Recent Posts

1426

General Software Discussion / squeak: new language that looks like an open-source flash?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 03, 2007, 02:21 PM »

http://www.squeak.org/

Seems to have some advantages such as
# Strongly Typed
# Garbage Collected
# Interpreted

I always hated how difficult it is to debug actionScript, even with third-party libraries and tools. The entire paradigm kind of forces you to have variables with a wide scope (practically 'globals') and that is just a way to let you shoot you in the foot.

Have you heard of this squeak before? The mailing list seems very active:
http://news.gmane.or...ltalk.squeak.general

They have a very large wiki (6000 pages):
http://wiki.squeak.org/Squeak

It also seems to be very fast, at least compared to actionScript:
http://www.visoracle...akfaq/benchmark.html
(unfortunately, that benchmark might be pretty old; no date to be found).

Since it has inherited properties from smalltalk, and the language itself may look a bit like ruby, whereas actionScript looks more like javascript/PHP.

What are your thoughts on this?

1427

General Software Discussion / Is there any way to abort a reboot?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 02, 2007, 11:08 AM »

Hmm,
Is there any way to abort a reboot? I sometimes hit a reboot button by accident in vista start menu and dunno how to stop the process.

Is it possible?

1428

Living Room / Re: snap.com search. gimmick or great tool?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 01, 2007, 02:19 PM »

You can get icons in google searches too by using the FF plugin googlePreview. Pretty neat. Another good plugin is CustomizeGoogle.

1429

General Software Discussion / console: a great CMD.exe replacement application

« Last post by urlwolf on February 01, 2007, 06:57 AM »

http://sourceforge.net/projects/console

it's like the command prompt, with better keyboard shortcuts, tabs, and resizable. A must for any shell work on windows.

You may know about poderosa already, but I find console to be even better in a sense:
no cygwin dependency (it can be put in a usb stick), easy to add a context menu, etc

it has a pretty active forum:
http://sourceforge.n....php?forum_id=143117

1430

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by urlwolf on February 01, 2007, 04:31 AM »

An added problem: no formatting, pictures, or tables in your notes.

1431

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by urlwolf on February 01, 2007, 04:30 AM »

thanks, I added a shortcut as well. nice.
Nudone, I think your system may face a problem when searching your notes. Are you going to create an index (say locate 3.0)? Even so, the indexer will not give you the matches highlighting that most applications would.

Any workaround for this?

PS: Is it me, or is the options panel in Dopus just crazy convoluted?

1432

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by urlwolf on January 31, 2007, 11:39 AM »

FileType NEW=.txt

When the file is created, the name of the file is \"New Text Document.txt\" with the name already highlighted in F2 rename mode.

Instead, I'd like the file to be created with the name \"Notes YYYY.MM.DD.txt\" and not be in rename mode. Is that possible?

nudone, see this thread for making new "button" for to make new text file (dopus):
http://resource.dopu...le+file+current+date

You can then make your own shortcut in customise mode ..

-tomos (January 31, 2007, 07:20 AM)

Hi Tomos,
I tried that, but I can see no difference in my right click menu.
Can you ellaborate on this?

1433

Living Room / Re: This is how you disable those Snap previews you see on alot of blogs nowadays.

« Last post by urlwolf on January 31, 2007, 09:43 AM »

You guys hate this?
I thought it could radically change the way we browse... (less client/server cycles).

1434

Find And Run Robot / Re: What New Major Feature is Most Important for you in Find and Run Robot?

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 10:08 PM »

I voted for indexing.

Mouser, have you seen an ahk script called 320MPH? This is my current favorite for quicklaunching things. Really well thought of.

1435

Living Room / Re: try my new experiment with HotOrNot pictures!

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 06:35 PM »

If it wasn't for a DC buddy, I would have stopped about 1/4 of the way through.

-tinjaw (January 30, 2007, 06:01 PM)

Agreed. I also found the process a bit too tedious. And i ended up doing a few mistakes because i became distracted. (i think that's the idea, though. am i right?)

-jgpaiva (January 30, 2007, 06:03 PM)

Hmm, interesting. I've been in many experiments that are intolerably boring (like deciding if a string is a word or not, thousands of times). The fact is that, for experimental hygiene, we need to use simple materials and have lots of repetitions. It is not the purpose of the experiments to bore people, believe me, although it's not for entertainment either.

Doing this experiment on campus, where students are used to boring experiments, would have made it feel like a very good one believe me. That's how boring experiments normally are. People get paid to get bored. Doing experiments on line has many advantages (more diverse population, faster data collection, usually you don't have to pay people) but it is definitely true that the attention span of a person surfing is very short and you cannot bore them, or they leave. I'm all for designing game-like experiments. But sometimes (often), like in this case, this is not possible. Designing experiments is hard enough as it is, so if you add the 'playability' constraint, you may never get a design that works.

I also think that the current way of running experiments may produce data that are inaccurate due to low motivation. In this case, it doesnt matter since the effect I'm trying to get should work even if you don't pay attention, but motivation is a problem for most other effects. Damn.

I do appreciate that you went through it all just because I posted it here. The feedback I got is really useful.

1436

Living Room / Re: try my new experiment with HotOrNot pictures!

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 02:57 PM »

Actually, you are right, pictures can have 16 repetitions as well now that I think of it. There are 100 different pics, and a total of 960 repetitions, so the average is about 9.6 repetitions per pic. It's normal, and it sticks out a lot in a situation like this, where one really likes to see variety

So the instructions (summary: "just click on the one you find more attractive") are not evident and should be on screen at all times?

1437

General Software Discussion / Re: A new holy war? PHP vs Ruby on Rails

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 02:40 PM »

So, if Ruby on Rails matches well with the tool you want to create, it could definitely save you some time and pain and help you create something really nice.  I'm just reluctant to say it has much to do with Ruby the language..

-mouser (January 30, 2007, 02:10 PM)

The point of this author is that everything works so fluently *because* of the design decisions in ruby itself (last paragraph).

I haven't tried ruby enough to say if I like the syntax. I though that everything being an objects (even integers with methods? 5.times?) would be too much overhead and make it slow. While it's certainly slower than python and perl, it seems to be no slouch.

1438

Living Room / Re: try my new experiment with HotOrNot pictures!

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 02:34 PM »

Yes. There are repeted pairs.
In fact you'll see each picture 8 times. Sometimes even the pairs are repeated. You think a warning should be present at all times about this?

Wow, so HoN loads really fast (no time to enter email!). That's good.

1439

General Software Discussion / A new holy war? PHP vs Ruby on Rails

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 01:44 PM »

There is a post at Oreilly's from a person that seems to have tried both heavily (not doing a 'hello word' on each is not testing) and seems to be in love with Ruby on Rails:

http://www.oreillyne..._rails_an_evolu.html

Of course the web is plagued with contrary views too.

The experiment I just posted is done using ruby on rails. I'm pretty impressed by the fact that all sql is handled by the framework, and even the interface to the DB. In fact, one can switch from sqlite to Mysql without altering the main code. Doing that in e.g., perl DBI would be impossible (dunno about PHP).

I'm considering dedicating some effort (e.g., a week) to Ruby and rails.
What's your take on Ruby and rails in particular?

1440

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 01:36 PM »

Nudone, I think what you want is a tagging layer on top of your filesystem (which is hierarchical).

I'm still wondering why after tagging is now everywhere (urls, pictures, images, music), our filesystems are still far away from supporting tagging natively...

1441

Living Room / Re: try my new experiment with HotOrNot pictures!

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 01:26 PM »

http://hon.mashupslive.com/test/
Forgot. No username/passwd needed anymore.

1442

Living Room / Re: try my new experiment with HotOrNot pictures!

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 01:25 PM »

Ok, here we go again.
Now it should work. Both Male and female pictures load directly from HoN.

No start button needed, so don't worry if you don't get one.

Note: please send the link to whoever you want, but do not tell them what it's about (I need people). You will be debriefed (i.e., I'll tell you hypotheses and results) after I got enough people for the statistical tests to work.

I have tested this under FF and Opera.

Note: you can select pictures from same or opposite sex, it's up to you
Thanks!

1443

General Software Discussion / creating SQL from excel, soft at bitsdujour today. Worth it?

« Last post by urlwolf on January 30, 2007, 08:45 AM »

There is an app for creating SQL from excel at bitsdujour today

http://bitsdujour.co...og2/wordpress/?p=289

I tested it a bit. It feels a bit clunky, no keyboard shortcuts to change types etc (GUI is poor, maybe because it's just a macro?).

Is there a better alternative to create sql visually and fast from say csv?

Oh, BTW, another nice tool if you need to interact with a remote MySQL server without a shell is SQLyog.

http://www.sqlyog.com/
It has SQL syntax highlighting, command completion, you can see all the tables at once etc.

1444

Living Room / Re: try my new experiment with HotOrNot pictures!

« Last post by urlwolf on January 29, 2007, 10:59 AM »

aha! this is why I wanted to test this.
All this AJAX stuff is fragile, one has to test all kind of situations.

The 960 pics are loaded at the beginning, that's why there is a red progress bar.

Email is optional.

When the progress bar is complete (pics are loaded), then the experiment would show a start button. If this is not working (I just tested, It isn't; I tested it in Opera, FF and IE before sending this) the only explanation I have is that Andrey, the coder, is changing the code from local pictures to HoN pictures. Sorry about that, I'll contact him.

Will post again as soon as it's working.

Mouser: there will be pics of hot people there, don't worry

1445

Living Room / try my new experiment with HotOrNot pictures!

« Last post by urlwolf on January 29, 2007, 07:49 AM »

Hi,

As some of you know, I do research on cognitive science. It is usual to run experiments over the web. I have great plans for psychology experiments, mainly if they are fun. This one uses HotOrNot pictures, so it should be.

It takes about 20 min. You will see some pairs of pictures repeating, that is normal. By doing this experiment you help me in my research, but no other benefits are implied.

The experiment is not quite ready (I need to iron some bugs out), but you can have a look anyway and help me finding problems before it goes live. Here:
http://hon.mashupslive.com/test/
username jose
passwd    jose
It's protected to avoid google indexing it.

Update: just checked the instructions I sent.
There are two problems with the instructions, here:
"DESCRIPTION: You are invited to participate in a research study that
investigates" (ENDS): it should continue "how people judge attributes
such as attractiveness".
It says "I am the man/woman" where it should say "I am a man/woman" *shrugs*.

Also, it currently loads only the female pictures, no matter what the
participants chose. The coder knows about these problems, and maybe by the time you read this, he'd have fixed it.

PS: I asked Mouser if it's ok to post experiment links here, and he's ok with it. I'm saying this because I don't want to post something that could be considered advertisement (I need to recruit people anyway) in a nice community like ours.

1446

General Software Discussion / Re: fit to witdth in firefox? (Opera feature)

« Last post by urlwolf on January 29, 2007, 05:23 AM »

thanks dk70,

it seems that smartsearches are not working if you use the delicio.us bookmarks plugin (which I do)...
hmm, let me try it in a portable version of ff with no plugins...
It works, a pity. I like the del.icio.us plugin too much.

1447

General Software Discussion / really nice feature of del.icio.us: the for: tag

« Last post by urlwolf on January 28, 2007, 02:48 PM »

I just started using this...
Do you normally email people with a link you found relevant for them?
Just tag it in delicious with for:username and they will see it in their del.icio.us inbox.
A lot faster, an more efficient that mail (plus you see tags and other people's lists!)

For example, assuming mouser's handle is the same in del.icio.us tagging something with for:mouser will do the trick. My username in del.icio.us is urlwolf btw.

1448

General Software Discussion / fit to witdth in firefox? (Opera feature)

« Last post by urlwolf on January 28, 2007, 11:58 AM »

Hi,
You know this Opera feature, Fit to width:"automatically shrinks a web page to the current width of the browser. No more scrolling to the left and right. ". I can't find something equivalent for firefox. Do you know if there is a plugin for this?

Also:
search keywords: I never use the extra search field. I just type a keyword like g for google and start adding the phrases I am looking for. Other keywords I use are gg (google.de), a (amazon) auk (amazon.co.uk), imdb (selfexplaining), dict (dict.leo.org) or w (wikipedia). Add your own.

Can you do that in FF?

1449

General Software Discussion / Re: free, small, fast uninstaller replacement

« Last post by urlwolf on January 28, 2007, 09:30 AM »

myunisntall is slow to boot. Maybe I'll keep both (different purposes) since the use that mouser and nudone describe really is an interesting feature.

1450

Official Announcements / Re: Announcing The New DonationCoder.com Help Desk

« Last post by urlwolf on January 27, 2007, 05:54 PM »

Wow! Looks really good, good work Mouser!

How did you pick KnowledgeBasePublisher out of the million FAQ manager frameworks out there? What makes you so happy? How easy is it to work with? (e.g., is it as simple as say wordPress? Did you have to muck around much with the code?

Also, does it make it possible for users to add their own FAQs?