Recent Posts

5051

General Software Discussion / Re: Kinship diagrams (and genealogy)

« Last post by Darwin on August 17, 2007, 07:46 AM »

Hi Grorgy,

My friend likes Family Tree Maker, although she mentioned Brothers Keeper as an alternative.

Like I said, I have no experience with any of these packages - hope this helps anyway!

Good luck,

Mike

5052

General Software Discussion / Re: Kinship diagrams (and genealogy)

« Last post by Darwin on August 17, 2007, 12:23 AM »

I teach this stuff (though I am a Bio-Anther) but have never really gotten into the software side of it - beyond a few freebies on cover disks. This one looks good - I've a friend who's heavily into geneaology (and she's an anthropologist to boot, albeit a Bio-Anther like me!), I'll see if she has any suggestions.

5053

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative

« Last post by Darwin on August 17, 2007, 12:21 AM »

 

5054

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 10:15 PM »

I find them oddly compelling.

-Darwin (August 16, 2007, 09:18 AM)

-Armando (August 16, 2007, 09:33 PM)

Perhaps others find me compellingly odd?

5055

General Software Discussion / Re: PC Hate

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 10:08 PM »

Silly person, doesn't  he know Macs are PCs?  Meh, people really start learning the differences between hardware, software (OS), and the machines themselves.

-Laughing Man (August 16, 2007, 09:57 PM)

Good one!

5056

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you use to keep track of your installed software?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 07:53 PM »

Ah... OK, I understand what you're after. I'll write something up and run it by you via PM before sending it off. I'm about to be summoned to the dinner table so this might not happen until later tonight, once kids have been bathed and cajoled into their beds!

5057

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 07:20 PM »

Just by way of an update - I renewed my SpySweeper licence for two years and upgraded to the Antivirus version. I'm really happy with it. I renewed Ad-Aware Pro 2007 for my wife... it's a dog. Ad-Watch 2007 pegs her processor to 100% and is very uncivilized. Ad-Aware itself seems good - I love the increased performance. I'm unhappy, though, that the big raison d'etre for renewing/paying for the Plus or Pro versions is to get the realtime scanning capabilities of Ad-Watch and it's so bad that I've had to disable it on her computer. 

5058

Living Room / Re: mouse messed up, please help

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 07:03 PM »

This might help grorgy - This one makes me think of the fish dance by Monty Python. Next time you're tempted to buy something by Logitech, just think about it...

5059

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you use to keep track of your installed software?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 06:45 PM »

Hi again, Ken. I'm just sitting down to compose an e-mail to the developer and am looking over your suggestions. I'm not sure about the one:

Be able to create folders, like the ones that exist, that meet specified criteria

and want to be able to represent it accurately (I'm thinking of simply writing an e-mail and seeing what happens).

5060

Developer's Corner / Re: Is Beautiful Code A Succubus

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 06:24 PM »

I just finished reading (the highlights of) this thread...

My own (nocoder, mind you) defniition of beautiful code would be code that is simple, clean and does what it's supposed to do. I guess I'm trying to say that it should be very efficient and functional. But what do I know?!

5061

Living Room / Re: mouse messed up, please help

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 06:14 PM »

Heh, heh - I hate to state the obvious but... have you tried fresh batteries? I've actually bought dud packs of batteries that are still sealed and yet have degaded. I find that with my wireless combo (MS setup that came free with Office 2003 - quite good, actually) fresh batteries make a huge difference. Note, though, that I am impressed with how long the batteries will last.

5062

Living Room / Re: mouse messed up, please help

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 05:58 PM »

nite_monkey - I'd check for dust, hair and food build up inside the mouse, under the buttons. WRT the signal going through wood, my keyboard and mouse are both wireless and I can be considerably removed from my desk and have the desktop and other objects (a metal, foam and leather chair for a start) in the way and it all still works...

YMMV

5063

General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 05:56 PM »

nite_monkey and fodder - glad that you came out unscathed! I am now confident that the problems on both my XP machines (didn't see any trouble on the Win2k notebook) were entirely coincidental. Time will tell, I guess. I'm watching out for any blogging or tech guru posts about the extent to which people have been affected this time around.

5064

ProcessTamer / Re: DCUpdater not picking up on Process Tamer installation

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 03:54 PM »

Cool - thanks mouser, and thanks for the quick response. I was just dropping back in here to add that I have the latest versions of both the Updater beta and Process Tamer installed, and here you've already cleared everything up! 

5065

ProcessTamer / DCUpdater not picking up on Process Tamer installation

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 03:48 PM »

Hi mouser,

I'm playing around with the DCUpdater and generally love it. However, although I have the latest version of ProcessTamer installed to its default location under XP Pro Sp-2, DCUpdater reports it as not being installed. Just to confirm, the default location is "C:\Program Files\ProcessTamer", no?

Thanks,

Mike

5066

General Software Discussion / Re: Ultraedit-32 released for U3 drives (but there's a catch...)

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 03:31 PM »

I have made v13 portable using the Application Portable Template (I use notepad++ but shhhh:P).

-Ehtyar (August 16, 2007, 03:22 PM)

5067

General Software Discussion / Re: Ultraedit-32 released for U3 drives (but there's a catch...)

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 02:55 PM »

Doh! I hadn't thought of doing that (simply installing v.12 onto a thumbdrive).

5068

General Software Discussion / Re: Ultraedit-32 released for U3 drives (but there's a catch...)

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 01:58 PM »

thanks mrainey - I've used that solution in the past. It worked for a while and then went pearshaped (with v.13). Not actually a big deal for me... I just like to complain! 

5069

General Software Discussion / Ultraedit-32 released for U3 drives (but there's a catch...)

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 12:46 PM »

IDM Solutions have released a U3 version of their popular Ultraedit-32 text editor. However, it requires a separate licence and there is only a 40% discount for current licence holders. Thus, to gain the ability to take Ultraedit with you will cost, after the discount, $29.95. People have been clamouring for this for years. However, I think it's too bad that this is a U3 solution only (I'm sure that there are workarounds for those of you who do not have U3 drives/wish to use the U3 software) and that this is being sold at such a premium. Many vendors make portability a feature of a regular licence (XYPlorer, any of JGSoft's offerigs - EditPad Pro, PowerGrep, etc.) or charge a nominal fee for it (GPSoft and Directory Opus 9 springs to mind - their portable licence is $10 AUD).

5070

General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 11:53 AM »

Just found this at the TLB support forums as well. The poster has described my problem better than I did - I *was* accessing the TLB context menu via right click and attempting to sort by name. I'm going to try to help the developer track this bug down as the OP over there hasn't responded.

5071

General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 11:36 AM »

Thnaks Dirhael. I've made the change (from optin) and will see how it goes. I *swear* I changed this setting years ago (maybe it was to optin?).

5072

General Software Discussion / Re: Q: Preferences backup for installed applications?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 11:33 AM »

Lashiec - I like your new avatar 

5073

General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 10:46 AM »

Hmm... explorer.exe just crashed again, but recovered itself. It happened when I was navigating TrueLaunchBar links... I wonder if there is a connection to the problem I had yesterday? Over the last two days I've noticed the display of TLB gettings messed up and freezing for brief periods of time. Perhaps I should contact the developer. Well, at least post in the user forum. Right, off to do that now.

5074

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 09:51 AM »

Just an update (thought I'd already posted about this): FoxIt Reader has been uninstalled from all my systems. Acrobat Reader 8.1 out of the box is pretty quick. I've disabled it's startup entry (for its speedup service or whatever it is) and run ARSpeedup and it's very zippy. I really don't notice a difference in speed in comparison to FoxIt. Now, I know that it's a mammoth download in comparison but all things considered, it's worth it (I'm worth it!), particularly in a world of large harddrives and broadband.

5075

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: XYplorer File Manager

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 09:41 AM »

Damn! I discover something new about XYPlorer everytime I open it up. Over the last few days I've discovered that right out of the box it hooks into my QuickView Plus installation and provides previews of any file (just about) that I click on. This morning I discovered that right clicking on the information panel maximizes/minimizes it (much lick doubleclicking on a the title bar of a Windows app). This is awesome because it means that I can set a size that is reasonable when looking at my folder structure AND a size that is useful for previewing and then switch between them with a single click of the mouse 

If XYplorer ever gets dual-pane viewing DOpus will be very seriously on the ropes...