Recent Posts

6101

Living Room / Re: Search DonationCoder from Firefox!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 06:43 PM »

Ahem ... https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3233.0

Na na ...

6102

Living Room / Boffins dismantle great firewall of China

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 11:25 AM »

Interesting article ...

http://www.vnunet.co...great-firewall-china

6103

Living Room / Re: Madness is contagious!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 09:58 AM »

I take it they don't like Stockhausen, Boulez or Xenakis, either

LOL - actually it isn't a question of like or dislike just the complexity of what is expected. Stokhausen is actually probably one of the easier options as it is all programmed into synths and recorded on to tapes in advance.

If you want to try something horrendously difficult to play (and to listen to) try some Berio or Ferneyhough ;-)

6104

Post New Requests Here / Re: Highlight text to "copy" middle mouse to "paste" ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 09:41 AM »

Actually if you have an MS mouse with IntelliMouse drivers installed you can set the buttons to do pretty much what you like already within the driver.

6105

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: HTML Organizer/Viewer

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 09:39 AM »

I doubt whether anything truly valuable is placed in open view

??? Why would anyone even use the web then - and why would anyone want to republish stuff that is of no value.

Actually as I understand it just about everything published on the web is copyright (even if the owners don't know it). A lot of people won't be particularly bothered if you use their stuff but there are many people who design websites (private and commercial) who would be pretty pissed if whole pages or large chunks were lifted and published elsewhere. You only have to read some posts on this forum to realis how annoyed people can get when their stuff is used without permission.

OK advertisers aren't going to gripe as it gets them free advertising but if I was republishing interesting stuff from the web one thing I would do in surfulator is to remove all the crap first!

Example - how would the authors and Mouser feel if all the reviews on this site were lifted wholesale and published elsewhere? In practice Mouser is unlikely to sue anyone for doing it as there isn't a budget for enormous legal fees, but I think a few choice words might be exchanged!

6106

Living Room / Re: Madness is contagious!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 08:40 AM »

No I love classical music (and Beethoven is a strong contender for my favourite composer) but the Grosse Fugue was written right at the end of his life when his music became more and more abstract. Some performers consider is virtually unplayable and if you listen long enough you begin to see why! Beethoven went deaf early in life so almost all his greatest works were written when he was unable to hear much at all. It beggars belief that great works like the last 5 symphonies were written entirely in his head!

I am doing a degree in Humanities with Music (for fun really - and it is mostly music). At the moment I am studying a third year course on compositional methods which makes it quite a wide ranging arts course too. You can see the course outline here.

6107

Living Room / Madness is contagious!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 07:32 AM »

I have been studying Beethoven recently as part of my uni course.

Listening to one of his late works (Grosse Fugue Op 133) is enough to drive anyone insane - he plainly was when he wrote it.

If you are feeling unstressed and want to be stressed give it a listen (not helped by the fact the attached file is a midi version - but it adds to the effect) ...

(It plays in Windows Media Player or any other MIDI aware sofwtare you might have onboard!)

6108

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: HTML Organizer/Viewer

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 05:42 AM »

The reason for my question was that as I see it Surfulator is designed for grabbing stuff for the web so that you can read/search and store a copy locally. Given that most of the material is grabbed in this way republishing any of it is likely to infringe copyright.

6109

Living Room / Re: Printer Driver Help

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 05:39 AM »

If you have MS Word you could always create a label template to ensure alignment

6110

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Uninstallers (a very short look at what I've tried!)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2006, 02:13 AM »

Funny - it has done that for me?

6111

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: HTML Organizer/Viewer

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 07, 2006, 07:30 PM »

Yes I think Surfulator or NetSnippets might well fit the bill.

Coming soon is the ability to publish Surfulater content to your local PC or a Web server so you can share it with colleagues and friends.

That sounds interesting but won't it cause all sorts of copyright issues? You would be effectively publishing other people's work???

6112

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Terminate processes and remove USB

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 07, 2006, 07:26 PM »

I must admit I think unlocker is great (and I use it a lot) but don't be too complacent with it - I'm not sure how cleanly it shuts down file connections with applications and with a USB connection it may lead to data corruption. It is great in a crisis though.

6113

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Uninstallers (a very short look at what I've tried!)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 07, 2006, 07:24 PM »

Unfortunately everyone wants a nice simple solution but in practice there isn't one - despite what the software companies tell you.

I still use TU though as it has lots of ways it can be used. For example if you want to try out a program you can install it, run it and then completely uninstall it so that not registry traces are left which is great!

6114

Screenshot Captor / Comments on ScreenshotCaptor - Beta Version - 2.12.01 to 2.24.01

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2006, 04:54 PM »

Nice demo ... well done. Glad to see you dither when you're typing as much as I do

6115

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Uninstallers (a very short look at what I've tried!)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2006, 04:48 PM »

Basically the way it works is that it looks at the registry before you install and after you have finished installing (actually it isn't restricted to that ... you can run it when you like and it will monitor your system from when you start it to when you stop it).

Anything on your system that changes registry entries (and as far as I know file entries - though this may be restricted to certain folders) will be recorded.

If you then 'uninstall' what it has recorded it will restore registry settings to their previous values and delete new files but won't touch files that have changed.

If you want to avoid recording extraneous effects you need to run it with as few extra apps, processes and services running as possible.

Note you can actually edit the recorded changes so you can check through and delete entries you simply don't want it to touch. If you have a normal running system you will have a lot to wade through - stopping all apps etc. will mean this is pretty manageable and you may only have to discount 1 or 2 changes.

Note also it is not a panacea .... if you want to do things correctly you should always work like this ...

1) Do all you installs and uninstalls with TU without exception

2) Check the install log after every install and make sure there are no unnecessary entires logged

3) Suppose you have installed applications A B C D E F G and now want to uninstall application C

4) Uninstall G F E D C in that order

5) Reinstall D E F G

You now have A B D E F G installed correctly

If you simply uninstall C without uninstalling the others first you may will revert registry entries to the state they were at when you installed B. Any of D E F or G could have also altered those settings (if they are common) and consequently you would lose the correct settings for those apps and they may not work properly any more.

6116

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Uninstallers (a very short look at what I've tried!)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2006, 04:14 PM »

Yes you do otherwise TU will also record any file/registry changes.

Also note that there are some things that these programs don't roll back - they record some file changes but can't undo them if files are replaced as tit doesn't keep a copy of the previous version of a file (read TU's readme file for details).

6117

Living Room / Re: Anyone actually use rewriteable media?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2006, 02:00 PM »

Bleh on your DVD player really - most DVD players will read DVD-RW discs if they are recorded in video mode and finalised. Many of the newer models will also read DVD-VR mode discs provided they are finalised too.

Advantage of vidoe mode = don't need to convert the ripped files if you want to make a proper menu driven DVD and edit out the rubbish as it is already in compliant MPEG 2 format.

Advantage of VR mode = you can edit on your player, you can reopen the disc after closing it.

6118

Google Boomerang / Re: Google Translator Boomerang - Latest Version Info - v1.02.01 - May 5, 2006

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2006, 05:44 AM »

Here is another funny ... I really like this one.

I tried to be kind - one short (relatively easy) sentence in English, boomeranged just once to see if any of the translation could be close to accurate.

See if you can guess what I tried to say and which language it was boomeranged through:

Me the hemp cloth for the breakfast [khen] with ate the egg.

Started life as

this

I had bacon and eggs for breakfast

and was boomeranged through

language

Korean

6119

Google Boomerang / Re: Google Translator Boomerang - Latest Version Info - v1.02.01 - May 5, 2006

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2006, 05:31 AM »

True - but a lot of people go to Google or AltaVista for a quick and dirty translation - it would be handy to have it available as a quick desktop tool to click. How about adding other engines (like BabelFish etc. but be aware that a lot of these pages actually use Systrans and so don't generate different translations) and allowing people to at least see the translated version?

6120

Google Boomerang / Re: Google Translator Boomerang - Latest Version Info - v1.02.01 - May 5, 2006

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 05, 2006, 07:12 PM »

I had completely forgotten how funny this could be! Thanks for getting it working again.

I have been listening on BBC Radio 4 to the Reith Lectures (very good they were too - especially the last one). If you are interested then you can hear them all at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2006/

For fun I translated the brief summary of the fifth lecture via ten cycles of German and it comes out as:

Music Barenboim showed the fact that it gives and a new journey for our politics strength would know a fundamental difference between the energy, illustrated those.

See if you can guess what it meant ... and check by clicking

here

Music has shown Barenboim that there is a fundamental difference between power and strength which could map a new journey for our politics.

Actually it can be useful to use Google translation - how about making boomerang a useful app by allowing users to have a one way translate option too and also expand the interface to have source and destination languages so that people who don't speak English can enjoy the joke?

6121

General Software Discussion / Re: Google SketchUp (free)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 05, 2006, 06:50 PM »

Just looking at their pricing again - in Europe they charge 315 Euros on the buy now page (where you select the language version you require) but when you go to check out (not that I am going to) they convert to your national currency and guess what in the UK it changes to £315 - that's a hike of 50% and on top of that you have to pay 17.5% VAT !!!

Strikes me it is like most of these 3D rendering packages (cf. Maya that was recently mentioned) if you want to play with a piece of limited software for free it is fine but if you want to use it for anything practical at all then they are just ridiculously expensive.

I really can't work out this sort of pricing strategy - if they charge $40 they would sell 10 times (probably a lot more) of the product and make just as much money and everyone would feel they got a good deal - as it is it just leaves a sour taste.

The irony is if you know a teacher and can persuade them to fill in the form you can get the Pro version for free - you just need to get your friendly teacher to renew the licence at the end of June every year!

6122

Living Room / Re: Very disappointing wifi connection!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 05, 2006, 04:07 PM »

I suppose if it is working OK otherwise it could be your portable's wifi card? Do you have access (borrow one?) to a PCMIA WiFi card you could try instead?

6123

Living Room / Re: Web Hosting Review

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 05, 2006, 10:42 AM »

Not convinced by the video review page ...

To be fair Womble and TMPGEnc MPEG editor are not at all the same as the products they are reviewing. They simply convert stuff from one format to another and allow you to chop bits out as you do it. All the apps they are reviewing allow you to take clips of material and assemble complete videos including cuts, fading (and other transitions), special effects etc.

However, if they honestly rank Nero's buggy and clumsy effort higher than Vegas then either there is a hidden agenda or else the reviewer hasn't the faintest idea about video editing. Adobe Premier and Vegas Studio are ahead of most of those programs in terms of sheer power (not sure about 1 and 2 in the list as I haven't tried them but they are by reputable companies). OK they are harder to learn - precisely because they actually do something rather more complex than the other programs, and do it better.

Personally I think the review is based on ease of use more than anything else - a daft criteria for video editing which is inherantly complex if you want to do anything more than stick clips one after the other.

The other issue he doesn't address (at least in the bits I read) are about quality of output. Ulead come out at number 3, but my experience is that I have huge audio sync problems with the Ulead stuff when I have tried it.

Add to that there are none of the blockbuster applications there - Adobe Premier CS2, Vegas+DVD 6, Pinnacle, Canopus ... not to mention all the studio quality production apps. OK they are rather more expensive but Vegas+DVD would blow any of those products out of the water by many miles (to name 1).

6124

Living Room / Re: size-changing USB flash drives

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 05, 2006, 10:29 AM »

Still think it isn't a joke - check out http://www.plusminus.ru/alltunes.html for the MP3 kettle and the 'About the Author" link a the bottom of the page. Fun site actually - made me laugh 

6125

Living Room / Re: Anyone actually use rewriteable media?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 05, 2006, 10:24 AM »

Why do people feel the need to use CD-RW and DVD-RW as large floppies with the need to format them???

When I use DVD-RW (I don't bother with CD-RW these days at all - partly because of compataility issues with CD players) I just use it as a standard DVD-R disc. If I want to reuse it I use 'Quick Erase' which only takes a few seconds.

As I said before I have only ever had one problem disc (so far) and I have been using them for a while now.

I take Mouser's point though - don't rely on a single copy though with any 'burn it yourself' media. Manufacturer's recon they will last for up to 100 years but there just isn't enough data on lifespan of the dyes yet as any aging tests depend on artificial aging which is bound to be different to real aging! Personally I think a 10 year expectation is probably reasonable as the technology won't be around much by that time anyway.

Having said that I still use some floppy discs, music cassettes and VHS videos - some of which are up to 15 years old and I very rarely find problems with them.

Anyone see the article today about TDK producing a 200Gb Blu-ray disc? Now that could solve all my backup problems - shame they will probably be more expensive than the average hard disc for the forseeable future! (http://www.afterdawn...ews/archive/7467.cfm)