Recent Posts

1401

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Outlining

« Last post by urlwolf on February 14, 2007, 06:30 PM »

hmm,
I don't know why but oneNote outlines don't really translate into word outlines (with Heading 1, 2, etc). Surprising considering that interoperability is really big at MS.

1402

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Outlining

« Last post by urlwolf on February 14, 2007, 02:17 PM »

I have used some outliners, from plain text (vim outliner) to pretty specialized ones.

I think the best outliner there is is oneNote. it does vertical and horizontal outlining.

The word outliner is not bad, believe it or not.

1403

Word Processor Roundup / Re: 3rd Party Tools like Bibliography Addins

« Last post by urlwolf on February 14, 2007, 02:10 PM »

Anyone has made this zotero plugin work for Word 2007?

1404

Word Processor Roundup / Re: 3rd Party Tools like Bibliography Addins

« Last post by urlwolf on February 13, 2007, 07:12 PM »

I'm secretly hoping that zotero develops a plugin for word and we can say goodbye to endNote. I agree, the functionality added in the last 4 versions  doesn't justify an update.

1405

General Software Discussion / Re: needed: tool to sync two HDs/folders

« Last post by urlwolf on February 13, 2007, 11:34 AM »

SyncBackSE should do it.
You can set it up so it backs up whenever you change/add/remove a file, so the synch'ing is realtime.

Also, office 2007 comes with Groove, a tool for collaboration that can do that and other tricks.

1406

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of FirstDefense-ISR (Raxco Software)

« Last post by urlwolf on February 12, 2007, 01:16 PM »

Looks like EAZ FIX and rollback RX are the same thing:
http://forums.techgu...ix-pro-rollback.html

Hmm... confusing.

And here is a long forum discussion about rollback:
http://www.wildersse...wthread.php?t=119215

There seems to be yet another contender, restoreit:
http://www.farstone....ftware/restoreit.htm

It seems that restoreit gets good reviews; does an independent partition. However, it doesn't like hard reboots, i.e., holding down the power button to shut down a system that is frozen.

All these apps look a bit risky to me...

You can get 50% off with rollback right now... codes everywhere since the people reviewing it at download.com get that as a reward.

people seems to be liking rollback:
http://www.wildersse...053&postcount=72

However, its installation depends on your hardware so license issues (what if you change your HD?) arise.

They have an active forum and a liveChat that seems to work well.

I highly recommend reading the wilder forums thread to anyone interested in buying one of these two programs.

I'm currently undecided. Please post your experiences here...

1407

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of FirstDefense-ISR (Raxco Software)

« Last post by urlwolf on February 12, 2007, 12:21 PM »

NOTE: EAZ FIX seems to be affected by the same uninstall problem:
http://www.download....2094_4-10432839.html

1408

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of FirstDefense-ISR (Raxco Software)

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

Quick update:
I have found an app that might be similar to firstDefense and rollback RX:
it's called EAZ FIX:
http://www.eazfix.com/stdvspro.html

Has anyone tried this one?
It seems to have all the advantages of rollback (smaller snapshots, own filesystem, etc).

It's a bit expensive at $69.95, no discounts to be found. No idea if it's as difficult to unisntall as Rx.

I have found a log thread on the wilder security forums:
http://www.wildersse...ex.php/t-147953.html
Also, how far away are we from a new version of Raxco's first defense?

Thanks

1409

Word Processor Roundup / Re: WPS Office should be in list

« Last post by urlwolf on February 12, 2007, 10:04 AM »

Looks nice.
It has tabs! We all were missing that feature in office!

1410

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com IRC Channel

« Last post by urlwolf on February 11, 2007, 12:24 PM »

grr,

No matter what channel I use, or what programs, my firewall detects some port scanning,... and it's not the port that the IRC server should be using. (e.g., 3128)

1411

General Software Discussion / Re: Living without AutoHotkey - possible?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 11, 2007, 12:04 PM »

I second that.
Ahk is really making my life easier.

1412

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com IRC Channel

« Last post by urlwolf on February 11, 2007, 12:00 PM »

Ok thanks,
I know what it doesn't work. My firewall (F-Secure) blocks the port, and reports a malware attack:

malware-Phatbot in

The DNS lookup brings this:

proxyscan-xs4all.nl


Is that related at all with IRC servers? Is that the way they operate? Show I create a rule that allows inbound traffic from these?

Thanks

1413

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com IRC Channel

« Last post by urlwolf on February 11, 2007, 07:47 AM »

Ok, I just installed trillian, connected to msn, but failed to connect to IRC.
Reading the help and googling is taking way too much time, it should be easier.

How do you connect to irc?
I have

efnet.demon.co.uk::6665-6669

but it doesn't seem to be connecting...
The "ball" that indicates connection in trillian is still transparent, the button becomes "disconnect" but nothing else changes i.e., I don't see a list of channels...
ugh! I wonder how teenagers do this

1414

Developer's Corner / Re: Why AJAX is Preferred for RIAs over Java

« Last post by urlwolf on February 10, 2007, 03:54 AM »

Hmm, very convincing. Downloading flex now...

1415

Developer's Corner / Re: Desktop Forum Reader

« Last post by urlwolf on February 09, 2007, 08:38 PM »

hmm maybe what you want is website watcher by aignes:
http://www.aignes.com/

I think it's a nice tool. I'd buy it, but I'm waiting for a DC discount . A bit obsolete since most sites can be read with an RSS reader. Still, nice functionality to track changes of static (or slowly updated) pages.

Another solution: subscribe to the RSS feed, if the forum has one. Then use a reader. I like greatnews. This forum for example has plenty of RSS functionality. THat is probably the best solution.

1416

General Software Discussion / Scott Finnie, windows expert, switching to mac

« Last post by urlwolf on February 08, 2007, 09:55 PM »

http://www.computerw...mp;intsrc=hm_ts_head
Scary thought...

1417

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: A form program to make forum posts consistant

« Last post by urlwolf on February 08, 2007, 08:32 PM »

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I still think having a standalone forum post editor application would be more useful, and users can load templates to do the same thing that is described here, only it's more flexible because we can also load other templates to standardize other types of posts also.  Just my thoughts.

Either way, it's a good idea.

-superboyac (February 08, 2007, 05:23 PM)

yeah, I second that. Something like windows live writer but for forum posts. i.e. it should be able to adapt to bbCode, SMF code, etc, and show you a preview. It should enable automatic uploading of pictures, etc.

But, wait... that'd be more time spent posting.. maybe not such a good idea

1418

Word Processor Roundup / Re: 3rd Party Tools like Bibliography Addins

« Last post by urlwolf on February 08, 2007, 07:15 PM »

I spent half my day today just checking that.
I'm stuck with endNote6, and if I want to work with word 2007 I need to buy endNote X (with enote being a product that I hate after v. 7, they made it worse!)
One tool that I have found that works with OOo is bibus:
bibus-biblio.sourceforge.net/

I could move to OO and have a portable setup if that worked.
However, my conclusion is that Bibus has problems that make it unsuitable right now:
   No people et al. (2006):
   No prefix, suffix (e.g. blah, 2006) or (blah, 2006, p. 201)
   No backwards compatible with endnote (all my papers have endNote inserts!)

Other than that it seems like a nice solution. If I was starting from scratch, this would be a contender.

Plus, Zotero is working on word integration, that'd be the end of endNote in my view! Not a good time to pay for a newer verision of endNote!

1419

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Outlining

« Last post by urlwolf on February 08, 2007, 07:10 PM »

I agree, outlining is really important.

1420

General Software Discussion / timeLog: a tool for tracking your time (has potential, current version rough!)

« Last post by urlwolf on February 08, 2007, 07:08 PM »

Here is one thingy that I found... I'm not using it right now, so I cannot write a better review.
timeLog: a tool for tracking your time
http://www.lifelogsoftware.com

It could be a replacement for timeKeeper, the last tool I bought for this.

The way it works is explained here:
http://www.lifelogso...doc/quickstart1.html

In my experience, it is really easy to get it to msgBox you with some cryptic errors. And it lacks a 'minimize to tray' option, plus a keyboard shortcut, which makes it unusable for me.

But:

1-The developer answers really fast!
2-The graphing of daily/weekly timelogs is nice!
3-New coming features, such as goals (e.g., do 1hr reading a day) are interesting.

What do you think?

1421

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of FirstDefense-ISR (Raxco Software)

« Last post by urlwolf on February 08, 2007, 04:36 PM »

cthorpe, patteo,
I really want to invest in one of these two tools. Having spent 1-2 days reinstalling everything makes me very conservative now

One downside of goBack is that it seems to be doing constant HD reading/writing in the background, which I hate (that's why I don't want to install any desktop search!). If I understand this review right, then firstDefense doesn't have that problem.

Are there any reviews that compare them head to head?
UPDATE: I found a very comprehensive doc (beware: written by raxco!) that corroborates what I thought of goBack as a resource hog:
www.raxco.com/products/fdisr/FD_vs_GoBack.pdf

Being impossible to disable (unless uninstalling!) kills the deal for me (and the battery issue!).

Any public discounts/ways to get any of these cheaper would be appreciated. cthorpe, what did you say exactly to get the discount? Any change you could get a DC discount (have you tried?)

I'm curious about why you say that a regular backup of the entire primary partition is still needed.

Thanks, great review!

1422

General Software Discussion / Re: laptop died. Need to troubleshoot it in a record time. Installing winXP from USB

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2007, 06:51 PM »

Ok, guys thanks to all.
I'm back, ready to work. I just reinstalled XP fresh (first time in a year! past due!). I'll be very careful about what I install in the future. It's a dell 600m, kind of older. Fortunately, I found the CD bay so it was easy to fix.

Now is the time when one appreciates to use the portable version of most applications... still quite a few hours needed to get everything back to an usable state.

1423

General Software Discussion / laptop died. Need to troubleshoot it in a record time. Installing winXP from USB

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2007, 11:27 AM »

I´m extremely busy right now and cannot afford to be without a computer for long. There is very little work I can get done without my laptop. Sad but true.

First I should say that I ab/used this computer heavily. I also used it in an unconventional way: sitting not on landscape view, but on vertical view (the graphics card allowed that) so I get more room vertically (ideal for coding and reading papers). I wonder if that position for long has harmed the computer... but I digress.

The computer doesn't boot, not even in safe mode. When in normal mode, I get the windows welcome screen, then it freezes on a blank screen.
When in safe mode, there is a long list of msgs showing what is installed. When reaching agp.sys, there is a prompt: press ESC to about loading SPTD.sys.
This is all I get. pressing ESC doesn't get you back to booting.

Reading online, it seems that this archive is part of daemon tools (I have it installed).
It may be that reinstalling windows will fix it.
Problem is, I have no CD drive! I have a secondary battery and I misplaced the swappable CD-drive.
Is there any way I can reinstall XP from an USB external HD?

I'm also considering buying a new comp. off ebay (if it's faster)! Of course, this is not an ideal solution as I\m now in Spain, laptops are about 1/3 more expensive than in the US, plus they have the Spanish keyboard which I don't like.

Any ideas? Thanks a lot in advance!
 

1424

General Software Discussion / Re: Installing office 2007 gets me a consistent 20-30% increase in Explorer's CPU?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2007, 09:14 AM »

I forgot to say, it feels like the entire system is being interrupted: scrolling in firefox is slower, Moby's DC popup application slowed down when showing a window, etc...

1425

General Software Discussion / Installing office 2007 gets me a consistent 20-30% increase in Explorer's CPU?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2007, 09:13 AM »

Hi,

I don't know if this is common, or not.
Installing office 2007 gets me a consistent 20-30% increase in Explorer's CPU. according to process explorer, even when the computer is iddle, the process is taking 1/4th of the CPU!

I know that Office 2007 was supposed to be a resource hog, but this is explorer itself. I think this is the only new application I have installed. It's probably worth it, but I'm sure my batteries are going to last very little. If this is normal behavior, we better start carrying a car battery with us and the laptop...

Have you experienced anything similar?