Recent Posts

3751

Living Room / Re: I'm ready to join the HTPC (home theater pc) revolution - what to get?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 24, 2015, 08:10 AM »

well, i think we should distinguish two kinds of devices, that may have different roles to play.

You found the WD TV -- that will have LESS flexibility, LESS expandability, and LESS POWER (?) -- but it will be a set top box, preinstalled with software ready to be a media player with a nice interface.
I gather that the Zbox unit is basically a windows box, designed for use as an htpc.  So you'll still have to install media software, show the person how to run the right programs, etc.

So for setting up a non-pc-savvy family relative, you might still have some pros and cons to weigh..

-mouser (July 23, 2015, 11:29 PM)

Yes, less on the flexibility. It really depends on what you mean by expandability.  If it's storage, then the answer is no.  Less power?  Than these zotacs?  Not by much if at all, and definitely less noticable, since the interface is made for the power.  I've had one of these mini-devices, and it was a lifesaver when my wife and children's mains went down... we just cycled them through it, and other than the fact that my wife lost use of photoshop, they were great for browsing and using office.  But they were definitely quite slower.

3752

Non-Windows Software / Re: Thoughts on "next generation" forum systems? (Discourse, nodeBB, etc.)

« Last post by wraith808 on July 23, 2015, 06:47 PM »

I'm sure if it's really needed/wanted, there's some sort of plugin for it somewhere.  Necessity being the mother of invention and all.  And if it's not, we could code it up.  I guess that's why features never mattered that much to me in most of the forums.

3753

Non-Windows Software / Re: Thoughts on "next generation" forum systems? (Discourse, nodeBB, etc.)

« Last post by wraith808 on July 23, 2015, 06:40 PM »

I've been using classic forums for about 20 years, and I hate FB. Discourse I am not yet sure about, I *really* like some aspects, dislike others. But it's a young system and they're actively improving it. Watching the Meta forums on Discourse.org you see a lot of interesting discussion and development and it's encouraging, to me at least.

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (July 23, 2015, 04:57 PM)

I've been using 'classic' forums for quite a while, and have liked some, and not liked others.  In the end, it's a matter of the community rather than the features to me as a user.  On the admin side, that's a different ball of wax.  But in use, it really doesn't matter- each has things I like and don't like.

3754

Living Room / Re: I'm ready to join the HTPC (home theater pc) revolution - what to get?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 23, 2015, 01:30 PM »

I just went back and checked out dirhaels post, that is a very slick build.

The request right now is just to play back video.  I checked the wd live box, and it can play all video including mkv.  Nice.  Perhaps I should avoid the whole building thing.

mouser, that is good advice I think at this point.  And tbh, i don't really want to build a pc again. 

I hate hearing about the death of the htpc, lol.  I'll never give it up.  I'll keep trying to make it smaller, and quieter, and more powerful, so that will never end.

wraith, can you give me an idea of the streaming power of the WD TV?  Does it have a hard time with anything, large mkv, bluray files?  How is seeking back and forth, pleasant?

-superboyac (July 23, 2015, 12:59 PM)

Right now, I have the 1TB version in all locations but one.  I have my less used stuff on my NAS (and all the music) and my more commonly used stuff on my the Box.  Now, they're all over the house, so I get different response- it's based on reception.

I don't rip blu-ray, only DVDs as I'm trying to maximize space.

Within those constraints, the only time I've seen it have a hard time is if my other devices are having a hard time in the same location getting to the router.  It does take a bit to buffer if I'm on the NAS, but inherently it's fine and browsing is fine... so much so that the rest of the family who wouldn't touch the HTPC (too much work for watching a movie) are using it all the time and asking me to rip more DVDs.

I use MakeMKV for the rips, and it works fine.

3755

Living Room / Re: I'm ready to join the HTPC (home theater pc) revolution - what to get?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 23, 2015, 12:12 PM »

Looks like silverstone.  For a build, I can definitely recommend them.  But from a perspective of HTPC as standalone devices, yeah... they're going out in favor of devices that have that sort of functionality built into the firmware.  So I've moved to having a WD TV.  Haven't regretted giving up the HTPC.

3756

General Software Discussion / Re: What's living in your taskbar notification area right now?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 23, 2015, 10:12 AM »

• Join.me (can't figure out how to disable launch on startup)

-Deozaan (July 22, 2015, 09:15 PM)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run -> join.me.launcher

Of course, whenever you use it, it adds it back

3757

General Software Discussion / Re: What's living in your taskbar right now?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 22, 2015, 03:45 PM »

so you mean taskbar notification area?

3758

Living Room / Re: The end of the hard disk

« Last post by wraith808 on July 22, 2015, 09:05 AM »

Hard disks can become too big to fail...

-Shades (July 22, 2015, 07:00 AM)

Do they get a bailout at that point?

3759

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

« Last post by wraith808 on July 22, 2015, 09:01 AM »

There's a new one from axosoft in beta - GitKraken.  From the blurb they give on that page, I don't see what's so different, so I'm not trying it out.

3760

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder Major Upgrades - Progress Report Thread

« Last post by wraith808 on July 21, 2015, 04:54 PM »

I've personally never used it.  The only views I use are the main view, and the recently unread view.  I'm sure others differ

-wraith808 (July 21, 2015, 12:46 PM)

That's strange... that's around the date for my last added bookmark also

-wraith808 (July 21, 2015, 12:51 PM)

-Deozaan (July 21, 2015, 01:11 PM)

I've never used the view.  I've used bookmarks, though.    

3761

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder Major Upgrades - Progress Report Thread

« Last post by wraith808 on July 21, 2015, 12:51 PM »

Can I hear some opinions on how important the Bookmarking mod is to people? Thats the one responsible for this page:
https://www.donation...php?action=bookmarks

-mouser (July 21, 2015, 12:42 PM)

I used to use that feature a lot. But I haven't added a new bookmark since mid-2012, almost exactly 3 years ago.

-Deozaan (July 21, 2015, 12:48 PM)

That's strange... that's around the date for my last added bookmark also

3762

Post New Requests Here / Re: Simple auto-saving text editor for mercurial commits

« Last post by wraith808 on July 21, 2015, 12:50 PM »

Where do you want this editor to hook into?  I'm not understanding the use case totally.

You have a mercurial client (and/or are using the commandline), and you want the text to be inserted in there after you close it?  Sort of like something that pops up at will linked to the current window and will save the text there?

3763

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder Major Upgrades - Progress Report Thread

« Last post by wraith808 on July 21, 2015, 12:46 PM »

I've personally never used it.  The only views I use are the main view, and the recently unread view.  I'm sure others differ

3764

Living Room / Re: Computer Programming To Be Officially Renamed “Googling Stackoverflow”

« Last post by wraith808 on July 21, 2015, 07:49 AM »

I was wondering, when a new appointee in our office developing a .Net project, was searching StackOverflow and copy - pasting codes in the project. Since he was not under me, I just wondered how he is going to get all codes for the project of our clients. 

As expected all codes were working except the product. The client ran away.

Now I see this is how all new programmers are learning to code, copy - paste.

Why there was no help for us when we were working hard to read a text file correctly, which had some lower ASCII characters in it.

-anandcoral (July 21, 2015, 02:41 AM)

OCP (Object Copy and Paste) has always been a problem, but it's becoming endemic.  You should *know* how any code works before you put it in your project.  And you should test it before you do so also.  Nothing wrong with not reinventing the wheel or getting outside help, but to take it at face value will bite you one day.

3765

Non-Windows Software / Re: Thoughts on "next generation" forum systems? (Discourse, nodeBB, etc.)

« Last post by wraith808 on July 20, 2015, 02:34 PM »

Makes sense. I don't know what hosting you use, but Digital Ocean has $5/mo "droplets" that can host a Docker Discourse instance quite easily, for whatever it's worth...

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (July 20, 2015, 02:02 PM)

I'm on my own server, already paying a lot for the 'privilege', so I'm really not looking to pay more.  Especially for something that couldn't be seamlessly integrated into the current sites that I'm using.  That's not to say that it couldn't as it stands.  But that gets into the whole learning to admin something else for something that's for fun in the first place, and is a production server.

But thanks for the info!

3766

Non-Windows Software / Re: Thoughts on "next generation" forum systems? (Discourse, nodeBB, etc.)

« Last post by wraith808 on July 20, 2015, 01:56 PM »

Interesting to hear from a bbPress user. I must admit I pretty much wrote it off due to its Wordpress plugin nature, I figured it'd be a bit clunky, not as full-featured, etc. Does it have some of the Discourse features you like (e.g. new topic from reply)? Or are you more choosing it for ease of management?

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (July 20, 2015, 12:54 PM)

Ease of management and integration with wordpress.  I do like using discourse better.  But I just don't have the time, nor do I want to pay more for dedicated hosting from a discourse hosting service.

A few images from it in use and the admin side below:


1. It looks very similar to how you manage posts.
2. It repurposes a few things from posts to use for the bb
3. It does have the admin things close
4. It can be a pain to set up private boards (have to use a plugin)
5. You can embed forums in pages and posts.

Like I said, it's not perfect... but for a forum to go around a blog or cms, it's perfect for me.

3767

Non-Windows Software / Re: Thoughts on "next generation" forum systems? (Discourse, nodeBB, etc.)

« Last post by wraith808 on July 20, 2015, 12:24 PM »

My experience with Discourse has been good and bad.  The good- I like the features.  Some might say that the changes and such were not necessary, but I like the ability to start a new topic from a response, especially.  I do find that without using a host, it can be problematic to install and keep up- I just want a board that works.  To that end, and because I know a lot about wordpress, I've been using bbPress.  It can be a bit clunky on the admin side, and you can see behind the curtains at times to the wordpress background, but the integration and ease of maintenance and admin is worth it to me.

3768

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder Major Upgrades - Progress Report Thread

« Last post by wraith808 on July 19, 2015, 04:03 PM »

Tuxman, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about Discourse. I "discovered" it some months ago (or perhaps re-discovered) and I have kind of a love/hate relationship with it. I'm not actively running it on any sites mind you, so my experiences are limited. I absolutely *love* some aspects of it (the default design is not one of them), and I really like what their goals are, what they're trying to do. But as I said I do have issues with the design, and there are some other concerns too. So I'd be interested in hearing your perspective, especially since you said you're tinkering with some SMF forks (don't know why I didn't think to look for some before now!). Perhaps this should be split off into its own thread?

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (July 19, 2015, 01:48 PM)

Perhaps.  And then I'll chime in from my experiences

3769

Living Room / Re: I need a physics/chemistry/engineering/science forum

« Last post by wraith808 on July 17, 2015, 05:18 PM »

ok but can you tell me please what the community wants/does and what not?
because I haven't understood yet

-kalos (July 17, 2015, 03:53 PM)

The specifics will vary by community- each has a faq/help page that should be read before posting so you can know what kinds of questions the community answers and does not.  A very general overview for all StackExchange communities can be found at http://stackexchange.com/tour

There are some things that will be universal to all StackExchange sites, i.e. the mechanisms of voting.  There are some that are site specific, i.e. what an upvote/downvote really means.

For example, one of the communities I frequent is RPG.SE.  It's help page is at http://rpg.stackexchange.com/tour.  There's also a page with more help and a FAQ at http://rpg.stackexchange.com/help.

So you'd have to go to the specific site where you were asking the question, and look for the two pages.  Also remember, that unless there is a diamond beside the person's name, they are just a member, like yourself.  And members everywhere can be good or bad.  The only difference is tenure and reputation- reputation gives abilities as the community comes to trust the individual member.

In general, however, StackExchange is not a forum, and it does not host discussions.  It also doesn't do well with open-ended questions.  It is specifically created to answer very specific, very directed questions.  If you're starting a question with "Can I get suggestions for..." in general, that's not an appropriate question.  Pros and cons and opinionated questions also tend to be closed. 

Ask a specific question about a specific thing that can't be easily googled, and you're more likely to get a good response.

3770

Living Room / Re: I need a physics/chemistry/engineering/science forum

« Last post by wraith808 on July 17, 2015, 03:46 PM »

Everyone will have different experiences, I suppose.  I've found answers to questions that haven't been posed elsewhere because I've taken the time to ask and get to know what the community does well and doesn't.

Different strokes.

3771

Living Room / Re: I need a physics/chemistry/engineering/science forum

« Last post by wraith808 on July 17, 2015, 02:20 PM »

You might have better luck on Google+ communities or Facebook groups these days. Search those two places if you can, not traditional message boards.

And yes stackexchange is a joke, they spend more energy on asking you to write your question properly than trying to help you find answers. By a huge margin.

-rgdot (July 17, 2015, 12:45 PM)

StackExchange is a venue for a very specific type of Q&A format, and for that format, it is a very good resource.  You just have to know if your needs fit that type of format.  And it is very dependent on the specific community.  I've had very good experience there.

3772

General Software Discussion / Re: Mitro: FOSS alternative to LastPass

« Last post by wraith808 on July 17, 2015, 10:28 AM »

Some of the copy in that article smacked of condescension, IMO.

Mitro, the open source password manager for individuals and teams, is shutting down on Aug 31, 2015. If you are a Mitro user, you might feel sorry to see it go. But you do not have a choice to keep it alive. Mitro is gone and it is time for you to move on.

I never invested in Mitro, but just from reading that tweaked me the wrong way.  I can imagine how much more if I was actually affected.     Add to that the fact that you can still run your own instance, and it seems more self-interest rather than community interest.

3773

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by wraith808 on July 15, 2015, 10:27 AM »

I'd rather live longer and prosper.

-MilesAhead (July 13, 2015, 12:02 PM)

Now that's prefectly getting 2 birds stoned.

-Renegade (July 14, 2015, 08:34 PM)

3774

Living Room / Re: How do you resist buying ever more powerful PCs?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 14, 2015, 03:24 PM »

I don't resist.  

I have made it so that it's easy when I get the urge to switch, however.  I have two decently good cases that I just switch between as I upgrade.

3775

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by wraith808 on July 12, 2015, 09:30 AM »

J.K. Rowling shuts down Serena Williams critic

-Arizona Hot (July 11, 2015, 05:16 PM)

(see attachment in previous post)
ROFL

-Stoic Joker (July 12, 2015, 07:17 AM)

And you can't fix stupid... he kept trying to justify himself in the twitter feed.