Recent Posts

15201

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011: Ten Timer

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2010, 10:41 AM »

Yeah I was only making a general comment, wasn't meaning to pass judgement on this particular case.

15202

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANI 2011 : Help ecaradec decide which app to code

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2010, 10:39 AM »

Another thing I could do is have a look at the fscript problems

yes yes yes!!

i SOOOOO want to bundle in fscript (and fsubscript) with FARR, with a single fscript DLL that i can put under update control.

15203

Living Room / Re: Why Apple's Distortion Field Works

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2010, 04:41 AM »

I have never been a fan of Apple, but i think you guys are being too harsh on Apple users.

There may be plenty of people who buy Apple stuff because they have bought into the ridiculous "lifestyle" marketing of Apple which promises you will be one of the cool kids if you have Apple stuff.

BUT surely there is a larger number of Apple users who buy Apple products simply because they are making an intelligent decision that their desires in terms of total user interface are much more in line with the focus of Apple developers.

From what I can see, most Apple users are happily making a rationale decision that they don't need to have an infinitely configurable device or software, and are more concerned with having a smooth predictable experience.

Most of us have some devices we interact with that we want to be able to really customize and tweak and don't mind spending a lot of time getting them to work the way we want and are willing to put up with (or often enjoy) a steeper learning curve and some instability, and also some devices that we just want to work and don't want to spend days studying and reconfiguring and troubleshooting.

I think Apple is just marketing to the audience of people who, at least for their computer/iphone/ipad, fall on one end of this spectrum.

So a big part of the reason there is a divide among apple vs pc users is they WANT different things out of their device (same goes for linux users of course).

ps. As I said earlier, this is a separate issue from the issue of Apple marketing their brand as a cool lifestyle choice, which is more insidious and psychological and appeals to our more irrational and counter-productive unconscious desire to attain status, which i find distasteful.

15204

UrlSnooper / Re: Necessary to have WinPcap driver start at boot ???

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2010, 03:47 AM »

Ok from what i see searching around, WinPCap uses two services: nm and npf, which seem to be started automatically when you start sniffing if they are not already running.

So i think the answer is that you do not need them running at boot time.

15205

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011: Ten Timer

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2010, 05:34 PM »

May i suggest a paradigm for considering some options like setting colors?

The smartest thing might be to simply say that such options are not worth implementing.

But a second choice would be to say that it's not worth writing a whole user interface system for changing colors, and instead just support some way that advanced users can edit and an advanced setting file that is read that controls things like colors or sounds, etc.

The point i'm trying to make in general is that often its coding the user interface system for configuring esoteric options that makes adding such options so impractical, and that a manually-editable advanced options file idea might come to the rescue for a wide variety of features in a wide range of programs.

15206

Find And Run Robot / Re: Open search results in windows explorer

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2010, 12:32 PM »

hmm.. that is a bit strange.. can you attach a screenshot showing a list of results where if you click it opens up in windows explorer, and then a screenshot showing a list of results where if you click it puts it in the farr window?

15207

Living Room / Re: Truely awesome 404 page!

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2010, 11:31 AM »

i like the dc one!

15208

Find And Run Robot / Re: Environment variables in 'Pattern Scoring'?

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2010, 09:29 AM »

ah i see.. well let me look into making it expand variables in scoring patterns -- the difficulty is really just a matter of having to do some caching since you obviously wouldn't want it having to repeatedly query the environment variable each time it searches.

15209

Find And Run Robot / Re: Environment variables in 'Pattern Scoring'?

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2010, 08:10 AM »

sounds like a smart idea.. though because 64 bit programs wont run on a 32 bit operating system, it sounds like you could just ALWAYS boost x64 pattern in all cases and get the benefit.

15210

Find And Run Robot / Re: Environment variables in 'Pattern Scoring'?

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 06:39 PM »

hmm.. i might be able to fix that easily, or maybe not.. can you give me a more specific example of how you would use it?
are you trying to use %var% to favor files in a certain DIRECTORY? if so, you definitely CAN use environmental variables in search directory list, and that would be a more efficient way to set a bonus score for files in a certain directory.

15211

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR v2 - Official Bug Tracking and Feature Request Thread

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 06:37 PM »

hi lordmuzer, welcome to the site!

thank you for your bug reports -- they are all very clear.  i am going to try to fix them.  i think bugs 1+3 are also happening on my other program (LaunchBar Commander) so it is important that i get them fixed as soon as possible.

15212

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011: Ten Timer

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 06:32 PM »

Planned Features - Addition of ten countdown timers.

yes! 

15213

Finished Programs / Re: InstaPlay - instant sound player

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 05:28 PM »

so to clarify:

The entire point of InstaPlay is for you to associate your music files to it so that when you double click the music file in your normal windows explorer, you get a quick preview of the sound.

If you don't know for sure that this is what you want, then you probably don't want InstaPlay -- it's something that will be specifically useful to only a certain group of people, and could be confusing to others.

But if you want a stand alone gui for browsing and previewing sound files, which doesn't require file association changes, check out Justice's other program, Bard.

15214

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: SQL Everywhere by Atlantis Interactive - a supercharged IDE for SQL Server!

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 04:50 PM »

Thanks for sharing the review -- your blog looks good too!

Quick note: arthurz, please edit your first post to specify your relationship with the product/company, if any, or specify that there is none.

15215

Finished Programs / Re: InstaPlay - instant sound player

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 04:39 PM »

With InstaPlay it made complete sense to have to associate it with music files (and maybe put it in path which sounds like just an association misstep), but this shouldnt be nescesary to get the benefit of the Bard program.

15216

Site/Forum Features / Re: All known drawings of Cody, the DC mascot

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 12:25 PM »

beak polish 

15217

UrlSnooper / Re: Necessary to have WinPcap driver start at boot ???

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2010, 09:54 AM »

ok, i see the option -- didn't notice when they added that.

the wpcap.dll is going to be what interfaces with the system driver i think.

does url snooper work if you install winpcap and tell it not to run at boot time?

15218

The Form Letter Machine / Re: Importing an XML data (tree) file

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2010, 01:32 PM »

Let me elaborate a little:

I've discussed with a couple people the possibility of making the Form Letter Machine / tfdocs.com more useful.

The online tfdocs.com felt like it had some great potential to me, but was just a complete flop in terms of people actually using it.

So i'm trying in my own mind to figure out if there is some potential for these programs to find a somewhat wider audience, and if maybe there is some way for me to secure a little bit of funding in order to take them to the next level, possibly making them more useful for business users.

15219

The Form Letter Machine / Re: Importing an XML data (tree) file

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2010, 01:24 PM »

The tfdocs.com web service was designed to do what The Form Letter Machine does, but is much more flexible and powerful, and uses xml as its native format.

But users having to hand craft the xml data for it has proven to be it's main downfall (at least that's my interpretation, along with the normal downfall for me which is no energy or resources to spread the word about it).

The Form Letter Machine is easy (though not 100% intuitive) to create new trees with, but is somewhat limited and simplified in what you can create, and uses a proprietary tree data format which is not well suited for adding functionality.

So i think the "proper" solution would be to rewrite The Form Letter Machine to use the same xml native data as the online version, and make it suitable for the advanced features.  I'm just a bit torn as to the best way to do it.

One way that might make the most sense would be to:

• Use the same native xml format and language for the desktop version
• Support the same features in the desktop version as the web version
• Use an embedded web browser in the desktop version to display the tree and contents of the resulting document
• Use a custom tree configuration editor, similar to the one in the current Tree Form Machine.

I'm just nervous about using the web technology in the desktop version, but on the other hand there are lots of neat things you can do with the web version that would be nice to bring into desktop version, and i really don't want to be maintaining two separate systems.  Having a single shared data and rendering system just seems more sensible to me.

15220

The Form Letter Machine / Re: Importing an XML data (tree) file

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2010, 11:00 AM »

tflm doesn't support xml import (yet).. you can use the exported XML with tfdocs.com.

importing xml back into the form letter machine is more troublesome.. and there is a question of whether i should re-write a Form Letter Machine 2 from scratch, rather than try to improve it around the edges.

15221

Living Room / Re: Unread/Aggregated Topics/Forums

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2010, 08:40 AM »

try pressing mark all as read and see if it behaves going forward.

15222

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Bizarre IE8 crashes with CHS

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2010, 10:24 PM »

wow that is strange!

how about this:

in chs you can actually turn off clipboard monitoring (Clipboard tab of options, uncheck "Monitor Clipboard") -- see if the same problems remain.
(you might have to also disable the "Clipboard Tricks -> Re-establish" on same tab.

see if that fixes anything.
my suspicion would be McAfee, but i don't know for sure.  anyone else have any other ideas?  any options in mcafee related to clipboard stuff?
i do seem to see on searching that mcafee does have some functionality for blocking clipboard tools, so i still think that is likely culprit.

15223

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to enlarge the fonts in The BAT! email client?

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2010, 11:30 AM »

I've never changed the font, but it looks like you can change font size in Options->Viewer/Editor section (Profile Layout, SmartBat Editor, Source Viewer).

15224

UrlSnooper / Re: Necessary to have WinPcap driver start at boot ???

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2010, 08:44 AM »

I don't recall that option.  URL snooper won't start it automatically (though that is a nice idea).. but you might be able to start it yourself manually before you use URL Snooper.. Try it and let me know if that works.  I can check and see if there is simple code to have URL Snooper start and stop the WinPCap driver.

15225

Find And Run Robot / Re: Options

« Last post by mouser on November 09, 2010, 12:11 AM »

Also: ALT+O