Recent Posts

501

Living Room / Re: which operating system you like most....

« Last post by iphigenie on October 14, 2008, 07:11 AM »

I don't think I love an OS anymore - I think you only love and OS early on, the first few times you encounter a good OS that does things in a way you find better/clever...

So my Operating System loves were...
SunOS/Solaris, with the CDE - used it daily for 4 years and got to love some of its tools, and it defined what I expected of a basic OS and Shell. CDE definded things for a lot of people. I still think xrn is the way a newsreader ought to work. I also think fondly of xpipeman which was handy during classes... Bought an old Sparc 20 and Solaris 7 in 2002 out of nostalgia

Silicon Graphics - showed me what a multimedia OS ought to be like. Never had it, barely used it, wanted it sooo badly. Stupidly expensive even at student specials...

OS/2 Warp - the one OS I loved enough to be an activist for. Seriously activist, running workshops and promotions days and going to Zurich for the launch etc. (got a free copy of the OS for that, so turned out well worth it). Joined the developer connection even though it cost a LOT at the time and it was purely a hobby. Ahead of its time and badly let down by IBM. But warm fuzzy feelings when thinking of this piece of software (equaled only by the warm fuzzy feelings I feel towards Turbo Pascal, my first IDE)

In the current day I can pretty much happily work with any OS, and thanks to open source I can find certain staples on all the platforms.

Desktop:
Windows - my base OS simply because of habit - I have apps and tools to make it work fine for me

Mac - it actually is the winning desktop platform in my industry - last week at FOWA was 75-80% macs! - and has some killer apps, but I cannot justify the cost both of hardware but mostly of having to buy the software all over again. I am also put off by some of the lock in the OS comes with.

Linux - have used it as a desktop several times in the past, and what happens is always that my favorite distribution gets bought or falls behind. Also the lack of games and apps have put me off in the past. Now I play with slackware whenever there is a new version, and try some others occasionally. I tend to not be keen on the default apps which are popular so it is a lot of work to get everything swapped around

Server:
FreeBSD - my platform of choice when i need control, performance and security
Linux - can work with any flavors, although I am not impressed with the redhat/fedora branch on average, have had more mysterious problems with servers using those than any other, *including* windows servers!
Windows Server - nothing wrong with it except cost, really
Mac Server - too expensive but makes some awesome servers
Open Solaris - both for nostalgia's sake but because it comes with some pretty interesting clustering/replication tools in the package, got the latest version and plan to try it this month again.

502

General Software Discussion / Re: Excellent RSS reader

« Last post by iphigenie on October 06, 2008, 10:38 AM »

Google reader is really slow for me - whether it is going back to all feeds, picking just 1 feed, or picking 1 item to see alone, all 3 take 20 seconds wait.
I was hoping to use it since I am on several computers and it would prevent me having to see so much in duplicate, but it's just too slow. On top of that it does not seem to integrate with google notebook and other things as well as I would have expected

Other online reader recommendations would be welcome.

503

General Software Discussion / Re: Xobni beta - Outlook Mail indexer and organizer

« Last post by iphigenie on September 29, 2008, 01:29 PM »

from my experience in Outlook you can turn emails into tasks and appointments but it is only a one way thing - you can drag the email to the tasks or calendar, a pop up comes up, but then you get the information cloned without a link back to the email. I always thought that was an odd oversight. That works in 2003 as well.

I guess it leaves some room for improvements by an add on

504

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Metaproducts Inquiry basic freeware released

« Last post by iphigenie on September 29, 2008, 12:46 PM »

I wonder how it compares to Local Website Archive, which is similar and has a free version. Guess I will try

505

General Software Discussion / Re: Someone MUST make a new PowerMarks program.

« Last post by iphigenie on September 23, 2008, 07:39 AM »

Link commander might have been a buy for me but it is not maintained anymore much that I can tell - at least my question in their ticketing system is unanswered 6 months later!

-iphigenie (September 18, 2008, 12:25 PM)

Now I went to the link commander site and updated my old question + submitted a new one, and both got an answer overnight - with huge apologies that somehow they had totally missed the old one. I was told that the new browsers will be supported in a new version coming early october, and that they also have added the bit I requested about knowing which links are on the opera personal toolbar.  If they do that this might be a buy for me.

506

DC Gamer Club / Re: Who Amongst us Plays WoW?

« Last post by iphigenie on September 20, 2008, 03:33 AM »

I play wow on the Stormrage EU server (mostly horde side) - Troll Priest. PvE mostly at the moment.

I also occasionally whip up Guild Wars, and am currently getting a taster of Warhammer online.

I am a casual gamer though, have phases and play a 2 or 3 nights a week, one or the other for about 2 hours.

My type of gaming tends to be explorer - i love to explore everything, tend to find things and places before I have the quest for them. I mostly raid for social reasons, to help people I know etc.

507

General Software Discussion / Re: Someone MUST make a new PowerMarks program.

« Last post by iphigenie on September 18, 2008, 12:25 PM »

Different people have different needs but what I am looking for is something that makes it easy to manage my bookmarks in one place then deploy to all browsers I might have, and possibly to online tool that support the exchange format:

- speedy management of bookmarks, especially moving/deleting, since i do that quite a bit
- fast search
- can add keywords/tags
- can grab bookmarks from browser(s), at the minimum from the active window, but if possible be tab aware and able to grab more. Alternatively a drop target
- gets basic information from website when available, i.e. keywords/description
- can open bookmark in browser (or has a browser internally)

tools to
- import/export/sync with bookmarks for: ie, firefox and other mozilla based browsers (eg kmeleon and flock, same filename but multiple locations), opera, safari, chrome etc. (note: all tools I have tried seem to lose opera's 'show on user bar' flag)
- find duplicates
- check bookmarks and mark any broken ones

Some tools have sexy extras like taking a screenshot etc.

In my recent tests my favorites were linkman (mostly due to the little resident search bar which I used a lot more than I would have thought - i am confused by the 2 pane system they use) and link commander (mostly the grabbing links, and a very clean and simple management interface)

Link commander might have been a buy for me but it is not maintained anymore much that I can tell - at least my question in their ticketing system is unanswered 6 months later!

508

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Chrome - What Will It Take

« Last post by iphigenie on September 18, 2008, 12:14 PM »

I have no knowledge of the update process, although I did remove the auto-start bit that google (and apple on the safari side) had installed without giving me options. I have not noticed it updating yet, but there simply could be no updates.

I have very little trust in google except some teams that I know are on the idealist side and have been given enough leeway to be able to resist evil... but yes, I dont put my email in gmail, wouldnt use google docs, because i dont trust them not to use the information available that way whether I allow it or not.

I was amused to see that chrome took my search preferences from IE7 so my default search in chrome was windows live 

509

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Chrome - What Will It Take

« Last post by iphigenie on September 18, 2008, 04:28 AM »

I am well known as being a google sceptic - I do not use gmail and quite a few other things out of concern that they have too much control and too much information.

Having just been to a conference which had people from the mozilla foundation and the google gears team, I now think chrome is a good thing (now that they have sorted the mistake with the license) and I have installed it.

- it is small and clean - no fluff, lots of space for the web page instead of menus and toolbars
- it has a fast rendering engine,
- it has a fast javascript engine, was optimised for many of the existing libraries, so ajax websites fly on it
- it supports gears natively which improves certain webapps no end, offering things like local storage, offline operation etc.
- it will be the standard browser on the up coming mobile device google are making (so they cant keep it in beta, this needs to be stable!)

- because of the javascript and gears it will be a very interesting browser for interactive apps on mobile devices

- it supports a lot of the new standards and many planned features hoped for html5 and ecmascript - so now we have things that opera, firefox 3, safari and gears support. Which gives the people working on ie8 arguments to get certain standards put in their product too.

- it can only be good to have another browser to put some pressure on the existing ones, firefox especially was letting itself slide on compliance and speed and things like Safari and Chrome have injected a nice kick back into the browser development. And chrome gave a kick to apple to push Safari performance up again to get the speed crown again.

It is an annoyance as a designer/developer that you have to test so many, but on the other hand it increases the consensus about some new features and also increases the chances that some of those make it into IE8.

510

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by iphigenie on September 18, 2008, 03:57 AM »

A quick note since I am looking at bookmark managers yet again now that I have too many browsers to handle.

Linkman has added support for Chrome, although there seems to be nothing for Safari.
I am not aware of any BM that supports all of ie, mozilla (inc flock), safari, opera, chrome and I would love to be enlightened

511

General Software Discussion / Re: Someone MUST make a new PowerMarks program.

« Last post by iphigenie on September 18, 2008, 03:56 AM »

just a quick note.
I really like delicious bookmarks for FF, but!
Magnolia (similar to delicious) actually takes an snapshot of what you bookmark there, so you can see the page even if it's no longer available. JFYI.

-urlwolf (September 14, 2008, 08:01 AM)

several do this:
- magnolia
- yahoo bookmarks
- diigo (allows notes on page too)
- spurl

Out of these, all but magnolia work properly with opera.

I find that handy for certain type of bookmarks where i bookmark a specific page of information, but not for bookmarks which are about remembering a site - so I use them for a subset of sites

512

General Software Discussion / Re: Let go of your bookmarks!

« Last post by iphigenie on July 23, 2008, 05:19 AM »

I do use bookmarks and local website archive as often as I use search engines

If it is something where I think this site is better than others and I will want to find that one again, then I bookmark it.

I have temporary bookmarks for projects/learning, which I delete when i am done with them, and permanent bookmarks that I want to keep forever.

Search engines are good to find information, but they are not good to find a particular site you want to find again. After all they are constantly tweaking their algorithms and entire sites can disappear off google overnight, so you just cant trust you can ever find this particular site again.

In short
- if it is the information I am interested in, I archive the information in lwa/note and rely on search engines to find again.
- information for a project I might bookmark as well, for speed of finding when someone says "where did you find..."
- if it is the site itself I am interested in (its tone, style, a shop etc.), I bookmark it both in the browser and in an online tool (i use several, depending on whether it is for a project, for sharing or just for me)

513

Living Room / Re: Advice: Never use your ISP provided email address

« Last post by iphigenie on July 23, 2008, 03:01 AM »

I only trust my own domain, since everything else can go bankrupt, be bought, stop offering the service etc.

514

Developer's Corner / Re: Please, do me a disservice...

« Last post by iphigenie on May 25, 2008, 03:58 AM »

I have often been unable to remove #_LEGACY keys when I tried, so it might need the right registry editor or to be done while booted off a CD.

I usually have given up and just made sure they were disabled but left them in, so I would be curious as to what the solution is

515

Living Room / Re: Digital Camera Help

« Last post by iphigenie on May 24, 2008, 02:29 PM »

I have had 2 olympus digital cameras and both were excellent. The first one was an entry level snapper which lasted almost 10 years and took some great images - the second one was a super-zoom which would have been a precursor of the model you link to - and again I loved it. It got stolen and I am regularly trying to snap a similar one on ebay, since I need a camera for my lazier half so he can take pictures too

This one does look very good. It seems very similar in features as the canon g series I mentioned (support for flash, raw etc) but you probably get a better price/value ration with Olympus. So its a great step up into serious photography without having to shell out for an SLR.

Macro mode: Wide: 3.9” – infinity (0.1m – infinity), Tele: 47.2” – infinity (1.2m – infinity)
Super Macro mode: 0.4" – infinity (1cm – infinity)

nice!

I am trying to find one of the previous 500 or 700 series on ebay as people who own these cameras often upgrade to a SLR - I'm cheap so i usually get outbid but i will keep trying

516

Living Room / Re: Digital Camera Help

« Last post by iphigenie on May 24, 2008, 08:40 AM »

There are quite a lot of compact cameras which do very well with close up photography - for example my little pocket camera (the f47d, just seen on special at £99 in the UK) can (when in macro mode) focus much closer than my SLR with the lenses I have. eg: http://iphigenie.72p...-11_12-53-08_02a.jpg (click on image to see larger size)

Although a zoom will not help with small objects, since it will increase the distance at which you can focus - so you can zoom but you are further away to start with. Macro works usually at fairly low zoom levels and very short distances.

I heard great things about the canon G series as a camera which is a middle point between the easy point-and-shoot and a serious camera - pricewise too

517

General Software Discussion / Re: Xara Xtreme Pro and Magix Xtreme Graphic Designer.

« Last post by iphigenie on May 21, 2008, 02:54 AM »

Seems strange that the price they offer on this is the same as what xara wants me to pay to *upgrade*

518

Developer's Corner / Re: The internet hijacked

« Last post by iphigenie on May 20, 2008, 11:29 AM »

--pedantic mode--
you can run multiple ssl servers on one IP, alhough you have to use non standard ports - thats the way it is often done especially if you have load balancers in front which can hide the non standard port
--shuts up--

Although the story of the root server is incredible - how could someone just snatch that IP like that...
Thankfully most of DNS never goes all the way up to the root server so the effect might not have been as bad.

519

General Software Discussion / Re: MusicIP 1.9beta3 (new 1.9 version) released

« Last post by iphigenie on May 19, 2008, 04:16 AM »

3700 files in 6 hours? I have over 15000 (and yes, all legal - over 300 CDs and emusic membership since 2000) - I dont think I will even try

I suppose i could make it analyse a subset and add them in batches over time?

520

Developer's Corner / Re: Procedural Game Coding Contest (May 5 to June 2)

« Last post by iphigenie on May 17, 2008, 10:57 AM »

all rogue likes are procedural then, and so would Depths of Peril, Dominions, Dwarf fortress, Daggerall, Elite
(have all of those apart from Daggerfall which I played a long time ago and still try to buy now and then)

Although I suspect they are after simpler procedural mechanisms and ideas

Always wanted to explore that side of things but a)too chicken b)no idea at the moment

521

Living Room / Re: Pirating abandoned content?

« Last post by iphigenie on May 16, 2008, 04:48 PM »

--soapbox--

Although what bothers me in this thread is all the mention of poor starving students. It's a nice myth but I have yet to meet a starving student. Most students are dressed, clothed, fed, they have help for all the basics. They get rebates on everything, access to an incredible amount of things for nothing. They certainly have a lot of the basics covered, and quite a few luxuries thrown on top. Access to leisure, sports, culture all for free. Access to all sorts of opportunities. They can get books on loan, used, from the library. Most of them get student loans, and if they cant afford textbooks its usually because they choose to spend it on other luxuries to keep up with all the rich kids. They can afford the stuff, they just prefer to buy fancy shoes/music/insert luxury here

I was a poor student, I worked to put myself through university. But I never struggled to eat or get clothed. And I never struggled to get the books for my courses either. Some I bought new, some used, many I read in the library.

Although I totally understand what you mean when you say "these are useful for poor students" - but there are a lot of free resources available to someone wanting to learn, without having to go and steal a particular one. Saying "i'm a poor student" just is no excuse for stealing, not when there is so much available for students.

I'm a poor self learner is a different thing. It is far harder to try to learn without being an official student - suddenly you are expected to pay full whack for everything. You dont get rebates, you dont get access to the university libraries, you dont get access to academic prices, and you dont get access to people to help explain things, or co learners to bounce ideas off.
 
PS: I.T. is terrible for that. Imagine someone trying to get an IT job after he has lost a job he's had 12 years. Keeps hearing he cant qualify for this of that job because he needs C# or Sharepoint or websphere. Figures "I can learn that". Gets told it will cost 10K in licenses so he can learn - and since employers want experience in those products working with alternatives just wont help. Oracle and Sun are ok for letting people play and learn for free, MS and IBM are not.

522

Living Room / Re: Pirating abandoned content?

« Last post by iphigenie on May 16, 2008, 04:31 PM »

On the original topic I had an interesting case in the last year.
I was looking for 2 japanese films which I had seen at the Leeds film festival in 2002 (or so). I figured by now they would be available somewhere, since they had been quite successful on the independent circuit around the world.

Found out that of course they had not been released in the west - just wasnt available.

But I also found out a semi-pirate site which sold copies.
Now these are people who copy DVDs who are not released in certain territories, create decent quality subtitles, and sell them at reasonable price. They also say that if a work ever gets an official release they stop selling them

A grey area, I was amazed at the dedication of people creating subtitles like that for films. Since rights are sold by territory, it technically doesnt really infringe anyone's distribution contract, although it does of course violate copyright. And it distributes a work where it is not being sold or promoted.

I did buy it, I wanted to see that film again and show it to my friends. But I thought about it for quite a while.

523

Living Room / Re: Pirating abandoned content?

« Last post by iphigenie on May 16, 2008, 04:23 PM »

One thing rarely known is that most authors wait years - 5 or often more - before they get their book royalties. This is because, supposedly, of book store returns.

I suspect small press publishers work differently, but the big ones seem to use every excuse to delay paying their authors.

Incredible how so many systems are at the detriment of the original creator of the work :S

524

General Software Discussion / Re: Xara Xtreme Pro and Magix Xtreme Graphic Designer.

« Last post by iphigenie on May 15, 2008, 01:18 PM »

I'm tempted to upgrade.

I played around with some old freehand and ai files and it managed to open only some of them, but those it did it handled beautifully (not sure what to do about the others)

My only gripe compared to those 2 products and some others is how hard it is to select-and-drag objects which overlap each other. I can select one so it is highlighted but when i then drag another object moves. I guess I am used to "select, then click somewhere on or near the object and drag, and it will drag". What happens in Xara seems to be click to select, then unless you click on very specific areas of the object, when you click and drag some other object underneath will move instead.

I had to select, right click, move objects to a set of layers, lock all these layers but the one with the few objects I was trying to move/adapt, to be able to not have to undo every other attempt at moving something.

Apart from that it is a very good product and intuitive to use in most other ways.

525

Living Room / Re: Sourceforge grief

« Last post by iphigenie on May 15, 2008, 01:10 PM »

i dont mind the interstitial, i mind an interstitial that
1. doesnt reload/start the download after a reasonable time
2. locks opera up totally
3. seems to be by the mirror not SF themselves