Recent Posts

5001

General Software Discussion / Re: Organizing Reviews

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 07:45 PM »

I'm a bit naive about the financial side of the internet... WRT wikis, is the expense due to bandwidth, hardware, software, or personnel requirements? Or a combination of all of the above? If it's personel, could the cost be defrayed by using and abusing the good members of this community in a volunteer capacity?

Just curious because I like the idea (of the wiki - the use and abuse of dc's membership is just a possible peripheral benefit!).

5002

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Auto-complete Intelli-sense type utility ?

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 07:36 PM »

OK - reviving this thread (because I am a mercenary bastard and want something!). I've long since given up on ActiveWords. There have been two updates since this thread went into a coma but it doesn't play nicely with other apps that monitor the keyboard (e.g. Accents) and resource usage is high compared to DirectAccess, which I use all the time now!

Anyway, I'm revisiting spell checking and wonder if anyone has autohotkey running with any other hotkey/keyboard monitoring app? If so, does it behave itself? Further in the same line of thinking, do the spell checkers, such as As-U-Type co-exist with other keyboard monitoring apps, like DirectAccess?

Alternatively, anyone have any new found favourite spellchecker, or is As-U-Type still king of the hill?

Ta,

Mike

5003

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Firewall for registry

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 07:12 PM »

You might try the other component in the GhostSecuritySuite, AppDefend. I haven't run it in a while, but I'm pretty sure that it's intended to do what you describe. After about a year of non development, it seems active again (it's still in beta).

5004

Living Room / Re: 2007 Worst dialog nominee, spelling category

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 07:09 PM »

I W-I-L-L S-P-E-A-K L-O-U-D-L-Y A-N-D S-L-O-W-L-Y S-O T-H-A-T Y-O-U C-A-N U-N-D-E-R-S-T-A-N-D M-E!

A very useful technique but, unfortunately, a disproportionately-large number of those on whom I employ it seem to be hard of hearing!

-cranioscopical (August 20, 2007, 07:01 PM)

Pardon me? What was that? SPEAK UP!

5005

Living Room / Re: 2007 Worst dialog nominee, spelling category

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 06:55 PM »

You've nothing to fear from me, ak_! The way I mangle (and confuse) French and Korean is pretty awe inspiring (and that's after 13 years of public school - in the NA sense of public school - French and living in Korea for 4 years). By confuse I mean that when I try to speak French, Korean comes tumbling out and when I try to speak Korean, French comes tumbling out. But I'm an ace in English, really. OK, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Actually, what is awe inspiring is how well many non-native English speakers communicate in English and how pitifully the vast bulk of native English speakers are able to communicate in anything other than their mother tongue.

EDIT: removed grand mal seizure inducing attempt to illustrate the stereotypical native English speaker attempting to communicate in a different language...

5006

General Software Discussion / Re: How do this in a screenshot?

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 06:47 PM »

Mouser - seems to me that this is one time in which your proposal to add basic screencapturing features to Screenshot Captor might pay off. Seems to me that one should be able to record a brief video and then generate a screenshot from that... You might have to take screenshots of more than one point in the video and merge them...

Or am I missing something? It's happened before - the fine print on credit card usage agreements, my nuptials (conducted in Korean and I evidently obliviously agreed to a life of servitude!) - things like that...

5007

Living Room / Re: 2007 Worst dialog nominee, spelling category

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 06:35 PM »

Cool - thanks for clearing that up for us, João. It's funny how often a non-native speaker will directly translate an expression from their native language into a different one, preserving syntax and everything. I see it all the time with Korean friends going from Korean into English and do it myself going from English into Korean (though this is less frequent an occurence because I am horribly handicapped by the fear of making a mistake, so don't often try...).

5008

Living Room / Re: How do you organise your 'My Documents' folder

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 03:44 PM »

I, too, use an E: partition for all of my data, including IE Settings and Outlook pst files. This way, when my OS installation needs refreshing via Acronis TrueImage restoration, I don't have to worry about my data... Anyway, the E: partition is organized much as TucknDar describes, minus the tagging. For example, I have a Work folder which is further divided into 1. PHD and subfolders (data, databases, graphics, correspondece, thesis, etc.), 2. Teaching and subfolders (class, which are subdivided further into year and then lecture notes, term papers, projects, etc.), and so on. Other folders are organized in much the same way. I don't know, it works for me and over time has become effortless.

5009

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 03:37 PM »

Hey Tom - you've already changed your avatar since the "new" one on July 10th. I like it, it's very dreamy. What's it from?

5010

Living Room / Re: KenR's health and situation

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 03:35 PM »

Mouser - sorry I cast aspersions on you like that - I was only pointing out how dark the humour was (but I appreciated it!); I certainly didn't mean to suggest that you think any less of Ken than we know that you do. Ken's presence on this forum has been huge and very positive, I know that everyone here wishes him a speedy recovery.

5011

General Software Discussion / Re: Mouse software

« Last post by Darwin on August 20, 2007, 03:08 PM »

I don't know if it's still possible to buy it (developer finally closed shop last year, after more than 12 years of development), but ToggleMouse was fantastic! I don't have it installed anymore, but ToggleSoft kept upgrading my licence for it from my original purchase for Win 3.11 in 1994 through development ceasing in 2006. The app was great and fully featured - you could try e-mailing the author at [email protected] (I think) to ask about downloading the last version and trying it out.

EDIT: Corrected author's e-mail to last known viable address

5012

General Software Discussion / Re: Guess what, you do have certain downgrade rights from Vista to Windows XP

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 11:13 PM »

mwb1100 - this is true of many OEM installations of XP, on notebooks anyway. I've been wondering about this myself as my OEM discs are for Compaq (and HP?) and Gateway so I have a wee bit of choice. I've been considering going this route as I think it advisable to actually get a machine with Vista preinstalled (all too soon XP is going to be old news, whether we like it or not, and newer software packages/updates will increasingly optimized for Vista) and to take advantage of some of the new hardware that's available. However, I'd still like to be able to downgrade to XP without having to spend mone on a copy and I'm *hoping* that this will work. I'm just waiting to find out if there are any curveballs that might crop up - BIOS level changes that might render the BIOS recognition feature in XP incompatible with a machine designed for Vista. Yes, I am paranoid (and it shows!).

PS I've been looking at DELL because I can still order a machine with XP preinstalled. However, I would rather have a copy of Vista AND a copy of XP, even if I don't intend to run Vista for a while yet.

5013

General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 11:07 PM »

wreckedcarzz - perhaps it's time to compile the apps and set up a poll? This is more for the community than for your app, but it would be very interesting!

-Darwin (August 19, 2007, 09:09 AM)

Just to clarify, I meant compile a list of the apps mentioned in this thread and pick, say, the top 10 or 12 and then run a poll asking people to pick the top three from the list that they use...

5014

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 10:47 PM »

One aspect that bugged me when I tried it ...I WILL have to eventually (re)consider IdeaMason more carefully...

You're in the same boat as me WRT having to take a leap and buy it if you want to find out if it will do what you want it to do as if you've already run the trial you won't be able to again... Your description of your workflow sounds similar to mine - lots of apps holding lots of info (Evernote, NetSnippets, TexNotes Pro, ZuluPad, Word, UltraEdit, EndNote, Excel, Access, ESRI ArcGIS... etc.). It is nice to speculate that IdeaMason can take all of this disparate info and organise it and even synthesze it for me, to a degree. At the very least replace several of my other apps... but, I paid for them and they work well - my system (like yours) works well. Do I need to spend more money to accomplish what I can already accomplish..!?

5015

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 07:44 PM »

Yes - thank you Grorgy. I still find myself drawn to the premise behind IdeaMason but will need to buy it now to figure out if it is for me or not! I only had the demo installed for about 6 hours, but of course somewhere buried in my registry is a record of the date of installation and no way to run the trial now... No worries - I don't actually NEED IdeaMason... it just seems "cool" (but not to the tune of $59.95 to confirm this impression - I've already been down that road with other "Gee whiz, neato!" inspired software purchases).

Still... The features I am most interested in are the referencing system (Endnote compatible) and the idea of preparing a draft from notes, memos, and other fragments of writing. I suspect that this is possible with both Do-Organizer and NetSnippets (both of which I own) but haven't explored generating reports with either of them beyond a cursory read through of the help file.

5016

General Software Discussion / Re: Organizing Reviews

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 07:34 PM »

A donationcoder review wiki - I like it! There would not doubt be issues, but this would a very interesting experiment 

5017

General Software Discussion / Re: changing label from E: to C: in the primary boot partition (windows XP). How?

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 11:02 AM »

There are some utilities (the used to be one in Partition Magic) that can help but the whole process is non-trivial and prone to probems - even with utilities. Personally I would leave well alone or reinstall Windows from scratch - probably quicker in the long run.

Very true. Even at the most superficial level (for from the perspective of annoyance), whicl while PM will offer to change all references to a changed partition (so F:\My Documets becomes E:\My Documents for example), in practice it misses lots of them. I spent three months uncovering problems and longer than that fixing them!

Be careful...

EDIT: corrected typos...

5018

General Software Discussion / Re: Dieting my laptop, starting with Windows Desktop Search -But I'm stuck, Help !!

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 10:38 AM »

Thanks patteo - X1 has jiggered Outlook 2003 for me on three different notebooks (XP Home, XP Pro, Win2k) for over a year, so I wouldn't know which build to try reinstalling! Also, love it though I do, the hit on resources that I experience with it coupled with the agonizing length of time that it takes to load previews (sometmes it never does) - both problems that go back numerous builds as well - means that I am not terribly interested in trying it out again. I've re-installed Copernic on my wife's notebook and will see how she likes it. I like it much better than WDS at any rate! If that proves to be to resource hungry, I might give Filehand Search another try...

5019

General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 09:09 AM »

wreckedcarzz - perhaps it's time to compile the apps and set up a poll? This is more for the community than for your app, but it would be very interesting!

5020

General Software Discussion / Re: Dieting my laptop, starting with Windows Desktop Search -But I'm stuck, Help !!

« Last post by Darwin on August 19, 2007, 08:31 AM »

Patteo - did you replace WDS with an alternate indexing app, by chance? I want to remove WDS from my wife's computer but need to replace it with something that will preview office and outlook files with formatting (ruling my favourite indexer - archivarius3000  - out of the mix)? WDS was installed as an alternative to X1 (latest full release) which conisistently crashes Outlook when using a notebooks standby or hibernate feature.

5021

General Software Discussion / Re: Smart PDF Viewers for Windows

« Last post by Darwin on August 18, 2007, 05:21 PM »

OK I'm more confused than ever... and even less able to see the utility of this feature. If I understand it correctly, Skim monitors the pdf on disk, so if you change it with a pdf editor, the view will change within Skim (while retaining annotations and so on)?

5022

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Darwin on August 18, 2007, 04:36 PM »

PS Looks like the offer is still on!

5023

Finished Programs / Re: SubDude, a subtitle renaming program

« Last post by Darwin on August 18, 2007, 04:35 PM »

Ah - thank ak_ I have nothing profound to say now, I really was simply curious! I am a regex "twit" I have several apps that will allow me to search and repace using regex, but I've never really taken the time to learn it 

5024

Living Room / Re: KenR's health and situation

« Last post by Darwin on August 18, 2007, 04:19 PM »

hmmm,
we're discovering a new side to mouser here   

-tomos (August 18, 2007, 03:26 PM)

Yeah, Kitty turns rabid! 

5025

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Darwin on August 18, 2007, 04:16 PM »

Yes - I'm curious as well. I can't help thinking that Ideamason is a great app, if you give yourself time to learn it...