Recent Posts

8051

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by mouser on March 07, 2014, 09:29 AM »

Just finished Les Valiant's book "Probably Approximately Correct: Nature’s Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World".
Sorry to say, another crap book almost devoid of useful content.  Could be boiled down to a 5 page paper without loss.



Valiant's past contribution to machine learning was a useful way of formalizing some guarantees about a class of "Probably, Approximately Correct (PAC)" algorithms.  His attempt at branding that as a theory of intelligence falls painfully short.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Text box background problem

« Last post by mouser on March 07, 2014, 08:40 AM »

yuck.

ok turn that back off.

ok i have another idea -- try changing the transparency setting of the text box to 255 (maximum).
Then edit the text in the box, and resize it a little.  I keep asking you to edit the text box (and let's resize too for good measure) after you make a change because I want to make sure that it isn't holding onto an old image.

See if that helps.  If not, can you experiment with other options for the text box and see if change any colors or anything make a difference.

Oh and can you email me ([email protected]) a copy of the image file AND IT'S ASSOCIATED .objects file, so i can see if i can reproduce?  To see the .objects file associated with this image file you may have to go to the main menu under "GoTo" and choose "Explore at Screenshot Directory".

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Text box background problem

« Last post by mouser on March 07, 2014, 08:15 AM »

Thanks, abbey, that's what i was looking for.

What a strange bug.. I'm at a loss to explain it.

Can you see what happens if you check that box in the options to "Use GDI+ Library", and then edit the text box text.  See if that cures the transparency problem.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Text box background problem

« Last post by mouser on March 06, 2014, 04:14 PM »

open up Options dialog, go to "Drawing Object Options" tab, and then take a screenshot, so I can see what that options tab settings are.

in particular, i'm interested in the "Use GDI+ library" option.

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Living Room / Re: Micro-Fundraiser for the Official DonationCoder CodyMobile!

« Last post by mouser on March 05, 2014, 07:34 PM »

I am imposing a $10/per post surcharge on posters for each post on this thread to pay for the codymobile.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Text box background problem

« Last post by mouser on March 04, 2014, 01:20 PM »

Hmm I see what you mean -- looks fine in editing mode, but transparent when you save it huh?

As a test, can you go into the box and edit the text a bit and then save?  Just to make sure it's not keeping an old copy of the text.

Another thing that would be useful is if you open up Options dialog, go to "Drawing Object Options" tab, and then take a screenshot, so I can see what that options tab settings are.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Text box background problem

« Last post by mouser on March 04, 2014, 01:04 PM »

I need to see the text box side panel that shows when you are in object editing mode, with the text box selected.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Text box background problem

« Last post by mouser on March 04, 2014, 12:17 PM »

I'm not sure I understand.

Can you take a screenshot of the screenshot captor window itself, showing the text box editing that you are having trouble with.
You'll find this option under the Capture menu, labeled "Capture image of Screenshot Capture Window"

And then attach it to this post (or email to: [email protected])

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Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by mouser on March 04, 2014, 12:00 PM »

I'm happy to be done with "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed" by Ray Kurzweil



You can file this one away as another famous narcissist with money getting more famous with a self-indulgent book that is mostly empty of insight and full of self promotion. Blech. Terrible.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Text box background problem

« Last post by mouser on March 04, 2014, 06:30 AM »

Hi Abbey.

You aren't doing anything silly, it's probably the "Blend Mode" setting for the box (should be a setting down at the bottom of the panel) -- try choosing "Normal" for that (the first value under Blend Mode).

Let me know if that works.

8061

Living Room / The Story of Merlin: The 1978 Electronic Game

« Last post by mouser on March 03, 2014, 09:21 PM »

Did anyone else have one of these Merlin early electronic games, circa 1978?

I did, and it was magical.

Here's an article about it's creator and the early days of these electronics games:

http://www.xconomy.c...me/?single_page=true

from http://games-beta.sl...he-first-mobile-game

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Screenshot Captor / Re: How to cature the Quick Capture Bar?

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2014, 12:21 PM »

the quick capture bar was added recently, and i didn't think to obey the option to stay on screen -- i could enable it -- though honestly how often does one want to capture an image of it?

8063

Living Room / Re: Funny Animal Videos

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2014, 11:33 AM »

some good ones in there crabby..  i couldn't help but laugh at plant cat and the one with the rapid foot.

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Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2014, 04:39 AM »

That looks great.  I have a similar set but without the extension bars -- which look very useful.  For those that are curious, the second extension bar there is bendable, which would let you access some otherwise inaccessible areas. 

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Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Simple Application to set all tray icons to always hide

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2014, 03:25 PM »

I was a long holdout on windows XP, but after finally moving to windows 7, my advice is that the best solution to managing system tray is to migrate to Windows 7, which lets you choose which icons to show in system tray.

8066

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2014, 03:13 PM »

And an update on my part:

Since switching from ESet to AVG several weeks ago, my system has felt noticeably faster, with no return of the application-hangs that prompted me to finally switch away from ESet in the first place.

8067

Living Room / Re: Survivorship Bias...an Insidious Enemy

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2014, 10:13 AM »

I'm making my way through the article CodeTrucker linked to -- it has some really nice gems -- like a discussion of people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky:

Wiseman speculated that what we call luck is actually a pattern of behaviors that coincide with a style of understanding and interacting with the events and people you encounter throughout life. Unlucky people are narrowly focused, he observed. They crave security and tend to be more anxious, and instead of wading into the sea of random chance open to what may come, they remain fixated on controlling the situation, on seeking a specific goal. As a result, they miss out on the thousands of opportunities that may float by. Lucky people tend to constantly change routines and seek out new experiences. Wiseman saw that the people who considered themselves lucky, and who then did actually demonstrate luck was on their side over the course of a decade, tended to place themselves into situations where anything could happen more often and thus exposed themselves to more random chance than did unlucky people. The lucky try more things, and fail more often, but when they fail they shrug it off and try something else. Occasionally, things work out.

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Living Room / Re: Survivorship Bias...an Insidious Enemy

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2014, 09:53 AM »

Thanks for posting the link to that article -- I think Survivorship bias (there may be other names for it as well) is a really important thing for people to read about and understand.

Survivorship bias is the tendency to look to the "WINNERS" of some competition for clues to what they did right that enabled them to "win" -- rather than looking at the entire population (especially the "losers").

In many scenarios, it may be that the winners just turned out to be lucky -- and worse yet, they have convinced themselves that their success is explained by a host of skills and actions that turn out to be irrelevant -- and where the valuable clues to success can be found only in looking at what brought down the losers.

It's one of those things that makes sense logically, but is extremely difficult to avoid succumbing to even if you know you shouldn't.

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Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by mouser on February 28, 2014, 10:59 PM »

Just finishing up: "Biological Learning and Control: How the Brain Builds Representations, Predicts Events, and Makes Decisions" By Reza Shadmehr and Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi

Not as good as I hoped from the table of contents -- nothing really new.  At least it moves the ball forward slightly in terms of identifying control topics that need addressing.

http://mitpress.mit....learning-and-control

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Black Screen

« Last post by mouser on February 28, 2014, 08:43 PM »

It's great to see when people work together to solve a problem and don't give up -- you can be sure someone else who has a similar problem will stumble across this thread at some point, and it will save them some time and hassle.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Beyond Compare v4 Open Beta

« Last post by mouser on February 28, 2014, 01:39 PM »

Beyond Compare is an amazing tool.

8072

Living Room / Re: A real touching movie

« Last post by mouser on February 28, 2014, 09:29 AM »

sweet 

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Quality of Captured Image

« Last post by mouser on February 27, 2014, 08:50 AM »

My coarse rule of thumb for file formats:

Photographs: JPG (usually i use quality options of 90-95% in whatever program i'm using)
Anything else: PNG

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Quality of Captured Image

« Last post by mouser on February 27, 2014, 08:48 AM »

Maybe someone can make a SC tool file for one of these png compressors so it's easier to access from SC tool menu?

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General Software Discussion / Re: Licensing Software: Version based vs. Time-Period Based

« Last post by mouser on February 26, 2014, 11:47 AM »

Personally I believe it is unethical to charge people for any update that fixes stability problems.

In addition, I think a minimally fair upgrade policy would be that a user should receive all updates until a major new release -- however long that lasts, AND get major new releases if within some time window since purchase (e.g. 1 year).

I believe being forced to buy a new version every year is wrong and I would avoid such products.  The only exception I make are for things like antivirus tools the developers need to devote huge resources to keeping the database up to date daily.