Recent Posts

1551

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

« Last post by rjbull on October 28, 2010, 03:34 PM »

mouser, it's an old DOS program, but for comparison, are you aware of John Souvestre's SLEEP?  It was primarily designed (I think) as a semaphore handler in DOS BBSs:

Mention on Rob van der Woude's Batch File Utilities page (with SAC download link).

More details here, How can you delay execution of bat

SLEEP- Batch util sleeps until event occurrence.


A very flexible command line tool for scheduling events; intended for batch files. "The possible events are: FOR a length of time, TILL a certain time, a question ASKed of the user, certain FILESPECS appear or disappear, the UPS is active, or a SCHEDuled event. Commands can be combined. Sleep is DOS, DesqView (uses DV System Memory), OS/2, and Windows aware.
Sleep will accept an indirect command file. Multiple lines can be used and command files can be nested. The resulting command line must be under 16K.
Sleep takes up to 100 filespecs, with paths and wildcards. Sleep will exit when any of these filespecs is created (+) or deleted (-). If also prefixed by "&", the conditions for those filespecs are AND'ed rather than OR'ed.
Serial and parallel port monitoring: Sleep outputs a byte to the port's control register, then monitors the port's status register, looking for the presence (+) or absence (-) of a bit or bits.
Scheduled events can stored in a file which contains one line per event. Sleep returns the error level of an event when it occurs.
Sleep can also be called to return an error level based on the date or time.
The cursor keys can be used to modify time remaining."

1552

Living Room / Re: Hallow-e'en

« Last post by rjbull on October 27, 2010, 08:32 AM »

We didn't celebrate Hallow-e'en in the U.K.

-cranioscopical (October 19, 2007, 09:18 AM)

UK has now adopted trick-and-treating, aka demanding money with menaces, which would be criminal in adults.  However, there are some better things:

Wychwood Brewery

1553

Living Room / Re: Windows Mobile device in $100-150 range on ebay..suggestions?

« Last post by rjbull on October 17, 2010, 02:16 PM »

daddydave, what do you mean by "digitizers going bad," please?  I've been using an eBayed Palm T3 for about three years without problems; it was in pristine condition when I first got it, though.

1554

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Hurry up: PIM Giveaway - All My Notes Organizer

« Last post by rjbull on October 15, 2010, 03:40 PM »

So, with the giveaway discount, the final price is only $17.  Well...  I did try to apply the 25% regional discount on top of that, but it wasn't having any  
<sigh>  One more in my collection of licenses!

Many thanks for the discounts, which seem carefully (and evidently, effectively) planned to suck in as many passing DC'ers as possible  

1555

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: Download Scheduler

« Last post by rjbull on October 14, 2010, 03:16 PM »

Common download managers should be able to do (most of) this, e.g. Internet Download Manager (payware), or Free Download Manager (freeware).  I'm not sure you can automatically overwrite files, though that might be in configuration options that I've never bothered to check.  If not, you could probably do it with a batch file run after the download finishes.

1556

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Hurry up: PIM Giveaway - All My Notes Organizer

« Last post by rjbull on October 14, 2010, 03:02 PM »

Thanks for the generous giveaway!  Is there a portable version of 1.37, or only for payware 2.21 onwards?

1557

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

« Last post by rjbull on October 14, 2010, 02:38 PM »

Thanks! I missed that when I read the book (I confess to reading more to find out what happened than for detail, need to go back).  I will tell this story when I talk about it.

-melitabel (October 12, 2010, 03:52 PM)

It looks more like EverNote than OneNote at first glance, but I'll take a longer look later.  I do need to find products which can work with both because we have people working on teams with both machines.  When this discussion started in 2006, note talking was entirely personal.  Now, there is little that I do without thinking, how will I be able to share this if I want to?

Larsson has Blomkvist using the software to keep notes on all members of the Vanger family, so it sounds like a structured system.  I confess this is somewhat third-hand information     There doesn't seem to be a PC version, unfortunately.

1558

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

« Last post by rjbull on October 12, 2010, 03:32 PM »

I did hope that there would be aversion of OneNote for Mac

-melitabel (October 11, 2010, 03:03 PM)

I presume you mean a genuine Microsoft OneNote, rather than a competitive product?  Because, I recently read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Out of interest I followed a link he gave, which turns out to be real software, Ibrium's NotePad Deluxe for the Mac.  The screenshot looks like a two-pane organiser.

1559

General Software Discussion / Re: extracting info from pdf

« Last post by rjbull on October 07, 2010, 03:24 PM »

Here is part of the manual for pdfimages, part of the XPDF suite:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pdfimages(1)                                                      pdfimages(1)



NAME
       pdfimages  -  Portable  Document  Format (PDF) image extractor (version
       3.02)

SYNOPSIS
       pdfimages [options] PDF-file image-root

DESCRIPTION
       Pdfimages saves images from a Portable Document Format  (PDF)  file  as
       Portable Pixmap (PPM), Portable Bitmap (PBM), or JPEG files.

       Pdfimages  reads  the  PDF file, scans one or more pages, PDF-file, and
       writes one PPM, PBM, or JPEG file for each  image,  image-root-nnn.xxx,
       where  nnn  is  the image number and xxx is the image type (.ppm, .pbm,
       .jpg).

       NB: pdfimages extracts the raw image data from the  PDF  file,  without
       performing  any  additional  transforms.  Any rotation, clipping, color
       inversion, etc. done by the PDF content stream is ignored.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1560

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Locate 3.0 - great *FAST* HD search tool!

« Last post by rjbull on October 07, 2010, 03:15 PM »

I personally don't like it has to run with admin privs, but without separating to a LUA GUI app and a admin service, that's just how it has to be.

-f0dder (October 07, 2010, 02:06 PM)

I bought a license for PC Magazine's RAAC = Run As Admin Controller, which makes running an admin app from a user account more comfortable.  But, that's only really a solution on your own PC.  Otherwise, perfectly competent file finders abound, but none are as fast as Everything.

1561

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on October 05, 2010, 03:06 PM »

On a thriller kick:

• (just finished)  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.    This one puts your life on hold until you finish it!
• (just finished)  Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason.    Latest in his Reykjavik series.
• The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth.    Very good, set in London and southern England during WWII.  The earlier two, set just after WWI, were absolutely excellent.

1562

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: One Day Promo - TreeDBNotes,TagControl 40%OFF

« Last post by rjbull on October 05, 2010, 02:54 PM »

WOT just OKd the TreeDBNotes link, but screamed about the SoftArtStudio one.

1563

General Software Discussion / Re: Q-Dir (File Manager)

« Last post by rjbull on September 25, 2010, 03:08 PM »

It's one of the most frequently updated programs I've seen...  XYPlorer is no slouch, either!

1564

General Software Discussion / Re: My Windows Desktop is a shambles...

« Last post by rjbull on September 23, 2010, 02:31 PM »

app, how do you remember what all the icons are for?  I prefer names, or icon+name.  Maybe, being an artist, you're particularly visually-oriented, rather than text-oriented?

1565

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by rjbull on September 23, 2010, 02:24 PM »

Thanks, tomos   

1566

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by rjbull on September 22, 2010, 03:12 PM »

Out of my (bedroom) window, this morning, 2010-09-22

1567

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Treo-like "Alt" key for Windows

« Last post by rjbull on September 19, 2010, 10:59 AM »

I don't think there's a lower case form of "Ð"

-Hirudin (April 18, 2007, 12:09 PM)

I think it's "ð"  It's Icelandic, one of their "th" sounds.

Blowing it up a bit: ð

1568

General Software Discussion / Re: Turn Windows path into URL?

« Last post by rjbull on September 18, 2010, 04:33 PM »

Listary can give filename, path, or path+filename.  I don't know if this feature is only in the Pro version, nor if it will do full UNC because I'm not on a network to test it.  Usefully, there's a portable version, and the basic version is free for personal use, otherwise $19.95 for Pro.  I bought my license when it was on Bits du Jour.

1569

General Software Discussion / Re: www.exendo.se, the makers of history explorer

« Last post by rjbull on September 16, 2010, 04:24 PM »

this other one, which as some advantages over AJC (easier to configure, non proprietary archive format, etc.).

-MerleOne (September 16, 2010, 10:44 AM)

I'd prefer a "non proprietary archive format" myself.  Still, it seems nice enough, though fortunately I haven't had to use it much.

1570

General Software Discussion / Re: www.exendo.se, the makers of history explorer

« Last post by rjbull on September 15, 2010, 02:32 PM »

If you're sufficiently cheesed off, you might like to compare it with AJC Active Backup, which has also featured on Bits du Jour.

1571

General Software Discussion / Re: extracting info from pdf

« Last post by rjbull on September 14, 2010, 03:15 PM »

is there a free PDF editor/converter that works well? many converters fail to convert properly to doc, even Acrobat
if not, any paid one that is really good?

-kalos (September 14, 2010, 10:43 AM)

Like others, I doubt you will find a free tool to do what you want, especially with tables.  I've used XPDF for extracting text from PDFs.  It will also extract images and (I think) do a few other things.  You might try the free online file conversion service Zamzar, which I found quite good when I tried it.  There's at least one more similar service, Media-Convert.

1572

General Software Discussion / Re: extracting info from pdf

« Last post by rjbull on September 14, 2010, 02:52 PM »

The test was with the free version of Able2Extract, I take it?

-daddydave (September 13, 2010, 03:11 PM)

No, painfully paid for.  Oh, and the reason why I chose Able2Extract over Nuance at the time - pre-test, as it happened - was because Nuance directed me to their UK shop, where they translate $US into £UK one-to-one.  I might have missed a slightly better program, but they missed my business through greed and taking UK residents for fools.

1573

General Software Discussion / Re: extracting info from pdf

« Last post by rjbull on September 13, 2010, 03:03 PM »

PDF Converter 7

-daddydave (September 13, 2010, 02:52 PM)

This is one of the Nuance ones.  I have Able2Extract.  Darwin kindly did a test on his Nuance Pro (more expensive) on the complicated front page of a World patent, for me to compare.  Nuance did a slightly better job, but there wasn't a lot in it.  Able2Extract in fact uses technology licensed from Nuance.

1574

Living Room / Re: Does Flash or java make websites suck?

« Last post by rjbull on September 12, 2010, 10:10 AM »

When I was at work, I used to check industry web sites using WebSite-Watcher.  I hated all-Flash sites because WSW couldn't see differences in them, if any.  I had lots to do, limited time to do it, and rarely any inherent interest in the sites.  Flash became a block to information transfer.

1575

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Notepad that remembers the font (and other settings) used per file

« Last post by rjbull on September 10, 2010, 04:30 PM »

Notetab Pro can do it, within limits; it doesn't seem to offer a huge number of fonts, but there is at least some choice.  Hit the Document menu, then Properties, to have the editor permanently associate the chosen font with the file (I think).  Notetab Pro is payware.  I don't know if the same thing works with Notetab Lite, freeware.