Recent Posts

801

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by allen on April 19, 2006, 05:25 AM »

Had I known consoles were allowed in this discussion, I might have had a little longer list I've always preferred console to computer gaming.  Metroid, Legend of Zelda, the uber-hyped Mario Bros 3 -- and all the sequels still following . . .

I never got to play on a 2600, with the exception of once or twice at a friends house--which usually amounted to watching my friends' big brother play it.  He wasn't big on sharing.  I barely got to jump on the NES wave -- my parents weren't entirely sold on the whole video game thing.  Fortunately, grandma and grandpa were aiming to please.

My parents, who never did admit to understanding my being drawn to games, sat up late at night playing Super Mario Bros. -- I think they made it to world 4 or 5 once, which they didn't have the heart to tell me until they were certain I'd done it myself

802

Living Room / Re: Man Using Paper Clip to Barter for House

« Last post by allen on April 19, 2006, 05:17 AM »

A step up for you, it's still functional.  Well, it was.  Now, it's more or less an unstraight wire. Had something stuck in my teeth, and . . .

803

Living Room / Re: Man Using Paper Clip to Barter for House

« Last post by allen on April 18, 2006, 09:48 PM »

I have a silver paper clip . . .

804

LaunchBar Commander / Re: great idea!

« Last post by allen on April 18, 2006, 09:45 PM »

my only request is that i be able to bring up a toolbar by hotkey and be able to navigate it by keyboard.

-cracksloth (April 18, 2006, 08:51 PM)

I am totally behind you on that -- though, FRR almost entirely eliminates the need for LBC on my system . . . yet, I run both

805

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Dream Host maximum discount $97 Off promo code

« Last post by allen on April 18, 2006, 09:37 PM »

Yup, use dreamhost--have for years and can't imagine I'd host with anyone else.  They offer everything -- from unlimited domains/subdomains/e-mail aliases to full shell accounts (for 2nd level and up plans, I think).  They provide pretty much everything -- and the control panel makes for easy editing of pretty much all of it.  So whether you know what you're doing or not, you should be able to find your way around.  In the near decade I've been with them, there have only been two significant outages -- one was caused by the California brownouts and the other a massive DoS attack, which they've since taken great strides to prevent from happening again.  Pretty good record, in my book.

Included are all the basics; php, mysql, ruby, perl, squirrelmail, formmail, miva merchant, some 1-click install software (blog, wiki, etc.), the typical apache goodies--cron,.htaccess.  There are also some interesting things -- they're big supporters of Jabber. If you're a fan of the protocol, you can have jabber@yourdomain.  Taking a queue from google, dreamhosts bandwidth and disk space are increased steadily by the day.  The longer you're with them, the bigger your account gets.  Right now, I have a hosting cap of nearly 72,000 MB -- and 1991GB bandwidth. Like I can use all that.

The closest thing to a complaint I have is that the control panel can be a bit slow at times -- which in the grand scheme of things isn't much of an issue.

806

Best Music Service / Re: tech crunch article comparing music services

« Last post by allen on April 18, 2006, 07:45 AM »

RE-Downloading is one very nice thing about emusic!

-Hirudin (April 18, 2006, 12:57 AM)

Definitely -- it came in real handy after reformatting my hard drive.  Didn't even bother backing up my emusic

807

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: My new favorite pen

« Last post by allen on April 17, 2006, 06:17 AM »

I love office supply stores, though I have very little use for them in real world -- pens are my favorite. I've been using uniball vision pens since junior high -- love 'em.



My favorite pen, though I had only a relatively brief affair with it -- ending when it was stolen by my ignoramus computer teacher -- put about 80 bucks into the pen/pencil set by Rotring.  That pen is heavy, double as an effective, albeit small, bludgeon.


(I had the pen/pencil versions of the first in that picture.)

808

Living Room / Re: Access all your bookmarklets at once

« Last post by allen on April 16, 2006, 07:23 PM »

I forgot to include a link, but the attachment should be there -- I can see it . . .

809

Living Room / Access all your bookmarklets at once

« Last post by allen on April 16, 2006, 05:35 PM »

Blummy is a bookmarklet that unifies all your bookmarklets (and other JavaScripts, like pageRank for example) in a single bookmarklet -- launch it and you get a central control panel to all of them, remotely hosted for universal access and highly configurable.  You can drag and drop "blumlets" from their library of user created items or create your own -- whether just a quick search or a full blown bookmarklet.



I'm also glad to report that it works just fine with Opera, for the most part -- occasionally there'll be little cosmetic issues, but usually a reload or relaunch of blummy will fix it.

Blummy

810

Find And Run Robot / Name Display problem with group items

« Last post by allen on April 16, 2006, 04:23 PM »

I've got a group for launching xplorer2 in a couple different modes.  The regex matches fine, the launcher matches fine, but I'm having trouble with the text display.  I'm assuming I'm missing an error somewhere, but . . . I can't find it, so:

[Select]

Explore $$1|c:\Program Files\zabkat\xplorer2\xplorer2_UC.exe "$$1"
Flatten $$1|c:\Program Files\zabkat\xplorer2\xplorer2_UC.exe "$$1" /F:1
Find $$1|c:\Program Files\zabkat\xplorer2\xplorer2_UC.exe "$$1" /F:1 /L

If I remove the $$1 from the names, it works fine -- it displays explore/flatten/find.  But with the variable inserted, it truncates things as shown in this screencapture:



No matter what size I make the column, it gets trimmed like that.  Is it a bug or user error?

811

General Software Discussion / Re: Keep your PC up to date with RadarSync

« Last post by allen on April 15, 2006, 09:22 PM »

This is really cool -- I know version tracker offers this, but it's not cheap.  I'm downloading now.  I wish they had such a thing for my palm . . . they don't, do they?

812

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by allen on April 15, 2006, 09:14 PM »

PC - Grim Fandango

-Ampa (April 15, 2006, 05:22 PM)

I'd forgotten all about that little gem!

813

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by allen on April 15, 2006, 06:21 AM »

Hey, you leave my sent folder out of this!

814

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by allen on April 15, 2006, 06:13 AM »

I loved Crusader: No Remorse, eventually . . . of course, I got my introduction playing Number Munchers and Math Blasters.

815

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by allen on April 14, 2006, 07:48 PM »

Around 50,000 -- give or take.

816

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by allen on April 14, 2006, 09:20 AM »

Opera M2 behaves very much in the same way as Gmail (rather, M2 did it first so one could argue that should be stated inversely -- with the labels rather than true folders, contacts being virtual folders themselves, single flat data base, etc. -- and it really does work quite well.  Because of Opera's keyboard-power-user-friendliness, the Mail client is inherently keyboard friendly as well.  And something can really be said for Opera's adaptive filters -- they work brilliantly when trained properly.

The only problem, for me -- is presently, a large enough mail base in M2 can result in dramatic performance issues.  Especially when the mail panel is active and a large view is open.  It seems one can work around this by taking care to always leave the last mail view one of a smaller nature.  This is one argument for users having separate mail/browser software -- one doesn't drag the other down

For average mail bases or general use, though, M2 is highly competent.  As for it not having a rich text editor, I see that as a feature not a shortcoming

817

General Software Discussion / Re: Luu Tran's wry philosophy of programming

« Last post by allen on April 13, 2006, 08:19 PM »

I like 40tude dialog too -- donation ware, at that

818

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a good file transfer app

« Last post by allen on April 13, 2006, 02:17 PM »

Most of it sounds about right, being an unsanctioned attempt to regain credibility -- but I don't remember any mention of open source when it released.  Furthermore, the official blurb you posted would lead one to think otherwise.  Who really knows, other than the developer?

The good news is it's open source and highly competent now

819

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Calendar LAUNCHED!

« Last post by allen on April 13, 2006, 07:33 AM »

No love for Opera 

-tinyvillager (April 12, 2006, 11:31 PM)

Hit escape at that dialog, it seems to be working just fine with Opera 9

820

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a good file transfer app

« Last post by allen on April 12, 2006, 03:58 PM »

The whole "file sharing" thing was really hitting the fan, it was right around or right after Napster was getting shut down, if I recall correctly.  AOL, owning Nullsoft, didn't want to be associated with a program potentially used to "illegally" transfer files -- at least, that's my best guess.  At the time, with the whole Piracy thing being -the- issue, AOL didn't want to be mis-perceived as a supporter of the stolen arts.  It's dumb, I mean it's not like it's a mass-user file finding device -- it's for transferring among close friends.  But file-sharers were being witch-hunted, so . . .

821

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a good file transfer app

« Last post by allen on April 12, 2006, 11:17 AM »

The biggest advantage to waste is its security -- folder share is probably a simpler solution.

822

Jazper's Software / Re: What is ShoutcastConcierge?

« Last post by allen on April 12, 2006, 06:06 AM »

Shoutcast.com has changed little over the years -- they provide streaming and some relatively rudimentary sorting and searching -- but it's no frills.  For the same reasons as brotherS, I prefer the third party approach.

That said, streaming audio hasn't replaced my mp3 usage yet -- simply because more often than not I'm in the mood for something specific.  Several years back, though, there was a stream I listened to almost non-stop.  Don't laugh.  24/7 Alphaville

823

Living Room / Re: Giant devil rabbit terrorises village

« Last post by allen on April 11, 2006, 03:07 PM »

Last I checked, knitted blankets leftoutside . . . nasty.

824

Best Music Service / Re: tech crunch article comparing music services

« Last post by allen on April 11, 2006, 01:15 PM »

Ah -- precisely what I like about Rhapsody -- unless I need to burn it or put it on my mobile device, I can listen to virtually any album in their library any time I want -- 9.99/mo US.  For 14.95/mo US, I can do that and copy them to my portable device -- so I only have to buy the tracks if I want to burn them to CD.  If you have the 14.95 plan, you get 10% off purchases.  Since I'm generally a homebody, the basic plan works great for me.

Rhapsody allows you 3 additional re-downloads of purchased music -- which is better than no-chance

825

Best Music Service / Re: tech crunch article comparing music services

« Last post by allen on April 11, 2006, 01:00 PM »

Emusic is where I get most of the music downloads I use on my portable devices -- but I do have a Rhapsody subscription. 


They offered a free trial, and I want to try most things free.  I didn't expect to like it, though, as a long time hater of Real Player -- but I've gone ahead and paid my monthly dues.  While the review hits them for their $0.99 price per track, that only applies to songs you want to transfer to your portable or burn to a CD.  Your subscription allows you to listen to and/or download unlimited music on your home PC -- which works really well for me.  I can listen to virtually anything I want.

I haven't touched iTunes -- does iTunes do this as well? I know Napster has a similar program.