Recent Posts

526

Living Room / Re: new "UNREAD POSTS" button

« Last post by kfitting on July 04, 2005, 12:22 PM »

How about a subscription option.  The AutoIt forums have this.  Basically, you can subscribe to a topic so whenever you enter the forums, you can easily track the topic.  Of course, you can unsubscribe so you dont have a clutter!  AutoIt forums also let you choose to be updated by email when the topic has changed... I dont find this useful, but others may.

Kevin

527

Find And Run Robot / Re: Problem turning off auto start

« Last post by kfitting on July 04, 2005, 08:21 AM »

I have been having a weird bug lately.  After a number of startups, FindRun seems to replace the tray startup with the non tray startup.  I have no idea why this is happening and I have no way to reproduce the error!  It's happened a few times now and it's fine after deleting the start menu item and then rechecking auto start in FindRun.  This is less of a bug report and more of a "keep your eyes open."  Like I said, I have no idea how this happens and I cant reproduce it.  Anyone else having this?  If not, I wouldnt worry about it too much... just keep it on the back burner!

Kevin

528

Mouser's Zone / Re: Any new ideas for small utilities?

« Last post by kfitting on July 03, 2005, 04:23 PM »

Now that is a handy utility... I cant tell you how many times I'm CADing my system trying to find and kill the process that is holding open my usb <insert hardware here>.  Even if it doesnt automatically allow you to disconnect, just a message would be amazing!

kevin

529

Backup Guide / Re: External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on July 02, 2005, 02:18 PM »

Thanks for the advice... went to NewEgg and ordered a bytecc 3.5" enclosure.  Hopefully this one works! 

Kevin

530

Backup Guide / Re: External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on July 02, 2005, 01:50 PM »

Well... bad news and good news.  First, the bad news: my external drive still doesnt work.  Now, the good news: it appears the enclosure is bad.  I took the drive out and put it as slave in my old desktop and it worked like a charm.  I even copied the same files I had been having problems with over to it and played them (via cat5 network).  Then I tried the external enclosure with said drive on my roomates' machine... no go.  I'm relieved!  I dont mind buying another enclosure, I just didnt want to have to buy another hard drive (saving money is a good thing!).  I have already had email contact with the enclosure manufacturer, so I'll tell them what happened.  Thanks for the help... hopefully I wont have to post in another week saying I'm still having trouble!!

Kevin

531

Backup Guide / Re: Information about Backup4all 2.3.2

« Last post by kfitting on July 02, 2005, 08:29 AM »

zridling, you mentioned just synching instead... can you list some programs that do this?  I'm looking for a program that doesnt put my backups into ANY proprietary format so I dont need some fancy software to access them.  I just cant find that many programs that do this!  Maybe I just dont know how to search or am missing something obvious! Thanks,

Kevin

532

Backup Guide / Re: External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on June 30, 2005, 05:54 PM »

Well, I tried rebooting my machine and all that.  Still no joy.  I sent an email to the enclosure company (Koutech) to see if they had any ideas.  I'm not going to try anything more tonight (i have other things to do.... other than computers??), but I'll get some time this weekend to try the drive internally and such.

Kevin

533

Backup Guide / Re: External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on June 30, 2005, 10:01 AM »

Already tried both... that was my first thought.  Like I said, I'll probably try disconnecting as much as possible and see if there is a conflict.

Kevin

534

Backup Guide / Re: External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on June 30, 2005, 09:17 AM »

heh heh, just got the drive yesterday and was playing around BEFORE backing stuff up.  The only files I have on it are the ones I'm testing with!  I'm going to try what Nudone said about seeing if the corruption is actually there or if it's just something screwy that a reboot will fix.  USB is working fine on my machine: keyboard, mouse, joystick, digital camera, internet, mp3 player upload, two hubs... seems to work!  I was thinking about trying to disconnect as much as possible and see if that had any effect on things.  Worth a shot!

Kevin

535

Backup Guide / Re: External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on June 30, 2005, 08:53 AM »

*most* of the time it's only when trying to view the files from the external drive.  I dont think it happens when just copying from external to internal (though once I get the I/O error on a file it appears to be corrupted), I havent tested it enough to be sure, but it seems to happen only when viewing.  It did happen once when I tried to view pictures from the drive.  I was using an image viewer similar to windows viewer (brings up the picture and allows you to flip through all pics in folder) and after a few pictures it gave the I/O error. 

Kevin

536

Backup Guide / Re: External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on June 30, 2005, 08:18 AM »

Some decent suggestions... the only problem is I'm using a laptop.  I may be able to try sticking the drive in the old desktop I havent used in a while.  nudone, your point about the video is a good one especially since avi's give the most trouble.  wmv and mpeg work.  The only problem is that once I get the I/O error on a file it's corrupt and I have to delete it (it does delete fine so maybe it's not corrupt, I dont know).  Honestly I can live with not playing video files from the drive, I'm just concerned that I wont know which files wont until it's too late!

mouser, yes, I heartily agree that the external drives are sweet.  I'm trying everything I can with this one... the fact that it works most of the time gives me hope!  I'll keep your offer in mind, though at ~$18 a pop, buying a new enclosure isnt out of the question (especially since I will probably expand to multiple external drive backups at some point anyway).  Thanks, and any more ideas are welcome.  If I get time tonight I'll try some different configs.  Oh, and the USB 2 thing... I'm assuming it's recognizing as USB 2 due to the speed involved, however, where would I be certain of that?  In device manager?  Thanks,

Kevin

537

Backup Guide / External Harddrive Problems....

« Last post by kfitting on June 30, 2005, 07:25 AM »

After reading mouser's review a long time ago I decided that I wanted to get an external enclosure and harddrive to make my own external drive.  Just yesterday I recieved my enclosure (USB 2.0) and Western Digital (80gig, 8mb cache, 7200 rpm Caviar) harddrive in the mail.  I plugged it in and copied ~8gig in half an hour.  All was going smooth... until I tried reading from the drive.  I got an I/O error.  After further playing around there are certain files that cause the I/O error, but ONLY on reading from the drive! To make things weirder, while I'm attempting to read the file that gives the I/O problem, I can read and write other files.  I get most of my problems trying to open avi files from the external harddrive.  If I copy them to my internal harddrive they play no problem.  I set the external drive to master, but what is the internal drive supposed to be set to?  Other than this setting, I dont think I have a hardware problem.  Is there some software setting I could tweak?  Any ideas?   If you need more info, let me know.

Kevin

538

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request Thread

« Last post by kfitting on June 29, 2005, 05:31 AM »

All of this sounds interesting!  One quick thought, nowhere near the complexity of the previous two (sorry it's early), perhaps you could have two hotkeys.  One brings up minimalist mode and the other brings up plugin mode.

Kevin

539

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request Thread

« Last post by kfitting on June 27, 2005, 06:18 PM »

I think the regex idea is great... provided documentation on it is high quality!  I hadnt thought of it the way you wrote it Mouser, but I think that's a great idea (the parts I can wrap my head around!).  Could you please expound on the idea?  I understand exaclty how this works with a web url, but what else will it allow people to do?  I'm NOT saying it doesnt sound useful, to the contrary it sounds extremely powerful; I just need a few more examples.  Particularly, does this take on any of the functionality discussed above with regard to the whole config file idea?  Great idea!

Kevin

540

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Idea for this week, 6/20/05: Graphics Viewers

« Last post by kfitting on June 17, 2005, 12:03 PM »

Dont forget lossless cropping and rotation for jpg.  Some of us still shoot pictures in digicams that only output jpg!!

Kevin

541

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Idea for this week: Graphics Viewers

« Last post by kfitting on June 16, 2005, 06:46 PM »

FastStone Viewer:   http://www.faststone...m/FSViewerDetail.htm

542

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request Thread

« Last post by kfitting on June 12, 2005, 07:23 PM »

I see it both ways mouser, and personally, I think it's up to you.  On the one hand it does seem somewhat natural to extend FindRun's capabilities with a minibrowser et al.  However, I can also see where this may be going against what you had in mind at the beginning.  Here are my thoughts about some of these features:

- I think it would be kind of neat to see different config files made available (perhaps tabs with shortcuts [alt-1, or something] would be the easiest). 

- Also, I think it would cool to be able to have a list of extensions that are allowed.  Currently, you can say which extensions arent allowed, but this requires tedious entry of the many extensions one has on their computer! 

- Also, It would be handy to have the option to select multiple files to open (rather than the one we have now). 

- And, to extend this further, if you allow multiple selections, regular expressions would be nice, since being able to filter results like that would make up for a fair amount of increased time.

However, is it worth putting a whole filebrowser on?  Dont know!  I can see benefits, I can see your arguments.  Personally, FindRun, in its latest variation, has reached usability for me.  Any further enhancements are merely icing on the cake (so long as no major bugs are added, heh heh!).  Sure there are tweaks here and there that would be nice but... it's a slick, unbloated, handy, fast, cheap, and an awesome little program all in one!  Your program, your features,

Kevin

543

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request Thread

« Last post by kfitting on June 12, 2005, 01:21 PM »

I agree with you about config files, I think they would be useful, but for right now you can simulate searching for things like this.  Obviously, config files allow you to do some cool things, I just wanted to be sure I understood what you meant! 

Regular expressions are similar to wildcards.  Currently, you can use "*" to mean any number of characters in a filename.  In my example above, *Gomez*.mp3 will find any mp3 with the word Gomez in the filename.  *.mp3 would find ALL mp3 files.  Regular expressions allow you to go farther than just * or ? (single character) and allow you to specify a number or group of numbers, one, two, or three characters etc.  Basically just a more feature rich implementation of wildcards.  however, with the power regular expressions bring, they also bring a fair amount of complexity.  For a decent explanation (and a look at how complex things can get) go to http://www.bulkrenam...ms/viewtopic.php?t=5.  The cool thing about regular expressions is you can use them... or not!  Power users can keep their search broad while narrowing it (paradoxical?).  Novices can play around a little, and complete newbies can avoid them altogether.  I personally do not know how to use them, mainly because not many programs support them.  However, if FindRun goes the way of the minibrowser, people will eventually begin looking for more than one match (the current intention of FindRun)to a particular search.  You, for example, may be looking for an entire album of mp3's from Miss Miranda, or all files that match this expression [a-e][ ](Mid)*.rtf, which would match all rich text files about "A Midsummer's Night Dream (I think, as I said, I am a novice to regular expressions... but I would like to learn!). 

As I said, regular expressions are complex and I dont know how easy it would be to implement.  I've only used them to batch rename files (that's how I found the link above) and while I dont use them often even then, they are EXTREMELY handy in the correct circumstances.  Those are my thoughts, have fun

kevin

544

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request Thread

« Last post by kfitting on June 12, 2005, 06:47 AM »

Very interesting ideas... FindRun is turning more into FindExplorer!  I dont see this as an inherently bad thing, especially since, as you say, it would have little impact on the current look/feel of the player.  One question, and I'm just trying to clarify something here, cant we already just search mp3 files by typing something like "*Gomez*.mp3"?  This may be limited compared to what you are talking about (minibrowser aside), I'm just trying to understand more what you are trying to add. 

That being said, an idea just jumped into my head: what about adding regular expression support to FindRun?  If we go The Way of the MiniBrowser, we can have multiple search "hits" and do act with all of them so this seems like a great idea... how easy it is to add, I dont know!

Two concerns with the minibrowser.  While I think it is an interesting idea and should definitely be considered, I am a little worried that it would change the GUI of the standard FindRun.  So long as there is a way to turn it off, no problem!  Also, I think that intentions will have to be fleshed out extremely well.  This minibrowser will have some but not all functionality of explorer (unless you are thinking of putting a tree pane and file pane in it).  Also, many people use third party apps for a file browser specifically so they can use cool little things that arent in Win Explorer.  FindRun couldnt emulate these other programs' useful features (and probably shouldnt try to).  I dont believe this is a showstopper, just something that needs to be decided up front so users dont start getting fanciful ideas of all the wonderful and magical things they believe FindRunMiniBrowser will be able to do! 

Let the discussion continue...

Kevin

545

Find And Run Robot / Re: loading different config files

« Last post by kfitting on June 11, 2005, 02:05 PM »

I think it's a cool idea, I'm just a little leary about using "hotkeys" to load the different configs... right now, I use the function keys for my media player and they are global.  So long as the hotkeys are customizable I dont think there would be any problem!

Kevin

546

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request Thread

« Last post by kfitting on June 10, 2005, 10:32 AM »

Woohoo, feature requests! Quick comment: isnt "\" already in use to search for a number?  Incidentally, the latest version (1.15.16, I believe) is fully functional and I havent noticed problems with it!  Awesome awesome awesome program!

Kevin

547

Find And Run Robot / Re: Interesting Program...

« Last post by kfitting on June 08, 2005, 09:22 AM »

Just tried it and it keeps crashing when it finds there is no internet connection... it keeps trying to bring up outlook.  It still looks interesting but I'll have to see what it's like at home where the networks arent quite so secure (or in this case non-existent).

Kevin

548

Find And Run Robot / Interesting Program...

« Last post by kfitting on June 08, 2005, 09:08 AM »

Just found this program (have not tried it yet) called Stick (http://iwonderdesigns.com/stick/).  Its a freeware app that appears (at first glance) to have some interesting features.  One of the fetaures is this:

"Quick Launcher Hit the Windows key and the space bar together and you'll see the application launcher. Just start typing the name of the application you want and the program will start listing matches. The more you use it, the smarter it gets."

You may want to add this program into the list of alternatives.  The program also has a lot of other things that some may consider bloat so FindRun still definitely has a place, but stick is worth a look.

Kevin

549

Find And Run Robot / Re: new beta 1.05.15 (update only) available to beta testers

« Last post by kfitting on June 03, 2005, 07:41 AM »

For the burner software the target is just the program name (CDBurnerXP Pro 3).  The Start In field is ("D:\Program Files\CDBurnerXP Pro 3\cdbxp.exe").  I believe it's mostly coincidence that the folder name and app name are the same (meaning, entirely at the whim of the authors). 

I had to laugh about letting the apps fight over focus.  But, it raised a question: would the use be unable to do anything in this situation?  Would there be a way to let the other app have focus?  At least then you could shut down the one program or something.  I'm just picturing a battle where the computer is, for all intents and purposes, locked up. 

Kevin

550

Find And Run Robot / Re: new beta 1.05.15 (update only) available to beta testers

« Last post by kfitting on June 03, 2005, 06:36 AM »

For both of the lnk files I mentioned, the old FindRun does not open them either.  And after a little bit of searching... I know why the excel one doesnt work!  The lnk file points to a file that is not on my desktop anymore.  Duh!  Sorry about the "scare" there.  Question that remains, is there any way to have FindRun check to ensure the file is there?  For the CDBurnerXP lnk, I cant change the Target field in the properties dialog (it's grayed out) and it's not pointing to the exe file, or actually, to any path at all.  It just has the name of the program in it.  The Start In field is set to the exe, however.

As far as focus is concerned...  it's definitely way better than before!  The screen tends to flicker sometimes, I'm guessing this is because of the focus flipping back and forth very quickly?  Any way to avoid this?  If not, not a big problem.  It's more just a tweak for polishing.  It definitely is nice to have FindRun stay on top! 

Any other questions?  Let me know.  I'll try and answer as soon as possible,

Kevin