Recent Posts

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Living Room / My cat needs your thoughts | RIP Saffron my dearest cat

« Last post by mouser on July 30, 2014, 07:54 PM »

Updated 8/29/14:
Saffron passed away on August 28th.  I have no words to describe how much I miss her.  Thank you to everyone who sent warm thoughts and condolences.  After this original post Saffron and I did have a couple of good weeks we spent together and that made the passing a little easier, though there is still a huge hole in my heart that I don't know how to fill.


Original post 7/30/14:

My cat Saffron, who has been my constant companion for 18 years has been quite sick for the last week -- the vet is doing what they can but it's not having much effect. I'm only just barely holding it together.
I would appreciate it if everyone could send her calm and positive thoughts.

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Living Room / Re: Capacitor plague

« Last post by mouser on July 26, 2014, 11:31 AM »

I think any of you without samsung monitors must be safe, since every single samsung monitor i own has suffered catastrophic capacitor death -- so samsung must have bought out most of the supply of those bad caps 

7378

Find And Run Robot / Re: hotkey to launch google search in a new firefox tab

« Last post by mouser on July 25, 2014, 05:54 PM »

I made an ahk script to find Firefox, create a new tab, and open the search results

That could be very useful, not just for firefox but for other browsers.  Thanks for sharing it 

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DesktopCoral / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DesktopCoral - 1.10.01 - Jan 16, 2011

« Last post by mouser on July 25, 2014, 07:48 AM »

I try to list alternative programs in my help files..
For DesktopCoral I have listed:

• Hawkeye ShellInit - http://www.hawkeyete...roducts/freeware.htm - freeware
• WipeOut - http://hp.vector.co....ware/WipeOut_en.html - freeware
• Worktop - http://www.virtualpl...t/html/desk_adv.html - freeware
• DesktopX - http://www.stardock....dxconfig/desktop.htm - shareware
• Fences - http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

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Living Room / Re: Show us a picture of your.. CAR!!!

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2014, 06:20 PM »

Nice 

7381

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2014, 02:53 PM »

holy cow that is cool.

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Living Room / Re: Printer's Ink

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2014, 10:50 AM »

We talked about this quite a bit at one point; see this thread: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=26503.0

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: add filter row like ditto or ethervane

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2014, 09:59 AM »

Ideally, I could just start typing to filter (not have to hit ctrl-f or click in an input box to give it focus)

right -- well that's one benefit of using a separate dialog -- it would open and have focus in search box right away.

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: add filter row like ditto or ethervane

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2014, 08:02 AM »

Would it be better to have a different hotkey that brought up a different small dialog window designed for quickly filtering and pasting, and keep the quick-paste menu the way it is?

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Living Room / Re: Coming up for a breath...

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2014, 07:10 AM »

Beautiful!

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General Software Discussion / Re: World's weirdest file manager

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2014, 12:00 AM »

it was funded to the tune of almost 12k on Kickstarter,

sometimes it seems to me that the main point of kickstarter is to confirm to me that i really don't understand this world at all.

7387

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Browser tray switch & firefox Profiles

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 09:33 PM »

is there a way within firefox to set which profile will run by default if you just launch plain old firefox?

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General Software Discussion / Deeper into the Windows Registry - Work-in-Progress Article on Gizmo's

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 09:13 PM »

Here's a very interesting article -- a work in progress -- on Gizmo's Tech Support Alert site (one of our favorite websites), taking a comprehensive look at the Windows Registry.

The Windows registry is doubly obscure as it is both unknown to most of us and hard to understand. This is as it should be. The registry is a fundamental part of the Windows Kernel and its operations are relatively complex. If Windows is working properly then we, as users, should never see the Registry or any of its components. This article is not written for registry beginners, nor those wanting to edit the registry. Instead it provides a deeper understanding of the organization and management of the registry.

http://www.techsuppo...windows-registry.htm

from a post on the forum by DC member Cuffy

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Find And Run Robot / Re: Scoring of recently used items being re-scored after presented in FARR

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 07:23 PM »

Does this explain why yours isn't growing:


Is your second number lower than first?

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BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Browser tray switch & firefox Profiles

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 05:56 PM »

I'm not following completely what you are asking for.

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BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Does BrowserTraySwitch work on Win 8.1 x64?

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 05:55 PM »

but it doesn't seem to make the system refresh. i.e. when I start a browser and make it be the default (via the browser menu), usually I see the desktop icons refresh, and so forth. But when I use BTS, there's no obvious change.

That's interesting -- i've recently come across the signals i am supposed to trigger when such a system change is made, and i'm not sure i send them when BTW triggers..  That would be easy enough to add.

However, first things first -- can you figure out if BTS doesn't work at all on Windows 8 -- that is when you change browser with BTS, do NEWLY LAUNCHED PROGRAMS open stuff using the changed browser?

Or is it that BTS works, but existing programs which were running when BTS makes a change don't see the change?

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Find And Run Robot / Re: Scoring of recently used items being re-scored after presented in FARR

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 05:24 PM »

Is there a way to keep increasing the score every time a result is launched?

this happens automatically.  the settings adjust by how much the scores grow each time and to what ceiling.

7393

Find And Run Robot / Re: Scoring of recently used items being re-scored after presented in FARR

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 03:18 PM »

JohnJ's advice is one all users would do well to follow as a general rule:

If you are launching something frequently, make a custom alias for it!  The result will be that it will be found instantly, and it will block out all other results.

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Find And Run Robot / Re: Scoring of recently used items being re-scored after presented in FARR

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 02:20 PM »

maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying above, but the scoring is also related to the letters typed matching the entry in the list -

Yes -- the issue here is that when an item is in your launch history, it doesn't JUST get a bonus in score from being on that list.  Something else happens to items on the launch history list.

What also happens is that FARR searches that list FIRST, before doing anything else.  That's what allows that list to act like a very fast cache -- so results previously launched are listed immediately.

Then FARR does it's normal search of folders.. at which point an item that was found when initially going through the history list will be found a second time..
What's happening in Filipe's case is that the second time the item is found, it is getting a higher score.  The question is why is it getting a different score the second time it's found.  

In broad terms -- the score is probably different because FARR is adding some bonus the second time around, that is calculated based on where it was found (i.e. while doing a search of a specific directory that has a bonus associated with it).  Now I *thought* I accounted for that already but there must be a scenario I overlooked.

That's why I'm asking if Filepe can figure out where the increase in score might be coming from -- as that would tell me which scoring bonus I neglected to apply when scoring items from the initial pass through the launch history.

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Find And Run Robot / Re: Scoring of recently used items being re-scored after presented in FARR

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 02:06 PM »

In the most common cases, items in the launch history should get high scores that put them initially at the top, and they never lose their position.

Your case may be different because you may be giving items a big (decisive) bonus score somewhere later on that i didn't anticipate.  My memory now is that i do try to compute final scores when initially looking at history items -- if so it sounds like i missed something somewhere.. I will try to fix this one way or the other.

If you can definitively nail down where the subsequent higher score is coming from it would help -- it really shouldn't be coming from the heuristic pattern score list, i don't think, as those SHOULD be calculated initially when it's evaluating the item from the launch history -- but then again I may be mistaken.

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Find And Run Robot / Re: Scoring of recently used items being re-scored after presented in FARR

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 01:13 PM »

Hmm, this is a bit tricky..  So there are 2 issues here, the first is that the folder is changing score, which isn't per se causing you a problem.  The second is the possibility that the position of the item you are looking for may change during this adjusting of score -- which could very well be a problem.

The only time an item will change score, is if it is "found" in multiple ways -- because the different ways of finding things can trigger different bonuses.

I can't remember if there are other ways this can happen but the one time when this may happen is if an item is in your launch history, it will be scored first.  It will later be found again while doing a directory search, which may result in a different score.

Let me give this a little thought -- it would seem like scoring something initially from the launch history should give it its highest score right away, so that it would never go up in score later on..

In the meantime can you confirm for me that the cause of your item changing score is that it is in the launch history list?

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BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Does BrowserTraySwitch work on Win 8.1 x64?

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 07:16 AM »

BrowserTraySwitch hasn't gotten much attention from me in the recent years.. I'm not sure why it wouldn't work with Windows 8, but it's possible that it doesn't..  If someone can confirm that it doesn't work, and has some insight into why the default browser registry settings wouldn't be effecting windows 8, I'm happy to update it.

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: add filter row like ditto or ethervane

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 07:15 AM »

In ethervane, after I type a few chars, the one I want usually ends up at the top and an "enter" will paste it it.  If more than one result remains after filtering, and the one you want isn't at the top, a double-click on the desired one will paste it in.

Ok but then are you saying that the current workflow: "Trigger menu with hotkey, press # for item to paste."  is no longer viable for people? Instead it's: "Trigger menu with hotkey, then use mouse to double click the item you want?"

In other words, I'm asking if you envision this new filtering thing will mess with the way the quick paste popup menu can now be used quickly?

----

What about something like:  Hotkey to bring up quick paste menu as it currently is, but if you hit Ctrl+F you get a search bar that lets you filter?

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Site/Forum Features / Re: Google ad test

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2014, 06:40 AM »

The last time we tried ads, I set up the Project Wonderful service, which showed occasional messages on the site like "Your ad could be here" and people could, if they went through the Project Wonderful service, have their ads shown on the pages.  Just didn't happen in any meaningful way.

Like most things in this world, I think if we wanted to make real money on ads on this site we'd have to devote considerable (and continuing) time and effort to the endeavor, having someone try to reach out and find people who wanted to advertise, etc.

That's just not how anyone here wants to spend their time.  But even more so -- given how common ads have become on the web, it's nice to have a place where we can get some respite from them.

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Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: add filter row like ditto or ethervane

« Last post by mouser on July 22, 2014, 09:45 PM »

If you hit Ctrl+Alt+w (default hotkey to show main CHS window), and then start typing, it will start filtering results.
I've considered adding one to the quick paste popup but it just seemed to me that when you need to filter a large number of results, you might as well do it from the main window?

If I did add one to the quick paste menu, can you suggest what the workflow would be? Right now you bring up the quick paste and then can hit a letter or number to paste that item.. How would we want user to be able to type in the filter and then select the result they want?