Recent Posts

776

Living Room / Re: New Study Says Drink All the Coffee You Want. Really.

« Last post by allen on April 26, 2006, 07:04 PM »

Yup, so as long as you keep pumping the stuff in with breaks only to sleep . . .

777

Find And Run Robot / Re: New version?

« Last post by allen on April 26, 2006, 05:03 PM »

The beauty of it, though is that it doesn't just run -- it finds and runs, hence the long name (Which I, personally, like save for "robot" -- I'd much rather Find & Run Automaton).  And refer to what the Find & Run Automaton does as Preemptive Cognizance

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Living Room / New Study Says Drink All the Coffee You Want. Really.

« Last post by allen on April 26, 2006, 04:58 PM »

While you health nuts are posting your this or that will kill you warnings, I've got this one to fire back

Coffee lovers can drink up without fear of increasing their risk of heart disease, according to a major new study that found people could consume as many as six cups a day without upping their risk.
...
 So the best answer is, if you enjoy coffee and you drink four to six cups a day, it's not going to cause you heart disease."

. . . this would be great news to me, drinking 2 pots a day, if I didn't love cigarettes so much

http://www.cbsnews.c...ws/main1548221.shtml

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Find And Run Robot / Re: New version?

« Last post by allen on April 26, 2006, 05:12 AM »

Either way, it sounds more like an STD than a great application.

780

Living Room / Re: 146$ Linux PC

« Last post by allen on April 25, 2006, 08:21 PM »

The uber linux geeks mod and slip distros on everything -- from gaming systems, to their iPods

781

Find And Run Robot / Re: New version?

« Last post by allen on April 25, 2006, 08:20 PM »

Might be time for another new-name thread.  I'm voting "Interface: Lucidity"

782

Living Room / Re: Air Force One Vandalised

« Last post by allen on April 25, 2006, 09:25 AM »

He didn't secure enough respect to ensure proper spelling.

783

Living Room / Re: Opera 9 Beta

« Last post by allen on April 25, 2006, 09:24 AM »

I know I have a lot of learning to do about customizing Opera and I'm glad! 

-Harrie (April 25, 2006, 02:50 AM)

A good place to start is here.  Lots of information . . . maybe too much

784

Living Room / Re: 146$ Linux PC

« Last post by allen on April 24, 2006, 10:04 PM »

Natively, no -- but there are xbox mods turning the gaming hardware into a personal PC.

785

Living Room / Re: Air Force One Vandalised

« Last post by allen on April 24, 2006, 10:01 PM »

Must be nice to have so much money at your disposal you can do such asinine things on a whim and not be dubbed the village idiot.

I hereby dub Marc Echo the Global Community Daily Village Idiot.

786

Living Room / Re: Opera 9 Beta

« Last post by allen on April 24, 2006, 08:06 PM »

Opera is great -- and the longer you play with it, the more obvious it becomes -- beyond the obvious, there are a lot of configuration options you can take advantage of hidden throughout various files -- with a little time and a lot of love, Opera can be optimised to be the perfect browsing environment for any user.

That said, the widgets are interesting.  It took me a while to adopt them at all, as I too found them obtruse and, essentially, trivial.  The widget I made is by no means an exception -- it's nothing more than a frontend for my regex find/replace utility.

That said, for me the best approach to widgets is on-demand.  While I often keep the weather widget pinned (always on my desktop) the rest are usually hidden.  When I need to use a widget, I just hit F6 and they all toggle on.  Use what I need and toggle them back off.  There are a lot that can be handy but when push comes to shove, there just isn't enough desktop space for a bunch of widgets that I'm only using once or twice a day if that on top of everything else I keep open.

The widgets are novel and have great potential as they evolve, but at this point there far from being one of Opera's stronger features in my opinion.

787

Mouser's Zone / Re: Suggestion:-Stop Hiding those Licence Keys!

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 11:06 PM »

You can find the keys here:
https://www.donation...r.com/Keys/index.php

On the left hand side of any page, there's a little blurb "Looking for a freeware license key? Click here" -- It is a bit hidden admittedly, but there you go

788

PHP / Re: Before you start the PHP Assignments

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 10:14 PM »

Ok, a rudimentary sandbox is now available here.  Feel free to repost/sticky as necessary, mouser.  A mysql database will also be provided in a day or two.

It doesn't restrict file type, so it's appropriate for all web technologies.

789

Living Room / Re: Donation based MP3 Music

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 11:33 AM »

I love Janis Ian -- hear her occasionally on Sirius radio and listen to her every few weeks via Rhapsody.  You have good taste

790

PHP / Re: Before you start the PHP Assignments

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 09:08 AM »

I'd be willing to provide some resources -- I can offer php 4 or 5.  What I may do is set up a web based sandbox rather than worry about accounts for everyone -- which would work for less complicated things that didn't require a lot of external file dependencies.

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PHP / Re: PHP Learning Resources

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 09:05 AM »

w3 Schools PHP Tutorial
Good information for beginners as well as anyone needing a refresher or looking to continue their PHP education.  w3 schools has guides for a lot of web dev technologies -- static as well as dynamic.

792

Living Room / Opera 9 Beta

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 08:54 AM »

Opera 9 has been under development for a while, and preview builds have been available -- but for those too cautious to use pre-beta software but not cautious enough to avoid betas, Opera 9 beta is now out.

Opera Software today announced the first public Beta of Opera 9. This version includes Widgets, small Web programs running in their own windows that are fun, easy-to-use and live on users' desktops. The Opera 9 Beta also features support for BitTorrent, a popular file downloading technology, in addition to an easy-to-use content blocker and thumbnail previews of tabbed sites.

Press Release
Windows Beta Download

I made an admittedly simplistic widget for it.

793

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: Private Dictionary

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 08:52 AM »

wr975 -- As I understand it,  the plan was to have a custom dictionary to suit the person encrypting the message. That just hasn't been implemented yet.

794

Living Room / Re: Support Alert Newsletter recommends DonationCoder

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 05:25 AM »

Yup, that's how *I* got here. Don't know exactly what I'll find because I'm not very advanced, but I'm trying to educate myself. Thanks for the nice welcome.

-j2callie (April 20, 2006, 12:40 AM)

Welcome to town You don't have to be advanced to join in -- and I'm sure you'll have no problem finding someone to answer any questions you may have.

795

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA : Private Dictionary?

« Last post by allen on April 20, 2006, 05:18 AM »

512290290999167190178999367134134234999367190123999189223999212999223267189367167,,,99910-290212223156189334999234134334190234134145999145189367256999290190256190999212367234999167190178'''145134999223134156...999:::534

796

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast Audio Radio Show - Upcoming Show Planning

« Last post by allen on April 19, 2006, 09:09 PM »

I don't have a mic -- is a 3 minute silent segment acceptable as an artistic, humorous approach to computing without a microphone?

797

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by allen on April 19, 2006, 09:07 PM »

Isn't kd lang from Alberta?

-JeffK (April 18, 2006, 10:20 PM)

Sure is.  And a Leonard Cohen fan, to boot KD is great.

Welcome, Tricia!

798

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA : Private Dictionary?

« Last post by allen on April 19, 2006, 08:55 PM »

I was just being utilitarian -- as for decoder ring fun . . . most of the things I do are pointless or at least counter intuitive -- so I'm not one to say "Don't do it"

799

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA : Private Dictionary?

« Last post by allen on April 19, 2006, 08:07 PM »

The problem is, you'd have to explicitly define all potential characters -- unless you want to support only US 26 character alphabet (which would be 52 if you differentiate among lower/upper case) -- wouldn't it be easier to just encrypt a block of text with a password and share the password with those you wanted to be able to read it?   It would, perhaps, but less fun than the decoder-ring approach but it would certainly be easier to implement and more flexible/extensible.

fsekrit would be ideal for sharing such messages.

800

Living Room / Re: Downloading your Gmail Account

« Last post by allen on April 19, 2006, 09:59 AM »

As far as actually being a competitor for gmail, lycos isn't one -- the only significant competition I see is Yahoo/MSN -- both of whom are seriously overhauling their webmail clients.

-allen (March 21, 2006, 09:18 AM)

Allen,

Have you noticed that Yahoo has a new email beta out now?

-rjbull (April 19, 2006, 08:11 AM)

Yeah, that was the overhaul I was referring to . . . unfortunately, it hates opera.