Recent Posts

3001

Living Room / Re: Why did it never occur to me.. You can wash a keyboard in water.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 25, 2012, 01:00 AM »

Heh that takes more Mojo than I have to spare

3002

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 24, 2012, 10:39 PM »

In some ways my best "extensions" (quotes needed!) are the couple of widgets I got from here. They don't officially hook per se, but they're browser-use based.

3003

Living Room / Re: Why did it never occur to me.. You can wash a keyboard in water.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 24, 2012, 02:56 PM »

(To Renny minus quotes because this is from my phone)
I get the edgy 'thang about your post but it's a profound economic puzzle. Besides the value if time, remember to include the risk of mistake damage. To me if I can't just wipe it down with Lysol wipes and paperclips, I lose a lot of confidence taking the whole thing apart etc.

Weren't we saying you have to wait *days* before you can use it again? So ... what ... I now need a backup keyboard for a week while I wait for the $30 one, only to find I messed it up anyway and now I need a new $30 one?

Bleh. *That's* the full cost matrix of these cute little projects ... for a $30 keyboard. (I'll leave the equations to my betters. Extra credit variables : pets, children (file under pets! Hehe) )

3004

Living Room / Re: Why did it never occur to me.. You can wash a keyboard in water.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 23, 2012, 05:13 PM »

I guess I'm just too lazy for all this stuff. I'll just buy a new keyboard every six years...
Given my lack of mechanical intuition for me the loss of time plus frustration and risk of mistakes outweighs 30 bucks every half decade.

3005

General Software Discussion / Re: Keyboard shortcut of the day

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 21, 2012, 12:04 PM »

Yeah, count me in for not knowing any of those.

3006

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 21, 2012, 12:00 PM »

I'm putting it here to not sully the real thread:

I giggled last night at a theoretical NANY concept: The TSA Agent App!
Learn which agents are available at which airports and when they are on duty! Share your experiences of your favorite grope! Vote for your favorite agent!

3007

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you going to wait for Windows 9?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 21, 2012, 11:53 AM »

From one of the articles from above:
"That lack of multiple window support forced Nielsen to dub it "one of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users."

Is that true even in desktop mode? Can someone clarify/confirm that That would be enough to keep me from using Win 8.

3008

Living Room / Re: Mysteries

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 21, 2012, 08:34 AM »

In one sense we had one chance to build towards getting off this planet, and we missed it. It's an interesting variant of the tragedy of commons problems and so on. If the global nations of the earth pooled wealth to make a universal moon and mars base pair starting from 1960 and finishing in 2025, we would have had it. But that was too hard of a problem. Instead people fell into endless "local" traps of smaller concerns. For me the biggest tip-off was the specifics of the computational power as it relates to the space program. So we got to the moon in 1969 ... with 1969 tech, both vehicle and glaringly, computational. So in 2013 we're acting like that's now too hard to do?! Really?! We couldn't have used that decade's worth of wasted money on DHS to just build a moonbound SuperFreighter Dreadnought just to dump supplies on the moon to get going with?

Nah, because that's not as much fun as visiting Iraq and Afghanistan claiming to look for a guy being actively protected by the Pakistani Government. (Isn't it amazing how fast THAT became old news, after years of "Staying the Course?")

3009

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 21, 2012, 08:23 AM »

Now Austin wants to secede from Texas.

-Arizona Hot (November 20, 2012, 09:58 PM)

What does that even mean? The Unincorporated Town Formerly Known as Austin becomes its own state? Or does it automatically secede from the US as well? Speaking of that other thread with the conspiracies, all this secession stuff is ... a game. Units simply cannot secede, that was the cutting edge news of 1865. So here we go again, someone's playing an angle, and I simply won't waste my energy on it. It will go away in a couple of years. We didn't go through total hell for 160 years with lots of ugly wars only to have states/town threaten to secede in ... wait for it ... 2013 out of what is very close to boredom.

3010

Living Room / Re: A secret society uncovered 250 years later

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 21, 2012, 08:17 AM »

Hi Paul. I disagree and think all that still falls under my categories. I am placing no restrictions upon the timeframe that the money must be used, so if they hoard it for a while, that's in line too. Meanwhile there are scores of uses of power, and I am including all of them, whether it's making a billion per day on barley futures with the help of Monsanto or our more familiar **AA shenanigans.

I'm not exactly a sheep, but my perspective is that even if I could have an IQ of 230 for a day from some secret drug a la Flowers for Algernon, knowing that 1,984 people in 451 entities are all part of a big interlocked mess doesn't help me do anything productive. Milk is available between $2.50 and $5 a gallon ... so I buy it. If it's "supposed" to be $1 a gallon but some crazy conspiracy is pushing it to those prices, there's nothing I myself can do about it. So that's just how the world appears to this slightly-above-sheeple guy.

3011

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Pledge & Release: KyrTTS

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 20, 2012, 03:25 PM »

So it's cute, but counter-productive? 

-kyrathaba (November 19, 2012, 08:07 PM)

Well, maybe that default voice can be used to torture terrorists to Save Our Country, but to actually *listen* to an audio text, I prefer not to end up like the guy in a Clockwork Orange.   

3012

Living Room / Re: A secret society uncovered 250 years later

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 20, 2012, 03:15 PM »

That is seriously dark stuff, and a very deep rabbit hole.

-Renegade (November 20, 2012, 06:12 AM)

I dunno, it seemed all a little hollow to me after a while. I don't have any interest in "irrelevant" alien invaders from Atlantis who all died out or whatever. It's a bit like the tree falling in the forest with no one around. So for the moment I will assume any cabals are made of H. Sapiens.

Next, my interests in new age changed, and moved away from obscurity for its own sake. Astrology, Alchemy, Crystals, many kinds of rituals, and so on, don't seem to do much in my particular experience. My more recent interpretation of alternative materials is whether I can directly apply a principle to enhance my life in a provable external way.

As for interlocking cabals, I don't care about them either. They're essentially another "unprovable theory" in the context of every day life. In one sense, the only things secret cabals can do is use money to get power and use power to make more money, so they can have at it. Except maybe making my unemployment worse, cabal-musical-chairs doesn't really affect me, so I choose not to burn up mental energy on that maze. There's plenty of lower level corruption to get grumpy at.

So in the end, as I moved last week, in the process of pruning down my library collection I discarded my copies. I'm just out of energy to wade through them for concepts for my growth system. I'm sure there are some in there, but as of right now I don't think any of it will be "found there and nowhere else and be stunningly life changing."

3013

Living Room / Re: A secret society uncovered 250 years later

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 07:03 PM »

One of my most prized finds as a young'un before I lost interest in such things, was the fact that some California new age house had reprinted the until-then ultra-obscure Isis Unveiled and the Secret Doctrine pair of texts by H. P. Blavatsky in about 1990. Compared with the usual mid range stuff on bookshelves at the time, it was immediately obvious that despite the author's apologies for collapsing in the face of organizing her text properly, she clearly Knew Something. Science wasn't in great shape in 1875-1890, but neither was it complete hocum either. Even with only a sporadic couple of years of hobby mythology studies at my command, something was up. There were Christian theological debates in footnotes that today match up with Wikipedia (yes, I know that other thread!) and she was one of only about two sources readily at hand that mentioned that the Phoenix had Arabian connections as well as the Egyptian-Greek lineage. And then there were various comments in at least seven languages. And that's when she was TRYING to be read.

So yeah, when someone like that wants to make a cypher, I'm not sure our modern cryptologists are ready for Triple-Steganographically-Encoded tricks like using "cinq" to mean "pain". And that's an easy one to take pity on my fellow Cody-ites. (Cinq is Five in French, Five in Jewish Kaballa Tree of Life, which often means hardship and pain.) And that's just one word. Do that for every word in the entire document and I could see why even a doctoral professor put it away in despair for thirteen years.

Edit: Or maybe this Knight guy is. I didn't read carefully enough before I started typing.

"So one evening Knight shifted his approach. He tried assuming that the manuscript used a more complex code—one that used multiple symbols to stand for a single German letter."

So yeah, "cinq" = "5" = "pain" is something he might catch if he knew where to look.

Edit2:
"It would appear that the Copiale symbols don’t represent just words and letters, they stand for numbers too. But if they do, Knight, Megyesi, and Schaefer haven’t been able to tease out the meaning. The Oculist master apparently understood these coded documents in a way that today’s interpreters do not. Despite years’ worth of attacks on their cipher, the Oculists’ secrets have not been pried loose, at least not fully. What they saw in their initiation chambers may never again be seen."

So forgive me for typing before I read the whole thing. I was right the first time. (Blame it on Slashdot!) If your key meaning is the phrase "mystical renewal" = "number 9" and you hide it behind the oldest Persian dialect possible, modern experts might still miss it.

3014

Living Room / Re: How Much Do You Trust Wikipedia?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 06:40 PM »

Obligatory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon

And has a anyone contacted Kevin Bacon for his opinion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Bacon

3015

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: RealWorld Paint 2011.1 finally complete

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 06:38 PM »

TaoPhoenix, if you remember what was the problem, I'd love to know

-vlastimil (November 19, 2012, 10:22 AM)

Hi Vlastimil,

Buy the way I find I often use a few particular features out of a sometimes much larger subset, with the signature example being Mouser's Screenshot Captor. I like knowing the big program has 450 horsepower even if I drive it like the semi-senile man I am. (kidding!)

My powers of concentration are rather erratic, but it's good to know you can add a couple of features so the next time I go on a rampage I'll make notes. Very vaguely there's something that I keep opening MS Paint for instead of the much fancier/stronger Paint.net if I can remember why.

3016

General Software Discussion / Re: Browser Bunch 1.4.2.0 - with BBSS

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 09:45 AM »

-MilesAhead (November 04, 2012, 08:51 AM)

That graphic is traumatizing oin a Stephen King's Clown kind of way. Or a Backstreet Boys song. : (

3017

General Software Discussion / Re: Browser Bunch 1.4.2.0 - with BBSS

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 09:44 AM »

All seriousness aside... it's your app. Let me know what you want to add.

-MilesAhead (November 04, 2012, 08:51 AM)

Actually, I think I have found my first big request for an feature-add. I would like a Toggle-able option (maybe in the Right-Click from the tray?) that prints-to-PDF all of the pages. The big use case is applying for jobs, I need PDF copies of the offer pages. So rather than hand-saving them, since your pro is already cycling through them, let's just do print-to-PDF of them all as well, in whatever same folder the text lists are going to. The PDF titles would be the same as the page Titles.

But it needs to be toggleable, because for example once I am done with the list I don't need page copies.

3018

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: RealWorld Paint 2011.1 finally complete

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 08:25 AM »

I'll try to remember to look at this. I end up doing a little fast and dirty stuff to simple pics and I vaguely recall shuffling between different graphics programs (though at the moment I can't recall precisely why. Something to do with one killer feature in one program and another one in another.)

3019

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Pledge & Release: KyrTTS

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 12:41 AM »

It's cute but it's a little too stripped even for my fading interest in TTS.

I used to use TextAloud back in the day. So unfortunately I don't have a use case for this little thingie. I'm happy to offer "essentials" features ideas but if programs are submitted as "I don't have time" that sounds counter-productive.

3020

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: N.A.N.Y 2013 Submission - Super Simple Photo Resizer

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 12:26 AM »

(With due chops to Renny!)
This is clearly the important part of that original photo.
I have cropped it with ScreenShotCaptor and Stickies, and uploaded it to Social Media site DonationCoder.

3021

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 19, 2012, 12:16 AM »

Perhaps the thing we are most guilty of on this forum is beating meta discussions to death 

-mouser (November 18, 2012, 09:50 AM)

I think this needs a discussion!

3022

Living Room / Re: How Much Do You Trust Wikipedia?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 18, 2012, 01:39 PM »

I guess I trust Wikipedia somewhere around a 2. My use cases for Wikipedia tend to be looking up movie actors, chemical classes of medicines, and light general knowledge. Usually the rawest facts are "near the right ballpark", long enough to satisfy an hour's curiosity of some topic like the financial panic of 1908 ( If I remember - I'm typing this on my phone!)

So maybe the speculations are up for interpretation but no one really disputes that J.P. Morgan was in the middle of it all.

3023

Living Room / Re: Patent on Turning Pages

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 17, 2012, 07:29 PM »

I'm wondering why a bunch of Flash Ads don't have prior art. There's a couple out there that were really aggressively page-turney.

3024

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 16, 2012, 10:05 AM »

Heroes of Science

http://datazoid.devi...on-Figures-337514889
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Renegade (November 16, 2012, 06:16 AM)

I actually have a Jung action figure! (Somewhere in the stuff I just moved!)

3025

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 16, 2012, 10:00 AM »

I could post this is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many threads...
Where would you post it?
Hard decision!

-Renegade (November 16, 2012, 09:54 AM)

Gadget Friday?