Recent Posts

14676

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 07:51 PM »

ok we'll do it for you, no worries 

14677

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: "VeggieSquares" - Children's Game

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 05:32 PM »

looks like you made it in time.

14678

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: DCDisplay

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 01:17 PM »

didn't work for me.  not even sure what file to launch, tried DcDisplay.application and got some error about security zones or something.

sorry if i'm grumpy.. i've said it before i'll say it again, how microsoft managed to make it so hard to run applications built from their new development languages, and the errors so confusing, i will never understand as long as i live. it just boggles my mind.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: FindColor

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 12:58 PM »

Ok i think i am understanding this a bit more, and it seems to me like it has a serious and real potential use, but not in it's current form.

It actually seems like a great idea for a new utility.

As I understand it, this could be very useful if you are trying to find images that have a certain color in them.

So let's say i want to find a photo that matches the color of my windows background, or of a specific color scheme on a web page im designing.

It would be nice to be able to start a utility, put in a color (or a set of colors), and have it SCAN AN ENTIRE DIRECTORY of images, looking for image files that have a LOT of the colors i have mentioned.  Or maybe even provide it with a small swatch of another image (say 64x64 pixels), or a whole large image screenshot and try to match some/all of the dominant colors in a theme.

You would want it to come up with some numeric score based on how close the colors where (not insisting on exact matches), and how much of the close colors it found, and then list the top matching photos and let you quickly preview them.

Some advanced options would be to score not based on euclidean distance of RGB but taking into account saturation, etc.  Looking for contiguous background regions of color, etc.  There are some definitely interesting possibilities.

I can see wanting some ability to tweak the scoring parameters, etc.

This actually sounds like a really neat idea for a program that i might even try if you dont.  Obviously a lot of work to make such a program.

Or does such an advanced program already exist?

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 12:40 PM »

tim, you might be able to get away with no audio for whirly but it'll never work for auspex..

it goes MUCH faster recording a screencast with audio too, much less work!

14681

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NetLaunch

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 12:29 PM »

I tests all available interfaces, excluding preset blacklisted adapters (virtual and VPN adapters)

and after testing all, how do you conclude if network is up or not? is it that if ANY adapter is up, the network is considered up?

this would be the main thing that could prevent the program from actually being usable for real world scenarios, since it could be pretty common that some network adapters will show as up when the user considers their network (internet?) down.. maybe the solution is being able to specify what network adapter to test, or whether the test should be done simply by pinging a web page, etc.

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FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FScript2, a new way to build javascript plugins for FARR

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 12:15 PM »

Well what i was saying was simply this:

Let's first start at the begining:

• Fscript (and FSubScript) is one of the most brilliant things ever invented.

But it has one problem:

• As currently used, each plugin loads its own different copy of fscript.dll
• This causes problems because when fscript.dll gets updated, some plugins have older fscript.dll versions and they may have bugs.

The basic idea of the solution:

• Have all fscript-based plugins share the same dll.

And the specifics:

• Can't we just put a single fscript.dll in the FARR main directory and include it with all farr releases, and have farr tell windows that when a farr plugin loads, to use that version of fscript.dll for the plugin?  Wouldn't that be simpler? Or is there a problem with that that i'm not understanding.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: DCDisplay

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 12:06 PM »

Is it possible to release DcDisplay in a way that just let's it run portably? Or does it have to install because of some XNA requirements?

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FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FScript2, a new way to build javascript plugins for FARR

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 11:40 AM »

separate question is..

it sounds like youve created something extremely clever -- that lets existing plugins still THINK they are loading the fscript.dll but really are loading the new one through a proxy.

but here is my question about a possibly simpler solution:

since dll's are actually made to be shared if the same dll is in the search path, might a simple solution be for me to just have the core FARR load the fscript.dll from it's own program file directory (included with future farr builds) and add that directory to the dll search path?

does that solve the main problem of having ONE centralized fscript.dll or fscript2.dll that will be updated when needed, and preferably included with FARR install?

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FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FScript2, a new way to build javascript plugins for FARR

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 11:27 AM »

so i have a question, if we assume on some machines it wont be possible for fscript2 to create the proxy dll, would one solution simply be to copy in the proxy dll manually?

and would this be a reasonable approach for new fscript2 based plugins? to simply include the proxy dll with their plugin?

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FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FScript2, a new way to build javascript plugins for FARR

« Last post by mouser on January 08, 2011, 11:14 AM »

whoa this is a surprise!!! can't wait to try it.

it sounds like you are inventing a whole new thing -- very interesting and challengine.

i only hope you do not lose your sanity in the process!   

14687

DesktopCoral / An idea for DesktopCoral

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 11:20 PM »

Can i try to gague the interest in adding the ability to actually embed a flash swf file on the DesktopCoral, resized to fit it -- would anyone like that?  Does anyone have any flash animations they think would be useful there (weather, clock, etc.).

In essence this kind of makes Desktop Coral a dockable widget bar, where the widget is a flash animation.

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DesktopCoral / Re: Transparency, The Command Line and Multiple Desktops

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 11:18 PM »

New version is now uploaded.

ps. regarding it remembering your transparency setting -- i think this may just be the case of your tool quitting the program before it gets a chance to save it.  so you should be able to have it remember it if you change it, and then MANUALLY exit the program.  in future invocations it should remember the settings.

however, the new version lets you pass -transparency # on the commandline which would allow you to set it manually and use different values for each instance.

let me know if it works for you.

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Living Room / Re: My 'LOL' alternative

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 09:22 PM »

I've only had one friend in life who could make me laugh that much.. I miss hanging out with him.

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BrowserTraySwitch / Re: BrowsterTraySwitch v2.06.01 beta (oct 22, 2010)

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 08:52 PM »

ill examine opera 10 and see if something has changed.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: That NANY badge

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 08:23 PM »

yeah we could do that, change the 01 to the actualy year
so, from 07 to 11 so far and then try to go back and give everyone their years.. but that might be a bit tricky to reconstruct..

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 07:50 PM »

I see it as a good foundational work for the following future applications

yep -- those sound really interesting and cool, and i definitely think you'll find use for those functions.  looking forward to it.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 05:41 PM »

such a strange program.. it might be interesting to see if you could put some of this code to use in a more general purpose application

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: That NANY badge

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 05:18 PM »

no its me too.

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Developer's Corner / Blog Essay: The Web Is a Customer Service Medium

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 02:31 PM »

Interesting essay:

Create a service experience around what you publish and sell. Whatever “customer service” means when it comes to books and authors, figure it out and do it. Do it in partnership with your readers. Turn your readers into members. Not visitors, not subscribers; you want members. And then don't just consult them, but give them tools to consult amongst themselves.

http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html

from http://smarterware.o...hy-wasnt-i-consulted

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 02:08 PM »

One really easy thing to do is send everyone the approximately $20 cafepress gift certificate for the mug -- and if people want to upgrade a pay the difference in order to get something more expensive at cafepress (like a hoodie, etc.) they can do that easily.

14697

Developer's Corner / Re: Awesome xkcd today

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 12:17 PM »

nudone beat you to it: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=25136.0

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Find And Run Robot / Re: right click file - jump right to context menu without pressing "M"

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 12:14 PM »

try selecting the result and hitting ctrl+P, or if its the first result in the list just hit ctrl+P from the search field.

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Living Room / Re: Board Game Review Site Roundup

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 12:12 PM »

A new site is aiming to fill some of the same functions as board game geek:
http://www.boardgameinfo.com/

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by mouser on January 07, 2011, 12:07 PM »

nice update