Recent Posts

8751

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover?

« Last post by wraith808 on January 07, 2011, 11:27 AM »

^ If that was minimalization, then I would hate to see what would have happened had they not done that LOL

8752

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover?

« Last post by wraith808 on January 07, 2011, 10:28 AM »

VB.NET is trivial to learn. I think it's great to start with.

-Renegade (January 06, 2011, 06:57 AM)

Why start with a lobotomy and then later on try to reverse it's effects?

-f0dder (January 06, 2011, 07:29 AM)

VB.NET I've found is as different from classic VB as night is to day.  Ok, maybe an exaggeration, but it's not the same animal.  I find that it doesn't irritate my OOP sensitivities as much as classic VB does, though.

8753

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NetLaunch

« Last post by wraith808 on January 07, 2011, 10:24 AM »

I had that same question when I was using it... I ended up disabling my wireless on my laptop, as it seemed to think that the network was up, even though the wireless wasn't actually connected to anything when I yanked the ethernet cable.

8754

Living Room / Re: Should I buy a tablet pc, ipad, netbook, or other?

« Last post by wraith808 on January 07, 2011, 10:23 AM »

I'm for it! LOL   I've always said that I can't completely vilify Steve Jobs- after all, he was partly responsible for Pixar.  Maybe he was trying to offset the evil that he's performing with Apple LOL

8755

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Park Cursor Aside

« Last post by wraith808 on January 07, 2011, 10:21 AM »

Anand, I was using Park Cursor Aside while recording the screencast, and I noticed that when the cursor is parked, input focus is taken from whatever you're typing in.  Is this something that's happening on my installation, or is it a known thing?  And is it possible to put the focus back to whatever you're working on?  It's a pretty slick idea and implementation, but that bit with grabbing focus makes it not as useful as it could be.

Thoughts?

8756

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: LinkToText ver 1.0.0.0

« Last post by wraith808 on January 06, 2011, 10:21 PM »

Hi limelect,

I tried your program, and I think I understand that it is supposed to be a password manager.  However, when I got an entry into the db and attempted to try it out, it gave me an error that the field 'Disable' was not found.

Thoughts?

8757

Living Room / Re: What would it look like if all DC visitors were gathered in one place?

« Last post by wraith808 on January 05, 2011, 10:02 AM »

Maybe we could have a DC flash mob ;-)

8758

General Software Discussion / Re: Your most used SPECIAL programs

« Last post by wraith808 on January 04, 2011, 04:08 PM »

You've convinced me to give it a try, when from the beginning, I hadn't really paid much attention to it.

8759

Living Room / Trouble with Google as the source of traffic

« Last post by wraith808 on January 03, 2011, 02:59 PM »

I saw the thread about the page rank for DoCo a little earlier today, and if not for that, then this article from Coding Horror would have passed me by.

There are a few interesting quotes from this... my favorite being:

I've been told many times that Google isn't a monopoly, but they apparently play one on the internet. You are perfectly free to switch to whichever non-viable alternative web search engine you want at any time. Just breathe in that sweet freedom, folks.

but followed closely by a less comic, but more disturbing one...

But last year, something strange happened: the content syndicators began to regularly outrank us in Google for our own content.

There are some really strange things going on with Google's page rank system...

Thoughts?

8760

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by wraith808 on January 03, 2011, 02:04 PM »

Mouser, I can do several for you if that will help.  I can't do all of them, but if you want to split them up, I'm more than willing to help.

8761

Living Room / Re: Anyone want to write an eBook in 2011?

« Last post by wraith808 on January 03, 2011, 08:30 AM »

I'm sure.  When I signed up, I was listed as the Publisher, and they wanted a publisher name.  So the book would show up as published by X, written by Y, with Y being my name, and X being the name assigned as the publisher.

8762

Living Room / Re: Anyone want to write an eBook in 2011?

« Last post by wraith808 on January 03, 2011, 08:22 AM »

Pricing there is STEEP~!

Barnes & Noble may update or alter the Pricing and Payment Terms at any time and changes will be effective and binding on you on the date thirty days from posting, as described in the PubIt! Terms & Conditions.

Publisher will set a List Price for each eBook between $0.99 and $199.99.

Publisher will be paid a royalty off the List Price according to the following terms:

   1. For eBooks with a List Price at or between $2.99 and $9.99
          * 65% of the List Price
   2. For eBooks with a List Price at or below $2.98 or at or greater than $10.00 (but not more than $199.99 and not less than $0.99)
          * 40% of the List Price

Publisher will, at all times, ensure that the eBook List Price:

   1. Is no greater than the eBook's List Price at any other retailer, website, or sales channel.
   2. Is no greater than the eBook's print edition (if applicable).
   3. Complies with the minimum and maximum pricing policy as stated above.

Sample royalty calculation:

   1. List Price: $9.99 - Publisher Royalty: $6.49
   2. List Price: $20.00 - Publisher Royalty: $8.00

Especially for just listing your product. It's not like they're actually going to market it or do anything. 40% or 65% just to put on on the shelf? YIKES~!

-Renegade (January 03, 2011, 12:52 AM)

Actually, I think you're reading that wrong   Look at the bold part... and you are the 'publisher'.

You *get* 65% if your book is between $2.99 and $9.99, i.e. 5% less than Amazon.  So Amazon is a better deal since they changed their rules (I believe after PubIt launched), but not by much.

8763

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: "VeggieSquares" - Children's Game

« Last post by wraith808 on January 02, 2011, 07:38 PM »

Says it under the entry... IWBASIC

8764

Living Room / Re: Anyone want to write an eBook in 2011?

« Last post by wraith808 on January 02, 2011, 07:13 PM »

Actually, there's already fragmentation in this market... if I was going to do anything like this (and I had sort of planned to), I would use PubIt.

8765

Official Announcements / Re: HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011 FROM EVERYONE AT DONATIONCODER! Add a reply here!

« Last post by wraith808 on January 02, 2011, 03:34 PM »

May everyone at DoCo have a HAPPY, SAFE, and PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR

8766

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: askapic.com - Photo Q&A Site

« Last post by wraith808 on January 02, 2011, 02:16 PM »

Suggestion: Integrate OpenID for sign-in.

8767

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 02, 2011, 11:08 AM »

Updated again, both the full package and the config file.  Now it works for all but a few cases; I think I know what the problem is, but how to fix it in the regex is a different story.  I also added freedictionary.com, which reinforced my future update to remove words added for anchoring the definition and getting more than one result (or perhaps being able to classify the lexical class that you're looking for).

8768

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 02, 2011, 12:08 AM »

I have it updated for your cases, but now I broke some that worked... create, verb, verbally... I'm going to try to fix those before I upload a new config file.

If anyone else wants to help with my limited regex skills, the regex I'm currently down to is

(?s:((noun *?.*?1\.)|(verb *?.*?1\.)|(—adj .*1\.)|(adjective *?.*?1\.)).*? *?2\.)

Much longer now as the adj case required special handling so I had to put some common code into the capture groups.

8769

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2011, 11:33 PM »

some of those I tried were in those two categories... I anticipated that.  Are you having problems with some specifically?

nevermind... I just tried the ones in your e-mail.  d'oh!

8770

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2011, 11:26 PM »

updated regex again: added create, satisfy, move, write, talk, type, shoot, tell, cast, parse, express, hardly, very, going, work to test cases.

8771

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2011, 11:06 PM »

Some I used for the first case include: bus, test, monkey, knight, moon, stream, donation, code, program, stream, desk, table.

For the second case, I used: blog, weblog

I didn't test the second case as much, putting it in there more as an example of what it could do than anything else, so I don't have any other ones offhand.  I did it on a couple of machines other than my development machines to make sure it was nothing on my computer also, though all of them were on my local network, though I don't think that should make a difference.

8772

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2011, 10:45 PM »

I just uploaded a new version of the config file and the zip.  The line you can check to make sure you have the latest in the config file has the regex expression "((noun)|(verb))1\..*?\. *?2\."  If it has a fixed number of spaces before the 2, it's not the latest config file.  It was a combination of my regex and dictionary.com not being consistent across definitions.  In all of my tests, there were 2 spaces before the second definition.  In the case of Monkey, there's only one space.  I'm sure there will be other cases that don't fit the examples I put in the config file... just let me know (or in the case of people better in regex, maybe you can correct it for me ) and I'll update it.  If you add dictionaries to the file, send those too so I can update the base installation if you don't mind.

8773

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2011, 10:35 PM »

I broke the original definitions trying to fix the monkey case.   Download the config file and overwrite, or the zip, and the normal cases should work.  I have to figure out why it thinks that monkey doesn't match.

8774

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2011, 10:22 PM »

Hey... it was released on January 1st

Not really a bug, other than my regex skills suck.  What my regex expressions are is the html stripped down to the text, then I find something to anchor it at the beginning and end of the term.  That one seems like it should work... hmmm...

I created a new config file.  You can either download the zip again, or just get it from here.

8775

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / NANY 2011 Release: WordCaster

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2011, 09:50 PM »

Ok... so it's a bit late, but I wanted to release something...  hope that's ok

NANY 2011 Entry Information

Application Name	WordCaster
Version	1.0
Short Description	Utility that checks definitions on multiple sites at the same time and displays them in one interface.
Supported OSes	Windows
Other Requirements	.NET Framework 3.5
Web Page	My Software
Download Link	http://www.wraith808...files/WordCaster.zip
Configuration File	http://wraith808.com...ordCaster.exe.config
Version History	2011-01-01 - First Release
Inspiration Credited To:	this coding snack request, though this isn't what the asker had in mind.
Author	wraith808

Description
N.A.N.Y. 2011 caught me in a bit of a rush. I didn't complete my original entry, but I had started on this because of a request that turned out to be specified incorrectly, so I finished it according to what I had originally specified it to be.

It uses a configuration file to specify several different dictionary type sites, and queries all of them on one word at the same time, showing the results. It uses regular expressions to parse the page, so is only as good as the regular expression specified in the site definitions. You can also specify different versions of the same site so that if a site might put it's definitions in more than one format, you can use the one that's appropriate (or query for more than one at once).

It's a bit rough around the edges still, and there are a couple of features that I haven't included that I want to include (for example the ability to remove spurious words that you might include to specify the definition, but that are not part of the definition). But it's currently functional, and a bit slick if I do say so myself.

Features

• Free for personal or educational use
• Very configurable
• Can query from multiple sites, or the same site more than once

Planned Features

• Remove extraneous words from the returned text
• Edit configuration from within program
• More default configurations

Screenshots


Usage
Installation
Requires .NET 3.5 framework, but other than that, unzip and run.

Using the Application
Add sites from the drop down, though no site definition can be added more than once.  Then enter the word to be defined, and click Get Definition.

The definitions are specified in the WordCaster.exe.config file in the executable directory in the following format.
<add siteName="<Unique Site Name>" description ="<Description of Entry>" definitionRegex="<RegEx for Definition>" url="<Enter URL Here, specifying place to put word to be defined by {Term}>"/>

Uninstallation
Delete application

Known Issues
Very minimal error handling at this point.
The regular expressions are rudimentary to be kind.  They don't handle a few cases, so I'll need to tighten them up.  As I do so, the configuration file can be downloaded separately at the link above.