Recent Posts

5401

Developer's Corner / Re: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Error Handling

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 14, 2006, 02:10 PM »

1 unforeseeable and unrecoverable errors, in this grou you would have for instance the "out of memory" exceptions. well what can you do if this happens? not much actually, most likely you don't have the memory to do any recovery to begin with.

Actually that is one that should be trapped and processed - even if it is only to save your work and exit cleanly.

One of my pet hates is software that just pops up 'out of memory' and exits without any user assistance ... I have come across a few of these apps.

5402

Borland C++ Builder Contest / Re: SqlManager component

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 14, 2006, 09:28 AM »

Haven't been able to try it porperly yet - how do you close the 'About ... ' window in the Help menu? Once open I had to use the task manager to exit the app.

5403

Developer's Corner / Re: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 14, 2006, 09:20 AM »

LOL - I could have warned you - never use real number representations where integer use is possible !!

5404

Developer's Corner / Re: Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas - Essay #40 by Scott Berkun

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 13, 2006, 09:16 AM »

Actually I was watching Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" yesterday - seems to sum up for me most of the motivations for bright people to support stupidity - summed up in one pf two words generally - arrogance or greed!

5405

Living Room / Re: Steve ballmer sells Windows 1.0

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 13, 2006, 09:10 AM »

Actually I hadn't seen this collage/music vid. before which just about sums up Ballmer ...

http://video.google....423&q=developers

5406

Living Room / Re: ImgBurn 2 relaeased - looks excellent

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 13, 2006, 06:17 AM »

A useful tool for backing up most CD and DVD formats is ISOBuster (http://www.isobuster.com).

I can't remember but I think the basic version is free (I upgraded to Pro version ages ago so I can't remember if the free version is time limited)*.

This will copy just about anything from CD or DVD on a byte by byte basis and also recover data from bad discs or with odd formats.

Combined with ImgBurn this is a good combo.

* Edit - see http://www.isobuster.com/freeware.php for details

5407

Living Room / Re: ImgBurn 2 relaeased - looks excellent

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 12, 2006, 06:35 PM »

I think a lot of copy programs have been withdrawn from sites because of draconian copyright issues in many countries now (one of the reasons a lot of stuff was removed from www.afterdawn.com)

5408

Living Room / First Blu-ray Drive Won’t Play Blu-ray Movies !!!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 12, 2006, 09:10 AM »

http://www.dvd-recor...rg/Article2892.phtml

Mad me laugh anyway ...

5409

Living Room / ImgBurn 2 relaeased - looks excellent

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 12, 2006, 08:58 AM »

Free CD/DVD burner for ISO and video files.

The new version has build tool which allows you to build ISO images and then burn them.

It has a verify tool (something missing in so many tools) so you can check your disc is correctly recorded - and best of all its free!

See http://www.imgburn.com/

5410

Living Room / Re: Shadow Girl Video - cool

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 12, 2006, 06:44 AM »

haha, that's cool.

check this crazy prank out:
http://www.youtube.c...v=-qHiC60jCr0&NR

-kimmchii (August 12, 2006, 05:06 AM)

That is really mad (and dangerous) ...

5411

Living Room / Re: Shadow Girl Video - cool

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 12, 2006, 06:37 AM »

Hmmm how about http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=cwOD0UijXak for a horrid 'Game Show'

5412

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a good Uninstaller App

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 11, 2006, 02:44 PM »

No - it doesn't mention dates - but it does nice things like open RegEdit and jump to the relevant part for each app or jump to the installation folder. You can also trawl through 'hidden' installs.

5413

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a good Uninstaller App

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 11, 2006, 12:39 PM »

PS: You see Carol, I try to post  .

-Mentat (August 11, 2006, 12:12 PM)

LOL - well done


After a quick play I like Uninstall Tool ... useful features.

5414

Living Room / Re: Free blog hosting for members at DonationCoder - might be a good idea?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 11, 2006, 11:58 AM »

For WordPress and multiusers see http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_MU

For Drupal and multiusers see http://drupal.org/node/43816

5415

Living Room / Re: Free blog hosting for members at DonationCoder - might be a good idea?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 11, 2006, 11:10 AM »

As I understand it that is how it works - you have one central install of drupal and then different users have their own versions of config settings (and, I think, their own SQL databases) to tailor the system to what they want. Just saves everyone installing it privately.

I haven't tried it in this mode though so I am not 100% of what is required or how it is set up.

5416

Living Room / Re: Free blog hosting for members at DonationCoder - might be a good idea?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 11, 2006, 08:48 AM »

I think Drupal allows multiple user installation.

5417

Living Room / Re: Math is an Attitude

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 10, 2006, 07:01 PM »

I'm a bit worried about the limit(x-8)^-1 as x->8 being equal to infinity. I'd think the limit doesn't exist.
Think I like the student answer better than the teacher example

-tsaint (August 01, 2006, 03:17 AM)

Actually I agree with you ... infinity isn't a limit. If there are limits for y=1/(x-8) they are x=8 because x can never actually equal 8 but can approach as close as you like and y=0 as y can never equal 0. Here is a quick and dirty graph ...



Technically x=8 and y=0 are called discontinuities - not limits.

A limit is like somone walking towards a fixed point but each step covers half the distance - they will never reach their target but the target is the limit !

5418

Official Announcements / Re: Should we add graphics (and other) challenges to the self-teaching school?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 10, 2006, 06:27 PM »

Yes, I agree. Deal with gimp and other free image editing software.. Photoshop is covered by far on tons of other sites.. like thousands..

-mitzevo (August 10, 2006, 04:55 AM)

You want some GIMP tutorials ... here are over 4,000,000 (LOL)

http://www.google.co...h?q=GIMP%20tutorials

Relating to the learning section I think there are endless tutorials out there for almost everything - esp. Photoshop. We did discuss in another thread bringing together a tutorial list for PhotoShop (and other apps if people want them) but rather than just pointing to a site with tutorials collect related (and tested) tutorials in related areas of interest (eg. Touching up skin blemishes etc) which I think would be a good idea. I wouldn't mind editing such a list once my exams are over at the end of October.

If you want assignments and constructive criticism try www.lvsonline.com who offer really cheap taught courses (~$25 for the first course, includes $5 registration, and $20 for subsequent courses)  in a lot of graphics packages amongst other things.

They are friendly courses taken online and you submit your assignments online but you do get to see what other students are up to and get personal feedback from a tutor. The tutors I encountered were really good and helpful.

5419

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a wiki? Compare, compare!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 10, 2006, 05:58 AM »

Actually PMWiki is on the site ... http://www.wikimatrix.org/show/PmWiki

Strangely I couldn't see wikipedia listed ??

Edit ... 'cos I'm stupid and it is called MediaWiki (which I did know before I went senile)

Here is a comparative chart I made which includes PMWiki and MediaWiki (plus some others I had heard of) ...

5420

Developer's Corner / Re: MSDN Documentation Library (huge) now free for the first time

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 09, 2006, 07:33 PM »

can you see them saying otherwise ... if they did it would be an admission of treating the EU courts with contempt (which they probably do but would be stupid to be seen doing)

5421

Living Room / Re: Is IRC Down?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 09, 2006, 07:08 PM »

If you are in the UK efnet.demon.co.uk seems to work OK

5422

Developer's Corner / Re: MSDN Documentation Library (huge) now free for the first time

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 09, 2006, 07:07 PM »

I bet this is part of their response to the EU issue over freely available documentation (for which MS is currently being fined large amounts daily for non compliance).

5423

Site/Forum Features / Re: BB Codes documentation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 09, 2006, 07:02 PM »

Well done for putting that up - very useful - and I learned something new - to NOBBC tag !! Saves using CODE tags to be able to display the BBC tags.

By the way the standard BB Code tags referenced by SMF boards are lissted here but obviously doesn't include mouser added tags such as SPOILER and ATTACHIMG etc.

5424

General Software Discussion / Re: best tool for separating (cropping) figure from background?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 09, 2006, 06:33 PM »

As well as the magic wand tool PS also has an 'extract' tool - which is designed to make this relatively simple. The results really depend on how complex the join is between the foreground and background and how much time you are prepared to spend fine tuning your selection. Basically you mask the edge of the bit you want to cut out and then fill the remaining area to keep with the fill tool, hit extract and it does the rest. It works best where there is a big contrast between the areas.

It is in the Filters menu ... here is the dialogue:



as a comparison here is Corel Knockout 2:



Knockout has a lot more flexibility and is quicker to use, but neither method can be described as quick methods.

I can't really see how you could expect any sort of automatic batch method unless you just wanted to extract exactly the same area or it is a single block of colour. How would the software know what you want?

5425

Living Room / Re: Is IRC Down?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 09, 2006, 06:29 PM »

Seems to be working OK