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176
General Software Discussion / Re: Software for planning wood bookcases/cabinets/tables etc?
« Last post by ayryq on June 12, 2015, 01:30 PM »
In the approximate scope of the original topic, I wanted to suggest "Cutlist"

There are similar, expensive programs, but this one is free and does the job pretty well. Basically you enter a list of parts, and a list of supplies, and it figures out the optimal way to cut your lumber. I've mainly used it for plywood, but it works with (and includes example files) for normal lumber as well. Many options to help it decide on what is the optimum use of wood. Looking back at it today, I found it also has an option "cross cuts first" which could be handy for me in the future as I have a fairly small jointer.
177
General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful
« Last post by ayryq on June 11, 2015, 09:03 AM »
http://adnauseam.io
-panzer (June 11, 2015, 06:24 AM)

Interesting... I expected their rationale to be something about supporting website authors (by clicking every ad encountered), but instead the website is all about overwhelming ad-based tracking systems.
178
General Software Discussion / Re: raffle/random choice software
« Last post by ayryq on June 10, 2015, 08:23 AM »
One more thing about random.org:

They have a paid winner-picking service: "The Draw Service offers a high level of transparency to your entrants and also protects you against accusations of tampering by storing a record of the results on RANDOM.ORG."

For fewer than 500 entries (and as many winners as you like) the cost is $4.95. Looks like you can upload a list of entrants (rather than just numbers) as well.

https://www.random.org/faq/#S5
179
General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced
« Last post by ayryq on June 09, 2015, 09:24 AM »
What would be worse is having W10 on the brain and only being able to turn off auto-updates by opening up your skull.  Maybe there will be a little door with a hinge.  The question then is do you use a key or a combination lock?  :)
-MilesAhead (June 09, 2015, 09:20 AM)

Both: Microsoft would have one and the government the other. You don't need to access your brain yourself.
180
General Software Discussion / Re: raffle/random choice software
« Last post by ayryq on June 09, 2015, 09:09 AM »
1. If you want to select winners not purely randomly, but with some weighted probabilities -- for example if you wanted the chance that an entrant to win to be based on how many years they have been in operation, etc. [doesn't sound like you need this].
-mouser (June 09, 2015, 08:32 AM)

You could simulate this by just assigning (some) entrants multiple entry numbers.
181
General Software Discussion / Re: raffle/random choice software
« Last post by ayryq on June 09, 2015, 08:28 AM »
I should add that it is key that you take the (first) output of whatever software you go with. Trust the randomness and don't "try again" if the results you get don't seem "random enough."
182
General Software Discussion / Re: raffle/random choice software
« Last post by ayryq on June 09, 2015, 08:14 AM »
A site I frequent (dcrainmaker.com) sometimes has giveaways; the site owner uses random.org to choose a commenter for the prize. They have many functions, including one that picks multiple, unique, random numbers from a set.

Here's a link to choose one set of 20 random numbers, chosen from 1-100. (You could number your groups)
https://www.random.o...mat=html&rnd=new

They are super geeky about making sure their numbers are random; here for example are their statistics: https://www.random.org/analysis/
183
DC Gamer Club / Re: Umbra
« Last post by ayryq on June 09, 2015, 07:54 AM »
Dungeon Siege is on Steam - probably it'll work on current PCs.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/39190
184
Living Room / Re: Soliciting feedback on website
« Last post by ayryq on June 08, 2015, 03:29 PM »
Spent the afternoon working on formatting it (in CSS) for optimal printing. I guess that's something someone might do with this sort of site. On my browser, I got it from 8 pages down to 4 by adjusting margins, removing picture thumbnails, and reformatting some of the lists.
185
Non-Windows Software / Re: Android: recommend form-filler/pasword manager, please?
« Last post by ayryq on June 05, 2015, 07:42 AM »
I use KeePassDroid too and I really try to avoid using it because it's such a time-consuming process to get a password out of it. Most of the problem is that my kdbx file has an extremely long password, which is annoying to type on a phone, but then you have to find the entry you want to use, switch apps, copy, paste, etc.

I'm following this topic to see if anyone comes up with anything!
186
General Software Discussion / Re: A double visualization
« Last post by ayryq on June 05, 2015, 07:38 AM »
See this page http://www.intel.com...ics/sb/cs-013542.htm

In short, there's often a separate brightness slider for video overlay windows.

Do you have a screen like this?
187
General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced
« Last post by ayryq on June 05, 2015, 06:56 AM »

The requirement to do such a side-by-side comparison predates Aero Snap in Win7 by several years, originating in early Windows stone age OS limitations. For example, I recall using a free ZDNet proggy in Win3.1 (I think it was) that conveniently popped up 2 Windows Explorer windows, stuck together side-by-side, because, well, a lot of people really needed to be able to do that, and it was a darn sight easier to use the freeware proggy than open two separate Windows Explorer instances and try to juggle their two windows side-by-side and keep the two windows ON TOP at the same time. Sheesh.
-IainB (June 05, 2015, 01:21 AM)

There are two new features that are really nice with Aero Snap in Windows 10: the aforementioned side-by-side "helper," (which I cancelled most of the time, making me part of "the 10%" in the article cited, I guess) and also, windows can now snap to corners—they take up ¼ of the screen in this mode. In fact, I went almost a whole day before I installed WinSplit Revolution on my PC  ;)

Before I used Compiz Grid (which was based upon WinSplit), I used a small utility that "snapped" windows to one another, and to the screen edge. Pretty handy.

Also, didn't Windows 95 introduce "Tile" mode to put windows side-by-side?
188
General Software Discussion / Re: Awesome software for kids
« Last post by ayryq on June 04, 2015, 03:05 PM »
The desktop is near dead for "users" -- they are all on smart phones and tablets now.


But I wouldn't expect much in the way of variety to emerge on a desktop OS. The desktop is now only a productivity tool, and not for casual computing.
-Renegade (June 04, 2015, 12:10 PM)

I don't know what to say to that. I guess,
  • You're probably right, and
  • that sucks.

The capabilities of a desktop (or laptop) computer will always exceed those of a tablet (until those two categories finally merge...) and the only thing making use of it is games (for grown-ups). What I'm looking for here are not games.


We have a truckload of different apps on my wife's tablet for our daughter, and she picks what she wants to do. She particularly likes ones with nice music and vocabulary apps.

But a vocabulary app is drop dead simple to make. Like, stupid simple. There are quite a few out there.
-Renegade (June 04, 2015, 12:10 PM)

I think the categories I'd be most interested in would be Science/STEM, History and Geography. Categories that lend themselves to higher-budget, deeper, more immersive treatment. My kids like the "apps" (aside: This is "short" for application not only in name but in fact) but they mostly look like they were made "drop dead simple" in some successor to Macromedia Flash. I wonder what Science centers are buying for their kiosks?
189
General Software Discussion / Re: Awesome software for kids
« Last post by ayryq on June 04, 2015, 10:21 AM »
I started looking for shops marketing to schools - found this site, for example: http://www.childrenssoftwareonline.com
Looks like a good way to see how old a software is is to see what Windows versions it supports. They sell a lot of Dorling Kindersley titles which purport to support Vista, for example. (DK made The Way Things Work that I mentioned earlier.) Of course, http://www.dorlingki...dersleysoftware.com/ is a parked domain now. There's a lot of stuff by Arc Media which look cool but explicitly say they do not work on 64-bit Windows.
190
General Software Discussion / Re: Awesome software for kids
« Last post by ayryq on June 04, 2015, 09:01 AM »
As for kids' software, there are truckloads of developers out there with LOTS of it. I wouldn't even know where to begin. My wife has her tablet loaded up with games and educational software for our little one.

There are a few large companies with kids' software as well. Fisher-Price has some good stuff.
-Renegade (June 04, 2015, 12:38 AM)

We have some good stuff on tablets, but it's mostly in a style, format, and depth that was state-of-the-art in 1995. And the number of programs for Windows PCs is much (much) smaller, and also harder to find.

Those CD-ROMs I mentioned were made for kids, they were state-of-the-art, and they fully used the capabilities of the modern PC (in 1999).
191
Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post
« Last post by ayryq on June 03, 2015, 09:10 PM »
100!
192
General Software Discussion / Re: Awesome software for kids
« Last post by ayryq on June 03, 2015, 09:09 PM »
Wow, this isn't where I imagined this thread going when I started it.

So, megarace?
193
General Software Discussion / Re: Awesome software for kids
« Last post by ayryq on June 03, 2015, 11:08 AM »
Contains penis, etc. 
-kunkel321 (June 03, 2015, 11:06 AM)

So do my kids  :)
194
Living Room / Re: DSLR Camera Simulator
« Last post by ayryq on June 03, 2015, 08:50 AM »
I think the "exposure compensation" sim is pretty cool, but the general SLR one - the one with the girl with the pinwheel, isn't. There's no possible way to expose correctly if the ambient light is reduced to, say, bright indoors, and it's got out-of-date profiles for high-ISO noise. A modern DSLR would do much better at high ISO. It'd be nice to have multiple example images, and if I paid for it I'd want different lenses and flashes.
195
General Software Discussion / Re: Replace any string (even several lines) in multiple word files
« Last post by ayryq on June 02, 2015, 01:05 PM »
Double post, sorry
196
General Software Discussion / Re: Replace any string (even several lines) in multiple word files
« Last post by ayryq on June 02, 2015, 01:01 PM »
Here's a VB script that might do it. Can't test it, sorry:

http://www.extendoff...-multiple-files.html

Here's a different one

http://www.word.mvps...acrosVBA/BatchFR.htm

And there's a $20 app in the windows store called "Global Office Find And Replace"

If you're willing to try LibreOffice, there's an extension that has a "Batch mode" find and replace that can be used on multiple files at once (button labeled "multiple execute"). It's quite a complicated extension but may be worth figuring out if you need to do this often.

EDIT: I should add that the extension referenced above has built-in support for line breaks. It also has a macro language that can be used for very complicated operations: one of the demos adds HTML tags to a document (e.g. text that is formatted bold in the document has < b > tags put around it)

Eric
197
General Software Discussion / Awesome software for kids
« Last post by ayryq on June 02, 2015, 12:48 PM »
When I got my first home computer in 1995, it was a Packard Bell with this awesome "CD-ROM" drive. To show off the capabilities that having a CD-ROM drive added, it came with a bundle of software:
Knowledge Adventure "3D Body Adventure"
Knowledge Adventure "3D Dinosaur
Knowledge Adventure "Space Adventure"
Knowledge Adventure "Undersea Adventure"
Megarace - remember Lance Boyle?
And some other stuff, I think an Atlas and an Encyclopedia (Grolier, maybe?)

I remember how engaging those 3D, full video, CD-ROM adventures were when I was in 8th grade. Recently I shopped for software for my kids, and I found things like this (which is actually pretty good, but is 2D cartoons, predominately). I'm not finding anything that would live up to my (admittedly, 20-year-old) memories of those bundled software. Maybe some of it was the novelty of having a home computer, and having actual video and sound, but I don't see that there is any of this single-subject, rich, engaging, educational software on the market now. (There's still a market for schools, with things like Math Blaster, typing tutor, and would you believe Stickybear still exists?)

Steam certainly doesn't have much; if you look at the tag "Education" you get, for example, Kerbal Space Program and Rocksmith.

Are there small publishers that I'm overlooking?

What about those atlas and encyclopedia programs? I don't think Google Earth (as cool as it is) quite substitutes for a well-designed multimedia atlas. And likewise Wikipedia pales somewhat as a learning experience compared to Encarta. I recently dug out my CD-ROM of "The Way Things Work" — the one with all the mammoths — and had to load VirtualBox to get it to even run.

Anyone else remember these programs from what I might start calling the "golden age" of PC applications?
198
General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced
« Last post by ayryq on June 01, 2015, 04:48 PM »
In the Windows 10 Technical Preview, I've installed things using the regular .exe/.msi installers. I don't think I've even used the Windows Store in the preview.
-Deozaan (June 01, 2015, 04:33 PM)

2nd that. I'm running one system (touchscreen laptop) on 8.1 and one (desktop) on 10 now - I never see the "metro" interface on 10 on desktop. Not even sure it's still there. There's a metro-like start menu (which you'll never see because you'll install "Classic Start Menu") and a few Modernish apps (like "Settings") that you'll need to use every once in a while. By and large the desktop on 10 is indistinguishable from 8.1 and in daily use it's identical. If I had to pick one word to describe the transition from 8.1 to 10 it'd be "uneventful." Which is probably exactly what Microsoft should be shooting for after the mess that was 8.0. Upgrading from 7 to 10 should be easier than from 7 to 8.

That said there are some things that still don't work right, like Cortana, and the People app.
199
General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced
« Last post by ayryq on May 31, 2015, 03:35 PM »
The Ctrl-A issue had been registered several times when I checked - I just added a "me too" to one. I didn't notice until today that it was only on the desktop that it didn't work -- within an explorer window Ctrl-A works fine.
200
General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced
« Last post by ayryq on May 30, 2015, 04:52 PM »
I'm on "slow" so build 10074 and it exhibits the behavior you mention.

Also, Ctrl-A doesn't work while renaming [EDIT: ...on the desktop...], which drives me nuts.
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