Recent Posts

401

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Compare contents of two RAR archives as if they were directories

« Last post by tinjaw on June 13, 2008, 02:57 PM »

Thanks for taking the time to post this info Craig. I'll grab the beta.

402

Living Room / Re: Career Advice : Masters Degree

« Last post by tinjaw on June 13, 2008, 02:55 PM »

tinjaw: I have some amount of experience, have personal work and done a few commercial projects as a freelancer.  Probably not very significant, (im not sure here).

-Carl00 (June 13, 2008, 02:36 PM)

Put together a website that is essentially your extended resume. Include code that can be download and compiled and executed. Include your unit tests as well. Put it on a version control server so it can be checked out by a potential employer. Then show it to people you trust to rip it apart and make it better. These should be people with industry experience, preferably as hiring managers, or at least project managers. Depending on how long your college instructors have been out of the business world, they will be able to provide current relevant feedback as well.

Also, STAY ACTIVE! Don't stop coding. Try to do more in the open source world where you can do the specific type of coding you want to do or that you can do exceptionally well. Contribute code, well documented, to the project. Show them that this is something you enjoy so much you do it in your free time, and that the work you do is above par. This will also keep you sharp for any technical interviews you get while hunting for work.

Also, if you can find the time, continue the freelancing. If you can produce enough income from that, well, no need to work for anybody else.

403

Living Room / Re: Career Advice : Masters Degree

« Last post by tinjaw on June 13, 2008, 12:59 PM »

Then I would say to forget about getting a masters degree. This is the only field I am familiar with enough to say that *if you want to be a pure code monkey* you don't need an advanced degree (right now). Hopefully you have some open source projects you can show. If not, hopefully you have some *completed* personal projects that you did with a team of coders. If not, hopefully you have a large personal project you completed yourself. If not, well, then you might as well go for a Masters degree because you are going to need the time to work on an open source project in a significant way or develop an intermediate application from start to finish on a team, or build a magnum opus on your own. Until then, you are basically going to be only desirable as an entry-level data entry person, where the data happens to be computer code at the level of a CS freshman.

Why? Anybody *can* be a programmer. Few people *are* programmers.

By that I mean that CS grads are a dime a dozen and a nickel if that dozen is outsourced. Coders with substantial documented/proven experience and/or woofie are a harder to find and thus get paid well. These are the coders that companies hire with plans of having them grow with the team and some day take a lead position of a team.

If you find yourself without that experience, you might want to think about taking the money you would spend on an advanced degree and live on it for 6-9 months while you do one of the things I suggest.

I will now get off my soapbox and allow somebody with an opposing view the floor.

404

Living Room / Re: Career Advice : Masters Degree

« Last post by tinjaw on June 13, 2008, 12:36 PM »

Before I could provide any advice, I would need to know what you want to do career-wise. Do you want to be a code monkey? Do you want to sit in a cube all day and code? If not, then what do you want to do?

405

General Review Discussion / Re: Best spreadsheet

« Last post by tinjaw on June 12, 2008, 01:36 PM »

Relatively new to the scene: Resolver http://www.resolversystems.com/  a slightly different outlook on spreadsheet programs.

-kfitting (March 08, 2008, 08:06 AM)

The thing to note about ResolverOne is that it is built on IronPython and exposes the underlying Python. So what you do in the spread sheet is exposed as Python code in the editor and it is two-way. Think of Delphi's two way editor, but with a spreadsheet instead of a UI and Python instead of PASCAL.

406

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Compare contents of two RAR archives as if they were directories

« Last post by tinjaw on June 11, 2008, 11:35 AM »

tinjaw, how thorough do you need the compare to be?

-f0dder (June 11, 2008, 07:55 AM)

The use case was that I believed all of the stuff in one RAR archive was included in another RAR. Before I deleted the first one I wanted to make sure all of its contents were in the second.*

I think we should ask for DC to try and get a discount on WinMount? What do you folks think?

*Yes, I just moved the files from the first to the second and said to update on older.  So, I got the end result I needed, but that got me thinking, hence the question.

407

Developer's Corner / Re: Wanted: Version Control Propaganda Video

« Last post by tinjaw on June 11, 2008, 07:52 AM »

He's not a programmer. He just wrote something in Visual Basic many years ago and just kept doing more and more until he had a few programs that people purchase from him. He is a one-man shop and will never need to work with another programmer. He has no formal training in the coding profession. No one has ever taken the time to explain to him what version control is, what it does, or why he would want to use it.

408

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Compare contents of two RAR archives as if they were directories

« Last post by tinjaw on June 10, 2008, 11:10 PM »

WinMount is very cool. I just downloaded it and it has a 15-day trial. Has anybody used WinMount more than just tinkering with it?

409

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Compare contents of two RAR archives as if they were directories

« Last post by tinjaw on June 10, 2008, 08:47 PM »

I just thought of something. It would be cool to have a way to mount RAR and other archives to a drive like you can with ISOs. Then you could do all kinds of stuff like comparing, etc.

410

Developer's Corner / Wanted: Version Control Propaganda Video

« Last post by tinjaw on June 10, 2008, 03:31 PM »

I have a friend who is not using version control and suffering from all that entails. I am looking for a video, or a document/web page, but preferably a video, that you believe would convert a non-believer into a version control user. It is not that they are educated about version control and denounce it as paganism, but they never were shown how it can save their sole and make them rich, and all that before breakfast. I am looking for something that is generic (i.e. software agnostic), educates, and proselytizes version control to the unexposed oblivious coders out there.

Anybody aware of such a useful piece of propaganda?

411

General Software Discussion / Wanted: Compare contents of two RAR archives as if they were directories

« Last post by tinjaw on June 10, 2008, 03:18 PM »

Beyond Compare 2 can compare the contents of two ZIP archives as if they were directories. However it doesn't handle RAR archives. I converted the RAR archives to ZIP archives to do the compare this time, but I don't want to have to do that all the time.

Does anybody know of any program that can handle RAR files natively in this manner?

I wonder if v3 of Beyond Compare can handle them? Maybe I should email Scooter and ask them to add it if it isn't.

412

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 10, 2008, 12:26 PM »

TODAY on Giveaway of the day, they have NetSearch. A product I haven't heard of before. Allows searching files on every computer on a LAN that has the client installed. Has anybody taken a look at this?

I am having a problem getting there from work. I will have to wait until I get home.

413

General Software Discussion / Re: Media Player Linux Distro Available?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 07, 2008, 11:54 PM »

GeeXboX is for you!

-scancode (June 07, 2008, 07:42 PM)

I forgot to mention that GeexBox gives me problems on this computer for some reason. It works fine for a while and then locks up.

414

General Software Discussion / Re: Media Player Linux Distro Available?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 07, 2008, 07:36 PM »

I am giving a more detailed second look at Mythbuntu. Maybe it is what I want after all.

415

General Software Discussion / Media Player Linux Distro Available?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 07, 2008, 07:29 PM »

I am very surprised that my searching hasn't been fruitful. I expected such a thing to be easily found.

I have a very old computer sitting around. I wanted to use it as a Media player. It has a CD drive, but no DVD drive. I want to hook up a LCD monitor and my stereo and use it to watch streamed movies and music. I don't want to do a standard OS install and then add the appropriate applications. I want it to be completely dedicated to media with a full-time dedicated interface. Something like a MythTV distro, but not centered around a box that has a TV-Tuner.

If this was a LiveCD, it would be great. I have found many things that come close, but they are all years old and abandoned or focused on emulating a TiVo.

Any thing you folks know of?

416

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 07, 2008, 12:45 PM »

short of opening each pdf up and reading through it...

-Darwin (June 07, 2008, 12:05 PM)

You young people have no idea how lucky you are. When I was your age we had to read them ourselves. Forwards AND backwards. We had to TURN PAGES. We even had to stack them outside which meant retrieving them from the yard with 12 feet of snow in freezing temperatures at night with a candle.   

417

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 06, 2008, 12:35 PM »

Uh, should this be moved to the file managers thread?

-Lashiec (June 06, 2008, 09:53 AM)

Oops. That is where I meant to post this, but I've been following this thread as well and posted earlier and so I blame my old age.

418

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 06, 2008, 09:45 AM »

I have a confession to make. I have a license for both Xplorer2 and XYPlorer and I have both of them installed on my laptop. This has resulted in me being less efficient because I keep confusing the two and don't learn the shortcuts etc.

Can somebody smarter than me sum up what differentiates the two. Preferably I would like to hear something like, XYPlorer is focused on making things easier and Xplorer2 is focused on getting every feature possible at your command. Or something like that.

Do you folks suggest I use one for a few months and then the other, or should I put one on my laptop and one on my desktop and use them both. I am thinking the former, but not sure which to use first. 

419

General Software Discussion / Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...

« Last post by tinjaw on June 06, 2008, 09:29 AM »

I have Easy Duplicate File Finder and CloneSpy on my USB stick. Both are freeware and both work splendidly.

420

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tinjaw on June 06, 2008, 08:42 AM »

OK, who is willing to make a summary of this thread so far? I would love a one paragraph description of each app that has risen to the top.

421

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: DoubleKiller Pro - FAST and great to find duplicate files!

« Last post by tinjaw on June 06, 2008, 08:40 AM »

Hello,

I am representing Bolide Software. Just want to inform you about our Duplicate Image Remover. It provides no byte-by-byte comparison, it compares image content therefore it can detect not only duplicate images but the similar ones too.
Feel free to ask me for the discount Or should I create a separate topic there?

-maxic (March 20, 2008, 08:50 AM)

maxic,

Thanks for the info, did anybody get in touch with you about your offer? I had your software on one of my computers for a short while. I downloaded it from GivawayOfTheDay (I think) but I rebuilt that computer shortly thereafter and really didn't get a chance to use it much. The little I did see looked impressive.

422

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by tinjaw on June 02, 2008, 12:58 PM »

Renegade deals out some useful advice on his 1,000th post.

423

Living Room / Re: Hosting options for new website

« Last post by tinjaw on May 31, 2008, 01:34 PM »

I have been using one hosting service or another since about 1994. I am currently using DreamHost and I am very happy with them.

424

Living Room / Re: flash-card programs to learn a new (human) language. What's the best?

« Last post by tinjaw on May 29, 2008, 10:40 PM »

I'm going to bed and my sleeping pills are already kicking in, so just some links.

Mnemosyne | Nihongo Pera Pera (Fluent Japanese)
http://www.nihongope...a.com/mnemosyne.html

Welcome to the Mnemosyne Project | The Mnemosyne Project
http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/

425

Living Room / Re: flash-card programs to learn a new (human) language. What's the best?

« Last post by tinjaw on May 29, 2008, 12:42 PM »

FullRecall - Software For Effective Memorization
"FullRecall is a software that can help you memorize the knowledge for lifelong periods with the minimum time investment. Underlying artificial neural network gradually grasps your forgetting curve to schedule optimal days for the reviews–i.e., days when you will be close to forgetting an information."
http://fullrecall.com/

It looks interesting.