Recent Posts

401

DC Website Help and Extras / DonationCoder.com on an iPad is Kinda Weird

« Last post by J-Mac on June 05, 2012, 01:15 PM »

Just one more reason - of several - to dislike my iPad: DonationCoder.com is difficult to read on it. Unlike any other forum I read, this one is tough to scroll. It seems like each individual post is in its own frame or something. When you put your finger on the page to scroll up or down, the text of the specific post you are touching moves slightly up or down - maybe 1/16" - but the page itself will not scroll. To get the page to scroll I must swipe the screen at the vertical scroll bar or in that thin area between the scroll bar and the posts.

Anyone else using an iPad? Can you confirm this behavior? (For me it occurs on the native Safari browser as well as Opera Mini and the Dolphin browser.)

Jim

402

Living Room / Re: Just Had a Baby Girl~!

« Last post by J-Mac on June 05, 2012, 06:42 AM »

Well, I've developed a bizarre urge to not post any pictures... Odd. I've posted lots before, but now, seems different... Anyways...

I've posted 3 pictures in my public Flickr photostream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryansmyth/

I don't want to post them anywhere else, as I'd like to maintain control over the pictures.

She's learned how to cry, and is doing very well. Actually, surprisingly well.

-Renegade (June 03, 2012, 06:34 AM)

Congratulations!!!

You'll now learn a lot more about love... and sacrifice! (sounds ominous, but you'll understand soon enough!)

BTW, if you search here on DC you should find some posts I made about why I pulled most pics of my children & grandchildren from my Flickr account. Some idiot on Flickr had collections about "erotic children pics" and had linked to some of mine. Flickr's "privacy" settings aren't all that private. I keep pics that I want private on SmugMug now. More expensive but a lot tougher for people to crack.

Anyway, enjoy! Life will become very interesting now! And very joyous!

Take care,

Jim

403

Living Room / Re: The Zombie Apocalypse starts now....in Miami

« Last post by J-Mac on June 01, 2012, 07:57 AM »

Ugh - That one gave me a little shiver when I read it. Ewwww..

Jim

404

Living Room / Re: Preparing for the inevitable

« Last post by J-Mac on June 01, 2012, 12:01 AM »

Nah, that sounds like a more specific version of the problems plaguing personal information management in general.

If that's the problem, wouldn't it be more simple to print out an e-book/paper table of contents/draw them a map stating which service they should head on to if x problems arise?

This is too expensive for your needs but by chance would something like Goalscape Connect's interface help your wife?

-Paul Keith (May 30, 2012, 06:07 AM)

Can't tell what Goalscape is. Their site just shows a login or register page without any hint of what they are. Why would one register without having a clue as to what you're registering? Is there a separate explanation page? I'm curious now!

Thanks!

Jim

Never mind - found it.

405

Living Room / Re: The Zombie Apocalypse starts now....in Miami

« Last post by J-Mac on May 31, 2012, 11:19 PM »

And now, this:  "Maryland student, 21, admits eating housemate's heart, part of brain"

I knew this was coming.... I knew this was coming...     

(Reading these articles to my wife - as she plays whatever the latest Facebook games are - and she's laughing and swears I'm reading them from The Weekly World News or similar...)

Jim

406

General Software Discussion / Re: HowTo save an entire google "20% preview" book?

« Last post by J-Mac on May 31, 2012, 09:01 AM »

You might try searching at scribd.com. They often have full books there submitted (not quite legally though) by members. However there's no more free lunch there; they don’t mention any charges until you click on the "Download" button. Then they offer up their pricing structure. If you can find a few that you want you can subscribe for one month at $9... something. (Can't remember the cents listed!). BUT you probably have to enter your credit card number and then remember to cancel.

Jim

407

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel and third-party clipboard managers

« Last post by J-Mac on May 24, 2012, 09:02 PM »

Hey Merle, my last post sure reads a lot more abrupt than it seemed to when I wrote it. IIRC I was very rushed trying to get somewhere and didn't really take the time to post properly. Sorry about that.

Yeah, I realize that it isn't the worst thing in the world but I have never been able to determine just why Microsoft felt the need to create a separate "Office Clipboard" that tries to disable the regular Windows Clipboard and then control what you can copy/paste and when. What was the rationale behind it? It has always seemed like a PITA to me. If I want to paste something several places in a spreadsheet I don’t want to be going back and re-copying it over and over again. Pity the poor souls who don’t use a separate clipboard manager; they have to continually go back to the original copied content and copy it over and over. And I can't see any benefit to the separate clipboard!

Thanks!

Jim

408

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel and third-party clipboard managers

« Last post by J-Mac on May 23, 2012, 05:22 PM »

Did you try using ClipCache instead of ClipMate & Excel ?

-MerleOne (May 23, 2012, 03:57 PM)

No... why should I when I bought ClipMate and have used it for years now?

If I copy some cells within Excel then paste them at another location, then press escape so that the dotted blinking line is no longer visible, I can return to Clipcache, copy the last entry, and paste it again in Excel.  I just tried with cells having simple numbers, not formulas.

Yes - and I mentioned that I can also do that with ClipMate - look at my previous post. Point is, why should I have to always go back and re-copy the entry before I can paste it? Again, read my previous post!

Thank you.

Jim

409

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel and third-party clipboard managers

« Last post by J-Mac on May 23, 2012, 03:42 PM »

Hi Merle.

What bugs me - and pretty much always has with Excel - is that the Office Clipboard takes over and tries to abandon whatever other program you use (the regular Windows Clipboard if none) and then it allows you to copy and paste ONLY until you press the Enter key - for any reason - or the Escape key. Maybe a few others I'm missing here in my haste to post this. You'll know it ahead of time if you see the dotted, blinking line surrounding whatever you copied. Then that bit of copied material is gone and you have to re-copy it. I absolutely hate that. I always use the Enter key to complete any entries in Excel and like I said that kills the ability to use the copied cell(s). Now if I open the ClipMate window it says something like "Clipboard has no data", or ""Clipboard data has been erased", depending on exactly how Excel tried to clear the clipboard. Of course all my copied data is still there in ClipMate but if I want to paste it I need to cursor back down to the entry and then paste it. It's just a lot of extra crap that I should not have to do.

So I searched and found that I can turn off the damn Office Clipboard. Hooray! Except now anytime I copy anything at all in Excel I get the error message pop-up that is attached below. Not once but anywhere from twice to who the hell knows! If it just keeps popping up too much Excel closes all by its lonesome. BTW it has nothing to do with copying an image; whatever I copy Excel pops that message up. If you Google the problem you'll find thousands of hits but no solutions. I'm thinking a fine solution might be going back to using Softmaker Office and only use OneNote from my Office Pro software.

Jim

[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

410

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel and third-party clipboard managers

« Last post by J-Mac on May 22, 2012, 10:57 PM »

Doesn’t really matter which one you use, if you are using Excel 2007 or 2010 the Office Clipboard simply will not get along with the clip utility. I HATE this about MS Office, and I'll probably drop Office altogether. I'm trying to find out if Softmaker Office acts this way with the clipboard.

BTW you can turn off the Office clipboard in Excel 2010 - I did but now I get errors whenever I copy anything in Excel. This is one Microsoft program "feature" that really sucks worse than most!

Jim

411

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by J-Mac on May 18, 2012, 12:52 AM »

RightNote has spreadsheets in it. Just sayin'.

Jim

412

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by J-Mac on May 17, 2012, 11:01 AM »

I'm not sure what the ribbon has to do with note-taking, but it is one of the most annoying inventions ever. For one thing, there's nothing ribbony about it. One dictionary definition is "notion consisting of a narrow strip of fine material used for trimming." The MS ribbon is hardly narrow; it takes up a practically a third of the screen.

-longrun (May 16, 2012, 11:34 PM)

Cause someone mentioned a favorite program being better now because of the ability to customize its ribbon... Surely you saw that?

Has the opposite affect on me!

Jim

413

General Software Discussion / Re: Rightnote, commercial alternative to abandonware Keynote

« Last post by J-Mac on May 17, 2012, 10:38 AM »

Couple of quick comments/questions about RightNote:

I purchased the Pro version a few months ago but didn't start using it very often until recently. Here's two items that have me pretty well stumped!

• First, when a RightNote window is open (on Windows 7 64-bit), clicking the taskbar icon does not minimize it. When minimized a click does open the window. But I can't minimize it except by using the "minimize" icon at the right edge of the title bar.
• Secondly, I cannot print anything from RightNote! I can use Print Preview, but when I click on "Print" or the Print icon nothing happens for about 20 - 30 seconds, then an error message appears, as attached below.

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

I thought I would post this here since RightNote has no forum. Has anyone else seen this? BTW, I have not come across any other program that throws an error attempting to print. The printer is my default printer and has no unusual configuration. Also, the inability to minimize - never saw this before either. Anyone?

Thanks!

Jim

414

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by J-Mac on May 16, 2012, 10:15 PM »

Hmm, I'd recommend Excel 2010 because you get to make *custom* ribbons which changes the whole Ribbon discussion for me at least!

-TaoPhoenix (May 16, 2012, 05:58 PM)

Yeah, but only to an extent. I'm disappointed in it. Just about everything I wanted to add/remove from the ribbon bounced with messages that either I can't do that or I can only do that with a "custom group". They still haven't made things much easier or even logical. An example: I tried to add the strike-out tool to the ribbon - ever notice that's missing? Naturally I wanted to add it next to the Bold, Italic, and Underline icons, but Nooooooo.... "You must create a custom group to add that". And of course I couldn't seem to add a custom group next to the other text formatting icons, nor even near them. Just stupid stuff like that I've encountered. Try as I might, I just cannot grow to like the ribbon. The separation of tools is a real PITA. Like being in Table Tools in OneNote and you need to add formatting - Bold or Italic - to text? Gotta click on Home at the other end of the ribbon, then back again. Of course keyboard shortcuts solve that, but when, say, changing the font or font size? Just too much jumping around from tab to tab. Don’t like it after two years of use.

Jim

415

Living Room / Re: Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft

« Last post by J-Mac on May 08, 2012, 09:16 PM »

Well, it's fine with me as my high speed connection always made my box a target to become a supernode. I would change the registry and all the other published tricks to avoid it and of course Skype would find another way to punch a hole in UDP or whatever and christen me a supernode again. I used Gizmo - which always used their own servers - till they were bought bu Google a few years ago. Google sat on it for two years, reducing features continually, and then killed it for good late last year. (They do that a LOT).

So I'm fine with Microsoft/Skype - for now.

Jim

416

Living Room / Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft

« Last post by J-Mac on May 08, 2012, 10:05 AM »

Finally! Now you shouldn’t have to worry about hacking your Skype installation to avoid having Skype designate your box as a "supernode". (Like me!) Oops - well not exactly, but calls will no longer be routed through Supernodes; instead supernodes will be used only to allow users to find other Skype users. As stated by Mark Gillett, CVP, Skype Product Engineering & Operations:

As part of our ongoing commitment to continually improve the Skype user experience, we developed supernodes which can be located on dedicated servers within secure datacentres. This has not changed the underlying nature of Skype’s peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, in which supernodes simply allow users to find one another (calls do not pass through supernodes). We believe this approach has immediate performance, scalability and availability benefits for the hundreds of millions of users that make up the Skype community.

http://arstechnica.com//business/news/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft.ars

Microsoft - which acquired Skype last May - apparently made the change about a month ago when the number of users logged onto Skype hit 41 million, which is about 37% above average. 

Anyway this is good news IMO.   

Jim

417

Living Room / Re: SuperMoon Pictures - Post Them Here :)

« Last post by J-Mac on May 07, 2012, 02:47 PM »

Well, I was all set but cloud cover made the Supermoon just barely a glow in the eastern sky here.   

Jim

418

General Software Discussion / Re: Cloud-storage - safe & secure? Consider Wuala (it's encrypted as well).

« Last post by J-Mac on May 05, 2012, 03:07 PM »

One annoyance with at least Wuala and Spideroak is that their mobile clients for Android and iOS do not support uploading into the cloud yet.

-phitsc (April 29, 2012, 04:46 PM)

Not sure that you could encrypt files on Android or iOS. And neither platform is proving to be very secure. That might be a readon why they are struggling to add the feature. Just a guess.   

Jim

419

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Fusion 11: $100 off!

« Last post by J-Mac on May 05, 2012, 02:56 PM »

Is it kinda sleazy to offer "half off X product" like a month before the next version is out?

-TaoPhoenix (May 05, 2012, 01:55 PM)

It depends... and it's very common.

Depends on whether or not they offer you a discount to upgrade; or if within a certain time frame if they offer the upgrade free of charge. Probably 30 days though some allow longer.

I didn't really look into this to see. I won't be upgrading; I haven't done any web site design for a while.

Jim

420

Living Room / Re: Keeping track of what you want to know about

« Last post by J-Mac on May 05, 2012, 02:10 PM »

Wow - used my missing of that thread as an example... OOPS!

Anyhoo, I do use the Unread and Recent post links but not religiously. Even so, it might have been there and I just didn't recognize what it was. Happens all the time.   

Also, I still use FeedDemon but that might go away soon. I understand that Nick is more than a little disillusioned with Google's recent changes to Reader. Nick had tied FeedDemon to Google Reader by having them sync, but Google anounced that won't be possible anymore. Hasn’t changed yet though it was supposed to by now. Once the Google Reader sync goes away I fear that FeedDemon might also.

Thanks!

Jim

421

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Fusion 11: $100 off!

« Last post by J-Mac on May 05, 2012, 01:39 PM »

Wow! Memories!

I used NOF back at version 7 and 8. Used it right up to shortly after the buy-out. Actually I liked it much better before the company was sold. Support wasn’t excellent but was very friendly and seemed to try like hell to get things working for you. I appreciate that kind of service even more than true experts who prefer to not be bothered by lowly users.

Mostly though the forum had long time users who were extremely helpful, and they had a lot of tutorials written that made my life much easier.

I hadn't thought about this software for a long time and then I came across my original installation CDs just last week. And here I find a thread resurrected about NOF. Always seems to work that way!

Thanks!

Jim

422

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Database Oasis for $21 on Bits duJour Wed, 4/14/2010

« Last post by J-Mac on May 05, 2012, 01:32 PM »

Sorry to necromance this thread but the post history within is necessary IMO.

Just wanted to comment that even though I don’t really use my copy of DB Oasis "Standard", I check every few months to see if any development has taken place. Supposedly they were releasing a major upgrade in January 2011 but excluding all Bits purchasers from December 2010 - about three weeks earlier - from being able to upgrade. Well as of right now they have never released ANY kind of update, upgrade or anything at all. Appears to be "abandonware" at this point.

Jim

423

Screenshot Captor / Re: Scrolling Capture Deluxe Thread

« Last post by J-Mac on May 04, 2012, 09:29 AM »

Hey, I missed this thread altogether. As you know, mouser, I have never been able to get a scrolling capture with Screenshot Captor, and that has stayed the same through three different Windows computers! I've posted several times about it and at first you replied as if most had no problems and it must be my system. Finally enough other people chimed in and you said you would be working on it. Apparently you have here but I didn't notice it.

Soooo.. where are we? I have downloaded and installed all updates/upgrades to SSC but I don’t see any settings screens like those posted in this thread. Is this a separate program? An add-on to SSC? Youi have kept this way, way under the table though I'm not certain why. How the heck do I get scrolling captures now with SSC?

Thanks!

Jim

424

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: MyInfo organizer 61% discount on April 23, 2012

« Last post by J-Mac on April 29, 2012, 09:24 PM »

I did and to be perfectly honest - unless I am misreading them - they both suck big time. With UR you can export documents and rich text items to a folder, item attributes only to a CSV file, text items only to a rich text file, item notes to a rich text file, or items to an XML file. MI can import IE Favorites, and it looks like plugins are needed for most other imports; yet I only see two plugins on their site: askSam or Diary 2012. Of course the XML export from UR would be the thing to use, but... MyInfo doesn’t do XML. Been promising to look into it for some time now if I believe the dev's comments in his forum, but no action on it ever.

IMO, they both bite because of their poor transfer of data capabilities.

Thank you.

Jim

425

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: MyInfo organizer 61% discount on April 23, 2012

« Last post by J-Mac on April 29, 2012, 01:55 PM »

I went ahead and bit on the MyInfo deal.  Now I can't find a way to import data from most other PIM/outliner software. 

I'm not starting anything new with MyInfo until I find a way to get my Ultra Recall data into it. And if that's not possible then I guess I got another candidate for the round file. Getting tired of this same old shit.

Anyone here familiar with MyInfo?

Jim