Recent Posts

5951

General Software Discussion / Re: Software for planning wood bookcases/cabinets/tables etc?

« Last post by mouser on June 12, 2015, 06:09 PM »

Today's progress: face frame cut (but not glued up), and drawer slides attached (very precisely):

5952

Living Room / Re: 2014-2015: Best tablet specs for ebook reading

« Last post by mouser on June 12, 2015, 04:57 PM »

That hp pro slate looks pretty neat.

5953

General Software Discussion / Re: Software for planning wood bookcases/cabinets/tables etc?

« Last post by mouser on June 12, 2015, 02:06 PM »

that could be verrrry useful, thanks aryq 

5954

General Software Discussion / Re: Software for planning wood bookcases/cabinets/tables etc?

« Last post by mouser on June 12, 2015, 07:57 AM »

I ended up buying a bed on craigslist that was much nicer than i could have built for a fraction of the cost.  That's the rule I realize now when it comes to furniture, you have to be insane to try to make it yourself and think you're going to get something half as good for 10x the price of buying a nice used piece.

So having absorbed that lesson, a few weeks ago i set out to build an 8ft media center cabinet for my living room, in an attempt to learn how to properly stain and finish a big item  (it's 8ft long, 33 inches tall, 16 inches deep) and how to make drawers.  Please do not ask me why i didn't start on something smaller.

Half way done photo:


Still to do:

• Add face frame.
• Add fancy inset/flush drawers (in center area).
• Add base trim.
• Stain.
• Finish and rub out (Lacquer, shellac, or polyeurethane). <-- this is the part i'm most nervous about and have been reading so much about and testing on scrap.. It's hard to do properly when you dont have a place to use a sprayer..

I already regret taking on the project, but nothing left to do now but push forward bitching and moaning the whole way..  I'll post more photos when it's done.

5955

Living Room / Re: [Infographics] WWII deaths compared w. others

« Last post by mouser on June 10, 2015, 06:40 PM »

pretty impressive video/visualization, thanks for sharing.
makes you wonder what software they used to create it.

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General Software Discussion / Re: raffle/random choice software

« Last post by mouser on June 10, 2015, 09:15 AM »

nice -- so that takes care of my point #2 above.

5957

Living Room / Re: A short history of Google's algorithm updates

« Last post by mouser on June 09, 2015, 05:43 PM »

Nice find, ewemoa.

5958

General Software Discussion / Re: simply create a projection

« Last post by mouser on June 09, 2015, 11:42 AM »

SketchUp:

http://www.sketchup.com/

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Feature request: One-time capture delay

« Last post by mouser on June 09, 2015, 10:02 AM »

On my todo list is a complete revamp of the hotkey system which would let people create hotkeys for arbitrary things without cluttering the user interface so much -- similar to what i did for Find and Run Robot.
This would make it much less problematic to add new hotkeyable functions.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Feature request: One-time capture delay

« Last post by mouser on June 09, 2015, 09:52 AM »

It's not a bad idea.. You can enable and disable delay from the system tray right-click menu.. Maybe i could add a new option there for enabling the delay one time only..
Or I could add a hotkey for it..

5961

General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 09, 2015, 08:33 AM »

can you create a new user with it's new resulting profile?

i'll try.

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General Software Discussion / Re: raffle/random choice software

« Last post by mouser on June 09, 2015, 08:32 AM »

Aryq's suggestion of random.org is a good one if you are simply trying to choose m winners from a group of n entrants.

There are a few specialized cases where you may need to look deeper:

1. If you want to select winners not purely randomly, but with some weighted probabilities -- for example if you wanted the chance that an entrant to win to be based on how many years they have been in operation, etc. [doesn't sound like you need this].
2. If you needed to be able to *prove* to some third party rigorously that you only ran the random selection once and these are the independently verified results. [doesn't sound like you need this].
3. If you were going to be running multiple giveaways over time and wanted to make it less likely that people would win twice in a row, etc. [doesn't sound like you need this].

5963

Living Room / Re: A short history of Google's algorithm updates

« Last post by mouser on June 08, 2015, 05:34 PM »

Nice find... MobileGeddon is going to hurt DC in the short term, but we're moving to a CMS and upgraded forum this year (already started working on the conversion) so we should be ok before too long.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 08, 2015, 01:13 PM »

wasn't happening with the admin profile/login.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 08, 2015, 10:34 AM »

Yes, I have run avg for a year -- this is the first time this has happened to me..

5966

Android Apps / Re: WhenLast (Android app) - v2.01 Beta - Sep 30, 2016

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 11:28 PM »

fyi: currently 51 users of whenlast according to Google Play store.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 04:33 PM »

yeah, reboots didn't help me.

5968

Living Room / Re: Micro Reviews of Board Games From a Non-Competetive Perspective

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 04:23 PM »

well i never played magic the gathering, though i have watched some of it being played -- and from watching i know it can get quite complicated.
there has been a rebellion against the "collectible" aspect of card games, as seen in magic the gathering, and most new deck builders do not follow this path.
instead there are fixed card sets that everyone can by for affordable prices and there aren't these super rare expensive cards, etc.

star realms seems to be the core boiled down essence of a deck builder, lean and mean and easy to learn and play.

here's a review that talks more about how to play it and why it's good:
http://www.nohighsco...ar-realms-in-review/

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General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 01:23 PM »

plenty of free space, no errors in chkdsk, no smart errors.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 12:38 PM »

There was something in my profile that could not be accessed on startup, but needed to be accessed.

that is infuriating that windows doesn't tell you WHAT in your profile is causing the problem!

5971

Living Room / Re: Micro Reviews of Board Games From a Non-Competetive Perspective

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 10:19 AM »

Today's micro-review is of my favorite new 2-player card game, which can be had for as little as $10-$12: Star Realms.



Star Realms is actually a "deck-builder", which means that over time each player buys and adds cards to their own personal deck which is continuously re-used (Dominion is one of the more popular "deck builders").

I can't think of a better introduction to deck building -- it's a fun, quick game with simple rules but plenty of strategy.

The theme is Sci Fi and the art is wonderful.

Really fantastic little game, could not recommend it more highly.

The creators of Star Realms look like they are using the same engine to make a similar card game set in fantasty theme, currently kickstarting here: https://www.kickstar...-game?ref=nav_search

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General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 09:51 AM »

Some other remarks:

I normally avoid (and warn people to stay away from) the System Restore stuff in Windows except as a very last resort -- I just don't trust it not to result in having some things restored to one version, and other files out of sync.
So I almost *ALWAYS* do a full system restore when I have a mystery situtation like this.
I may still do a full system restore -- but in this case it seemed like restoring just the User Profile to a point 2 days ago was pretty harmless, at least as a first try.
I may go back and try to figure out which file(s) got corrupted, if i can figure out how, using some file comparison tools.

Fyi here is my general recovery procedure when i encounter serious problems like this:
First, make sure you don't make situation WORSE, by making a full image of the BAD CORRUPT drive, if at all possible.  Put this someplace safe.
Second, if I am going to do a system restore from drive image / backup, do so on a NEW hd -- if you don't have a new hd you can use as your new hard drive, buy one.  If the restore is successful, this will be your new hd drive, and the suspicious one can go on the shelf marked as an untrustworthy backup.

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General Software Discussion / Scary Windows error: Failure to log in to profile, loading of temp profile

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 09:39 AM »

This morning I had a scary experience -- when i woke up and sat down to start work, my pc was at the login screen and when i tried to log in as my normal user, my desktop layout was completely changed, none of my startup apps ran, etc.  Then I saw an innocuous message in the system tray saying that my user profile could not be loaded and so a temp profile was created and loaded instead.

While this may sound like no big deal, what windows is really saying is: Something went badly wrong with your user files/registry and they are now corrupt and i don't even know how to let you start working..  It's better than a complete hd crash, but not much more informative.

After trying a few fixes found on the web along these lines: http://www.techsuppo...rofile-in-windows-7/

None worked, and I had to RESTORE my last known good user profile from a restore point.

Thankfully:

• The last good restore point was only a couple of days old.
• Since I just got back into town i have worked on the pc very very little since then.
• I also had a full backup before my trip out of town that I could (still can) restore from if need be.
• None of my important documents are actually in my C drive user profile so not end of world.
• I have online backup of my user profile stuff (crashplan).

But this reminds me:

• A severe HD crash and/or loss of data can happen at ANY TIME with NO WARNING.  Backup, and do it redundantly.

And:

• I still have no idea why this happened -- that scares me.  Normally I replace the hd on first hint of HD corruption, but this is an expensive SSD and i still don't know if this was an HD issue or not.

Anyway, just a warning.. I've never seen this error before and I hope to never see it again.

5974

Android Apps / Re: WhenLast (Android app) - v2.01 Beta - Sep 30, 2016

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 09:28 AM »

Does Dropbox normally sync the files so that they appear in all the relevant apps automatically, as they do when I sync files in WhenLast?  If so, then I probably set things up wrong in Dropbox when I tried to add JotterPadX.  However, if this happens in WhenLast only because you created it that way and it doesn't normally happen in Dropbox, then I think you'd have lots of opportunities either to collaborate with developers of existing apps that would benefit from what you did in WhenLast, or to create apps similar to some that already exist but that lack the sync mechanism you've created for WhenLast.

The SYNC feature between machines is specifically coded in WhenLast and is definitely non-trivial.  It is *not* a generic feature of dropbox integration.

What dropbox gets you is the ability to save and load files to your online account.  If an app installed on multiple devices wants to keep sync'd between multiple devices, it has to write some real code to merge changes and keep files synchronized, etc.

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 365 day trial of AVG AntiVirus 2015

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2015, 09:21 AM »

Thank you very much for this, i am a purchased owner of AVG on 2 pc but this will come in handy for my htpc which i just installed avg on.
I have been quite happy with AVG since switching over from an unstable ESET installation.