Recent Posts

31601

Living Room / Invader360: Beautifully Stark Retro Space Game

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 11:55 PM »

This is a beautifully Stark Retro Space Game.

Invader360 is a great little Flash based tube shooter, similar to arcade classics Tempest,

from jayisgames.com

31602

Older Newsletters / Second Podcast Radio Show Info - Scheduled for June 4, 2006

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 11:15 PM »

The Second DonationCoder Audio Podcast Radio Show
(scheduled for June 4, 2006), at 8pm New York Time

we need your help recording segments!

https://www.donationcoder.com/podcast

Question of the Month:

• Question of the Month: How did you get your (forum) nickname?
• For each show we ask our members to submit their answer to a different question. We'll include a few of our favorite answers in each podcast.
• Please don't forget to introduce yourself at the start of your voicemail using your DonationCoder.com forum name.
• Record your answer on your computer and email it to [email protected] in mp3 format or upload anonymously to ftp.donationcoder.com.

More on the DC Podcast show:

• https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3161.0
• https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3330.0
• https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3157.0

31603

Find And Run Robot / farr v2 planning - use cases and action idea

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 10:19 PM »

if we imagine the entire set of "actions" and the entire set of "files",
then choosing an action narrows down the list of possible files you could be referring to,
and choosing a file narrows down the list of possible actions that could be applied.

and then you could add "modifiers" which further narrowed down both lists.

the problem i present is not significant if you assume that the results window only ever shows FILES.

then you could day that a user could start typing:
"PLAY bo"
where PLAY was an action (play an mp3 file) which would also make farr narrow down the coming search to only be of mp3 files containing bo.

then when you hit enter it would play the file.
in this case PLAY acts like a modifier AND it also specifies the ACTION to apply when you hit enter.

you might also have a command called
TAGEDIT

which says that you are going to be applying this action to an mp3 file, and you want it opened in your favorite mp3 tag editor.

so if you type "TAGEDIT bob"
it would end up showing all mp3 files with bob in their names, and when you hit enter it opens the file in the tag editor.


Now, as i've described it so far, there is no user interface quandry,
because we're saying that the results window only ever shows FILES (mp3 songs in my example above).
and we've just added the possibility of specifying ACTIONS which act like modifiers but also say what happens when you press enter.

The problem comes in when we want to *help* the user choose a relevant ACTION.

This impinges on the realm of group aliases as we currently have them - where what you type matches against not only files but alias regular expression commands.

And the same problem comes up whether you specify actions before or after.

For example,
imagine my "TAGEDIT bob" example above..
What happens as i'm typing "TAGE"?

Is it trying to find files with TAGE in them?
Wouldn't we want it to be helping me remember my list of available commands and reminding me about TAGEDIT in case i forget how this action is spelled, and to let me not have to type the whole thing in?

Same thing applies if we let user specify action later.

If the person types "bob dy" and then selects "bob dylan's dream" from the results list,
and now wants to perform an ACTION on this song - we want a way for them to select an action without having to use mouse context menu.

to think of another way this problem rears its head, just ask yourself
what happens when a MODIFIER is half-typed?
will it totally mess up the current search - because farr will be trying to match it against the file name list.

In some sense a solution would be like two side-by-side results and search windows,
one for actions, one for files
and let users have two keyboards so they can type in both at the same time and restrict results in both windows.

31604

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Virtual Server 2005 free !!

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 04:47 PM »

welcome to the site mwb1100.  very usefull post. (like your avatar too by the way!).

so this kind of answers my question also.
if you want to use a nice desktop tool to run another virtual pc in a window and easily test software, virtualpc2005 and vmware workstation are the tools of choice (neither free).

31605

Skrommel's Software / Re: AddUrlTimeStamp request

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 04:08 PM »

works perfect 

great util.

31606

Programmer Libs / Re: JrDebugLogger - Viewer Speed

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 03:59 PM »

i *believe* that the same single solution will solve both problems. i suspect that its the constant refreshing of the display with each new row that is causing all the problems; by limiting visual update speed i am guessing the problem will be solved.

31607

Programmer Libs / Re: JrDebugLogger - Viewer Speed

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 03:46 PM »

sorry i forgot but ive been updating all my apps recently so expect an update *this* month

31608

Dr.Windows / Re: Dr.Windows Dialogs - Add Yours!

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 03:26 PM »

I was asked what the & in the button labels do.  for example:
Button: &OK

Answer:
In windows buttons and menus, and & before a letter tells windows to UNDERLINE that letter, and let the user push alt+letter (or just the letter if in a menu) to trigger that button/menu.  You'll see it all over your windows menus and buttons if you take a close look.


ps.
app how about showing a screenshot of that broken.exe for those of us too scared to run it 

31609

DonationCoder Projects / Re: DC Homebrew Mini-CMS Discussion

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 02:36 PM »

Refining the proprosal -
I suggest creating a special "invisible" Board on the forum, which would be the container for what might be called "Floating Posts" or "Floating Threads" or "Tagged Threads".

Essentially this Board would not be like the other boards on the forum - you wouldn't browse it as normal.

Instead it would be used to store articles as posts,
and we would have special functions to retrieve articles and posts from that section by tags/userids/etc.

ive done a similar thing already in the programming school - where users can only read their own posts in certain sections.

NICE IDEA:
we might even NOT make this section hidden but instead label it as "My Articles" and when you click on it,
you see ONLY articles you yourself have written.
each person will see only their own articles, and be able to edit only their own articles (except for admin who can see all).

then an admin can view/edit an "article' and "promote" it to be embedded on a content page (like an article or download).

31610

Skrommel's Software / AddUrlTimeStamp request

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 02:20 PM »

skrommel - i think i asked for this before,
i think it would be good to not add timestamps to any folders within the top level subfolder "Links"
this is used by windows for the toolbar and adding dates to it makes it harder to work with.

any chance of getting this?
i love this util.

31611

Dr.Windows / Re: Dr.Windows Dialogs - Add Yours!

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 02:15 PM »

i need to collect these and add them to the next pack 

welcome to the site Who?  (and you too zerocool!)

31612

Screenshot Captor / Re: Suggestion: Maintain aspect ratio on print -> specified size

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 01:24 PM »

First let me say that except for my text editor, there isn't a tool I use more often that Screenshot Captor.  I even uninstalled a commercial program that the company bought for me because this was so much better.

now that's what i love to hear

you're idea about printing is a very good one; i didn't write the print dialog but i'll bet the author of the printing code will be willing to add this just because it's so obviously the right idea.  i'll pass it along to him right away.

31613

DonationCoder Projects / Re: DC Homebrew Mini-CMS Discussion

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 12:28 PM »

same thing with blog i guess - a blog is just a post,
but with the ability maybe to say:
show me a "virtual blog" only with this person's blog posts.
or show me a "virtual blog" that contains all the blogs of all users.

these are "portal views" into the forum.

thats my new idea

31614

DonationCoder Projects / Re: DC Homebrew Mini-CMS Discussion

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 12:26 PM »

users need to be able to design their own sidebars.

the very best way to invision what this mini-cms has to be able to do is to look at

our reviews: https://www.donation...pareTools/index.html
a user needs to be able to write such a full rich review.

a software page:
note our main software page should have their subpage with a pic:
https://www.donation.../Software/index.html
and then their page:
https://www.donation...ware/Jibz/index.html
with subpages for their programs:
https://www.donation...Jibz/Dina/index.html

an administrator would have to "approve" adding their "section" to the download page.

someone like skrommel might not have a 2 level hierarchy and just use one level:
https://www.donation...m/Software/Skrommel/

and then we have my idea of a blog portal, which is basically like a blog or lifehacker or digg page, which gets its content from the days top forum posts (as chosen by admin or otherwise).

--

i am not opposed to imposing some rather strict formatting requirements on articles/reviews/software page that goes beyond what we currently impose, but the basics are the same - users are going to want to be able to create pages with lots of pictures, and custom sidebars.

it would also be nice to have a way of creating a page like this our release page:
https://www.donation...ftware/releases.html

and i would be happy to replace the complex powerful mantis bug tracker with a much simpler integrated bug report thing where each bug report is simply a post, but again like the rest of cms idea, somehow "tagged" and able to be viewed in a specific way.

the bug tracking idea is a great example of the advantages of this forum-centric idea - because it says that each bug is a forum post.  it can be encountered by people reading the forum, but it would also have a way to "view" bugs from a different interface that would collect and present them in a different more useful task relevant way.

which is basically my idea - to add extra info to posts (tags and fields), and then have a content-template system that is capabable of collecting these posts and organizing and presenting them in a novel way that is most useful for the task.

31615

Living Room / Re: Do you Suffer from Computer Anger Management - How do you handle it?

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 11:39 AM »

nice find edvard, that is pretty cool - good for kids who might enjoy seeing things destroyed

31616

DonationCoder Projects / Re: DC Homebrew Mini-CMS Discussion

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 11:36 AM »

here is what i was thinking about static page rebuilding - i think you got the flavor at the end.  this is what movabletype does. it knows that when someone posts a reply, it needs to build the blog page.

a similar system could be used - all static pages that relied on a thread would have an entry on a table.  whenever a thread is modified that a static page depends on, the static page would be rebuild.

when you think of the # views vs. the number of times a new post is made, there should be no comparison in terms of cpu usage.  even if you had 1000 posts a day it would still be a big winner in terms of speed.

it's not just average speed of course - the real win comes when you get something like a digg or slashdot, because in that case you get 20,000 views and no new posts.  a static page suffers no hit at all.  a dynamic page will kill the server.

while i don't worry about this soo much with forum, i would be VERY reluctant to have a popular page of our site use such a dynamic approach.  if i am write and the blog portal idea gets popular, it will get a huge # of hits a day.

31617

DonationCoder Projects / Re: DC Homebrew Mini-CMS Discussion

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 10:49 AM »

to sort of summarizing the approach i am suggesting, it basically says that we use the forum data table to hold not just posts, but blog entries, articles, download descriptions, maybe even wiki entries, (and bugtracking entries?), and then write custom code to extract and present these items in different ways in an organized website.

there are advantages and disadvantages to this of course..

31618

DonationCoder Projects / Re: DC Homebrew Mini-CMS Discussion

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 10:23 AM »

The Goal:

• A way to make it easier for users to create content for the website, in the form of Reviews, Articles, Blogs, which can be organized in a clean, standard hierarchical form, like the normal website pages here - the pages should look identical to other real pages on the websites with sidebars, etc.
• A way for programmers to have their sofware available for download, in nice fashion similar to the software currently available in the software section (with thumbnails, screenshots, etc.).
• In other words, we want to make it easy for users to create content for the website that looks like the static content on this website, with minimal intervention.

Requirements

• Has to be "safe" and protect against a malicious user trying to run arbitrary php code.
• Can't be too hard for users to write content and format it nicely.
• Output should be static html/php pages for minimal cpu performance hit.
• Ideally the same sysem could be use to organize the entire EXISTING website content, to help unify everything.
• Ideally it would integrate into the forum software to support searching.
• It must integrate into the forum to the extent that its easy for people to add comments on downloads and articles.

Some Ideas

• A generic template system that can build on demand create static html website hierarchy of pages from "templates" and a hierarchy of content pages.
• Support for special kind of content/template fields that can instruct the engine to go grab and extract content from forum posts/threads.
• In this way, comments could on a download or review could actually be extracted and ADDED to a website page whenever a new comment is posted - very nice.
• This would also let us build a unique idea - a blog portal into the forum - where an admin could mark posts that should be automatically extracted and added to a "blog"-like page listing the day's hotest threads.  Think about a Lifehacker like page created from interesting forum posts.
• Because of the complexity of articles, users will need to be able to edit them gradually without making them public, until it comes time to "publish" them, which might require permission from an administrator.
• My idea was to perhaps create a kind of "virtual" forum area for EVERY user, where they could write articles as if they were writing posts (perhaps using same bbcode, etc), and then have some system of moving these special private user articles (posts) into main areas of the forum, or "publishing" them as pages on the main website.
• Extra features would probably need to be added to such posts (articles), like excerpts and preview images.
• I am concerned that the forum bbcode might not be rich enough to support full articles, but there is a lot to be said for keeping all articles as posts.  It may be possible to allow richer html editing inside these posts.
• Such a system of being able to extract info from posts might also enable us to build a kind of "bookmarking" system where users can mark which posts threads they want to assemble on a page like a portal.
• A generic rebuilding-table might be kept track of so the system knows which static pages need to be rebuild when certain forum "posts" change or are added.

31619

Living Room / Historical Sounds in MP3 Format

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 08:35 AM »

Historical Sounds in MP3 Format

Spiro Agnew - Hippies
Anwar al-Sadat - Peace
Apollo 11 - The Eagle Has Landed
Apollo 11 - One Small Step For Man
Apollo 13 - Houston We Have a Problem
P.T. Barnum - 1890 Commercial
Battle of Midway - Eyewitness Account
Marlon Brando - Offer He Can't Refuse
William Jennings Bryan - The Republic
George Bush - Death of Communism
Johnny Carter - Nomination
Fidel Castro - Ambition
Fidel Castro - Cuban Revolution
Fidel Castro - We Have The Power
Neville Chamberlain - Meeting With Hitler
Winston Churchill - Finest Hour
Bill Clinton - Renewal
Calvin Coolidge - America and the War
Calvin Coolidge - Duty of Government
James Dean - Tearing Me Apart
John Dulles - Free People Will Never Remain Free
Amelia Earhart - Aviation
Amelia Earhart - Women
Thomas Edison - Electricity and Progress
Albert Einstein - E=mc^2
Albert Einstein - Non-Violence
Albert Einstein - Nuclear Weapons
Albert Einstein - World Peace
Robert Frost - Fire and Ice
... more

http://www.freeinfos...site.php?postnum=460

from digg.com

31620

DonationCoder Projects / DC Homebrew Mini-CMS Discussion

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 07:52 AM »

This thread is to plan the mini-CMS features that need to be added to the site to support articles/reviews and templates, and better coding snack files, etc., as well as the amazing blogportal idea.

31621

Site/Forum Features / New source code highlighting feature

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 07:43 AM »

New source code highlighting feature was just added to the forum, which is useful when posting source code:
Fore more info see: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3687.0

We also used this kludge:
http://l4x.org/Story/261/
to support the accepting of tabs in post form when in the programming school section.

31622

Official Announcements / Re: Were you a radio interviewer or disk jockey or producer in a past life? read in!

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 06:24 AM »

awesome.

31623

General Software Discussion / Re: Vote for your favorite software programs of the year!

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 03:35 AM »

i couldn't get it to send me a voting form or anything..
how does this work - can you vote for any program or is it a specific list?

31624

General Review Discussion / Re: Opinions on remote PC control software

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 03:25 AM »

May 15, 2006
Famatech has announced the beta release of the completely re-designed Radmin 3.0. The new release is the fastest and most affordable remote control solution available on the U.S. market - complete with extremely rapid screen updates, military-grade security as well as newly added multi-user text and voice chat tools.

http://www.radmin.com/

31625

Developer's Corner / Simple DirectMedia Layer v1.2.10 released

« Last post by mouser on May 18, 2006, 03:21 AM »

SDL 1.2.10 is a major release, featuring a revamp of the build system and many API improvements and bug fixes.
...
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."
SDL supports Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. The code contains support for AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, SymbianOS, and OS/2, but these are not officially supported.
SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, C#, Eiffel, Erlang, Euphoria, Guile, Haskell, Java, Lisp, Lua, ML, Objective C, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Pike, Pliant, Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk.
SDL is distributed under GNU LGPL version 2. This license allows you to use SDL freely in commercial programs as long as you link with the dynamic library.

http://www.libsdl.or...ase/changes-1.2.html

from digg programming section