Recent Posts

326

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 13, 2016, 03:44 PM »

What if I type something in a notepad and crashes?
I still need to save that text.

-kalos (July 12, 2016, 04:39 PM)

It doesn't matter what system you use: nothing will completely inoculate you against a crash.  Whether you use a 'benign keylogger', or invoke an external editor as I suggested, you can only recover the text they had saved up to the crash point.  You can of course make them save their text more often, thereby reducing losses, but that's at the expense of causing constant disk access as the programs save their files, which will slow your system down somewhat.  And skwire is right about keyloggers.  Even if you are willing to use one, the saved files can be astonishingly messy.  I know because I briefly tried it with the logging facilities in PowerPro, and that even has two modes, with and without 'invisible' keys like Alt+key combinations.

327

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 13, 2016, 03:22 PM »

I'm going to trial Text Editor Anywhere, anyway. Thanks @rjbull !   

-IainB (July 12, 2016, 09:12 PM)

I just hope you like it - I've found it very useful, not least because it allows one to use macros, boilerplate text, etc. from your editor of choice. 

<thinks>  I feel a magisterial IainB mini-review coming on...

328

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on June 29, 2016, 10:20 AM »

Two books by the least-prolific and least-known of the Scandi-noir pack.  I read The Butterfly Effect years ago, not long after it first appeared in English.  I promptly forgot author and title - I often do - but the book itself stuck in my mind.  I wanted to read it again, and eventually tracked it down through Wikipedia's Scandinavian noir page.



For the harder of seeing, here's the text OCR'd from the back of the book.

It is a cold, dark, windy night in Oslo, and Igi Heitmann pores over
the debris in her dead fathers office, trying to piece together the
last days of his life as a failed private eye. She discovers a curious
butterfly medallion in his desk - which in turn leads to the discovery
of a young woman, Siv Underland, in a snow-drift, two bullets in her
head and a gun in her hand. Igi learns that her father and the young
woman died within hours of each other. Who killed Siv Underland, and
did the same person kill Andreas Heitmann? Igi is an under-employed
research psychologist, with more than enough problems of her own: her
husband is a transvestite who often wakes up next to very attractive
men instead of next to her. But she soon finds herself in the role of
detective, on a trail that leads not only to the final days of her
father and Siv Underland, but to the city's underworld of corruption,
sadism and child abuse. Igi is caught amongst the shards of a dozen
shattered lives. She must tread carefully if she is to reconstruct the
violent and tragic truth of those lives, and not be killed herself in
the process.

That lead me to look for Rygg's other work, of which there appears to be only one:

Igi Heitmann is being stalked In the suburb of Oslo where she lives
with her cross-dressing husband and their daughter, someone is spray-
painting the walls of the houses. HEITMANN = CHILD KILLER, the
graffiti says. Who would think this, and how do they know where she
lives? On a bitter winter's evening, Igi attends the opening of the
exhibition of an avant-garde artist whose use of violent sexual
imagery has caused great controversy. Moving between the world of
pornographic art and the happy life she shares with her husband and
daughter, Igi must follow a dangerous and shocking path to the truth.

Rygg excels in a calm, detached portrayal of bizarre behaviour and horrific evil.

329

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on June 29, 2016, 09:11 AM »

The citizens under his control wear a "torc" which is an explosive necklace [...] I seem to remember some SciFi movie or series that used the idea.  But I cannot recall the name.

-MilesAhead (June 18, 2016, 07:30 AM)

Probably the Saga of the Exiles by Julian May.

There's also a "faceless man" in Ben Aaronovich's "Peter Grant" series, but he's attempting to become an evil overlord.

330

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on June 29, 2016, 05:48 AM »

Text Editor Anywhere, freeware by the author of Listary:

License: Freeware

Current Version: 2.01

System Requirements: Windows 7 / Vista / XP / 2000

Text Editor Anywhere allows you to edit text anywhere with your favorite text editor. It provides a means of taking advantages of some advanced features (like auto-completing, spell checking and syntax highlighting) that are only available in an external text editor. It may also save you from web browser crashes.

For example, you can use Vim to tweet or reply a post in Chrome with the help of Text Editor Anywhere.

• Support all kinds of text editors
• Support all applications
• Support Unicode
• You can pass complex parameters to the editor

It’s very easy to use:

Step 1: Press Win + A whenever you need it. You can hold Win key and press “A” repeatedly to choose another file extension or edit the text with a new extension. It works like Alt + Tab.

With the cursor in the text box, press the TEA hotkey; it loads whatever text is in the box in a new file in whatever editor you've defined in TEA's configuration.



Edit away.  Save the file.  Alt+Tab back to the browser, and whatever text was in the text box will be automagically replaced by your edited text.



I have a scheduled event that archives all TEA's files, then deletes all but the most recent ones.



It's much like the Firefox extension It's All Text!, but browser-independent.

331

Living Room / Re: Thanks again for the Windows 10 upgrade reminder - NOT

« Last post by rjbull on June 20, 2016, 05:02 PM »

my point is that the reason I moved from desktop software is that many things can (and did) happen, to make me lose my snipe.  Comcast going down, latency in the connection, ebay deciding to act weird.  And of course, my own machine going down for some reason.

-wraith808 (June 19, 2016, 09:11 AM)

Quite so, but those will presumably also be true for whatever web service you use, plus the concern over giving it your eBay credentials.  Gixen has been mentioned on DC before as a sound service, though.

332

General Software Discussion / Re: Where has Clipmate Support Gone?

« Last post by rjbull on June 18, 2016, 04:37 PM »

My duty clipboard manager is ArsClip, which is free, portable, and has a lot of power, much of it not very obvious.  I haven't tried Clipboard Manager by Outertech, but it looks good.  ClipCache is OK, but last time I checked, didn't have all the power of ClipMate.  But, the most bang for your buck, with good features, a good interface and good support, is mouser's own ClipboardHelpandSpell, which he mentions above.

333

Living Room / Re: Thanks again for the Windows 10 upgrade reminder - NOT

« Last post by rjbull on June 18, 2016, 03:59 PM »

I got tired of being sniped, so decided to equip myself to snipe back.  I wanted a desktop software rather than a web service, and looked through an auction software review site (that's now changed to a seller-only site, by the look of it) for a freeware one.  The first one I came to was Biet-O-Matic (Bid-O-Matic, BOM), a German program that can be switched to an English UI.  The Help file was in German only, last time I looked, but you won't need it, at least for basic operations (no doubt I'm missing finer points).  On the few occasions I've used it, it's worked well, and I recommend taking a look.  It has a Firefix plugin, too, that I haven't tried.

334

Site/Forum Features / Feature request - improve ease of Wikipedia linking

« Last post by rjbull on June 15, 2016, 04:12 PM »

In this post, 4wd kindly corrected a munged Wikipedia link I'd put in.

If you use the reply box and click the button to enter an ordinary URL, the forum software pops up a little dialog so you can put it in in correct form, which is:

[Select]

[url=http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=42726.msg399785#msg399785]Re: Suggestion: A new GUI for ExifTools [/url]

But if you want to enter a Wikipedia link, the relevant button just gives:

[Select]

[wiki][/wiki]

with no indication of exactly what is wanted, which is similar to a plain URL:

[Select]

[wiki=Comparison_of_metadata_editors]Comparison of metadata editors[/wiki]

which gives

Comparison of metadata editors^w

Evidently just the Wikipedia page is needed.  Putting in the whole URL gives a Wikipedia error:

[Select]

[wiki=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_metadata_editors]Comparison of metadata editors[/wiki]

Please can

[Select]

[wiki][/wiki]

in the reply box either be replaced by a dialog similar to the plain URL one, or otherwise be a bit clearer about the correct form to put in?

<sigh>  I seem to have made a meal of this...

335

Post New Requests Here / Re: Suggestion: A new GUI for ExifTools

« Last post by rjbull on June 13, 2016, 04:45 PM »

I tried a DuckDuckGo search for "exif editor".  One of the postings it returned was Comparison of metadata editors^w.  It lists several GUIs for ExifTool, and some other programs.

ExifTool seems to be the default freeware.  ImBatch, free for non-commercial use, might be worth a look.  Otherwise, some of the programs that can bulk edit EXIF data, and have GUIs, are quite expensive.  I'd be resistant to spending money, because there exist free tools for stripping EXIF data altogether, and far too many people who like to do just that. 

336

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature Request: Remind me of Clip

« Last post by rjbull on June 01, 2016, 04:10 PM »

Wezinc is under development/improvement (e.g., beta releases), at/near the beginning of its product life-cycle

-IainB (May 28, 2016, 12:37 PM)

I wish they clearly stated whether it's freeware or not, or what sort of license they plan in the future.  Also, it would be nice to see a no-install version for USB sticks etc.  I wonder how you rate Wezinc versus RightNote, but that's rightly a query for another thread.

Essential PIM would seem to be outmoded and at the end of its life-cycle

-IainB (May 28, 2016, 12:37 PM)

It's note-keeping features haven't excited me so far, but I dabble a bit with its to-do and calendar.  I really like that it has an Android version, and PC and Android versions can be synced locally, without a cloud account.  I use its contacts a bit on Android, too.  I'm ambivalent about mobile platforms, but they're increasingly popular.

337

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on May 24, 2016, 04:50 PM »

 

Includes Mrs. Miller's strategy for reading War and Peace, "the only book you'll ever need:"

Spoiler

Five-point plan for anyone thinking of taking this book on:

1. Read fifty pages a day. N.B. the Millers both commute by rail, so have a fair amount of dead time to fill][/i]
2. Utilise the list of principal characters at the front.
3. Pay attention! Soon you'll discover that Tolstoy is doing the heavy lifting for you.
4. Don't fret if you are not enjoying the Peace, there will be a bit of War along shortly.
5. When you get to the end, read it again.

Preferred translations, in order:
(1) Louise and Aylmer Maude
(2) Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
(3) Rosemary Edmonds
Avoid Constance Garnet - "prissy"

338

General Software Discussion / Re: Slimjet updated to 10.0.1.0

« Last post by rjbull on May 24, 2016, 04:39 PM »

Do the current frustrations with Firefox extend to its forks, like SeaMonkey and Pale Moon?

339

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea : One Shot System Time Sync

« Last post by rjbull on May 24, 2016, 04:36 PM »

I'm not sure if it's exactly what you want, but you might try TimeSync, freeware by Horst Schaeffer:

TimeSync gets the current time from a NIST server, and adjusts the PC clock if necessary. Although the exact time is also supplied by Windows or (probably) by your router, you may want to have an extra tool that checks the time at your will.

Time and date are displayed according to the user's regional settings. Accuracy is usually within a second. TimeSync will try alternative servers, in case the time cannot be obtained from the preferred server.

TimeSync Option /auto is provided to run TimeSync from the the Windows task scheduler. In this mode the TimeSync window will not show if the clock offset is under a given minimum.

340

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Xp/Vista Replacements and Enhancements

« Last post by rjbull on April 27, 2016, 02:42 PM »

I liked PS Tray Factory back in the day.  But I'm not sure I need it on Win7. 

I do find it ... odd ... that they upload v3.3 to cnet.com but haven't updated their own website: http://www.pssoftlab.com/

-mwb1100 (April 15, 2016, 07:30 PM)

They recently updated to 3.31, but without (as far as I ca see) saying what they changed.

341

General Software Discussion / Re: bookmark management tool

« Last post by rjbull on March 21, 2016, 07:02 PM »

Late to the thread, but -
 
+1 for LinkStash 

I've used it for years.  The license policy is nice, too, because one license covers both installer and portable versions.

342

General Software Discussion / Re: Picasa to be 'phased out'

« Last post by rjbull on March 21, 2016, 06:47 PM »

People who "like" to keep photos still on their cards are almost certainly doing so for a bad reason. They should be disabused of their foolish notions rather than pandered to with software features

-JavaJones (March 18, 2016, 02:03 AM)

Some of us old-time film users think of cards as digital film 

343

General Software Discussion / Re: Picasa to be 'phased out'

« Last post by rjbull on March 21, 2016, 06:46 PM »

anyone I know who uses Picasa just use it locally.

-tomos (March 16, 2016, 06:30 AM)

That's my impression (on limited data) too.

344

General Software Discussion / Re: Affinity (Serif) goes head to head with Photoshop & (maybe) Illustrator

« Last post by rjbull on March 21, 2016, 06:42 PM »

I think there could be a very big market for almost-as-good-as-Photoshop software.

-tomos (March 19, 2016, 04:37 PM)

I thought that's what Elements was...  though my impression is that most photographers'  new first port of call is Lightroom, only turning to Photoshop or equivalent when they really need the extra features.

345

General Software Discussion / Re: Start Menu 10 Pro "skip start screen"

« Last post by rjbull on March 20, 2016, 03:15 PM »

Thanks for the information.    I see that as of today, 2016-03-20, it's on a 10th anniversary sale at 50% regular price.

346

Living Room / Re: "Great Service" Awards for Software

« Last post by rjbull on March 01, 2016, 02:40 PM »

Horst Schaeffer, from his wonderful batch file utilities back in the DOS days, to his array of small, fast, focussed, freeware Windows programs.  He's been a very generous programmer.

347

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on March 01, 2016, 02:35 PM »

I've been looking at this for a while - how is the book?  I couldn't decide if I wanted to read it or not.

-wraith808 (February 29, 2016, 05:24 PM)

Informative, interesting, even fascinating, but grim, as anything to do with the First World War would be.  The author doesn't purvey triumphalist BS or derring-do, but tells it like it was, using a vast array of documents from the time, including quite a few memoirs from the airmen themselves.  It took me a while to read as it's hardly lightweight, but it's well and clearly written.  Includes unusual areas such as the physiology of flying, which was as little understood at the time as aerodynamics.

348

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on February 29, 2016, 05:17 PM »

what is convenient to get out of the public library is drying up.

-MilesAhead (February 18, 2016, 07:37 AM)

Advanced Book Exchange (ABE)

I am trying another scifi author

-MilesAhead (February 18, 2016, 07:37 AM)

In case you don't already know them:

Jack McDevitt
Jack McDevitt on fantasticfiction

Adam Roberts
Adam Roberts on fantasticfiction
Especially his first three novels, Salt, On, and Stone.  In particular don't miss On; it's truly extraordinary.

Paul McAuley
Paul McAuley's blog: Earth and other unlikely worlds
Paul McAuley on fantasticfiction

349

General Software Discussion / Re: Comparative review of password managers

« Last post by rjbull on February 29, 2016, 04:53 PM »

I started with KeePass, the 1.xx series, which I still use.  I added AI RoboForm for more automation, which it does well.

When I bought an Android tablet, I installed KeePassDroid because it uses KeePass 1.xx series files, copied via Dropbox.  It works via the Android clipboard, which is a security risk if you run a clipboard manager, as I do.  In search of greater convenience I added Sticky Password (SP) when Bits du Jour had one of their deals on a lifetime license.  I chose SP largely because (a) Win-SP and Android-SP will sync over local WiFi without needing anything cloud and (b) it meant I wouldn't have to buy an upgrade to RoboForm if I didn't want to.  On limited acquaintance, my feeling is that Win-SP isn't as slick as RoboForm at figuring out login details, but it gives you quite good diagnostics and editing features to fix logins that don't quite work.

The Android experience is mixed, probably because of restrictions within the Android OS as well as sluggishness on the part of developers.  Android-SP only supports a few browsers; Firefox, which seems the most universally supported, Dolphin, and UC Browser, but not UC Browser HD which I sometimes use, nor Opera  either.  Success is variable.  Some logins work with some browsers but not others (though I don't use the very latest Android-SP).  To support everything for which Android-SP doesn't have a browser add-on, it offers a "floating window" making loginID and password readily available, but which in itself is little if anything of a step up from KeePassDroid, especially as it goes through the clipboard again.  A problem that sometimes arises is when the floating window sends the required data to the clipboard, but clears the clipboard immediately, so you can't use the data, unless you recall it with a clipboard manager.

I realise the thread is about password managers, but I was surprised and disappointed to find that Android-SP won't fill in details from an identity.  That is, it's OK for forum logins and the like, but not much use for online purchasing.  Given that online shopping is supposed to be going to destroy the retail sector, that seems a big omission.

350

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on February 29, 2016, 04:05 PM »

Unexpected detail: the book was first published in 1897.  The first few chapters purport to be the journal of a newly-qualified solicitor temporarily practicing as an estate agent.  Even then, he carried a "Kodak" camera (a model introduced in 1888) for photographing property.  Estate agents' windows full of photos of houses must be a much older phenomenon than I expected.