Recent Posts

5876

Note Taking Software / Re: Preview Version of SuperboyAC's Notetaking Software Roundup Now Onlline

« Last post by superboyac on September 11, 2006, 05:55 PM »

nudone, I've just messing around a little with TexNotes, and I'm impressed.  I can't truly say at this point that it offers anything particularly unique, but I will say that it is a very very nice program.  Of the Big Three, it is most similar to Mybase, but it seems to be a much easier to understand interface and overall has a nicer feel to it.  I will definitely include in my next roundup and probably feature it a little bit, because it is very nicely done.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What to you think of RealPlayer?

« Last post by superboyac on September 08, 2006, 09:53 AM »

The actual realmedia format may be good, but its implementation was horrible, and that's what turned me off.  If I understood correctly, this question was about the Realplayer software, not the format itself.  I've always hated the software and probably always will.  Back in the 90's, I was able to tame the software to turn most of it's bloat off and not allow to take over all of my file extensions.  But now, fortunately, realmedia doesn't have a monopoly on streaming software anymore, as more and more websites are using wmv and quicktime also (not that quicktime is any good).  Oh and flash is being used more now also.  So, now that I don't need realplayer anymore, I don't worry about it.  I have realplayer alternative for emergencies, which I haven't used for at least a couple of years.  Sorry mouser, I know you like the format, but I say good riddance.

My universally most hated pieces of software (in no particular order):
Realplayer, Quicktime, AOL, Kazaa (is it even around anymore).

5878

Note Taking Software / Re: Preview Version of SuperboyAC's Notetaking Software Roundup Now Onlline

« Last post by superboyac on September 07, 2006, 12:12 PM »

btw, I dont see AceText any where.. lol oh well it's probably in a catagory of it's own under text-only or some thing 

-mitzevo (September 07, 2006, 02:13 AM)

Well, Acetext seems to be more of a clipboard manager with some extra features than a notetaker.  But it could definitely function like a notetaker if you wanted it too.

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Note Taking Software / Re: Preview Version of SuperboyAC's Notetaking Software Roundup Now Onlline

« Last post by superboyac on September 06, 2006, 12:11 PM »

Thanks for all the kind words and everything, I just realized there were comments here!

message to superboyac - what happened to TexNotes (Pro) http://www.gemx.com/texnotes.php

-nudone (September 05, 2006, 03:28 AM)

Oh!  I missed it, sorry.  I will have to add it to the second roundup that I do.  I'd add it to the current one, but I won't have the time for a couple of months.

Might be nice to include all of the programs that are in the first table in the feature table too, and not just the big 3. Maybe list the big 3 first and then the rest, and make the big 3 a dif color than the rest to make them stand out.

-app103 (September 05, 2006, 03:32 AM)

True, I wanted to include more programs in the feature matrix.  That might also be something I'll expand in the next roundup I do.  The problem is that I'd have to become more familiar with the other software to be able to grasp the more detailed features.  I use Evernote, Surfulater, and Mybase a lot so I was familiar enough to easily make that matrix.

BTW, what happened to oneNote? It's the one I use right now and I have seen several people defending it in the long thread... I think it's a major player that shouldn't be ignored. The outline features are outstanding. I'm talking about the 2003 version, the 2007 one seems to be much improved (I cannot say).

-urlwolf (September 05, 2006, 04:51 AM)

Oh man!  I missed OneNote too!  I remember in the beginning of the thread, I wasn't too keen on OneNote.  However, I think that recently (after I had already finished this roundup) discussions increased about OneNote, and the next roundup will include it as a prominent player for sure.

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on August 23, 2006, 01:22 PM »

With regard to EverNote - I gave it a try as I was looking for something that could take all my varied odds and ends and then be searchable. I don't really care for "trees" and "hierachies".
My question is this - do hyperlinks go inactive in EverNote? They certainly did for me any time I copied one in.

-Clive (August 23, 2006, 02:28 AM)

No, the hyperlinks are still active, but you have to double-click on them to open up the site.  I know, most people are used to single-clicking with the cursor changing to a "hand" when it passes over the link.  Surfulater behaves like this, and so does Mybase, and probably most other programs.  I actually prefer Evernote's double-clicking ways because it feels more like a text editor for even the hyperlinks and prevents accidental clicking on the links.

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on August 21, 2006, 11:49 AM »

kfitting:  good point about the tagging in MyInfo.  I noticed the same thing about that and thought it was really cool.  In fact, in the official roundup that I just finished (hopefully, it will get posted this month sometime), I put in a small mention of MyInfo's tagging system, because it was unique and useful.

5882

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: What is the Great DonationCoder.com GTD Experiment of 2006?

« Last post by superboyac on August 17, 2006, 01:20 PM »

Count me in, I think I already use some GTD techniques, but this will make it official.

5883

General Software Discussion / Re: podcast recording application? (dictation?)

« Last post by superboyac on August 17, 2006, 01:17 PM »

I don't want to be one of those people who don't answer your question, but I have a feeling that's where my response will go 

I don't think there's a shortcut around doing a podcast.  I mean, a podcast is just recorded audio.  You need an application that can record audio and edit it.  How much editing power you need depends on you.  That's really it.

For example, I record my part of the DC podcasts on my minidisc recorder.  Then, if I don't do anything else, I'm done.  I can just upload my wav or mp3 file.  But since I like to have my music going in the background, I need a program that can layer audio files and tweak it a little (fade-in, fade-out, volume control, etc.).  Since I am familiar with Cubase, I just use that for it.  Maybe other wav editing programs can do it also, like Wavelab or Sound Forge, but I don't know how they handle multiple tracks.


I'm sure Goldwave is good enough for most purposes, but it doesn't have nearly the power and control of Cubase or more professional audio editing packages.  I know there are also a couple of freeware apps like CUbase, but I forgot their names. 

It sounds like you're looking for a program that not only records, but also has some fancy playback/authoring features.  I don't know of anything like this, but a package like Cubase allows you to do it, but perhaps not in the exact way you described.  In Cubase, you can record a whole bunch of tracks with multiple segments in each track.  You can move each audio segment around with the mouse...it's pretty flexible.  It's all one file, but each part can be extracted, or the whole processed version can also be extracted as a mixdown.

Like I said, I don't think there's a good shortcut.

5884

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast #4 Submission Time!

« Last post by superboyac on August 14, 2006, 04:26 PM »

I sent in a new song this weekend, I'm not sure if you guys recieved it.  if not, please let me know.

5885

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast #4 Submission Time!

« Last post by superboyac on August 08, 2006, 09:53 AM »

Thanks Z, I guess I can't back down now!  Now I have to come up with material...

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on August 07, 2006, 01:01 PM »

Hi everyone, while I enjoy discussions about the definition of bloatware, I don't think this thread is the place for it.  Please keep in mind that this thread is already extremely long and we want to be careful to not veer off-topic if we don't have to.

Thanks!
(remember, it's a thread on "notetaking software")

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Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Very simple timeclock utility

« Last post by superboyac on August 07, 2006, 12:41 PM »

Thanks doublebogey, that works pretty well.  It keeps track of everything happening.  I would rather have it just keep track of when I arrive or go to break instead of every little thing I'm doing on my computer.

Actually, I just found a program called Work Time Recorder, that seems to do what I'm asking, although it's not perfect.

To be honest, I don't even really want to keep track of my time anymore...maybe I was just a little hot about an issue last week.  I have too many other things to be doing besides worrying about my time also.  If anyone is going to dispute my work ethic, let him bring the evidence.

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Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Very simple timeclock utility

« Last post by superboyac on August 04, 2006, 01:43 AM »

Thanks mouser, if it's easy enough for the class, that would be great.  I'll be selfish and tell you my needs for the program.  Of course, if anyone want s to add additional features, you're more than welcome:

--don't worry about any security features, as far as fake data and stuff.  It's pretty much the honor system.  Besides, I want to be able to manually edit the times in case I forget to login one time or something.  That's why I want there to be a button that logs the time OR you can just manually type it in.

--All the events should have a start time and a stop time.  And you should be able to have multiple events started at the same time.  I found a freeware program out there that would automatically stop another event when you started another one.  So it could only do one at a time.  But just because I go on break doesn't mean I'm checking out of work for good.  All events are independant of each other.

--in the reports or the export feature, I'd like the rows to be organized by day, and the columns by the start/stop time of the events.  All the events for that day should appear on the same row, even if some didn't happen (at least have a placeholder).

Anyway, that's all I can think of.  It's cool if no one wants to do it, I kind of posted this in the heat of the moment.

PS. mouser, could you tell me the names of some of the programs you know of (even if it's not free) that can do this?

5889

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Very simple timeclock utility

« Last post by superboyac on August 04, 2006, 12:29 AM »

I don't want to be too pushy, but if someone was able to make this thing, it would be greatly appreciated.  There is some unfair persecution going on at our work right now, and I want to secretly have some hard evidence on file in case some unfortunate circumstances arise.

Thanks again.

5890

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Very simple timeclock utility

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2006, 06:37 PM »

I've been searching for almost 2 hours, but I can't find anything.  Here is the idea, it seems simple, but I don't know if it really is.  Here is my visualization of it:

--The main window is just a list or grid of events I create, like "arrived at work", "went to lunch", "came back from lunch".

--Next to each event would be a time entry field with a button next to it.  If you click the button, it will automatically fill the time with the current time.  Or else, you can type the time in manually.

--Each day's log should be stored in some kind of database.  And there should be an option somewhere to export some date range of the database as a .csv, or tab-deliimited file, or something universal like that.

If anyone can do it, much thanks!

5891

General Software Discussion / Simple Timeclock software (any recommendations?)

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2006, 03:57 PM »

Can anyone recommend a light, simple, easy to use punch-in punch-out timeclock software?  Here's what I need it to do:

--be very lightweight!
--I set multiple time "categories" like morning arrival, morning break, afternoon break, leaving time.
--For each day, I just check when I leave and when I come back for the appropriate category
--I can view and print a summary of whatever timeframe I desire when I need to.

This would be very helpful, as some accountability issues are arising here at work lately, and I don't want anyone making BS up about what we're doing.  We need hard numbers.

Thanks.

PS.  perhaps someone can do a coding snack of it, if a good one doesn't exist? 

5892

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast #4 Submission Time!

« Last post by superboyac on August 02, 2006, 06:35 PM »

That's great guys, what a big task to take over.  I'll try to make sure I do my share and keep my portion coming, maybe with some extra music.  Sorry about missing last month, it was a rough couple of weeks for a while, but I'm back on track now.

5893

Best E-mail Client / Re: The Bat! - annoying word wrap

« Last post by superboyac on August 01, 2006, 03:27 PM »

On a similar, but perhaps unrelated issue:

Initially, I thought the MicroEd editor in the Bat was cool, but I find it being more of a nuisance than not since I've switched over to it.  Can someone describe what the usefulness/uniqueness of the MicroEd editor is?  The only thing I can think of is that you can click the cursor anywhere on the page and begin typing, but that's kind of a nuisance also.  Here are the issues I'm having:

--Since you can click anywhere to type, if you want to go to the end of the line, you have to make sure you click exactly at the right spot, or use the "end" key.  Normally, if you just click anywhere to the right of the last character of a line, the cursor won't go past that last character.

--Also, there's this automatic indentation thing that almost always happens to me.  Say you're writing, and you put a period and then the appropriate two spaces after the period.  If one of those spaces wraps into the next line, every line after that is now automatically indented.  This always happens to me, how do you guys deal with this.

Overall, I like MicroEd, but I was wondering what makes it "good" and why other users like to use it over the normal windows way of editing.

5894

General Software Discussion / Re: My rant against php...

« Last post by superboyac on July 28, 2006, 04:58 PM »

I think Crimson just replaced Notepad++ as my freeware text editor of choice.

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General Software Discussion / Re: My rant against php...

« Last post by superboyac on July 28, 2006, 04:55 PM »

Ah!  Crimson does it very nicely!  If only Ultraedit would do this, I don't know why it doesn't.

I've heard a lot of good things about vim, but it doesn't wrap the indentation (at least not by default), and the program seems a little raw for a newbie like me. 

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General Software Discussion / Re: My rant against php...

« Last post by superboyac on July 28, 2006, 03:12 PM »

I kind of understand, it's complicated.

Any suggestions for editors that indent wrapped text? 

5897

General Software Discussion / My rant against php...

« Last post by superboyac on July 28, 2006, 01:13 PM »

I'm currently writing my notetakers roundup using the php template mouser provided, and I have some basic newbie questions and rants.

First of all, none of the editors out there allow any kind of wysiwig editing of php code.  How come?  Wouldn't it be nice to see the changes in some kind of "live" way as you change the code?  I remember that when I made a couple of pages in Dreamweaver, you could do that with html.  You just write code and you can split the screen and see the actual page under, or even preview it in the browser.  But with php, you have to go through all this localhost business, that I can't figure out for the life of me.

Another issue I have with editors (any basic editor like Ultraedit, Notepad++, whatever) is that, yes, they do syntax highlighting and automatic-indentation, which is nice.  However, when long lines wrap around, none of the editors will wrap the text where the indentation already is.  It would be very nice if the wrapping was also indented.  Why is this so hard?  Don't people want this?

OK, I'm done.

5898

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Zoom Player - the all-in-one media player!

« Last post by superboyac on July 19, 2006, 03:33 PM »

nudone, I have a general philosophy that a program that tries to do everything will eventually do nothing that well.  That's why I avoid all-in-one type of programs.  Sometimes, a program like winamp tries to do everything and doesn't succeed in doing everything well, but it still does a couple of things well, so I only use it for what it does well.  But, in general, I like programs that are more focused on specific tasks and limit their functionality to that task so it can be done with high quality.  Even for video players, I use 2 different programs (as I explained above in this thread).  For DVD's and full-length movie files, I use Zoom Player.  For short video-clips that would just double-click to watch from my file-manager, I use Light Alloy (I used to use MPC, but LA is MUCH lighter and more powerful).

I like VLC because it plays everything, but I only use it when my other players can't play a file.  As a player, VLC is light on features and has little annoying things about it.  I liked MPC a lot, but like you said, recently it's been taking a while to open files. 

5899

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Light Alloy limited-time discount

« Last post by superboyac on July 18, 2006, 03:33 PM »

I haven't had any problems playing mpeg files with it.  I'm sure like most players (besides ones like vlc), Light Alloy just uses the codecs already on the computer, but I can't be sure.  So, I'm assuming you can RM and QT files because they are already installed.  This is true for me when I use MPC.

Light Alloy doesn't really do anything that WMPlayer can't do, it's just that it does it better and is very lightweight.  It's playlist features are better, mouse features are customizable, and it has cool OSD features like Zoom Player.

Actually, I probably wouldn't have gotten it if it was $19 like it is, but when it was $10, it was a bargain.  Call me cheap.

5900

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Light Alloy limited-time discount

« Last post by superboyac on July 18, 2006, 01:26 PM »

Looks like it's been changed to $19.  Yesterday and even just a couple of hours ago, the big "Buy Now!" button was saying $9.95.  I don't think it was a mistake, because the ordering page said "Summer discount" and it doesn't say that anymore.  Maybe I got the last one and it reminded him to raise the price.  Sorry everyone!  It's still $10 off what it normally is.