Recent Posts

2451

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 05:21 PM »

I was hurtling (as in moving very quickly) down a hill on a country road a couple of weeks ago and a deer kept pace with me for about 10 seconds before bounding into the bushes on the side of the road. Scared the snot out of me, actually! Deer here (Vancouver Island, Canada) are fairly large animals - really make a mess out of a car if you hit one - and I didn't fancy having it knock me off my bike.

Lovely photos, BTW Tom. Olympus 5050 by chance 

2452

General Software Discussion / Re: OCR/Text Recognition in a .pdf document? How do I do this.

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 05:13 PM »

Other than that, I don't know of any solution besides Acrobat pro.

-Edvard (August 28, 2008, 04:56 PM)

Well, there is PDF Converter Professional as noted above! Actually, this also means that Zeon PDFDoc Gold should do it as well as Scansoft/Nuance licence their product from them.

2453

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 05:12 PM »

Still, if your company is forcing you to eventually use a Mac, then make a deal for them to provide conversion software for your home systems when you have to work there.

-zridling (August 28, 2008, 04:47 PM)

Great advice - wish I'd thought of that 

2454

General Software Discussion / Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 03:56 PM »

I'm Scansoft/Nuance free on this machine... I have Office 2007 installed, so saving to pdf isn't an issue, though I suspect that I will miss the ability to edit downloaded pdfs (saving image based pdfs as searchable pdfs, for example), but I've got a newer computer with PDF Converter Professional 5 installed on it if it comes to that...

mwang and jandi - I wonder if MFC42LOC.DLL is the culprit that has plagued you on and off over the years?

2455

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Textmaker (Softmaker/Ashampoo Office) 2008

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 03:14 PM »

Thanks for the heads up, Curt  Downloading it now...

2456

General Software Discussion / Re: OCR/Text Recognition in a .pdf document? How do I do this.

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 02:41 PM »

A couple of years late... PDF Converter Professional 3 (and 4 and 5) will allow you to select "Save As" and "Searchable PDF" from the File menu....

I've had very good results doing this on various pdfs that I have downloaded from the internet. Most of them are ancient journal articles (such as Science magazine articles from the 19th century) but some recent pdfs are generated as image files rather than searchable text. PDF Converter handles these as well. Most recently I've done this on a 400+ page PhD dissertation that features pages that are at an angle and have things like lint and other debris that were on the platen glass visible... Worked like a charm.

2457

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone uses MediaMonkey? I need your advices.

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 02:15 PM »

Oh, I always check for discounts - I just don't always find them! I'm not actually that tempted by Media Monkey as I don't really have a need for it... but there is always a *bit* of temptation for me where software is concerned...

Hope you enjoy the new software, tslim 

2458

General Software Discussion / Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 01:55 PM »

Stupid, stupid, stupid...  I re-booted and tried to open up Scansoft PDF Converter and clicked through the re-installation nonsense and eventually wound up with a completely functional PDF Converter session! So, I can go home, re-install PDF Converter and live with the Korean dialogs in Paint, ArcGIS and so on, or I can have English dialogs and futz around with a persistent installation prompt everytime I try to run PDF Converter... There has to be a better way! I will find a better way...

2459

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone uses MediaMonkey? I need your advices.

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 01:26 PM »

Heh, heh, thanks for posting the discount code, tslim (I think  ) 

2460

General Software Discussion / SOLVED Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 01:23 PM »

UPDATE: I found the solution to this issue here: http://windowsxp.mvp....org/foreignlang.htm!

Epic... of course, I'm sitting in a library, away from my installation files for PDF Converter Professional 4, which is now borked... Evidently IT is the reason that MFC42LOC.DLL was in my System 32 folder in the first place  Renaming MFC42LOC.DLL to MFC42LOC.BAK solved my display problem but has put PDF Converter into a loop trying to reinstall itself. Changing the file name back doesn't help. I'm that fed up of Nuance that I am tempted to simply uninstall it and forget about it.

2461

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 12:38 PM »

Yeah... I've never really understood the received wisdom that graphics and video editing is better on a Mac. I mean, I understand the source of the "myth" but over the past 7 or 8 years (or more) as far as I know/can tell, it hasn't applied. Having said that, I think that 40hz point was more that the software that is available for the Mac platform for graphics and video manipulation is as good as that available for Windows...

2462

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2008, 10:00 AM »

Just to remind everyone (who says I take these things too seriously  ) this isn't urlwolf's personal machine. It's work supplied and, I presume, what he uses at work. I'm with renegade and others on this: if it were me and we were discussing my home computer I'd be a lot more leery unless the machine to be supplied were very high spec.

I note that in Canada Mac prices have remained static while windows based computers have plummeted in price. Thus, the Vista notebook I bought for $749 a month ago has specs that I would be spending at least $1000 more for in a Mac notebook (512 MB dedicated video card, Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB RAM, 250GB HD, 15.4" trubrite screen, HDMI, etc.). A lower spec'd 13.3"  iBook is $1200, larger screened iBooks/Powerbooks are more expensive and my estimate is thus likely conservative...

EDIT: clarified the last sentence and would like to add that I went looking for Mac notebooks online in Canada and they range from $1050 for a base 13.3" iBook to $2800 for a 17" Powerbook with specs similar to my PC notebook (albeit with a higher spec CPU).

2463

Living Room / Re: My Taskbar Notification Area Competition

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 08:31 PM »

Yes, you're right, Curt. I haven't touched my PS Tray Factory icon in hours and just checked it. Also resting:



EDIT: re-did screenshot...

2464

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 08:10 PM »

I'd look at it this way. Macs are expensive. The simple fact they're offering to  get you one and give someone else your hand-me-down tells you something.

-40hz (August 27, 2008, 06:53 PM)

Awesome! I hadn't thought of it that way - good point 

2465

Living Room / Re: My Taskbar Notification Area Competition

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 05:23 PM »

Curt - PS Tray Factory is rock solid on my XP Pro installation (with 2GB RAM) and has never had any noticeable affect on my system resources. Right now it is handling 20 icons (hiding them - there are six more visible, including PS TF's cogwheel icon, but not including the clock. At the moment, it's using 1-3% of my CPU and 4MB of VM. On my Windows 2k machine with 512MB RAM it's using 0% of the CPU and 2MB VM... Of course, it's only hiding 6 icons on that machine with 5 icons visible.

Great... now you've got me wondering why it's using any CPU at all 

2466

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 04:39 PM »

I don't like the provision about having to swap your machine... Why do you have to give it up? I suppose the answer is that it will be re-allocated to someone in a group that isn't Mac-biased? Anyway, given what can be done with Parallels and BootCamp, I'd go for it, if it will make life easier at work (and hey, you get to add knowledge of another OS to your repetoire).

Dormouse does make some good points though... However, given that (I think) you *could* triple boot OSX, Linux, and XP if you wished, for the most part I don't see a problem WRT hardware.

So, er, verbose way of saying I'd go for it!

2467

General Software Discussion / Re: PC Upgrade - A few questions

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 11:15 AM »

thanks, tslim - that makes me feel better 

2468

General Software Discussion / Re: PC Upgrade - A few questions

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 08:56 AM »

tslim - 

You're making me feel bad about my recent purchase of a Core 2 Duo notebook when Intel is promising that Quad Core will be available in a mobile platform next year 

I salve the wound by reminding myself that this kind of leap in mobile technology will no doubt be very expensive in the first year or more that it is available...

2469

Living Room / Re: Cortex Command Giveaway

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 08:45 AM »

Sorry - I get carried away sometimes! Yes please!

2470

Living Room / Re: Cortex Command Giveaway

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 08:32 AM »

This is not a spam post. This only a test of the Cortex Command Giveaway licensing system. This is not a spam post!

2471

Official Announcements / Re: August 26 had some slight downtime -- thanks to gothic for fixing it

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 08:27 AM »

Many, many thanks, Gothi[c]  I was going a bit crazy yesterday morning wondering why DC wouldn't load!

2472

Living Room / Re: What do you do during your free time?

« Last post by Darwin on August 27, 2008, 06:59 AM »

Ah... the '70's... shag carpets, wood panelling, bell bottoms, French jeans. Outrageously big cars. Big hair/mullets.

They say you can never go back. We should be grateful.

-40hz (August 26, 2008, 09:56 PM)

I feel the same way about the 80's as well!

2473

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 26, 2008, 06:17 PM »

What do you see as the advantages/disadvantages against Clipboard Help and Spell?

-Dormouse (August 26, 2008, 12:53 PM)

To be honest, I've never really done more than install CH&S and give it a cursory glance... 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 

2474

General Software Discussion / Re: opera downward spiral into oblivion: most sites don't work, they don't care

« Last post by Darwin on August 26, 2008, 06:12 PM »

Jeez, urlwolf - do you really need a bank account? I mean, with all those free mountain bikes, and shipping, your coffers must be draining fast! 

Darwin ducks and runs for cover...

2475

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 26, 2008, 12:28 PM »

Resource usage is low. However, I have an ongoing problem in that the connection to the clipboard keeps on being broken. The only thing I can think of is Office 2007, but I've yet to figure out where the problem lies!

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...