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4601

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera: The web browser I have been dying to love

« Last post by MilesAhead on January 01, 2012, 05:27 PM »

Of course the one feature that has always stood out that I've seen no other browser implement in satisfactory fashion, the automatic wrap of bookmarks toolbar or personal bar or whatever you wish to name the toolbar that has a bunch of bookmarks on it.

I've seen a bunch of modifications to FF configuration that supposedly will do it. But every one I've tried caused the browser to lose use of one of the scroll bars until restart.

It is kind of difficult to believe in all these decades of coding browsers nobody else can seem to get it right.  If you reduce the width of the window in Firefox, chromium, IE, etc.. you end up with that '>>>' on the right hand side instead of another row of bookmarks.  Really weird.

4602

Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 30, 2011, 05:52 PM »

The best I read with a telepathic lead character was the Psion trilogy by Joan D. Vinge.  That Cat character was the quintessential anti-hero.  James Dean with a laser beam.

4603

Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 30, 2011, 05:12 PM »

An author I enjoyed that wasn't a big name was A. E. van Vogt. I was still in high school when I read The War Against the Rull and Slan. Good action stories. Maybe not that deep. But fun reading.

http://www.amazon.co...;tag=duckduckgo-d-20

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Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 30, 2011, 05:09 PM »

Speaking of sci/fi writers. I just watched another flick about Philip K. Dick. He was giving this speech in France at some Sci/Fi convention in the early 70's.  The woman who accompanied him is giving an interview about it in the documentary.  She talks about how she wanted to disappear because he was rambling this crazy stuff. But here's the funny part. He was talking about reality just being a computer program and if you get deja vu, it was because somebody changed a variable in the simulation. Everyone is wincing in discomfort at these ravings.  But I'm thinking, he thought of The Matrix 20 years before the Wachowski Brothers. Maybe they even saw the speech and got the idea from him? 

-MilesAhead (December 29, 2011, 12:55 AM)

It's just another angle on the "dollhouse god" concept, where reality is manipulated by some outside force or entity, as if it were nothing more than a child's toy to be played with.

-app103 (December 29, 2011, 02:17 AM)

Kind of like Glass Bead Game or Hercules and his antagonists being assisted and interfered with by the gods I suppose.  But the computer simulation bit was pretty specific. Sure made me think of Matrix.

4605

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera: The web browser I have been dying to love

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 29, 2011, 01:10 AM »

I was curious about Opera but didn't want to pay for it. When it became free I used it quite a bit. One trick with browsers is, what's "bloated" now becomes "lean" a couple years later when the competition catches up with the bloat. I think I used 8.502 or something like that for years. I feel about Chromium now like I felt about Opera then. You could run it out of the box.  In Chromium I only have like 4 extensions enabled. The main thing that frosted me about Opera was stubborn ideas like expecting me to triple click the mouse to copy a line of text to the clipboard. Have they not heard of CTS??  Geez!!

Even now though, I can't do everything with Chromium. I have Firefox and Opera installed for those sites that don't work well in Chromium.  What I can do without is IE. Don't use it or anything based on the engine.

4606

Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 29, 2011, 12:55 AM »

I agree. Of course, it doesn't make sense. That's because it's science fiction,

I don't think the lack of sense is due to fiction but the obsession in these stories with the start date the person initially gets in the time travel device as "the present."  In other words, in The Time Machine if it's January 1 1900 when the traveler first embarks, then that's "the present" and he can go forward, backward but comes back, maybe a few days after he left.  Maybe the number of nights slept away is added to the departure time so he doesn't return before he left.  Whatever. My point is, whenever you are, it's the present. If you go 2000 years into the "future" or the "past" you have no more control of events than anyone else. You may have some foresight since you see how the scam usually plays out.  But flipping a coin in the fountain doesn't ripple back.  That's absurd.  The present is always now. It's just relative to when you are. But enough of my harangue.

Speaking of sci/fi writers. I just watched another flick about Philip K. Dick. He was giving this speech in France at some Sci/Fi convention in the early 70's.  The woman who accompanied him is giving an interview about it in the documentary.  She talks about how she wanted to disappear because he was rambling this crazy stuff. But here's the funny part. He was talking about reality just being a computer program and if you get deja vu, it was because somebody changed a variable in the simulation. Everyone is wincing in discomfort at these ravings.  But I'm thinking, he thought of The Matrix 20 years before the Wachowski Brothers. Maybe they even saw the speech and got the idea from him?  

4607

Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 28, 2011, 06:34 PM »

For some reason I'm a sucker for time travel stories.  H. G. Welles, Dick and some others. However I don't buy the concept that whenever you get in the machine, that's the "present" and you can go to "the past" to change something, then it ripples back.  Whenever you are, obviously that's the "present" or you wouldn't be there. I think the rippling would get awfully tiresome awfully fast.

-MilesAhead (December 28, 2011, 04:33 PM)

Yes, but that - whether the "rippling" occurs, or to what extent it occurs and who it affects - that is a goldmine of ideas and is what enables such great stories to be invented!
I think the wife in The Time Traveller's Wife would have found it "awfully tiresome" too!

-IainB (December 28, 2011, 05:54 PM)

It's convenient because people can get the idea of a domino effect.  Don't knock over the first domino and none of the history happens. But it doesn't make sense because if you can do something differently, then so can everyone else. If you came from the "future" you might have some insight what the "big picture" is.  Say you might be able to get away with buying some Cisco Systems before the internet boom.  But I don't think moving the brief case closer to Hitler necessarily eliminates WW II. People who want to profit from the war can always find another Hitler.

4608

Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 28, 2011, 04:33 PM »

Saw an interesting profile of Philip K. Dick on Science channel "prophets of science fiction" series. I remember liking the short story Adjustment Team much better than the Adjustment Bureau film.

For some reason I'm a sucker for time travel stories.  H. G. Welles, Dick and some others. However I don't buy the concept that whenever you get in the machine, that's the "present" and you can go to "the past" to change something, then it ripples back.  Whenever you are, obviously that's the "present" or you wouldn't be there. I think the rippling would get awfully tiresome awfully fast.

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Living Room / Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 28, 2011, 04:25 PM »

I read the first book of Foundation years ago in my early teens.

I thought it was okay but kind of boring and pointless because IIRC the solutions to all the crises were all the same:

Spoiler

Do nothing because it was predicted to happen this way!

I started on the second book but after not getting much Sci-Fi satisfaction from the first, I didn't get very far into it before moving on to other books I was enjoying at the time. e.g. the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.

-Deozaan (December 15, 2011, 01:47 PM)

I read a lot of Asimov.  But I do have to admit by the time I got to the end of Foundation trilogy I was really tired of reading someone exclaim they had figured out where the foundation really was. It was like, yeah, alright already!! Tell me where the damn thing is and be done with it!! Arrrggghhh!!!

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Post New Requests Here / Re: Go back to 98 drag-and-drop in Win-Explorer

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 24, 2011, 06:51 PM »

Many file managers have the folder tree on the left. Perhaps you can find a free one that's better behaved than explorer.  I like FreeCommander.  But as I mentioned, I don't use the drag to tree technique so I can't tell you from experience if it works better or worse than Explorer.

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General Software Discussion / Re: adding tab support to apps that dont have it

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 24, 2011, 06:41 PM »

Right. I wonder how many programmer man hours went into VirtualBox? Anything feasible is likely to be of the nature of the Tabbing utilities already mentioned. It amounts to a fancy cascade, not multiple windows to one process. You can't force a single instance application design on a program from the outside.

4612

General Software Discussion / Re: adding tab support to apps that dont have it

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 24, 2011, 01:39 PM »

please, the topic is not about a tabbed text editor, but about a way to group to tabs, windows of an app that does not natively support tabs

-kalos (December 24, 2011, 07:57 AM)

If you don't see anything for download on sites like Softpedia, C-Net, PCMag, then it's likely because it's not really feasible.  Programs that assume they only use one window or form are just structured differently than those written for multiple windows/tabs/forms. Pretty tough to force from outside.

4613

Post New Requests Here / Re: Go back to 98 drag-and-drop in Win-Explorer

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 24, 2011, 01:35 PM »

Try Windows Seven. Maybe it's better.

4614

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Take highlighted address and add +4 to zip code

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 23, 2011, 08:40 PM »

This is the only thing I found that seemed close. I don't know what Yahoo Widget Engine is though:

http://www.softpedia...dress-Verifier.shtml

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Post New Requests Here / Re: Go back to 98 drag-and-drop in Win-Explorer

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 23, 2011, 08:27 PM »

I never use the Tree on the left in Explorer.  I do some "one window" drag and drop operations using http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/

It adds tabs to Explorer. I get the tab of the destination folder to show, go to the source tab and drag the files onto the destination tab. I don't use that method unless the destination has no subfolders. I hate it when stuff "disappears" after your drop it. But for circumstances where the target is the terminal folder it works fine.

Also for 32 bit Windows especially, I've been using FreeCommander for years.

http://www.freecomma....com/fc_downl_en.htm

But Explorer has the advantage of being in ram all the time.  The QTTabBar addon seems solid and doesn't slow it down that I can tell.

4616

General Software Discussion / Re: adding tab support to apps that dont have it

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 23, 2011, 08:23 PM »

Also there's PsPad
http://www.pspad.com/

and EditPadLite7
http://www.editpadlite.com/download.html

PsPad has the notion of a Project where it will have all open files on tabs and a list of all files in the Project on the left ready to open on double click.

EditPadLite7 boasts column cut & paste among other features.

4617

General Software Discussion / Re: RunIt 1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 21, 2011, 09:46 PM »

Note, there are some free registry tools already available to open Regedit to an existing key.  For example RegScanner. See the docs for "/regedit" command line switch:

http://www.nirsoft.n...tils/regscanner.html

I wrote a .cmd file just to make it easy to open the Run key to delete old entries.

basically it's just Regscanner /regedit regkey

in my case

regscanner /regedit HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

(all one one line)

Also there's a SysInternals from 2006(regjump.exe) but I believe RegScanner doesn't get redirected to SysWow64 registry entries on 64 bit systems.

4618

General Software Discussion / Re: RunInTrayMod 1.31

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 21, 2011, 08:15 PM »

RunInTrayMod 1.31 Modified Tray Splash to accommodate Taskbar.

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General Software Discussion / RunIt 1.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 19, 2011, 04:16 PM »

RunIt 1.0 Is a simple tool to add a program, batch file, shortcut or other file, to the Registry Run key for the Current User. This is the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

You may download from this page:

http://www.favessoft.com/downloads.html

The most convenient usage is to put a shortcut to RunIt in the SendTo menu. You can right click a program or shortcut and select RunIt from SendTo.

To avoid collisions it creates a Value in the Run key named "RunIt_Program" where Program would be the base name of the file or shortcut you added.  As example, if you right clicked on notepad.exe and selected RunIt from SendTo the Value added to the Run key would be "RunIt_notepad" with the full path to notpade.exe as the string value.

I suspect the programs in Registry Run are run slightly before those in the user's StartUp Folder.  I have a batch file that sets the Desktop Work Area and I used RunIt to add it to the Run key. Hopefully the new work area will be in effect for the apps started using StartUp Folder.

It's just a convenience. I haven't as yet added a mechanism to remove entries. But the entire path to the Registry key is in the Readme for manual edit using RegEdit.

4620

General Software Discussion / Re: Make a music mix for burning on audio disc - software?

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 18, 2011, 07:26 PM »

In the past I did everything I could to stop WMP from running.  But it turns out WMP 12 has support for both PGS subtitles and XSub subs embedded in avi/divx. So I do use it on occasion esp. when a video has one of those subtitle types(VLC also has this support but it crashes as soon as I touch it when a video is playing.)

I try to blunt the WMP negatives by turning off network media sharing, all the stuff I can regarding its library functions etc..  You are right.  The indexing will totally hog your system if you let it. Also I set everything regarding doing anything on the internet to disabled.

I think I have it peacefully coexisting.  At least for the time being.

4621

General Software Discussion / Re: RunInTrayMod 1.3

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 17, 2011, 03:03 PM »

RunInTrayMod 1.3 Added "Toast" tray popup splash screen for delayed start. Thanks to Melba23 on AutoIt3 forum:

http://www.autoitscr...5-how-to-make-toast/

Removed source from zip as it would be too cluttered now.

edit: here's a screen shot of the delay splash just above task tray.

edit2: adjusted Toast so splash screen may be closed by clicking the x.

This does not cancel the delay.  The delay count down reverts to the
Tray Icon Tooltip.

4622

General Software Discussion / Re: TopmostToggle 1.7.5.0

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 15, 2011, 06:04 PM »

TopmostToggle 1.7.5.0 Added Alt Right Mouse Click to toggle Maximize Box of active window.

4623

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Maximize Button Remover

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 15, 2011, 06:02 PM »

Download TopMost Toggle from this page:

http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html

Alt Right Mouse Click on active window toggles Maximize Box.  Double click on Tray Icon for About Box to display hotkeys.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Make a music mix for burning on audio disc - software?

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 12, 2011, 02:22 PM »

I like Burrrn also. The last Burrrn portable version worked fine for me on Vista64(the only "bug" was in the scrolling log sometimes the entries would be duplicated, but the job completed perfectly.) It seemed to flake out sometimes on Windows Seven. Either it would burn perfectly or quit with an error. One of those deals where if you just hit it again it may work.

I do Imgburn for all my DVD burning but for CD I've had very good luck with CDBurnerXP. It even has some cover and insert print functions for free.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Make a music mix for burning on audio disc - software?

« Last post by MilesAhead on December 11, 2011, 02:20 PM »

Tutorial shows how to create playlist with WinAmp. I thought WinAmp also had audio CD burning but I couldn't find details on it:

http://blog.winamp.c...-to-make-a-playlist/

So I guess you can use anything that lets you order the playlist manually.

CDBurnerXP will preserve playlist order for Audio CD but not for a Data CD with .mp3 files.
However if you select Audio Disc from the start dialog it will automatically convert .mp3 or .flac to audio and then burn an Audio CD.

http://cdburnerxp.se...p/Audio/compileaudio