Recent Posts

526

General Software Discussion / On developer's block, and calling it quits. Being a programmer is hard

« Last post by urlwolf on March 20, 2009, 05:33 PM »

Hi guys,

I just wanted to bring to your attention a thread that got me thinking.
Vitaly, the developer of spider player, a player that sounds surprisingly good (nobody knows why; it uses BASS and 32-bit processing, which you can find in others that don't sound as good) has decided to switch careers, partly frustrated with how difficult programming is:

thread

I have to admit that programming is hard. I'm right now chasing a bug that has driven me crazy for 3 weeks straight. I have written a 30-page-long paper with results I was suspecting were wrong. Now (IF I catch the bug!) I'll have to rewrite most of it.

There are many ways in which programming can be NOT fun. I wonder if we realize this.

Again, a 'thank you' to Vitaly and to all programmers around the world that make our lives more pleasant with their software.

527

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: resolver one, python spreadsheet (no sheet limits) 60% off today only

« Last post by urlwolf on March 17, 2009, 10:16 AM »

ok, while it says that the size of the spreadsheet is unlimited, I tried importing a csv that fits the maximum capacity of excel 2007 (~ 1M rows) and it crashed with an out-of-memory error. On a Laptop with 4gb, but a 32-bit OS. Still quite a lot of memory.

So, it looks like it's only 'unlimited sheet size' in theory.

528

Found Deals and Discounts / resolver one, python spreadsheet (no sheet limits) 60% off today only

« Last post by urlwolf on March 17, 2009, 09:39 AM »

http://www.resolversystems.com/download/

Evaluating now.

529

Living Room / Re: The Greatest Graphic Novel of All Time: Watchmen

« Last post by urlwolf on March 04, 2009, 02:51 PM »

I liked "Preacher".
I was unimpressed by Watchmen, and prefer the Dark night (that choice between the two is kind of a test between comic readers).

Modern stuff, I liked Daredevil in the run that Malev had.

530

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your mouse of choice?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 27, 2009, 07:12 AM »

So after 3 pages, we still don't have the exact free-wheel on any non-logitech mouse (bar the vertical one)?

You gotta love patents.

531

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your mouse of choice?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 21, 2009, 05:06 AM »

So up to now, only App's hard-to-find, more-so-in-EU Evoluent is the only one non-logitech with the free wheel. Anyone?

I'm surprised no other maker has copied this; it's a truly great idea.

532

General Software Discussion / criminalize boring: a catalog of cool

« Last post by urlwolf on February 21, 2009, 04:51 AM »

http://criminalizeboring.tumblr.com/

533

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your mouse of choice?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 21, 2009, 01:50 AM »

I forgot to say that I will NOT get a Logitech product again because their software plain doesn't work on any machine I own. This is because of an incompatibility with my keyboard of choice (IBM ultranav). I contacted both companies and they really couldn't care less. This is on win XP, I hope, now that I'm moving into windows 7, the drivers will not conflict with each other.

534

General Software Discussion / What's your mouse of choice?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 20, 2009, 12:15 PM »

Mine is the logitech MX revolution.
Once you try the scrollwheel, you cannot go back to any other mouse. It has no clicks, you can roll it in a 'free' way.

The big disadvantage: no middle click.

Do you know any mouse that has this 'free rolling' wheel while still having middle click?

535

General Software Discussion / Re: How much trouble is a 64-bit OS right now?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 17, 2009, 03:41 AM »

anyone wants to stops me before I make win 7 beta my main OS for the rest of the year ?

536

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows editors - do they have to be so bad?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 17, 2009, 03:27 AM »

The mark feature works in intelliJ IDEA, which is (by far) the best editor I've ever seen. If you forget that it's part of an IDE, and supports only a few languages (quite many, actually, but not some I need to be totally set), prepare to be amazed.

537

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows editors - do they have to be so bad?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 16, 2009, 03:53 PM »

I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but emacs has the marks/blocks function you like:
http://www.cs.cmu.ed...info2www?(emacs)Mark

538

General Software Discussion / Re: How much trouble is a 64-bit OS right now?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 16, 2009, 03:51 PM »

We have a sysadmin at work and he's leaning towards Win 7.
He would have to deal with printer driver problems if there are any.
Other than that, I don't have high requirements for hardware.

I'm thinking win 7 could be the best solution here too.

539

General Software Discussion / Re: Postbox - a new Mozilla-based email client

« Last post by urlwolf on February 15, 2009, 04:13 AM »

no GPG, no use for me.

540

General Software Discussion / Any easy way to see how much each Firefox addon weights you down?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 14, 2009, 08:18 PM »

Is there any easy way to see how much each Firefox addon weights you down?
I have 14 by now, this is getting ridiculous. And what bothers me most is that hitting 'back' is no longer instantaneous.

541

General Software Discussion / Re: Benubird Pro on Bits du Jour today (Feb 14, 2009). Anyone using it?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 14, 2009, 02:21 PM »

If you only need tagging/search in tags (assuming pdf conversion is covered) then I think you can get it in other ways. I for example use TotalCommander for that. it stores tags in the comment metadata, and it can search in there too.

I still don't use tagging much. Music files, yes. Pdfs: I wish! the rest... well, I do not really see an urgent need.

542

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: Turn Notepad into WYSIWYG Word Processor

« Last post by urlwolf on February 08, 2009, 06:14 AM »

Maybe you want something like a desktop wiki.
it's plain txt, has basic formatting, and even easy linking between notes.
The one I like now is called zim. But it's not too easy to install on windows (perl required) and not portable... so still looking.

I do use OneNote for what you describe, though, as it search is very good (even inside images).

543

General Software Discussion / nifty trick to address more memory under win 32-bit

« Last post by urlwolf on February 07, 2009, 06:29 PM »

Acording to Microsoft:

The /3GB switch allocates 3 GB of virtual address space to an application that uses IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE in the process header. This switch allows applications to address 1 GB of
additional virtual address space above 2 GB.

This tiny switch /3GB can do wonders.

The catch: the application must use IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE in the process header.

From nettakeaway.

544

General Software Discussion / Re: How much trouble is a 64-bit OS right now?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 06, 2009, 04:00 AM »

So it's still unclear to me how life under win 64 is.
Some people report no problems, some report lots.
In any case, which version (XP, vista, win 7 beta) do you recommend? This is a production machine, but the reports that the beta is solid seem encouraging.
And if I have to reinstall win 7 in aug, that's a small price to pay IF everything else is better.

545

General Software Discussion / Re: Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Win7

« Last post by urlwolf on February 06, 2009, 03:56 AM »

Well, actually it looks like they have improved IO quite a lot for Win 7. I wonder how they did that, as they are still using NTFS...

546

General Software Discussion / Re: MOGware's FileHamster (Complaint)

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2009, 05:57 PM »

I'm pretty familiar with both programs.
They are different beasts.
In mercurial, you have to commit your changes, and name what changed. tortoiseHG pops up a window, etc. It shows a changelog, which is something you don't get with filehamster.

In my opinion, tortoiseHG is head and shoulders better for managing code, or text-based formats. And of course for collaboration.

The advantage of filehamster is the simplicity of it all. I cannot be bothered commiting changes to a word document every time I save it. Filehamster does that fine, though, and doesn't run a diff. It's kind of very primitive, but very efficient.

But I agree the insolence of filehamster popups must be punished. I thought of buying it, but that would be rewarding such an obscene behavior. We don't want this industry to think they have the right to go all blinking and dancing on our own desktop. This is why God invented adMuncher

So filehamster gets no money from me, unless they stop being obnoxious.

547

General Software Discussion / Re: [IDEA] recode intellicomplete, make it publicly available

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2009, 12:56 PM »

I have to admit, the idea is good. So this uses context to complete.
Good, but it's impressively obscure to the user. I cannot, by the life of me, replicate the behavior you show in the general video. And I have been tweaking the parameters for about 30 mins now. This is borderline pathetic, so I'm not expending a minute longer on it.

By the way, (*) it offers plenty of non-helpful suggestions. It offered 'what about you?' in the place marked with a star.

I agree that you do seem to care about problems. But you have to see too that my time is very valuable and that the tool simply doesn't work for me.
Oh, a note on your forum policy. If you think that deleting posts because they are considered non-informative is ok, then I must say: you do not understand the web. You are free to do that as the forum is yours; but I'm free to call your lack of judgment and not to post ever again. The one other forum where this has happened to me was JRiver Media center's. I don't use the tool, nor post there, partly because of that. And I can assure you that the posts that got censored in both forums were most civic.

548

General Software Discussion / Re: [IDEA] recode intellicomplete, make it publicly available

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2009, 09:37 AM »

Right now I'm using typing assistant.
Not sure if I'll buy it though. I missed the DC discount.

549

General Software Discussion / Re: [IDEA] recode intellicomplete, make it publicly available

« Last post by urlwolf on February 04, 2009, 06:08 AM »

I tried PE in 3 different computers.

I could not get it to mimic intellicomplete. It may be interacting with something else I have installed.
My posts asking for help in their forum got deleted. I do not have time for fixing this when other alternatives worked out of the box for me.

550

General Software Discussion / Re: How much trouble is a 64-bit OS right now?

« Last post by urlwolf on February 03, 2009, 05:52 PM »

BTW: What are you running that needs so much RAM? (Are you responsible for issuing Launch Codes?  tellme)

Just R.
But in general, I handle large sparse matrices, and even in an sparse format, they take up a lot of memory.

So it looks that win 64 works better than Linux. That is all I wanted to know.
Still, I worry about the day-to-day. If I'm going to be a beta tester for every tool I use, I'll waste a lot of time.