Recent Posts

276

Living Room / Re: Cannot Unsee!

« Last post by daddydave on March 01, 2012, 10:20 AM »

Re: Amperman

Looks a little like he's about to put his foot in his mouth...

-40hz (March 01, 2012, 10:07 AM)

I thought he has no legs and is raising the other arm to balance himself.

277

Living Room / Re: Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by daddydave on March 01, 2012, 10:13 AM »

I think the bottom line is Paypal does not want to be a generic money transfer service like Visa or Western Union. For example, from stories I have heard, if you try to send money "just because" or for charity, and they get wind of it, they will reverse the transaction. They started off as just an easy way to buy stuff on ebay, perhaps that explains things somewhat.

-daddydave (March 01, 2012, 09:27 AM)

That might have been true at some point, but from advertisements and e-mail communications that I have received, this is not correct anymore.  Did you know that personal transactions between individuals just to transfer money costs nothing?  This flies in the face of that explanation.

-wraith808 (March 01, 2012, 09:49 AM)

Weird. I was just basing it on some horror stories I heard. Seems like Paypal has a few of them.

278

Living Room / Re: Cannot Unsee!

« Last post by daddydave on March 01, 2012, 10:01 AM »

Perhaps you can appreciate this then. I am learning Devanagari script in conjunction with my epic journey of trying to learn one of India's 22 national languages. The hm conjunct in Devanagari looks a lot like Sarge from Beetle Bailey to me (apologies for the poor artistic skills and the abuse of Mort Walker's image)

279

Living Room / Re: Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by daddydave on March 01, 2012, 09:27 AM »

I think the bottom line is Paypal does not want to be a generic money transfer service like Visa or Western Union. For example, from stories I have heard, if you try to send money "just because" or for charity, and they get wind of it, they will reverse the transaction. They started off as just an easy way to buy stuff on ebay, perhaps that explains things somewhat.

280

Living Room / Shapeways: Customize and create 3D printed products

« Last post by daddydave on March 01, 2012, 09:12 AM »

I stumbled onto this site looking for Raspberry Pi cases. I didn't realize 3-D printing had gone that mainstream. Sorry if this looks a little spammy, it is a commerical site, I have no affiliation.

Customize and create 3D printed products...print your products in 25 materials, including metals, ceramics, and glass.

from Shapeways

281

Living Room / Re: Today is Your Last Chance to Remove your Search History from Google's New Policy

« Last post by daddydave on March 01, 2012, 09:05 AM »

Today's the day Google starts sharing information with Google!

By the way, isn't the problem people think this is the reason for multiple accounts and multiple sign-on?

282

General Software Discussion / Re: visual basic for applications, where to go for resources and solved examples?

« Last post by daddydave on February 27, 2012, 09:36 PM »

Don't laugh, I am going to recommend a book written for Office 2000, that just happens to have never been updated for the three later versions of Office. Ok, go ahead and laugh now. The book is Microsoft Office 2000 Visual Basic for Applications Fundamentals by David Boctor. It is very no-nonsense and gives short practical examples that are right to the point: it's what the help file should have been (although it is very basic).

283

General Software Discussion / Re: Need Disk Imaging tool that can restore from external HDD

« Last post by daddydave on February 27, 2012, 07:55 PM »

This is a rather timely thread for me, just yesterday I made a partition backup of my wife's computer with Easus Todo Backup Free, and hadn't put much thought into the restore process.

3. Creating a Easeus WinPE bootable disk rather than the default linux bootable disk may also resolve your issue.  Most of the bootable disks from backup/recovery vendors are linux based by default and may give an option for WinPE based bootable disk.

-patthecat (February 27, 2012, 03:46 PM)

I had this thought, too. I might try it myself.
Easeus Todo Backup site has a Linux vs WinPE boot disk comparison. That site doesn't seem to say one way or another, though.

284

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PDFZilla free for 20 days - Ends 14 March 2012

« Last post by daddydave on February 23, 2012, 08:16 PM »

Make an image of your Windows partition once a week - takes twenty minutes.  I've used Windows for close to twenty years and have never reinstalled from scratch, but images have saved my butt half a dozen times.

-mrainey (February 23, 2012, 09:19 AM)

I install and trial a LOT of programs. If I'm going to do an OS reinstall I'm going to want to shed all of that useless junk lurking around my hard drive & registry. I don't want to carry half-uninstalled program DLLs around wtih me till I upgrade to Windows 8.

-Innuendo (February 23, 2012, 03:06 PM)

My sentiments exactly, except the Windows 8 part.

285

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RightNote PRO 50% off

« Last post by daddydave on February 23, 2012, 05:07 AM »

BitsDuJour offer extended for another day.

286

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RightNote PRO 50% off

« Last post by daddydave on February 22, 2012, 10:40 AM »

FYI. a BitsDuJour deal for RightNote (apparently STANDARD not PRO)  is on (18 hours left):

-daddydave (February 22, 2012, 07:10 AM)

You can buy both Standard AND/OR Pro version with 50% discount

-Ennovy (February 22, 2012, 08:02 AM)

I apologize for misreading the site, I just saw that, that's great news!

287

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RightNote PRO 50% off

« Last post by daddydave on February 22, 2012, 07:10 AM »

FYI. a BitsDuJour deal for RightNote (apparently STANDARD not PRO)  is on (18 hours left):

288

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by daddydave on February 10, 2012, 12:10 PM »

I've only used the (Palm OS and) Windows Mobile version, but I have used things like Plucker and iSilo/iSilox for this purpose. These don't produce a PDF, there was a desktop component to download and format the content and a mobile component app for the viewer.  Plucker is freeware but unfortunately it seems to have stopped development over a decade ago. (The Windows Mobile spinoff was called Vade Mecum, the best tool to create those Plucker documents on the desktop was called Sunrise XP.) iSiloX is multiplatform and actively developed, although I think the iOS version didn't get good reviews, and the iOS desktop sync probably doesn't work as well on that platform, don't know about Android. You could set up a schedule for each item, tell each item to shrink or remove images, etc., and it would work with both RSS feeds and web pages. For RSS feeds that showed partial content, you could specify a link depth to fetch, although usually it was better to just fetch the web page in that case. iSilo really had far superior rendering to Plucker (which was freeware and seems to be no longer developed), it preserved indent levels and colors nicely so you can look at things like formatted code listings.

289

General Software Discussion / Re: How I fought Firefox and won

« Last post by daddydave on February 04, 2012, 11:07 AM »

Like the custom configuration stuff!  Nice to know about Custom Buttons. Seems like its usefulness overlaps with an extension I recently discovered called PrefBar, so now I am curious to install it to compare the two.

290

Living Room / Re: Woz likes Android

« Last post by daddydave on February 01, 2012, 08:43 AM »

Interesting read, is that normally a true source of info?

-Fred Nerd (January 31, 2012, 08:02 PM)

Well, I am not familiar with the author (and the overall journalistic trend these days is for even credible outlets to give blog wrters their own little space to say anything), but Daily Beast is basically Newsweek, which is fairly mainstream (with all the credibility and caveats that implies). So personally, I would trust it, and I had read the bit about Woz getting the Android preview device elsewhere fwiw.

291

Find And Run Robot / Re: Farr freezes : solved but...

« Last post by daddydave on February 01, 2012, 07:35 AM »

Looks like I may be switching from Avast to MSE in the near future, just so I can turn this off.(The problem occurs with Avast, also)

292

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Release: Image Grid

« Last post by daddydave on January 16, 2012, 02:15 PM »

This is awesome, seems like a simple thing but so handy .I am using it to collect my third grader's photos so I can print them out for her science project. Usually what I end up doing is putting them in Word, wasting time resizing them and getting the wrapping properties right. This is instant. I can think of other uses for it, too.

293

Developer's Corner / Re: Node.js Learning Resources?

« Last post by daddydave on January 13, 2012, 05:01 AM »

I don't even know what it is, but this question has been asked on Quora as well. I noticed some overlap between the answers you have already been given, but maybe there is something new there:
http://www.quora.com...s?q=node.js+tutorial

294

General Software Discussion / User script to customize the ol' new Google Bar

« Last post by daddydave on January 08, 2012, 09:12 PM »

I wonder why Google has pushed Gmail so far down on their new vertical navigation bar. Now I can fix it with the Google Bar+ user script, and do additional customizations! Well, for this screenshot I replaced Gmail with DonationCoder.  (requires Greasemonkey or Scriptish for Firefox, or Tampermonkey for Chrome)

Script Summary: Gives new options to the new google toolbar. If the new google bar has not been enabled, this script will enable it. Allows each menu entry to be customized. Allows for a thinner interface. Allows for google Ad blocking. Presets are provided for common menu items (more will be added); If you have an item you think should be a preset please let me know via the discussion link. As of 0.5.6, users are notified of updates right on the google bar!

from userscripts.org

295

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome feature: How to Pronounce English Words

« Last post by daddydave on January 07, 2012, 05:16 PM »

I'm not sure I follow you about Mr. Tech Toolkit.  It seems to show something in red ("direct link") in the graphic you posted, but I'm the one who had in red the statement about Pronounce not being available for FF 8.0.1.

-cyberdiva (January 07, 2012, 04:08 PM)

One of the side effects of Firefox's rapid increase in version numbers is that there are a lot of addons where the developer has not had a chance to update version compatibility information, thus shifting this burden to the user. I think Curt is right that the Mr Tech Toolkit addon is allowing him to install it anyway even if Mozilla thinks it is not compatible. I use a different addon with a similar function. The addon changes what you see on the Mozilla addon web site to allow installing it.

296

Living Room / Re: If you had a medical implant would you rather it be closed or open source?

« Last post by daddydave on January 06, 2012, 05:49 PM »

So what happened to uncle Dave??

Well he was trying to jailbreak his pacemaker and bricked himself.

-Stoic Joker (January 06, 2012, 05:45 PM)

Great one!

297

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome feature: How to Pronounce English Words

« Last post by daddydave on January 06, 2012, 05:28 PM »

Interesting. Try highlighting "tune" and "and" and it will give you three different pronunciations for each, but it is still the one guy's voice (didn't sound robotic to me, just seemed like a slight British accent (to an American)). The volume oscillated up and down when I highlighted several words at a time.

--

I prefer forvo's approach, you can get a human to pronounce it for you, add your own words, record pronunciations yourself using a builtin Flash applet, and hear native speakers from several different countries or regions. Plus it's not English only. You can also use your favorite browser search addons to look up highlighted text in Forvo just like any search engine. I have no affilation with them other than being a user (yes, I am kind of derelict in my pronouncing duties, I have only pronounced one word there so far).



And if anyone knows Punjabi, go here and pronounce ainvayi for me, thanks.  

298

Web Link Captor / Nice, with one nitpick

« Last post by daddydave on January 05, 2012, 01:24 PM »

This is a really nice tool, simple to operate but powerful. I liked that tree structure under Script to Invoke, a lot of scripts could be added and it still wouldn't look cluttered.  Great job on the user interface.

I had some ideas to use it to look up foreign vocabulary on dictionary and pronunciation web sites, but sadly when I pasted lines from my word list, all the Unicode characters displayed as question marks. so I was sad. (That was the inspiration for the Unicode thread I started, by the way.)

299

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« Last post by daddydave on January 05, 2012, 12:57 PM »

Well, I remember when there were a lot of e-greeting services that existed pretty much for the purpose of harvesting email addresses to spam, before people figured out what was going on. Or maybe people still use those, I don't know. So it probably looked a lot like spam, if people have that memory. And the service he provided seemed to be an e-greeting service of a sort, that just happened to have Santa in it.

I do sympathize with the general case, though, of the developer being harassed and hounded for suppport by people getting something for nothing though. That's why HFSLIP (a slipstreaming tool similar to nLite except it was a 30 page batch file) doesn't exist anymore, and he was being hounded by free business users.

300

Developer's Corner / Why would brand new software NOT work with Unicode? / Challenges

« Last post by daddydave on January 05, 2012, 07:12 AM »

You are creating an application today. It will not be Unicode compliant. Why? For older programs, it may not be worth the rewrite effort, but if you are writing code from scratch, intended for a worldwide audience, this would seem to be automatic, and yet it doesn't seem to be. What are some of the challenges you face in creating software that leaves the ASCII character set of yesteryear behind (except for backward compatibility)? Be as technical as you want, don't worry about it being over my head. Maybe it will be, but I can still use it as a starting point for further research, and others will benefit.

On the other hand, be as non-technical as you want as well. I think I am seeing a trend of requesting Unicode support for various DonationCoder applications (maybe I am just noticing it more now that I am learning Devanagari script), so I think a lot of people want to know why this isn't easy!