Recent Posts

1201

General Software Discussion / Less Than Worthless Reply From Take 2 Interactive

« Last post by tinjaw on October 15, 2007, 07:10 AM »

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1202

General Software Discussion / Re: FileHamster - auto incremental file monitor/backup as you work - and free!

« Last post by tinjaw on October 14, 2007, 06:43 PM »

I'm willing to be they will let you "upgrade" for the difference since you purchased so recently.

1203

General Software Discussion / Re: FileMenu Tools: Customize Windows Explorer's Context Menu

« Last post by tinjaw on October 14, 2007, 02:50 PM »

This goes beyond just changing the context menu. There are several built-in utilities: Find and Replace, Advanced Renamer, Advanced Delete, Copy/Move, Synchronize Folders, and Change Time are some of them. Screenies available on their website.

1204

General Software Discussion / Re: do you use any system to read/write faster(speed reading/autocompleter)?

« Last post by tinjaw on October 14, 2007, 01:36 PM »

For speed reading I use Zap Reader. It is invaluable when I am trying to catch up on my RSS feeds. It is highly customizable for a simple web app. I showed it to a buddy of mine, who showed it to a school teacher, who now incorporates it into her grade school reading curriculum. There is a introductory video on the Zap Reader home page.

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1205

General Software Discussion / Re: FileMenu Tools: Customize Windows Explorer's Context Menu

« Last post by tinjaw on October 14, 2007, 01:26 PM »

I rediscovered this program while rebuilding my laptop. I am looking at my Desktop box to see what I have installed there that I want to also put on my laptop. FileMenu Tools is one such program. However, I had forgotten how useful it is as I had, for some reason, turned off most of the available utilities it has and was using it to copy the name of the file to the clipboard and to copy the contents of a file to clipboard. It has been on my WinXP box for many months without any stability issues.

1206

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tinjaw on October 14, 2007, 12:44 PM »

I am curious to know if anybody has found any program, pay or not, that works well, indexes all MS Office documents, including PSTs, PDFs, inside compressed archives, etc.

1207

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Flash Portal

« Last post by tinjaw on October 13, 2007, 02:45 PM »

Odd, on this particular computer, using Firefox, the game is unplayable. A, W, D, the movement keys, don't work. I can't move my guy. Oh well.

1208

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 20$ off XYplorer and lifetime license

« Last post by tinjaw on October 12, 2007, 03:12 PM »

Ken,

I have sent you a $1 DC credit "Get Well" gift. Convince 19 others and you can get XYplorer at the sale price by using your $20 gifted credits.

OK folks, time to step up to the plate! 

your friend,
tinjaw

1209

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to start learning C++?

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 07:17 PM »

I feel the need to add that regardless of which method you choose to learn, start work on a project that *you want to build*. The project will motivate you to learn without making it feel like you are learning. Just learning to learn, is sometimes hard. Practice exercises aren't always interesting. If you have a pet project you will want to work on it and the learning will come naturally.

1210

Best Text Editor / Re: EditPad Pro and Inaccuracies in Reviewing Generally

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 07:12 PM »

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Don't make me whip out a can of whoopa$$ on all of you.  These are not the bad reviews you are looking for. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Seriously, let's see what Mouser has planned and then we can critique it. I am sure he will ask for input before he implements anything, and then we can be constructive. Anything said now will pretty much be lost, or at least need to be reiterated.

1211

Living Room / Re: Do you archive/store your downloads (mainly install files)?

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 06:35 PM »

Now I have even more reason not to archive my files.





I will just ask one of you for them if I can't find them on the Net. 

1212

Best Text Editor / Re: EditPad Pro and Inaccuracies in Reviewing Generally

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 06:05 PM »

I think there is a happy middle. Have threads for the reviews where people can bring up the items that are wrong/out-of-date/inaccurate/etc. Those can then be, after a reasonable amount of time, verified and the review updated.

1213

General Software Discussion / Re: What does software 'maintenance' inlcude?

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 05:32 PM »

It is an industry standard term in the software business. And that standard varies.  Since I do not know the context upon which your case arises, I will comment on what it generally means with you purchase "shrinkwrapped" or "retail" software. In these cases it means technical support at no additional charge, all patches, upgrades, updates, new versions, at no additional cost, and in some cases, priority support to find workarounds or one-off patches when a legitimate bug in the software is causing your business undue financial burden. Though, the latter is usually only found on software with >$1,000 USD per seat price tags.

1214

Videogame Development / Re: First Post

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 10:23 AM »

"You want to complain? I ought to complain! Look at these shoes, only had 'em three weeks and the heel's worn right through".

-Darwin (October 10, 2007, 08:32 PM)

Oh Yeah! Well.... Well.... You're Hitler!

1215

General Software Discussion / TweakGuides.com - Firefox Tweak Guide

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 10:11 AM »

I just found this site while looking for a particular configuration setting for Firefox. I haven't read through the site yet, but it looks very good.

TweakGuides.com - Firefox Tweak Guide

Has anybody seen any reviews/critiques of this guide? Often the information on sites like this is less than accurate. I have no experience with the website, so I do not know their reputation for accuracy. Can anybody enlighten me?

1216

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Direct Access - text expander and application launcher (and much more)

« Last post by tinjaw on October 11, 2007, 09:43 AM »

Personally, I think a single dot is even better and easier.

-sri (October 11, 2007, 03:06 AM)

Unless of course you are using that as the last word in a sentence. 

1217

Videogame Development / First Post

« Last post by tinjaw on October 10, 2007, 06:08 PM »

Eat that /. 

1218

Developer's Corner / Re: Error messages everyone can understand

« Last post by tinjaw on October 10, 2007, 01:05 PM »

BTW, love your animated kitty avatar!

-Ralf Maximus (October 10, 2007, 01:00 PM)

That's not an animation. That is a live feed from the webcam in her bathroom.

1219

General Software Discussion / Re: CDBurnerXP 4 released

« Last post by tinjaw on October 10, 2007, 12:57 PM »

# 4.0.115
Changelog: http://www.cdburnerxp.se/development

-tomos (October 10, 2007, 12:46 PM)

I like this one from the change log. >>> made CDBXP portable 

1220

General Software Discussion / Re: Tranparency in IE 6

« Last post by tinjaw on October 10, 2007, 12:39 PM »

Warning, some people might NOT find this excessive. 

1) Run a proxy server, intercept the PNGs and convert them to GIFs and modify the source code of the web pages in realtime to use the GIFs instead.

2) Open source the code

3) Put it on SourceForge

4) Profit!

1221

General Software Discussion / Re: Tranparency in IE 6

« Last post by tinjaw on October 10, 2007, 11:18 AM »

This is just a WAG, but is that image a PNG? Maybe IE6 didn't have support for transparent PNGs.  I don't know.

1222

General Software Discussion / Re: Replace Windows XP's Icons

« Last post by tinjaw on October 10, 2007, 11:07 AM »

Crap. I should have read Chaim's original post more closely. Chaim! Don't buy StyleXP! There are free alternatives that accomplish the same thing. StyleXP just replaces your Uxtheme.dll and provides you with an alternative front end to the default Windows Themes interface and charges you $19.95 for it. You can patch Uxtheme.dll yourself for free and use non-MS Windows themes.

-Darwin (October 10, 2007, 07:51 AM)

Thanks for piping up Darwin. I haven't registered the program yet. I had a feeling that might be the case, because that is pretty much why I wanted to try it. It sounded like all it did was "hack" the existing resources in the binaries and I thought that would be more stable than running fresh code, like Stardock's stuff.

Alternatively, Stardock's Windowblinds (or the Object Desktop suite which includes Windowblinds but adds a lot of additional functionality, including icon editing and replacement) accomplishes the same thing without touching the uxtheme.dll and is much more configureable...Of course, like StyleXp these are shareware alternatives.

-Darwin (October 10, 2007, 07:51 AM)

I am not sure that I want to do anything more than just change the appearance of my desktop at this point. I want to be able to keep the pretty desktop while doing development work, so I want something that won't slow things down and I need to keep the system stable. In fact, on my game rig I have a AutoIt app that I wrote that shuts things down for me before I play games. I plan on writing a similar app to "auto-configure" my laptop for various tasks, like development.

1223

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 20$ off XYplorer and lifetime license

« Last post by tinjaw on October 10, 2007, 11:00 AM »

...if you can get in for $29.95 now, I wouldn't hesitate.

-Darwin (October 10, 2007, 07:21 AM)

I didn't. At 1/3 the price of Dopus, and a lifetime license instead of Dopus' single version license, the choice of which one to choose was pretty much made for me.

1224

Developer's Corner / Code Snippet Storage/Library/Catalog/Organizer/GinzuSwissArmyKnife

« Last post by tinjaw on October 09, 2007, 11:11 PM »

What do you use to keep your code snippets organized so you can easily find and reuse them? I realized, that in the over 15 years I have been in the software business, I have never seen or heard anybody mention a tool the used specifically used for this purpose.

I haven't really thought about it much, but as far as my wants go, it would need to be independent of any particular IDE, so I could use it with any IDE. It would be easily searchable in all the ways you would expect it to be. Preferably portable, so I could carry it on a USB stick, but need not be cross-platform. Windows-only would be fine, but cross-platform would be a plus.

I will start the usual Google search, and will report what I find, but I am curious to know if any of you already have something in mind that you use or has been recommended to you by someone.

1225

Developer's Corner / Re: Writing a simple driving game (help!!)

« Last post by tinjaw on October 09, 2007, 06:43 PM »

When you are ready to take a break, grab some food and a beverage and watch this video. It is about an hour and fifteen minutes long. It will blow your mind. If you thought flight simulators were difficult to program?! Pishaa!!! Automobile racing is muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch tougher.