Recent Posts

951

Living Room / Re: Flash game : Fantastic contraption

« Last post by Eóin on July 23, 2008, 12:56 PM »

I love this little game.

952

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder/Veign Programming Contest Results Posted

« Last post by Eóin on July 23, 2008, 12:16 PM »

Also, think you guys could write up some articles on how the code behind your programs work?

-VideoInPicture (July 23, 2008, 10:45 AM)

That's not a bad idea, documenting code is always something left undone which for an open source project would actually be very helpful.

953

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder/Veign Programming Contest Results Posted

« Last post by Eóin on July 22, 2008, 03:36 PM »

Wow I'm honoured and very privileged to have been chosen to receive this MSDN giveaway. My most sincere thanks go to both mouser and Chris for hosting the competition and providing the prize.

Also of course my congratulations to Eric and Hollowlife1987 for their fantastic entries.

954

Official Announcements / Re: Programming Contest from DonationCoder.com and Veign.com - Deadline July 1st

« Last post by Eóin on July 14, 2008, 12:39 PM »

Ok here is my updated entry. The extra two weeks gave me the chance to do some huge UI polishing and usability improvements. It also allowed me to added a feature I really wanted to support, sub-profiles.

I have written up a small page giving an introduction, you can find that here on my site. I've attached the binary download links here again (hope you don't mind mouser) as I'm going to apply for a SourceForge project, it is open-source after all. Unfortunately I should have applied sooner as it can take a day or two.

I hope people check it out and like it, shout if you have suggestions

Update! The latest download links can now be found on this page.

955

General Software Discussion / Re: TrueCrypt 6.0 released

« Last post by Eóin on July 08, 2008, 01:01 PM »

An updated 6.0a is just out today!

6.0a, July 8, 2008
Resolved incompatibilities / bug fixes:

• On systems where certain inappropriately designed chipset drivers were installed, it was impossible to encrypt the system partition/drive. This will no longer occur.   (Windows Vista/XP/2003)
• Other minor bug fixes.  (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)

-http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=version-history

956

Living Room / Re: DC Forum Members -- Tell Us About Your Website

« Last post by Eóin on July 04, 2008, 04:40 PM »

My site is BinaryNotions.com but my primary project is very much Halite, a bittorrent client.

nudone from here designed the icon. Thanks again nudone

957

Developer's Corner / Re: Parallel compilation for Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 with dual / quad core

« Last post by Eóin on July 01, 2008, 04:48 AM »

I must look into scons again. For commandline builds I tried out Boost.Build for a long while but lost faith when it started leaving some build targets out of date.

958

Developer's Corner / Parallel compilation for Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 with dual / quad core

« Last post by Eóin on June 30, 2008, 07:07 PM »

This is an absolute gem. I can't think of anything more to say about it other than it just works, and works fantastically. Why it's not a part of VS 2005 already I don't know.

Close Visual Studio and uninstall any previous version before installing this new one or MPCL won't work properly.

NOTE: This is a beta version that will stop working on 1st of March, 2009. Then You will have to download an updated version if you want to continue using MPCL.

DOWNLOAD MPCL 0.65b

After installation, a new "MPCLAddin" entry will be shown under the tools menu.

MPCL won't parallelize compilation of .cpp files marked as "Create precompiled Header /Yc", so create only a few precompiled headers and mark all other files as "Use precompiled header /Yu"

You can disable Parallelization for specific projects in a solution, by adding NOMPCL to the list of Preprocessor definitions, in Project Settings/Configuration Properties/C/C++/Preprocessor. This option is only available from V0.65b

-http://www.todobits.es/downloadmpcl.html

959

Official Announcements / Re: Programming Contest from DonationCoder.com and Veign.com - Deadline July 1st

« Last post by Eóin on June 30, 2008, 04:56 PM »

Thanks both for the kind words. Better safety precautions are a very good idea. Though I must say I surprised myself in a VM where XP booted even with everything set to disabled. It had a fantastically low memory overhead too, but beyond the morbid curiosity I can't see any real reason for trying it

960

Official Announcements / Re: Programming Contest from DonationCoder.com and Veign.com - Deadline July 1st

« Last post by Eóin on June 30, 2008, 03:26 PM »

Ok, here's my entry for the competition. It's called ServiceProfiles, the idea of the app is to allow you to switch between different NT Service profiles (shockingly ). The logic is that say you wanted a seriously cut down system only for certain tasks like gaming then you could make a 'regular' and a 'gaming' profile and switch between them. You be surprised how lean you can get XP while still having it perfectly usable for some tasks.

The program lets to specify two properties for services as part of a profile, startup type i.e. Automatic, Manual and Disabled, and Active State i.e. Running, Paused and Stopped. In practise you should stick to only changing startup types and rebooting after selecting a profile unless you know what you're doing. Truthfully you should really know what you're doing before using the program at all. It's difficult enough to break a system, but it's easy to mess it up enough to get you cursing my name. A Google on the topic throws up some good reading.

Some Usage Instructions

In the badly named 'Observation Mode' you can view a list of the services on you current machine and their properties. Once you start to make a change you'll be prompted to name a new profile. No changes will be made to your system until you 'Apply' the profile by clicking the play button in the toolbar. The events log will report the results of trying to apply your profile and report and errors if they occur along with a hint at the cause.

Any profiles you create automatically get saved in your Docs. and Sets. folder, that can be changed from the options.

Hopefully there won't be too many rough edges, but this program was the fruit of just two weeks work. I still have stuff I'd like to add, possibly going down the road of making it a neat services 'powertool' for reporting all sorts of details which the built in Windows service console doesn't but time will tell on that front. What is definite is I'll find an open source home for it and continue to refine the core profile side of the application.

One rough edge is that the app is finicky about trying to leave new profiles with the default '(unnamed)' name, it won't let you do so for boring internal reasons which I'll hopefully fix soon.

I'm attaching, just for here, a zip of three profiles based on Black Viper's XP Sp3 Safe, Tweaked and Bare Bones configurations. I'm going to seek his permission to ship these together with his 2k and Vista configurations with the program. Hopefully he won't mind once I acknowledge and give full credits.

These three files can be loaded into the application from the menu and I'd recommend doing so when you first use it as they'll give you a better feel for the app. Also hopefully it's ok to attach the actual binaries here too, I didn't want to setup a Sourceforge account or similar until after the compo. The app is in two flavours and each is both standalone or install. Note you will need full Admin privilages to run the program. Even Vista admin user accounts will need to rightclick and select "Run as Administrator".

Note also the icon is not my own work, it comes from mattahan's Buuf Iconset.

Update! The latest download links can now be found on this page.

961

Living Room / Re: Picking the right mouse for gaming - suggestions?

« Last post by Eóin on June 28, 2008, 07:56 PM »

* f0dder goes on a rampage about the lack of quality mice without a zillion buttons, and without right-handed-only form factor.

-f0dder (June 28, 2008, 05:31 AM)

* Eóin starts venting his frustrations over the difficult of getting a good solid wired mouse Seems here in Eire that you either pick a cheap, bargain bin, wired mouse or go wireless just for something like forward / back buttons

962

Developer's Corner / Re: Programatically determining your IP Address...

« Last post by Eóin on June 27, 2008, 12:40 PM »

Coincidentally I read a snippet about this recently. For local IP address check out GetAdaptersInfo API function.

For the external IP I think you need to look into using a webservice which reports its. For example http://checkip.dyndns.org/.

963

General Software Discussion / Re: Proprietary media formats — time to get rid of them!

« Last post by Eóin on June 25, 2008, 11:39 AM »

I am arguing pointing out that without the ability to protect *any kind* of intellectual property the motivation for new creations/modifications will dissipate.

-CodeTRUCKER (June 25, 2008, 11:12 AM)

I believe that is an arguement that reality proves again and again to be false. Artists will always create, it's what they do. If you need convincing just look to opensource software.

What the world no longer needs is the leeches like the music industry which produce nothing themselves, but simply 'manage' the artists works.

964

General Software Discussion / Re: Whatever happened to... <INSERT DEADWARE HERE>

« Last post by Eóin on June 24, 2008, 07:47 AM »

Wow, after more than two years TeXnicCenter have release a new version- Beta 7.50. I'm secretly hoping my giving out here prompted the new developments

965

Developer's Corner / Re: source control systems: what's the best?

« Last post by Eóin on June 18, 2008, 08:28 AM »

Funny, I work backwards to that tinjaw, I use git for my local dev and 'git-svn' it to a subversion repo for distribution.

966

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 Released

« Last post by Eóin on June 18, 2008, 05:45 AM »

I saw this neat addon posted over at Neowin. It has some really neat features such as splitting the URL into breadcrumbs when you hold ctrl (the feature is off by default). It called Locationbar².

967

Official Announcements / Re: Programming Contest from DonationCoder.com and Veign.com - Deadline July 1st

« Last post by Eóin on June 17, 2008, 09:49 AM »

I'm in! Will post more details before or at the weekend.

968

Living Room / Re: does win XP 64-bit suck?

« Last post by Eóin on June 12, 2008, 04:45 AM »

It's doesn't suck one bit, I've been using it as my primary OS for the best part of three years now. I do tend to dual boot with regular XP for games though. It's not that they don't work with XP x64 just that I've always like to keep my game OS and work/development OS separate.

969

General Software Discussion / Re: Whatever happened to... <INSERT DEADWARE HERE>

« Last post by Eóin on June 05, 2008, 04:13 PM »

Perhaps a bit specialist but I find it sad that development of TeXnicCenter just stopped abruptly almost two years ago.

970

C / C++ / Re: Managing Large code with Object Oriented Programming

« Last post by Eóin on May 31, 2008, 07:03 PM »

My advice, which repeats a lot of what was already said, is as follows.

Check out Effective C++ and More Effective C++, if you know the material already by skimming through then good, but if you don't then it is absolutely mandatory. To quote Matthew Wilson-

"These books are must-reads for any C++ practitioner and rightly so.
...
You won't get a job in more development teams if you've not read these two books, and for good reason."

Next you have to check out Beyond the C++ Standard Library: An Introduction to Boost. Boost is huge but this book covers to essential libraries you should be using in every project.

After that there are many many more good books on C++, but delve into some of the free online resources. Some that spring to mind; Boost, The C++ Source, STLSoft and More C++ Idioms.

Finally I would recommend Imperfect C++, written by the earlier mentioned Matthew Wilson it is very heavy going but also invaluable. Other than that I'll finish off by saying happy studies, with C++ you will never stop learning.

971

Living Room / Re: Thread removed

« Last post by Eóin on May 22, 2008, 03:43 AM »

We should have a spam bin or something where they get moved to.

-Gothi[c] (May 22, 2008, 02:26 AM)

It's important though that they don't get indexed by search engines as in the end that's the purpose of most spam posts.

972

Developer's Corner / Re: OpenSSL Vulnerability?

« Last post by Eóin on May 17, 2008, 11:01 AM »

While an somewhat innocent mistake I find it very worrying that the Debian developers would make code changes in such a critical library

973

Developer's Corner / Re: Forking in Open Source Projects - Debate

« Last post by Eóin on May 16, 2008, 07:00 PM »

Mouser I can see where you are coming from but I think you should be careful using the term open source because the extra restrictions you're suggesting very much go against the spirit of open source software. If others cannot redistribute freely then it isn't really open source.

That said I suppose I take the stance that if you are going down the open source road then go there properly and BSD/MIT your code. I don't even like GPL. LGPL is ok though

974

General Software Discussion / Re: Überwallpaper!

« Last post by Eóin on May 12, 2008, 01:02 AM »

I've been a subscriber now to CGWallpapers.com for over a year and highly recommend it. Here's a free example:

975

General Software Discussion / Thorough harddisk checking.

« Last post by Eóin on May 04, 2008, 05:03 AM »

Hi folks, I have two harddisks of which I suspect one may be giving some trouble. I don't need to get any data off them but would like to run some sort of very thorough check on each before I put them back into service.

There are lots of different tests on say the Ultimate Boot CD but has anyone here any advice from personal experiences to add?

Cheers, Eoin.