Recent Posts

15951

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CHS vs. ArsClip

« Last post by mouser on July 18, 2010, 11:43 AM »

very good observations; the icons in menu is a cool idea.

as for customizing which clips show in the quick paste popup, open CHS main window, right-click on the Quick Paste group and edit it and modify the SQL for the virtual folder.  by default it's: "NOT (IsInRecyleBin) AND (ModificationDateTime>=DateTimeMinusOneHour)"
if you change that to just "NOT (IsInRecyleBin)" you might see what you want.

15952

Living Room / Re: Software Industry Conference - Dallas, Texas -- Pics

« Last post by mouser on July 17, 2010, 05:20 PM »

fun.. wish we could have had a donationcoder tshirt on display..

15953

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR plugin: FarrWebMetaSearch 1.6.0

« Last post by mouser on July 17, 2010, 04:44 PM »

i should be able to fix this if i understand where it is failing to resolve %PLUGINDIR%

15954

Living Room / Re: Twitter is the world's fastest growing search engine

« Last post by mouser on July 17, 2010, 07:57 AM »

whoa that wms plugin is pretty amazing 

15955

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

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 06:31 PM »

And if you go into a B&N you can read ANY book on your Nook

!!!! that sounds amazing.

15956

Living Room / Re: Lists of Forums with help on home contractor problems (roof, heating, etc.)

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 01:47 PM »

they use reviews from customers

this is very different from what i am talking about.  i'm not talking about a place to get opinions of specific contractors.

i'm talking about forums where experts can advise homeowners about questions, problems and issues with work done by contractors.  these are places where you can go to get an expert second opinion after a contractor has finished some work which you find questionable -- or places you can go to get some expert assessment to help you figure out what you need to pay attention to when hiring a contractor.

15957

Living Room / Re: Best dense-information, detailed-illustration books of things?

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 01:44 PM »

There's a sad irony in a book about trees.

or perhaps there is a sublime honor in being a solitary tree from whose single trunk the entire catalog and history of all the world's arboretum might be set forth and passed on and studied.

15958

Living Room / Best dense-information, detailed-illustration books of things?

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 01:02 PM »

I really love these reference books that are densely packed with small illustrations or photos on every page, cataloging animals, insects, etc.

Here are two prime examples:

http://www.amazon.co...-Allen/dp/0679451226


http://www.amazon.co...de-Trees-David-Allen


Anyone have any others to recommend?

15959

Living Room / Lists of Forums with help on home contractor problems (roof, heating, etc.)

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 12:20 PM »

One of the things i've been doing for the 1929 condo building i live in is hire and supervise contractors to do work on the building.  This has included major heating/radiator/boiler work, a new roof, windows, electrical, etc.

In a perfect world it would be easy to find and hire a good contractor and entrust them to do a good job.  The reality is far from that.  I've found you have to educate yourself, check their work carefully, and be skeptical.

In some areas you may be able to educate yourself sufficiently with a book or two, but in other areas, getting some advice and second opinions from experts can be invaluable.  But it's not easy to find an expert in real life to give you a second opinion about another contractor's work.  This is where some of the specialty contractor forums can be invaluable.

I wanted to start us of with 2 forums that i have found to be particularly helpful -- with professional contractors willing to take a look at photos and comment on them and offer advice.

I'm hoping others here will add more.

• Heating, especially Steam Heating Contractor Talk: http://www.heatinghelp.com/Forum
• Roofing Contractor Talk: http://www.roofing.com/

As good as these sites are, they are basically forums where contractors talk to one another and are sometimes willing to help homeowners with questions and advice.  It does make me wonder if the time isn't ripe to try to create a website focused on providing objective support for these specialty areas.  Doing that would require figuring out a way to pay the contractors who participate in such discussions -- but it's a service that people should probably be willing to pay for gladly.

15960

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Zonal OCR Image

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 08:58 AM »

i know some people here on dc do quite a bit of OCR, and i think it may be that even this specific question got asked in the past. would be interesting to hear what they say.  my screenshot taking program (Screenshot Captor) has support for scanning, and it can be told to only grab a particular region of the screen or scanner bed, and run external tools after capturing, so that might come close, but it does seem like this would be something that calls for a dedicated program.

do the dedicated OCR applications not have something like this?  what's missing from the existing applications?

15961

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Tidy Favorites Online

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 08:12 AM »

Welcome to the site Dennis, looks like a very cool idea to me.

15962

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Famous Software : We review your software for free

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 07:59 AM »

Welcome 

15963

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

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2010, 07:35 AM »

indeed when i said "cheap" i meant the smaller models of the kindle or other ebook manufacturers that are now under $200.

obviously that's still a lot of money -- i didn't mean to imply it wasn't, just that the costs are starting to get to where it's a gift to consider.

15964

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

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2010, 09:07 PM »

the dictionary feature is indeed excellent -- i should have mentioned that.

search is a great feature in theory, but because my conclusion is that the ebook isnt great for reference browsing, its hard to think of cases where search helps much.

i find annotations one of the features where the ebook fails miserably compared to writing in the margins of a real book or paper.

which also brings up another downside of an ebook reader compared to a real book.  with a real book on my bookshelf, i can see it, remember it, see the notes i wrote in it -- it has a very real tangible memory existence for me.  the ebook books seem much much more ethereal -- once finished they vanish from memory.  again this is a case where reading a novel would be fine, but for a reference book, i don't know.

15965

General Software Discussion / Re: weather.com

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2010, 09:02 PM »

hamradio turned me on to http://www.intellicast.com
which has a fantastic radar display (see image at very bottom after you put in your zip code)

15966

Living Room / Some initial reflections on using an ebook reader

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2010, 07:09 PM »

I was recently gifted a new kindle dx and thought it might be useful to report my initial thoughts for others considering jumping into buying an ebook reader.

This will be really quick, just some fast thoughts while they are fresh in my mind.

First, I underestimated how enjoyable it would be to read a normally-paperback fiction book on it.  I normally read large format academic/reference books and papers, and rarely fiction, but decided to read a free version of Moby Dick (Herman Mellville) on the kindle, and it is extremely satisfying.

I think there are several reasons it's satisfying; the fiction format is very well suited to an ebook reader.  the screen is larger than a normal paperback, and the fact that one reads such books linearly, page after page, makes the page turning speed 100% satisfactory.  (this isn't the case when you want to quickly flip through a reference book).

The weight of the thing makes it fun to carry around the house and read in different rooms, and the e-ink is indeed much more comfortable to my eyes than an lcd screen ever is, and there is real advantage to there being no viewing-angle issues.

Compared to reading a book -- one thing i didn't realize is how much of an advantage it is that the ebook reader doesn't have the problems that books have of not saying folded open, and having to hold them open.  the flat 2 dimensional slate feel of an ebook reader is actually a really nice thing.  as much as i appreciate the physicality of a book -- there is some real advantage to the physical size and shape of an ebook reader from a functional standpoint.  i'm surprised how pleasant it is to lay the book reader down flat on a table or on my lap or hold it with one hand while reading.

I never have a physical bookmark when i need one; having the ebook reader remember where i left off is nice.

Areas where i find the ebook reader less satisfactory:

Reference books and papers: it's very hard to capture the feel and experience you get from being able to really quickly flip through, scan, and browse such documents and can feel claustrophic and very limiting trying to do here.

There is something very attractive about being able to carry one device with hundreds or even thousands of books on it.  however my initial experience has been that i'm not finding myself reading the same way i listen to music, wanting to have a hundred choices on hand at any given moment.  instead reading seems more likely to be a matter of having one or two items at a time that one is focusing on.  so this is not such a big deal.

If you love reading classic older literature, that is now in the public domain -- I think you need to get yourself an ebook reader; it's PERFECT for this, the books are free and readily available, and the reading experience is ideal.

In fact i'll go further: if you have a child you want to expose to fine literature, a wonderful gift might be to get one of these now cheap kindles, and fill it with public domain literature classics.  And it's one of the few technological devices that can't be used to waste time and rot their brains.

Reading the NY times or other newspapers on it -- very cool how it gets them automatically each day, but not very satisfying to read.  however reading the onion blog is quite fun.

15967

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: A Work Break Timer with a Particular Appearance

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2010, 12:51 PM »

This isn't exactly what you are asking for, but InstantBoss by dc member app103 comes pretty close:
http://www.appsapps.info/instantboss.php



And maybe app would be interested in hearing your ideas; here's the thread where InstantBoss was born:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=4430.0

15968

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor Splice Tool

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2010, 11:39 AM »

makes me very happy to see when people like a new feature 

and thank you for your donation support -- it makes it possible for me to keep updating the software. 

15969

Post New Requests Here / Re: ToDSSS - Time Of Day Synchronized Slide Show Screen Saver

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2010, 07:21 AM »

Fun idea.

I already have an image based screensaver (Multi Photo Quotes).  It wouldn't be too hard to add some of these features as an option.

15970

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Screenshot Captor Question

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2010, 12:20 AM »

You could do this by setting the timer to capture a new screenshot every 60 seconds.

But then i would encourage you to explore the more specific tools designed to interface to a webcam and look for changing images and automatically snap a new image whenever the image changes.  There are some good ones, mainly focused on security application use that do this.

I actually have a new application that interfaces to a webcam and could easily be modified to do such stuff and will be released at the end of this year, so depending on what you find i might be willing to release something.  Let us know what you find.

15971

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Script to set a system restore point; win7

« Last post by mouser on July 14, 2010, 07:36 PM »

I'm a single parent with teenagers.
System restore points are a necessity.

 

setting up a good external backup system would probably be a good idea too.

15972

General Software Discussion / Re: save the text of all visited webpages

« Last post by mouser on July 14, 2010, 12:43 PM »

it seems like this would be a good project for a beginning plugin coder, to make a firefox/chrome/etc plugin that simply saved the text of every page opened to a datestamped file somewhere.

15973

Site/Forum Features / Re: Idea: DC Cody Tshirts customized for an interest area

« Last post by mouser on July 14, 2010, 12:03 PM »

that would look pretty cool on a shirt with some red and black text (in a communism-style font) saying something cryptic related to "Coding Snacks".

15974

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Open Menu

« Last post by mouser on July 14, 2010, 12:01 PM »

i agree with everything JJ says.

and if you WANTED to add some kind of imagery to suggest this was about meals/restaurants/etc you could always stick a small illustration of some sort inside the green circle or under the "M".

15975

Find And Run Robot / Re: Scrolling the output of appcapappendmemo

« Last post by mouser on July 14, 2010, 11:57 AM »

i shall add it on next update, which should be in a day or two.