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00:16
Of course it was a Flash issue
How lame
Now maybe they'll let me go out and get some food :-)
Does anyone want to help? There are two more off-topic votes needed on those two questions:
there you go
Awesome guys... Kudos to all three! :-)
00:29
Sure thing
Can't commit, have to wait at least 12 days for Game Dev to get out of beta...
But well, now I hope for it to go slow instead of fast. :D
If I knew that the limit were 3 commitments I would've chosen them more wisely... :-(
You can uncommit
Wait...
CTRL+F Uncommit...
Argh...
Thanks! Didn't notice that yet. :O
Sure. I only just saw that minutes ago :-)
Oh, I can get myself out of Game Dev this way: "and to ask or answer at least ten questions."
But well, it's not really easy to ask 9 serious questions that add value to the site... Better to wait 9 days. ^^
That way I'm punished for my mistake, committing to that site! :-)
@TomWij Good man.
A lesser person would have asked nine crap questions.
Have a star.
The reason I commit is because I'm interested in Game Development, but I currently don't have any questions nor are able to help anyone out at all...
@PopularDemand LOL
Glad the old icon's back @PopularDemand
@TomWij Congratulations, you have described how I feel about nearly every beta.
@TheUnhandledException No problem. Boss yell at you for being hypnotized while on the job?
00:50
What about it?
I logged into Nothing To Install like eight hours ago.
Official blog post is all
ah wow
most significant design departure yet
Whoa... If there's one lay-out I don't like, it's the lay-out of Nothing To Install.
I really like that one, very mellow.
the breaks are too light
00:54
I wish it'd expand to fill the page though.
my laptop screen is pretty good and there's not enough contrast, basically
er, i'm saying that, i don't think it's my screen
and there's simply not enough contrast /on the site/
Okay, the copy-and-paste Hello, World! Windows 7 gadget doesn't work for me.
What gives?
eh?
link?
9
A: How to get started with Windows 7 gadgets

Kevin MontroseHere's an MSDN article on Vista Gadgets. Some preliminary documentation on 7 gadgets, and changes. I think the only major changes are that Gadgets don't reside in the Sidebar anymore, and as such "dock/undock events" are now backwards-compatibility cludges that really shouldn't be used. Best w...

There's a link in there to an MSDN page that gives what should be copy/paste markup for a bare-bones Gadget.
But I followed the instructions, and... no gadget.
I'm now depressed.
hrm
it seems fairly straight forward
so it doesn't appear in the gadgets list?
the "gallery"
@Mark Exactly.
hrm
I'm on an admin account of a recently cleanly installed Win7.
Maybe I should go be a polisci major.
I love instructions that use qualifiers like should: "In the Gadget Gallery, the "SDK Hello World" gadget should be visible."
WELL? what if it isn't!?!@
OK, I'm outta here. Catch you guys later
01:01
ok, well I suppose I can try it, I'm running windows 7
oo, stupid question
did you use notepad?
to create the HTML?
@Mark Yes, but I was careful to select UTF-8, if that's what you're getting at.
actually no...
if you don't change the file extension from ".txt"
in the drop down
I did that as well.
01:04
it automatically adds ".txt"
k
wow, chat rate limits eh?
Yeeeeup.
this is really kind of annoying, I guess I should type longer messages...
Which sucks for when I do onebox and then immediate explanation, or vice versa.
Oh, icosahedrons.
You're right, I got tricked by the clean install.
Before I installed 7 I had Vista set to "always show extensions."
Apparently 7 by default will show you ".html" and ".xml" and hide ".txt."
I didn't create the files in Notepad; I right-clicked in the folder and said "new file."
Thanks @Mark.
heh
well it works for me
fwiw
but yeah, file extensions are a real pain
Argh, MS, stop taking away menus and whatnot.
01:07
haha
I want all the advanced options available in fewer clicks!
ooooh, convenient, uninstalling from the gallery causes it to delete the folder
sweet
I see it now as well.
nice
figured it was something stupid like that
Man, that would have taken a while longer to solve on my own.
01:09
it was sort of instinctive to go to that
been bitten before by that same problem -- er a very similar problem
Hm, the display is funkified, did that happen for you as well?
A black box covering most of the text?
yeah
i assumed it was my theme
Perhaps a Vista/7 thing. Okay, I'll keep looking into it.
but it's just HTML, so I figured you could probably debug that
I'm running 7
Yeah.
Right, but the instructions are for a Vista sidebar gadget.
01:11
not upgraded or anything, plain old 7
I haven't looked at the "modifications for 7" thing.
OH -- got it.
I assume there's some more CSS
Probably.
er, some CSS you can add that will fix it
so what are you planning on making, if you don't mind me asking?
A little scheduling widget.
01:14
I use the weather gadget and the clock and the calendar, but i've never found any other useful stuff
ah cool
I used to run EssentialPIM, but it's huge.
Outlook is worse.
yeah
I run outlook at work
I don't want to open klokoo.com every time I need a reminder, especially since it's sound-based.
it brings my limited-3-year-old-p-o-s-laptop to it's knees
heh
@Mark Same.
@Mark I disabled the sidebar in Vista for exactly this reason.
01:15
yeah?
i'm still running XP at work
Weather/clock/calendar aren't worth the tradeoff in startup time.
haha
definitely not
my thinkpad edge at home does just fine though
You might want to mouseover the "exactly this reason" message.
Ooh, edge. You like it? I have an SL400, which was a pleasant surprise given the old "we build good computers, they don't have to be pretty" mindset.
hrm, what's special about that?
I never saw a picture of it when ordering, so it was a nice surprise when it arrived.
01:17
sorry, special about the "exactly this reason" message?
love the edge, i got it before they switched up the specs
Mousing over reply messages highlights the background of the message that was replied to.
so it has 4 gigs of RAM and 64bit windows
Clicking on the "left turn arrow" takes you to the original message.
got it
Useful when you're talking to multiple people or one person about multiple things.
01:18
heh
user151055
Why are the chat rooms so empty?
@fahad It's 2118h US Eastern time?
@fahad: because most people have lives?
It's (slightly) livelier in here during British/US work hours.
Used to be a pretty good time, but then the novelty wore off.
hrm, how do you tell it which message you're replying to?
well I'm here because there's no interesting questions (yet) on SO
user151055
01:19
@PopularDemand:whenever i come to this room,there are not more than 10-15 people
I find the opposite problem with the IAD parking lot....
whenever I go there it's always full
@Mark Mouse over it and a little menu should pop up at bottom right.
I've been early in the morning, late in the evening and then in the middle of the day
Buttons are Flag for mod attention, Star as interesting and Reply to this.
I can't figure out when I have to get there not to park in the boonies
01:20
@fahad I think you overestimate how many people care about Meta Stack Overflow.
@PopularDemand cool
@Mark You in the DC area, then?
@PopularDemand I live in EST, and started to reply "it's nowhere near that late", and then looked at the clock and got really depressed
yeppers
I thought it was like 7pm
01:21
Nice, I just moved away.
It's still "home" in my mind though.
I'm here for a year
originally from NY
moved in May
@MichaelMrozek I'm sorry. If it helps, I just starred the status-bydesign message right before you said that.
@Mark How's that going for you?
user151055
Is this chat room not known to many people?
could've sworn i answered this two days ago: stackoverflow.com/questions/3835922/…
Well, my day is complete. It was mostly horrible, but I gave a 9k user what-for, and the "idiotproof" gadget tutorial is no longer besting me.
01:23
@fahad There's a link on the top of meta and it was in a system message there for a while, but that assumes people visit meta and care about chatting live with other meta users
@PopularDemand pretty good...when i'm not traveling DC area is fantastic
The SO-specific chat will probably be somewhat more popular
Man, remember when we tried setting up that room to talk to that user-who-we-didn't-know-at-the-time-was-a-troll?
@PopularDemand Yeah, that went well
That was probably the all-time high for MSO Chat.
And I mean including the future.
01:24
Is it still the case that making a room backing a question doesn't indicate anything on the question? It really should
I decided I didn't really care until it went live on SO, and then I'd bring it up again
@MichaelMrozek Good point.
You'd have to choose the wording carefully though, because people will end up there five months later and expect the live chat to still be going on.
@Mark Well, he gets a Joel Spolsky Point.
hm, what's that reply to?
my screen might not be long enough
ah fantastic
@Mark You thought you answered a question earlier.
i can click the arrow
It's about C pointers.
01:27
yep
@Mark This?
8
A: Swapping two string pointers

MarkYou can't modify the addresses of num1 and num2, your code should work if your test was instead: int main () { char num1[] = "012345678910"; char num2[] = "abcdefghujk"; char *test1 = num1; char *test2 = num2; fastSwap (&test1,&test2); printf ("%s\n",test1); p...

I'm not sure I buy Joel's assertion that some people just can't get pointers.
haha, yes that
there was this awesome peculiar compiler bug that made it seem like it was sort of working to the OP
but it was some horrible undefined behavior
unfortunately the OP did a really poor job highlighting the problem
at first glance it seemed to be okay
Ah, the pernicious "computers do what you tell them to, not what you want them to" bug.
despite the obvious problem that you can't move num1/num2
haha
i got in the elevator today and forgot to press the button
01:30
@PopularDemand I'm still not totally convinced that's true. Computers do what you tell them to until you stop looking, and then they sabotage you
the doors shut and i started to wonder why it wasn't going down
second time this week!
stupid elevator, it knows it's after 5 and i'm on the top floor, clearly i'm going to the parking level.
@MichaelMrozek Why would you stop looking? Hm, I used to think you were smart.
:rolleyes
user151055
I went to gavator.com to change my avator,i have uploaded a picture but my avator dint changed
I get distracted by MSO chat -_-
01:30
@fahad It's cached, hit CTRL+F5.
Maybe wait 10 minutes and do it again if it doesn't work.
@MichaelMrozek Isn't that why you come here?
user151055
ok
The original gravatar link still shows the old image, but I think it takes gravatar a couple minutes to push a change
user151055
why do we use gravator ?
@fahad why not?
user151055
Why dont we just upload an image on the site
01:32
@fahad what if I don't want to upload an image?
@Mark You could get a question mark, like old facebook.
@fahad Gravatar is to avatar images like OpenID is to site logins
Or a medium-length hair silhouette, like current facebook (as far as I know).
@PopularDemand But I like a purple fractally thingy
@Mark Generate one yourself.
01:33
@PopularDemand I bet there's an SO post that shows me how...
@PopularDemand Or, you know, use this one:
@Mark Yeah, I think it's a dupe, in fact.
Don't forget unicornify, either.
heh
28
Q: How is the default user avatar generated?

alextanscIs there a name for the default avatars that are generated for users who do not assign one themselves? Not the avatar of the blank user, but the one made up of shards, shapes, and colours: Is there an online generator for something like that? See also: How do I change my profile pic...

of course that's not quite a dupe
You're explicitly instructed to "do this at home"!
Ha, I can tell this is going to be great from the title alone:
0
Q: How to vent on Stack Overflow without resorting to personal attacks of character.

Peter AjtaiSometimes voting dwon an answer or question just isn't satisfying enough psychologically. One feels the urge to annihilate and destroy with prejudice. However, there is no need for personal attacks on Stack Overflow. Instead, make use of this bookmarklet by Erik Rothoff and destroy, destroy, des...

HAHA
nice, some 26k user downvoted an incomplete answer i had
01:36
!!!
and when i fixed it
I can't upvote this enough.
he had posted a "complete" answer (with no explanation)
and then refused to remove the downvote, claiming i copied his answer
user151055
Why does a downvote decrease our own repo?
I found this extremely frustrating
01:37
(Because, you know, I'm afraid of dying inside a game of Asteroids.)
@Mark The timeline view would kind of ruin that
@Mark It happens. It helps to remember that rep is only a marginally meaningful number in the first place.
oh I know
I deleted the post, but that was very dissatisfying knowing that at 26k he'd see it there
=)
Three times now I've had people steal verbatim whole paragraphs of my answer into their own and then get accepted
@MichaelMrozek It happens -- and has happened to me -- but I don't do it
and i don't downvote their answer as a function of that
until i got over 2k i frequently would get left behind on fast-response answers
01:40
Time for dinner and whatnot. Have a good evening, guys.
even if my answer was first, people chose an identical 10k user answer
@PopularDemand see ya
@Mark That's unusual; if answers are the same almost always the first answer will get upvotes. If anything it's more likely for low rep users, since they look more impressive having the same answer as a high rep user
well in the races it appears that they've originated near the same time
high rep users following with the same answer within a minute or so will kill the upvote for a lowrep users
people reward the rich IMO
There's several ways to tell which was first though; mouseovers and the timeline are probably the easiest ways
not so much an issue now that im ~5500
I default to vote sort
and i imagine most others do too
shrug
is it me or have there been a rash of questions like this recently?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3836008/find-largest-number-with-all-contiguous-triples-being-unique-primes
02:14
got 2000 rep on meta ... feeling a bit bored ...
0
Q: Ability Wikis, we need your help!

wafflesI just deployed ability wikis to meta see: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/abilities This is in response to the ever so popular, you have gained a power request. Temporarily we are allowing all users on meta with more than 2000 reputation to edit the wikis, we will then use these wikis as the ...

02:40
@waffles that looks pretty nice
thanks
0
A: Find largest number with all contiguous triples being unique primes

MarkJust as a baseline here's the naive approach... I believe the best answer is 0419113137331739719919379773. package com.stackoverflow.junk; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Arrays; import java.util.List; public class primefinder { static List<Integer> primes = Arrays.asL...

interestingly using sets instead of a list there makes it slower
by about 25%
@waffles Sweet!
I'll check that out tomorrow
er, i take that back
@Mark package com.stackoverflow.junk;? :)
02:54
yeah, it's where i write SO code
so if instead of keeping a best list i keep a best set it runs in about 8s
but i lose the ordering
i need an ordered set
Well I am again headed off, this time for the night for good. Catch you guys later
bingo, cut the execution time in half
03:25
The heck
03:44
@NullUserException ?
 
1 hour later…
04:50
so I'm considering posting a meta feature-request to recall moved posts
that is, occasionally we observe posts erroneously moved from one site to another
unlike closing there's no great undo for this
when a post is closed, rather than moved, it can be reopened through voting
but unless I'm a high rep user on the other site that the question gets relegated to, I can't do anything to remedy the problem
so it seems like we should have a "recall" option, where after 5 votes to recall a moved question, it's returned to the original site
thoughts?
@Mark It seems problematic that a post can be moved from A to B, people can be acting on it on B, and suddenly without warning or any interaction from B's users the post disappears
then perhaps we should have an option to prevent moves from occurring
I know in the past it's been discussed to have preventative reopen posts
but there's no way to counteract a move vote before the post is moved
Generally a comment that says "uh, this doesn't belong on B" works pretty well, and B can always migrate back to A if that's the case
(and in the past I think Jeff has indicated no preventative voting on closures)
 
4 hours later…
08:47
Anyone here?
What's up with all the Enlightened badges I'm getting today? I was almost suspecting someone of going around upvoting all my answers, but I don't appear to have gotten any votes on those questions.
Tim
Tim
You might want to check out this answer: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66268/…
3
A: Someone please call 911... Silver badges missing

wafflesThat would be cause you got them due to a programming error on our side. I just ran the following globally: delete u from Users2Badges u join Posts p on p.Id = ReasonId and p.Id <> (select MIN(p2.Id) from Posts p2 where p2.DeletionDate is not null and p2.ParentId = p.ParentId ) where Bad...

Ah, ok
The comment about the badge grant run only granting one of each type of badge per user per run also explains why I'm getting these badges every few hours :)
Thanks
And now my SE inbox is broken :( Showed (1) in red, but clicking on it shows an empty pane, even though there were items in it before
09:05
yeah, inbox is now empty for me too.
@Lasse reload the page, is it still empty for you?
No
It got back a red (1), and one element in the pane
but previously, it just removed the (1)
okay, so our inboxes just were flushed
notices his events were removed, shrugs
09:24
morning all
09:56
Hi Mr. E
your Blog is still pretty sparse :)
10:54
There's an odd bug in the footer of the SOFU, with the graduation of nothingtoinstall.com
Grrr.... why is the image so small?
stalks off to chat feedback

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