Recent Posts

27526

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.50 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - February 20, 2007

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2007, 12:52 AM »

i think everyone is agreed now that there should be a feature freeze, which basically means my efforts now will be going into stability and bugfixing, so we should have a public release at the very very latest march 7.

27527

Living Room / Re: Apologese - I will be offline for a while ...

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2007, 12:43 AM »

Trouble is if it is an intermittent fault I could end up stuck with a lemon that plays up at home but tests in the workshop and I am really stuck as to what to do next.

Many of us have suffered from this situation - can be truly painful.  We had a vcr like this back in the day when vcrs were expensive.  each time we brought it in it seemed to work for them.. Eventually, and i'm not recommending this, we took an electrical cord and just burnt out some of the components on the board. It was the only way we could figure out to get them to repair this broken device..

27528

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.50 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - February 20, 2007

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2007, 12:27 AM »

- I would like to suggest that you freeze new features for now. Let's focus on stability, performance, and bug issues so you can get an public release out.

Agreed.
Indexing is the one other major feature option that is still on my todo list but let's leave that for another milestone.

For now it's time to focus on stability/performance/bugfixes.

27529

Official Announcements / Re: What changes would you like to see on DonationCoder.com in 2007?

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2007, 12:25 AM »

Thats a good idea Clive, i'll put it on my todo list.
ps. It's nice to hear that someone read's the blog!

27530

Best Text Editor / Re: Is this serious?

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 11:45 PM »

The text editor review is getting a little old, i'll update it with your comments though.  i have to admit im not much of a vi[m] fan.  i know it's powerful but the interface is just too much for me.  at least with emacs i feel like im still on a planet inhabited by humans.  with vi i feel like i've been transported to an alien universe made for creatures who use telepathy instead of fingers.

27531

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.50 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - February 20, 2007

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 11:09 PM »

ok teegee you seem to have an unusual firefox setup, however not to fret! this just gives me a chance to try out my new Advanced Configuration system and ill add a way that user can specify custom location of their bookmark files.

27532

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.50 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - February 20, 2007

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 02:58 PM »

maybe teegee moved his bookmarks somewhere out of the default location:
\\Documents and Settings\\USERNAME\\Application Data\\Mozilla\\Firefox\\Profiles\.....\bookmarks.html?

27533

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.50 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - February 20, 2007

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 01:50 PM »

i must admit i have ff 1.5, and winxp and haven't tested it on other stuff.  I should try it on ff 2.
what operating system do you have by the way?

27534

Living Room / Re: The Machine Is US

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 12:22 PM »

How come i didn't know about tinjaw's blog!

fun reading.  we really do havve to put together a page with links to all blogs written by dc members.

27535

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.50 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - February 20, 2007

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 11:55 AM »

I have just uploaded Version 2.00.50 to the same location.

This is a MAJOR new version which introduced plugins and a bunch of new improvements.

HOWEVER: it is a super early release - there are bound to be issues, and i havent fixed any of the bugs mentioned before (at least not on purpose), so only install if you like to experiment.  Having said that, i think there are some great new things in it.

There is only one included plugin: FarrFox.  It will be enabled by default but you can disable it if you don't like it.  It lets you search your firefox bookmarks by typing ff KEYWORDS.

One of the other improvements is that now all alias lists can now be searched and filtered and scored.  If you don't know what this means then it won't matter to you, but it can be very helpful if you use aliases like menus because now you can filter and score these menus if you want.

Please see the help file for more info!

---

Note that this FarrFox plugin is only a simple example of what plugins can do - I will be releasing a plugin sdk soon for people who want to try writing a plugin - and i'll have some prizes too   Plugins can be written in anything that can create a DLL file, though my sample code is plain c/c++.

27536

Living Room / Re: Best choice for server-side game programming

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 10:37 AM »

A dedicated server is a real computer.  DonationCoder.com website for example runs on a dedicated server.  Essentially it means your operating system is running on the pc, and ONLY your stuff is running on the computer.

A *virtual* private server means your have a complete operating system running on the computer, but in a virtual environment along with other people's virtual environments.  So, you have complete control over your operating system and all files, and it is very secure against other virtual users touching your files, BUTall the resources are shared between all virtual users - so it's significantly slower (and cheaper).

A VPS (virtual private server) could cost you $25-$100 a month.
A Dedicated server could cost you $100 to $500 or so.

27537

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Virtual PC 2007 released - freeware

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 10:29 AM »

In my view, everyone should have this installed, unless you happen to own VMWare.

See my review of virtual machine tools to see why it's so useful.  Don't be distracted by my love of VMWare - VirtualPC is an excellent product and given that it is free, it's a wonderful addition to everyone's toolset, especially if you do a lot of software testing. 

27538

Living Room / Re: Best choice for server-side game programming

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 10:06 AM »

If you were going to build a large-scale multi-user project, i would certainly not rule out any language like .net even if it required a dedicated server.

The larger the scale of the project, the more speed might matter and the more important code organization matters.  You could develop it on your pc and only after it gets to a stable state then raise money to pay for a virtual or dedicated server where you can run whatever software you need to run.

27539

UrlSnooper / Re: URLsnooper refuses to start!

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 09:55 AM »

i'll have to try the uninstall in winme too and see if there are any issues.
in case your winme friend feels brave, see this post: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=7503.0

27540

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.45 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - February 6, 2007

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2007, 05:21 AM »

keep the bug reports coming - it's not that i'm not listening it's that im working every day on plugin system and some new features that i think are very cool.

i finally added ability to filter and score within an alias.  so if you have an alias group list of 20 programs you can now type the alias name followed by some more words to filter and score from within your list.  extrememely useful if you have big aliases.

i also added a feature Joto calls search templates, which basically lets you make regular expression shorthands for more complicated searches:

This can be very useful when you have certain search strings that you reuse often.

For example, let's say you often do a searches like this :

+audio .mp3 Dylan
+audio .mp3 Blondie
+audio .mp3 Bratmobile

You can now create an alias which makes this easier.  Just create a new alias, give it any name you want, and choose a regular expression pattern, like

^msearch (.*)

And now the important part.  for the results, put a single entry as follows:

dosearch +audio .mp3 $$1

Now when this pattern is matched by the user typing something like:

msearch Dylan

Then FARR will behave as if the user had typed:

+audio .mp3 Dylan

27541

Living Room / Re: Agree with Bruce Eckel?

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 10:16 PM »

this is absolutely my #1 concern, and my reason for not embracing it yet.  i want to be comfortable that it will be a viable cross-platform solution before i spend too much time developing large projects in .NET.

It doesn't mean i would rule out .net development, but i would think long and hard before i embarked on a large .NET project that i had hopes of porting to other platforms.

27542

Living Room / Re: Google Releases Paper on Disk Reliability

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 08:22 PM »

The conclusions are interesting that heat and usage is not a very good predictor of failure.. I guess basically the take-home message is what we all suspect: failure of disk drives is unpredictable - so backup your stuff regularly!

27543

Screenshot Captor / Re: [Request] Some features after 2.30.04

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 07:29 PM »

so basically you want an option that will hide the sc window when you launch a tool, yes?

27544

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR Occasional Hangs

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 12:32 PM »

in step 6, when you exited, it saved current settings and thus overwrote your old file '
perhaps it is time for me to have farr save backups.

27545

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR Occasional Hangs

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 11:49 AM »

send me your renamed ini file please - ill see if i can find what went wrong ([email protected]).
its a text file btw so you can open it and make sure you are not sending me anything sensitive.

27546

Developer's Corner / Re: Fifteen Commandments of Programming

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 10:19 AM »

well you did finding that i must admit 

27547

Screenshot Captor / Re: Download file name

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 07:31 AM »

im sort of inclined to agree with you that version numbers in downloads are useful... however it poses a major problem for the online listing sites which send people to a fixed download url.  there are ways around it but they are a huge pain.

27548

Developer's Corner / Re: Fifteen Commandments of Programming

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 06:54 AM »

great stuff!
ps. redhat you know you are suppose to attach a picture so i can blog more easily!

27549

Official Announcements / Re: Upgrading the forum tonight to SMF 1.1.2 - Possibilities of minor turbulence

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 06:32 AM »

Hopefully the forum has now been upgraded successfully.
Let me know of any troubles.

27550

Living Room / Re: We all need to do some ground work for DC

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2007, 05:13 AM »

Not sure what it means for everyone to "do their part" but i appreciate the sentiment

I'm thrilled with the new help desk area (powered by KnowledgeBase Publisher), and we'll be adding more help entries in the future.

As for being available for contract work or larger freelance projects, please do by all means pass along the info to any people or businesses that you think might be interested in hiring a programmer.