Recent Posts

2801

Living Room / Re: How -- and why -- do you use different browsers?

« Last post by Edvard on April 26, 2006, 04:52 PM »

Internet Explorer was too buggy and full of security holes, so I tried FireFox
FireFox looks real nice, is easy to use out of the box, and has a billion extensions to make it do a billion nifty things. And it runs on linux. BUT... It takes FOREVER to load (except on the new office computer which is a 2.8GHz Pentium D with 1GB of RAM) and Java apps slow it to an absolute crawl, (which I could not find on bugzilla, and googling for "java slows firefox" turned up a scant handful of reports...) so I tried Opera.
Opera is fast and webpages render pretty good. Mind, I haven't been using it for very long, so I've been told I'm going to find a bunch more nice things to say about it. BUT... the interface is cluttered and confusing (give me FITTS'... PLEASE!) and it took me an hour to figure out how to add or remove bars and buttons. So, what am I looking for? Well, if Firefox started faster and had not the issues with Java, it'd be a no brainer. But I keep seeing so much good being said about Opera, and it is free now, so I'm giving it a shot. No idea about Netscape (anybody still using that dinosaur?) Mozilla proper, Maxthon, etc.

2802

Living Room / Re: Opera 9 Beta

« Last post by Edvard on April 26, 2006, 12:54 PM »

Weird. I just noticed that as I was getting to this topic. Freaking weird.

2803

Living Room / Re: Opera 9 Beta

« Last post by Edvard on April 26, 2006, 12:24 PM »

What I'm wanting to do is make everything a little more FF-ish. BIG nav buttons to the left of the url box, tabs under that over the window. No bookmark, link or fav buttons taking up space to the left of the window, things like that. HEY I just noticed my Stop button is not there any more... what gives?!?!. These kind of things make me STOP using software. I'm not done with Opera yet so there may be hope...

P.S. Opera 9 Beta crashes on NT4 (I'm on 8.5...). Where the heck do I submit a bug report (and a Dr. Watson log, )?

2804

General Software Discussion / Re: New Internet Explorer Security Risk - April 25, 2006

« Last post by Edvard on April 26, 2006, 11:59 AM »

Actually, I have found IE to be somewhat useful when using alternate shells and desktop programs. I have PowerPro hiding my icons and have found that I can't open my recycle bin. IE to the rescue! I made a shortcut that has IE open my c:\Recycler\(blahblahblah) and it acts just like my RB but with IE's trappings (of course). There was another trick to make it act more like Windows Explorer (with alternate shells, WE doesn't always play nice) but with all the alternate file browsers out there that do so much more anyways, it's moot.

2805

Living Room / Re: Opera 9 Beta

« Last post by Edvard on April 26, 2006, 11:44 AM »

I'm seriously considering switching to Opera from FF for many reasons I won't go into here. The things that have stopped me from using Opera are (1) Price. (no longer a consideration) and (2)  User interface. I'm not talking skins, I'm talking Where's My Freaking Buttons (!?!?!?!). I have a lot of muscle memory invested in FF and the default Opera interface is (for now) cluttered and disorienting. It took me an hour, but I finally figured out how to put a Stop button on my Navigation toolbar (w00t!!!11!!1). Now I have to clear out the crap and put what I want where I want and it is proving to be a difficult task. But, judging by past experience, this is try #2 so it may turn out to be a keeper.

2806

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by Edvard on April 18, 2006, 05:34 PM »

Indeed, Mame is awesome. But when Mameworld.dk went down, I lost interest in digging for roms as the links almost always went to undesirable websites. The world of emulation is a big one... Look here:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Emulators/

2807

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by Edvard on April 18, 2006, 03:05 PM »

There were no games on the TRS 80.

I beg to differ:
http://www.dadgum.co.../giantlist/list.html
Check out all the ones with "TRS" in the listing. I didn't know there were so many for HALF these systems...

2808

Living Room / Re: Is it safe to try new freeware?

« Last post by Edvard on April 18, 2006, 02:59 PM »

Website says it is simply an AutoIt app that relies on other unzippers to work. I use and love 7-Zip, but I have found that ZipGenius opens more than 7-zip does.

2809

Living Room / Re: Is it safe to try new freeware?

« Last post by Edvard on April 17, 2006, 04:40 PM »

Heh. The Linux Evangelists strike again... I'm with you gjehle, at home anyways. At work, not only am I on Windows, but Windows NT 4.0 SP6a. So a lot of the stuff I'm installing is usually to suck some productivity out of this dinosaur, as well as to get around some annoyances. My favorite trick is to unpack ALL exe's (Installers are quite often self-extracting archives with setup scripts) before running them. It has been a while since I've seen it, but I have run across some that had spy installers packed in with the goodies. Besides, 90% of the time if it doesn't need an uninstall, I don't need an installer.

2810

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by Edvard on April 17, 2006, 02:37 PM »

Yipes, let's play "I'm an old fart"...
All the old games I remember were Apple II games. Some platforms, a couple interactives (like Zork, etc.) here's a list of all I remember, but there were probably a few more...

Zork I & II
Apple Panic
Lode Runner
LSLLLL (admits blushingly... and only once...)
but first prize goes to...
Robot Odyssey (which lives on as DROIDQUEST!!)

2811

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: My new favorite pen

« Last post by Edvard on April 17, 2006, 10:49 AM »

*gasp* Fountain Pens!!
I too am a closet fountain pen groupie. Never could afford the good ones, Shaeffer ALWAYS leaked on me so I was in for the Parker "Jotter" (which came in both fountain and ball-point models) with plastic refill tanks. They could be had (for a while) at the corner grocer for 4-6 USD. Then they just went away...
My next fave was the Pentech something-or-other. 2 bucks for cheap gray plastic with an ingenius wire pocket-clip and folded-metal nib that was a bit scratchy sometimes but used a bigger refill tank and NEVER leaked. I would immediately take it home and use an x-acto to chip the black paint off the nib because that caused problems when it loosened later on. Those went away too, after Pentech was bought out by the company that makes Disney promo junk.

Sites of fountain-pennish goodness:
Penspotters
http://www.rickconne...nspotters/about.html

The PenMuseum
http://www.penmuseum.co.uk/index.html
(hit the "Masterclass" for more info than you will ever need)

I found an entertaining history of the ballpoint pen can be found around the middle of this page:
http://www.writersbbs.com/members/pens/

2812

General Software Discussion / Re: Your favourite Windows Shell Enhancements

« Last post by Edvard on April 14, 2006, 10:19 AM »

Useless, but fun. Brand your context menus!!
http://www.virtualpl...ml/ui_cntxt_dll.html
Allows you to put a custom bitmap at the tail of your menus.

2813

Developer's Corner / Re: 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed - nice article

« Last post by Edvard on April 12, 2006, 10:45 AM »

I like this part about business relationships and being too formal...

If someone address me like a computer, I’ll respond in kind — by hitting delete.

Too bad telemarketers haven't read that...

2814

Living Room / Re: Hacking Network Printers - nice loong article

« Last post by Edvard on April 11, 2006, 01:20 PM »

Yep, we got a Xerox 555 Document Centre in the office and it has all that.  Good thing we're behind a firewall...

2815

Living Room / Re: Giant devil rabbit terrorises village

« Last post by Edvard on April 11, 2006, 01:11 PM »

  http://www.ananova.c...tory/sm_1541732.html

2816

Living Room / Re: remember that cool video with the even cooler game?

« Last post by Edvard on April 07, 2006, 02:40 PM »

Ooh... Desktop Mirrors... where do I get some?

2817

Living Room / Re: DIY madness ...

« Last post by Edvard on April 07, 2006, 02:38 PM »

Mmm... IKEA 
(the closest one to me is about 60 miles away, but well worth the trip  )

2818

Living Room / Re: DIY madness ...

« Last post by Edvard on April 07, 2006, 11:58 AM »

In these here parts, we call that a "lazy susan" (no disrespect to Susans the world over...) but here's my two cents (and I've done it myself, so I know it works):
Find a container lid of some sort that's sturdy (hard plastic or metal), flat, large enough to serve as a base for what you want to do and has side walls a tad shorter than a marble's diameter. With the lid turned up, put marbles inside around the rim (hopefully, there's a lip of some sort to keep the marbles at the perimeter but if not, it should still work) and place the table on top. Now, the table should be able to rotate on the marbles. Rather a rough job, but it will work in a pinch.

2819

Living Room / Re: Giant devil rabbit terrorises village

« Last post by Edvard on April 07, 2006, 11:37 AM »

hehe... couldn't resist:
http://bau2.uibk.ac....yGrail/grail-21.html

2820

General Software Discussion / Re: One-hit wonders

« Last post by Edvard on April 06, 2006, 05:34 PM »

How about Jeskola Buzz?
http://en.wikipedia..../wiki/Buzz_(software)
I heard about it around the same time Oskari's hard drive melted, wiping out all the sources. Now it's a rather large community of die-hard fans keeping it (barely) alive.

2821

Living Room / Re: remember that cool video with the even cooler game?

« Last post by Edvard on April 06, 2006, 05:23 PM »

At first I was going to say "did you click 'How Do I Play' ?" but apparently you have... I don't get it either, it just gets harder and harder. That thing you want for your Birthday... it'd make a great interface for Hummingbird
(too bad it's abandoned, that's the archive page. But it's still available here: http://ftp.citkit.ru...ge/h/hu/hummingbird/ )

2822

Living Room / More secure passwords... New/Old thoughts

« Last post by Edvard on April 06, 2006, 12:22 PM »

I was just thinking... Wouldn't "LeetSpeak" make for really good passwords? Easily remembered and yet more secure... Seems the Wiki page for Leet has beat me to it...

A more modern and legal use of leet is as a cipher that is opaque to computer systems. Computer security systems often disallow the use of common english words as passwords. Leet's use as a way of ciphering English words and phrases as strings of punctuation characters can make it useful as a means of creating memorable passwords that such systems will accept. A system that will refuse "Now is the time" as a password will often be quite happy to accept "|\|0\/\/ 15 7|-|3 71|\/|3".

Thoughts?

2823

Living Room / Re: Etch a Sketch

« Last post by Edvard on April 06, 2006, 11:17 AM »

Online versions may not be as cool as the real thing, but anyways...
Etch-A-Sketch
http://www.etch-a-sk.../html/onlineetch.htm (java)
http://www.babygrand.com/games/etc.htm (flash)
Spirograph
http://www.math.dart...tle/java/SpiroGraph/ (java)
http://www.wordsmith...java/spirograph.html (java)
http://fergusmurray....beeb.net/Trochor.htm (java again, but it's 3D!)
LiteBrite
http://www.sfpg.com/...ation/liteBrite.html
http://www.hasbro.co...te/swf/litebrite.cfm

Also, see this post:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1285.0

2824

Living Room / Re: The Torn-Up Credit Card Application

« Last post by Edvard on April 04, 2006, 05:07 PM »

More credit card monkey business... I'm about to get some scissors...

http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/

http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/

Man, these money-grubbers really don't care, do they?

2825

Developer's Corner / Re: correleation between beard growth and unix hacker level

« Last post by Edvard on April 03, 2006, 07:24 PM »

Only if you've been running it since 1995

Touche'.
I didn't even have a computer in 1995. (come to think of it, I may have barely had a home...)

but... I compiled my own print driver!!1!11