB drive and it's ready to go.
It can configure keyboard shortcuts with the simplest method (why oh why other apps don't use this?): just put a txt file in the folder with the kb combo and the action, separated by tabs. That's it.
It has audioscrobbler support.
It writes some interesting tags (you can look at them with foobar) that can be useful to do sorting/searching outside musicIP.
It can start working (giving recommendations) without finishing analyzing your tracks.

It feels like musikCube but with cover art and a lot snappier.

Bad news: doesn't support cuesheets yet. I'm considering spliting all my cue files into independent tracks, let me know if you know a good, fast method for doing this.

It has it's own syntax for tagging (I was getting used to Tagz already).
Not a huge community (although active forums and developer!)

I have registered it (wil report on the advanced features later).

1202

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

« Last post by urlwolf on May 22, 2007, 03:15 PM »

Wow.

The database search is lighitng fast, almost real-time.
I can drag and drop songs to my portable player (!).
Albumart shows up fast.

Memory usage is tiny compared with basically anything else (even virtual memory) : mediamonkey, foobar, even XMplay (!).

This thing is actually a very serious player. And the added playlist generation features are great!


EDIT: a good review, with pics:
http://musicinterfac...ation-musicip-mixer/

1203

N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007 / Re: WorkCoach - v0.8.0 - January 24, 2007

« Last post by urlwolf on May 20, 2007, 04:36 AM »

Great idea arjen.
For unknown tasks, a jharps suggests, instead of a leaning mechanism -which could be hard to implement- one could use tags.

A tag cloud with the recent projects (font size associated to activity/recency/any var) and drag-and-drop tasks to projects would be really cool.

1204

General Software Discussion / folder marker at GAOTD

« Last post by urlwolf on May 19, 2007, 08:45 AM »

http://www.giveawayo.../folder-marker-home/

Looks interesting Dopus does something similar now, but it highlights only the text, not the icon.

1205

General Software Discussion / Re: Tags tags tags...

« Last post by urlwolf on May 18, 2007, 06:48 AM »

Clipboard Help+Spell could actually be used to tag most things effectively

How?

1206

General Software Discussion / create your last.fm tag cloud and post it!

« Last post by urlwolf on May 14, 2007, 05:16 AM »

You can get a nice, informative tag cloud here:
http://anthony.lieke...ts/last.fm/index.php

And post it here (unfortunately, the BBCode is not compatible with SMF):

http://www.last.fm/forum/5/_/257754

1207

General Review Discussion / Re: MiniReview: SpaceMonger

« Last post by urlwolf on May 10, 2007, 12:45 PM »

I used to use this one, but switched to windirstat (free, and better for my purposes).

1208

Living Room / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #3 (My Unique Data Backup Solution)

« Last post by urlwolf on May 10, 2007, 07:24 AM »

SuperboyAC, Can you recommend some CDs of jazz organ trios as well?

1209

Living Room / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #3 (My Unique Data Backup Solution)

« Last post by urlwolf on May 10, 2007, 07:23 AM »

how do we order the record!!

I like the hammond sound, and the guitar is very good too!

1210

Living Room / Re: How do you spend your time on the computer?

« Last post by urlwolf on May 09, 2007, 11:24 AM »

We're in good company, too, and we can look for inspiration to at least two people at donationcoder who have actually finished their PhD's - Zaine and Ken. Obviously, they've managed to balance a love for computers with their academic workloads, so it can be done!

Well, I have finished my PhD, but that doesn't mean that I have a good balance between my academic life and other activities (love for computers being one of them). If fact, I'd say that very few people achieve that balance, and it gets worse the more responsibility you have/older you get. If you don't believe me, just peruse threads in this forum:

http://chronicle.com....php/board,33.0.html

1211

General Software Discussion / wolves

« Last post by urlwolf on May 09, 2007, 10:50 AM »

Hi,
 
Here's something  worth the small time it takes to complete:
http://www.thepetiti...5&ltl=1178644468
 
When I lived in Boulder, CO I got to see some wolves, deers, bears, etc, up close and would hate to think that the laws in other states could let 2/3 of them die.
 
Since they don't check addresses, you can put anything in that field. In case only you live outseide the US and only US addresses are taken into account, -not sure- you can use any friends'.
 
Pass it around to anyone you think may take the time to sign in. If they don't get the 80000 signatures they need, well, I guess people are gonna have fun shooting moving targets.
 

1212

General Software Discussion / Re: I love opera, but something is terribly wrong...

« Last post by urlwolf on May 08, 2007, 08:17 AM »

Plus, the more extensions/useful things that google, del.icio.us, etc develop for firefox, the more one feels alienated by using opera.

The opera dev team redefines the word stubborn when it comes to implementing an API so people can write plugins.

The widgets solution is wity, but gives little room to play with; the widgets I have seen are just clocks, and other unimportant gadgets. And I removed them all when I realized that just a clock or a timer would take 2-3% CPU each (!). No memory footprint though.

So, I'm starting to think that Opera sucks; they are the fastest, and most effective browser (brilliant user interface), but there are many simple decisions (easy updating/config; extensibility) that they are doing obviously wrong! And they don't care (look at their forums); how many times do people ask for an API?

Josh in this forum doesn't use opera because roboform cannot talk to it. I sorely miss my del.icio.us toolbar and now google toolbar and google workbook. Add Zotero, firebug, etc... and you have serious reasons to doubt Opera will survive in the long run.

Maybe it justs needs a new CEO...

1213

General Software Discussion / I love opera, but something is terribly wrong...

« Last post by urlwolf on May 08, 2007, 08:09 AM »

Every week I have some kind of problem with Opera.
This time, after moving from 9.1 to 9.2, the wand stopped working.

Here they explain howt to move settings. I followed these instructions to the letter.
Still, no passwords are autocompleted.

Just to make sure, I re-copied all files again. Nothing.
Maybe this is because in my new installation, I didn't enable the global password?

I think managing opera when moving from one install to another is unnecessary complicated. I have been an user since v.5, and I still have problems like this.

I get the password field highlighted, the wand popup shows up, there are several options (indicates that the wand should know the passwd) but nothing is filled.

I can't believe I have produced 137 posts in the opera forums already, basically asking for help.

Which reminds me that I have NEVER used a forum in the 2-3 months I had FF as my main browser.

Soething's really wrong with opera. I consider myself a power user. If I have to waste my time chasing answers like this, I wonder how average, non-techie users deal with it.

Thoughts?

1214

General Software Discussion / Things I can do in Linux that I can't do on Windows

« Last post by urlwolf on May 08, 2007, 05:24 AM »

Things I can do in Linux that I can't do on Windows

Since I often hear from friends and people on the Internet about things they can't do in Linux that they could on Windows, I thought I'd write up a list of things I can do in Linux that I can't do in Windows.
Update every single piece of software on my system with a single action.  This is one of the main reasons I run Linux.  Sure, Windows has Windows Update, but that only updates the operating system, Office, and a few other things.  For every Linux distribution I've used (Gentoo, Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu), updating is simple.  When you update, you have every application, every library, every script - every single piece of software upgraded automatically for you.  And on most of them, they will check for updates automatically and notify you.  This is great for security, fixing bugs quickly, and getting the latest in features.
Update nearly everything on my computer without a reboot.

from http://dmartin.org/w...i-cant-do-on-windows

1215

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by urlwolf on May 04, 2007, 01:12 PM »

* Crazy idea pops out *

Would it be possible to use either distributed computing or P2P protocols like BitTorrent to create a distributed search engine?

-Lashiec (May 04, 2007, 01:01 PM)

You mean using distributed CPU power/memory when computers are iddle, kind of like that extraterrestial life searching project?

One problem that I can see would parallelization. Not all algorithms can be parallellized. Not sure about google's. But many Information retrieval algorithms are hard to split into smaller memory sized in different machines.

I'm sure whatever google is doing can be parallellized... the sheer size of the dataset makes that a fact.

1216

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Super Flexible File Synchronizer Mini-Review

« Last post by urlwolf on May 02, 2007, 02:39 AM »

Very good review!

When I got to the "HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO SIMILAR APPS" section, the list I see (written by Tobias?) left me unimpressed. I think it is incomplete. In fact, cheaper tools can do most of the items mentioned (i.e., syncBack), whereas there are things that only SFFS can do that are not on the list.

Example:

• sftp support
  
• amazon S 3 support
  
• delta updating of *files* (i.e., if a big file is changed, only the changes are copied, not the entire file)
  
• resuming a profile after something went wrong easily and reliably
  
• caching the index so you do not have to reindex large drives that change little (saves lots of time)
  
• low memory and CPU usage (take that, backUp4all!)
  
• a feeling of reliability overall

rc12 is out, btw.
I didn't know the wizard mode was added already.

I think SFFS can easily replace any of the traditional backup utilities, and be more transparent, reliable, and less of a resource hog. And did I mention faster?

In summary, highly recommended!

1217

Official Announcements / Re: The Gizmo Effect!

« Last post by urlwolf on April 22, 2007, 08:48 PM »

Congrats Mouser, and Welcome to all. Sarkand, your post moved me.

1218

Developer's Corner / Re: Netflix contest: $1M to developer of best movie recommendation engine

« Last post by urlwolf on April 20, 2007, 06:34 AM »

all,

Do you know of any webservice where users log which movies they have actually seen? Something like last.fm for music, but using movies instead...

Actually, same thing for books read would be great too..
@mouser: I sent you an email, cannot reach the #IRC channel for some reason...

1219

General Software Discussion / software patent hell: .ogg is doomed?

« Last post by urlwolf on April 19, 2007, 02:03 PM »

http://technology.gu...y/0,,2060078,00.html

Ogg still carries potential risks, because there is no guarantee that it doesn't infringe someone's patents.

The recent MP3 lawsuit illustrates the problem. Microsoft thought it was safe because, like Apple and others, it had licensed MP3 from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Along came Alcatel-Lucent, the telecoms equipment giant, with some patent claims, and Microsoft was fined $1.52bn (£758m) by a US court.

Well, Alcatel-Lucent didn't actually sue Microsoft, it sued Dell and Gateway. Microsoft stepped in because the infringing software was part of Windows. If a device manufacturer is sued over Ogg, who is going take on the burden of fighting the case and paying any fines? A handful of open source hackers?

I hope ogg gets some dev. love. I have encoded most of my collection in ogg -q6.

1220

General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!

« Last post by urlwolf on April 19, 2007, 11:16 AM »

god, I cannot recognize a single artist in your screenshot, superboyAC

I do use foobar as my library, tagger, transcoder, and ripper
I think one explanation for the high memory usage is that I may still have some album art in tags; but I think I read in one of the threads that Lashiec posted that these are completely ignored.

In fact my current library (a small one on a 2.5 HD!) is about 1242 entries (most of it cue sheets) and foo is using 45mb of RAM + 37 of virtual memory.

I wonder why that is...

1221

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have apps in the System tray?

« Last post by urlwolf on April 19, 2007, 07:52 AM »

Anyway, here's a process working set size trimmer I wrote.

It's a command-line tool supporting wildcards, so you can do "trimws *" to trim all processes, or "trimws fir*" to trim (among others) firefox. Not that in the "*" case it'll mention a lot of errors, that's because system services are protected (and I'm not doing anything to circumvent that ).

I wrote this while looking into trillians "low memory usage", and just upgraded it to have wildcard support.

I still don't think using a tool like this blindly is a good idea, but at least this one is free, comes with source code, is tiny, and is a one-shot thing rather than a stupid bloated keep-running app.

-f0dder (April 18, 2007, 06:08 AM)

Thanks F0dder, I did try your trimmer, and it works
The only problem is that VM cannot be de-allocated, which is the big problem for me. I don't want to have to use the pagefile, as it implies disk writing and slows down the system.

I have 1Gb, and as soon as PF usage goes above 1024mb in the process explorer, I *guess* my system has to go down in performance (I didn't check; I try not to go above that).

Actually having foobar, excel, R, and Acrobat open can take you close to the limit! 1Gb is not that much for today's standards!

Are my beliefs correct? (you shalt not go above your physical mem.)?

1222

General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!

« Last post by urlwolf on April 19, 2007, 07:33 AM »

Thanks lashiec. I'll try those sometime soon, currently I don't have my collection with me...

I think the problem is that the metadata has to be in memory. That's a lot of metadata for >30.000 songs...

1223

General Software Discussion / Re: Sumatra PDF Viewer is cool, thin, and open-source

« Last post by urlwolf on April 17, 2007, 11:43 AM »

So how about this...
We put together a donation of say $100 and give it to whoever (OSS programmer, donationcoder.com programmer, RentAcoder programmer) implements the feature set that we need -or close- in sumatraPDF. The result'd be OSS so everyone can benefit.

We seem to have a clear feature set in mind, and some (copying, highlighting) cannot be very difficult to implement, although I can be dead wrong!

What do you think?

PS: Honestly, I adobe cared about academics, who only want a -reader- with maybe highlighting and notes at a fraction of the price of Acrobat, we should not be worrying about this...

1224

General Software Discussion / Re: Sumatra PDF Viewer is cool, thin, and open-source

« Last post by urlwolf on April 16, 2007, 05:48 PM »

ok I mailed the author, and told him to stop by, and maybe sign up so we can donate to him.

It seems that TOC, search, and copy are planned features. Other than that, nothing fancy will be implemented since the author wants to keep things simple.

I asked if it was possible to implement a plugin architecture and he said that it was too much work and not worth it for such a small piece of software. So if we want new features, we'll need to understand the whole project, and compile ourselves.

I would like to see highlighting, notes, and UDF support (metadata: useful for citation, like mp3s have tags). He said he is not interested in implementing any of these.

1225

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have apps in the System tray?

« Last post by urlwolf on April 16, 2007, 05:11 PM »

I use opera as my main browser. The widgets are always on top.
The timer for example is nice because I can increase the font size with + and - (a lot more customizable than any other floating clock/timer I have seen).

Opera uses a lot of memory when I have many tabs open, but the widgets theirselves, not at all. And even opera rarely goes over 100Mb + 100mb virtual memory. FF would do 150 easily.