Recent Posts

951

DC Gamer Club / looking for some suggestions

« Last post by Target on May 10, 2011, 12:35 AM »

for some games for my mother in law 

preferably puzzle or platform/side scrolling games, and nothing to difficult (this is for a person who can't remember a 5 character password from one day to the next)

scrollers should be run and jump or run and jump and shoot (no space games)

oh, and they need to run happily on Win7 X64...

I suspect the old Monkey Island series could be a contender (anyone know?), but this is way outside of my normal gaming preferences so I have no idea

952

Living Room / Re: If a tree falls (in c#)

« Last post by Target on May 08, 2011, 09:05 PM »

Actually, I have always found the length of a piece of string to be N-1 where n is the required length....
And my programming also comes up short

-Fred Nerd (May 08, 2011, 09:57 AM)

And the solution to the N-1 string length problem is to have N+1 drinks~!

-Renegade (May 08, 2011, 11:18 AM)

this is not a solution as the only output is 2X(N-1)

953

Living Room / Re: When Growing Online Pressures Backfire

« Last post by Target on April 15, 2011, 01:01 AM »

I'm currently working on a tool that will extract a stack of information from some of our systems in order to build a report whose value i am far from convinced of.

It was someone else's idea, and despite the fact that they're clearly motivated purely by convenience, and that they haven't really thought about either the requirements, the intended audience (minimal input so far, and mostly from another area with completely different requirements), or the possible use/value of the final outputs they managed to catch the attention of our manager, and, well, you know how it goes...

It had been floating around for about 12 months and there were rumblings about engaging a 3rd party to build the damn thing.  Having just seen the 'mock ups' I was rather concerned that we were going to buy a pup, so I said so.  This was interpreted by my manager as a wish to be involved (is there a pattern emerging here?)

To rub salt into the wound whatever I come up with probably won't even be the final solution - looks like another group (a group that 'specialises' in these sorts of apps but which had 'avoided' involvement to this point) will take my workings and use it as the basis of 'their' solution 

954

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel 2007 workbook bloat - potential fix?

« Last post by Target on April 09, 2011, 04:19 AM »

2Target
I had similar issue recently and it appeared that there were few hundred thousands of empty cells added to my XLSX file. Since each one requires proper tags in XML file whole document size was enormous.

I've simply deleted additional rows/cols and it helped. No need for any further magic.

-fenixproductions (April 08, 2011, 03:18 AM)

This is a common issue - it usually occurs when 'someone' enters something in a cell way outside of the used range, though adding formatting to unused cells/rows/columns will do it as well.  The supposed fix is to highlight and delete ALL the unused columns and/or rows and delete them (thus removing the any/all unnecessary content/formatting)

Thanks for posting that.

I've had other Office documents passed to me that were horribly slow to work with. They weren't particularly large (large, but not massive), but just sssssllllloooooowwwww... Did you have any of that in the bloated excel file?

-Renegade (April 08, 2011, 03:31 AM)

no, it was purely data (though there was a bit of formatting that I think is unnecessary, but not in the sheets that were affected).  Watch out for lots of calculations as these can (and will) slow things down enormously (calculations done in VBA are several orders of magnitude worse) - if you think this might be the culprit try turning off the auto calculate function.  There is one bug that pops up a bit in Google searches that indicates something wierd with cell borders.  According to the various post simply removing the offending formatting doesn't work but copying and pasting the content (only) to a new sheet seems to do the trick (YMMV of course)

955

General Software Discussion / Excel 2007 workbook bloat - potential fix?

« Last post by Target on April 07, 2011, 07:47 PM »

It appears that inexplicable bloat in Excel workbooks is a reasonably common issue, so my experiences with this phenomenon may be useful to others

A shared workbook had blown out in size considerably for no reason that I could see (ie from 4M to 33M)

I had already gone through and removed as much unnecessary formatting as I could (it's a shared resource) but it made no difference

Googling didn't turn up anything particularly useful (the main fix seems to be removing unnecessary formatting, which I'd already done), but it did remind me that office 2007 files are zipped xml bundles.

When I opened the (zip) file, I found 2 worksheets were considerably larger than the others (one was 180M and the other was 89M).  AHA! says I

I went back into Excel and MOVED the sheets out, saved, then checked the size, and...no change

I went back into the bundle and found that the bloat had moved to the next sheets (WTF?), so instead of sheet26 being 180M, now sheet25 was 180M.

I made a fresh copy and this time I COPIED the offending sheets out, then went back into the bundle and DELETED the offenders, saved, then checked the size.

This time the file had come back to a more reasonable 4M, so I re-opened it with the intention of copying the deleted sheets back in.

On opening the file Excel threw up a 'this file is corrupted, do you want to repair' message to which I answered yes. After letting it do it's stuff I saved and went to copy the deleted sheets in only to discover that Excel had automagically reinstated them!!

I've done as much testing as I can (the workbook contains data only, no additional functionality) and as far as I can see no data was lost to the exercise, and the aforementioned bloat is now gone (woohoo...)

I can't vouchsafe this method, however it seems to have worked in this instance.  YMMV, so if you're going to use it I would suggest you make a copy of your file(s)  first, then confirm the results yourself before you replace your originals.
   

956

Living Room / Re: unboxing videos

« Last post by Target on April 06, 2011, 09:09 PM »

Not more gallows humour, I'm already at the end of my rope!

check again, I think you'll find knot

957

Living Room / Re: unboxing videos

« Last post by Target on April 06, 2011, 05:41 PM »

As ever, you put the xing back into boring!

-cranioscopical (April 06, 2011, 01:48 PM)

I read recently that hanging is to good for people who pun

they should in fact be drawn and quoted...

958

Living Room / Re: unboxing videos

« Last post by Target on April 05, 2011, 11:49 PM »

unboxing-videos

-Target (April 05, 2011, 05:47 PM)

Better than having to unwrestle with stuff…

-cranioscopical (April 05, 2011, 09:53 PM)

like it mat-ters

959

Living Room / unboxing videos

« Last post by Target on April 05, 2011, 05:47 PM »

I can't believe people actually go to the trouble of actually doing this stuff, but I saw this on how-to-geek this morning

unboxing videos

as it happens, it pretty much sums up how I feel about ewetube

Edited to correct spelling misteak in the subject line

960

Coding Snack Guidelines / Re: IDEA: Remind User a Flash Drive is Plugged In During Shutdown

« Last post by Target on April 04, 2011, 07:19 PM »

another option would be to use Last Chance to schedule a checking routine at shutdown

otherwise it would be relatively easy to do in AHK, though detecting the shutdown request (ie methodology) may be an issue

961

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Auto-mount ISO file on doubleclick, copy its contents to a folder...

« Last post by Target on March 30, 2011, 05:38 PM »

It's not automated, but there's a plugin for total commander that allows you to open/view ISO files like any other folder or archive. 

You can't modify the image, but files can be copied out without a problem

I assume this functionality is available in other file managers as well...

962

Living Room / Re: My Movie Fantasy

« Last post by Target on March 22, 2011, 05:46 PM »

I would love to see a horror film that takes place during a sunny warm day with cute, cuddly critters that everyone in the audience loves, but the critters are out to do bad things.

And no flickering lights in abandoned buildings and no rain.

I suppose the closest so far is Lesbian Vampire Killers.

-Renegade (March 22, 2011, 04:02 AM)

when I saw the subject line I thought you were going to go Charlie Sheen on us....

963

Living Room / Re: Ever wondered what happens to all the old hardware when you move office

« Last post by Target on March 20, 2011, 09:27 PM »

Don't love them too much... They'll all be like that once the Zombie Apocalypse arrives on December 12th, 2012~!

he, that day comes hopefully I'll be on the side with all the big guns ('come get some' as someone once said...)

964

Living Room / Re: Ever wondered what happens to all the old hardware when you move office

« Last post by Target on March 20, 2011, 08:19 PM »

thanks App

love those old buildings, though I think that one lost something in the translation - I can't decide if fits too well in it's new context (and loses it's histerical identity), or if it doesn't fit at all

965

Living Room / Ever wondered what happens to all the old hardware when you move office

« Last post by Target on March 19, 2011, 04:26 AM »

this might be a clue (is your old office in here?)

Eerie world of abandoned computers

966

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel - pattern matching in cells

« Last post by Target on March 16, 2011, 07:15 PM »

what is it you want to do, and how are you trying to do it?

is the format of the invoice numbers consistent, ie 3 letters and 3 numbers?

this quick formula will give you a flag

=IF(AND(TYPE(LEFT(A14,3))=2,ISNUMBER(VALUE(RIGHT(A14,3)))),"","XX")

Note that it doesn't properly test the alpha segment, ie WHS and WH2 both evaluate as text in my quick test

Unless you have a consistent naming convention you may need to test each character

and string length may be another test...

967

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini Review of SugarSync and DropBox

« Last post by Target on March 08, 2011, 04:31 PM »

I always had a 'thing' for Wilma off the Flintstones. But I knew it could never be...

... she'd never leave Fred.

-timns (March 08, 2011, 11:52 AM)

There'd be a Barney were she to do so.

-cranioscopical (March 08, 2011, 01:25 PM)

bam bam...

968

Site/Forum Features / Re: Shortcomings of DC and How to Improve

« Last post by Target on March 06, 2011, 06:22 PM »

Despite this thread's persistance I still can't see that it's produced anything solid (no doubt the OP is chortling smugly to himself)

Other than a general perception that the look and feel of the site hasn't changed for some time so far no one has come up with a single thing that 'needs to be fixed', or with some 'must have' functionality that we currently don't have.

That's not to say that there aren't things that might be done better, but changing things in order to maintain an illusion of progress is pointless (don't forget that the lions share of the work involved in doing any changes will fall to just a couple of people).  

I think the idea of a poll/survey is a good one - lets drag this out into the sunlight and see whether or not there's really an issue here (after all, it really is an issue for the community to decide).  

969

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Target on March 02, 2011, 07:26 PM »

Their language buffers in their brains are too small, and they can't double buffer, so you get choppy playback.

-Renegade (March 02, 2011, 07:24 PM)

so it's an issue of blandwidth?

970

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Target on March 02, 2011, 06:33 PM »

the trouble with interpretising grammatical expression is that so much of it is contextual, and what is correct in one context is incorrect in another.

To use Stoic's example 7 chairs are countable or mass, whereas furniture is not.  But if you were referring specifically to the chairs you wouldn't say furniture, even though it is potentially correct.

971

Living Room / Re: A Point About Grammar

« Last post by Target on March 02, 2011, 05:23 PM »

unfortunately we've come to accept that close enough is good enough, instead of saying that's wrong, do it again

("speliing"?  luckily I knew what you meant )

972

Living Room / Re: The March 2011 6th Anniversary Fundraiser Has Begun! Cheer for Victory Thread

« Last post by Target on March 01, 2011, 10:10 PM »

I love this place. Will donate the second week of March. Just finished putting LibreOffice over the top. My nips are tingly! Oh wait, that's TMI.

 

-zridling (March 01, 2011, 08:41 PM)

Thanks for keeping us abreast...

-timns (March 01, 2011, 08:42 PM)

Look, this is a family site and remarks like that make it pretty clear that you're in your cups! 

-cranioscopical (March 01, 2011, 09:05 PM)

next you'll be telling us you're brazillian...

-Target (March 01, 2011, 09:14 PM)

It's no use your trying to wax lyrical.

-cranioscopical (March 01, 2011, 09:26 PM)

that's as close I'm ever going to get to waxing anything (ow....owOW....OWWWWWWWWW)

973

Living Room / Re: The March 2011 6th Anniversary Fundraiser Has Begun! Cheer for Victory Thread

« Last post by Target on March 01, 2011, 09:14 PM »

I love this place. Will donate the second week of March. Just finished putting LibreOffice over the top. My nips are tingly! Oh wait, that's TMI.

 

-zridling (March 01, 2011, 08:41 PM)

Thanks for keeping us abreast...

-timns (March 01, 2011, 08:42 PM)

Look, this is a family site and remarks like that make it pretty clear that you're in your cups! 

-cranioscopical (March 01, 2011, 09:05 PM)

next you'll be telling us you're brazillian...

974

Site/Forum Features / Re: Shortcomings of DC and How to Improve

« Last post by Target on February 28, 2011, 06:43 PM »

Well Target, if you see nothing wrong with the status quo then there's no point discussing the issues.

This particular discussion hasn't exactly been a welcome diversion or come at a particularly good time.

-mouser (February 28, 2011, 10:03 AM)

Don't you feel the resistance to constructive criticism?


I totally understand the worries and the desire for me to not bring these issues during this particular time, and to have this thread "calm down" asap, as such Target I suggest you to spend more time on the fund-raiser and not here. PDFTT as a few here would often say.

As I said, I could be wrong all along... let's be patient and see how the fundraiser goes.

-lotusrootstarch (February 28, 2011, 06:11 PM)

see, I tried a different tack here and clearly asked you to change the way I see things but again you have answered with obfuscation and condescension

Despite numerous requests from numerous people to clearly state your case still refuse to do so - clearly your interests here aren't at all what you claim them to be  

meh, some people just can't be helped...

975

Site/Forum Features / Re: Shortcomings of DC and How to Improve

« Last post by Target on February 28, 2011, 05:28 PM »

I hope I'm wrong, but this is starting to sound a bit personal - if Lotusrootstarch has a personal issue with someone here then this isn't the forum.

Lotus, I think it would be easier to talk with you and take your criticisms seriously if you didn't have multiple accounts and keep telling us about how you are really a long time member but don't want to say who you really are.

-mouser (February 28, 2011, 09:59 AM)

Mouser makes a good point here - it's unfortunate but potentially contentious posts like we've been seeing from Lotus can erode trust within the community simply because individuals can no longer trust that the individuals we're speaking with are who they say they are. 

Perhaps we should take a different tack here -

• What is your 'vision' of what DC could or should be?
• Just how do you define success?
• How would that apply to DC?
• How do you anticipate this level of success would benefit the member community?

Note the separation between the first and second points - these are very distinct questions and need to be addressed as such

Personally I don't see anything wrong with the existing setup, but I'm ignorant of your viewpoint so help me change my mind