Recent Posts

751

Living Room / Re: Donation Coder Fever

« Last post by J-Mac on March 01, 2011, 11:25 PM »

Dangit, you got a klever pun in there too! 

I bet you lot never knew DC could be so high-brow 

-timns (March 01, 2011, 07:16 PM)

Hey! Hey! We work hard to maintain our "low-brow" reputation! Don’t go and ruin it for us barbarians!   

Jim

752

Living Room / Re: In Western societies, how can a man have a hyphenated name? (and why!)

« Last post by J-Mac on March 01, 2011, 11:22 PM »

Looks like something from a Leno monologue!

Actually though, this is not a modern concept. An example is the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, generally considered to be the father of the modern style of conjuring, and often mistakenly referred to as "Robert Houdin". His name before he was married was Jean Eugene Robert. He married Mlle. Houdin, and obtained permission to use the old hyphenated form of the last name, Robert-Houdin. That was in 1830! And, yes: Harry Houdini took Robert-Houdin's name and added an "i" to it for his stage name.

Thank you.

Jim

753

Living Room / Re: Reverse Phone lookup

« Last post by J-Mac on March 01, 2011, 10:57 PM »

jaden,

Not one of those links was able to give me information on any of the number I submitted. However all of them were very eager to pass me on to another service that would provide the info for a fee. Sorry but there's no free lunch anymore it seems...   

Thank you.

Jim

754

Living Room / Truly Stupid Email from Companies! Show Us Yours...

« Last post by J-Mac on March 01, 2011, 10:39 PM »

OK, granted this email from ACD Systems, the developer of ACDSee photo organization software, is old - from 2006 - but it is still a classic in my book! Apparently they either really thought that the Yahoo Toolbar was all that, or they are incurably stupid enough to have thought that they could convince their customers that it is...

Jim

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

755

Living Room / Re: Gmail accidentally resets some accounts

« Last post by J-Mac on March 01, 2011, 10:33 PM »

For my Gmail backup system I created a Google Group of my very own with no members other than myself. Then I configured Gmail to auto-Forward all messages to that Group. Cheap and easy.  

Also I use MailStore Home to archive all my email. It can grab your IMAP messages from the server and store them. And MailStore's search feature is extremely fast and accurate. Nice. I was using Eric Fookes Software's MailBag Assistant up until Windows 7 but then I had to drop it. Wonderfully useful application but he wants way too much for his latest version in which the only new feature is that he changed out the Regex search engine. Otherwise it looks, smells, and acts exactly the same as the old one. Except of course this one claims to be able to run on Windows 7 now...  MailStore is a much better offering IMO - and it is free!

And then there is Thunderbird, though that has lost and/or corrupted my mail more than once so I wouldn’t consider that reliable.

All that and I only use Gmail for what I consider to be my "unimportant"e mail. Nothing that I would have concerns about anyone reading.  

Thanks!

Jim

756

Living Room / Re: Unsubscribe to 404

« Last post by J-Mac on March 01, 2011, 09:50 PM »

I never use the Unsubscribe links for unsolicited email messages. That is the very definition of spam. However if I don’t want anymore email from a source that I actually did sign up for at some time, then I always give the Unsubscribe link a try. Only fair, really.

Thank you.

Jim

757

Found Deals and Discounts / ExifCleaner at GiveAwayofTheDay 25 Feb 2011

« Last post by J-Mac on February 25, 2011, 10:44 AM »

ExifCleaner 1.5 from SuperUtils.com is available at GAOTD today, 25 Feb 2011. Sounds pretty decent. Believe it or not it has a bunch more Thumbs-up ratings than Thumbs-down, which is a rarity anymore at GAOTD. It cleans out the Exif tags, geotags, IPTC and Adobe XMP from JPEG images. Works on individual photos or in batch mode. I haven't installed it yet but according to some users there who have it does not require any special registration or serial codes; the version downloaded will work from the start. Of course the usual GAOTD limitations apply: No tech support and no free upgrades to future versions, and it is strictly for personal use.

Has anyone here used ExifCleaner or any of SuperUtils.com's applications? I am going to try this one but as always I am interested in comments from other users.

Thanks!

Jim

758

General Software Discussion / Re: Burn4Free ignores choices on install.

« Last post by J-Mac on February 24, 2011, 04:14 PM »

Now repeat after me: ImgBurn, ImgBurn, ImgBurn.........

Extract with UniExtract and delete everything except:
ImgBurn.exe
ImgBurnPreview.exe
ReadMe.txt

-4wd (February 23, 2011, 09:02 PM)

I noticed that with the last two releases. 2.4.4.0 didn't have that junk, but 2.5.2.0 and 2.5.5.0 both have Ask Toolbar and Uniblue apps. They DO honor the deselection during installation though at least.

Thanks!

Jim

759

General Software Discussion / Re: The Bat: Great program, terrible documentation and support

« Last post by J-Mac on February 24, 2011, 03:41 PM »

40hz's historical explanation today is very revealing and thought provoking.

-superboyac (February 24, 2011, 01:11 PM)

where's that ?

-tomos (February 24, 2011, 02:24 PM)

Yeah - I've been looking around for it too!

Jim
Oops - think I found it; the Ubuntu thread here.

760

General Software Discussion / Re: The Bat: Great program, terrible documentation and support

« Last post by J-Mac on February 24, 2011, 12:02 PM »

That does sound nice vizacc. Shame it isn't available on Windows.

Thank you.

Jim

761

General Software Discussion / Re: program to create automatic fully unattended installations of software

« Last post by J-Mac on February 17, 2011, 10:17 AM »

Reinstalling all your programs is definitely the most time-consuming part of reinstalling Windows or whatever OS you are using; without a doubt! And a nice, easy way to automatically reinstall those programs seems like a great tool. I wonder though how much difficulty is involved regarding version changes, settings changes, etc. I would guess that many of the programs you have set to be reinstalled have had newer versions installed since you recorded the reinstallation app, plus in my case no doubt many of the programs that are installed at the time of recording are no longer installed by the time you need to reinstall the OS.

Could be more of a confusing mess than just reinstalling them all manually! Also, after reinstalling Windows is the time that I carefully reconsider just what programs I do and do not want installed anymore. If all your previously installed programs are automatically reinstalled you would have to then uninstall all of those. Could be more messy than I'd want!

Thanks!

Jim

762

General Software Discussion / Re: program to create automatic fully unattended installations of software

« Last post by J-Mac on February 16, 2011, 08:50 PM »

Heh - I won a copy.   

Still never did use it though.

Jim

763

General Software Discussion / Re: program to create automatic fully unattended installations of software

« Last post by J-Mac on February 15, 2011, 11:30 PM »

Almeza Multiset does exactly what you ask - but you have to walk it through all installations the first time naturally. So, time consuming to set up but it should make future installations - particularly when reinstalling the OS - much simpler.

Jim

764

Living Room / Re: Newspaper Article: The Dirty Little Secrets of Search

« Last post by J-Mac on February 13, 2011, 10:53 PM »

This is one reason I have been using Twitter more lately for searches. Mouser, I gave up on trusting top results a long time ago. It's often just too apparent that the results aren't reflective of reality. And as far as "…the possibility of an eventual revolt against these "top of the page" high ranked results...", How do we revolt?! I don’t even want to try to list all the alternative search engines I have tried in a quest to get away from this kind of fraud! There just aren't any worth using presently - at least IMO.

Thank you.

Jim

765

Living Room / Re: No, robot: Japan's elderly fail to welcome their robot overlords

« Last post by J-Mac on February 13, 2011, 10:45 PM »

Serious topic but I can't help but seeing Rosie in her little apron pushing a vacuum around!

Thanks!

Jim

766

Living Room / Re: Borders Goes Bankrupt - The Death of Print at Retail?

« Last post by J-Mac on February 13, 2011, 10:39 PM »

Where I live there were always more Borders stores around than B&N. I usually went to Borders mainly because that was the first big box bookstore I ever used. I always felt that Borders and B&N were very close in quality, availability, etc. and so I just used the one that I was already familiar with. That is.... until I discovered Amazon.com! My first book purchase at Amazon was in early 1999 and I never looked back!

Jim

767

Living Room / Re: Wikipedia Book Creator

« Last post by J-Mac on February 13, 2011, 10:35 PM »

Very nice! I really like this!

I often print out PDF manual or ebooks too. Not usually entire books though, but specific chapters or sections. I can't sit at the computer for long periods - about 30 minutes max for me. So it is essential that I be able to print out some things so I can read them wherever. If there's a printed book with the same content I just buy that but many times there is no printed version available.

Thanks!

Jim

768

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Resizing tool

« Last post by J-Mac on February 13, 2011, 10:07 PM »

Try WinSize2. Works for me on Windows 7.

Jim

769

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Chrome: Time for a Second Chance?

« Last post by J-Mac on February 11, 2011, 12:54 PM »

Made me open Chrome and check that out. Got it all set, but... I can't print! Chrome says I am connected, I'm signed in, tells me all my printers are now connected to Google Print Cloud. All looks good but when I click on "Print a Test Page" the dialog that opens shows no printers there and says that I have no printers connected. Weird.

Thanks!

Jim

770

ProcessTamer / "hello world!"

« Last post by J-Mac on February 08, 2011, 02:06 AM »

Continually repeating in the log. Cute!   

Jim

771

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by J-Mac on February 04, 2011, 12:00 AM »

Not sure - I'd have to check, but the last time I checked a few days ago it said 3.0.8.0, yet Support told me in an email yesterday to download 3.0.18 - which doesn’t sound right. Unless they are using a numbering system like 3.0.1, 3.0.2, etc. up to 3.0.18, 3.0.19...  Of course that would mean that I somehow missed 3.0.9 through 3.0.17 all in a couple of days. I don’t think so. Weird.

Thanks!

Jim

772

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by J-Mac on February 03, 2011, 12:37 PM »

Tom, it is very easy to install and start it backing up. It's backup simplified. Problem is in trying to control it at all. I can't tell if they designed it this way so that people can't control/configure it, or if they just haven't developed the program enough.

Jim

773

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by J-Mac on February 03, 2011, 11:31 AM »

I purchased three licenses the last time Oops had a sale, and I am struggling with it currently. I opened a support ticket yesterday with Altaro. First, once this thing starts backing up there is no way to stop or pause it. Oops can get a little high in CPU usage at times, like any backup program. But if it is taking a little longer than expected and I want to work on something that requires no "stealing" of resources, like DVD authoring or editing, I can't stop Oops; I have to wait until it gives me the time. I don’t like that!

Also it has difficulties - big difficulties - deleting old backups. My backup storage grew a little too big too fast for my liking so I wanted to reduce its size. If you delete the oldest backups from within Oops it slows to a crawl. E.g., deleting less than a week's worth of backups Oops took over 20 minutes just to select the old backups! Then a couple hours - running at 75 to 85% CPU trying to delete them. It was unresponsive for so long I finally gave up and killed the process - and the service, too - and then just went into DOpus and manually deleted the files and folders. Manually. Took all of < 1 minute.

Then last night I noticed that the Oops storage area had increased by an additional 145 GB! I found a folder named "Recovered Files" in the Oops Profile folder. Why? I don’t know yet. I deleted that too.

It just doesn’t act like most other backup programs I have used, and it doesn’t allow you to freely change, delete, pause, etc.; all features that Altaro really needs to implement in order to make it a usable product IMO. I'm awaiting the next reply from support to see what I do from here.

Thank you.

Jim

774

Screenshot Captor / Re: Settings Not Saved When SSC is Updated in 2.89.01

« Last post by J-Mac on February 03, 2011, 12:17 AM »

Hmm. Not sure what could have happened, though fortunately I have some ultra-redundant backups and was able to easily recover the old ini file.

Thank you.

Jim

775

General Software Discussion / Re: Outlining software recommendations?

« Last post by J-Mac on February 02, 2011, 11:27 PM »

OK then I'm thinking of a program that was recently available that added several pre-built outlining styles in Office 2007, filling the gap left when the outline formats were abandoned by MS.

Jim