Recent Posts

4301

AutoHotkey / Re: help with icons

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 28, 2007, 08:17 PM »

there isn't a change icon under properties. that is only for shortcuts, I want the original program's icon changed.

-nite_monkey (November 28, 2007, 07:52 PM)

Use the compiler (convert.ahk to .exe) to browse to your preferred icon

Spoiler

4302

Living Room / Pop Quiz

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 28, 2007, 06:51 PM »

Several interesting answers to kids' questions. For example, with reference to one's sister, "Why can't we just cook her?"

And for those who want only the answer to this one:

Spoiler

You cannot just cook and eat your sister, because your father is trying to civilise you. You would find it existentially upsetting. Even if you were uncivilised, like the 70-plus species of mammal that are known cannibals, it would not be your sibling you would kill and eat. For instance, male lions and female chimpanzees kill and eat the offspring of rivals, not infants who are closely related to them genetically. In a cave I was excavating recently, I discovered the ancient remains of butchered babies and toddlers, so I know that early humans certainly sometimes ate other humans. It was not always their enemies. Before farming was developed to provide regular meals, if a member of your family died, it would have made nutritional sense not to waste anything, and you would not want to attract dangerous meat-eating animals to your camp or allow your enemies a chance of a good feed off your deceased loved one. So in those circumstances you would have been obliged to eat your little sister, as part of a solemn, dutiful ritual. Nowadays, you don’t need to do that, unless times get very, very tough.

http://www.telegraph...r_117.xml&page=2

4303

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / Re: Help me find a name for my reading/writing speed-up program

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 28, 2007, 05:51 PM »

I like eyeCue! it sounds like IQ, -which reminds people of psychology- it's really short... it's catchy!

-urlwolf (November 28, 2007, 03:31 PM)

Yes, eye for read; cue for prompting (a typing 'shortcut'); IQ for 'smarts'.

4304

Living Room / Re: What's Your Favorite Productivity or Programming Supplement?

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 28, 2007, 03:38 PM »

What? Everything All The Time is gone? Poll is missing beer & whiskey...

-Renegade (November 28, 2007, 03:12 PM)

... and Mozart!

4305

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / Re: Help me find a name for my reading/writing speed-up program

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 28, 2007, 02:38 PM »

EyeCue

4306

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com Yearly Fundraiser for 2007 - Advice Requested Please

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 27, 2007, 10:15 PM »

if we should wait until January for the fundraiser

A lot of people seem to be short of cash soon after Christmas.

4307

Living Room / Re: VectorMagic: Convert Bitmaps into Vector Art (Free)

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 27, 2007, 01:14 PM »

Vectormagic has turned out to be VERY useful for some things that Illustrator gave unsatisfactory results.

-Edvard (November 27, 2007, 10:23 AM)

Just to agree with your point -- I thought that IllusCS3 was doing quite well until I saw output from VectorMagic.
I ran a complex photograph through VM at the maximum allowed resolution (lots of leaves on trees in background, person and hairy dog in foreground) and I could see using the resulting vector image to create a very acceptable poster.

4308

Living Room / Re: The deluge...

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 23, 2007, 02:18 PM »

Now that we've got that "flood" claptrap out of the way, how about explaining the prevalent Adam & Eve "two humans who started civilization" meme?

-Ralf Maximus (November 23, 2007, 11:19 AM)

My theory says that this was related to the Apple iPop.

4309

Living Room / Re: How often do you reboot your primary workstation?

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 23, 2007, 10:49 AM »

Sometimes mine's on for weeks.
Sometimes it's off overnight.

Depends on whether I want the machine to act as an alternate heat source 
Depends on whether I'm busy trying to earn a dollar (on 24/7) or relaxed.

As far as I can tell XP pro seldom needs to be rebooted for reasons of stability.

4310

Living Room / Re: Graphics Tablets - opinions (nudone, hamradio, tomos etc. care to chime in?)

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 20, 2007, 04:10 PM »

Darwin, how are you getting along with the Bamboo?

4311

Living Room / Re: To wide-screen or not to wide-screen

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 20, 2007, 09:27 AM »

Tomos, I think it was really just a dummy run for Cody

4312

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 20, 2007, 09:21 AM »

A new and third way has arrived:

We are pleased to announce our latest new product:
PowerPlugs: Classic Menu for Office 

Brings the Office 2003-style menus and toolbars back to Microsoft Office 2007
For a limited time you can get PowerPlugs: Ultimate Combo for PowerPoint (which now includes PowerPlugs: Classic Menu for Office) for just $299.
Visit CrystalGraphics.com 

-PowerPlugs

-Curt (November 20, 2007, 07:48 AM)

Thanks for the information, Curt.
I glanced too quickly at your post and the figure of $299 surprised me.
I see that the piece to which you refer is more than reasonable.
PowerPlugs: Classic Menu for Office (Plugs into Office 2007) $29.95

4313

Living Room / Re: Help Name Our Cat!

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 19, 2007, 02:44 PM »

Or Codette.

Nice story about the phantom escapee 

4314

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com Yearly Fundraiser for 2007 - Advice Requested Please

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 18, 2007, 03:54 PM »

So i was thinking about one of those little thermometer fundraising things

-mouser (November 18, 2007, 01:35 PM)

To show or not to show is a tough one.  The risk, as you've already pointed out, is that it can be counter-productive.

From http://en.wikipedia....ited_States, in 2006, the median annual household income according to the US Census Bureau was determined to be $48,201.  That being so, we're probably still talking today of $6,000 as being greater than 10% of median U.S. household income.

For the sake of argument, let's stick with the $6,000 as an example.  It's very easy for an individual to look at that sum and assess it in terms of the familiar, which is personal income.  Do you run the risk of people saying, "Gee that's more than 10% of what I earn!"

If you want to show progress (hopefully as a motivator) could the target be shown in some other way that puts it in context?  Would it work better to use something like a scale that shows progress from zero to 100% of DC running costs (or whatever determines the target) -- without specifying an amount?

4315

Living Room / Re: Help Name Our Cat!

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 18, 2007, 10:32 AM »

How about www.technocat.tv (available name)

-Carol Haynes (November 18, 2007, 05:59 AM)

Nice piece of research there, Carol!

My goes into the wait-and-see pool. 
Most of our pets have been named for some behaviour or personality trait.  (We usually try to ignore the messier ones! Here ..itty,  ..itty, ..itty!)

[Edit: still can't spell]

4316

Living Room / Re: Laptop or Desktop — which are you?

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 18, 2007, 10:25 AM »

99.5% desktop.

Seldom use a laptop (or any computer) when I travel.
Sometimes use a laptop on the porch during the summer but prefer to read or snooze.

The cycle is: buy a laptop every now and again, use it for a while, return to desktop, forget about laptop, laptop joins pile of previous redundant laptops, pile reaches critical mass, pile given away. Buy another laptop *sigh*
 

4317

Living Room / Re: Science magazine had a photo competion ...

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 18, 2007, 10:13 AM »

Thanks for those, they're fascinating.
As for old newspapers, that makes me wish I'd saved one a year for the past... oh never mind how long 

4318

Living Room / Re: Poem of English Pronunciation

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 17, 2007, 07:56 PM »

I always have to imagine people with extremely strong.. say scottish accents turning around and speaking to someone in BBC english!

-tomos (November 17, 2007, 07:35 PM)

Isn't it delightful when that kind of thing really happens?
I recall being served fish and chips by a gentleman whose appearance and location led me to expect him to be Chinese. He addressed me in a broad Glaswegian accent.

Canadian spelling is mainly the same as British with some (few) American spellings for example, we have car tires, not car tyres. The preferred ending for 'ise' words is 'ize', so we don't sympathise, we sympathize.

For myself, I find that rotating between Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. pretty well guarantees that I'll make errors in all three 

4319

Living Room / Re: Laptop or Desktop — which are you?

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 17, 2007, 03:33 PM »

Renegade, you can plug your peripherals into a laptop.

-zridling (November 17, 2007, 09:07 AM)

Please!  Not in front of the children!

4320

Living Room / Re: Poem of English Pronunciation

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 17, 2007, 09:35 AM »

Ti! I won't tell if you don't.

4321

Living Room / Re: Poem of English Pronunciation

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 16, 2007, 10:15 PM »

I can pronounce it but I certainly can't defend it.

It's a bit fishy, as Shaw would have it.

Spoiler

to pronounce "ghoti"
use:
"gh" from "laugh"
"o" from "women"
"ti" from "nation"

 

4322

Living Room / Re: Graphics Tablets - opinions (nudone, hamradio, tomos etc. care to chime in?)

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 16, 2007, 05:08 PM »

would a tablet provide some added convenience when editing densely tagged text

-tranglos (November 16, 2007, 08:32 AM)

I concur with ak_'s view that the tablet's not much help outside of graphics.

A long time back, in order to try this out, I ran my system for a couple of weeks using the tablet in place of a mouse or trackball. I found doing that to be more trouble than it's worth. For precise editing of dense text, specifically, I found positioning the cursor to be more difficult with the tablet than otherwise.

4323

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: EverNote - Free today at GAOTD

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 15, 2007, 09:31 PM »

How to tell which version of EverNote 2.2 you have installed
To find out which version of EverNote you are running click on the Help menu and select "About EverNote". Compare the screenshots below with what you see, to learn what version you have.


from: http://www.evernote....evernote_version.php

4324

Coding Snacks / Re: Script/batch file that copies two files from a drive(usb) to a location

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 15, 2007, 08:24 PM »

the powerful options that 4DOS gives you

-wolf.b (November 15, 2007, 08:10 PM)

I heartily second the recommendation to use 4DOS (better yet, 4NT).

4325

Living Room / Re: Graphics Tablets - opinions (nudone, hamradio, tomos etc. care to chime in?)

« Last post by cranioscopical on November 15, 2007, 07:31 PM »

Darwin, I haven't tried these (I still use an old WACOM ArtPad II which has been rock solid for years).

One point I'd offer for consideration, however, is the physical size of the tablet itself.  On mine the drawing pad is only 4" x 5".  While this doubtless would be risible to a graphics professional it's more than enough for me to do the kinds of operations to which you refer. 

A small desktop footprint means that the pad is always in place and accessible, without having to be moved around.  FWIW if I were buying another tablet today I'd look for the same small footprint.  Newer versions offer more levels of pressure sensitivity etc.
In my case small footprint = less hassle = greater propensity to use. 

As Carol pointed out WACOM is supported by just about every serious graphics application.  WACOM is good about updating drivers, too.

If you've not had a graphics tablet before you're in for quite a bit of fun.  I hope you enjoy yours when it comes. 
A good chance to deploy some of those smokin' dollars