Comment Feed for Beernutz and his creativity strike again (Coffeehouse on Channel 9)

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

ScanIAm — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:57:58 GMT

beer28 wrote:

Chris R. works at BeerCoSoftware.com (title: President of Development and Sales). This is Chris's work blog.

Don't let the title scare you. Chris R. is also accounting VP, HR Lead, and procurement head honcho.

He's also a fireman, cowboy, and race car driver.

vroooooooooooom.

beer28 wrote:

Disclaimer: BCS will not let personal views of any employee, including Chris, regarding any software product, company, standards or otherwise get in the way of any company that hires it to provide a solution. Companies pay BCS and BCS provides solutions regardless of the views of any employee. That’s part of being professional, and BCS is a professional software company.

It's nice to know. Unfortunately, it's like claiming "BCS is totally against the concept of fraud. We just don't do it!"

Yay, BCS.

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

evildictaitor — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:57:06 GMT

Bas wrote:

W3bbo wrote:
There's a load of other issues I have with WMP, I think it's the ethos of the program, WMP is meant for a top-window for playing a presentation piece, like a DVD or something. Besides the half-arsed taskbar player (which breaks the taskbar in classic mode) it doesn't sit well as a "background music player" (note: memory consumption and main-window UI non-optimized for staying "out of the way").

This, I agree wholeheartedly with.

It would be nice if there was a WMP11-lite that came with windows that minimised to tray (and had an interface simmilar to the Volume Control - i.e. not normally visible) and could basically start playing immediately after double clicking a file or starting it up. Although thinking about it, it's probably limited by disk speed more than memory.

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

Bas — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:28:33 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote: Wait, what? If I open WMP, it starts with the Media library.

Only if you configure it to, the default is the advert-laden "Media Guide". WMP still takes 5 times longer to open than Winamp with identical libraries.

Which version are you using? Because WMP11 no longer has the Media Guide (or at least hides it under a series of menus). I can't recall explicitly configuring my version to open with the Media Library, by the way.

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote: If I want to play a song, I press Ctrl+E, type some search criteria

I just tried that now. I had to press Enter after typing in my criteria since it wasn't Find-as-you-type. Additionally, WMP froze for a few seconds whilst performing the search.

WMP11 is find-as-you type.

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote: use the arrow keys to select the track, and press Enter to play it immediately, or Shift-Enter to add it to the playlist. How is that different?

Enter destroys your current playlist, Shift+Enter appends it to the bottom.

True. Destroying your current playlist is a non-issue, though, because it allows you to resume playing the previous playlist.

W3bbo wrote:

There's a load of other issues I have with WMP, I think it's the ethos of the program, WMP is meant for a top-window for playing a presentation piece, like a DVD or something. Besides the half-arsed taskbar player (which breaks the taskbar in classic mode) it doesn't sit well as a "background music player" (note: memory consumption and main-window UI non-optimized for staying "out of the way").

This, I agree wholeheartedly with.

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

evildictaitor — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:17:22 GMT

Dodo wrote:
Get a playlist with 2M songs and wait for that window (and maybe even winamp) to open... hell I tell ya. Use the media library instead.

Now say that each file has a kilobyte of data in it, wouldn't it just be easier for you to personally go through each of those two million records and hand copy-and-paste it into a file, so that a badly coded program could work it's wonderous O(n²) desktop search over it?

Think about it! Instead of your media player being able to search a logaritmically indexed file and start playing it after as much as two or three seconds, you can wait upwards of a minute for the desktop search to give up and crash! It's an experience you'd never forget.

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

W3bbo — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:11:58 GMT

Dodo wrote:
Get a playlist with 2M songs and wait for that window (and maybe even winamp) to open... hell I tell ya. Use the media library instead.

Somehow I doubt your collection is 2 million files strong.

Assuming an average 256kbps MP3 file size of ~5.5MB, that would require a massive 10 terabytes of storage capacity.

I'd be more concerned about the limitations of Win32's ability to enumerate such a large quanity than how any program is going to manage the library data for that.

Which is a key difference between winamp and wmp: Winamp doesn't load the library when it's opened, just the current playlist (a simple M3U file), whereas WMP does.

Dodo wrote:
Sidenote: UTF-8 filenames and titles.

"UTF-8 filenames"? Explain. Programs cannot tell NTFS what encoding method to use.

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

W3bbo — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:07:53 GMT

Bas wrote:
Wait, what? If I open WMP, it starts with the Media library.

Only if you configure it to, the default is the advert-laden "Media Guide". WMP still takes 5 times longer to open than Winamp with identical libraries.

Bas wrote:
If I want to play a song, I press Ctrl+E, type some search criteria

I just tried that now. I had to press Enter after typing in my criteria since it wasn't Find-as-you-type. Additionally, WMP froze for a few seconds whilst performing the search.

Bas wrote:
use the arrow keys to select the track, and press Enter to play it immediately, or Shift-Enter to add it to the playlist. How is that different?

Enter destroys your current playlist, Shift+Enter appends it to the bottom.

There's a load of other issues I have with WMP, I think it's the ethos of the program, WMP is meant for a top-window for playing a presentation piece, like a DVD or something. Besides the half-arsed taskbar player (which breaks the taskbar in classic mode) it doesn't sit well as a "background music player" (note: memory consumption and main-window UI non-optimized for staying "out of the way").

But that's just me.

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

Dorian Muthig — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:02:57 GMT

W3bbo wrote:
Hence why I love Winamp and its "Jump to File" command. Just load your entire library into your playlist (which you should be doing anyway), and at any time want to play a song? Press a key-combination you assigned to Winamp to give it focus (Mine's AltGr+Ins) , press "J" to open the Jump to File Find-as-you-type window, enter some criteria, use the arrow keys to select the track, and then either Enter to play the track immediately or Shift+Enter to queue it up (Winamp has queues-within-playlists, which is cool).

Get a playlist with 2M songs and wait for that window (and maybe even winamp) to open... hell I tell ya. Use the media library instead.

Sidenote: UTF-8 filenames and titles.

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

Bas — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:00:13 GMT

W3bbo wrote:
Hence why I love Winamp and its "Jump to File" command. Just load your entire library into your playlist (which you should be doing anyway), and at any time want to play a song? Press a key-combination you assigned to Winamp to give it focus (Mine's AltGr+Ins) , press "J" to open the Jump to File Find-as-you-type window, enter some criteria, use the arrow keys to select the track, and then either Enter to play the track immediately or Shift+Enter to queue it up (Winamp has queues-within-playlists, which is cool).

All done in under a second and a half (I've timed it) with zero latency or delay with swtching to Winamp, opening the JtF window, and playing the thing.

WMP, despite its bloat, doesn't even do that.

Wait, what? If I open WMP, it starts with the Media library. If I want to play a song, I press Ctrl+E, type some search criteria, use the arrow keys to select the track, and press Enter to play it immediately, or Shift-Enter to add it to the playlist. How is that different?

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

W3bbo — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:48:05 GMT

Lloyd_Humph wrote:

GoddersUK wrote:You know the best desktop search out there?

The "New Folder" button.

Yep, putting you files in descriptively named folders really helps.

/troll feeding.

Absolutely, logical folders are the best search... Never mind, troll feeding :P

Organised files are nice, but they're not a perfect solution, just a means-to-an-ends.

Take my MP3 collection, when I want a speciifc song I want it played then and now, rather than spending a good few mouse clicks trawling through my extensive collection to find it.

My MP3s are sorted by \My Music\%artistName%\%dateOfPublicaton%-%albumName%\%trackNumber% - %trackName%

And it's often hard to remebmer which specific album a song was on, or even what its name was.

However desktop search isn't a perfect solution either, since whilst searching for the file using arbitrary terms works (since it helpfully indexes the ID3 tags), when I tell it to open it I then have to wait a good 3-4 seconds for WMP to open, then another 2 seconds for it to load the file (WMP is bloated, m'key?) and then start playing it. Hardly the seamless user experience I'm after.

Hence why I love Winamp and its "Jump to File" command. Just load your entire library into your playlist (which you should be doing anyway), and at any time want to play a song? Press a key-combination you assigned to Winamp to give it focus (Mine's AltGr+Ins) , press "J" to open the Jump to File Find-as-you-type window, enter some criteria, use the arrow keys to select the track, and then either Enter to play the track immediately or Shift+Enter to queue it up (Winamp has queues-within-playlists, which is cool).

All done in under a second and a half (I've timed it) with zero latency or delay with swtching to Winamp, opening the JtF window, and playing the thing.

WMP, despite its bloat, doesn't even do that.

But it's also a thing with Windows Desktop Search too, the main window takes longer than it should to load up, and I wince at having to open the WDS sidebar since that, too, takes too long to load.

If it isn't a "major" program, it should open in a snap, literally. Why doens't WDS or WMP?

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

GoddersUK — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:23:57 GMT

You know the best desktop search out there?

The "New Folder" button.

Yep, putting you files in descriptively named folders really helps.

/troll feeding.

EDIT: besides MS have already produced the worlds best search UI:

Re: W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

Lloyd Humphreys — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:22:19 GMT

GoddersUK wrote:
You know the best desktop search out there?

The "New Folder" button.

Yep, putting you files in descriptively named folders really helps.

/troll feeding.

Absolutely, logical folders are the best search... Never mind, troll feeding :P

W3bbo & evildictaitor Obsoleted by Desktop Search

SpectateSwamp — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:39:35 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

W3bbo wrote:
I dunno, I'd rather use software written by Beer than SpectateSwamp, at least it would work.

Yeah. Pity his application was made obsolete by String.IndexOf.

You'll be OBSOLETE to the Masses when they get this Desktop Search. They'll know everything they need to know about computing.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

evildictaitor — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:38:19 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

I dunno, I'd rather use software written by Beer than SpectateSwamp, at least it would work.

Yeah. Pity his application was made obsolete by String.IndexOf.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

W3bbo — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:42:51 GMT

Tom Servo wrote:

littleguru wrote:I hope for him that he gets a decent job.

Lets hope it ain't a company whose product I use. If his type of "common sense" (more like laffo sense) influences said product, then it'll be doomed.

I dunno, I'd rather use software written by Beer than SpectateSwamp, at least it would work.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

evildictaitor — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:07:57 GMT

Cybermagellan wrote:
I miss Beer, he was the first time I ever had a real police officer threaten to charge me for something....

Did he claim to be a real police officer, and I'm missing the irony from having not been there?

Police officers don't usually threaten to charge you with anything unless they catch you redhanded (e.g. DUI, loitering, resisting arrest etc), they just turn up to your house and "ask" you to go with them to the police station to "answer a couple of questions" or "help them with their enquiries".

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

Cybermagellan — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:47:56 GMT

I miss Beer, he was the first time I ever had a real police officer threaten to charge me for something....

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

Tom Servo — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:21:32 GMT

littleguru wrote:
I hope for him that he gets a decent job.

Lets hope it ain't a company whose product I use. If his type of "common sense" (more like laffo sense) influences said product, then it'll be doomed.

Actually, I hope he "disappears" from this universe in a car submerging incident.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

irascian — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:57:28 GMT

dahat wrote:

We should never forget Beer... and the good old days of trolling around here where it was a minor problem from a smaller number of players than we do today.

While I'd agree we should never forget Beer - he's a classic lesson in the dangers of taking virtual strangers at seeming face value - I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic in referring to the "good" old days.

Those of us who became subject to his constant "legal threat" emails (I made the mistake of saying I thought he was mentally ill in a thread Rory started trying to build bridges with the nutter, resulting in email threats which when ignored then went to Rory), his prying around amongst other 9ers for personal details of where you live etc don't see anything "good" in this sorry, and frankly quite dangerous, individual at all.

There can be a very thin line between being an obsessive "fan boy", and being a mentally ill fantasist, albeit a very clever one. In my view beer28 is on the wrong side of that line and it would be foolish to promote the guy and talk about "good old days" as if his ridiculous fantasies were in any way real. The guy has way too much time on his hands, and can become dangerous and malicious at the slightest provocation.

The guy needs help and pretending that his fantasies were in any way "the good old days" is foolish, to say the least.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

evildictaitor — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:28:00 GMT

permufanatic wrote:
Codiplex is a network of developers working to make cash out of an upcoming financial crunch.

Uhuh. You and all the other bit-part companies that can't see the wood for the trees. When the financial crunch happens, all the big players will internalize (or export to foreign countries) as much as possible. They won't be diversifying their testing branch to CA.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

permufanatic — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:18:10 GMT

dice/monster+youtube+certification+employer_fees+employee_fees+locations across the US
What if an employer could see candidates and hear them before interviewing?
(no expensive fly ins for undesirables)
What if candidates in mid-recession could get a better chance at a job by paying fees to a testing center?
Codiplex, based in Orange county, CA, is a network of developers working to make cash out of an upcoming financial crunch.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

Harlequin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:11:07 GMT

I'm just scratching my head wondering what a codiplex is?Maybe Saturday Night Lives "clownpen1s.fart" sketch isn't too far off if we truly are running out of Urls :)

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

DarthVista — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:36:37 GMT

The rise and fall of Chris' company has certainly been instructive.

dahat wrote:

Chadk wrote: Please, lets not dig beer up from the grave. Despite how amusing this is, lets just forget him.
We should never forget Beer... and the good old days of trolling around here where it was a minor problem from a smaller number of players than we do today.

Although I can't speak for Beer, I always saw the Coffeehouse as a sort of improv comedy stage of sorts. Unfortunately I just can't take some of things that occur in this industry too seriously.

It's too bad nobody really ever got that... [C]

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

dahat — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:09:31 GMT

Chadk wrote:
Please, lets not dig beer up from the grave. Despite how amusing this is, lets just forget him.

We should never forget Beer... and the good old days of trolling around here where it was a minor problem from a smaller number of players than we do today.

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

Xaero_Vincent — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:18:24 GMT

Reserve your copy today!

Re: Beernutz and his creativity strike again

mVPstar — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:46:58 GMT

Lloyd_Humph wrote:
Hmm... I smell a lawsuit.

Two lawsuits.

Codeplex and Elite :)

Jason Cox wrote: Come on Microsoft! Go after the cybersquatter!
+2

Let's not forget the Canadian agencies. ;)