Recent Posts

15301

Find And Run Robot / Re: Options

« Last post by mouser on October 29, 2010, 03:21 PM »

you should see options menu in system tray, OR on main toolbar of FARR:

15302

General Software Discussion / Re: How to quickly autonumber text lists?

« Last post by mouser on October 29, 2010, 11:59 AM »

I suspect that for many coders, especially those like skwire, a really nice public thank you like this is more satisfying and rewarding than a donation..

BUT that won't stop me from reminding everyone that the DonationCredit system we implemented makes it possible for you to send people on the forum some donations easily, and that we should all remember to use it as a way of supporting coders whose work we like.

So when you see someone like skwire do these wonderful coding snacks, don't forget to click on the gold coin under his name and send him some of your donation credits, and make sure to specify a nice message when you do to encourage them and let them know how much they are appreciated here!

15303

Living Room / Diffen.com: Wiki-based Website where you compare things

« Last post by mouser on October 29, 2010, 09:43 AM »

This is basically a wiki system that has been specialized (slightly in function, mostly in content) to provide information comparing similar things.  For example, if you are interested in the difference between "brass" and "bronze", or between "disinfecting" and "sterilizing".

What is Diffen?

Diffen is a free collection of comparisons that people all over the world help write and maintain.

Diffen is informational:
What is the difference between DVD+R and DVD-R? What is the difference between a pub and a bar? An alligator and a crocodile? What is the difference between 401(k) and IRA? Treasuries and bonds? AMD Turion and Athlon processors? How is a Pentium Core 2 Duo different from Pentium Dual Core? How does the work environment at IBM compare with working at Microsoft? How does living in Seattle compare with living in Amsterdam? What is the difference between a Plasma TV and an LCD TV? Cal Tech and UCLA? Yankees and the Red Sox? Diffen can help you find (and write!) all these comparisons and more.

http://www.diffen.com/

15304

Find And Run Robot / Re: simple quick question

« Last post by mouser on October 29, 2010, 07:52 AM »

As you say you can edit the Search Folders to exclude and include certain extensions.

If you want to do it globally, you can edit the Scoring Patterns to penalize the scores of some extensions and increase the scores of others.  It might be an interesting idea to provide a global list of allowed/rejected extensions.

I don't understand the 10 dictionaries comment -- can you elaborate?

15305

Living Room / Re: I'm thinking about learning how to program.

« Last post by mouser on October 29, 2010, 07:49 AM »

Another thing to take notice of is the plethora of fantastic tools you get in your context menu in Visual Studio.

It's hard for me to imagine any new learner being anything but negatively impacted by all of the plethora of tools and commands in Visual Studio.  I've been programming for 30 years and i still find these super powerful IDEs a bit overwhelming and distracting.. If you're just starting out learning how to program you might be better off using a simple text editor for your code, and focusing on the language itself and not trying to master a complex development editor/tool at the same time.

15306

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST MiniCap VERSION INFO THREAD - v1.20.01 - May 4, 2010

« Last post by mouser on October 28, 2010, 05:23 PM »

moffitt -- welcome to the site and thank you for taking the time to post.

First, i think you must be talking about Screenshot Captor, because i don't think MiniCap has any blurb or nag or anything.  at least not to my memory.

If you are talking about Screenshot Captor (the big brother of MiniCap), then the situation is a bit harder to explain.  My big apps, like Screenshot Captor, pop up a quick welcome message the first time you run them, and then will start to ask you to download a *FREE* license key after about 10 days;  to get that you just come to our site and visit the license key page.  Once you put that in you shouldn't be reminded again or see any sign whatsoever for 6 months, at which point you can drop by the page again for a new key.

I know it's confusing, but the attempt is not to nag people to force them to donate -- but to try to at least get people to realize that our site survives only through the donations of users, and to make sure they don't at least visit our site to learn that if they are going to use our software.

15307

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot

« Last post by mouser on October 28, 2010, 04:14 PM »

That sounds quite useful, but sounds like a completely orthogonal program (ie does different things for different purposes).

15308

Developer's Corner / Re: The Composed Method pattern

« Last post by mouser on October 28, 2010, 02:58 PM »

I'd be interested in hearing more about bullet point #2 -- which sounds good but is not very clear.

I do think it helps especially new coders to get into the habit of isolating code into small functions.  The obvious warning flag that should tell a new coder to create a function is when they find themselves repeating code.

But i also try to tell new coders to always be on the lookout for when they are writing code that they aren't completely sure about -- or code which they may want to optimize later.  The best thing to do in such cases is isolate the code into a function -- it will make it much easier to keep organized in your head when it comes time to revisit the code and improve it.

15309

Living Room / Re: I'm thinking about learning how to program.

« Last post by mouser on October 27, 2010, 10:04 PM »

 

15310

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me come up with a Windows XP-->Windows 7 transition strategy.

« Last post by mouser on October 27, 2010, 03:30 PM »

bingo.
although i would still prefer to have 2 machines set up, the old one untouched, and the new one.  and then you can take your time setting up the new one and referring to the old one as you need it.

15311

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot

« Last post by mouser on October 27, 2010, 02:57 PM »

This utility is similar to my inexplicably unpopular utility, Drag and Drop Robot, but is much more powerful and robust.

In essence, the utility is designed to run in the background; watching for newly created files, or let you drag+drop, or queue via commandline, and then run mini scripts on these files that can launch external processes on them asynchronously.

This isn't something that most people need, but it can be useful for doing large numbers of time-consuming operations like emailing files, uploading them, converting them, etc.


A *major* feature of the utility, and what makes it different from most other similar utilities (including my Drag and Drop Robot), is that it is designed from the ground up to be able to handle errors in processing files gracefully and let you re-attempt failed actions.

That is, imagine you have queued up 1000 files, and the utility is walking trough the file list, emailing image files, etc.  If some attempts to email fail, they will be logged in a Failed Action queue, where you can examine them and re-queue the actions to be re-attempted when you wish.  If the computer crashes in the middle, the next time you start it up it will continue right where it left off.


I basically have this program finished and working -- but it was created as paid contract work -- i am *hoping* to convince the funder to let me make a version of it available for free personal use.

15312

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me come up with a Windows XP-->Windows 7 transition strategy.

« Last post by mouser on October 27, 2010, 02:26 PM »

im not a big fan of dual booting, too many complications like this.. better keep 2 pcs, or even use a swappable boot hard drive.

15313

General Software Discussion / Re: What the heck am I doing wrong with MS Word page numbering?

« Last post by mouser on October 27, 2010, 10:19 AM »

AndyM:   

15314

Screenshot Captor / Re: reduced image clarity on MS word

« Last post by mouser on October 27, 2010, 02:37 AM »

the first test you could do is use the same exact process to paste the image into an image editing program like paint.net, thegimp, whatever, and see if the image is clear.  if not then we can investigate.  if so, then its definitely a MS word issue.

15315

Living Room / Re: The conflict of interest that is Google

« Last post by mouser on October 26, 2010, 07:18 PM »

An interesting infographic suggesting that Google is a monopoly drowning in conflicts of interest:
http://www.scores.org/graphics/monopoly/

Found on http://www.boingboin...raphic-is-googl.html

15316

General Software Discussion / Re: What the heck am I doing wrong with MS Word page numbering?

« Last post by mouser on October 26, 2010, 05:56 PM »

Now I had this working fine at first.  But I started fiddling around with the header/footer, and now the page numbering doesn't work anymore for some reason I can't figure out

Welcome to Microsoft Word!  

I don't think i've ever created something in MS Word where i didn't have an experience like this with regard to something (page numbering, image text flow, section numbering, etc.); it's a consequence of so many hidden marks that you can't see, and the program trying to be "smart" and figure out what you want it to do instead of requiring you to tell it when to do something.  It can be insanely frustrating.  It's also why i end up saving-as with different filenames each time i make a non-trivial change, so i can always go back to an older version.

15317

DonationCoder Projects / Re: Flat File Mini CMS in PHP

« Last post by mouser on October 26, 2010, 05:51 PM »

looking forward to the planning document .. if you do a good job of creating a planning document, and don't go overboard in terms of complexity and features, there is a good chance someone will code it.

15318

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Focuth - time management tool for IT people

« Last post by mouser on October 26, 2010, 05:50 PM »

as far a name.. the good part is that it is nice and short.  the bad part is that "Focuth" will likely be heard by native speakers as the way a baby would mis-pronounce "focus" .. so it gives it a kind of "kid" sound, rather than something serious.. so it might be slightly embarassing for an adult to say "Focuth" -- it sounds like you have a speech impediment lisp and are trying to say "focus" -- it's not something that is very comfortable to speak as a native english speaker.

15319

Living Room / Re: I'm thinking about learning how to program.

« Last post by mouser on October 26, 2010, 03:51 PM »

And don't forget to check out the self-teaching programming school on the DonationCoder forum -- it was designed with one purpose in mind, to help motivate people to teach themselves how to program.  Some people find it quite fun!

15320

Living Room / Re: I'm thinking about learning how to program.

« Last post by mouser on October 26, 2010, 03:34 PM »

There are long threads on the forum about how to get started programming, and what the best language to code in is.

The point I always try to make is that the hardest thing about learning how to program is staying motivated and sticking to it.  The particular language you choose is not that important, so if there is something about a particular language that motivates you or grabs your interest (a book, a friend, that cute girl in class who thinks programmer's are hot, whatever), then go with that.  And if you hit a road block with one language, try another till you find one that speaks to you.  Personally i've always found that stumbling across the right book is the most important thing in terms of motivating me.

15321

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Focuth - time management tool for IT people

« Last post by mouser on October 26, 2010, 11:22 AM »

i really like the look and feel -- very streamlined and pleasant to use. 

15322

Living Room / Re: I'm thinking about learning how to program.

« Last post by mouser on October 25, 2010, 10:54 PM »

In terms of advising people on first languages to tinker with, i think Python represents a pretty good choice, and is probably a more gentle way to get started than C#, while still being fairly good in terms of teaching good programming habits.

15323

General Software Discussion / Re: How to quickly autonumber text lists?

« Last post by mouser on October 25, 2010, 04:35 PM »

In my current build, I have those two edit controls set to insert a tab character when the tab key is used.  However, you will lose the ability to tab out of that control to the next one.  Make sense?

or just support the standard \t for tab and \n for newline

15324

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quick Comparision of Flickr/ipernity/PicassaWeb

« Last post by mouser on October 25, 2010, 01:31 PM »

Excellent!

Someone recommended smugmug.com to me -- have you checked them out yet?

15325

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: I want to recommend you about my new software, it is called LangOver version 5.

« Last post by mouser on October 25, 2010, 12:17 PM »

I split the long rambling posts about dot net to their own thread https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=24358.0