Recent Posts

451

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: XYplorer Lifetime License Pro on offer BdJ Friday 8th April 2011

« Last post by oblivion on April 08, 2011, 05:18 PM »

You talked me into it. 

452

General Software Discussion / Re: What is now the best dialog box enhancer/extender?

« Last post by oblivion on April 08, 2011, 01:24 PM »

+1 for FileBox Extender from here too -- although I'm currently playing with DM2, courtesy of the PortableApps build of it. It's not as good, but the portable-ness is a bonus.

453

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: XYplorer Lifetime License Pro on offer BdJ Friday 8th April 2011

« Last post by oblivion on April 08, 2011, 01:16 PM »

I tried XY a while back, but (so far) DO9 does everything I want better than anything else I've ever used... mind, if anyone wants to try to convince me why XY's a better product, I'll certainly listen -- I make more use of my file manager than anyone else I know!

454

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Migrate from USB Safely Remove to Zentimo for $8.90

« Last post by oblivion on April 08, 2011, 03:56 AM »

You were 2:25/108 at Bexhill-on-Sea?  My knowledge of how to read a nodelist is fading... 

-rjbull (April 07, 2011, 03:33 PM)

They were never really supposed to be human-readable anyway.

Apparently. 

Although one qualification for a nodelist listing of your own was always supposed to be the ability to write your own entry. 

Yes, that was one of my later incarnations -- I had several, over the years. As was my holding of the office of REC25, a job with little associated work by the time I took it, sadly.

I still miss Fidonet. A worldwide, non-state/corporate-controlled, public access network, designed with cost-minimisation built in. (Tom Jennings never got the recognition he deserved.) It taught me more about written communication than any college course.

Its last hurrah, from my viewpoint, is probably the fact that I use The Bat! for email, have it configured for plain text and use the author's initials for quotes. Nothing else I've ever found does that properly!

I myself did a fair amount of liaising with authors, mostly freeware but some shareware.  Most of what I knew about DOS freeware I either learned from, or contributed to, the Free Software for DOS list.

Not somewhere I knew about. Just been to look, briefly -- some real blasts from the past!

The one that stands out -- Protext! Good grief -- the WP that spanked Locoscript on the Amstrad CP/M boxes but still somehow never made it to the big time.

I also quite like the phrase "Simple and advancxed text editors", which suggests it was written without using one. 

Vista Home Premium seems so different, I have trouble wrestling with its DOS emulation.  I suppose I'm just getting rusty, and simply reluctant to tackle unnecessary complexities.

I have yet to attempt to get to grips with PowerShell. That certainly looks very different, but I suspect I'm going to have to tackle it sometime.

my BBS finally turned up its toes and I reluctantly decided that FidoNet just wasn't going to justify the effort of rebuilding it.

Similarly, when my feed disappeared, I gave up as there was by then so little traffic.

Fido stayed strong in some parts of Europe for quite a while after it died in the US and UK, I believe, but it was always something that needed a particular "critical mass" to keep it going -- those few of us left in the UK by the end just couldn't compete with the increasingly affordable internet, despite the relative lack of security associated with it.

No, I think it came because I'm a registered user of USBSR (with lifetime license) and Crystal Rich give away free licenses from time to time.

Fair enough. But I also have a lifetime licence, and they never offered a free Zentimo license to me! (Possibly my discussion with them about the lifetime license not covering Zentimo mitigated against it! Or the fact that I'd got a GOTD freebie.)

455

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Migrate from USB Safely Remove to Zentimo for $8.90

« Last post by oblivion on April 06, 2011, 06:04 PM »

I presume you mean the vendor has a hard time justifying the offer of lifetime licenses?  Spare a thought for your fellow Brits who don't have the income for constant updates!

-rjbull (April 06, 2011, 03:15 PM)

Point taken. Nor do I -- but as an ex-BBS sysop who had quite a lot to do with distributing and using shareware, I can see both sides of this.

Still got mine - that plus QEMM and NDOS were the most productive environment I ever had.  Can't bear to get rid of it.

I replaced NDOS with 4DOS, eventually. (4DOS has gone free, last I saw, as 4NT took over for the up-to-date people amongst us.) I still miss the power of the 4DOS batch language, the environment editor, set /r c:\sets.txt, and the command history navigator. <sigh>

The setup was still going strong up to about 6 years ago, when my BBS finally turned up its toes and I reluctantly decided that FidoNet just wasn't going to justify the effort of rebuilding it.

That's the position I'm in.  I do have the free license for Zentimo 1.0 that they gave away a while back, in case of need.

Via GiveAwayOfTheDay? Yes, I did that too. Had quite a long argument with the authors about the licencing issue at the time -- steamed about it for a while but, as I say, I can see their point.

456

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Windows error msg - "No Disk"

« Last post by oblivion on April 06, 2011, 12:50 PM »

i did as you suggested.  Sorry to report, no help.

-mickh (April 06, 2011, 02:24 AM)

I've seen this type of issue several times in the past. I think it's a history thing: some bit of software checks through various locations that it's used in the past and panics if some relevant drive letter is unavailable. I'm not sure there's a simple fix, but it might be worth trying something with a history cleaner and/or a registry cleaner (CCleaner's a good free option, or jv16 Power Tools has a 60 day free trial.)

457

General Software Discussion / Re: Never again will I purchase that shampoo! (or will I?)

« Last post by oblivion on April 05, 2011, 01:41 PM »

@Cloq - I understand very well your frustrations with their normal email overload. However, if you follow the apparently secret but official procedure, you will not be spammed or even emailed at all. I know.

-Curt (April 01, 2011, 05:03 PM)

Ashampoo... if ever there was a company to be ambivalent about, it's them.

I use (bought and paid for) the current Burning Studio, mostly because it's got inbuilt support for Lightscribe "printing". Pretty much everything else I ever do, I can do with something else -- Mediamonkey for burning audio CDs from MP3s, or ImgBurn for, well, everything else. 

I've tried and pretty much rejected the use of all the Ashampoo tweakers and cleaners. I've got licences for most of the older versions, mostly picked up free one way or another, Ashampoo Office isn't a patch on OpenOffice (mostly because it's got no database app but why pay money when Ooo is free AND better?) Their screencapture program's functional but FAR too busy, overcomplicated, and mouser's kicks it into the long grass anyway...

I keep reading the email because there's always the possibility they might one day do something REALLY good, but I agree: they're all right ish but (a) never EVER pay what they claim the asking price is, and look for alternatives first!

458

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Migrate from USB Safely Remove to Zentimo for $8.90

« Last post by oblivion on April 04, 2011, 03:32 PM »

After several crashes with Zentimo I had seen enough to uninstall. But I will probably try it again in the future.

-sajman99 (April 03, 2011, 06:00 PM)

I've been using Zentimo on my Win7 netbook pretty much faultlessly, and seen no problems since the first crash on my Vista desktop; as I say, it might have been a coincidence.

It might also be a coincidence that the netbook didn't have USBSR installed before I put Zentimo on...

I note the previous comments with respect to USBSR's licencing, but I think they have a point: a lifetime licence is hard to justify, financially. It's nice when people honour such things -- I bought a lifetime licence for Pretty Good Solitaire back in, ooh, maybe 1998? No such thing exists anymore, and the author's licences are now only good for a version or two, but he honours the lifetime licences he sold, and I sometimes feel quite guilty about the fact that I keep getting free updates -- but there are other products I've bought licenses for in the past that no longer exist or are no longer of any use (copy of DESQview/386, anyone?) It's hard to see how USBSR could be improved without bolting on extra features anyway -- it works perfectly as it is, it does what it says on the tin, how many upgrades do you really think you need? So they've worked that out and, rather than completely abandon USBSR, have produced a new product that has the extra bolt-on features and a new licencing model that might just keep them going into the future. You don't need Zentimo but you already have a USBSR lifetime license? So there's no argument really, is there, except you have a green arrow in the system tray instead of a Z and you have to write a Truecrypt commandline for the autostart option instead of having it written for you.

I've thought about this a lot; it's clear the authors are sensitive about this issue anyway. I didn't NEED Zentimo but I've bought the upgrade because I'd like that bit of code to survive for a while to come.

[/soapbox]

459

Official Announcements / Re: 2011 Fundraiser Giveaway Extravaganza - WINNERS POSTED

« Last post by oblivion on April 03, 2011, 05:24 PM »

I can only second everyone else's reaction -- definitely well over 100% satisfaction levels here, and a huge thank you to everyone involved!

(My wife thinks I'm a bit of a geek for getting excited about a text editor. See if I care what SHE thinks!  )

460

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Migrate from USB Safely Remove to Zentimo for $8.90

« Last post by oblivion on April 01, 2011, 02:17 AM »

Zentimo's a decent product, although the extras, over and above USBSR, are mostly inessential.

The licence covers all your own PCs, though, which is reasonably generous.

I was halfway convinced that the new licence model for Zentimo was an excuse to stop developing USBSR, but there's been at least one or two updates to USBSR since Zentimo's release, so I'm keeping my natural cynicism at bay at present. 

One small concern: Zentimo might have caused a small bit of instability on my Vista desktop -- a major crash a couple of hours after installation, but it hasn't recurred so it might have been a coincidence.

Both of these utilities are all but unique. I recommend USBSR highly: Zentimo is looking good too, but may not offer enough extra to justify the upgrade to everyone.

461

Skwire Empire / Re: Birthdays (simple birthday tracking app)

« Last post by oblivion on March 24, 2011, 07:07 PM »

I have to say I'd rather keep the age displayed (I've used it already today to quickly find out how old two nephews are, and I'm not sure I'd prefer having to click or hover to find that out. I'd rather lose the permanent note display, if the issue is maximising horizontal real-estate.

Maybe the age could be in a different colour, to distinguish it? Or is that not the objection to its display?

462

Find And Run Robot / Re: Settings not being saved

« Last post by oblivion on March 23, 2011, 01:57 PM »

Figured out that running it in compatibility moder or running it as administrator (as mentioned above) helps. But both solutions are not very practical, since on every system startup I must confirm that I allow this program (Windows security alert).

-BigBonsai (March 23, 2011, 03:58 AM)

The best way round this seems to be to use TaskScheduler to start the program rather than the usual method. You can then tell it to start with admin rights and NOT have to click a UAC prompt.

There's a post somewhere (with respect to Everything, a program with similar issues with Vista and 7) that I can probably find if it's helpful.

463

Post New Requests Here / Re: Podcast Conversion and dates

« Last post by oblivion on March 23, 2011, 05:58 AM »

Here's a proof-of-concept script. 

-skwire (March 21, 2011, 12:07 PM)

Thanks!

It doesn't seem to want to work, though. The script is in the freac app directory (\portableapps\freacportable\app\freac) and freaccmd.exe is present in the same place. I can drop an m4a onto it and it does the "converting" thing for a little while then stops, but I can't find any sign of the output file in the folder I specified (g:\temp) or, indeed, anywhere else.

Any idea what might be going wrong, or how I can watch what it's doing in more detail, perhaps?

464

Post New Requests Here / Re: Podcast Conversion and dates

« Last post by oblivion on March 23, 2011, 05:17 AM »

interesting...  in thinking about a general purpose solution, one question is, can you keep the base filenames the same?
if so then a good general purpose solution might be an app that scans a directory and sets the file date stamps for all sets of files with same basename (and different extensions) to the date of earliest datestamp in the set.

-mouser (March 21, 2011, 09:32 AM)

Sorry, I didn't notice this response before. I don't see why you couldn't constrain most conversion apps to work in that way, and it occurs to me that a general purpose app that took that approach might be useful for all sorts of things where you might want the creation date to be retained in a different file format. Photos as well as audio -- maybe even MORE than audio, since I suspect my idiosyncratic approach to podcasts may not be "normal." 

465

Skwire Empire / Re: Birthdays (simple birthday tracking app)

« Last post by oblivion on March 22, 2011, 03:32 PM »

I hope this will be good enough.   

-skwire (March 22, 2011, 06:22 AM)

Marvellous! Thank you -- it's perfect!

466

Post New Requests Here / Re: Podcast Conversion and dates

« Last post by oblivion on March 21, 2011, 11:56 AM »

Do you have AutoHotkey installed?

-skwire (March 21, 2011, 11:17 AM)

Okay, just had a bit of a look at the helpfile for it. It looks like a file loop could be used to retrieve the file list and operate on them one at a time, and if I can throw commands at fre:ac or Lame, I might even be able to puzzle something out.

What I'm less sure about is -- as I suggested previously -- putting a front end on it. To make it reliable, I'd want a front end on it that allowed the specification of the input and output sources and a path to LAME or fre:ac or whatever, and I suppose to make it bulletproof it'd probably have to be able to specify encoder options and suddenly it's looking like I really should be running away from all this ui stuff   

467

Post New Requests Here / Re: Podcast Conversion and dates

« Last post by oblivion on March 21, 2011, 11:37 AM »

fre:ac actually comes with a commandline version in its install so that, combined with a small bit of AHK script, would make this a piece of cake.  Heck, you could even use the lame.exe file directly.  Do you have AutoHotkey installed?

-skwire (March 21, 2011, 11:17 AM)

I've got a portable copy somewhere, but I've never tried to use it. You're a proper programmer, I just pretend to know what it's about sometimes. 

(I can sometimes write very simple and mechanistic black boxes -- take some input textfile, chop it up, put it back together in a different order, exit. Anything requiring screen design or direct access to the Windows API, I'm running away so fast people are choking on the dust.)

468

Post New Requests Here / Podcast Conversion and dates

« Last post by oblivion on March 21, 2011, 09:30 AM »

I am a bit of a podcast addict. Sadly, I get a bit behind and -- because I TRY to be organised -- I keep my podcasts in a single folder, so I can sort them in date order, and transfer the oldest first to my MP3 player.

Mostly, this works very well. But one of the podcasts I regularly get comes in M4A format. Although the software I use to transfer stuff to my player converts things on the fly, I prefer to do the conversion myself so I can control the output quality and filesize a bit better.

So far, I have found the easiest way to do this is to use fre:ac (the new version of BonkEnc, still free though) to do the conversion to MP3, output the files somewhere away from the originals, then use another little freebie (filedate) to re-datestamp the new files to match the originals, so they don't get sorted to the end of the list. Fiddly and time-consuming, especially if you've only just got round to it after a few weeks of letting M4As build up...

Two related requests, then. Either a program that can suck in an audio file (or a list of files) and squirt out an MP3 with the same time/datestamp as the original, optionally deleting the original... or if doing that is too complex for a "snack", a program that can display two lists of files, allow them to be lined up by hand in case filenames don't quite match, then apply the date/timestamps from the source list to the destination list.

469

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell v1.45 Discussion and notes for Ugraders

« Last post by oblivion on March 21, 2011, 05:32 AM »

Thanks for the new version, and the newly silent operation!

There are some oddities with hotkeys that I can't pin down, though.

I have ctrl-alt-Z set as the "main window" hotkey. Sometimes it works; sometimes, it shows a popup instead.

I find it difficult to keep track of what hotkeys I'm using for what. Is there any way you could put all the defined hotkeys on one screen -- even if you don't allow modifications?

One specific point: there are two, apparently unsynchronised, places where a hotkey for the Quick Paste group can be set. (In options/hotkeys and the QP group Edit mode.) They seem to do different things, though, and if I set different hotkeys in both places, I get two different results...

Also, while experimenting (to see what, if anything would happen if I set duplicate hotkeys) I set a hotkey for the spelling check, cleared it then set the same hotkey for the CHS main window. As I type this, the hotkey's still doing the spelling check...

...but after exiting and restarting CHS, it's sorted itself out.

This configuration is portable and running under XP.

470

Skwire Empire / Re: Birthdays (simple birthday tracking app)

« Last post by oblivion on March 20, 2011, 08:06 AM »

Another suggestion, hopefully not too complex -- how about the option to store a start year, so that it's easier to keep track of birthdays where the age matters -- kids' and ones ending in 0 in particular? (So I'd be asking for an on-the-fly age calculation too, of course!)

471

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« Last post by oblivion on March 11, 2011, 11:03 AM »

Hm. I used to use a Psion 5mx program that I used in this sort of way. It was a sort of mindmapping program -- can't remember what it was called, now -- but the basic principle was that you made entries and entries had child entries and so on. If you clicked an entry, it moved to the middle of the screen, its children were linked to it by lines. The further way from the centre of the screen an entry was, the smaller it was. I used it much as mouser uses his index cards: a task/issue had a number of components, and each of those components could have children itself, if necessary, but there was no concept of ordering beyond the basic hierarchy (I find grids and tree structures impose too much order, sometimes) and you could just delete things as you did them, and the structure would close up around the gap, much like throwing an index card away.

PsiMind. I think that was it. But it doesn't run on the emulator, sadly. 

472

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell v1.45 Discussion and notes for Ugraders

« Last post by oblivion on March 09, 2011, 12:51 PM »

Ordering: doesn't seem to matter how I order clips in the main window, I can't change the order they display in the popup.

Set some values for Ordering field on some clips (anything > 0 will bring a clip higher to top then clips with no Ordering value), and then most importantly, make sure you edit the QuickPaste group as shown on the very first post in this thread.

-mouser (March 09, 2011, 11:38 AM)

Ah. Oops. 

473

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell v1.45 Discussion and notes for Ugraders

« Last post by oblivion on March 09, 2011, 11:23 AM »

A few more observations...

Ordering: doesn't seem to matter how I order clips in the main window, I can't change the order they display in the popup.

Another sort of ordering issue: I've just run through a process that's consisted of copying an id number to the clipboard from an editor, pasting it into an app to look up information relating to it, then pasting back some static info, also from the clip list, once I've confirmed it applies.

If I was doing this in ArsClip, I'd have a list of id numbers going down the list, most recent at the top, with the bit of static text either in position 1 or position 2, depending on whether I'd just pasted it again or copied a new id to the list. CHS allows that bit of static text to gradually move down the list: it's now in position B.

It's not appropriate to make it a favourite, because now I've finished what I was doing, I'll never need it again. Is there any way (or could there be a way) have clips in the New list float to the top of the list so anything that's being repeatedly used stays near the top of the list instead of gradually moving downwards?

I've just discovered that Alt-F, Alt-E etc to open various menus in the main window don't seem to function.

The capture sound is turned off, but plays when I paste from the list and I can't work out where or how to make it stop.

Finally -- but this might be down to Jarte -- pasting a clip with an appended \n into Jarte loses the <cr> regardless. (Ctrl-C to select the original with the <cr> then Ctrl-V to paste it straight out of the clipboard works as expected. However, Notepad++ doesn't experience the same issue, so it's probably just a Jarte thing...?

474

Living Room / Re: Win 7 XP mode

« Last post by oblivion on March 09, 2011, 09:22 AM »

LOL - how did you know I am a DNA fan

-Carol Haynes (March 09, 2011, 06:38 AM)

The second head was a bit of a giveaway.

475

Living Room / Re: Win 7 XP mode

« Last post by oblivion on March 09, 2011, 06:03 AM »

No that's just what they do in Belgium - that's why the EU is based there!

-Carol Haynes (March 09, 2011, 05:34 AM)

I must refer the writer to the following helpful and informative article. Belgium, man, Belgium!!

Please be very careful: you could inadvertently cause the destruction of our entire planet.