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1351

General Software Discussion / Planet Zoo - the wonderful world of simulation games

« Last post by mouser on November 05, 2019, 03:27 PM »

The trailers for the new zoo simulation game "Planet Zoo" are stunning... To see how far we have come in a few decades with these simulation games is draw dropping. 

And the icing on the cake is how involved people are in taking this sandbox tool and creating interesting things with it.. This combination of programmers creating tools that other people then take and create with is one of the greatest things.

Similarly amazing in different ways are the videos of Microsoft's new flight simulator engine:

Think about where flight simulators were when I started programming:

It's just mind boggling what an amazing age we are living in and to imagine the future of simulations.

1352

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on November 05, 2019, 03:35 AM »

It's not a bad idea as a general function, to add a duplicate feature...

Though I will note that for discussion list, the easiest thing might be to write your items using a text editor and use the simple import feature/syntax.

1353

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2019, 07:00 PM »

Any new suggestions?

1354

Living Room / Re: My new project -- nodejs multi-user lobby library

« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2019, 12:57 AM »

Just an update that I've been working on this project off and on for last 6 months, still lots more to do.
But you can browse some of the code here if you are curious: https://github.com/dcmouser/approom

It's definitely nowhere near usable yet, so I don't remember you trying to make it run.. but if you are comfortable in nodejs, feel free to message me if you are interested in helping me with coding.

1355

Multi Photo Quotes / Re: Problem with rotation

« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2019, 01:06 PM »

I don't believe MPQ will ever rotate images on purpose.

The only way I can imagine that happening is if the image is stored in some rotated form and has some meta data that MPQ doesn't understand saying it should be displayed in a different rotation...
Can you find a photo that reliably behaves in this way and send it to me? ([email protected])

1356

Screenshot Captor / Re: attempted capture opens web page http://www.www_getwindowinfo.com/

« Last post by mouser on October 31, 2019, 04:47 PM »

Someone just reported this again to me, the symptom is the same, a browser page opening at "http://www.www_getwindowinfo.com" when you try to make a capture involving (palemoon) web browser.

Solution:
Disable the option to get url info from browser during capture (it's option on the "Basic Capturing" -> "Capture Options" tab: "Retrieve and store URL string.."  (UNCHECK THAT).

1357

Living Room / Cooking with tourettes

« Last post by mouser on October 31, 2019, 02:41 AM »

As a life skill, being able to laugh at yourself cannot be overrated.

Check out this ladies awesome cooking videos:

We should all be so lucky to have such good attitude about making a mess in life, and a family that shares it.

1358

Multi Photo Quotes / Re: Extremely delayed THANK YOU + a little request

« Last post by mouser on October 30, 2019, 11:55 PM »

Draw god 250mb of text is a lot of text...  Though I respect the craziness

One idea would be that if MPQ is putting up a random quote every so often, you're only going to see a small subset of these potential quotes in your lifetime.. Perhaps one solution would be a utility that processed all your quote files once and chose a random set of 10,000 and saved those to a new file that MPQ will read from..

The problem with your proposed solution is that i don't think it would solve the speed problem.  It sort of depends.. There is no fast way to jump to line 50,000 in a text file -- the program still has to read every line.  It *would* save you memory, but not time.  In fact you'd start to be much slower if the program had to retrieve multiple quotes between slowing down..

Now you COULD drastically speed up the process if we built a binary "index file" for each of the quote files that stored an index of where each quote was located in the file, so it could read it directly with random access instead of loading the entire file.  This wouldn't be TOO hard to do, though it would probably take a day of coding.. One could use a standalone utility to do it, or it could be built into MPQ to build such binary index files whenever it encounters a new (or changed) quote file.

It's a fun idea, just a little hard to justify for a single person's needs, since there is probably no one else needing it..

Part of why this slowdown is problematic for MPQ is because MPQ is not a program that stays in memory.. So another potential solution would be to add a mode to MPQ that basically didn't exit but rather went into the background and "woke up" when triggered as a screensaver, etc.  That way you would see the slowdown on the first startup of the program, but then not again until reboot..

1359

Multi Photo Quotes / Re: Extremely delayed THANK YOU + a little request

« Last post by mouser on October 30, 2019, 01:06 PM »

MPQ is one my apps that just never got much attention (though I use it myself).
I'm glad to hear that someone is enjoying it.

The MPQ codebase is alive and well and I'm happy to add features and release a new version.

---

There are a few ways I could improve the speed of parsing quote files.. The easiest might be to support an alternate quote file format that it could read and cache.. wouldn't be too hard.

But before I do it would be nice to figure out where the slowdown is really happening and why.. MPQ is C++ code that should be able to parse a pretty huge file pretty quickly, so a minute is a VERY long time for even huge quote file.. It may be there is some inefficient code that I've written that I could clean up..

Can you email me your quote files so I can reproduce the same scenario? Or similarly large files..? ([email protected])

1360

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 30, 2019, 12:22 PM »

Got it working here.  Nice that you can tap to move to the next -- there's no way to go backwards, right?

Not in the widget, but i could probably fix that by making another tap location you could tap on widget to go back..

Initially I wasn't sure how to get the widget to display once its preferences screen showed up.  I think pressing the back key / button works.  Is that right?

Yeah the preferences dialog is just back button to leave.. I would prefer a set of "Save/Cancel" buttons, but I guess this is how android wants to do it.

1361

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: Welcome to NANY 2020

« Last post by mouser on October 29, 2019, 01:11 PM »

Looks like a slow year for NANY.. Anyone else got any projects? I've finished one, now I have to think of another.. Hopefully a windows app this time to complement my android NANY.

1362

DesktopCoral / Re: Can't drag app's window into reserved space

« Last post by mouser on October 28, 2019, 01:44 PM »

It's a question that comes up occasionally.  Unfortunately it has to do with the way the program works -- it reserves the space so Windows will not let you put any icons into that space.  (Not sure why it seemed to work differently when docked on the side).
It's useful for applications that draw on the screen, like Rainmeter, but not so useful if you want to put desktop icons into the reserved space.

What you COULD do, if you want to put icons to launch applications or documents in the reserved space, is try my Launchbar Commander tool, which may be overkill for what you want, but does let you create (an optionally transparent) reserved docking area on your screen, and let you populate it with icons to launch files, shortcuts, menus, etc.

1363

Screenshot Captor / Re: Bug: odd behavior on large monitor

« Last post by mouser on October 23, 2019, 11:32 PM »

If you reboot, does the problem remain? Is it just one monitor you have connected or multiple?

1364

Screenshot Captor / Re: Is there any plan to update to ScreenShot Captor ?

« Last post by mouser on October 23, 2019, 09:36 PM »

It should always zoom in and out, BUT if the zoomed view won't all fit in the window, it will zoom in differently depending on where your cursor is.. That is, it zooms and then adjusts the panning position so that the area under your cursor stays in view.

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N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 23, 2019, 11:54 AM »

Oblique Strategies: https://carinelallem...1/enoobliqstrat1.pdf

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N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 23, 2019, 11:26 AM »

It might be nice for someone to make a set of solo self-improvement or meditation questions I could add..

1367

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 22, 2019, 06:46 PM »

The value of the "virtual" sections seems clear to me now; I've created a new option in the tool menu to show "bulk" checkboxes and a "bulk" section.  This makes it easier for you to select a bunch of items and then do operations on them (delete them, etc.).
It's not super important for this app, but it does seem like a useful feature to add to my apps, and will make it easier to perform bulk operations on items in future apps.

1368

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 22, 2019, 12:52 AM »

New update uploaded, fixed a network access and cleartext error that newer android os might get when running the Browse for Imports function.

1369

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 21, 2019, 01:04 PM »

You can mark an item as a favorite from the edit screen.  All of my android apps will have this option in future builds.  All items marked as Favorite will show up in the Favorites tab.

1370

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 21, 2019, 12:31 PM »

I have 3 users on google play store, and 1 is me

1371

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 20, 2019, 11:12 PM »

Added two new "virtual" sections, one for "Favorites" and one for all items with non-blank Notes fields.  Now it's very easy to browse the list of items with notes or organize your favorites.
If you don't use these features the virtual sections will not be shown, so it won't get in your way.

1372

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 20, 2019, 10:02 PM »

I see also a simple list is importable -- I can look at the lists from popup quotes and modify if needed.

Yep! The only thing that needs to change is as described in this post: https://www.donation....msg433063#msg433063

• The file needs to be named: discussionlistq_*******.txt
• The first line of file needs to start @FILEFORMAT:CB1
• Then there should be one line specifying the tag to use for the questions to follow, like @TAG:PopQuotes1
• And then each item on its own line after that, with \n used for linebreaks if desired.

1373

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 20, 2019, 12:56 PM »

Another feature I was thinking of adding (to all of my android apps), is the option to mark items as a "favorite" which would show them in an automatically created "Favorites" tab.

Implemented in latest beta.

1374

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 20, 2019, 12:44 PM »

I'm happy to add more question sets if anyone here wants to write some original ones.

1375

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release - Android App - DiscussionList

« Last post by mouser on October 20, 2019, 12:36 PM »

to really answer some of these questions could take a long time (or is that just me ;-)

Oh yeah when we go for our weekly walk, it's lots of meandering discussion around each question so it can take hours to get through them all if we are in a talkative mood and on a long walk.  That's why I worked hard to make it so the app remembers where you were and doesn't change the order of questions if you come back to it even days later.