Recent Posts

15776

Find And Run Robot / FARR 2.88.01 beta - testing requested

« Last post by mouser on August 17, 2010, 10:31 AM »

I put up a new beta version of FARR that i'd like some help testing:
https://www.donation...AndRunRobotSetup.exe

The new version doesn't have any interesting new features, but i made some changes to make it wake up from minimization (a lot) faster, and i'd like to get some feedback to see if i've broken anything in the process.

(essentially the new version prepares the next search results, which typically show launch history, as it is minimizing, rather than on the next request to display).

note: if you have your normal farr trigger set to always start off with some text pre-added to the search box, this new method will not help you at all; is there anyone who uses farr in this way, to always have some text in the search box when they trigger it? i am thinking of adding a special option for that case but would like to hear if anyone actually has use for it.  don't worry if you just occasionally pull up farr in this way -- i only care if you always bring up farr with some same text in the search box.

Beta Changes:

• [MajorFeature] Faster wakeup display from minimized state (see also the StayInMemoryLonger option on General Options tab)
• [Feature] Alias matches now show instantly even when keypress delay option is enabled.
• [BugFix] When you do not have "stop on exact alias match" checked and an alias was matched, it could show large numbers of results.
• [Feature] New install of farr now adds the search directory %PROGRAMFILES64% which will search in the win64 specific program files directory (not just the Program Files (x86) directory); older users should add this directory manually.
• [BugFix] When launch results had an argument that ended in \ it could mess up launching of them
• [BugFix] When the option to show FARR in taskbar when active was set, there was an additional delay before FARR could start accepting characters after unminimizing.

15777

Unicode Image Maker / Re: Little Bug

« Last post by mouser on August 16, 2010, 09:43 PM »

all's well that minimizes well, i always say 

15778

Living Room / Re: Fixing 2-XL 8 Track Robot

« Last post by mouser on August 16, 2010, 08:09 PM »

welcome to the site joan; i'm afraid i dont have any tips on fixing it, but i do notice tons of 2xl robots on ebay today, i've never seen so many.  so buying a spare might still be the way to go.

and of course the online 2-xl "simulator" i made has the advantage of not breaking, but is unfortunately not very friendly to the visually impaired.  i actually made a real attempt to make it useable with keyboard shortcuts instead of a mouse, but i could not figure out how to do it in flash despite my best attempts.

15779

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Alias: WolframAlpha Search

« Last post by mouser on August 16, 2010, 12:23 PM »

Note, if you want the result from wolfram alpha to display directly in your farr window, and not open your browser to show it, you can easily do that by changing the alias result from:

[Select]

WolframAlpha: $$1 | http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$$u1 /ICON=icons\wolframalpha.ico

to:

[Select]

WolframAlpha: $$1 | htmlviewurl http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$$u1 /ICON=icons\wolframalpha.ico

15780

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FCalc: how to do algebra or ratios?

« Last post by mouser on August 16, 2010, 12:19 PM »

i think ampa has the right idea, and in fact lanux already made an alias for wolfram alpha, that you can download here:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=18405.0

15781

Living Room / Re: ultimate insult from fraudulent ebay seller tries to sell me iPhone 4

« Last post by mouser on August 16, 2010, 11:15 AM »

yeah i wouldn't assume you are in trouble, i'd just pay heightened attention to my credit cards for the next few months.

15782

Living Room / Re: ultimate insult from fraudulent ebay seller tries to sell me iPhone 4

« Last post by mouser on August 16, 2010, 10:20 AM »

well you need to change your paypal login password immediately, that would be a start.

paypal has an incredibly cool hardware security key that generates one-time-use login codes; it's like a $5 onetime fee and i love mine.
more info:
https://www.paypal.c...lSecurityKey-outside

15783

Living Room / Re: ultimate insult from fraudulent ebay seller tries to sell me iPhone 4

« Last post by mouser on August 16, 2010, 09:52 AM »

The real question is.. how did someone managed to make a charge go through on your paypal account.
That is the mystery you have to solve.

And just to clarify, i'm sure you've already considered this -- but for anyone else reading, be aware that sometimes a scammer will send you an email pretending to be from paypal, pretending that you have been charged for something, and giving you fake links to paypal customer services, etc.  You need to make sure on all such occasions that if you think you have been wrongfully charged for something, that you NOT use any of the links in the email to go to the site, but open the website manually on your own.

15784

Finished Programs / Re: Chorded shortcuts for RSI prevention

« Last post by mouser on August 15, 2010, 02:40 PM »

The thing is that I want to limit the # of keypresses, i.e. I do not want to hit Enter.

if you are already using farr, let me just mention that you can create your own aliases that don't require you to hit enter, see this thread for details: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=18620.0

15785

Find And Run Robot / Re: Never show tray icon and/or taskbar button

« Last post by mouser on August 15, 2010, 09:01 AM »

hmm good point, let me look into it. shouldn't be a problem to add.

15786

Find And Run Robot / Re: Never show tray icon and/or taskbar button

« Last post by mouser on August 15, 2010, 08:27 AM »

is there a way to have no tray icon at all (like L*unchy or Ex*cutor)...?

see second screenshot.

15787

Finished Programs / Re: Skinny Paste

« Last post by mouser on August 15, 2010, 08:25 AM »

quick tip, for FARR users, it's really easy to make an alias with a list of items you can quickly paste into running application, and which you can search through and choose by typing.
just make an alias and in the results put a list of items like so:



though i still think this is a perfect case for a simple coding snack.

15788

Find And Run Robot / Re: Never show tray icon and/or taskbar button

« Last post by mouser on August 15, 2010, 07:44 AM »

Possibly this could be caused by the utility "Tray Wizard" that I use to keep tray clutter to a minimum.

im guessing this is true -- can you test it by exiting Tray Wizard and restarting farr?

also, try making sure you have these two options set as follows, and restart farr after changing either of them:



the first one is probably already unchecked, but the second one is not set by default.

15789

General Software Discussion / ghacks on adding custom items to windows explorer context menu

« Last post by mouser on August 15, 2010, 07:00 AM »

Martin over at ghacks has written several write-ups of programs that let you customize the context menu in windows explorer / file managers.
Today he writes about and older program called "Fast Explorer 2008", but he has written a whole series of other short articles on similar programs, all worth checking out. 

• ghacks on Fast Explorer 2008 - http://www.ghacks.ne...plorer-context-menu/
• ghacks on Context Menu Enhancer - http://www.ghacks.ne...plorer-context-menu/
• ghacks on XP Context Tools - http://www.ghacks.ne...xt-tools-to-windows/
• ghacks on File Menu Tools - http://www.ghacks.ne...context-menu-editor/
• ghacks on Your Menu - http://www.ghacks.ne...ndows-7-contex-menu/

15790

Living Room / Jonah Lehrer on The Psychology of Power

« Last post by mouser on August 15, 2010, 06:46 AM »

I've posted links to blog essays by Jonah Lehrer before, and i maintain he is possibly the best popular science of psychology writer around today on the web.

He moved from his own blog to Wired recently, and the move doesn't seem to have slowed him down at all.  Today's essay on "The Psychology of Power" is worth reading.

Nothing revolutionary in the article, but it's worth reading.

Basically it argues that some of us have got it backwards with regards to how we get bad leaders. Jonah suggests that organizations tend to promote kind and conscientious people, and weed out the really selfish ones (contrary to the thinking of many of us that only the cut-throat Machiavellis make their way to the top).  But that it's the very act of having power and responsibility that tends to lead good people to going astray.  I guess that's the age old "power corrupts" thing.  Worth reading, especially if you are one of those good people who may find themselves in a position of some authority and think "i could never act that way."

Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude... Although people almost always know the right thing to do—cheating is wrong—their sense of power makes it easier to rationalize away the ethical lapse.

http://www.wired.com...psychology-of-power/

15791

DC Gamer Club / Re: Worms Reloaded on Steam on Aug 26, 2010 - multiplayer dc

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 08:29 PM »

im happy to buy the next 4 pack; next 3 people can send me $15 in donationcredits each.

15792

Finished Programs / Re: Skinny Paste

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 01:48 PM »

sounds like a good idea for a coding snack to me.

15793

Living Room / Re: Some initial reflections on using an ebook reader

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 11:45 AM »

it seems like a bunch of new ebook readers may be coming out at the end of the year, might pay to wait a bit, i'm not sure.

15794

Living Room / Re: lap top cooling pad

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 11:17 AM »

very good advice about dust in the cooling fan and vents.

but be very careful about this step:

With most laptops you should be able to use a can of compressed air to blow off most of the dust without opening the laptop.

i think we have had some threads in the past about how easy it is to destroy a computer when blowing compressed air into it.  in fact i destroyed one of mine in exactly that fashion, and it wasn't pretty (the thread is still on dc somewhere about my ordeal).

do look for dust and see if you can remove it with tweezers, then look around the web for other ways to clean the fan.  that really goes for all fans on all pcs, not just laptops.

15795

Living Room / Re: Pubctuation display problem

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 09:46 AM »

what i was trying to get at is that some of the solutions people are suggesting are needed when the web page itself specifies the wrong character encoding for the content of the page.  so if it's your web page and you want to fix the problem at it's root -- it may be that you need to change the character encoding line on the header of the page you are making, or else fix the extended ascii characters on the page that look ok to you in your text editor but are not part of the normal default character encoding set.

15796

Living Room / Re: Some initial reflections on using an ebook reader

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 09:44 AM »

The amazon kindle actually has a built in voice reading feature that will read what you see on the screen out loud to you, and has earphone jack too.  it seems to work quite well.

As far as it being useful for limited site -- one of the main advantages of these ebook readers, and the kindle in particular, is that you can zoom the font size to be very large.  so i think that would be quite useful for someone who can still see but has a hard time with small print.

15797

Screenshot Captor / Re: Version number anomaly

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 09:39 AM »

Thanks for a thoughtful and kind reply 
Perhaps this was just the gentle and kind nudge i needed to update my build process to embed the proper version # in the exe file when building.

15798

Living Room / Re: Pubctuation display problem

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 09:38 AM »

I think it's important that you clarify, in terms of choosing a fix, if your aim is:

• To edit your web page so that you and others don't see such bad characters in the future.
• To quickly change your browser settings so that you personally can view the page properly, without caring what others viewing the page see.

15799

Screenshot Captor / Re: Version number anomaly

« Last post by mouser on August 14, 2010, 07:57 AM »

hi kzinnato, welcome to the site and remember our motto: don't panic!
well i'm not sure that's our motto, but it's still good advice.

first things first, the version on this website (donationcoder.com) is the one and only official download.  direct link is here and it will always get you the latest version: https://www.donation...nshotCaptorSetup.exe

now as for cnet download, cnet should have a copy of our official version.

let me tell you where i think the confusion is coming from.  in windows, exe files can have a version number embedded within them -- the version # embedded in the exe file of screenshot captor is indeed "2.28.5.0" and has been probably for over a year.  that's just not a number i bother to update.  it's not related to the official release version.

perhaps i should automate the setting of that exe-file-embedded value during builds, but in general this number is not a reliable as a way of guess a program version number.  however programs like TechTracker may try to guess at the version number using it, which would explain the confusion.

15800

Living Room / Re: Micropayments to DonationCoder could be possible through new PayPal service

« Last post by mouser on August 13, 2010, 11:18 PM »

While that kind of system might make sense for regular software developers and other online businesses, small coders taking micropayments would get eaten alive by fees I would think.

it could be quite the opposite if done right, and that's the KEY to this being a "new" service specialized for micro-payments.

if the current standard minimum paypal fee is 25 cents (and that fee goes up to $1 on a $25 payment) then a STANDARD paypal payment for anything less than 50 cents is dwarfed by fees.

BUT the idea of all micro-payment systems is that people put in larger chunks of money, the fee is taken from that, and then micro-transactions take place "virtually" with little or no transaction fees.

SO, in this case a person would deposit $25 and pay a fee on that ($1) and then be able to make as many micro-transactions of as little as a couple of cents, without anyone paying any further fees.

That's the idea, and thats what makes a micro-payment system special.