Recent Posts

326

Living Room / Re: Apple Wheel macbook - revolutionary

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 11:29 PM »

"And nothing is more simple than a single giant button"

ROFL!!

I can't wait for the model with no hard drive, screen, or wheel - maybe get 2x the battery life!

327

Developer's Corner / Re: Funny things that happen during debugging

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 10:23 PM »

Ah duh, so basically 2 roads intersecting in a cross, with two (opposite-facing) directions being green and the two other sides being red? I thought the 4-way part had to do with the states the lights could be in (on one side), which kinda baffled me. Guess it would be best heading off to bed

-f0dder (January 05, 2009, 09:59 PM)

Correct. Two roads intersecting. How would you manage to get 4 different light "modes"?

Green on road 1
Red on road 2
Yellow on road 3
Wtf goes on road 4? Flashing red lights? No lights? One lane for each color?

But then... THIS HAPPENS (FWIW, I *love* that series, even though I can't speak/understand a bit of German).

It boggles the mind!

EDIT: For the Stoplight, that video would make the BEST error message ever.

328

Developer's Corner / Re: Funny things that happen during debugging

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 09:52 PM »

Yea, like a 4-way stop. 4 different roads converging in a perpendicular manner to make one single intersection. (I took Geometry last semester, might as well sound smart )

I ended up making an infinite loop on a friend's final project while trying to help him - this If statement wouldn't trigger, and the Do...Loop kept going until the If was completed, and it never was... that was embarrassing explaining once I figured out what I did.

329

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: SnapSuite program family/Free online computer help

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 09:42 PM »

Alright, figured I should update this topic with some fresh info...

I have done my NANY program (updates to come, it isn't finished, but is completely usable as-is) MiniBrowseIE, however because I am just so nice () I am not only re-doing my website to be more... not crappy, but am uploading just about all my code/projects for everything I have. Only a select few things were left out (mostly computer class stuff) - amongst the things are FloorIt 2's source code (!), FloorIt source code, SnapSuite 2009 source code (I'm not kidding here ), along with lots of other programs (both released and unreleased/personal apps). I do not think that any of them contain any code that is bad (I mean passwords/usernames - I have left out DownloadForever and UploadForever, along with Update Managers for FloorIt 2 & MiniBrowseIE because of this).

If you are someone I know (see and am familiar with) on the forum (Deozaan, Curt, etc - anyone that frequents the forum w/ a good post count), or anyone of authority (mouser, Carol, nudone, etc) and you, for whatever reason, want access at anything I haven't uploaded, your more than welcome to get it

If your wondering why I am posting all this info and free code: I love open source. For the end users, it is free software that has a large amount of programmers behind it, with lots of updates. For the programmers, you can find a program and help contribute to it, or take the source code and learn/build with it.

If you are going to make changes to anything I have uploaded, all that I ask is that you give me credit somewhere, and that you please send the updated code back to me - it helps me. I have TONS of dead projects on my hard drive because somewhere along the line I got stuck on X, Y or Z and just gave up. And if someone of greater knowledge can jump that hoop and then show me how they did, I can then apply that knowledge and possibly revive what would have been nothing more than dormant files.

Download. Code. Enjoy. Return. http://wreckedcarzz.....com/sourcecodeindex

330

Living Room / Re: What is a mouser? What does it mean to mouser someone?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 08:19 PM »

Wonder how you code if you can't sit still? With my setup I could use voice recognition and walk around with a headset, but unless you have that and/or a wireless keyboard, its kind of difficult. Maybe that would explain the seemingly random releases/updates for his apps?

331

Developer's Corner / Funny things that happen during debugging

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 08:10 PM »

Alright, I have been making a Stoplight simulation program (don't ask why ) over the last few days, and during debugging I had some STRANGE things happen due to so many things to consider and variables to take into account and whatnot - this is one of the images I got...

"STOPLIGHTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY"


So, just curious what other things have happened to people while debugging? What happens when you have a "little" too much liquor and you try making that database application? <-- Not that I have done this... not saying I haven't

EDIT: Just for reference, this is a standard USA 4 way stoplight (taking into account timing only for 2 of the 4 ways... it's not a perfect science)

332

Find And Run Robot / Re: Network access?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 06:07 PM »

Whoa... I didn't know you could navigate folders with FARR. Looks like I haven't messed with it nearly enough. In that case...

+1 for network browsing

333

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Relog

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 05:29 PM »

I have TMP, and was just using FF as an example - but it looks like there isn't any easy way to log off and then back on without a full reboot. I know that with TweakUI (and via some complicated Run command in Vista) you can set Windows to auto login on boot, but I don't want to reboot the whole thing (if you haven't seen Vista's boot time compared to XP on the same box, it is ... astoundingly longer).

  Oh well.

334

General Software Discussion / Re: The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 05, 2009, 05:22 PM »

Hirudin: it is a magic carpet app which flies the user to the Egyptian Capital to buy cheap bootlegged software in a bazaar.

-nontroppo (January 05, 2009, 03:31 PM)

That could be manipulated a bit to represent a certain popular online application...

it is a magic carpet downloading app which flies the user to the Egyptian Capital Pirate Bay to buy download cheap bootlegged software in a bazaar matter of minutes, days, or weeks.

-nontroppo (January 05, 2009, 03:31 PM)

µTorrent, anyone?

Edit: I can't spell to save my life.

335

General Software Discussion / The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 04, 2009, 10:55 PM »

Go ahead and laugh. It's OK. At least I know I'm not the only one laughing. Right?

Anyways, it would appear that the monkeys have hit the button - and from what I can assume, the first public alpha of the Cairo Shell will be released in 10 days.

Cairo is an alternative shell (ex: Explorer.exe, ugh) for Windows XP/Vista/7 (compatibility has been verified for all 3) - from the screenshots, news and hype, it should be one awesome shell replacement.

The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

Disclaimer: I don't do any testing or anything for the Cairo team; I'm just REALLY excited to see that this may FINALLY become a program that I can use. In all seriousness, it looks/sounds just amazing.

Last second edit: I know, the image is huge. Don't blame me, I didn't want to download it, edit it, upload it and re-link it.

336

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Emergency Release - Dad's Around

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 04, 2009, 04:01 PM »

Good to see you've updated this, scannie!

EDIT: Whats wrong with the hotkey? Win and Z are like right next to each other... and its not obvious like Alt-F4.

337

Living Room / Re: Thumb trackball wanted

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 04, 2009, 03:57 PM »

I agree the logitech Trackman is a fine product.   However I am very used to the 5 buttons on the Microsoft product.  3 just doesn't cut any more.  I might even go back to a mouse if I could find one with 5 or more buttons.

-wiiiindy (January 02, 2009, 01:41 PM)

The Logitech G9 is an awesome mouse - tailored for gamers, but an awesome mouse. It has a total of 9 buttons:

• Back button
• Forward button
• Speed down
• Speed Up
• Left click
• Right click
• Scroll down (press)
• Scroll left
• Scroll right

I don't remap the buttons, but there are enough of them to go nuts over.

Its also worth mentioning that the Logitech G11 keyboard has a total of 54 function keys (18 keys, 3 modes) if your into that kind of thing.

Disclaimer: I own and love both these products

EDIT: Added links

338

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 04, 2009, 03:50 PM »

I can use custom blocking options and whatnot with OpenDNS - I like to be able to tinker with options and see what works best.

339

Living Room / Re: Vista has gone nuts: [Major] Help please?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 04, 2009, 03:36 PM »

I tried to use a Retail disk with an OEM key, and got the run around from eMachines (phone), eMachines (Live Chat), Microsoft Activation Support, multiple MS automated systems, and got redirected so many times that I lost count.

Turned out all they had to tell me/ask me was "Are you using the key on the machine's sticker, or from another source?" - the former worked. So much for support.

And no, Anytime Upgrade won't work now. It gets all the way to completion (as far as the 5 step process goes), but then it says that it has encountered an error and cannot install a component. Then the machine reboots and rolls back to Home Basic. I have 2 Retail DVDs along with my Anytime Upgrade DVD (what I was using). I plan on trying to Upgrade again here tonight.

Thanks for the help, though

340

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Relog

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 04, 2009, 03:31 PM »

Alright, I don't know if this can even be done in any programming language at all for Windows, but I figured asking can't hurt.

I am in need of a program to log me out, then automatically log me back in to Windows (Vista, specifically, but need XP support too). I would assume that the password would need to be stored somewhere - I personally don't care about encryption or anything, plain text file storage is fine for me.

Other things that would be nice...

• Hooking into Vista's little fly out shutdown/restart/etc menu thingy... whatever you call it.
• Ability to relog as a different user (or automatically do Fast User Switching and not a full Log Out, Login to different account)
• Scheduler to do this automatically

I'm hoping someone can pull this off... I "relog" a lot just to make sure changes to Windows and stuff are applied, and keep anything bad from going crazy with my RAM (*cough* Firefox *cough*). It would be really nice to not have to wait a few seconds for the Welcome Screen, enter my password and wait again. Just Relog and wait a few seconds.

-Brandon

341

Living Room / Re: Vista has gone nuts: [Major] Help please?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 04, 2009, 01:57 AM »

Alright, I'm back from Vista Install Hell installing Vista. Everything has gone without a hitch, except the wasted 6 hours on the phone with support and getting Vista activated. Oh, and Windows Anytime Upgrade won't work now. Home Basic blows big time.

Other than that, and UAC, everything is amazingly faster. All in all I think it was worth it - I did the format and restore properly this time, getting everything down to my Firefox profile (including extensions) backed up.

Off to make my "ready-to-go" disk image (the "initial install" is happily sitting on my external HD) and give WAU another go. Maybe I'll wake up and it works this time around. Anything's possible

(I'm still curious where that Virus came from, and how it did such seemingly random damage...)

342

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS - safer, faster and smarter DNS

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 03, 2009, 01:33 AM »

FYI: For those of you running DD-WRT, you need to DISABLE "Use DNSMasq for DNS" on the Setup screen, after entering the OpenDNS DNS servers. I spent like 10 minutes trying to fix it.

343

Living Room / Re: saving games problems

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 03, 2009, 01:14 AM »

My sister uses my laptop almost CONSTANTLY to play The Sims 2 (w/ expansions), and it *requires* her to be an Admin on Vista to even run.

Poor/lazy programming, IMO (not saying I could do better, but nonetheless).

344

Living Room / Re: Techno kittens!

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 03, 2009, 01:12 AM »

I've seen this video before, its cute - notice the one cat over on the right side that kind of fades off into the abyss?

345

Living Room / Re: Vista has gone nuts: [Major] Help please?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 02, 2009, 02:22 PM »

Also, one more question (I'm just one big inquiry ): Is it possible to backup Vista's Voice Recognition data? This is probably the most important thing to me besides my programming stuff, and I can't seem to find any info on where it is stored. If anyone has any info on where it might be stored or how to backup/restore it properly, that would be EXTREMELY appreciated.

Edit: Never mind, I'm an idiot - a change in search keywords reveals a simple solution: http://www.microsoft...4&DisplayLang=en

346

Living Room / Re: Vista has gone nuts: [Major] Help please?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 02, 2009, 12:32 PM »

Yea, actually I had downloaded it about a week ago - I got completely overwhelmed and, after managing to scan through the whole list, gave up. I'll disable everything and then see if that fixes it (unlikely, though).

I finally got all the stuff backed up, except one game, so I think I'm going to reformat today.

EDIT: Disabled all non Windows stuff in ShellExView, no help. Recycle Bin still takes WAY too long (although somewhat shorter) to get its context menu open. About 5-10 seconds now.

347

General Software Discussion / Re: download contents are not asked if wanted to be opened or saved

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 02, 2009, 04:12 AM »

Did you try my method? It's a bit overkill but nontheless...

-wreckedcarzz (January 02, 2009, 04:08 AM)

i did and it didn't fix it one bit :S

-papoj1 (January 02, 2009, 04:10 AM)

 

Darn it... alright. Sorry it didn't work.

348

General Software Discussion / Re: download contents are not asked if wanted to be opened or saved

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 02, 2009, 04:08 AM »

Did you try my method? It's a bit overkill but nontheless...

349

Living Room / Re: Vista has gone nuts: [Major] Help please?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 02, 2009, 03:44 AM »

@ Cloq - I tried using the Administrator account, and that didn't show any positive results. I am making backup and format preparations now.

More off-topicness (because we all love to be OT!)

I play with a group (clan) that I am in 2x a week (Friday and Saturday nights) every week. Not too much but not too little that I want to jump in and play randomly. Relaxed pace where I am ready to play but not bored/overly excited about it.

And yea, try using the d@mn mule in an MP game... if ANYTHING happens *BOOM* - server crash. Ugh!!!

I play on mostly BIG custom maps, so the weps are standard, but it takes everything that the group has to get the map complete (coop maps only). Fun, but annoying at times.

And yea - it is supposed to be stealth, but wtf? Once your cover is blown IRL you cannot just "hide" and wait, but the game acts otherwise - and the few seconds (or if your lucky, minutes) that your undetected by the majority of AI, your always worried that something has seen you that you don't know about yet (and it almost always has, be it the tank that's about to blow you away, or the sniper across the canyon just sitting there with the scope right on your *BOOM*.

Coop maps ftw though, end of story

</offtopic>

Oh yea, while I was/am preparing my backups, look what happened to my poor IDE hard drive that I toss all my backups onto (note that about 95%-98% of this was games... they are being moved to the 250GB drive now)...


  - And people say that "You'll NEVER use THAT much space!"

Last second edit (how many of these am I going to make... jeez): Can I use a (legit) Vista Upgrade DVD to install Vista w/o a key, then use my OEM key to activate Vista within the OS? I can't find the darned boatware eMachines DVD...

A second LSE: There is a total of 46.71GB of games on that IDE drive. That makes for over 100GB of games I have installed. Overkill?

350

Living Room / Re: Vista has gone nuts: [Major] Help please?

« Last post by wreckedcarzz on January 02, 2009, 12:51 AM »

I didn't partition the drive this time around (that's why I reformatted 2x before - Vista/Ubuntu/Xubuntu dual booting setups, both failing to work out with my style of computing, become annoying 15 and 20GB space hogs, respectively), so everything is on this one 120GB (111GB usable) drive. It is just a massive whole-disk partition, taking up every bit it can.

I have a games list that people literally awe at (GRAW2 is a great game, btw, I have it as well ) because it is just so long. 65.5GB on C:\, with an overflow of 17.1GB on an external drive, and 3 stacks/spools of not installed games. But that's beside the point

I have never done a full system hard drive image... "thingy" - I found out that I had the last 2 problems by trying to setup a backup scheme (the irony). So basically, if/when I give up and reformat, I should just make an image of the computer in that state for emergency recovery, and toss it on a DVD or something?

*checking links*

Thanks for the help, again

Last second edit (I'm really bad @ forgetting this stuff): Vista in safe mode shows the Recycle Bin context menu and Desktop folder just fine. I disabled all startup apps with StartupRun and the Recycle Bin/Desktop situation remains fixed. Now it is a game of cat and mouse to see what exactly is screwing me over.

Also, I was attempting to download Sauerbraten (a wonderful FPS, btw) and as the download completed (before I reset and did safe mode and disabled all startup apps), the WHOLE computer came to a standstill (much like gridlock @ 5PM on a Friday in New York). It was usable (if you consider "usable" to be "The mouse is moving! It's still alive! THERE IS HOPE!!!"), but the mouse would litterally "loop" my actions to it infinitely, until about 5 minutes later, when FF gave in and told me that it could not complete the download. This happened a second time over, but this time I waited the same amount of time and got not as positive results (ending with a press of the reset button and some not very kind words under my breath). (The download completed normally after rebooting with no startup apps.)

Bottom line: Something is screwing up FF and my RB/Desktop.