Recent Posts

326

General Software Discussion / Re: 4 (Maybe more) Absolute top go-to programs

« Last post by Jibz on May 01, 2014, 01:07 PM »

Four I tend to use much and would have a hard time without:

Total Commander - my muscle memory from NC makes this the fastest for me
"A good text editor", which has been Sublime Text for the past year, though currently replaced by Vim
SourceTree (and by extension, Mercurial and Git)
Listary - mainly for the find as you type and disk search

(I've left out things like browsers, e-mail client, and compilers here).

And four from the second tier:

CrashPlan - luckily not actively "using" it much, but it quietly keeps my files backed up
Evernote - mainly for website clipping, I use Google Keep quick notes
KeePass, though also increasingly LastPass for websites
f.lux - you don't really notice it much until you try turning it off at night

Honorable mention to Ad Muncher and WinPatrol.

327

Living Room / Re: ImgBurn - full of OpenCandy and other crap

« Last post by Jibz on April 24, 2014, 01:07 PM »

I've been updating ImgBurn through Ninite, and haven't noticed anything suspicious, but perhaps I just haven't looked close enough.

328

Living Room / Re: video hosting performance: local vs youtube/vimeo/etc.

« Last post by Jibz on April 21, 2014, 01:29 PM »

It looks like the video is encoded at around 12 MB/sec, and from my computer I am downloading at somewhere between 256 kb/sec and 512 kb/sec from your server, it should be obvious that there is no way this will be smooth.

For streaming, I would make a web-optimized video file at no more than 2 MB/sec (I don't know what software you are using, I often use use Handbrake for recoding).

If you don't want to place it somewhere with more bandwidth than your own server, you might have to go even lower, but the quality will suffer.

329

General Software Discussion / Re: The AVE

« Last post by Jibz on April 19, 2014, 02:09 PM »

Thanks for the links Edvard .

I've seen the explanation of the hjkl keys before, I can see how Esc and [ ] are easy to reach and press on that keyboard. On a Danish keyboard, you need to use Alt Gr to get [ ], making it impossible to press Ctrl-[ and Ctrl-].

I can see the idea of keeping your hands on the "home row". But the arrow keys do have the advantage of working a whole lot better in insert mode (though I suppose I shouldn't be moving about in that mode, but I find it hard not to ).

Is there some trick to using visual mode to select lines? It seems if you do the obvious of pressing v and then moving down using j, it selects the lines plus the first character on the next line. If I have to select the lines up to the last and then press $ to get the last line, that's just hopeless .

Edit: Ah, found it with google while fiddling with this post. Apparently you can use Shift-V to enter visual line mode.

330

General Software Discussion / Re: The AVE

« Last post by Jibz on April 19, 2014, 04:28 AM »

Thanks ewemoa, it's great to get some perspective from someone who has used Vim .

Also, by default vim doesn't open another file from the same folder as the current one. If you just opened "C:\data\long\path\foo.c", and then want to open foo.h from the same folder, you need the entire path again. I know there's command history, but you get what I mean -- most other editors would start by looking in the same folder.

-Jibz (April 18, 2014, 05:12 AM)

I tested this in the default installation of gvim (7.4.214-1) in Manjaro Linux and didn't reproduce -- i.e. I got the behavior of not having to navigate again.  May be it has been tweaked to behave nicely?

-ewemoa (April 18, 2014, 06:23 PM)

I guess it might be compiled with different settings. On my default Windows install, if I open "d:\data\foo.c" and then do ":e foo.h" I get a blank new file instead of the header file from the same folder. With autochdir on it works as I expected.

By default you can't open a file, make a change and then open another file without saving the first one. That seems odd, but I am sure there is some Unix explanation for it.

-Jibz (April 18, 2014, 05:12 AM)

I don't know about the Unix part of it, but if you think of it as opening another file into the buffer you are working in (so you might lose changes if opening is successful), then may be it doesn't seem so odd?

FWIW, at least in gvim here if you choose "Open Tab..." (:tabnew) after making a change in the current buffer, I am not being asked to save changes.

-ewemoa (April 18, 2014, 06:30 PM)

My guess is that it is a remnant from when computers had so little memory you had to unload one file to open another. It looks like :e file will unload the current buffer, unless hidden is on. Perhaps I should be using tabs instead of buffers, I will have to look into that.

Another thing that took me a bit by surprise is that the copy/pasting to/from other programs doesn't work as usual. I had to google to figure out you have to use a special register "* to access the clipboard.

I feel I can get basic editing done now, with a few attempts to do some things. I am still a little surprised sometimes at exactly where visual mode selections end, and often when I paste, it ends up on the wrong side of where I thought it would . So it takes somewhat longer than with ST, but I guess that's a question of getting used enough to it to use more commands.

331

Living Room / Re: video hosting performance: local vs youtube/vimeo/etc.

« Last post by Jibz on April 19, 2014, 03:28 AM »

I think they also re-encode your video, to get smaller files in a (sub-)format better suited for streaming.

332

General Software Discussion / Re: The AVE

« Last post by Jibz on April 18, 2014, 05:12 AM »

The whole buffer vs window vs tab page distinction seems a little convoluted;

Summary:
   A buffer is the in-memory text of a file.
   A window is a viewport on a buffer.
   A tab page is a collection of windows.

-Vim help

must be written by a programmer .

By default you can't open a file, make a change and then open another file without saving the first one. That seems odd, but I am sure there is some Unix explanation for it.

Also, by default vim doesn't open another file from the same folder as the current one. If you just opened "C:\data\long\path\foo.c", and then want to open foo.h from the same folder, you need the entire path again. I know there's command history, but you get what I mean -- most other editors would start by looking in the same folder.

I think it adds a bit to the complexity of starting to use Vim that you have to fiddle with settings to get it to behave similar to what you would expect.

I should probably try vimtutor again .

333

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Atom - A new editor is born

« Last post by Jibz on April 18, 2014, 03:17 AM »

For me, Sublimes two killer features are its excellent multiple selections feature (which would be absolutely cool to have in VS; there is a plugin but it doesn't quite work so well) and its goto-anything feature (which VS now also kind of has; it's called NavigateTo - Ctrl+,).

-phitsc (April 18, 2014, 01:57 AM)

I agree, the way multiple cursors and the fuzzy search in panels like goto-anything and command palette work in Sublime Text are very sleek. You can see other editors are copying these features (for instance UltraEdit just got what looks like multiple cursors that work). On the surface Atom looks like it was heavily inspired by ST (even the names for these features are the same, most other editors came up with their own slightly different names).

I am not saying ST was the first to implement these things, but it does them so very well.

334

General Software Discussion / Re: The AVE

« Last post by Jibz on April 16, 2014, 04:40 PM »

Being able to install it seems like a good starting point .

I've managed to get it running, and this time around I decided to try to stop myself from trying to install a bunch of fancy plugins. I seem to remember that was part of what killed me last time -- I had to fight with learning plugins as well as Vim.

So, I've got Vim, pathogen, sensible, commentary, and of course my favorite color scheme solarized.

Hmm, guess I am not doing too well on skipping plugins am I?

Here are some resources I am looking at:

Vim Tips Wiki with some links to resources
Learn Vim Progressively
The Vim Learning Curve is a Myth
Vim Adventures a game, how odd?
Vimcasts

(Btw, I might have sneaked a set guifont=Dina:h8:cANSI into my .vimrc as well )

335

General Software Discussion / The AVE

« Last post by Jibz on April 16, 2014, 05:56 AM »

So, you find yourself reading a discussion somewhere about text editors or IDEs, and that one guy mentions Vim. You start to think about how awesome it would be to know Vim, how all the cool kids seem to do. There's something special about a text editor that works entirely different from all other text editors. You seem to remember sometime last year where you tried to learn Vim, but you can't quite put your finger on why you didn't end up being a Vim pro.

That's right, it's time for ...

The Annual Vim Experiment

It's been long enough since the last time that you've forgotten the time it took to play with .vimrc to get something that looked halfway usable. You've repressed the countless hours of fumbling around and googling just to edit a few lines of text. You can't remember the aggrevation of every single other program on your computer doing random things as you involuntarily used a Vim shortcut that was on it's way into your muscle memory. If you're using Windows, you've forgotten how half the plugins are a pain to install because they assume Ruby or Python or something else. And if you're using a non-US keyboard, you also forgot how 5% of the commands were hard or impossible to press.

All of that is far enough away in your memory that you are ready to give it another try. And who knows, maybe this time you will succeed if you get the right help -- the question is what are the best resources to get you going?

336

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft dropping support for Windows 8.1

« Last post by Jibz on April 15, 2014, 04:15 AM »

If you can't get users to upgrade by adding new features, I guess forcing them to upgrade by not fixing bugs is one way to go (and getting them to subscribe monthly appears to be the other at the moment) .

I sympathize with their dilemma though, they must be drowning in backwards compatibility.

337

Developer's Corner / Re: About the Python 2 to 3 Transition...

« Last post by Jibz on April 13, 2014, 10:23 AM »

Speaking of which, just saw the announcement that Python 2.7 support has been extended from 2015 to 2020.

Personally, I was happy to start seeing projects supporting Python3, so I hope this will not be a setback.

338

Living Room / Re: Are your websites secure? The heartbleed bug

« Last post by Jibz on April 11, 2014, 05:29 AM »

http://xkcd.com/1354/

339

General Software Discussion / Re: Malwarebytes is moving away from lifetime licenses

« Last post by Jibz on April 09, 2014, 03:33 PM »

From the release history for 2.0.1:

• All scheduled scans should now run without popping up the main UI so that users are not interrupted

Still pops up the window after every scheduled scan here .

And they need to fix it so the new version can update itself without having to be run directly from the admin account.

340

Screenshot Captor / Re: [Doubts] One Pixel Difference in Selected Region and Dimension Display

« Last post by Jibz on April 06, 2014, 12:12 PM »

1) Hm, for region select, I'd expect to get the selection inside the selection-box that I've meticulously drawn around the stuff I'd like to capture using the enlarged view near the cursor, and not have 1 extra pixel-row added on any of the sides.

-Ath (April 05, 2014, 07:20 AM)

Doesn't a region select have to capture what is on the edge as well? or there is no way to select the entire width or height of an image. Unless you somehow allow the selection to go one pixel beyond the edge, but that seems somewhat strange.

341

DC Gamer Club / Re: 86% of Gamers Prefer Free Games With Advertisements

« Last post by Jibz on April 01, 2014, 10:08 AM »

Games with advertisement and free-to-play games can sometimes work. The problem is it opens up the opportunity of making easy money with scammy tactics like keeping your app going when it should be closed, popping up adds over the "continue" button at just the right time, huge adds with 5 pixel close buttons, etc.

I like to think if your revenue is based on selling your product, you are more likely to try to improve business by improving your product.

342

Living Room / Re: April 1, 2014

« Last post by Jibz on April 01, 2014, 04:19 AM »

Atlassian BitBand - https://www.atlassian.com/bitband

Facebook buying Ubuntu - http://itsfoss.com/f...ubuntu-for-3-billion

Google Roundup - http://ausdroid.net/...l-fools-pranks-2014/

SwiftKey Flow Hard - http://youtu.be/-QfhTWJIDCM

Samsung Fingers - http://global.samsun...omorrow.com/?p=35430 (apparently HTC had the same idea)

CERN switching to Comic Sans - http://home.web.cern...rn-switch-comic-sans

343

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft: All your data are belong to us.

« Last post by Jibz on March 28, 2014, 01:24 AM »

I think if it's "free", or the company obviously has a commercial interest in your data not only in selling you the service, then you can be pretty sure they will take a peek.

If you want something where this is less likely, perhaps a commercial provider which is not also a multi-billion dollar conglomerate might work.

I've been using fastmail for a couple of years, and since the break with Opera, I don't see them having much interest in the data.

344

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ? (All about Git, Mercurial-Hg and the like...)

« Last post by Jibz on March 27, 2014, 10:27 AM »

A Note About Git Commit Messages might also be worth checking out. Commits that just say "changed some stuff" are not much use to others (or yourself a couple of weeks later ).

345

Living Room / Re: A three drive system - the sweet spot

« Last post by Jibz on March 26, 2014, 02:16 AM »

A significant percentage of home computers (and sadly an awful lot of business computers) have low quality power supplies which are plugged into outlets with inconsistent line quality and poor or nonexistent grounding. When you replace the mechanical bits of a hard drive with the purely electronic ones in a SSD it stands to reason cheap computers would have a higher failure rate than expensive ones. I'm over generalizing a bit because not every expensive computer has a quality power supply but a quality power supply usually makes for a more expensive computer.

-Vurbal (March 25, 2014, 04:28 PM)

+1

I've had three motherboards and a graphics card toasted before I started buying quality power supplies.

346

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« Last post by Jibz on March 24, 2014, 07:09 AM »

Just to let you know, I updated from beta 64 to 65, and the flickering seems to be fixed now .

347

Living Room / Re: A three drive system - the sweet spot

« Last post by Jibz on March 23, 2014, 03:36 PM »

I'm looking at this more from a server perspective (since that's where my experience chiefly lies). But there's enough in common between PCs and servers that I think what applies to one pretty much applies to the other as far as hardware goes. Two articles worth looking at are here and here.

-40hz (March 23, 2014, 07:04 AM)

Thanks for the links, some good stuff there .

I think you're right, the server/enterprise market is a little different. Personally, I've had my SSD for little over two years, and the wear indicator is at 2%. If I can get that with all user and temp folders and the pagefile on the SSD, that's okay for me.

348

Living Room / Re: A three drive system - the sweet spot

« Last post by Jibz on March 23, 2014, 01:49 AM »

^^ Amen.  I've heard it since SSD's came out that the swapfile (pagefile on Windows) should go on a fast but non-SSD Disk.  Hadn't thought of the temp and log files, good catch.

-Edvard (March 22, 2014, 07:13 PM)

I think for most recent SSD drives, the controller is likely to die years before the read/write tear of the temp folders is going to make a dent. I can't find anything backing this up though, most tutorials seem to reiterate the wisdom of five years ago.

Regarding the pagefile, here is a Microsoft Q&A from 2010 stating some usage data for the pagefile (near the bottom) and recommending keeping it on the SSD.

349

General Software Discussion / Re: OneNote is now free

« Last post by Jibz on March 22, 2014, 03:26 PM »

Did you by chance already have some Office x64 products installed before you installed OneNote?

-Deozaan (March 22, 2014, 01:24 PM)

I only had the free Word Viewer (with compatibility pack) installed (only think that comes in 32-bit). I noticed it no longer opens docx files but gives an error message now, not sure if the OneNote install broke it.

350

General Software Discussion / Re: OneNote is now free

« Last post by Jibz on March 20, 2014, 04:11 PM »

But other than that, this is cool news! I love OneNote. I thought it was really cool/useful in Office 2007.

-Deozaan (March 20, 2014, 03:26 PM)

A few points from the other thread:

• It's more like freemium
• You can only use notebooks stored in the cloud in the free version (you have to buy/subscribe to Office to use a local notebook)
• It's around 1 GB installed, the tiny setup tool downloads all of that
• It also installs OneDrive and a printer driver
• Some people see 64-bit programs being installed when they chose the 32-bit version, not sure what exactly the difference is