Recent Posts

32226

Living Room / Re: A personal note about DonationCredits

« Last post by mouser on April 06, 2006, 02:05 AM »

thanks to everyone who helped test the system during development, especially those in the irc chat channel.

i hope we'll be able to do some fun new stuff with this credit system as well, so if you think of something fun and novel for us to try, that keeps in spirit with the site, please suggest it here: https://www.donation...index.php?topic=2942

32227

Living Room / A personal note about DonationCredits

« Last post by mouser on April 06, 2006, 02:02 AM »

Some of you may have noticed that i haven't been posting as much or updating my software as much over the last 6 weeks or so.

You might have figured out now why that was - I've been working literally from day to night on the new DonationCredits system which has just gone live.

I really hope it will let us take DonationCoder.com to a new level of community and the ability to make it easier for people who contribute to the site to get their share of rewards.  While it means less money for the site, I hope it will mean a more welcoming site to those who are not motivated chiefly by money, but would still appreciate some support from others.

Now to catch up on some of these great threads I've been skimming! 

32228

Living Room / About the new banners at top of forum and website

« Last post by mouser on April 06, 2006, 01:57 AM »

as you know we are having a contest throughout april and perhaps beyond for the redesign of the banners -
we are going to be testing some of them out for a while.

so this isn't a final decision but just to let us get a feel for them.

read more about the contest, and view subsmissions or submit your own, here:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=2802.0

32229

Living Room / cody has some eggs?

« Last post by mouser on April 06, 2006, 01:45 AM »

just wanted to say thanks to nudone for once again giving us a wonderful holiday cody..
seems like cody is the really the family type.. (remember this? https://www.donation...140882109_dyn_84.jpg)

32230

Site/Forum Features / Re: DonationCredits Discussion

« Last post by mouser on April 06, 2006, 01:41 AM »

It is with a huge amount of pride, trepidation, and exhaustion that the DonationCredit system has now gone live on Aprl 6, 2005.

You can read all about it from the help page on DonatinCredits (go to your profile or click Cody mascot in upper right).

Please share your credits with each other and help make this a success.

Some important info:

• Donations to the site now get split evenly into money for the site and money given back to member in the form of credits to give out as they see fit.
• Look for the small golden coin on posts and software pages - if you see someone doing something you like, toss them a few credits, just to say thanks

Please take a minute and fill in the new Donation Blurb on your forum profile, it's what people see when your name comes up for them to donate to:

32231

Official Announcements / BIGGEST NEW FEATURE SINCE HISTORY OF THE SITE - DONATIONCREDITS

« Last post by mouser on April 06, 2006, 01:31 AM »

After months of non-stop work, the DonationCredits micro-donation system on this site has now gone live.

This has been a huge amount of work but we hope it will take the site to a new level of collaboration and sharing.

This system will make it easy to donate to each other to show support for their contributions to the site and the forum.  From now on, whenever you donate to the site you will get back some of your donation in the form of credits which you can give out to others with just a click or two.

To learn more, just click on the little bird mascot (Cody) or follow the gold coints.
Or discuss it here: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=2942.0

32232

Living Room / MOVED: Former Congressman Tom DeLay hired by Microsoft

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 09:54 PM »

keeping with our stated policy of avoiding politically charged conversation, this post has been removed.

32233

Site/Forum Features / Re: Ads On The Website - Everyone Read In Please - UPDATED!

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 08:16 PM »

we get no money when people view ads, only when they click them; so if you don't find them useful enough to click on occasionally, you might as well turn your add chances to 0.

32234

General Software Discussion / Re: Url Snooper error notice

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 07:21 PM »

will do (actually it's already on to todo list).

32235

Living Room / Re: Unread Posts not working entirely

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 05:36 PM »

there are about 10 new posts an hour lately...

i wonder if its something about cookies or something - unread posts always seems to work perfectly for me.

32236

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: InventoryPoster

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 06:58 AM »

i think its a brilliant idea, but im sure it already exists.
support centers often have users run such a tool.

but i dont remember the names of any free ones that do this - looking forward to seeing people post them.

32237

Developer's Corner / Re: Do you use a good office chair when programming?

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 03:49 AM »

does anyone know if there is such a thing as a high quality chair meant for people who tend to site cross-legged (ie sit with their feet up on the seat of the chair).  and if not, maybe it would be a good invention..

32238

Developer's Corner / Re: Do you use a good office chair when programming?

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 03:13 AM »

house that is a truly strange chair - i'd love to try it out though.

32239

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: HDDlife Pro (and other disk-health reporters)

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 03:12 AM »

i want to echo longrun's very wise advice (even if it is spoken from a cat that looks like it is on drugs).
almost all hard disk failures i've had seem to have been suddent and catastrophic, so no matter what drive monitoring tool you have, don't assume it is going to save you from a crash, and make sure you have backups always.

32240

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Distributed compiling and clustering

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 03:06 AM »

that is really really cool.

32241

General Software Discussion / Re: Review of File Renamers — let's make a list

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 03:05 AM »

great find Cavalcader!
i'd love to see a list of similar programs - i've been looking for such a tool myself.

32242

General Software Discussion / Re: NetJaxer -- Have your Web 2.0 ON YOUR PC :)

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 03:03 AM »

that is strange but very cool.

32243

General Software Discussion / Re: Url Snooper error notice

« Last post by mouser on April 05, 2006, 03:00 AM »

there seems to be some circumstance that is causing this for some people - either one of the custom menu items is empty or the context menu described on the options tab is empty or something - i remember someone posted about it here and then fixed it.  i'll be doing an update of url snooper in april and i will try to find and fix the problem.  if anyone finds more clues on how to reproduce this let me know.  (you might try reinstalling the files if you think you messed one of them up and see if that helps).

i would very much appreciate if someone can reliably reproduce this and let me know any clues.

32244

Living Room / Re: Why Macs Suck

« Last post by mouser on April 04, 2006, 09:09 PM »

ps. discussion of mac/linux software is welcome on this forum.  if we ever get enough mac users here on the forum we can create a section specifically for mac software; same with linux.

32245

Site/Forum Features / Help with Forum Features, posting stuff, etc.

« Last post by mouser on April 04, 2006, 09:00 PM »

We removed the normal SMF Forum Help link from the main tab to simplify and save space,
but here is the help page for general info on using the forum and posting, etc.:

Starting help page:
https://www.donation...ndex.php?action=help

Specific help on posting is here:
https://www.donation...ction=help;page=post

32246

General Software Discussion / Re: Review of File Renamers — let's make a list

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

I love his description of Preview: (for cowards!)

 

32247

Older Newsletters / Re: Newsletter for April 3, 2006 - Codename 'Happy Birthday to Us'

« Last post by mouser on April 04, 2006, 07:31 PM »

By the way, did anyone notice (or not notice as the case may be), that we finished sending out the 20,000 recipient newsletter today with absolutely no slowdown at all of the server at all. victory!

Dealing with server slowdowns during newsletter mailings has in the past been a true nightmare of stress.  But we seem to have solved it now.  I will be posting a new thread about how it was solved and the person who helped us solve it in the next day or so.

32248

General Software Discussion / Re: How necessary is a software firewall?

« Last post by mouser on April 04, 2006, 07:13 PM »

carol points out something else very important that i overlooked.
a key thing that a good firewall (like agnitum outpost) can do is keep detailed logs of outgoing and incoming communication, which can really help when trying to figure out the cause of a problem, or the identify the source of some trouble.

it's all fine and well to be protected, but sometimes there is a great value in being able to see when something fishy is happening and be able to track down the source, if only to reassure yourself that it's harmless.

32249

Developer's Corner / Re: Language for professional, sellable software?

« Last post by mouser on April 04, 2006, 07:09 PM »

another thought:
anyone who has learned a few programming languages well will probably tell you that the underlying concepts and skills are extremely similar between different languages.  a good, experienced programmer can probably pick up new languages easily (although like everything it takes lots of time to become really efficient and proficient in the idioms of the langauge).

in short, the best thing is get experience writing code, in whatever language you choose, and learn how to code well.

Recommended reading:

http://www.amazon.co...p/product/0735619670
Code Complete, Second Edition (Paperback), by Steve McConnell



http://www.amazon.co...p/product/020161622X
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (Paperback)
by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas

32250

Developer's Corner / Re: Language for professional, sellable software?

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

Im definitely not the best person to give financial/business advice but i think in general you would be well served by taking a balanced approach that looked something like this:

1) make sure you learn one mainstream accepted language *very well* (c++, java, etc)
2) and then make sure you have some experience with some of the scripting langauges like perl, python, php etc.
3) learn how to use the tools of the trade (debugger, ide, etc) and get some experience with some libraries like qt, boost, etc.
4) if you think you want to focus on web development, that's a slightly different path and you would focus more on the emergent web technologies like ajax, ruby on rails, etc.  these seem to change more rapidly so keeping up with current trends here is more important.

in other words, you really do need to go deep into one language and not be someone who knows a little of everything but can't build big programs.  but don't put all your eggs in one basket, and don't ignore the importance of knowing how to use other tools.

just my 2 cents.