Recent Posts

426

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on December 21, 2014, 05:14 PM »

Just started:
Mandarin Gate by Eliot Pattison, seventh in his 'Inspector Shan' series of thrillers set in present-day Tibet, detailing the Chinese cultural genocide of Tibetan Buddhist culture, the very monks oppressed fugitives in their own country.

Just finished:
Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovich.  Great fun, though a bit of a deus ex machina ending (rather literally).  This is the fifth in Aaronovich's series of 'Peter Grant' thrillers, the first being Rivers of London.  Up-to-the-minute police procedurals - except that the viewpoint detective constable (of mixed race) is also England's most recently recruited wizard...  Somehow it all works.

Just finished:
Prayer by Philip Kerr.  Kerr is better known for the excellent though grim 'Bernie Gunther' series of thrillers, but this is a stand-alone novel.  It's an unpleasant, uncomfortable book that picks out examples of God's wrath from the Bible to postulate God as a kind of Manichaean monster, with a frequently Stalinist contempt for human life.  Theists, especially Christians, you have been warned.

427

General Software Discussion / Re: Extremely simple and minimal sticky notes for windows

« Last post by rjbull on December 08, 2014, 03:36 PM »

Prompted by dr_andus' comment "fairly minimal," and by re-reading the OP, I think you may be less concerned by the total feature set, than by features not getting in your way.  In which case, I suggest taking a look at the sticky notes program I use myself, the little-known Magic Notes.  From your point of view, the plus point would be that a left double-click on the tray icon (or a hotkey) gets you a new plain sticky note, with no fluff, with whatever defaults you've set.  You can get to fonts, colours, alarms, attach-to-window etc., if you want them, by clicking the Note Window Menu icon or by function keys.  But they won't bother you if you don't bother them.  Right-click on the tray icon gets you About, Help, Preferences and other general program stuff.

Magic Notes is $19.95 payware.  There's no generally-available free version that I know of, but the trial period is a generous 45 days.  Development is glacially slow, but I've used it for years in different versions and it has always worked perfectly well.  Its feature set is comparable with Stickies and Notezilla (the latter has more features, I think).

Another sticky notes program that I haven't tried, but which has been around for a long time (since 1998, apparently), is TurboNote.  TurboNote+ is on version 7.0.  Its basic price is $US 29.97, but TurboNote v.3.4 is freeware (see their FAQ page).

428

General Software Discussion / Re: Extremely simple and minimal sticky notes for windows

« Last post by rjbull on December 07, 2014, 03:14 PM »

Not sure if it's quite what you want, but DC member anandcoral wrote Stick-A-Note.  IainB's review is here: Stick-A-Note + Universal Viewer - Mini-Review

There was a very simple Stickynotes by Toren K. Smith at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/tbone , but that page has gone (WayBackMachine?).  Or, take a look at KNot v2.04b

429

Living Room / Re: ebay snipping

« Last post by rjbull on November 26, 2014, 03:43 PM »

Shopper Tools (mentions Gixen)

I use - on the odd occasion when I use it - freeware Biet-O-Matic (Bid-O-Matic).

430

General Software Discussion / Re: Possible to make application point to a directory within the drive it is on?

« Last post by rjbull on November 14, 2014, 04:55 PM »

Surf over to Horst Schaeffer's mini programs page and take a look at Vdrive and ShortExe, which should help if you make frequent use of USB drives without fixed letters.

431

Screenshot Captor / Re: SC post-capture run

« Last post by rjbull on November 14, 2014, 04:50 PM »

maybe a better thing would be to not set SC to start at boot time, and start it manually afterwords, after teh virtual shares are connected?

-mouser (November 14, 2014, 10:21 AM)

I'm not familiar with virtual shares, so, is this a situation where one could use a startup manager to make things happen in the right order?

432

Living Room / Re: Beer Spa

« Last post by rjbull on November 10, 2014, 04:50 PM »

That's got to be better than the smelly sulphurous thermal water that most spas use! 

433

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Sorting - latest copy on top

« Last post by rjbull on November 10, 2014, 04:36 PM »

Does this help?  Note the direction of the arrow in "Created".



Forgot to add; you may need to choose which columns you see by clicking on the very small icon below:

434

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your preferred File Manager

« Last post by rjbull on November 10, 2014, 04:10 PM »

To me the functionality is more important though, and the standard orthogonal file manager interface with NC compatible keyboard shortcuts

-Jibz (November 10, 2014, 01:24 AM)

+1

435

Post New Requests Here / Re: customizable gui for cli apps

« Last post by rjbull on November 06, 2014, 04:46 PM »

If your CLI apps include DOS ones and batch files, take a look at Horst Schaeffer's WBAT, which while itself DOS, is as Windows-like as you'll find in a console application.  I've seen it used as the menu interface in some rescue boot disks.

436

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Dimmer?

« Last post by rjbull on November 04, 2014, 03:58 PM »

Here on DC: DimScreen ?

Please note that Skrommel no longer posts here, but others may be able to help you.

437

Living Room / Re: Who is your Favourite "Doctor"?

« Last post by rjbull on November 04, 2014, 03:56 PM »

I forgot Romana    And now it appears that The Master has...  undergone gender reassignment...

[Edit at UK time 2014-11-06, 22:32:-]
Hmmm.  I belatedly realised this means The Master is now The Mistress, which changes the entire character of the show...
[/Edit]

438

Living Room / Re: Who is your Favourite "Doctor"?

« Last post by rjbull on November 02, 2014, 04:58 PM »

The thing I could never wrap my head around was the concept of The Doctor as the last of a race of Time Lords.  I mean, if these guys are always scampering around in the centuries how are there not any of them left around even if they got killed in the future?

-MilesAhead (October 26, 2014, 04:47 PM)

Because there aren't any Time Ladies?  
(cross-reference Robert E. Heinlein's short story '"—All You Zombies—"' and Mark Twain's answer to the question "What would men be without women?" "Scarce, sir…mighty scarce".)

439

General Software Discussion / How can I back up and restore tray configuration, please>

« Last post by rjbull on October 31, 2014, 05:51 PM »

I run Vista Home Premium, 32-bit, UAC On, user account.  Lately I've had a number of BSODs.  When Windows finally crawls back into action, I usually find the tray has been partially scrambled.  The Network icon is usually missing, and the icons whose notifications I've customized are all set to Hide when inactive.

Please, is there any way to save the tray configuration for these, so I don't have to change them back to the way I want them by hand?

TIA...

440

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Add short excerpt to clip Title in main window

« Last post by rjbull on October 24, 2014, 04:00 PM »

mouser, this kind of question has come up before.  Is there any way to make that cell more prominent, and/or add more in Help, or a video?

441

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: How much value would there be in an optional floating small clip window?

« Last post by rjbull on October 24, 2014, 03:49 PM »

The clipboard manager I use most is ArsClip, which has this:

The Clipboard Bar's main purpose is a clip viewer window.
This mouse-friendly window also acts as a Drag and Drop target, a Popup
trigger, and clipboard manager.

... and I don't use it.  Hence a "no" from me.

One of the features I most like about CHS is its Paste Templates, invoked by popup > Additional actions... on last clip.  The main popup menu has accelerator keys.  Please, could there be accelerator keys on the Additional actions menu too?

442

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.26.0 - Oct 8, 2014

« Last post by rjbull on October 21, 2014, 02:54 PM »

...I wouldn't know.  As I wrote, I use the much superior Total Commander 

-rjbull (October 20, 2014, 03:13 PM)

...Eh? Misses the point.

-IainB (October 20, 2014, 04:16 PM)

My first post made the point, not very explicitly perhaps, that there's no "need" to make downloads of CHS that only contain updated files (which is what I understood the OP to want) when one can rely on a good file manager to overwrite new/changed files and ignore the rest.  Unless, of course, one is on dialup and really, really wants to minimise download size.  I have been in the habit - for about 15 years - of using Total Commander for my file management needs, and almost never use Windows Explorer, so don't know what it offers.  I imagine most frequent PC users do likewise.

443

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.26.0 - Oct 8, 2014

« Last post by rjbull on October 20, 2014, 03:13 PM »

@rjbull and @dcwul62: If you open the .ZIP file for the latest portable version and then select and copy all its contents to the installed portable proggie's folder, doesn't Windows Explorer check first and ask you if you want to install newer/older versions and/or overwrite, etc.?

-IainB (October 19, 2014, 05:19 PM)

I wouldn't know.  As I wrote, I use the much superior Total Commander 

444

General Software Discussion / Re: The most stupid Windows error?

« Last post by rjbull on October 20, 2014, 03:11 PM »

I run Vista Home Premium, ...

-rjbull (October 19, 2014, 04:31 PM)

Every second version of Windows... Darn that meme just keeps on giving!

-TaoPhoenix (October 19, 2014, 04:42 PM)

The well-liked Win7 and hated/despised Win8 seem to make the unloved Vista Win6 and well-liked XP Win5.  So I wondered if there was some kind of ju-ju related to odd vs. even version numbers, and what Microsoft were thinking of to take the risk of jumping over Win9...

445

General Software Discussion / Re: The most stupid Windows error?

« Last post by rjbull on October 19, 2014, 04:38 PM »

But don't you want to hear that awesome logoff sound?

-mwb1100 (October 19, 2014, 04:33 PM)

Is there a "smiley" for apoplexy?

446

General Software Discussion / The most stupid Windows error?

« Last post by rjbull on October 19, 2014, 04:31 PM »

I run Vista Home Premium, 32-bit, UAC On, user account.  When I want to shut down, I close open application programs, click on the desktop, press Alt-F4, choose Shut down.  Occasionally I get this BSOS Black Screen of Stupidity:



Windows can't shut down because Windows is shutting down?  

447

General Software Discussion / Re: need duplicate word scanner

« Last post by rjbull on October 19, 2014, 04:23 PM »

Of related interest, TextSTAT - Simple Text Analysis Tool:

Concordance software for Windows, GNU/Linux and MacOS

TextSTAT is a simple programme for the analysis of texts. It reads plain text files (in different encodings) and HTML files (directly from the internet) and it produces word frequency lists and concordances from these files. This version includes a web-spider which reads as many pages as you want from a particular website and puts them in a TextSTAT-corpus. The new news-reader, too, puts news messages in a TextSTAT-readable corpus file.
TextSTAT reads MS Word and OpenOffice files. No conversion needed, just add the files to your corpus...
In TextSTAT you can use regular expression which provides you with powerful search possibilities. The programme is multilingual. Because it uses Unicode internally, TextSTAT can cope with many different languages and file encodings.

Freeware.  Found via Mark Wieczorek's "My Favorite Smallware".

448

Found Deals and Discounts / Breevy text expander for Windows $5 off 12th Oct. 2014

« Last post by rjbull on October 12, 2014, 04:41 PM »

Breevy is a text expander for Windows that helps you type faster and more accurately by allowing you to abbreviate long words and phrases -- saving you time and money.

Simply define an abbreviation for a longer piece of text, like eml for [email protected].

Then, in the future, instead of typing that longer piece of text, type the abbreviation you associated with that text in any application, and Breevy will automatically replace it for you, instantly.

449

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommend image comparison tool, please?

« Last post by rjbull on October 12, 2014, 04:33 PM »

Xnview (freeware) has a compare tool

-tsaint (October 09, 2014, 06:22 PM)

Thanks - are you using XnView or XnViewMP?

450

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.26.0 - Oct 8, 2014

« Last post by rjbull on October 12, 2014, 04:26 PM »

As for me, I am using a 3rd party tool (Beyond Compare) to do a foldercompare of the existing portable version with the new, extracted folder and only update what is necessary

-dcwul62 (October 10, 2014, 11:44 PM)

Why not use an unarchiver that checks for new/changed files?  I use the one built into my favourite file manager, Total Commander.  It gives various options, a particularly useful one being Overwrite all older.