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8376

Developer's Corner / Re: Web Page Slideshow Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on February 08, 2011, 02:24 AM »

Does DNN have something like Ubermenu? http://codecanyon.ne...a-menu-plugin/154703 I have seen them before, pro coders do not buy scripts for 10$, but one of those plugins many probably don't know they "need".

-Bamse (February 08, 2011, 02:12 AM)

Yes. It's got a quite good menu. Different skins though do it different ways sometimes. The current skins I'm using has an excellent menu system.

Screencasts are actually very difficult to do well. I've not looked at hers, but I've done lots in the past, and they take a LONG time. For a quick job, I'd say you're looking at at least 1 hour of work per 1 minute of screencast, minimum. And that's a hack. There are no good screencast tools that will let you do everything in 1 place that I've seen/used. The audio part is the hardest.

Maybe sometime I'll open up a website or service publicly for marketing. I'd rather stay away from that though as the vast majority of the web marketing industry is pretty sleazy.

8377

Developer's Corner / Re: Web Page Slideshow Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on February 08, 2011, 01:18 AM »

In another thread you said you knew how to promote software in a very effective way. If you are correct many will probably be happy to pay a modest sum for a well writing ebook Can include info on how to set up sites, may be even find a platform for spitting out sites your self. You being a developer, with web dev experience and all counts more than unrelated credentials. You can sell your self better than yet another dude who can help with a website and hosting plan.

-Bamse (February 08, 2011, 12:33 AM)

It's one of those things that I just never get around to. I always have something else that's more pressing or more important. Doing a well written book is a huge effort. I started it before, but I had a lot of code samples, and I was commenting everything in extreme detail. It took too long to keep my interest.

Software devs. can be idiots with websites, promotion - don't see the point in how-to screencasts and other informative boring stuff that can mean tons to users. Whole area is confusing, loads of offers left and right - you just spend hours looking for a little slider. Targeting a specific group is more than a stupid niche idea since you are part of it. Question is how much money they want to spend

-Bamse (February 08, 2011, 12:33 AM)

I think I will be able to sell it for $50 or so. Maybe more. We'll see. Right now there's nothing like what I want out there. Some are close, but just not right. They're all pretty boogery to tell the truth. The good ones aren't available for the framework I'm using (DNN). All the DNN ones are just... bad. Nothing surprising though. A lot of stuff in the DNN world is really substandard for a good site. I suppose that goes for all of the web though -- Joomla, WP, etc. There are always crappy plugins/modules.

It took me several days to find a suitable skin for the site. I lucked out there. It was normally $75 and I got it for $15. It looks good too. Not like a lot of them that are really... boring. $15 certainly beats spending $5k~$10k.

8378

Living Room / Re: A question for Google -- why are you so desperate to have me switch to Chrome?

« Last post by Renegade on February 08, 2011, 12:20 AM »

Probably for the same reasons that Microsoft bought a little browser then turned around and made it free. Applications are moving to the web, and they want to be there. That's where the money is.

8379

Living Room / Re: Death Threats in an Odd Turnabout

« Last post by Renegade on February 08, 2011, 12:09 AM »

Pirated DVDs... Jeez... DVDs are defective by design due to... Sigh... That's just another rant that everyone already knows.

It's just so moronic that you have to pirate content in order to get decent quality. The crap you get through iTunes is really bad. Just piss-poor resolution. Sigh... 

8380

Developer's Corner / Re: Web Page Slideshow Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 11:19 PM »

Not going the Flash route.

I'm having a hell of a time trying to find anything. So far I've spent another 5 hours finding, testing, ruling out.

I think I'm going to need to code this myself. Oh well... I'll try to put some polish on it then see if I can sell it. Got a $5,000 car repair bill coming in... Transmission... Ouch... I need to make some ca$h badly...

8381

Developer's Corner / Re: Web Page Slideshow Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 09:21 PM »

DynamicDrive... Wow. I checked them out and they're still around. I used to read a lot there many years ago.

I'm still searching, but it looks like everything is using jQuery, so I suppose I'll get on top of that then have a look again.

8382

Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 08:00 PM »

Customers? What do the bleedin' customer desires have to do with anything anymore?

-40hz (February 07, 2011, 10:58 AM)

Sigh... Nothing.

I stopped buying any movies/shows through iTunes as it's simply not worth it. It's often cheaper to buy a DVD set at retail in the store and have a physical copy. I'm still hosed with DRM, but crappy DRM that barely works, which is better than Apple's DRM that actually works. So, better broken defective by design than simply defective by design.  

Books at retail here are insanely expensive. I've seen books that are 3x the USD price, putting them well over $100. More often they are about 2x the USD price. For those prices you should get a free <insert rudeness here />.

So it makes more sense to buy an ebook, print it, then bind it myself. It's kind of sucky, but better than being violated at retail.

The books I buy are all more expensive though. The cheapest are around $50 USD, with most in the $60~80 USD range, but some well above that. I got a fantastic deal on one book for only $150 USD (US prices ordered through Amazon). So buying those at retail here is simply out of the question.

What I would like to see is getting a digital copy along with the printed copy. For a $50 USD book, I'd pay $70 or $75 to get both. That's reasonable.

The thing I want most is to not be blatantly violated. But like you said... What do customer desires matter?

8383

Living Room / Re: Porn for Geeks (Kind of SFW)

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 07:43 PM »

Why are you going out over the WAN then?

Are these servers in two different (as in building) locations such that you can't do a giga-LAN connection between them?

-40hz (February 07, 2011, 07:00 PM)

They're in different places with no direct connection.

And I still need to do some config on the one server. No FTP setup yet. I just wanted to get things done and couldn't be bothered at 2am in the morning to go and set everything up just to transfer some files.

I'll be doing more work on the one server and get it finally setup. For now, it's just doing what it's supposed to do. Making me jealous of all the bandwidth I don't have~! (Even when it's fast here, it's still slow. I miss my Internet connection in Korea. )

8384

Living Room / Re: Porn for Geeks (Kind of SFW)

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 06:39 PM »

Is that between your dev server and your ISP host server?

-40hz (February 07, 2011, 11:11 AM)

No -- just 2 servers of mine.

8385

Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 08:42 AM »

For an example, I was watching an episode of CSI the other day...

-Deozaan (February 05, 2011, 12:19 PM)

While I watch CSI, I sometimes want to reach out and strangle the main characters. Gary Sinise I've always liked, but the show is beneath him. He's a better actor than that.

I feel like I'm being preached to in the show all the time. "Oh, you evil son of a *BANG BANG*... That'll teach you to jaywalk. Now we're going to go throw your mother in prison for raising such a brat!" They're psychotically out to convict everyone for everything for no reason.

Sigh... CSI... Pet peeve...

I saw the episode that you're talking about. Yeah... They love to blame people and don't care who as long as they get to throw someone in prison or get to ride their moral high-horse. Pisses me off.

I think I simply spent too long in Asia to swallow the radical legalism you find in North America, etc. etc. There is another way.

8386

Developer's Corner / Web Page Slideshow Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 08:17 AM »

Can anyone recommend a script or utility to make header slideshows?

I want a slide show about 800x200 pixels or so that slides DIVs across the top header. I also want to put both HTML and images in the DIV.

I don't care if it works with IE4 or Opera 3 or whatever. I only care about hitting the top 95% or so of the browser market, so it needs to be relatively robust, but I'm willing to sacrifice a few visitors for some slick style.

This is entirely about style, so the slicker, the better.

If you know anything that's drop-dead sexy, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

8387

Living Room / Re: Porn for Geeks (Kind of SFW)

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 08:10 AM »

Umm, Dirt slow? If this is across the internet, 11MB/s isn't half bad - at least not if we're talking a home connection

-f0dder (February 07, 2011, 07:45 AM)

No - that's between 2 servers of mine in Texas.

8388

Living Room / Porn for Geeks (Kind of SFW)

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 07:36 AM »

Oh, yeah... Look at those big juicy fonts... Yeah baby! Gimme 10 MB/s~! Yeah! That's right! Now 11 MB/s... Oooo... 12 MB/s... Yeah... That's HOT~!



This Australian Internet is killing me... Dirt slow... I was transferring some files between servers, and just thought I'd share a laugh.

8389

Living Room / Re: Death Threats in an Odd Turnabout

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 07:31 AM »

...extort... through fear.

-Eóin (February 07, 2011, 07:03 AM)

Nice choice of words there. Really. It's so bang on.

BTW -- With the increasing number of laws on the books in many of the countries that people here live in, we/you're all criminals. Gotta love lawyers... 

8390

Living Room / Re: Death Threats in an Odd Turnabout

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 06:47 AM »

They're out to ruin people's lives, and got their own lives ruined... fair enough, even if I don't approve of death threats.

-f0dder (February 07, 2011, 01:53 AM)

+1 Compared to the type of threats these people typically make... death is a kindness.

-Stoic Joker (February 07, 2011, 06:31 AM)

You guys are going to bring out my lawyer-hatin'-rantin'-hollerin' self complete with outlandish blatherings pretty soon.

8391

Living Room / Re: which is more important, system ram or video ram?

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 03:30 AM »

I put 2 video cards in this box, but usually I don't worry much at all about it as I don't play games. Mostly I just want them for multiple monitors (running 3 now).

8392

Living Room / Deceptive Online Advertising

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 02:56 AM »

Believe it or not, this is an ad:



I saw it at some site. I forget where now. Just snapped the screenshot as I was busy.

It's nothing more than an image.

And no... I forgot to click through and ended up closing the window.

8393

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a right-click menu tool to quickly resize images?

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 12:55 AM »

Got the context menu done now:

https://www.donation....msg235608#msg235608



That just opens up the program with the picture loaded. You still need to resize & save. It's 1 less step anyways.

Also, you can cycle through presets now. See the thread above for what they are & how (i.e. F2, F3, -, +)

8394

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple Photo Resizer - Please Give Feedback

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 12:52 AM »

Ok, a few updates...

Over in this thread, I saw deano looking for context menus, and thought it would work well as it doesn't have any impact on the main UI. So, there's a shortcut in the Windows Explorer context menu now for JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and SVG files. i.e. Right-click on one of those image types. I used the least possible impact on the system so as not to take any resources for that. No COM stuff or loading DLLs or any of that nonsense.

Also, someone had mentioned presets, but I just can't see adding in anything to the visible UI as it would clutter things up and get confusing. There's already a lot there for some people. Soooo...

-, +, F2, F3 now size the image to presets by width (height is relative):

• 120
• 160
• 240
• 320
• 400
• 512
• 600
• 640
• 800
• 1024
• 1152
• 1280
• 1360
• 1440
• 1600
• 1680
• 1920
• 2048
• 2560
• 3200
• 100%

Preset were all chosen according to popular monitor and camera resolutions.

They cycle as well. So once you hit the minimum or maximum, it flips back to the maximum or minimum, respectively.

Arrow keys and PageUp/Down keys still work as before. 16px increments for arrow keys and 64 pixel increments for PageUp/Down.

Basically, just "silent" type modifications. No noise in the UI, but a few things to make it easier to use.


Very shortly I will get on top of that nice new shiny Help & Manual license and do a help file even. Mostly big screenshots and "how to" task-based stuff for people. (I was soooo hoping to win that, and soooo glad when I did~! )

8395

Living Room / Death Threats in an Odd Turnabout

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 12:21 AM »

http://m.smh.com.au/...-20110207-1ajb6.html

A controversial London-based law firm that sent tens of thousands of letters demanding payment from people it accused of illegal file sharing has dramatically quit its copyright litigations, claiming death threats are causing "immense hassle" to the lead solicitor's family.

The founder and lead solicitor at ACS:Law, Andrew Crossley, announced in a statement to the Patents County Court in London that his firm would no longer be chasing alleged copyright infringers.

"I have ceased my work. I have been subject to criminal attack. My emails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats," Mr Crossley said in the statement read to the court by barrister Tim Ludbrook, who is acting on behalf of copyright licensee MediaCAT. "It has caused immense hassle to me and my family."

I can't help but laugh at litigation like that being withdrawn, but the cause of it... well... not very funny.

8396

General Software Discussion / Re: Web Media Server ?

« Last post by Renegade on February 07, 2011, 12:07 AM »

Have you looked at SHOUTcast?

8397

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a right-click menu tool to quickly resize images?

« Last post by Renegade on February 06, 2011, 07:09 PM »

I thought so but it doesn't work for me - not a big issue as I can start it really quickly and then it's right there for me to use.

-deano (February 06, 2011, 05:24 PM)

Hmmm... That's odd. What OS are you on? (I've not tested on Windows 2000 as it is not in the list of .NET 4 supported systems.)

-Renegade (February 06, 2011, 06:47 PM)

Windows 7 Home.  I didn't see a shortcut created when I ran the exe so created my own...

I basically assume that most things won't run on Win 2000 anymore 

-deano (February 06, 2011, 06:49 PM)

Odd. There should be a desktop icon by default.

I checked, and that *should* work...

It will take me a bit to test as I don't have a Windows 7 Home VM setup yet. (Gotta hit MSDN & download first.)

8398

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a right-click menu tool to quickly resize images?

« Last post by Renegade on February 06, 2011, 06:47 PM »

I thought so but it doesn't work for me - not a big issue as I can start it really quickly and then it's right there for me to use.

-deano (February 06, 2011, 05:24 PM)

Hmmm... That's odd. What OS are you on? (I've not tested on Windows 2000 as it is not in the list of .NET 4 supported systems.)

8399

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a right-click menu tool to quickly resize images?

« Last post by Renegade on February 06, 2011, 05:18 PM »

Thanks, yes it's not what I asked for but really liked that.  It also works well with Quick Cliq.  I can't drag an image directly onto the shortcut icon though - is that what you meant?  I have to run the app, then drag the image onto the left-hand side. 
Nice bit of software which I will use - I certainly know a few people who would like something this simple.

-deano (February 06, 2011, 04:46 PM)

No -- I meant that you *can* drag a photo directly onto the shortcut icon on the desktop. That opens the program with the photo loaded. You then need to either save it resized photo or to slide the slider to resize however you like, then save. Dragging & dropping onto the desktop icon just saves a step, making it a little bit easier.

8400

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple Photo Resizer - Please Give Feedback

« Last post by Renegade on February 06, 2011, 03:51 PM »

Renegade, I was in similar situation years ago, but went even more extreme with the ease of use and ended up with this free resizing tool: http://www.rw-design...r.com/picture-resize
I added a lot of features over the years, but the basic functionality remained the same. Drag and drop photo or folder on it and it creates resized copies. No GUI, no sliders, no buttons. It can be configured by changing its name... Newbies just drag and drop, power users can do a lot more.

BTW cubic resampling is no good when shrinking images. It is for magnification of images.

-vlastimil (February 05, 2011, 08:12 AM)

There are better algorithms, but I just wanted to get it done -- it's the best quality available in the shortest time. The results are more than good enough for casual users. It's not targeted at prosumers or professionals. Heck, I still use Photoshop for resizing some things as Photo Resizer doesn't do everything that I need.

That's a very interesting approach to have the name of the application determine the options. I've never seen that before. I've of course seen differently named versions of applications, but not like that. A very interesting innovation!

One of the "inspirations/motivations" for it is someone I know and who shall remain unnamed -- Asking him to rename a file is a major task. Watching him browse to a different location on his computer is enough to make you want to rip your eye-balls out and scream. While seeing Cthulhu may give you a few insanity points, he'll max you out real quit as you find yourself screaming wildly and attempting to bash your brains out in a padded cell.

I've not given him a link for it yet, but he'll be the acid test to see if I've managed to get the UI right.