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5801

Mini-Reviews by Members / Automatic Wallpaer Changer (AWC) v3.0.1

« Last post by superboyac on November 16, 2006, 12:55 PM »

Basic Info

App Name	Automatic Wallpaper Changer
App URL	http://awc.smurphy.co.uk/
App Version Reviewed	3.0.1
Test System Specs	Not important
Supported OSes	Only Windows, from what I could tell.
Support Methods	Forum
Upgrade Policy	Freeware (donationware)

Intro:

Automatic Wallpaper Changer (AWC) does just what its name says.  I did a nice, long search for wallpaper changers that were simle and lightweight, and finally, this was the only program I found.  There were a lot of shareware stuff that did wallpaper management along with a slew of other unnecessary functions (personally speaking, that is).  I even tried out our very own DC nugget "Temporality Screens", but that's a specific software for something a little different.  Anyway, I just thought this was a nice simple application for sticking in a bunch of pictures, and having it alternate through them for your wallpaper.


Who is this app designed for:

This is for people who have very simple wallpaper needs.  Nothing too complicated can be done with this.  It's also for people who want something extremely light on resources and very minimalist.


The Good


Lightweight, minimalist, simple, does the job.


The needs improvement section


Nothing really wrong with it.  There's the option to replace the tray icon with a custom icon, but it seems to screw up the custom icon if it's more than 8-bit or something.  Also, it only reads pictures from one directory, so it's kind of limited in that way.  And you can't select individual images to include...it's just one specific directory (but subfolders can be included).


Why I think you should use this product


I think you should use this product if you are depressed about your current desktop.


How does it compare to similar apps

This is probably really simple compared to other programs.  Someone here reviewed Wallpaper Master which is much more powerful than this and probably better overall.  I just thought I'd throw this option out there also, since it's kind of hard to find this software on the internet with a simple search.


Conclusions

Nice, simple software.  What else can I say?  It just does the job.

5802

Living Room / Re: What's better: modern built-in motherboard sound chip or old sound card?

« Last post by superboyac on November 12, 2006, 10:19 PM »

All the above is true, but there's a more important--theoretical--reason why a cheap first-order RC filter is used, and that has to do with distortion.  Any analog filer is a "causal filter" such that it can't know the future.  In contrast, digital FIR filters can be non-causal such that the value of the points are known before time zero and after time zero.  If we balance the filter coefficients across time zero, then we have a "zero-phase" filter across all frequencies.

Having zero-phase delay across all frequencies creates a distortionless filter for our application, so we really favor digital filtering over analog filtering when it's feasible.

For audio play back, the strategy is to oversample the signal by x4 (or better) using a first-ordered anti-aliasing analog filter (to minimize phase distortion) at ultrasonic frequencies, either 45K or 90KHz.  Then we run it through a zero-phase digital filter to achieve a "perfect" cut-off at whatever frequency we want, say 45/2 KHz.

Remember, for a non-causal filter, the cutoff can be perfectly sharp; whereas, for a causal filter (which includes any analog filter), there will always be a response roll off.  The higher the order, the sharper the roll off and phase delay (leading to more distortion).  So our cheap first-order RC filter produces less ultrasonic distortion than a higher ordered analog one.  But the assumption is standard audio equipment won't reproduce those ultrasonic frequencies (say at 90KHz) anyway.

I should add my area is in scientific instrumentation design, not sound card design.  Frankly, I couldn't tell you whether the PC sound chips are being design right or not.  But it wouldn't cost anymore to design them with x4 oversampling in mind and zero-phase digital filtering at their outputs.  I do know that some audio component CD players employ x4 and x8 oversampling and digital comb filtering, but I really can't speak for the sound-chip PC world.  Perhaps someone else knows for sure or has a link to a sound-chip spec sheet.

-superticker (November 12, 2006, 02:15 AM)

yeah.......what he said.

5803

General Software Discussion / Re: Flash and other stuff not working with firefox anymore, please help?

« Last post by superboyac on November 12, 2006, 01:14 AM »

tinyvillager, ah!  I didn't see your post when I checked back on this thread, it might have saved me some time.

dk70, I did what you said and it worked, thank you!  I also learned about two useful plugins I didn't know about, FEBE and CLEO.  THanks again, I'll try tinyvillager's solution first next time, I think it might have actually done the trick.

5804

General Software Discussion / Flash and other stuff not working with firefox anymore, please help?

« Last post by superboyac on November 11, 2006, 10:14 PM »

I recently tried messing around with some security applications, and now I've realized that flash doesn't work in my firefox browser (2.0) and also the DC forum looks all messed up.  I don't know what to do, I uninstalled the applications that I was trying out, but it didn't help.  Here are the programs I tried out the last couple of days:
--Outpost Firewall
--Spy Sweeper

I don't know what I did, but I uninstalled both of them.  Any help is appreciated.  Thanks! The screenshot shows what is happening.

5805

Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?

« Last post by superboyac on November 09, 2006, 02:54 AM »

Ugh, I tried using Outpost again.  What a painful experience.  I don't know what it is, maybe it's interaction with Kaspersky or something, even though I read about how to make them coexist together properly.  Every time I try to use Outpost, it results in nothing but problems...slow internet, webpages not displaying, computer slowing down, computer working too hard, antivirus working too hard.  Geez.  I give up, I don't need this, do I?

Years ago, i used Zone Alarm and even though I got rid of it for the bloat, it's actual firewall functions never gave me any problems.  I'd train it a little in the beginning and that was it.  But then I tried Outpost because it was supposed to be better and lightweight, but it was a headache.  As I got better with computers, I keep trying it again like every year it seems like, and no luck.  I don't even think I need a firewall.

5806

What's the Best? / Re: Open source vector graphics software?

« Last post by superboyac on November 08, 2006, 09:19 AM »

Good options, thanks!

5807

Living Room / Re: Best way to protect hard drive that is only used for backup?

« Last post by superboyac on November 08, 2006, 09:17 AM »

ooo, sugar, that doesn't sound good!

5808

What's the Best? / Open source vector graphics software?

« Last post by superboyac on November 07, 2006, 05:52 PM »

What's the de facto open source vector graphics software?  Fill in the following analogy:

The Gimp : Photoshop

(blank) : Illustrator


Just thought I'd make it fun.
I came across something called Inkscape:
http://www.inkscape....php?css=css/base.css

Is that what I'm looking for or is there something better/more popular?

Thanks.

5809

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by superboyac on November 07, 2006, 11:00 AM »

Well, if you use Windows Firewall, that should hopefully protect you against worms etc. - which, with a decent NAT router setup, would only happen if somebody on your LAN got infected. Dunno if there's any remote exploits for the windows firewall, oh well smiley

Actually, I don't even use Windows Firewall.  Am I crazy?

5810

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by superboyac on November 07, 2006, 09:40 AM »

If you plan on using IRC, forget Norton, it will block you from IRC for no good reason whenever it pleases.

-app103 (November 07, 2006, 12:56 AM)

And IIRC (grin) it was also Norton that would BSOD if anybody on IRC wrote some special command (from a list of commands that Norton was monitoring because they were used by zombie bots).

Personally I've stopped using software firewalls; I depend on my NAT'ing router to keep incoming traffic away, and Kaspersky to keep malware from running. Of course I can't detect "phone home" in regular software that way, but oh well.

-f0dder (November 07, 2006, 09:18 AM)

I do exactly the same.  Personally speaking, I have never used a software firewall that wasn't more of a nuisance for me than anything else.  My computer habits are good enough where a good antivirus program and a few spyware programs is good enough for me.  I don't know if my computer is vulnerable to attacks or anything, I hope not.

5811

Living Room / Re: What's better: modern built-in motherboard sound chip or old sound card?

« Last post by superboyac on November 06, 2006, 06:06 PM »

In recent years, I've always noticed that the built-in motherboard sound is pretty good.  I'm a musician, so I have different needs, namely, ASIO support (for those that are familiar).  I actually have two pci soundcards on my computer, the turtle beach for regular stuff, and the ASIO one for pro-level musician stuff.  What I like about this setup is that I can control the volume from my mixer rack separately...so mp3's and internet audio won't affect the settings on my keyboard playback sounds.  Actually, I think that with some better equipment, you can control all volumes with a single soundcard, but I'm not that sophisticated.

So, to answer your question, the motherboard is probably fine.

PS  Remember back in the day (early 90's) when there was a huge difference between onboard sounds and sound blaster sound?  My parents never let me get a soundcard, but a family friend snuck one to me once...and I was blown away by the difference, it was crazy!  The kids these days, they don't appreciate what they have.  sigh.

5812

Best E-mail Client / Re: That statistic counting thing when you start The Bat!

« Last post by superboyac on November 06, 2006, 04:14 PM »

You don't notice any delay at all?  In my case, there's at least a few seconds where I can see the totals being calculated from the top mailbox on down.  I remember when I had the mailboxes encrypted at first, the delay was pretty long, then I took off the encryption and it was much faster, but it's still there.  It's at least 5 seconds.  I don't know how many messages I have, I can go check tonight.  Maybe it's just my 5 year old computer.

5813

Best E-mail Client / That statistic counting thing when you start The Bat!

« Last post by superboyac on November 06, 2006, 10:35 AM »

You know how whenever you start the Bat, all the mailboxes start counting all the messages in the box and display it on the right?  I was just wondering, what happens when my mailboxes get huge?  I already have 10 years worth of emails in the Bat, but what happens as the volume gets bigger?  Is it going to take longer and longer to open?  Why does it have to recount each box again every time I open the program?  I remember that Pegasus also displayed the count next to its mailboxes, but it didn't have to recount every time it opened like the Bat, and starting the program was really fast.

And I don't really want to archive emails, I like having them all there.  Actually, i don't even know how to archive in the Bat, but that's another question.

5814

Finished Programs / Re: DONE - IDEA: change wallpaper at specific time - not timed intervals.

« Last post by superboyac on November 03, 2006, 05:26 PM »

Hi everyone, I was just checking this fine utility, and I can't figure out how to use it.  The help dialog doesn't have anything in it, I don't know how to make these thm files, and even if I could understand how to write the code posted in this thread, I don't know where to put the code.  Also, there's some mention of a temporalityscreens.ini file which I don't know where it is.  I should have been a CS major...

5815

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Time delay setting for rollout/in of autohiding toolbar?

« Last post by superboyac on November 03, 2006, 04:46 PM »

Ok, cool, I'm glad it's not just me and that you're aware of it.  As for having it visible always, I'm with you there for my personal computer, but at work, I'm working with AutoCAD and I'm very stingy with my space--I even turn off the scrollbars in AutoCAD to get those few pixels back.

One other feature I was thinking of suggesting is this:
Since, like you, I kind of like having the toolbar always visible, I was initially inclined to have it in the floating window mode, but it was too easy to move and resize it, etc.  Would it be possible to "lock" the window location and size of the toolbar?  Maybe there is already software that already exists that does this for any window, I'll check it out.  Maybe it's a good idea for a coding snack!

PS  I just found out about the linking feature, love it!  That's a good idea for notetaking programs also, Surfulater does it...so does Mybase...okay, I'm off-topic.

5816

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone know a good free folder locking program?

« Last post by superboyac on November 03, 2006, 04:40 PM »

Thanx Josh.

Hey Superboyac.

I don't know if Hide Folders is of any interest to you.  http://www.fspro.net/

-skywalka (July 24, 2006, 11:15 AM)

Skywalka, I know you responded months ago, but I just saw this response.  Yes, it is exactly what I was thinking of, thank you for the suggestion.  They even have a free (but limited) version of the software.

5817

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Time delay setting for rollout/in of autohiding toolbar?

« Last post by superboyac on November 03, 2006, 01:52 PM »

OK, I've almost finished setting up my toolbar, it's great!  I'll attach a screenshot later, although it's nothing special.  I've realized that I need to find some cool icons somewhere.

Back to this docking issue, I don't like having the toolbar docked because it takes away screenspace.  However, when I do the hiding or sliding docked bar, it's response is somewhat sluggish, and for someone as impatient as me, I found it a little frustrating.  On several occasions, when my mouse went to the edge of the screen to make the toolbar appear, nothing happened...so I would have to click on an empty part of the desktop first and then move the mouse back to the edge to appear.  So, the other option is the have the toolbar in it's floating window mode, which I like, but I don't like that it get's hidden behind other windows, and I also don't want that big window to always be on top either.  (As you can tell, I'm hard to please!).  So, the last option is to put it in the system tray, which I don't like because it's too small in there.

Therefore, overall I prefer the hiding dockbar, but it has to react instantaneously as the mouse goes over and leaves the edge (see, just now, I made the toolbar appear, I clicked back into this message to finish typing, and the toolbar is still visible...it should immediately go hide).  Does anyone else experience this?

5818

LaunchBar Commander / Time delay setting for rollout/in of autohiding toolbar?

« Last post by superboyac on November 02, 2006, 04:34 PM »

Mouser, I finally got to play with this program after almost a year of putting it off (tests and other stuff).

So, I'm configuring the program just the way I like it, and I'll post more thoughts about it later, but right now, the most immediate question I have is about the time delay of the autohiding docbars.  My pet peeve with autohiding/sliding menus is that I want them to appear immediately when my mouse goes over it AND disappear immediately when my mouse leaves.  In Windows' TweakUI, there is a place where you can set this behavior delay to 0, so everything is instant.  Is there any setting for something like that for LaunchBar?  If not, will it be implemented in the future?  Some programs, like AutoCAD, sometimes include an ini setting for this.

OK, that's it for now.  Great program, I'm surprised I lasted this long without it.

5819

Living Room / Re: Best way to protect hard drive that is only used for backup?

« Last post by superboyac on November 02, 2006, 03:58 PM »

Yes, if the controller and drive are hotswap capable, it should be good.

What backup software are you using? For example Acronis True Image allows you to create a hidden partition that is only available to the Acronis software. (Technically it is available, but for purposes of this discussion or less than advanced users you can consider it so.)

-tinjaw (November 02, 2006, 01:52 PM)

Tinjaw, I'm not going to use backup (imaging) software more so than synchronization software.  From a couple of threads in DC forums, I think I'll go with a program called DirSync.  The reason why I want to use synchronization instead of imaging is because I want to be able to use the files on a standalone basis directly from the hard drive.  Furthermore, the files I'm backing are not OS or program, but things like documents, individual program settings, mp3's, etc.  Personally, I don't really care if my OS or programs crash, what I care about are the saved files and stuff.  I can always reinstall programs and OS.

I don't want to get too off-topic, but I've started a few other threads including this one about my backup issues.  Here are the collected threads...I probably should combine all the threads if possible:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1999.0
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3937.0
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3320.0
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=6002.0

5820

Living Room / Re: Best way to protect hard drive that is only used for backup?

« Last post by superboyac on November 02, 2006, 10:32 AM »

If I can't hotswap, it won't be that big of a deal.  I'll just turn my computer off before switching drives, no biggie.  If anyone can recommend a good SATA controller, that would be great.  First, let me mention that I can't use these new PCI Express slots since my motherboard is an old MSI from 2001.  If the controller and drive (Seagate 7200.10 line) are hotswap capable, I should be good, right?

5821

Living Room / Re: Best way to protect hard drive that is only used for backup?

« Last post by superboyac on November 01, 2006, 05:29 PM »

Good to hear, mouser, thanks.  To be honest, knowing myself, I don't think I'll ever have the problem of accidentally erasing or formatting large quantities of files.  But I wouldn't mind being able to somehow "lock" the drive except for the times when I backup.  No big deal though, I'm not too worried.

As far as swapping, I'm going to use SATA drives, so I've learned that you can just hot swap them, which is cool!

You know, if there is any interest, I may write a short article of the details of my backup solution once I finish everything.  It's nothing fancy, but there might be some people who would like to read it.  I'll include pictures also.  I know I've started 2 or 3 threads that are related to my quest for the perfect backup solution.

5822

Living Room / Best way to protect hard drive that is only used for backup?

« Last post by superboyac on November 01, 2006, 10:30 AM »

I just had a thought...if I have multiple hard drives in my computer, and one of them is used only for weekly backups.  What is the best way to protect this drive from being modified except for the purposes of backing up?  I don't want to accidentally add or delete anything from the drive, or get confused and think this is one of the other drives and accidentally do something.  I wouldn't even mind if I couldn't even see the drive in my list, except for when I was backing up stuff.

PS This might be kind of an unrelated question, but will I run into any problems if I use the same "bay" for 2 different hard drives when backing up?  Like if I swap the drives once a month?  Will I confuse the computer as to which drive is occupying that space?  Or does it not matter at all?

5823

Living Room / Re: Recommendations for good external hard drive solutions?

« Last post by superboyac on November 01, 2006, 10:10 AM »

Thanks cranio, the value of the Seagate drives is really why I'm getting it, and I like their 5-year warranty.  I know Carol here has a slight problem with Seagate's temperature, but I haven't had any problems with Seagate so far, or Western Digital.  I don't really need anything really special for what I'm doing, but that 7200.10 line seems to have good value overall.  And I heard there will be some good sales after Thanksgiving on the 500GB drives.

5824

ProcessTamer / Re: Is Cacheman similar to Process Tamer?

« Last post by superboyac on October 31, 2006, 03:09 PM »

Thanks Darwin, that's good information to know.

5825

Living Room / Re: Recommendations for good external hard drive solutions?

« Last post by superboyac on October 31, 2006, 01:51 PM »

OK, I think I've finally settled on my backup solution.  Here are the details:

My current tower has four 5.25" bays, all of which are being used in the following order:
--main hard drive in special fixed cooling enclosure
--2nd hard drive in a removeable bay/tray enclosure
--DVD player
--DVD recorder
(I have two DVD drives because I didn't have a burner when I built the computer in 2001)

So, here is what I will have to buy:
--two SATA 500GB hard drives (I think I prefer Seagate's new 7200.10 line)
--The new Snap-In mobile rack from Addonics
http://www.addonics...._rack/aesnapmrsa.asp

--I probably need some kind of SATA PCI card or something since my computer doesn't support SATA at this time.

The reason why I like Addonic's snap in rack is because I can just slide the bare drive in and out.  One of the new drives will be kept in there for the most part and backup the other two main drives.  Then, once a month, I will bring the other new drive (from some offsite location) and switch the drives in the rack and backup the other two drives again.  I like that I can just use the bare drive.  Since I have no more available 5.25" racks, I will remove the DVD player, which I don't need anyway.

For backing up, I will actually use some kind of synchronization software like DirSync.  The reason why I do this instead of imaging is because I actually want the files useable on a standalone basis on the drive.  There are no program files being backed up, just program settings, music, documents, etc.  I don't really care if my OS crashes or programs crash since I can just reinstall them.

So that's my solution for now.  I like it, but it's also somewhat temporary.  One day, I will build a new computer (mine is 5 years old already), and I will have something more sophisticated, like an external enclosure with multiple bays or something.  But since I'm not a gamer or graphics person, I think this computer can last me a couple of more years, until I can afford a newer system.

Any thoughts are appreciated, especially if you see something very wrong with my solution.