Recent Posts

3801

General Software Discussion / Re: Brilliant Windows based Recovery environment ...

« Last post by nudone on August 09, 2005, 02:32 AM »

that sounds good. i can't remember seeing the reatogo.de link so i'll have to try that myself.

i hope everything goes smoothly with your test.

just seen this on todays shell extension city page...

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

might be worth looking at for anyone interested in pebuilder.

3802

General Software Discussion / Re: Brilliant Windows based Recovery environment ...

« Last post by nudone on August 08, 2005, 01:58 PM »

not really sure about the wireless drives (or wifi in general) but i wouldn't be too surprised if someone hasn't made something to work with pebuilder.

as for nero have it's best to read from the source. if you look about two thirds of the way down the pebuilder home page you'll see a section labelled 'Plugin included with PE Builder, but the user needs to buy the program'.

under that heading is the details for nero - opens from another link.

you probably find something for wireless somewhere around all that section on the page.

happy hunting.

3803

General Software Discussion / Re: Brilliant Windows based Recovery environment ...

« Last post by nudone on August 08, 2005, 11:57 AM »

i've been using pebuilder for some time now - definately worth investigating the things you can add to it like Nero Burning Rom (if you have a valid key).

3804

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: extract archive and change file extension

« Last post by nudone on August 08, 2005, 11:55 AM »

absolutely fantastic, skrommel, you are a star.

many many thanks.

3805

Unfinished Requests / IDEA: extract archive and change file extension

« Last post by nudone on August 07, 2005, 03:37 PM »

i'm hoping to find time to try and figure this one out myself using AutoHotKey but i would be delighted if skrommel beat me to it (hint hint).

the idea is rather personal and perhaps wouldn't be of much use to many people without a little modification to the way the script works. here's the description...

i download (from www.absolutvision.com) royalty free images that are archived into a zip file before they are sent.

the files inside the zip archive are contained inside a folder called 'gallery' and are of the jpeg2000 format with the extension .jpf

i understand that autohotkey can accept files being dropped onto an autohotkey script .ahk file - whatever is dropped is passed on as arguments.

this makes me hope that a script could be wrote that would automatically extract the contents of one of these zip archives that contain the jpeg2000 files and then change their extension to .jpc instead of .jpf

the procedure would be that you drop the archive onto the autohotkey script icon and everything would automatically continue from there. the result being a 'gallery' folder containing .jpc files.

i appreciate that this a a specialised task but i believe that it would be handy for other uses if the script could be modified slightly. maybe a template mechanism could be achieved if you had a few scripts that changed file extensions in various ways. all you would need to do to quickly change the files would be to drop them onto the relevant autohotkey script icon. i imagine this could probably be done for changing the names of files also, maybe by numbering them or whatever.

i hope all that made some kind of sense.

(sorry about this, i thought there had been an error with the posting process so i've accidently posted this message twice - maybe mouser can delete one of them.)

3806

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: forced coffee/tea/cigarette break reminder

« Last post by nudone on August 06, 2005, 03:38 AM »

thank you very much skrommel.

i had forgotten about making this request but i shall definately try out your script.

skrommel to the rescue once again.

3807

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshotsw

« Last post by nudone on August 02, 2005, 06:32 AM »

  looking good, dude. can't wait to try this one.

3808

Living Room / Re: It's the first of the month.. you know what that means..

« Last post by nudone on August 01, 2005, 05:02 AM »

do i have to?

3809

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: A new name

« Last post by nudone on July 31, 2005, 07:51 AM »

arrgh, no!

not clippy, it's too much like microsoft's clippy annoyer, i mean helper.

3810

Living Room / Re: BIOS flashing scares the crap out of me!

« Last post by nudone on July 29, 2005, 03:48 AM »

funny, scary and true.

i've flashed the wrong bios a couple of times. thankfully it's not such a problem if you've done a backup of the original bios first. i wouldn't risk doing it any other way.

3811

Backup Guide / Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup

« Last post by nudone on July 29, 2005, 03:40 AM »

had a bit of a brainwave before going to be bed and realised whilst doing the DOS based restore that i probably neglected to select part of the backup image as it's spread over 4 separate files.

just gone through the process again this morning and everything worked fine. so it was my error not the paragon program.

it's a bit rubbish, though, that the software didn't realise i had missed out part of the image file and it did take over an hour to perform the complete restore.

i had avoided using Acronis True Image as it seemed to need extra prompting on my system for it to get through the system reboot and restore process. after all this incredible waste of time i've had with Paragon Drive Backup i think i'll be making the switch over to Acronis - should have done it from the start.

3812

Backup Guide / Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup

« Last post by nudone on July 28, 2005, 04:56 PM »

ha ha ha, it didn't even work.

windows now complains that i haven't got a registry and blue screens half way through boot up.

whilst waiting for all this to FAIL i see that Paragon have released Drive Backup 7. i suspect that will have an improved interface and CD support.

3813

Backup Guide / Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup

« Last post by nudone on July 28, 2005, 02:54 PM »

i'm sat here watching a very slow progress bar gradually make its way across the screen as 'Paragon Drive Backup' attempts to restore my main system partition.

this is the first time i've used the program in DOS (can't get into windows at the moment) and i have to say it will be the last time i use it.

it looks like it's going to take well over an hour to restore the 6 gig of system data - it doesn't take anywhere near that long when starting the program from within windows. from what i've seen 'Acronis True Image' doesn't take anywhere near this length of time when running from the boot CD either.

another complaint is that i've had to do this from floppy - there's no option to make a boot CD with Paragon. and to top it all off, the interface you are presented with when using the DOS version of the program is so ugly and 'DOS' like that i'm not even sure i've selected the correct options - i'm probably destroying the wrong partition because of this. brilliant.

whilst making the boot floppy it looked like you could make a script for some kind of auto backup/restore process. don't worry dear little Paragon, i won't be troubling myself any further with your horrible program.

(how did i get into this mess in the first place - i let 0&0 defrag my system partition on booting up. this seemed to totally wreck my ms office and adobe programs i tried to run - no problem i thought, i'll just put everything back using my backup image. yeah right. i coudn't even access my secondary hard drive. oh joy to the world.)

3814

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Duplicate files in a single click

« Last post by nudone on July 26, 2005, 03:53 AM »

i right-click on that file, choose 'copy' then right-click on an empty spot choose 'paste'. for me this is one-click too many

lanux, you might find it a less painful process if you 'right click' on the file and drag it to an empty spot, let go and click 'Copy here' from the menu that pops up.

i know it's still more than the 1 click method you are after but it's a more 'flowing' kind of method than the stop-start click click click click way you are doing at the moment.

3815

Unfinished Requests / Re: Update on 7/15 Coding Snack Weekend - and a prize for skrommel

« Last post by nudone on July 24, 2005, 10:33 AM »

yes, very sensible. totally pointless worrying about such minute memory wastage. i should know better than to worry about such things.

the main reason for discarding hoekey was to try and get the autohotkey script to do a few more things. like Zaine has said, he has replaced quite a few utils he was using and instead used autohotkey.

seems i'm asking questions without thinking them through. if i want autohotkey to do more than hoekey then there isn't anything to decide upon.

3816

General Software Discussion / Re: Drag and Drop Robot Movie

« Last post by nudone on July 24, 2005, 08:19 AM »

ha ha, very true.

how about a competition for best, or most imaginitive, uses for 'drag and drop robot'?

3817

Unfinished Requests / Re: Update on 7/15 Coding Snack Weekend - and a prize for skrommel

« Last post by nudone on July 24, 2005, 08:16 AM »

this is probably the wrong place to ask but here goes anyway...

i've been using a 'hotkey' manager called 'hoekey' for a few years now - i always thought it the best of the bunch when you can be bothered to figure out the syntax.

it's nowhere near as versatile as something like 'autohotkey' but i'm wondering if i replaced 'hoekey' with an 'autohotkey' script that performed the same tasks (a few hotkey shortcuts for starting common programs and moving/minimising windows about with the keyboard instead of mouse), does anyone think there will be more system resources used by an 'autohotkey' script.

'hoekey' takes up about 340k when running and, as i understand it, 'autohotkey' uses a few meg (?????????). does this actually mean anything, especially when i've got 1.5 gig or ram.

i assume it doesn't really matter and i ought to know better without asking such things. i just have grown attached to 'hoekey' and wouldn't want to dismiss it when it has served me so well for so long.

3818

General Software Discussion / Re: Drag and Drop Robot Movie

« Last post by nudone on July 24, 2005, 04:04 AM »

it's a great program, mouser.

i just can't think of something i can properly use it for - wish i could.

3819

Living Room / Re: IRC DAY 7/29 and 7/30

« Last post by nudone on July 23, 2005, 04:05 AM »

nice idea to have a special day.

3820

Unfinished Requests / Re: Update on 7/15 Coding Snack Weekend - and a prize for skrommel

« Last post by nudone on July 21, 2005, 12:07 PM »

sounds like a good idea, especially if there are going to be more scripts coming from skrommel.

i must say it's probably the first time i've been inspired to look at 'autohotkey' in a serious way. skrommel has really opened my eyes to how quickly these sort of tasks can be solved.

i sincerely hope there will be more to come from skrommel. a true coding snacks saviour if there ever was one.

3821

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Dim rest of desktop/windows, except for focused window

« Last post by nudone on July 19, 2005, 03:08 AM »

absolutely fantastic work there, skrommel.

'Ghostit.ahk' appears to do the job just fine. it deserves to become a very popular little tool.

not sure what you could add (if it needs anything). would be nice, i suppose, to be able to adjust the level of transparency through a slider control - is that going beyond what 'autohotkey' can do?

i've noticed a few odd things happening on screen when bringing some things into focus but i suppose that can only be expected.

also, thanks to 'jsmallberry' for suggesting the idea.

3822

Image Manager Shootout / Re: ACDSee vs ThumbsPlus for large collections

« Last post by nudone on July 16, 2005, 05:59 PM »

you can 'catalog' files with ACDSee but you may not immediately spot the option as it's under the 'database' menu.

i've not got anything i can really test it on at the moment as all my files are already in the database (i suppose i could delete it and make another).

there appears to be quite a good choice of what you can do when selecting how you want to catalog folders but, to be honest, i can't remember if i've ever done it through this manual setup method - i've always pretty much just let ACDSee extend it's database automatically when it encounters new images (maybe if i had a folder with thousands of image files inside i would be able to tell you if this auto method is time consuming or annoying. i don't think it will work as a background process).

if you want to try it for yourself then here's what to do:

from the 'Database' menu, select 'Catalog files...'

choose which folders you want to scan through

there are a few 'advanced options' you can select: import Exi data, build and include thumbnails, catalog only image files and also, include contents of archive files.

after this you can also automatically add a few details such as the a caption, author, various dates and notes. these will be applied to all the images in the current scan.

i hope this helps.

3823

Living Room / Re: Printing out pages from www.donationcoder.com eg reviews

« Last post by nudone on July 16, 2005, 05:40 PM »

  Jeff has already been so kind and made a donation. and greatly appreciated it was too. 

3824

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Thanks Nudone, great review!

« Last post by nudone on July 16, 2005, 09:34 AM »

i hope you like it Jeff.

lack of planning and bad time management meant it wasn't the super-duper review i'd like it to have been, but i suppose it's easy to spot things that were left out after it's all been done.

mouser did an excellent job of making it more coherent. hopefully, next time i'll know how to cope with the amount of work involved.

3825

General Software Discussion / Re: Open/Save Dialog Utilities - response to Nudone's Blog from May

« Last post by nudone on July 15, 2005, 03:28 PM »

are we having a software review on all this sometime soon?