Recent Posts

24276

Official Announcements / Re: JANUARY 2008 GIANT SHAREWARE GIVEAWAY AND DISCOUNT CELEBRATION

« Last post by mouser on January 25, 2008, 03:00 AM »

Just a reminder that the deadline to enter the drawing is TODAY, JANUARY 25th.

24277

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - new sidebar widget to show status - green/yellow/red

« Last post by mouser on January 25, 2008, 02:46 AM »

i's hard for me to think of uses for your specific case, but i've occasionally thought about the idea of a program that multiple people could run which would show some picture or info representing each others "state" using an image.

So in other words just imagine a program where any number of people on a "team" (2 or more), simply need to enter the same unique identifier, and thereafter see a little image for each other person on the team, including themself.  And they can change the image showing their state easily.  Could be a fun visual way to communicate your mood with your friends, etc.

I think the easiest way to do it would be simply to have the unique identifier be a web page url with id, and run a script on a web page that lets people update their picture, etc.

Could be fun if anyone wants to try it.

24278

Living Room / Re: Mini How-To: How to make your PC go to silent standby (S3 mode)

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 03:42 PM »

in my case, you can change the mouse and keyboard wakes up and power button function all from the bios.
i never touched the registry.

24279

General Software Discussion / Re: Time to Wipe this Machine! Clean install? Or XP Repair?

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 02:22 PM »

My favorite thing to do in such cases is to start from scratch..  reformat and use their cd or reformat and install OS from scratch.

BUT FIRST, back up your entire hard drive and make sure you can read files from the backup.  That way, when you realize you had some files and settings you didn't want to wipe out after all, you can restore them.

Installing the operating system from scratch can feel like getting a new PC -- it's time consuming but very enjoyable.  Just make sure you have a good backup first!!

Another cool trick is to buy yourself another hard drive, and take our your old one and put the new operating system on the new hard drive, leaving your old operating system hard drive just the way it is.  Use a rack or an external usb drive to access the files on it if you need them.

24280

General Software Discussion / Re: What are your top 10 Tech/Software Blogs?

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 02:16 PM »

I think you may be being too hard on ghacks -- they have original content too and as you say, sometimes there is news that everyone carries.

I very much agree with your general comment that:

BUT, it really sucks and pisses me off to no end when a blogger as a matter of habit refuses to give the source credit or is just too lazy/careless to bother.

I 100% agree with you -- you MUST cite your sources.  And when you do, the source will usually be very happy that you posted about the issue.

My experience on those occasions where ghacks posts about items that we may have discovered first is that Martin always credits us as the source (though it is always on the second page that you have to click for); so the most i could complain about is that he might be nicer to put the credit on the front page with the item.  But again my experience is that Martin has always been very stand up about crediting us when appropriate.

24281

Living Room / Mini How-To: How to make your PC go to silent standby (S3 mode)

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 02:08 PM »

I have a homebuilt spare PC in the bedroom and when it's on it sounds a bit like an airplane (loud).

One of my favorite features of windows that many people don't seem to take advantage of is "Standby Mode", which basically puts your PC into a very low power state, very quickly, that it can very quickly wake up from.  It's a great alternative to shutting down and restarting if you just want to turn your PC off for the night, etc.

BUT

I noticed recently that my PC stopped going into a silent standby mode, for no apparent reason!
What was the cause? How to fix it?

Well, it turns out that there are at least 2 different kinds of Standby modes (S1 and S3) that a PC can go into.  S1 leaves the fans and usb connections on, S3 turns off the fan and usb (this is the quite mode).

And there are several things that can control whether your PC goes into S1 or S3 standby mode.

For me, the answer was to go into the bios and change the bios power setting to "S3 ONLY" mode.

There is also a registry setting that addresses this issue, though it's not clear to me whether you should set this INSTEAD of the bios setting, or in addition to.

For a longer description of related settings see this nice post on the matter: http://thegreenbutto...ms/thread/29899.aspx

From your bios you can also do some nice stuff like configure your power button to go in and out of standby mode.  For a spare bedroom PC this is a great setup -- push the button at any time and the PC wakes up or goes to quiet sleep in seconds.

24282

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 11:47 AM »

when I have to manually rewrap long lines,

Alt-L will reformat a paragraph.

Regarding the restore, it failed both on 3.9x and 4.x
However it did restore far enough to get all of the directory structures.. so that explains part of what you were saying -- the restore recreated all the directory structures but crashed in the middle of restoring messages.  Then i just manually copied files.

24283

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 09:18 AM »

ok got it, thanks.  doesnt add anything from my standpoint, using my normal external image viewer (irfanview) works exactly the same.  it might be nice if they did what codetrucker seemed to be asking for which is have an option where the images were all shown at once, perhaps automatically.

24284

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 09:05 AM »

Welcome to the site marek and thank you for the post, looks like there are quite a few new things i didn't see during my quick evaluation.  How do you enable the new image viewer?

ps. The virtual folder and folder tabs features are extremely impressive.

24285

Find And Run Robot / Re: BUG: Can't launch results that end in space

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 06:33 AM »

why on god's earth is there a space at the end of that file name?

24286

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 04:24 AM »

i'm afraid i'm not going to be too much help here since most of the questions you ask are things i don't use.
never tried smartbat so i have no idea.
regarding nohtml inline, could you be a little more specific?  what i do know is you can choose whether to view and respond to messages with html either as they are, or as always plaintext (which is what i choose).  so i never see any html or inline images.  all pictures and attachments for me are always shown in a panel where i have to click to view (which is how i like it).  i did look for a way to show attached images immediately without clicking and didn't find any way to do so, but the attachment images are all listed as tabs at the bottom of the message so it's just one click to view each one.

24287

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Deductoid puzzle game

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 04:14 AM »

One bug I have found is that once some cell is solved, you can still right-click on this value in other cells, and select it as a possibility for other cells in the same row. This should not be possible.

are you sure this is true? my experience is that once you solve a cell, it eliminates this image from all horizontal compatriots.  i don't think i have experienced your bug.


you made the same basic point as me about letting the user "experiment" and try moves that might be wrong, and not telling them, just so they can realize their error later.

however i feel obliged to say that, after playing the game more.. i might be willing to withdraw my request for this if it's anything more than a 5 minutes addition to the code.  the reason i say this is, as you learn how to play and get some experience, you RARELY make a mistake or ever have to guess.  As you said, the cool thing is that there is always a solution and there is NO guessing required and there is always a move you can make given a single clue.  this is a key difference with a program like minesweeper, because it means you never have to try a sequence of multiple moves before you find a problem -- there is always an exact move you can make to eliminate something based on one clue, so there is no real reason to have to experiment once you understand the rules and get the hang of it.

24288

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: Monitor Dimmer

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 01:41 AM »

cool 

24289

General Software Discussion / TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 01:15 AM »

So i'm playing with the latest "alpha" of thebat! email client (found here on betanews; ritlabs doesn't like to post their betas on their homepage), and wanted to post some observations.

It doesn't seem or look much different from version 3.  When ritlabs moved from version 2 to version 3 there was a LOT of complaining from users that they just hiked up the version number to be able to charge for an upgrade and it happend so soon after the change from version 1 to version 2.

It seems to me that on one hand this is a bit like an arbitrary version change rather than a major change, BUT in all fairness it has been a long time since version 2 came out and version 4 hasn't been released yet.  And i give them credit for the non-stop constant improvement of the program in small increments, which has to be worth something.

The alpha still is a tiny bit buggy, but quite usable (it is after all really just an improved version 3 not a major rewrite), and i didn't find any showstoppers.

What compelled me to post though was 2 things:

The first thing is that I am a longtime user and fan of thebat and after a couple years of suffering with this bug where the program occasionally loses its connection with a mail server and enters a hung state which requires program restart, it looks like they have FINALLY fixed it!  This fix has been so long in coming and they should be ashamed it took them so long to fix it.  But i am thrilled it is fixed.  It was the one thing i hated and it's fantastic that it finally seems fixed.

The second thing is a double edged sword.  The backup and restore functionality, which ritlabs has obviously put a lot of work into, and which seems wonderfully powerful, FAILED to properly work for me.  It backs up fine, but gives an unintelligible error during the restore process, making it unusable.  Thankfully this issue is not very servere because one of the nicer things about thebat is that it saves all mail in a file directory in a way that can be simply copied or moved between machines.  This is actually one of my favorite features about thebat, that i can see all of the files and manage and backup my mail data manually, and it doesn't mind being moved around.  But this is a warning -- do NOT assume that just because the backup function worked that the restore function will.

There you have it, some early observations.  For me, I remain a fan of the program and am happy to keep using it.

ps. you can read my original review of thebat here; take the comparison with other programs with a grain of salt of course, since the review is over 2 years old and i'm sure some of the other programs (Thunderbird in particular) has grown a lot since then.

24290

General Software Discussion / Re: Inventory Software

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 01:00 AM »

You guys might want to handle all the arrangements and back and forth details through personal messages so it doesn't get the thread off course. (but post the final results here please to keep us informed).

24291

Living Room / Re: What's Your Favorite Smilie?

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 12:57 AM »

if someone is willing to do the job of collecting smilies and making another collection of the good ones, send me your final results and i'll add them to forum.

24292

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 12:55 AM »

We need to have a DC coding challenge focused solely on screensavers i think.

24293

Skrommel's Software / Re: Battery Run featured at gHacks.net

« Last post by mouser on January 24, 2008, 12:44 AM »

Congrats to Skrommel The Mysterious once again 

24294

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by mouser on January 23, 2008, 04:55 PM »

What i'd really love is if substrate worked across multiple monitors 

24295

Living Room / Re: What's Your Favorite Smilie?

« Last post by mouser on January 23, 2008, 04:48 PM »

the laughing dog from Darwin's post is my favorite by far.

my second favorite:

24296

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by mouser on January 23, 2008, 03:40 PM »

well there is enough credit to go around  

24297

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by mouser on January 23, 2008, 03:34 PM »

fred!
what a fantastic treat to see you here 

as you can see from this thread, a lot of us are head over heels for this wonderful screensaver 
beautiful work!

24298

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft's "Rich Signature"

« Last post by mouser on January 23, 2008, 02:20 PM »

someone make a utility that lets us swap our info for that of bill gates.

24299

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: create a social network graph of DC users

« Last post by mouser on January 23, 2008, 02:19 PM »

I worked with Gothic on this for a while last year and we got some *very* cool looking graphs.. I'm still waiting for gothic to perfect it and release the general code.

24300

Living Room / Re: An apology

« Last post by mouser on January 23, 2008, 02:18 PM »

Ok with the agreement of Codetrucker i'm closing this thread now.. Everyone can return to business as usual.