Recent Posts

1676

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Phatware Buy 1 get 1 Free = Phatnotes + Calligrapher up till 15 Sep 08

« Last post by Dormouse on September 05, 2008, 09:29 AM »

I could not work out the real life difference between
Phatnotes "Award-winning advanced notes organizer for mobile and desktop computers" and
Phatpad "an advanced notes organizer for Microsoft Windows Powered Tablet, Desktop and Pocket PCs"

1677

General Software Discussion / Re: What's the best image-"framer"?

« Last post by Dormouse on September 05, 2008, 07:19 AM »

Today the Giveaway of the Day is Wondershare Photo Collage Studio, which apparently includes photo frames.

The framer that I would go for is IDFramer - but it is $39  , which is why I haven't bought it (so far anyway).

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General Software Discussion / Re: List of newbie questions regarding software

« Last post by Dormouse on September 04, 2008, 12:22 PM »

For novel writing etc., it is worth looking at Liquid Story Binder and its Forum. Has been on both BitsduJour and GAOTD recently.

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Living Room / Re: Can you live with *just* opera?

« Last post by Dormouse on September 03, 2008, 01:44 PM »

Opera + gmail is pure shit. I love Opera and keep trying to use it, but every time I check my e-mail I want to scream and find myself scrambling for file -> exit.

Earlier in this thread, it was mentioned that Opera and gmail play well together... what am I missing? Because for me, it hangs for everything. Changing folders is 50/50, reading a message is 50/50. Sending messages? I have about a 5% chance of actually getting it sent. Useless.

-allen (September 02, 2008, 10:27 AM)

I don't have these problems. Mostly it works just fine. Sometimes it feels as if the gmail server is down - but it's no better if I try touse FF to access it. Never descended as far as ie for this.

Just as I have no problems using my bank account with Opera.

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7.5 is Released

« Last post by Dormouse on September 03, 2008, 10:01 AM »

Send me an e-mail to [email protected] and I can try e-mailing it to you. Are you on dial-up?

-VideoInPicture (September 02, 2008, 03:32 PM)

Thanks for the offer. I tried to post a reply twice last night, but neither actually got through and I gave up.

The download eventually made it, so everything is OK now 
I'm not on dial-up, though it does sometimes feel like it. Certainly my old ISDN connection felt more reliable than my broadband does now. I have only a .5MB connection because of my distance from the exchange. And the line goes down completely a few times a year. As it had over a few days over the weekend; the phone line seems to be working now but the internet connection has been slow and very intermittent. Hopefully that also has been repaired by now, though I haven't checked.

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Circle Dock / Re: Portability

« Last post by Dormouse on September 02, 2008, 05:11 PM »

A number of the corporate-type computers I use are never updated. Policy seems to be to rely on draconian firewalls and only reimage when the system breaks. And obviously, being corporate, none of them are on Vista - and one or two are still on 2k. But the ones I use most myself should work fine being pretty new.

So real portability will be welcome,but the portability already there is very useful. 

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Circle Dock / Portability

« Last post by Dormouse on September 02, 2008, 03:46 PM »

Because everything is kept in its folder, I assumed Circle Dock might be somewhat portable (despite needing .Net).
So I tried it with my USB and it was  . Haven't tested it at different drive letters, but assume it will always need to be at the same letter to work; or is it self-referential?

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7.5 is Released

« Last post by Dormouse on September 02, 2008, 03:30 PM »

The download doesn't seem to support resume (I've tried Opera & FF Down Them All).

After some time without internet connection, I now have one that is very intermittent. Managed to get as far as 93% once, but that is no different to 0% without the ability to resume.

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 29, 2008, 05:31 AM »

I have RocketDock and ObjectDock open (+ other progs), but not Elegant Clock and I have never had any problems with the mouse or 100% CPU (or anything like it) when opening or closing windows.

I am using WinXP SP2 with 512RAM.

-rittwik (August 28, 2008, 11:33 PM)

Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz
128MB RAM

-rittwik (August 29, 2008, 01:50 AM)

But there is a big difference in system specs.  - I have a Core2Duo with 2GB memory and a relatively new (though inexpensive) graphics card with 512MB memory of its own. TBH, I don't think I'd like to try to run WinXP Pro in the RAM levels you quote at all.

1685

Circle Dock / Re: Windows Start Menu Shadow Residue Bug

« Last post by Dormouse on August 28, 2008, 11:47 AM »

XP Pro

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Circle Dock / Re: Windows Start Menu Shadow Residue Bug

« Last post by Dormouse on August 28, 2008, 03:43 AM »

I'll be improving the speed of loading the dock folders in Alpha 8 so there will be less lag. And yes, I will be adding more shape options.

-VideoInPicture (August 27, 2008, 06:30 PM)

Faster would definitely be better. Also a set of included icons/folders in the right click menu might be quite fast (there's no point in putting a lot of icons in a virtual folder).

To some extent, I'm testing out the reasonable usability limits. Can certainly go higher than I have atm, but no more than another ring or two. I could benefit from geting the icons more densely packed if there were the same density for each ring, buthaving the icons going out in spokes is also a good way of organising them - at least if there were an easy way to decide which spoke and which ring each icon was on. [I can rearrange icons by moving them one over the other, but haven't yet worked out the rules that decide where the outgoing icon moves too; I probably just need to look at this a bit more].

The Start Menu is disappearing in your case because the dock is grabbing focus when you hover over part of it. Have you tried setting the option to hide the dock after it executes something in Settings Panel -> Dock Items -> Hide Dock? This will prevent the dock from grabbing focus because it will fade away.

Circle Dock won't be able to open your special start menu because it is hardcoded to show the default Windows start menu, which has a class name of "DV2Host" and I don't think other start menus use this. I'll be adding an option for the middle button to execute other things beside opening up the default start menu, but I don't think I could move any of the other add-on start menus to where Circle Dock is located.

-VideoInPicture (August 27, 2008, 06:30 PM)

I don't expect Circle Dock to open VSM and don't really need it to open the Start Menu - I was just looking at what it did really. With Circle Dock, I wouldn't be using the start menu (any type) much anyway. Quite happy with it opening the default Start Menu, if only I could see it all and use it - but if it weren't there I probably wouldn't be mentioning it as a desired feature.

1687

Circle Dock / Re: Windows Start Menu Shadow Residue Bug

« Last post by Dormouse on August 27, 2008, 06:19 PM »

I'm at 120 top level icons now, and have only just started playing with the dock folders (about another 8 in there). Not sure what I'll end up putting in them yet, as it is most efficient having everything at top level. Not sure what the top number for that is, but it would be even bigger if the outer circles could contain more icons than the inner one (and I'm sure this is planned  ). Still can't get it over 50% CPU however much I move it; seems pretty reasonable on resource use.

If I try the start menu now, it does come up even having reactivated the Vista Start Menu, but I have a problem in that if I move my mouse towards it, it disappears again before my mouse gets there. Maybe a TLB/VSM conflict.

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Living Room / Re: If somebody offers you swapping your PC for a mac cold turkey: would you do it?

« Last post by Dormouse on August 27, 2008, 12:59 PM »

I've used Macs (& Lisas & Apple2s etc) in the dim and distant, but my answer would always be 'no' now.

If MS is the Evil Empire then Apple is the Most Evil Principality. More evil than MS but less influential. So, 1, I wouldn't want to support them.

2. I don't want to waste time learning stuff I will never use. Linux is quite enough of an extra for me. (Soon, I hope, it will be Windows that is the extra).

3. Apple has been consistently (well, reasonably consistently) successful with Steve Jobs and consistently unsuccessful without him. There will be a limit to how much longer he will drive Apple forward, and then what will happen?

4. There is far more software, free and commercial, of all types available for Windows and/or Linux than for the Mac.

With the Mac you get the OS, lifted from Next/Unix, and a limited set of very proprietary hardware. If the OS were freely available, I'd consider it as an alternative to Windows/Linux but I wouldn't tie myself into a limited set of hardware controlled by a ruthless exploiter of a monopoly.

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 26, 2008, 09:49 PM »

Right now, I'm making it so that Circle Dock can extract all the default high resolution icons in Vista so that you don't have to replace all the icon images.

-VideoInPicture (August 26, 2008, 09:07 PM)

Of course, I have my Vista Start Menu running on Windows XP 

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General Software Discussion / Re: Desktops V1.0 - a virtual desktop manager from Sysinternals

« Last post by Dormouse on August 26, 2008, 07:19 PM »

I'm amazed this came out of SysInternals. 

-40hz (August 26, 2008, 05:46 PM)

Maybe MS is finally exerting an influence

1691

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Friday, January 12: ClipMate @ Bits du Jour

« Last post by Dormouse on August 26, 2008, 07:15 PM »

I've owned a licence for Clipmate since before I knew of the existence of CH&S and have over 400 clips saved and organized. Thus, I've never *needed* to play with CH&S much and can't really give an educated breakdown of the pros and cons of each 

-Darwin (August 26, 2008, 06:17 PM)

I think I'll take this as a recommendation for ClipMate - especially coming from someone who always seems to have tried a number of options extensively 

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Friday, January 12: ClipMate @ Bits du Jour

« Last post by Dormouse on August 26, 2008, 07:11 PM »

There are a few nice discussions on the forum about different clipboard "enhancers". One of my favorite is dominated by allen  with some great reflections.

-Armando (August 26, 2008, 02:19 PM)

Thanks, I'd not remembered this one (I'm assuming I've seen it before as I remember a discussion about AceText). allen's objections to ClipMate seemed to be that it does too much (I think I can survive with that) and lack of a portable mode (also important to me - but it now has that).

I do a lot of writing and correcting. Some of my own stuff is used in multiple documents. I don't really need anything too complex, but I prefer mouse use (and I'll see how ClipMate goes with that) and will use some long kept snippets. I don't need it to compete with Ultra Recall, OneNote or Evernote though.

1693

Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 26, 2008, 04:07 PM »

Circle Dock open from restart a few hours ago; 64 items on it so far; most of the time CPU usage is 0%; I can get it to nearly 50% if I really spin it fast. Moving mouse over an icon brings it up to nearly 4% occasionally (ie usually much less).

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Friday, January 12: ClipMate @ Bits du Jour

« Last post by Dormouse on August 26, 2008, 12:53 PM »

I'd install and test it - if you don't have any trouble, it's a must have. Having said that, if I didn't have so much invested in organising my clips through it, I'd switch to Clipboard Help and Spell...

-Darwin (August 26, 2008, 12:28 PM)

What do you see as the advantages/disadvantages against Clipboard Help and Spell?
I loaded CH+S, and it does seem powerful, but it seems rather keyboard orientated and it turned out that I didn't actually use it very much so I stopped autoloading it. (In practice, with Circle Dock I shall be autoloading a great deal less anyway). I did have the trial of ClipMate installed - but found I was still on Day 1 of 30 after all these months  - probably because I was mostly trying other free progs (Ditto, ClipMagic, CH+S, ClipCache, ClipX etc) and didn't see myself buying a full price version of ClipMate. Of course, with a discount, it may be different.

Wish I'd paid attention to all the posts on extraordinarily low prices on ListPro now, and don't want to miss out on the discount on ClipMate if it really is better than the others. Doesn't seem as if it will be quick to get on top of its usage though (and not sure I'll do it in a week), so the more explanations of its advantages there are, the easier to make a decision. I do need to decide which one I will stick to longer term though & portability is a definite advantage there against some of the others.

PS - No sign of any problems in my so far desultory usage despite Office 2007. Any hint to what I should be looking out for?

1695

Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 26, 2008, 03:16 AM »

there is an option in the Settings Panel under Centre Button to enable or disable the centre button from opening up the start menu. I still haven't been able to fix the shadow residue bug or find some open source code of a docklet that properly brings up the start menu. Anyone with a solution?

-VideoInPicture (August 25, 2008, 05:54 PM)

Shadow problem does not bother me since I normally have them turned off anyway.

Why not allow the centre button to be allocated to any keyboard key or combo? It wouldn't give the position by the dock but would increase flexibility. In my case, it would allow the Start Menu to come up even if I have it as the Vista Start Menu - and it covers teh whole screen anyway, so position is not an issue.

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 25, 2008, 05:41 PM »

With Vista Start Menu turned off, I do get the Start Menu.
But it is very tall and the top of the left column is effectively missing. Programs show up OK within window.

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 25, 2008, 12:04 PM »

I don't get the Start Menu at all. Presumably because I have Vista Start Menu installed.

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 25, 2008, 09:08 AM »

Thank you.   

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Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 Discussion

« Last post by Dormouse on August 25, 2008, 08:59 AM »

Looking really good.

Only problem so far is that it seems to toggle every time I go to the bottom of the screen. I've tried unticking the edge of screen boxes on the toggle menu, but they are all always ticked again when I look.Strangely nothing happens when i approach any other screen edge. I have a 2 monitor system with the 2nd monitor usually switched off. It toggles when I hit the outer edge of the workspace (ie left edge on left monitor, right edge on right etc) except when it hits the ObjectDock or RocketDock edges when they emerge and Circle Dock doesn't. Unfortunately the taskbar does not seem to have the same inhibitory effect.   All cured now 

1700

Circle Dock / Re: Windows 7's Taskbar....Err.....Circle Dock for the DC Programming Contest

« Last post by Dormouse on August 25, 2008, 05:42 AM »

I'm updating the Circle Dock website right now..

-VideoInPicture (August 25, 2008, 05:27 AM)

So, just a few more minutes to wait