Recent Posts

851

Screenshot Captor / Re: FTP Uploader

« Last post by allen on April 08, 2006, 09:46 PM »

You could use rcftp and a script to get the location copy + convenience of RC.

852

General Software Discussion / Re: Find and Run Robot got an Award

« Last post by allen on April 07, 2006, 08:56 PM »

Wow, great news for the community -- congrats to mouser!

853

Living Room / Re: Firm pitches $2,800 64GB USB Flash disk

« Last post by allen on April 07, 2006, 10:41 AM »

According to this, BitMicro has a 155 gig in the works.

I'd read an article somewhere on the lifespan of a USB drive -- and basically what it came down to was with normal usage, there's a very good chance it will outlive your harddrive -- and potentially  you.

854

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy

« Last post by allen on April 07, 2006, 05:48 AM »

Is TB's configuration in one or more identifiable files, so that you could back those up in case of disaster?
[/url]

I had everything backed up, as TB has a very effective backup/restore feature.  Unfortunately, the backup was on the same hard drive -- in my defense, I was in the Navy and didn't have a lot of options on where/what to do with my data.

I've only just started with conventional email clients (mostly been using CompuServe) and haven't got very far yet.  I'm assuming I'd keep identifiable folders for mailing lists, but I hadn't thought farther than that.  Sounds like TB needs a faster searching system...

It's not picking on the bat specifically -- this is the case, in my experience, across the board.  Search is often thrown in as a feature not the focus -- the result is a mediocre search -- and when you're talking about a massive mailbase, seconds or even minutes are at stake   TB has a new improved search, but I really haven't tried it yet.

I thought TB had virtual folders?  It was really all a single message base?

No.  Well, TB does have virtual folders now -- they're a relatively new feature (Last year or two) -- I haven't spent enough time to know just how effective they are, though.  Even with virtual folders, one can lose a lot of time organizing I do keep my mailing lists in separate views, though -- as I don't need them mixed with personal mail or vice versa.

re: m_s
-- Might be time to start a new thread about mail conversion/archival

-rjbull (April 07, 2006, 03:48 AM)

855

Living Room / Re: Firm pitches $2,800 64GB USB Flash disk

« Last post by allen on April 07, 2006, 05:37 AM »

That's is awesome.  I couldn't possibly get my money's worth out of it, but cool nonetheless

856

fSekrit / Re: Progress report etc.

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 04:44 PM »

I've downloaded it and replaced the 'emtpy' copy I keep on my c: drive -- I'll take it for a thorough test later on.

As for converting, perhaps even something as simple as an 'upgrade' option in the menu of an already opened file where it prompts you for the location of the new exe and upgrades from there.  It would still be easier than opening two side by side, copying one into the other, closing the old one and overwriting it with the new one.  Would save a few steps.  The obvious downside there, would be the upgrade mechanism would be increasing the file size, eh?

I have fewer than a dozen to upgrade at the moment, at least, so it's not like I'm going to lose any sleep over it. 

857

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 02:48 PM »

I haven't used The Bat! in a dedicated fashion in a few years--not since I lost my hard drive with everything on it.  I just haven't been in the mood to setup everything the way I like it -- you wouldn't believe how many hours I put into making TB 'perfect' for me.  Just don't have the energy to do it again, maybe one day . . .   -- it also consumes a great deal more resources than, say, Pimmy.

One of the biggest reasons, though -- is that my focus has really changed.  Back when I used TB hardcore, I was really heavily into sorting and organizing my mail into folders -- and nothing is more filter/sorting efficient than TB.   What I've learned over the years, however, is that a well organized mailbase is easily more a hindrance than asset.  I say this for two reasons -- first of all, the amount of time spent setting up and maintaining a convoluted hierarchy of folders and sub-folders.  Secondly, the amount of time spent decoding this.  Whether you're a mouse or keyboard user, it takes a good few clicks to get to the message you're looking for -- and you can at least double that, because a lot of the time you end up having to check multiple folders.  If, perhaps, you organize by people as well as by subject, you can never know for sure if you filed a message by one or the other -- unless you copy it over into each -- but then you're increasing your mailbase potentially by 100%.

Anyway, in my experience, when you're sitting on tens or hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages, whether things are well organized or not, the quickest and most efficient way to get to your message is by searching the mailbase.  Here's where mail clients fork a bit.  Gmail (and to a lesser extent Opera's M2) is built around search with limited organization based on tags, for example.  TB! on the other hand is very much the opposite -- excellent capabilities with sorting and handles large folders rather quickly -- but its search is relatively complicated and arguably notably slower searching across all the folders and such.

It took me quite a while to get used to not having everything organized in a fascist manner -- to get used to throwing everything in the same place with a couple labels for quick access stuff -- but in the long run, I've found abandoning rigid order in exchange for searching to be greatly time saving and immensely more efficient.  The larger my mailbase grows, the more this becomes true.

The Bat! is an amazing application, the best in its league, but I think that they're at the end of an era for E-mail.  There's been quite a lull in mail client development the last few years.  I think in a year or two or three we'll see another surge, everybody with a new mail client, as an era of developers taking queues from web application developers in trying to ride the search and tag wave.  Assuming, of course, server side doesn't entirely replace client side first.

858

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: BatchFTP

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 02:29 PM »

type o <servername>
It'll prompt for user/pasword
ls
> files are shown
cd <directory>
> go to <directory>
lcd <directory>
> go to <directory> on local machine
put <filename>
> uploads <filename> to current <directory>
get <filename>
> downloads <filename>

Etc

859

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: BatchFTP

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 01:32 PM »

Cool idea, but man is that pricey!

I know in winXP you can just open a folder/IE to an ftp site and do your FTP'ing from there -- but you can't chmod.  How about in webdrive?  You might have to write a mini-review for it.

-- If you really want to go simple, superboy, you could always use good old fashioned start -> run -> ftp; no chmod there, either though.

860

Living Room / Re: Etch a Sketch

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 11:38 AM »

Mindblowing . . . if only he hadn't turned it profitable, I could turn my jealousy to smugness and say "Someone has too much time on their hands."

861

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: BatchFTP

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 10:22 AM »

Never tried (or heard of...) Dopus -- played Dofus though

I adored BPFtp, used it for years -- but lost my license and their new company can't return old ones.  It's just a bit too dated to pay -that- much for. There are a lot of freeware/shareware ftp clients that do more -- and you're right about the file browsing dialog!  Actually, no significant updates have been made to BPFTP in the better part of 5 years -- the biggest changes have been rebranding as some "Digital Candle" or something like that acquired them, then they went back to sans Digital Candle.  Not sure what the deal was -- software wise, it's been largely untouched.  Had I not lost my license, I'd probably still be happily using it, but in the long run Batch is a better application at a better price.  Aside from my web design, I use it to automate uploading backups of important files and schedule downloads for when I'm not going to be on/needing bandwidth.

In my experience, the absolute most powerful FTP suite is CuteFTP -- but it's pricey and, frankly, you need to be in an enterprise situation to really take advantage of a lot of its features/make it worth the money.  It's a little bit too much, in most cases -- it is well designed and works great, though.  I've owned licenses for a few versions of it.  Skipped over the upgrade a major version or two ago, as BatchFTP is a good balance of price and software -- no complaints here, except that I worry about its development.  The author has said it's not abandonware, he's just busy/between jobs -- but that's been the case for some time now!

862

Living Room / Re: cody has some eggs?

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 06:37 AM »

Tough to do with a mouth full of coin.  I think he uses his feet. . . unless it really is a ghost.

863

fSekrit / Re: Progress report etc.

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

Yikes, what a time! -- My my brother in law recently cost my wife and I between 200 and 300 dollars via ebay.  I'm not sure the final numbers, as I'm still trying to get things ironed out.

Anyway--fsekrit. Great to see a new version, and the find/replace will be great.  Here's a little something -- upgrading the version of fsekrit.   A utility would be handy, as upgrading a bunch of files is going to be a bit tedious!

864

General Software Discussion / Re: Mobysaurus V2.4 Preview 2

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

Here, here -- I too look forward to seeing the Mobysaurus grow.

865

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: BatchFTP

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

It doesn't get much simpler than BulletProof -- but here's how I finally looked at it when I decided what client to stick with -- The one with more features is cheaper.  And even if you don't use scheduling, the repeating can be really handy -- I didn't think I'd use it either, but do all the time now.  If you're adjusting your webpage and stylesheet, for example, instead of having to navigate to your css folder, upload it, move back to the data folder, upload it, etc. -- you just add them to your queue, upload them -- and when you need to upload them again, they're still there in the queue. Activate them and upload them again.

As a BulletProof user, you're used to queuing up files and hitting start -- imagine if you only had to queue them once, then it's just a matter of toggling a check box to upload it again.  (Unless you hit go when nothing is checked, in which case it automatically resets their status and uploads them all)

It is also possible to use BatchFTP in what he calls "Auto" mode, if you want to use more conventional non-queue based operation.

There's a free trial available, give her a spin

866

Living Room / Re: A personal note about DonationCredits

« Last post by allen on April 06, 2006, 05:48 AM »

Congrats, mouser! Great to see your efforts have come to fruition at last.  The final result is looking great at this point, can't wait to take her for a spin.

Now to just get the word out there -- this program could, and really should, spread like a contagion.

867

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Maya for Free

« Last post by allen on April 05, 2006, 03:31 PM »

Watermark is better than nothing. I think if you get to the point where you are good enough with it to warrant sharing renders and the matermark is a deterrent, you might as well pay for it -- you can probably make the money back

868

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy

« Last post by allen on April 05, 2006, 05:31 AM »

I use Pimmy to read most of my mail.  I do not, however, use it for my gmail archival -- as it really couldn't handle a mailbase of that size sufficiently enough.  In order to prevent a conflict with Pimmy downloading mail and my backup not downloading, I have a copy of all messages forwarded to a third-party account from which I download the messages for reading at the moment.  Erstwhil I use The Bat! to download/maintain the actual backup of my mail.  From there, the mailbase is backed up weekly and uploaded to my ftp account by BatchFTP.

I had used mailbag assistant in the past -- once upon a time, I was in an experimental phase obsessed with e-mail clients.  Using them all, searching for the perfect one -- mailbag assistant played a critical role in my ability to move the mailbase around from client to client  since it natively supports most formats.  (All but Opera, really).  I've since lost my registration, however, and don't have enough need for it right now to warrant the price.  Maybe with a 50% discount . . .

869

Screenshot Captor / Re: Ftp Uploader

« Last post by allen on April 04, 2006, 12:56 PM »

Yeah, that is handy . . . I might have to request such a feature be added to RCFtp

870

Developer's Corner / Re: correleation between beard growth and unix hacker level

« Last post by allen on April 04, 2006, 09:22 AM »

I've got the beard, but . . . the brains still haven't come.  What am I doing wrong?

871

Screenshot Captor / Re: Ftp Uploader

« Last post by allen on April 04, 2006, 09:20 AM »

Another option is RCFtp.

It was designed to be a right click context menu option (right click > upload) but accepts command line parameters as well, so you can easily use it (as I do) as an external tool with Screenshot Captor or your text editor.  What I particularly like is that it stores ftp profiles -- so when I go to upload, I can select which account and directory I want to send it to.  That way I don't have to configure different tools for different upload dirs.

872

Living Room / Re: It won't happen for 100 years

« Last post by allen on April 04, 2006, 09:15 AM »

Those of us who prefer dd/mm/yy will have to wait until May 4th to enjoy the 123456

873

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite Soundtracks or Scores to listen to

« Last post by allen on April 03, 2006, 08:29 AM »

The only soundtrack I have ever owned, and certainly my favorite, is for the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou?"  -- The movie was made for the sound track, really, not the other way around -- and is a marvelous compilation if you like folk/bluegrass.

874

General Software Discussion / Re: Review of File Renamers — let's make a list

« Last post by allen on March 31, 2006, 12:30 PM »

I'm looking forward to seeing the results -- that said, I can't help much, you've already got my pick (Oscar's) in there.

875

Living Room / Re: Flash Games: GrowCube Series

« Last post by allen on March 31, 2006, 11:04 AM »

Vanilla is the tree one, I believe.  I love the growcube games -- I'll play them for hours . . . I know I've managed to get get max levels on all items in GrowCube but I don't think I'd mastered v 3.