Recent Posts

276

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: YourFonts - Generate a font based on your handwriting

« Last post by yksyks on August 11, 2008, 05:48 AM »

To erwind:

Just at a brief look--definitely not Czech. For example these characters are missing:

ěřťňůĚŘŤŇŮ

and some others for Slovak. Do you want me to analyze it thoroughly?

277

Living Room / Re: which operating system you like most....

« Last post by yksyks on August 10, 2008, 05:53 AM »

I cannot agree more with Brandon. I bought a new laptop "infected" with Vista, as I wrote before, but I decided to give it a chance. And in the meantime I became a happy Vista user and even a defender. Besides what Brandon wrote there are many trifles you might overlook at first, but which make life easier. Just for an illustration--I was always terribly bugged with WinXP Explorer putting the newly created file at the end of the list and requiring refresh to position it properly. No more in Vista. The new file appears immediately just where it should be. A triviality, but it delights. And so on...

I have to mention, though, that my very first step was disabling UAC--and since then I cannot complain.

278

General Software Discussion / Re: Evernote Beta now Open

« Last post by yksyks on August 09, 2008, 02:22 AM »

I'm using Evernote 3 on a regular basis now and I can tell that nothing weird happens. You can access your local data as usual and they just get synchronized once you are connected again. So far no complains. It just works flawlessly and as expected.

I was surprised that when I accidentally managed to edit the same note on another machine before they were synced I was warned about the possible conflict, which was not the case with Evernote 2.

279

Living Room / Re: Am I too demanding, or are they all cheating?

« Last post by yksyks on August 06, 2008, 11:44 AM »

I have to revive this thread and add another case to this topic. This time I managed to avoid buying the product, though.

So be warned anyone tempted to purchase Panasonic VDR-D50 digital camcorder. On the manufacturer's pages you can read:

Records to 8cm DVD and SD Card

After my experiences described above I became suspicious, because the camera was not labeled as "hybrid" and only after downloading the full User's manual and browsing through it I realized that you can record on the SD card still pictures only! I couldn't believe my eyes. In 2008, anyone really cares about taking 640x480 resolution pictures and storing them on 8 GB SD card? Every cell phone has a better resolution, and who would buy a movie camera for taking poor still pictures? So what's the point of the SD slot? Maybe the specifications just look better. They simply follow the same pattern as those cases above.

Along the same lines goes the information about the recording time: 36 minutes on double-sided DVD. Only after reading the manual (or in worse case after purchasing the camera), you'll discover that after 18 minutes you have to stop the recording, open the camera, turn the media over, close the compartment and continue. Why not to say that you have 3 hours of recording--and in some small footnote the additional info reading "on 10 DVDs"?

Well, this could not be called directly cheating, but anyway, I wouldn't call such a behavior decent. A big disappointment from Panasonic.

280

General Software Discussion / Re: Your most used SPECIAL programs

« Last post by yksyks on August 01, 2008, 11:55 AM »

With appearance of the digital TV broadcast I developed a new hobby: creating DVDs from recorded material. After some experimenting I finally settled on a steady and quite effective process comprising:

VideoReDo -- for cutting out commercials and trim the movies
DVDStyler -- for creating simple menus and converting the material to proper DVD structure
DVDShrink -- when the final size doesn't fit on a DVD5

and then Nero 6 for burning, but there's nothing special on this one.

281

TapTap / Re: PhraseExpress Collision

« Last post by yksyks on July 29, 2008, 03:59 AM »

Thank you, Mouser. TapTap is becoming more and more indispensable for me, especially on my new laptop, where it can simulate otherwise not easily reachable keys like Pause, etc. By the way, would it be possible to map some TapTap action to the Context key, which the laptop keyboard lacks?

If I could help with some testing, just let me know.

282

TapTap / PhraseExpress Collision

« Last post by yksyks on July 28, 2008, 04:18 PM »

This message is mostly addressed to Mouser, but maybe someone else could confirm or verify my discoveries.

Mouser, I understand you're quite busy these days with FARR development (thanks a lot, by the way!), but I finally managed to identify my old problem I have with TapTap and PhraseExpress. Almost always when PhraseExpress enters a text string the TapTap gets invoked. After some experimenting I realized that it is always the first item in its configuration file, regardless of what it contains (frankly, I tested just DLC, DLA and DLS).

I tried to ask the PhraseExpress team, but I only received a standard response that they cannot fix collisions with some other's programs, and they also deleted any references to TapTap from my post.

In the meantime I noticed that TapTap sometimes does the same under different occasions which I'm unfortunately unable to reproduce systematically. So, maybe they're right that the problem is not on theirs side.

At the moment I'm using an ugly workaround--I mapped the first item in TapTap configuration to ScrollLock key, which I'm not using at all and which I can easily monitor on the LED on my keyboard without any side effects. It continues to randomly switch on and off when using PhraseExpress.

I noticed this behavior on both the WinXP and Vista.

Do you need more details? Or is there a better way to fix this?

Thanks in advance.

283

TapTap / Re: Double right control to Lshift+Lcontrol+Lalt+F11, how?

« Last post by yksyks on July 28, 2008, 06:29 AM »

While experimenting with TapTap and browsing the forum I found this old thread and a possible solution:

keymap   DRC      :   SCA+F11

Would that work for you?

284

Living Room / Waking up after power failure

« Last post by yksyks on July 21, 2008, 04:30 PM »

There are several recent threads discussing remote or scheduled PC waking up, but I have seemingly simpler question, which I'm unable to find solution to, though. My problem is: how do I wake a PC (ATX motherboard -- MSI 925X Neo) automatically after power failure? I have an UPS, but if the PC hibernates due to longer outage, is there any simple trick to start the PC unattended? The BIOS doesn't have the "always on" option.

Thanks for any ideas.

285

General Software Discussion / Re: Links to Infos about Regular Expressions

« Last post by yksyks on July 13, 2008, 02:06 PM »

Regex Coach

The Regex Coach is free for private or non-commercial use.

286

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« Last post by yksyks on July 11, 2008, 02:05 PM »

Thanks for an explanation. Not a big issue, anyway.

287

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« Last post by yksyks on July 11, 2008, 11:33 AM »

Maybe a bit off-topic, but is it only me noticing that there's a checkbox missing "Run Find and Run Robot Now?" at the end of upgrade? It happens on my Vista Business laptop, not on the desktop XP.

288

General Software Discussion / Re: Equivalent to Foldershare?

« Last post by yksyks on July 11, 2008, 10:45 AM »

In no way I could be considered an advocate of Microsoft products, but FolderShare does its job silently, quite reliably and nothing else. (Besides, it was not originated in Microsoft.) It lacks a lot of features, but for the price it's a real bargain.

Thanks for other useful links.

289

General Software Discussion / Re: Equivalent to Foldershare?

« Last post by yksyks on July 11, 2008, 08:25 AM »

Thanks, cpmp. You made me study in more depth the details. I managed to dig out the most important piece of information:

Free: Free forever. Allows up to two computers, 5 revisions per file or 30 days of previous revisions (whichever is less), up to 10,000 files, and 2 GB of storage. The free account expires after 60 days of inactivity.

Well, that's not bad. It depends on your type of work. I'm working with large files for professional printing bureaus, so even the paid 40 GB would be questionable, provided I could afford it.

Anyway, I realized only now that Syncplicity works completely different from FolderShare--it's a remote backup and versioning system, too! On the other hand, what I like about FolderShare is its ability to create peer to peer connection, so when I'm at home when both my laptop and desktop are connected to the same LAN, the syncing process runs at the full speed of LAN.

290

General Software Discussion / Re: Equivalent to Foldershare?

« Last post by yksyks on July 11, 2008, 03:07 AM »

-There is no sign in, sign out like FS. This has been one issue that kept me away from FS.

-kartal (July 10, 2008, 09:06 PM)

You mean sign in on the web page? I almost don't use it. I've just set up a couple of libraries comprising over 7000 files to be synchronized and since then it works unattended.

I use the free one so price isn't a consideration.

-cmpm (July 10, 2008, 09:29 PM)

According to the link you provided:

Free during beta, pricing starts July 28, 2008.

So the free version will soon be over. I can't afford paying for this, especially when I'm almost satisfied with FolderShare.

The problem I had with FolderShare was caused by Excel, which changes the timestamp of the opened file to the current time, and changing it back again after closing it without any editing. This obviously confuses all real time synchronizers/backups/versioning systems. Anyone having an idea? This is my biggest pet peeve with Excel (at least versions 2000 and 2003).

291

Living Room / Re: Evernote Icon - what the heck is it? Anyone actually like version 3 ?

« Last post by yksyks on July 10, 2008, 08:49 AM »

I imported my 2.2 database into the previous build of version 3 (don't recall the number) with all the formatting retained, except for the tags. Some of them are missing altogether and the flags are not displayed anymore as icons, but as tag "flag:red". Gross. No other issues so far.

292

Living Room / Re: Evernote Icon - what the heck is it? Anyone actually like version 3 ?

« Last post by yksyks on July 10, 2008, 03:46 AM »

Evernote 3.0.0.681 released today. Some GUI changes, some bugfixes, especially useful is that you can now reorder columns. Still not perfect, but I'm using it now on a regular basis instead of version 2.2 and I can only recommend it.

293

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by yksyks on July 09, 2008, 03:43 PM »

I can't help myself, but when speaking about tidying up the workplace, I always recall my favorite quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick:

Here is an anecdote about my brother, which, with minor variations, could be told truthfully about me:

Bernard worked for the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, for a while, where he discovered that silver iodide could precipitate certain sorts of clouds as snow or rain. His laboratory was a sensational mess, however, where a clumsy stranger could die in a thousand different ways, depending on where he stumbled.

The company had a safety officer who nearly swooned when he saw this jungle of deadfalls and snares and hair-trigger booby traps. He bawled out my brother.

My brother said this to him, tapping his own forehead with his fingertips: "If you think this laboratory is bad, you should see what it's like in here."

294

General Software Discussion / Re: Equivalent to Foldershare?

« Last post by yksyks on July 09, 2008, 04:19 AM »

If anybody is interested in my very short experience with PowerFolder: I realized soon that for some reason it blocks Alt-PgUp and Al-PgDn shortcuts, which are inevitable for Adobe InDesign, so upon every restart I just stopped PowerFolder, saying to myself that I'll have to investigate or eventually disable it later. This repeated several times and I completely forgot about it. Needless to say that I've never synchronized a single bit using it. After today's restart this window appeared:



So I finally uninstalled it without further investigation. Would you trust such an application?

Never mind, in the meantime I humbly returned to FolderShare and I must say, except rare cut-offs, it runs quite well, synchronizing several thousands of files without any problem.

295

Living Room / Re: Opera 9.5

« Last post by yksyks on July 04, 2008, 05:16 AM »

Well, I didn't find any solution, but a clean install of the final build 9.51 fixed all. For me Opera is back!

296

General Software Discussion / Re: I need a frame by frame dvd video player software.

« Last post by yksyks on July 04, 2008, 03:09 AM »

I just noticed that you need to view movies from DVD, not the individual MPG or VOB files, so in that case you'd need VideoReDo TVSuite, which is capable of importing the DVD.

Anyway, I'm not sure if players can do what you need--in my opinion the players allow to step frame by frame in forward direction only as they can't interpret the B-frames backwards, but if you need to get back they usually skip to the GOP start, i.e. the closest I-frame.

297

General Software Discussion / Re: I need a frame by frame dvd video player software.

« Last post by yksyks on July 04, 2008, 02:55 AM »

I'd suggest VideoReDo Plus, which is not just a player, though. It's a full featured MPEG-2 editor, but very fast and you can scroll by frames freely. You can run several instances to compare movies frame by frame, set bookmarks, etc.

I'm not sure, but probably the trial version doesn't allow to save movies after its expiration, however, the browsing functionality should remain. Anyway, you can try it for free.

298

Living Room / Re: Opera 9.5

« Last post by yksyks on June 30, 2008, 05:11 AM »

Me too. This must some strange coincidence. If I eventually come to some solution I'll post it here.

299

Living Room / Re: Opera 9.5

« Last post by yksyks on June 29, 2008, 04:28 PM »

I'm not going to try to report this as a bug. I can recall some time ago I reported repeated problems with tv.com site and I was not alone in that case. After a long time I got a reply that they discovered some non-standard coding on the mentioned pages and they can't do anything with that. Needless to say other browsers displayed these pages correctly. Anyway, they fixed it a couple of betas later.

So I'll give Opera one more try with clean install, but in the meantime I'm happy with IE7pro.

300

Living Room / Re: Opera 9.5

« Last post by yksyks on June 28, 2008, 05:13 PM »

I advise to either stick with the stable version, or install the beta builds in another directory.

-Lashiec (June 28, 2008, 02:05 PM)

That's what I'm trying to avoid--losing all the history and bookmarks every week? I'm not that devoted to Opera...

Also, it would be a good idea to report the problem to their bugtracker, or if you feel brave enough, use the Opera Desktop Team blog comment system, or the Opera forums.

Certainly not. That's why I asked DC members to verify if it's only me. And yes, it's only me, so I'm pretty sure they won't care. Also, it applies to DC forum solely, so I can tell you what the reply would be: Let the DC forum guys correct theirs pages!

Regarding the Opera forum: I used to write there several times, but I've never receive any valid answer, if you don't count ironic, arogant and sarcastic comments. This is a "normal" forum, not even remotely resembling the constructive atmosphere here at the DC.