Recent Posts

1276

General Software Discussion / Re: ctrl + tab (first in, first out history) for excel sheets?

« Last post by urlwolf on April 01, 2007, 03:56 PM »

Thanks kfitting, Perry,

One comment... why ctrl-alt-tab?  Why not ctrl-shift-tab?  Most of the programs that I've seen that use ctrl-tab add shift to go background.  But, since it's in vba, it's easily customizable!

I agree, it'd be more interesting to mimic windows defaults.

I have magnaged to get some runtime errors. I deactivated all my other addins (that's how interested I am in this ctrl + tab functionality!), and have gotten rid of the runtime errors. However, the history doesn't work as expected (like normal windows ctrl + tab)... in my system, it just goes to next open sheet, not the last used. Example, imagine I have sheets A B C D E. I work on A, then click on C, and want to go back to A by doing ctrl + tab. The current implementation (at least in my system) goes to D (the SheetNumber ++), not to A.

Is it they way you intended it? (sorry, didn't look at the code!)

1277

General Software Discussion / Re: ctrl + tab (first in, first out history) for excel sheets?

« Last post by urlwolf on March 30, 2007, 12:18 PM »

Thanks Perry, that is an interesting piece of code.
With a shortcut to get to the find box, it can make switching between sheets pretty snappy. I'd still prefer to have something like ctrl + tab, though.

The add-in I linked to shows worksheets as threes. Switching is by clicking. Not bad either. I think someone could do an emulation just changing the code you linked to (I don't think *I* would, since I know zero VBA).

I'll search a bit more, but definitely thanks for the hint!

1278

General Software Discussion / ctrl + tab (first in, first out history) for excel sheets?

« Last post by urlwolf on March 30, 2007, 07:03 AM »

qst for excel ninjas...
is there any way (addin) to do ctrl + tab (first in, first out history) with excel sheets?

Any tips for navigating sheets? I find it a pain to have tabs on the bottom. No way to put them on top, or to the side in a tree form it seels.

I have seen this navigator, but why are excel addins so pricey?

A possibility would be some hack that converted all sheets to independent workbooks, (then you can ctrl tab through them). Later, it could merge them back to a single workbook.

1279

Mouser's Zone / Re: Multi-browser Bookmark Synchronization Tool and Other Multi-Browser Ideas?

« Last post by urlwolf on March 29, 2007, 01:18 PM »

If you have to use multiple browsers, why not have them all in an external, 3rd party place (e.g., delicious) and connect to that from each browser?

Sorry, I know it doesn't answer the question and sync'ing is yet another problem...

1280

General Software Discussion / Re: Lightweight alternatives to FeedDemon

« Last post by urlwolf on March 29, 2007, 11:04 AM »

Slightly off topic: I have been a fan of Opera for many years, but recently defected in favour of FireFox - which I loved, and spent a month customising until I had it just the way I wanted it... then out of curiosity went back to look at Opera one afternoon to discover that it did everything my well tuned FF install did (and more) pretty much straight out of the box - plus it is so much quicker, and seems more stable too.

-Ampa (March 27, 2007, 04:37 PM)

This is almost exactly my experience too.
I paid for opera v.5 and kept it as my main browser up to version 9, tried FF for a month, hunted for extensions, and then went back to Opera.

Opera is probably THE best application I have ever seen.

The only thing I miss is a del.icio.us taskbar for better del.icio.us integration (using standard bookmarks seems just silly).


BTW, If you haven't experimented with Opera widgets, I'd suggest you to do so. They may replace 2-3 applications that run in your taskbar already. For me it was a clock bar, a 24 hr timer, a weather program, and some other time estimation gadgets. Total RAM saved: ~40 mb. (plus freed space in the taskbar!)

1281

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

« Last post by urlwolf on March 27, 2007, 06:51 AM »

hmm
After playing around with columns UI, and azrael/navigator "skins" foo is not resposive at all. Moving around a list with the arrow keys makes it go 100% CPU, and it is extremely slow.

I like tabbed playlists, cue support (it sucks in mediamonkey!), and the album replaygain, but everything else... ugh.

It's >100mb with my library too.

1282

General Software Discussion / Re: I found a jewel of a program: XMplay

« Last post by urlwolf on March 26, 2007, 05:42 PM »

2) it destroys the intended (or very-bad-mastered, in some cases) dynamics of the track.

Does that hold for replaygain as well?
If I understand it right, mp3gain (not foobar) writes a tag with volume correction info to each sector (?) of an mp3, whereas foobar just uses one tag for the entire file.
I can attest that mp3gain is slow as hell... close to 20hrs for a measly 8000 tracks.

I agree about the audo enhancers, but changing the overall volume is not that bad.

1283

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

« Last post by urlwolf on March 26, 2007, 09:24 AM »

I'm trying foobar.

Up to now, this is the app that uses the least CPU (even less than xmplay in my system, both with ozone).
However, loading my 32000 tracks library makes it use 100mb of memory (!).
Is that what you find? Is this normal?

I have used this config:
http://www.head-fi.o...wthread.php?t=184284

1284

General Software Discussion / Re: I found a jewel of a program: XMplay

« Last post by urlwolf on March 26, 2007, 05:51 AM »

still, mp3toys doesn't sound as good to my ears.
I think I've found one reason why xmplay may sound better to many of us (at least Darwin, Krazy Hawaiian, and me).

For me is like I can get more detail and get more "into" the music.

Look at the autoamp slider. if it's set to dynamic, you will see how it moves around, increasing the amp in parts where the recording would be pretty much inaudible (try it with classical, with a wide dynamic range, e.g., orchestral stuff).

THis is kind of an alternative solution to replaygain, but while replaygain works as a single tag for the entire file, this autoamp thing changes within a file, and it does the analysis in real time!

(This might save you the trouble -and mapy CPU hours- of running mp3gain on your large collection)
This cannot be as pretty as it sounds, such a simple solution should have been discovered before and mainstream by now.

I'm still investigating this...

1285

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

« Last post by urlwolf on March 25, 2007, 08:46 PM »

ok i upload it here.
i just tried it with foobar ver 0.94 in virtual pc, it worked.
(i am still using foobar 0.8.3,  )

-kimmchii (September 28, 2006, 03:32 AM)

kimmchii, the file is gone due to inactivity. Can you upload it again somewhere at DC? Looks like this is the perfect way to test foobar (with someone else's help!).

1286

General Software Discussion / Re: how tidy and complete is your music library?

« Last post by urlwolf on March 25, 2007, 05:59 PM »

Do you use replaygain tags?
I thought I had that controlled, but mediamonkey seems to be using its own way, and I cannot find any replaygain info when looking at my files with mp3tag.

Most of the CDs I ripped myself are ogg -q6, which uses a different tagging (vorbisgain).

What is the best way to get replaygain tags for every filetype easily? foobar maybe?

1287

General Software Discussion / Re: I found a jewel of a program: XMplay

« Last post by urlwolf on March 25, 2007, 09:34 AM »

Note: mp3toys (the album art powerhouse) uses the BASS engine too. Unfortunately, it doesn't take plugins (no ozone) so I wouldn't use it as a player.

1288

General Software Discussion / Re: how tidy and complete is your music library?

« Last post by urlwolf on March 25, 2007, 05:57 AM »

What is this tidy of which you speak? I got one folder for music, and sub folders for full albums, all id-tags are default, I don't change them.

-nite_monkey (March 24, 2007, 11:29 PM)

Well, for a start, no duplicates, no missing album info, no tracks with defaults (unknown artist), etc

Then, you can make sure that everything has other fields like BPM, year, etc.

Having cover art for everything is nice too.

If you care about directory structure, then having a consistent artist/album tree too.

Some people like to have lyrics.

The amount of time that can be wasted in this is really impressive

1289

General Software Discussion / Re: I found a jewel of a program: XMplay

« Last post by urlwolf on March 24, 2007, 08:25 PM »

darwin, would you mind putting my favorite VUPlayer to the comparison test... http://vuplayer?  I first learned about it here on DC. 

-jdd (March 24, 2007, 07:15 PM)

vuplayer uses the exact same engine as xmplayer. from their page:

BASS library is copyright © 1999-2007 Ian Luck
http://www.un4seen.com

1290

General Software Discussion / Re: how tidy and complete is your music library?

« Last post by urlwolf on March 24, 2007, 06:57 PM »

Actually, if you post what strategy you follow to get tags right (and cover art), that'd be ideal.

1291

General Software Discussion / how tidy and complete is your music library?

« Last post by urlwolf on March 24, 2007, 05:49 PM »

how tidy and complete is your music library?

I used to think that my music library was in a pretty good shape.
Most of the stuff has covers, etc. But when you really want to look for little details, things look ugly...

I'm using two outstanding scripts for MM:

Advanced Duplicate Find & Fix 1.8

Tagging inconsistencies

With these two, I have found plenty of... well, inconsistencies.

I have the feeling that some people in this forum will have immaculate libraries

1292

General Software Discussion / Re: I found a jewel of a program: XMplay

« Last post by urlwolf on March 24, 2007, 05:29 PM »

Darwin, what is CMS?

I just installed Quintessential to see what sound quality it had. I subjectily compared MM, quintessential and xmplay. All using the default settings in ozone. xmplay sounds best to my ears, by far. Of course, this is just subjective.

1293

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Backup4all for U3

« Last post by urlwolf on March 23, 2007, 09:33 AM »

yes, it does that.
But it is really slow. And bk4all it's the single application that I have seen going over 300mb of memory usage.

-urlwolf (March 20, 2007, 11:34 AM)

This happened because you had a lot of files and a lot of file versions for those files - recommendation is such cases would be to use the "Limit maximum number of stored backups to" or "Merge stored backup to maintain the maximum limit" options. Thing is that all the information regarding files and file versions is stored in the backup catalog (.bkc) and that's loaded in the memory, and if you have lots of files and file versions the size of bkc increases.

-Softland (March 21, 2007, 02:39 AM)

I just did that; my current .bkc is ~30mb. Doing a frist backup after selecting the new options... will it reduce the size of my .bkc file, or should I start from scratch?

Anyway, this is also one optimization that will be included in version 4, just as a side note we've redesigned the catalog and doing tests with over 1 million files (and keeping file versions) while maintaining acceptable usage of cpu/memory.

Good to hear...

1294

General Software Discussion / best tool for downloading cover art and lyrics for your mp3 collection : mp3toys

« Last post by urlwolf on March 23, 2007, 09:27 AM »

After using mediamonkey for a long time, lately I have felt that it langs behind in many areas. It's funny how an app that formerly dominated the category can lose control and slip down...

Anyway. For just playing, I posted about XMplay, and I still think this is the best choice.

But for organizing libraries (and mainly get accurate cover art), MM used to be the best (google art plugin, amazon, etc). It was buggy, and doing it in batches was a pain; I can remember how much time I invested getting cover art in a half-automatic way when I first found MM...

Enter mp3Toys. Just play with it. it makes everything so automatic and smooth, it's ridiculous. But it's probably the opposite of XMplay: sound quality is not the focus, and with a large library it may take > 100Mb of memory.

Impressive integration with last.fm (it recommends similar artists!), very accurate cover and lyrics finding... I'll let you find more.

1295

General Software Discussion / Re: I found a jewel of a program: XMplay

« Last post by urlwolf on March 23, 2007, 07:38 AM »

Have used this for many years.

The Pros are huge, but it is a one man project and updates are irregular (last major update Dec '05). Some feature requests have been waiting years and not yet seen the light of day.

The community is small too, which means that there is a fairly slow trickle of skins etc, but so long as you are happy with one of the existing ones you will not find such a compact and high quality player anywhere else - try it out!

Ampa

-Ampa (March 22, 2007, 09:11 AM)

3.4 is comming out any time now (according to Ian in the forums).
But this program deserves being better known. I just filled a review at download.com. Maybe you should write about/rate it in some other review sites. The larger the community, the more features we'll get. Plus, it is just sad that people are stuck with monstruosities like WMP or itunes, while beaties like this get no attention. Getting this program to be better known is almost a moral obligation

1296

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Screen Calipers on Bits du Jour Tuesday, March 20

« Last post by urlwolf on March 22, 2007, 08:24 PM »

just a head up:
opera users can have similar functionality with this widget:
http://widgets.opera.com/widget/4536

1297

Official Announcements / Re: Mar. 2007 Giveaway/Discounts: Website Watcher,Local Website Archive,AM-Notebook

« Last post by urlwolf on March 22, 2007, 10:27 AM »

Here is a way to backup locally all your delicious bookmarks (change username to yours):
wget -H -r --level=1 -k -p -erobots=off -np -N --exclude-directories=urlwolf --exclude-domains= delicious.com,doubleclick.net http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=1 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=2 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=3 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=4 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=5

You may have more/less pages. wget can be run at timed intervals so you have always the latest versions. keeping numbered versions + comparing them using a visual diff program may do kind of like what WSW does, but a bit clumpsy.

1298

Official Announcements / Re: Mar. 2007 Giveaway/Discounts: Website Watcher,Local Website Archive,AM-Notebook

« Last post by urlwolf on March 22, 2007, 09:22 AM »

Trying to figure out what LWA does...

I'd normally do:
wget --convert-links -r http://www.anysite.org/
and the maybe search it using and indexer, such as X 1 (thanks wordzilla!).

Is LWA giving you any extra capabilities? Which ones?

1299

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to compress large pdf files

« Last post by urlwolf on March 22, 2007, 08:02 AM »

for large ppt, I'd covert them to flash movies with a program I got from GAOTD, and then try to get a pdf from the (usually tiny) flash movie. (Both are adobe products, there must be an easy way to get this going though I dunno how)

1300

General Software Discussion / how to tag files in win XP

« Last post by urlwolf on March 21, 2007, 08:22 PM »

http://idea.zanestat...itch-google-desktop/

Reasonable and simple.
It'll need WDS to find the tags later, though.