Recent Posts

151

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use any GTD/calendar system to get organized?

« Last post by Cavalcader on June 16, 2006, 12:52 PM »

I'm in the process of switching over (at least for most stuff) to MyLifeOrganized. Still, it's got a bit of a learning curve, so I'm taking it slow. My most recent reminder tool is RainLendar, a gorgeous skinnable calendar that's really handy. It has an "always on bottom" ability to keep it on your desktop, variable transparency, all kinds of customizability, and while it's not updated every week or month, the author keeps making steady improvements.

There's a similar tool to monitor local system (and other) stats called RainMeter by the same guy, infinitely skinnable and also scriptable. It'll even do weather with a free plugin. Very creative tools; www.rainlendar.net is an easier-to-remember URL if you don't like the one linked above.
 

152

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Beta new version of TrID file identifier - now with batch scanning & renamin

« Last post by Cavalcader on June 16, 2006, 12:16 PM »

TrID is a cool program -- I've used the v1 series on occasion over the last few years. I'm looking forward to trying the new one!

153

Official Announcements / Re: Contest - Come up with a novel idea for DonationCredits

« Last post by Cavalcader on June 10, 2006, 02:18 PM »

Any other members, or even one of the submitting members, could choose to accept the current total of "bids" and make the software release within X amount of time. If it's done in time, all bids go to the developer. If not, they are either returned or left in the project for the next developer.

-broken85 (June 10, 2006, 01:04 PM)

That's a great idea! I would amend that to include a way to give a partial credit amount if the timeframe is missed, since real work would still have been invested and "real life" can get in the way of one's plans. Maybe it could only "pay" partial credits, if needed, when the project is fully completed (with the definition of "completed" meeting some accepted standard either per project or defined overall).

154

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Program to identify and delete empty folders in a tree

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 30, 2006, 01:04 PM »

(this post was no longer relevant)

155

Living Room / Re: World's worst pop-up dialogs

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 21, 2006, 11:33 AM »

[offtopic]btw.. how can you post the thumb to an external image?[/offtopic]

-jgpaiva (May 21, 2006, 05:58 AM)

ImageShack does it automatically over a certain size.

156

Living Room / Re: World's worst pop-up dialogs

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 20, 2006, 08:00 PM »

That "catastrofic faliure" error is just hilarious!

-jgpaiva (May 20, 2006, 06:44 PM)

Definitely! I wonder if it's describing the program itself or just the error?

What's really "fun" about Media Player is that the dialog just repeats the status message. The "details" button also has always repeated the error message whenever I've seen one, without anything else added.

157

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: DimSaver, a better PowerDimmer screensaver alternative

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 20, 2006, 04:29 PM »

Hey, brotherS, are you still running into that undimming bug? I just reread your note and saw that you're having to wait for the timeout to do your testing. I'm attaching a freeware program that starts the Windows currently-active saver as if the timeout happened.

For a fancier one the developer, Stardust Software, makes a tray-based saver control with more options, but the one I'm posting just runs, starts the saver, and quits again. I've got it on a hotkey, myself, as an alternative to locking the sytem when I step away (by hitting Win-L). This one's a whole 25k, so I didn't even bother to zip it.
 

158

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: DimSaver, a better PowerDimmer screensaver alternative

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 20, 2006, 02:05 AM »

How can i get my keys?

-bds (May 20, 2006, 01:42 AM)

Aren't they on the table by the door? 

No, seriously: click here.

159

Living Room / Re: World's worst pop-up dialogs

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 20, 2006, 01:03 AM »

-app103 (May 18, 2006, 11:39 AM)

Heh! That's great.   And then they renamed it AOHELL?

160

Google Boomerang / Re: Google Translator Boomerang - Latest Version Info - v1.02.01 - May 5, 2006

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 20, 2006, 12:10 AM »

Heh! Mouser, yours might be true on Mondays.   But I still can't figure out how Carol came up with "the hemp cloth". (Isn't that something like burlap?)

161

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 13, 2006, 04:21 AM »

Thanks -- it's really nuts how deeply buried something like that is, considering the difference it makes. Have you seen the new Office that's coming out? They've really done a major redesign of the UI so that stuff you need related to what you're doing is easy to find, and stuff that's not related is not in your way. Here's hoping they'll do the same with Windows...

162

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 13, 2006, 01:09 AM »

I agree with zridling's comments regarding the fact that a major difference between these search programs is the interface.  However, I respectfully disagree with the issue of continually spinning HD's. 

With X1, the user determines exactly when, if ever, the index should be updated, either on a scheduled or manually selected time. The initial indexing takes a while but incremental indexes are quite fast.

-jdd (May 07, 2006, 05:28 PM)

By the way, a lot of people know about the Indexer that comes with XP (Pro? and maybe even 2k) or later. What most don't seem to know is that it can really be tweaked so that it stays out of your way. Its default settings have it getting in the way of doing anything else on the machine while it's updating. This is made worse by the "tweak" settings being not only left off of the menus, but they're only on one of two otherwise identical (or nearly identical) context menus.

Just a quick once-over in case it helps some of the folks here: once you go through the Administrative Tools (or Run dialog) to get to the Microsoft Management Console and then the Indexing Service, you right-click the resulting pane on the right, winding your way to this menu:


Then you work your way through a couple of dialogs and you're (finally!) able to customize the performance settings.



Each of the two settings have 3 steps, and with Indexing set to "lazy", and Querying set to "High load", the system then waits for you to have stopped any activity for a period of time before it'll start indexing anything not already in the Catalog. As soon as you start to use the mouse or keyboard, *poof*, it stops and waits for you again. Makes a huge difference.

You may even get good performance with the Indexing at the middle position, but you're guaranteed for it to be getting in your way working regardless of your own activities if you set it on Instant, and you can count on a performance hit even with a peppy machine.

163

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Command-line tool to move dir contents to existing subdirs

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 12, 2006, 01:39 PM »

Awesome! That'll be a huge help for drive "housekeeping". 

Edit: since this will be a mod of the DelEmpty script, I'm locking this topic for eventual disposal.

164

Screenshot Captor / Re: please add rectangles to the editor

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 11, 2006, 09:17 PM »

Thanks, Abt eriX. I usually use magenta since it's probably the least-used color, but of course MS Paint doesn't even support transparency. If you use GIMP it's a very different process.

165

Screenshot Captor / Re: please add rectangles to the editor

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 10, 2006, 10:40 PM »

Thanks!

166

Screenshot Captor / Re: please add rectangles to the editor

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 10, 2006, 07:58 PM »

Let me know if there's anything I can do from this end to help. I'll load those scissors into GIMP in the next couple days (finishing up finals at school) and see what I can do. I should be able to poke a "hole" for those handles.

Is there a way to paste into a new image with Captor that I'm overlooking?

167

Screenshot Captor / Re: please add rectangles to the editor

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 10, 2006, 03:24 PM »

one thing i miss is ability to 1) paste clipboard image as a new resizable/movable object onto an existing screenshot.
2) merge two screenshots.

so i'm going to add these function - i think it will make it easier to combine screenshots.

any related suggestions?

-mouser (September 28, 2005, 04:48 AM)

Maybe I'm not understanding the concept. When I open Captor, it displays any previous pics as thumbnails on the left, and one is loaded. If I paste, the clipboard is added to the current (old) image, or if I delete that and paste there's a flicker but then a blank image is created. I couldn't find a way to paste as new (rather than using Captor itself to create the image from scratch).

Also, any dialog that has a non-rectangular window isn't captured as such. (A good example that almost everyone has handy is Media Player.)


One program that does that well (but otherwise isn't as cool as Captor ) is the freeware WinSnap. Maybe since both of you are coding the respective programs for fun (and out of necessity) you could combine your efforts? That's not to presume that you want to, of course, but it's a thought. There's a lot of overlap in their feature set.

Here's WinSnap's version of the same shot:


BTW, in the FWIW category, the "scissors" pic bundled with Captor needs its finger holes "cut out" -- they're opaque.
 
I can try to do it myself and email if you like, but I haven't tried it yet.

168

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Command-line tool to move dir contents to existing subdirs

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 08, 2006, 11:16 PM »

...Was it something I said?

169

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Terminate processes and remove USB

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 08, 2006, 10:53 AM »

I'm not sure how cleanly it shuts down file connections with applications

-Carol Haynes (May 07, 2006, 07:26 PM)

True. That's a consideration with any of the techniques above -- they're all nonstandard methods, but one bonus of Unlocker is that it shows the name of the program that has the file lock (without listing a bunch of other stuff). Then you still have the option to close that program normally.

170

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Terminate processes and remove USB

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 07, 2006, 03:44 PM »

Another possibility is Unlocker -- a very cool ShellExtension.

171

Developer's Corner / Re: 18 Monospace fonts comparison screenshot

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 07, 2006, 02:01 PM »

For font viewing and comparisons, I've never found anything to beat X-Fonter from Black Sun Software. (screenshots) They're currently at version 5.5 with v6 in beta, and they've been around for years.

If you want to play with it without using a trial version, the last free version is here (a great site that has a boatload of various "last freeware version" packages).

172

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 07, 2006, 01:29 PM »

A lot of big-name tools are designed to require Windows 2000 or better, but for those holdouts still running the Win95/98 series there's an older search tool that was put out by AltaVista when they were still owned by DEC. I used it for several years around the turn of the century (sounds ancient, doesn't it?) and I found it to be a really good performer that doesn't need to grind away at the hard drive endlessly. I just updated its database about once a week.

There's a blog that discusses it in more detail here, and it also links to the software. The only thing they don't have is a screenshot, but if you're curious there's one in a PC Pro review. (I didn't want to hotlink their pic directly.)

173

Living Room / Re: Sites that mix & match other sites

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 07, 2006, 02:21 AM »

Ha! That's great.   I especially love the first line in the second screenshot on the program's page: "The master clocks of this program have intentional taste of useless." I'll have to try that in my next bug report to a freeware or shareware coder!

I just discovered this site -- it's the mother lode of mashup links:

174

Living Room / Sites that mix & match other sites

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 06, 2006, 05:46 PM »

Have you guys seen the Lost In Translation website? It feeds your text through multiple translation engines to see if you can still make sense of it on the other end. There're some examples posted there, but here's one I tried:

Original English Text:
Easy come, easy go.

Translated to Japanese:
?????????????
(these characters aren't recognized by the forum software, but they were there, honest!) 

Translated back to English:
Easy you coming, easy it goes.

Translated to Chinese:
????, ?????
(same thing)

Translated back to English:
Easy you to come, to be easy it to go.

Translated to French:
Facile vous à venir, pour être facile il à aller.

Translated back to English:
Easy you to come, to be easy it to go.

Translated to German:
Einfach Sie zum zu kommen, einfach sein es zum zu gehen.

Translated back to English:
To come simply it to to go simply its it to.

Translated to Italian:
Per venire semplicemente esso a da andare semplicemente relativo esso a.

Translated back to English:
In order to come it to going simply relative it simply to.

Translated to Portuguese:
A fim vir ele a ir simplesmente relativo ele simplesmente a.

Translated back to English:
The end to come it to go simply relative it simply it.

Translated to Spanish:
El extremo a venir él a ir simplemente relativo él simplemente él.

Translated back to English:
The end to come he to go simply relative he simply he.

Sorta like the game where you whisper something to the person next to you and it goes around the room. 

175

Screenshot Captor / Comments on ScreenshotCaptor - Beta Version - 2.12.01 to 2.24.01

« Last post by Cavalcader on May 06, 2006, 04:33 PM »

I made a demo screencast movie showing off a new feature of ScreenshotCaptor designed to make it easier to post good pictures to a forum post.

-mouser (May 04, 2006, 02:18 AM)

Wow -- very impressive feature! Nice job.

Should we post bug reports here? (If any exist, of course. Hmph.)