Recent Posts

5351

General Software Discussion / FreeCommander Preview

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 07, 2011, 03:23 PM »

A preview(beta) of the new FreeCommander file manager is now available for download:

http://www.freecomma...r.com/fc_beta_en.htm


Previously only donators were given a peek. There's a portable zip so I'm going to check out how it feels.

5352

Living Room / Re: Mirageman : Brilliant Flick

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 07, 2011, 02:38 PM »

I usually watch in original language reading the subs(unless it's a schlock flick were the dub is meant to be funny.) I didn't even check out the English sound track. It shouldn't be too hard to follow though. There's not much in the way of plays on words and the action should give context.

I too saw "Kick Ass" but I have to say, I used to object to comics where Superman Batman Hulk only killed people "by accident" like on Star Trek, but that 10 year old remorselessly spiking guys with a lance kind of turned my stomach.  Kind of wonder where they are going with the game violence thing.
Although other than that, the flick was funny.

I prefer Nicolas Cage's "Batman" to most others I've seen.

5353

Living Room / Mirageman : Brilliant Flick

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 06, 2011, 03:39 PM »

Mirageman

When I first watched this film over a year ago, my reaction was mixed.  Having viewed it again the other day I enjoyed it much more. It took a second viewing for the brilliance to sink in.

It's the best example of the "regular guy becomes superhero" genre I've seen.
Lots of laughs.  The actor who played the lead, Marco Zaror, choreographed the fight scenes.

Even though I saw this film before, I was laughing loud and often. The toughest part of being a superhero, assuming you are already a karate master who can kick ass, seems to be getting the costume right.  This flick has the funniest take on it I remember. It also puts a perverted twist on many of the Hollywood clichés found in action flicks.


It was filmed in Chile.  Spanish with English Subs.

5354

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: "MakeNewFolder" clone for Windows 7

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 06, 2011, 03:23 PM »

This seems familiar.  Maybe it was requested or something similar awhile back. To get the current folder an Explorer window is open to, the setting  "Display the full path in the Title Bar" has to be set.  Also Vista and W7 store the folder path differently than XP.  Depending what the programmer used to code the utility it could be a bit messy to extract the info. That's the only reason I can see for the reluctance. He might have this down to a couple of lines in XP whereas checking for both XP and Vista/7 can lead to spaghetti code.

I can't think of any other reason except maybe "been there done that."  I know some stuff I've written, especially shell extensions, I just don't ever want to look at again.  I got so sick of testing that I stopped even using the utilities myself.

The other consideration for me is I don't want to duplicate some else's user interface. Unless the person said the program is dead and buried or donated to the public domain I'd feel like I was ripping it off.

5355

Finished Programs / Re: Idea: New Folder by F-key for Windows 7

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 06, 2011, 03:15 PM »

W7 already has built-in support for Control-Shift-n create new folder in Explorer Window:

http://lifehacker.co...olders-with-a-hotkey

5356

General Software Discussion / Re: which is the best free virtualization software?

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 05, 2011, 09:49 PM »

This may be of interest to some.  Although you may run into problems if the original drive letter is different than the partition it's booted as:

http://www.macrium.c...riumImageBackup.aspx


It includes a free beta tool for manipulating the image.

5357

General Software Discussion / Re: which is the best free virtualization software?

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 05, 2011, 06:55 PM »

That looks like a good sites, Miles.  I just skimmed it a bit and lots of good stuff.

-techidave (March 05, 2011, 06:52 PM)

They gave me a couple of pointers to get VirtualBox working on Vista64.
Some good people on there.

5358

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: an app to stop installers from launching web browsers and opening pages

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 05, 2011, 06:43 PM »

In fact if you don't mind messing around with the registry you could just set any app as the default browser, such as dummy.exe which would just go away without opening a window(maybe beep or something so you know it ran.)

Only thing is esp. with 64 bit there's a lot of registry setting "echo" where the 32 bit stuff sets 64 bit settings for SysWow64 32 bit emulation and it gets messy.  You could probably just use a registry monitor, then set something as the default browser, to see what registry keys are changed.

I just don't like to mess with the registry unless it's very simple. Like one or two keys.  Too much liability for no gain.

But I would think once you know which keys to manipulate it would be a matter of writing a small utility that takes the installer off the command line, change the registry to make dummy.exe the default browser, run the install, then change the default back to whatever it was in the first place.

edit: on the other hand, some of these installers want to use an IEism so they explicitly call IE with the url.

Maybe the pop-up killer approach would be better. Kill all browsers until the install is complete.

5359

General Software Discussion / Re: which is the best free virtualization software?

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 05, 2011, 06:39 PM »

Tangentially, you can often get good advice getting the VM set up on W7 from this subforum:

http://www.sevenforu....com/virtualization/

5360

Living Room / Re: Unsubscribe to 404

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 05, 2011, 06:34 PM »

Unfortunately a lot of sites use the confirmation gimmick to side-step the bug me not browser extension

5361

General Software Discussion / Re: OS recommendations for Pent.III 128MB laptop

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 05, 2011, 06:32 PM »

btw in case anyone else has a Pentium III and wants to try Mandrake 9.1 I found the iso images are still available from the source:

http://distrib-coffe...fficial/iso/9.1/ppc/

For contemporary machines you can get the OneCD here:

http://www.mandriva....om/en/downloads/one/

edit: if you are tempted to try Mandrake I would go with the 3 iso images. Mainly because if you download applications you may run into updated versions that require newer kernels or some other mismatch.  The CD images should have all the apps you need and fit the kernel that's installed with Mandrake 9.1.

Easiest may be to boot a Live CD and try some of the word processors and editors.  The thing that put me off most about Linux was the lack of editors I liked that had Windows like key bindings.  It's too distracting concentrating on how to use the editor instead of what you are typing in the thing.  Then again, if you go with total immersion you may pick it up quickly. I scared myself by almost starting to understand the vi mind set.

I tried all the editors and word processors I could find that were supposed to be "Windows like" and didn't like any of 'em.  The kylix IDE editor came closest since the key bindings and the feel were nearly identical to Delphi Windows IDE.  But if you're going to go with only Linux OS might as well get your feet wet with vi, emacs and the whole bunch.

5362

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: an app to stop installers from launching web browsers and opening pages

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 05, 2011, 04:20 PM »

For me the annoying part is when you upgrade and the installer insists you first uninstall the old version. Then it pops up a web page asking you why you are uninstalling.  Duh!!

5363

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: "MakeNewFolder" clone for Windows 7

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 04, 2011, 11:02 PM »

btw I have a utility called CreateDir you can download here:

http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html

It doesn't parse levels like Sharpe's utility. It makes a chain of directories. You may be able to achieve some of the same effect using batch files with linear directory chains.

IOW to get Current Folder Some Folder under that with Folder A and Folder B under Some Folder(none of which exists yet) would use 2 params.  Assuming drive C: then the 2 folder chains would be "C:\Current Folder\Some Folder\Folder A" and "C:\Current Folder\Some Folder\Folder B"

You'd have to experiment to see if you could get what you want out of it.

5364

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: "MakeNewFolder" clone for Windows 7

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 04, 2011, 10:52 PM »

What happens when you run Sharpe's program on 7? Does it not install? Traps out?  What?

5365

Living Room / Re: Are *you* Computer Literate?

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 04, 2011, 07:52 PM »

Hmmmm, I wanted to compose a meaningful reply but I couldn't find anyone to read the subject line to me.

5366

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: New MakeMKV beta 1.6.5

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 04, 2011, 07:47 PM »

version 1.6.5 is the latest. I think some issues were introduced in 1.6.4. Since I have a licensed copy I backed off to 1.6.3 until things shake out.  In any case I noticed a basic guide posted today.  Naturally I couldn't resist sticking my $.02 in the comments section:

http://adubvideo.net...uray-dvd-mkv-makemkv

If you should feel the need to back off to an older version there's a topic in the MakeMKV forum with a link to old versions.  Shouldn't be tough to find.

5367

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: an app to stop installers from launching web browsers and opening pages

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 04, 2011, 06:36 PM »

I wasn't able to find any smooth way to detect if a url is being opened by an installer. A kludge to do it may be to write a small batch file where you would put the name of the installer as param. The batch would launch BrowserChooser program, which would prompt you if it's not the default browser.  Click OK to set it as default.  Then the batch would run the installer.  When BrowserChooser pops up because the installer launched a url, just kill it.

Then run any browser set to detect default on startup.  Firefox can be set to do this.  Chromium does it by default.  Click to set that as default and BrowserChooser won't pop up anymore.

Something smoother like hooking all calls to ShellExecute run the risk of messing up your system program launches.  Maybe skwire can conceive of something more macro rather than the BrowserChooser hack. On the plus side you should be able to use the same batch file for install or uninstall.  Doesn't really matter. You are just changing default browser before and after running some program.

5368

Living Room / Re: In Western societies, how can a man have a hyphenated name? (and why!)

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 03, 2011, 05:43 PM »

From watching Korean sitcoms I came to the opinion they handle women's family names and marriage in a much simpler more sensible way than in the USA.

Instead of changing her surname every time she gets married, divorced etc. like American women do, Korean women keep their original surnames.  The children are given the surname of the father. No hyphens or chemical formulas required.

Here's a wiki page with way more info than necessary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name

5369

General Software Discussion / Re: OS recommendations for Pent.III 128MB laptop

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 03, 2011, 05:35 PM »

APT is easy to use.  That's what's so good about it. I've been away from Linux for a long time.  I'll leave nuts & bolts advice to those still steeped in it.  But one thing that may be handy is to read up a bit on bash shell. You can do scripting with it.  But aside from complicated scripts you can also create an alias for a complicated command.  An alias is just a place holder or macro that's translated by the shell into what you assign it.

This page shows a few examples:

http://linuxreviews.org/quicktips/alias/

5370

Site/Forum Features / Re: Suggestion for Modify of your last post

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 02, 2011, 01:40 AM »

Sometimes I edit 4 or 5 times to get it right with typos.

-MilesAhead (March 01, 2011, 08:22 PM)

Don't you mean: "...get it right without typos." ?

-4wd (March 01, 2011, 10:02 PM)

Without the typos I wouldn't have to edit. Kind of like cops being without a job if there's no crooks.

edit: see I didn't really have to edit this one because I got it right without typos.

5371

Living Room / Re: Unsubscribe to 404

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 01, 2011, 08:27 PM »

Most forums I am on the unsubscribe link works to unsubscribe from a topic. But for "deal email updates" it's really annoying. You unsubscribe, then get a nice looking notice that they are sorry if they cluttered up your inbox and won't do it anymore.  Then 2 days later you're right back on the spam list.

Seems like customer relations and marketing departments don't communicate.

5372

Site/Forum Features / Re: Suggestion for Modify of your last post

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 01, 2011, 08:22 PM »

Crap, I just noticed you could change the subject

I thought you could only do that if you're the thread starter?

-MilesAhead (February 28, 2011, 07:34 PM)

You're right, just tried it.

It only changes the subject of your reply, so if you didn't start the thread it's useless in respect to what I'm suggesting.

-4wd (February 28, 2011, 08:33 PM)

I wonder if there'd be a way to have a button on the edit such as "Save and Update" or something like that.  I know if I'm correcting spelling or grammar I don't want it to show as a new post until I'm done making edits.  Sometimes I edit 4 or 5 times to get it right with typos.

5373

General Software Discussion / Re: OS recommendations for Pent.III 128MB laptop

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 01, 2011, 05:58 PM »

I ran Mandrake 9.1 fine on a machine with specs very close to yours.  It was a Gateway desktop Pentium III 550 MHz with 128 MB ram.

I believe I had OS/2 3.0 installed on the same machine. I was a bit sluggish with only 128 MB ram.  But Mandrake screamed on that machine!! Running XWindows with XEmacs and other Gui apps the machine had very snappy response.  Also the drivers included with Mandrake 9.1 may be a good fit for that machine.

If you try the install and it doesn't go smoothly then just wipe the disk when you install XP.  To install Mandrake without broadband you may want to look for a 3 CD set of .iso images to avoid having to download any packages.  But for editors and common apps I'd be surprised if everything you needed wasn't on the first CD.

5374

General Software Discussion / Re: I have to admit defeat ... I cannot format a hard drive ...

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 01, 2011, 05:46 PM »

@Cloq   Sounds like the Pavlovian approach to assembler wasn't efficacious. That's really learning the hard way!

[url=http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php]

5375

General Software Discussion / Prep USB key to be bootable using diskpart : Vista/W7

« Last post by MilesAhead on March 01, 2011, 05:06 PM »

Here's a pretty succinct article how to prep a USB key boot disk using diskpart:
http://www.techsuppo...ta7-command-line.htm

For wiping a drive and creating a single partition diskpart can be a lot faster than using a general purpose formatting program Gui.

The article shows the diskpart prep sequence.  The remaining step is to put a bootable image on.  Once the USB key is prepped it's usually a matter of xcopying the bootable files on with the correct switches.

The diskpart prep is very fast.  The time consuming task is the format.  I recommend using the standard format rather than quick esp. if the USB key is being changed from FAT32 to NTFS or vice versa.  Better to have the entire capacity written in the format to avoid stuff grinding to a halt when you actually use it.

I mentioned this sequence a few times.  Looking though Gizmo's site today I noticed this article. I was happy to see it didn't omit the clean step in the sequence.