Recent Posts

551

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

« Last post by Grorgy on August 21, 2007, 07:48 PM »

That one looks good app, it's a bit over the top for what I'm after for this course, but it would be great for someone really interested it writing it all up.

Thanks for your help folks, an obscure area of computing I suppose, at first the only ones i could find were old dos programs that were only written about, i couldnt even find them lol.

Cheers
George

552

General Software Discussion / Re: Avoid: Jriver Media Center, if you believe in your right of free speech

« Last post by Grorgy on August 21, 2007, 03:41 PM »

AT LEast they still have a forum, even though it may not be the best, my ISP DEcided too many nasty things were being said on their forum about them so they closed it.  unfortunately, unlike media players there is not a lot of choice in ISP where I live

553

Living Room / Re: 2007 Worst dialog nominee, spelling category

« Last post by Grorgy on August 20, 2007, 06:58 PM »

 

554

General Software Discussion / Re: Recomend an RSS Service that can add tons of feeds, filter out most items?

« Last post by Grorgy on August 20, 2007, 06:55 PM »

Now that is a great suggestion, it would make RSS actually usable.

555

Living Room / Re: 2007 Worst dialog nominee, spelling category

« Last post by Grorgy on August 20, 2007, 06:52 PM »

thats ok though ak_ theres a lot of paranoid native english speakers here to    Ok who said that!!??

556

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Grorgy on August 20, 2007, 12:35 AM »

Well, firstly what I am achieving better, I'm starting to get all the documents I have organized in one place, links to all the journal articles, scanned pages from books and so on, using categories to give them some added meaning and reusability.  I am jotting more stuff down, probably because I like playing with the program  , more than any change in habits at this stage.  Like Darwin says it can format a whole document built up from the various materials, and by the way, the materials all have a set type, but then you name each item and can give it a category or categories and can link it with a project you are doing, and once built the document can be exported to word or any other RTF editor, though it works with words templates.  I haven't figured out how best to do this part yet, as my documents are only quite short essays, and don't need lots of heading (or any).  So that fits in what i can do better when i get it sorted.

I've just started using endnote, I dont really need it but now seems like a good time to learn how as i want to continue onto higher degrees in time when it looks almost essential, or something like it, but hey, i get it free  , so I haven't looked into exporting or importing endnote references yet.

Seems to me that you guys have worked out a system that works, and while I dont know how far through you are it would seem to be to be counterproductive to change to ideamason , though if you were just starting, or looking at just using it for smaller items or other work then I would recommend giving it another look.

I use evernote for the ephemera of the web, so its got lots of junk in it, stuff i should really get rid of, but its all in categories to and if I need something I can have a look there, and at that point decide to move it to ideamason and have it available more permanently (I've had evernote go silly on me and I've lost its contents a couple of times, though not recently, probably getting better at using it)

What I want to do, is have the references in endnote and Ideamason, figure out how to get the documents formatted how i want them so they can easily be exported to word, have evernote as the main place for new snippets and get the ones of value into ideamason.  However, I'm not there yet.

557

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Grorgy on August 18, 2007, 05:30 PM »

Well, yes, I do run into difficulties with it, I find it complex and not very intuitive, and because of this I have been using it mainly as an outliner, note taker, a place to add suggested books movies,  tv shows of interest, a journal and that sort of thing.  The help is quite detailed but lacks pictures and the website has some videos which are great, but I haven't worked out how I can skip around in the video to what i want to see, or quickly rewind to the bit i want to see again, so i have had to kill the video and start again, given they run up to 10 minutes this can get tedious to say the least lol.     

Every time I use it though I'm going through different sections of it to learn more about it and its getting easier to use and more usefu with each use, (just as well).  I'm using it a fair bit, but not nearly at the potential it has at this stage. 

Darwin s point about giving yourself time to learn it, is in my case anyway, very valid, of course some people may just pick it up no trouble at all, unfortunately i'm not one of them.  But the IdeaMason website does say its complex and has a steep learning curve, so i was certainly forewarned.  But each day brings new discoveries for me in it and so long as i don’t get to frustrated and give up, the help is all there and in the end i get what i want.

I would not recommend starting to use it i for a time critical task though.  In my opinion it is best to ease your way into it, and I will start using it to write up my notes from lectures and so on as my next step, before starting to write something that needs to be submitted on a set date.

So overall:
I like it but:
* Its complex with a steep learning curve
* Help resources are not always that friendly to use, but they do exist and are comprehensive as far as i can tell so far.

Think that’s about it, I'll go get another cup of coffee and think about it some more 

558

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

« Last post by Grorgy on August 18, 2007, 02:46 AM »

Thanks for those Darwin, the family tree maker looks good if family histories is what you are doing, brothers keeper had no pics  so i'll let the folk at the university have a look if they want to, I've since discovered tho, after more careful reading of the genopro one that they have an academic program allowing free use so as a purchasing option it has to be right at the top lol

559

General Software Discussion / Re: Jeff Atwood's School of Blog Writing, Episode 999

« Last post by Grorgy on August 18, 2007, 02:41 AM »

i read it as well, and I agreed particularly with the bit about the name and who/what you are, even if it’s a good read, or a fun rant it loses credibility for me if the writer wont say a bit about themselves

560

General Software Discussion / Re: Organizing Reviews

« Last post by Grorgy on August 18, 2007, 02:20 AM »

I like both sorts of reviews.  The detailed review of certain types of applications that renegade is after are excellent but, and it’s a big but, if the reviews posted weres limited to those that were extensive, then the number of reviews would decline significantly, and the chance of anyone who isnt technically minded to write one almost disappears.  If im looking for something or just looking then being able to get a list together of possibles and probables from people who just like their latest purchase/find whatever and the comments that then flow and other programs that are in that category and relative merits is both entertaining and informative and open for quick updates and new players appearing on the scene.    tooo many words i'll stop now   

But just to finish lets have both 

561

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

« Last post by Grorgy on August 17, 2007, 02:35 PM »

works now (here anyway)

562

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

« Last post by Grorgy on August 17, 2007, 03:21 AM »

Thanks Darwin, this one looked good to me to, but i'm no expert in the area (or any area really  )  as i was driving home i thought i had the wrong subject area to, it was anthropology i was thinking of but somehow archaeology got written, hope my assignments end up with the right words in them 

563

General Software Discussion / Kinship diagrams (and genealogy)

« Last post by Grorgy on August 16, 2007, 11:20 PM »

I was wondering if anyone has any experience or knowledge of kinship programs.

The reason I ask is I found genepro2007 http://www.genopro.c...amily-tree-software/ which did what i needed it to do for a specific task (a simple family kinship diagram in this instance).  Now after talking with the lecturer of the course involved the university may be interested in buying a licence and it would be good to have other options for them to look at, as i imagine that it would be useful in sociology, archeology and other subject areas.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers
George

564

Living Room / Re: mouse messed up, please help

« Last post by Grorgy on August 16, 2007, 09:09 PM »

I must just be unlucky or something, Ive never had any real success with them at all, but given they are still in business they must work well for a lot of people, maybe if you change logitech and grorgy to numbers you end up with 666 or something 

565

DcUpdater / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DcUpdater - 1.19.01 - Aug 5, 2007

« Last post by Grorgy on August 16, 2007, 09:06 PM »

Now it's a no-brainer for us to update DC programs. Thmbsup Thmbsup Thmbsup

I agree, its so good to not have to scurry all over the place to find the needed updates, I hope many people take advantage of this from me to

566

Living Room / Re: mouse messed up, please help

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

hehehehe will do Darwin (I  the Pythons)

567

Living Room / Re: mouse messed up, please help

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

My experience with logitech leads me to believe its just another case of shoddy workmanship, I've never bought anything of their's that actually worked properly, apart from a headset, but i'm expecting it will break any moment    Trouble is i forget why I don't buy them and well now i have a desk microphone and a webcam (and a mouse which used to work but was the worst mouse i ever had, don't know who's hand it was designed for but i bet it wasn’t human) neither of which work 

Ahhh now I've written it maybe i'll remember 

568

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

« Last post by Grorgy on August 16, 2007, 01:05 AM »

It wont help if the update itself is the thing causing the problem, but it gets rid of MS errors, which seem abundant.

569

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

« Last post by Grorgy on August 16, 2007, 12:29 AM »

I finally had enough of windows update, for whatever reasons it would keep crashing randomly, gone to windizupdate (http://windowsupdate.62nds.com/) and so far all is working fine, and now i dont have to go to IE for anything, what a pleasant change

570

General Software Discussion / Re: Novell Groupwise is such a lame program

« Last post by Grorgy on August 14, 2007, 10:23 AM »

They probably work to a budget as well, which usually means that its way cheaper to stick with one brand especially if you have a large user base, volume discounts and all.  Not to mention additional staff training and so on, not all users are going to be all that computer literate, the skills will also be transferable throughout the organization reducing costs further

571

Developer's Corner / Re: Best Language for Employability?

« Last post by Grorgy on August 14, 2007, 04:40 AM »

A quote from a manager/supervisor type in a development i was involved in once
'I don’t care if it works or not, I want it on time and on budget' so depending as to how prevalent that view is, it may not matter a lot what you know 

572

General Software Discussion / Re: Inventory software to keep track of my stuff?

« Last post by Grorgy on August 12, 2007, 10:00 PM »

Tidiness leads to ruin, if you have a database you will need to make sure its up to date, then make sure things always go back where the database says they are, or update the database    good luck

573

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you know a good image viewer with CMYK support ?

« Last post by Grorgy on August 12, 2007, 07:12 AM »

now that interesting, i dowloaded it with ie7 as well and got the jpg instead of the png and the right colours show up in microsoft office picture manager and windows picture and fax viewer

574

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you know a good image viewer with CMYK support ?

« Last post by Grorgy on August 11, 2007, 06:55 PM »

A Quote from the lilyview website, maybe its a photoshop feature?

Photoshop uses a own color management system and includes some additional tags to any written TIFF. These tags are private, registered to Adobe and not well documented. So any other application that tries to read those TIFF's has a problem in interpreting the colors correctly (or lets say in the same way Photoshop does).
But also Photoshop has a problem (and this is not only my private oppinion, for more information you may have a look at Google Groups Graphics because I think Photoshop does wheight the "green" to much and the "blue" to less.
Also some pictures from the "SGI Tiff Test Suite" and CMYK images created by other image processing applications do definitely look "wrong" when loaded into Photoshop.

575

General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use

« Last post by Grorgy on August 11, 2007, 06:02 PM »

looking at these programs it seems to me you need to change the question a bit.  I find it unlikely that anyone, except perhaps mouser, actually uses FARR for more than a few seconds at a time, yeah sure its a convenient way to launch a program but wouldn't what's launched be of more interest?  Maybe if you had a few categories, Favourite launcher, file/directory explorer, browser, other utilities, and most used program apart from those categories.  Just a thought.