Recent Posts

3926

Circle Dock / Re: Windows 7's Taskbar....Err.....Circle Dock for the DC Programming Contest

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 12, 2008, 08:14 AM »

Wow!

3927

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite gadgets and gizmos?

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 12, 2008, 07:03 AM »

Just picked up one of these

The four coloured lights on the front correspond to the four burners on a kitchen stove.
Four timers can run at once, and each can be re-run for the same time period, or reset to a new period.
Running timers show a green light.  Expired timers flash a red light.
Timers are set by twisting the central control knob, which beats fiddling with the all-too-common set-minute and set-second butons.

It's a really nice design and useful for all kinds of things, in the kitchen, the workshop, the studio... wherever.

Link is here: Quad Timer
The regular price is about $26 USD but I found one locally for $15 CAD.

3928

Living Room / Re: Thank You, DonationCoder Community!

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 12, 2008, 06:24 AM »

I was doing my normal morning read of DC forum, and just noticed that I saw 3 consecutive posts (by 3 different members) that all finished with ""

-jgpaiva (July 12, 2008, 05:25 AM)

They were trying to get a ride into work 

I'm with mouser, your contributions to the flow of positive energy are notable! 
You and a core of other stalwarts keep us in shape, we are lucky here.

3929

Living Room / Re: Mobo Mystery

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 11, 2008, 09:12 PM »

I have just filled out the webform for tech support from Asustek. I'll let you know what they reply. The auto reply claims a 48-hour turnaround.

-tinjaw (March 18, 2008, 09:24 PM)

So what did happen?

3930

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for July 11th, 2008 - Codename "Revenge of the Mini-Review"

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 11, 2008, 10:41 AM »

Another good newsletter!
I like the flow of this one, it reads well.

Oho!

Is it true that you've just made a successful takeover of Windows Secrets? 

3931

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: use key to constrain mouse movements to horizontal/vertical

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 10, 2008, 07:36 AM »

FWIW, until what you want appears...

Floating ruler from Renegade, right here on DoCo
Numpad mouse from Kalvin Au

Help me to sort out some finicky positioning stuff from time to time.

3932

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 09, 2008, 05:14 PM »

ok i admit it, dust is invisible to me.. i live in a world which is covered with a thin layer of dust.  when i say clean i mean clean of all unwanted particles large than a grain of sand.

-mouser (July 08, 2008, 11:59 PM)

Don't call it dust, think of it as patina 

3933

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 11:20 PM »

size of desk isn't so important -- have a clean and neat work area is.

-mouser

Clean ??!   

3934

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 11:11 PM »

I meant god knows what you might have uploaded instead of the picture of the levitating cat!

-tomos

True, oddly enough this was in my mind.

Can't think why...

Be interested to see your newly-formed desktop.  Not going to go at it yourself with a scrollsaw and a router?

3935

Living Room / Re: A Code writer writes a book.

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 09:32 PM »

Thanks for pointing this out.  It's an interesting thought, how much alike and how dissimilar are the two approaches.
I wonder if he has best-seller software.

3936

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 01:52 PM »

did you upload the wrong screenshot

-tomos

Well done, Tomos, you win today's spot-the-dummy competition

-cranioscopical (July 08, 2008, 10:55 AM)

that could have been dangerous

-tomos (July 08, 2008, 11:52 AM)

Oops, I see how that was misinterpreted.  I was the dummy to whom that was meant to refer.

3937

General Software Discussion / Re: Advice on fixing a boot problem with XP Pro

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 01:47 PM »

"Dynamic Disk" means it uses GUID-style partitions, instead of the old partition table system that has been used for... well, since the dawn of time. It's an option when you add a new unpartitioned disk to a system, Windows will ask you if you want to initialize it as a dynamic disk or not. 3rd-party tool support for DD's isn't very widespread, afaik.

-f0dder

Thanks for the input.  I wondered if the dynamic thing was why Acronis wouldn't see that drive (the rest of the system did; disk management, explorer et al).

5 hours to get 20gigs of data? Sounds like the drive was running in PIO mode, or extremely full of bad sectors...

-f0dder

For a while I thought someone had swapped in an 8088 as a joke 

Not PIO, no IDE devices but everything's set for DMA  -- I checked there just in case.  It's a SATA drive.  Something else was going on.  Transfer rate is where you'd expect now I've reverted from dynamic and reformatted the drive 'from scratch'. 

3938

General Software Discussion / Re: Advice on fixing a boot problem with XP Pro

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 11:26 AM »

I have never seen that happen with Acronis? (Having siad that I haven't used the Home version for ages).
TrueImage should see all partitions on all attached drives - ATA, SATA and attached USB/Firewire devices.
If it doesn't you may find the partition table has been damaged and it can't read it - have you tried checking the partition table on the second drive?

-Carol

Thanks for the reply, Carol.

Turned out that the second drive was a dynamic disk (!??!)
It was slow as molasses on Marmite -- took about 5  hours to copy off 20Gb of data.
Once I had the data off I killed it and reformatted.

I've heard a lot of good about Acronis, but I'm certainly unimpressed by its removal routine.
Perhaps there's something in the documentation that I missed -- I didn't set up that machine.
The Home version wouldn't have been my choice.

It's my week for computer glitches, evidently. 
Just lost one HDD and now I need a new chip cooler as mine's starting to grumble (unrelated events).

3939

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 10:55 AM »

did you upload the wrong screenshot

-tomos

Well done, Tomos, you win today's spot-the-dummy competition

3940

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 08, 2008, 10:43 AM »

That's a nice screen set-up.

I like the levitating cat!

 


[edit - attached wrong image] 

3941

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: First website for a client

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 07, 2008, 10:55 PM »

Straight in at #1 

I like the little girl in the front who keeps her back to the camera.
Many pop idols should emulate that approach.

3942

General Software Discussion / Advice on fixing a boot problem with XP Pro

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 07, 2008, 09:16 PM »

The problem:

My wife's machine had Acronis True Image Home 10 on it.
I didn't like it and uninstalled it (it seemed only to cover the first HD, didn't want to talk to the second HD)
Now a reboot gets me
"Acronis Loader fatal error"

If I then hit enter, we roll on merrily into XP

Questions:

Can I get rid of this Acronis hang-over?

TIA

off topic

On one occasion I put TIA at the end of a message to my ISP, the only satellite provider available to me, sadly.
The reply that came back began with

Dear TIA...

                                                             
Their tech support is about what you'd expect from that 

[Edit To answer myself, I found an Acronis .iso that does exactly what I need]

The solution is here, in case it could ever help anyone else.

Please use the following ISO image to create a special CD:
here
Once the CD is written, boot the computer from it and confirm that you want to fix the master boot record.

3943

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: [bug report] Plist Plugin

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 07, 2008, 01:03 AM »

Spot on, thanks very much!

3944

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini Review: Espresso

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 06, 2008, 10:41 PM »

Thanks for the review, interesting.

3945

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: [bug report] Plist Plugin

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 06, 2008, 09:24 PM »

i think v0.0.0.5 had fixed this bug

-lanux128

Yes, thanks.  For reasons of my own I had removed the printer-plugin folder. Reinstallation of the plug-in picked up the older version, as mentioned by mouser.

The correct term for this is FARR too much funn. 

3946

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: [bug report] Plist Plugin

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 06, 2008, 04:52 PM »

Hello taichimaster.

I have a problem with plist under the lastest FARR.
I can see only one printer in the plist display.
My version is 0.0.0.4.

Can you help?

One wouldn't ask if your plugin were not so useful!

3947

Find And Run Robot / Re: New FARR Plugin Display Mode: UserWindowMode

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 06, 2008, 01:56 PM »

Mouser, rather than sitting on the fence I'll make a feint if it keeps you happy.

3948

Find And Run Robot / Re: [bug] Initial Size

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 03, 2008, 08:56 PM »

my FARR keeps growing over time.

-nitrix-ud (July 03, 2008, 01:16 PM)

So, you've finally noticed mouser's plan for world domination?

3949

General Software Discussion / Re: Using URL-catching technology to save lives

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 03, 2008, 08:54 PM »

Type it in and see what I have there.

-TomAlciere (July 03, 2008, 08:11 PM)

Why, exactly, are you telling us this?

3950

Living Room / Re: Woot.com Bag of Crap post

« Last post by cranioscopical on July 02, 2008, 09:38 PM »

Thanks for the entertainment.

Here's a thought...
Anyone interested in a crap exchange?
3 unwanted items from me for 3 from you? 
If so, for me it'd have to be in North America to make (snail mail) postage feasible.

PM if interested