Recent Posts

7226

Living Room / Re: I can haz LOLMouser plz?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2009, 07:50 PM »

I suspect if mouser's house ever burned down, something like this would happen:

7227

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: Trout (audio player)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2009, 02:44 PM »

Bug Report:

When starting Trout up again, it brings the playlist to the about the correct position to keep the currently playing track visible, except the currently playing song is actually just one above the visible area. In other words, you have to scroll up the playlist window one spot to see the currently playing song.

7228

Living Room / Re: Samsung's 24 x 220MB/s SSD RAID

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 09:58 PM »

Additionally, who cares if it can access it super fast if it can only access it 500 times before the drive is dead. How does an SSD compare with an HDD when it comes to durability and the number of times data can be written to the disk?

-Deozaan (March 10, 2009, 09:39 PM)

That's simply a non-issue with moderns SSD (acutally, it wasn't anymore by sometimes).

-Mark0 (March 10, 2009, 09:42 PM)

That's good to know. But there's still plenty more I'd like to know about SSDs before I'd be willing to pay more for less storage space.

7229

General Software Discussion / Re: Moving from yahoo mail to gmail

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 09:54 PM »

1) Buy your own domain and hosting service for cheap from some hosting company like Dreamhost.
2) Use Dreamhost (or whatever your host is) to set up an unlimited number of forward-only e-mails (that forward to your Gmail account) for any website that asks for one. i.e. donationcoder @ ac.com or flickr @ac.com, paypal@ ac.com etc. Basically, I just use the website name as the part before the @.
3) If you ever start to get spam, simply delete your [spammywebsite]@ac.com e-mail account.
4) Enjoy a simple life virtually without any spam.

It has worked great for me so far. I've had a Gmail account since May 2005 and to this day I probably get less than 15 spams per year on it. And I've actually never had to delete any e-mail addresses so far.

What's great is that I have about 145 forward-only e-mail addresses that all go to my Gmail account. If anybody anywhere asks for my e-mail address, I just make one up and remember to create it later. That way nobody ever gets my personal e-mail address and I can mass-edit the forward-to address so I'll never have to tell anybody if I change my address. They can just keep using the same one and it will forward to the correct address.

7230

Living Room / Re: Samsung's 24 x 220MB/s SSD RAID

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 09:39 PM »

Of course if you build a super computer it's going to be fast. I'd like to know how SSD drives work in your average consumer PC to see if it's worth all the hype to get one.

-Deozaan (March 10, 2009, 05:00 PM)

  Yeah, pretty much what I was trying to say. Fail.

-Darwin (March 10, 2009, 09:23 PM)

Additionally, who cares if it can access it super fast if it can only access it 500 times before the drive is dead. How does an SSD compare with an HDD when it comes to durability and the number of times data can be written to the disk?

There are so many more factors than just access time that should go into deciding what technology to use to store important data. Makes me think these marketing guys are the same marketing guys from Apple.

7231

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft's Turn-off mode in IE8 not enough, says Opera.

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 05:06 PM »

Am I the only one who is growing tired of opera's whining? Opera is a fantastic piece of software, but come on.

-Josh (March 10, 2009, 04:03 PM)

I agree. Stop whining and improve your product. It's been working pretty good for Firefox.

7232

Living Room / Re: Samsung's 24 x 220MB/s SSD RAID

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 05:00 PM »

I'm not impressed.

Of course if you build a super computer it's going to be fast. I'd like to know how SSD drives work in your average consumer PC to see if it's worth all the hype to get one.

7233

General Software Discussion / Re: Foxit Reader Multiple Vulnerabilities

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 04:43 PM »

Nod5: Not sure which of the updates are important in that list, but the one that fixed the vulnerability was underneath the "Reader Update" section.

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Living Room / Re: adding memory to my Dell Precision 380

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 03:23 AM »

crucial.com says my MSI Wind U120-024US RAM slot(s) are empty. I definitely have 1GB in there now and I'm pretty sure that I can get another 1GB in there...

7235

General Software Discussion / Re: Foxit Reader Multiple Vulnerabilities

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 03:05 AM »

Nice to have a separate thread about it, though - foxit users might not have read through the Acrobat-bug thread very carefully

-f0dder (March 10, 2009, 03:03 AM)

Good point. I edited my post to clarify that point.

7236

General Software Discussion / Re: Flash Slideshow Freeware

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 03:02 AM »

Do you want a slideshow or a conveyer belt?

7237

General Software Discussion / Re: Foxit Reader Multiple Vulnerabilities

« Last post by Deozaan on March 10, 2009, 02:36 AM »

This was also briefly mentioned by xtabber in the Acrobat bug can lead to malware installs without even opening an infected file thread.

EDIT: It was mentioned in the Acrobat thread because Foxit had the same vulnerability. So if you didn't know about it then maybe you should also read the other thread as well.

7238

General Software Discussion / Re: Acrobat bug can lead to malware installs without even opening an infected file

« Last post by Deozaan on March 09, 2009, 04:32 PM »

Yeah, I came upon this yesterday when looking for a plug-in to enable viewing pdfs within Firefox (ie to enable me to use PDF Converter Pro to view pdfs within Firefox...). However, I decided not to download it because I don't mind having pdfs open in an external viewer.

FWIW, I'm always asked what I want to do with pdfs (open with PDF Converter or save), so am not sure what additional benefit PDF Download will give me?

-Darwin (March 09, 2009, 03:45 PM)

I prefer PDFs to open in an external viewer. But Acrobat integrates in IE and Firefox and I absolutely HATE it when PDF files display in my browser. So I've been using PDF Download for a while to 1) try to view the PDF as HTML inside the browser and/or 2) force the browser to download the PDF to launch in an external viewer.

But now that I've uninstalled Acrobat and installed Foxit Reader, that doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.

7239

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: Trout (audio player)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 09, 2009, 04:12 PM »

And I set up the toaster to display how much time was remaining and it displayed all 00:00:00 once when a new track loaded up. I pressed the hotkey to display the toaster again and it properly displayed it after that. I can't duplicate it either...

-Deozaan (March 09, 2009, 05:35 AM)

After leaving it paused for a few hours and coming back to it, it has now done the same thing with every one of the tracks I've listened to (3 so far) since resuming play. Also, the toaster stayed up for about a minute (once) instead of going away after 2 seconds like it is set up to do.

a pre-emptive vote against any possibility of changing that to a double click (to bring it from the tray)

-tomos (March 09, 2009, 06:36 AM)

I wasn't going to ask to change it.

And just to be clear: I'm certainly not demanding or expecting any of these changes to happen. I'm just giving feedback on things I think would be improvements, and making bug reports.

7240

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: Trout (audio player)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 09, 2009, 05:35 AM »

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I noticed after I loaded a playlist with thousands of songs that while it was loading them all up, if I right click on one of the table headers (you know, you left-click them to sort the list by that column) it would stop loading the songs until I finished with my right-click business.

-Deozaan (March 09, 2009, 02:48 AM)

That's an AHK behaviour, though, I have seen it with other languages in the past.  I'm fairly certain is has to do with AHK being single-threaded but I couldn't say for sure.  Nothing should be missed during the file loading i.e. that thread will pick back up when you're done with the context menu.

-skwire (March 09, 2009, 03:48 AM)

I wasn't too worried about it. It just seemed odd is all.

EDIT: Always on Top is hard to find. I think it should also be available as an option from the tray icon.

-Deozaan (March 09, 2009, 02:48 AM)

There is no AoT setting for the main window so I assume you mean for the minibars.  I couldn't think of a better place for it other than the minibar menu.  I could build out a specific minibar menu that would show up in the tray menu.

-skwire (March 09, 2009, 03:48 AM)

Correct, I meant the MiniBar.  Strange, it looks like there is an AoT setting in the tray menu now... How is that possible?  I swear it wasn't there before!

In the meantime, I thought of another couple of useful options for the tray icon menu. Options to toggle the horizontal and/or vertical MiniBars. (i.e. MiniBar -> Show Horizontal Bar and MiniBar -> Show Vertical Bar options). And that would also be a good place to have the MiniBar -> Always on Top option if the one currently showing in my tray menu is just a fluke.

Also after a couple of hours of use, here are some more of my opinions on how Trout (specifically the MiniBar) would be better suited for my tastes and preferences:

• I personally don't need a button to take me to last.fm's website. Also, tooltips would be nice so that I wouldn't have to launch my browser to last.fm's website to figure out that that button is a "go to last.fm's website" button.
• I'd rather have a track progress indicator than a volume meter showing. Is it possible on the Horizontal MiniBar to have a tiny vertical indicator (about the size of the last.fm button) for the volume and use the current horizontal indicator for the track progress like it is in the main window? I don't need to adjust the time on the track from this indicator, I'd just like to see how far into a song I am.
• Any way to replace the last.fm button with such a volume indicator?
• I suspect that with the Vertical MiniBar you could swap them so that the volume bar was the small one only a few pixels wide and the track progress was the larger of the two.
• Alternatively, (though this wouldn't work well for the Vertical MiniBar) just showing some text in the volume indicator that can be customized to show Time Elapsed or Time Remaining (I'm a TR kind of person, myself) would be nice, but I think that might even confuse more people into thinking that it was a track progression indicator instead of a volume indicator.
• I'd like more area to click on to drag the MiniBar around with. What I'd prefer is if clicking didn't change the volume (or track progress) so I could click anywhere that wasn't a button to drag it around. My suggested solution for adjusting the volume with such a setup would be to use the scroll wheel. i.e. click on the MiniBar to activate it then adjust volume using scrollwheel.

Additionally, a couple more potential bugs: I somehow managed to confuse it to death. I'm used to double-clicking tray icons for the main window to pop up. So the tray icon disappeared as the main window was popping up, but apparently clicking the tray icon again minimized it to tray, but the tray icon never showed up again. Good thing I had the MiniBar open or else I might never have been able to open the main window again!

And I set up the toaster to display how much time was remaining and it displayed all 00:00:00 once when a new track loaded up. I pressed the hotkey to display the toaster again and it properly displayed it after that. I can't duplicate it either...

Alright, that's enough for now. And now that I've finished my math homework I can go to sleep.

7241

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: Trout (audio player)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 09, 2009, 02:48 AM »

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I noticed after I loaded a playlist with thousands of songs that while it was loading them all up, if I right click on one of the table headers (you know, you left-click them to sort the list by that column) it would stop loading the songs until I finished with my right-click business.

This is on Windows XP with the Trout build 197.

And by the way: WOW! I didn't know such a thing was possible using AHK. This is simply beautiful. This just might be the audio player to get me to finally upgrade from WinAmp 2.81 Lite (August 21, 2002) which I love so much I still use it to this day.

EDIT: Always on Top is hard to find. I think it should also be available as an option from the tray icon. And it seems the MiniBar should snap to the edges of the monitor if it's within ~10 pixels. Or at least have an option to do that.

7242

Living Room / Re: Extreme Change

« Last post by Deozaan on March 08, 2009, 11:33 PM »

hollow, why on earth did you cut your beautiful long hair? I mean, don't get me wrong, you look good with your "new look".... just.... that was awesome hair. 

-Dell[a] (March 08, 2009, 06:32 PM)

It's not supposed to be beautiful long hair if you're a man. It's supposed to be awesome, masculine, manly long hair! Sheesh Della!

7243

Living Room / Re: The Greatest Graphic Novel of All Time: Watchmen

« Last post by Deozaan on March 08, 2009, 03:48 PM »

I heard from a friend that it was a horrible waste of 3 hours. He had re-read it before watching it and it totally went off the wayside. Having never read it myself, nor seeing the movie, I can only go off of what I've heard. I typically don't like watching movies based on a book that I've recently read, because Hollywood always tends to add change the story. 

-Mizraim (March 08, 2009, 09:15 AM)

I think movies work like this: Watch the movie before you read the book. That way if Hollywood totally smurfs up the book's story, well, it might still be a good movie but with a different story than the book. Then you'll have (potentially) seen a good movie and you can still read a good book.

I remember this is how it was with Eragon. People who had read the book absolutely hated the movie (including me), but most people who had not read the book enjoyed the movie (including my wife).

7244

Living Room / Re: World of Goo - Indie Game with Great Reviews?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 07, 2009, 12:42 PM »

Ok thanks

I don't really like the idea of using a particular program to install and run games but i'll give it a try (after all it's only five dollars).

-ak_ (March 07, 2009, 09:11 AM)

I felt the same way, myself. (I've tried GameTap and couldn't stand it!) So I finally got Steam to try out Audiosurf and since then I've purchased a lot of games (about 14 of them!) through Steam and really enjoy the convenience. It automatically downloads the games, patches, etc.

Plus all the weekend deals!

I've actually purchased games on Steam that I had pirated years earlier when I was in high school.

Just one word of warning: All the games you download are automatically installed in (a subdirectory of) the Steam directory. So if you're like me and have a small hard drive specifically for Program Files and a large hard drive for games and other data, then be sure to install Steam to your large drive if you think you may be using Steam for future purchases.

7245

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for March 4th, 2009 - Codename "A Call to Action"

« Last post by Deozaan on March 07, 2009, 12:26 PM »

6. Website Discoveries

In each newsletter we highlight some of the software coded by DC members that is available on Donationcoder.

Huh? I don't think any of those websites are "software coded by DC Members."

Thanks for the newsletter!

7246

Living Room / Re: The Agreeable Cat - Never be Bound By Online Legal Agreements Again

« Last post by Deozaan on March 07, 2009, 12:24 PM »

How about getting a Magic 8-Ball to agree? You might have to ask it a few times, but I'm sure it will eventually become agreeable.

7247

Living Room / Re: World of Goo - Indie Game with Great Reviews?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 06, 2009, 08:26 PM »

The current weekend deal on Steam is offering World of Goo for 75% off (which is $5 for the game).

7248

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Deozaan on March 05, 2009, 09:10 PM »

I think the humor is starting to turn sour.

7249

Living Room / Re: The Daily What’s Top 7 Billy Mays Infomercial Re-Dubs : NSFW Language

« Last post by Deozaan on March 05, 2009, 06:35 PM »

  A couple of them had a good line or two. Not that great overall...

Here's one I saw recently:

Billy Mays in Half-Life

7250

Living Room / Re: Google Maps on Paper [ScreenToaster promo video]

« Last post by Deozaan on March 05, 2009, 04:21 PM »

What's the point?