Nobody shares knowledge better than this

[SpectateSwamp]

Fear the Knowledge

@Medezark said:

Thanks for the quick time-references.  I will re-look when I get home.  Beware -- I have a critical eye.  My responses will be polite, but if something looks like a digital zoom artifact I wont be able to accept it as evidence.  But I will be open minded.

I fear for you. Once you realize these things are here and that I didn't create them. You'll want to capture your own. Then you're hooked. With only me to believe you. So Beware when you look at tobacco leaf and cloaked videos. You'll end up running around chasing spooks for months.              Warning!!!!!

[Xyro]

@SpectateSwamp said:

@Medezark said:

Thanks for the quick time-references.  I will re-look when I get home.  Beware -- I have a critical eye.  My responses will be polite, but if something looks like a digital zoom artifact I wont be able to accept it as evidence.  But I will be open minded.

I fear for you.

Yes, what Spectate said.

[serguey123]

@Xyro said:

@SpectateSwamp said:

@Medezark said:

Thanks for the quick time-references.  I will re-look when I get home.  Beware -- I have a critical eye.  My responses will be polite, but if something looks like a digital zoom artifact I wont be able to accept it as evidence.  But I will be open minded.

I fear for you.

Yes, what Spectate said.

Fuck that, I fear for myself, will I slowly descent to dementia as Medezark has? Will my brain be forever poisoned and my soul tainted by this thread?

That is what I wanna know

[FrogEater]

@serguey123 said:

Fuck that, I fear for myself, will I slowly descent to dementia as Medezark has? Will my brain be forever poisoned and my soul tainted by this thread?

That is what I wanna know

 

At the time I read this, Winamp was playing (yeah, in Random order :)) The Doors - The End out of my few 1000's tracks playlist. I found it an intersting coincidence..isn't it ?

[Medezark]

@SpectateSwamp said:

@Medezark said:

Thanks for the quick time-references.  I will re-look when I get home.  Beware -- I have a critical eye.  My responses will be polite, but if something looks like a digital zoom artifact I wont be able to accept it as evidence.  But I will be open minded.

I fear for you. Once you realize these things are here and that I didn't create them. You'll want to capture your own. Then you're hooked. With only me to believe you. So Beware when you look at tobacco leaf and cloaked videos. You'll end up running around chasing spooks for months.              Warning!!!!!

I had a special project to work on last night (A "game show" for one of the senior vp's to use during team meetings... using powerpoint and access and has to be like "jeapordy" with the vp able to modify the questions/answers/scoring, and "lots of colors" and "keep track of team scores across multiple sessions" .... bleh.  And my manager's been nit-picking it to death all day.)  Got the assignment at 4:45 PM yesterday, and starting with 0 knowledge of the powerpoint api's delivered a completed app set at 8 PM (after going home and eating and what-not), now I've spent ALL DAY tinkering with colors and fonts and reworking it from a linear quiz to linear by category to Jeapardy style. And explaining to people that NULL conversion errors mean they have NULL results in their datasets for the umteenth time, and that I can't fix the fact that they can't upload to a read only FTP server that I have never heard of nor have access too.

ARGH

Will try to look at videos again tonight, maybe, unless they want me to hand key our dev database schema into a text file one table at a time, because export might misspell something..

[The_Quiet_One]

@Medezark said:

Will try to look at videos again tonight, maybe, unless they want me to hand key our dev database schema into a text file one table at a time, because export might misspell something..

 

We haven't seen you reply since. Which doesn't concern me, since if you had:

a.) Become a swampie you'd be back on this thread in an instant professing the same insanity SpectateSwamp does

b.) Gotten a brain hemmorage from staring at little spots in his videos you would not be posting in other threads since

Nevertheless, I guess you've concluded that the videos are so unnoteworthy and pointless that they don't even warrant a response. For that I congratulate you. None of us could keep our mouths shut on how ridiculous they are.

[SpectateSwamp]

Fear the Knowledge - Unshared

@RHuckster said:

b.) Gotten a brain hemmorage from staring at little spots in his videos you would not be posting in other threads since

Admitting you see the spots too. Wow. You have come a long way RHucksterSwamp.

[The_Quiet_One]

 @SpectateSwamp said:

Admitting you see the spots too. Wow. You have come a long way RHucksterSwamp.

We've all said we've seen the spots. We just keep telling you they are either compression artifacts, bugs, or leaves.

[mott555]

@RHuckster said:

 @SpectateSwamp said:

Admitting you see the spots too. Wow. You have come a long way RHucksterSwamp.

We've all said we've seen the spots. We just keep telling you they are either compression artifacts, bugs, or leaves.

 

Or the camera's dirty.

The first Star Wars movie made Luke's landspeeder appear to float by spreading vaseline on the lens to smudge away the wheels. Then the camera just had to be aimed carefully.

[Shortjob]

@FrogEater said:

At the time I read this, Winamp was playing The Doors - The End

Mine was playing "Led Zeppelin - Dazed And Confused"

[SpectateSwamp]

Why would I want to "combine / join video files"

I decided to look around at the video forums and find out just why people want to "join video files". There were tons of posts and sites for Joiners. Shit I have been doing video for years and years; never joining nothing. What was I missing?

But sadly most of the more interesting threads were on forums that had already banned me. A more banned person I never knew.

Obviously most media players don't have the play-list capabilities of SSDS.

Whoo hoo. Share your video Knowledge with SSDS the Super video Joiner!!!  Rue the Joiner

So why would anybody in their right mind want to physically join video?

[spenk]

Re: Why wouldn't I want to combine / join video files

@SpectateSwamp said:

So why would anybody in their right mind want to physically join video?

Perhaps they took a series of short videos throughout a day or event, by creating a single long video, edited as appropriate, it means whoever is watching the video can simply hit play on their media player of choice (or dvd player / divx player) and watch a video from start to end.

When you watch a movie at the cinema or at home do you believe it was shot as one continuous take? If they filmed the entire thing there would be months of video footage, superfluous footage is edited out while different scenes (which are normally not shot in chronological order anyway) are joined together to make an overall result that is more pleasing than a series of disparate clips with a flicker of SSRR in between them.

@SpectateSwamp said:

Obviously most media players don't have the play-list capabilities of SSDS.

Most media players support a playlist and the ability to shuffle videos, that is sufficient for most people. Only you seem to want the ability to play a video or mp3 from a random start time for a random amount of time - it just isn't practical in development time to create a feature with a global user base on one.

 

[Shortjob]

@SpectateSwamp said:

So why would anybody in their right mind want to physically join video?

a) To restore videos taken apart by video hosters's 10-minute-limit. (n-minute limit resp., Youtube)

b) To restore old pirated 650mb-cuts.

c) Because some video providers actually serve their content in 10-minute-slices without need. (Which is a real wtf...)

[Medezark]

@SpectateSwamp said:

@Medezark said:

 

Ok, looked at ONE of the videos.  You should probably provide the reference start - stop time stamps for the relevant frames.

Thankyou thankyou for looking.

 
Tobacco leaf flyer demo85-pict7.mpg

 0:32.29 thru 0:33.08 seconds (left side of screen 2/3 way up)
 
 0:52.00 thru 0:52.04 seconds the biggie

 52:26 thru 53.01 from the lower right up to the cloud.
 
 0:57.01 thru 0:57.05 seconds right at bottom of cloud poking out

 1:00.07 thru 1:01.07 seconds lower right hand
 
 1:56.29 thru 1:57.08 seconds  lower left side

 2:32.21 thru 2:33.15 seconds right side 1/3 way up

 2:59.21 thru 2:59.28 seconds lower left corner very faint

 3:22.04 thru 3:22.09 seconds lower right side
 
There are 1 or 2 more that I don't have listed

This object makes moves that I haven't seen before. A lot of zig zaggies.

I'm about halfway through the video from yesterday. There was some interesting segments. A FTS object and a bird in the same clip.

Spec -- Finally got to look at the video segments you reference above -- I see birds, bugs (very interesting watching a mosquito being compressed in and out of frame as it's relative size in pixels increases and decreases) , and compression artifacts. Do you have RAW video clips?

[DescentJS]

@Medezark said:

@SpectateSwamp said:

@Medezark said:

 

Ok, looked at ONE of the videos.  You should probably provide the reference start - stop time stamps for the relevant frames.

Thankyou thankyou for looking.

 
Tobacco leaf flyer demo85-pict7.mpg

 0:32.29 thru 0:33.08 seconds (left side of screen 2/3 way up)
 
 0:52.00 thru 0:52.04 seconds the biggie

 52:26 thru 53.01 from the lower right up to the cloud.
 
 0:57.01 thru 0:57.05 seconds right at bottom of cloud poking out

 1:00.07 thru 1:01.07 seconds lower right hand
 
 1:56.29 thru 1:57.08 seconds  lower left side

 2:32.21 thru 2:33.15 seconds right side 1/3 way up

 2:59.21 thru 2:59.28 seconds lower left corner very faint

 3:22.04 thru 3:22.09 seconds lower right side
 
There are 1 or 2 more that I don't have listed

This object makes moves that I haven't seen before. A lot of zig zaggies.

I'm about halfway through the video from yesterday. There was some interesting segments. A FTS object and a bird in the same clip.

Spec -- Finally got to look at the video segments you reference above -- I see birds, bugs (very interesting watching a mosquito being compressed in and out of frame as it's relative size in pixels increases and decreases) , and compression artifacts. Do you have RAW video clips?

are we allowed to talk about raw things like that here?

[Xyro]

I'd just like to bring these two quotes together in the same post:

@SpectateSwamp said:

So why would anybody in their right mind want to physically join video?

@SpectateSwamp said:

Tobacco leaf flyer demo85-pict7.mpg

 0:32.29 thru 0:33.08 seconds (left side of screen 2/3 way up)
 
 0:52.00 thru 0:52.04 seconds the biggie

 52:26 thru 53.01 from the lower right up to the cloud.
 
 0:57.01 thru 0:57.05 seconds right at bottom of cloud poking out

 1:00.07 thru 1:01.07 seconds lower right hand
 
 1:56.29 thru 1:57.08 seconds  lower left side

 2:32.21 thru 2:33.15 seconds right side 1/3 way up

 2:59.21 thru 2:59.28 seconds lower left corner very faint

 3:22.04 thru 3:22.09 seconds lower right side
 
There are 1 or 2 more that I don't have listed

[Medezark]

@DescentJS said:

@Medezark said:

 

Ok, looked at ONE of the videos.  You should probably provide the reference start - stop time stamps for the relevant frames.

Spec -- Finally got to look at the video segments you reference above -- I see birds, bugs (very interesting watching a mosquito being compressed in and out of frame as it's relative size in pixels increases and decreases) , and compression artifacts. Do you have RAW video clips?

are we allowed to talk about raw things like that here?

I meant uncompressed, but even then if Spec used digital zoom the camera itself would have introduced artifacts as a result.  I like to think I have a relatively open mind as regards the possibility of alien life / visitors from other dimensions-times-planets etc.  I have personally witnessed some strange ariel happenings (the most exciring were over Arlington and Euless Texas back in 1976-1977.)  In my opinion, however, the some of the technological advances in recording moving images actually create more dubious video as time goes by.  All of the digital wizardry we've incorporated into the cameras and file formats introduces more and more areas of doubt.

[SpectateSwamp]

Fooie to video Joiners

@Xyro said:

I'd just like to bring these two quotes together in the same post:

@SpectateSwamp said:

So why would anybody in their right mind want to physically join video?

@SpectateSwamp said:

Tobacco leaf flyer demo85-pict7.mpg

 0:32.29 thru 0:33.08 seconds (left side of screen 2/3 way up)
 
 0:52.00 thru 0:52.04 seconds the biggie

 52:26 thru 53.01 from the lower right up to the cloud.
 
 0:57.01 thru 0:57.05 seconds right at bottom of cloud poking out

 1:00.07 thru 1:01.07 seconds lower right hand
 
 1:56.29 thru 1:57.08 seconds  lower left side

 2:32.21 thru 2:33.15 seconds right side 1/3 way up

 2:59.21 thru 2:59.28 seconds lower left corner very faint

 3:22.04 thru 3:22.09 seconds lower right side
 
There are 1 or 2 more that I don't have listed

A screen reshoot is the answer. With each segment played 3 times in a row. Just so camcorder guy doesn't miss one. Rerendering / joining video can result in barely visible objects disappearing completely. I tried it Once. I have done screen captures of each frame and circled those in Red and played those pics back at high speed. But it still comes back to looking at the original videos.

I have only looked at 4 of the 20 cloud clips I shot yesterday. I'd better get back to that. Maybe make an important discovery.

 

[spenk]

@SpectateSwamp said:

A screen reshoot is the answer. With each segment played 3 times in a row. Just so camcorder guy doesn't miss one. Rerendering / joining video can result in barely visible objects disappearing completely. I tried it Once.

 

A decent editor will not re-compress the video if it doesn't need to. A reshoot will cause more compression / distortion artefacts. I also admire your persistence "I tried it Once", this is the spirit that dragged humans from the primordial slime and created great works of art and literature. Where would we be these days if it wasn't for the sheer luck that Einstein just happened to come up with "E = mc2" on his very first attempt to formulate a relationship between matter and energy - after all having two attempts is just folly.

 

[SpectateSwamp]

Swamp Search takes over Cloud Computing

What the F*%& if Swamp Search takes over cloud computing like it has USB Flash Drives!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ695Q9H8nE      This Cloud

Wouldn't it be handy to have the same capabilities available in the clouds as I currently have on a USB stick.
They wouldn't be able to stop the Knowledge sharing then My Swampies.

P.S. If SSDS wasn't the greatest app; then it is NOW. With the simple changes required to set multiple versions of the executable (SSDS) to run "without prompts" will make creating multiple templates and ONE step / click actions EASY. EG Show me the last page, Show me my youtube hits. Add some notes. Demo this preset video sequence. etc all with good properly named shortcuts to the specific SSDS executable version. Once someone can use it easily then they may want to start looking behind and extending their knowledge.

 

[spenk]

@SpectateSwamp said:

What the F*%& if Swamp Search takes over cloud computing like it has USB Flash Drives!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ695Q9H8nE      This Cloud

Wouldn't it be handy to have the same capabilities available in the clouds as I currently have on a USB stick.
They wouldn't be able to stop the Knowledge sharing then My Swampies.

P.S. If SSDS wasn't the greatest app; then it is NOW. With the simple changes required to set multiple versions of the executable (SSDS) to run "without prompts" will make creating multiple tempSolates and ONE step / click actions EASY. EG Show me the last page, Show me my youtube hits. Add some notes. Demo this preset video sequence. etc all with good properly named shortcuts to the specific SSDS executable version. Once someone can use it easily then they may want to start looking behind and extending their knowledge.

 

Oh for fuck's sake....

So you are comparing data hosted on the internet which is generally accessed through industry standard protocols available on just about any platform with the pile of crap that is SSRR on a USB stick? You really are a total moron, you have no idea what the cloud is, no idea what people expect from computers, no idea how people use computers and no real idea of the world around you.

You want an example of what can be done in terms of searching and sharing data then go look at something like http://netflixpivot.cloudapp.net/ (it is a Silverlight app so sorry to those who can't / choose not to use it) - this is how people can search, filter, visualise and share information without a single cryptic command prompt of fucked up config file to edit.

I have no illusion that you will actually go to that link, after all installing silverlight (free and less than 6M) is far too much effort for you, after all you know best. (that last bit was sarcasm by the way - you are actually quite ignorant and delusional)

@SpectateSwamp said:

P.S. If SSDS wasn't the greatest app; then it is NOW. With the simple changes required to set multiple versions of the executable (SSDS) to run "without prompts" will make creating multiple templates and ONE step / click actions EASY. EG Show me the last page, Show me my youtube hits. Add some notes. Demo this preset video sequence. etc all with good properly named shortcuts to the specific SSDS executable version. Once someone can use it easily then they may want to start looking behind and extending their knowledge.

It is far from the best app, we have had this discussion before. It can't search for files, can do little more than the media player shipped with windows, your flagship "golf" feature took me less than half a day to implement in a fraction of the code. 

If it is now so easy to automate "without prompts" could you explain how to build a search index for several file types in a folder tree and then perform a search for a file? After all you have still failed to prove how your Desktop Search tool can actually search for a file.

 

 

[Xyro]

Come on, Spenk, we should encourage him in this!  Then we can have that one golden multi-petabyte file of every page on the internet like we've always wanted!

Godspeed, Spectate!  Start working on that cloud, and take down Google!  Don't forget to film your progress for when posterity wants a documentary of you.  But beware, for you will become the common enemy of both Google and the aliens.  So don't forget to film what you've filmed, in case there are any aliens lurking about.  Google does not want you to succeed, and being the powerful business they are, they've probably teamed up with the aliens to thwart you.  Aliens fly around clouds, after all.

May the magic stones protect you!

[Medezark]

@Xyro said:

Come on, Spenk, we should encourage him in this!  Then we can have that one golden multi-petabyte file of every page on the internet like we've always wanted!

Godspeed, Spectate!  Start working on that cloud, and take down Google!  Don't forget to film your progress for when posterity wants a documentary of you.  But beware, for you will become the common enemy of both Google and the aliens.  So don't forget to film what you've filmed, in case there are any aliens lurking about.  Google does not want you to succeed, and being the powerful business they are, they've probably teamed up with the aliens to thwart you.  Aliens fly around clouds, after all.

May the magic stones protect you!

Which aliens?  The Reptilians or the Nordic's?  The Reptilians, I thought, were only interested in leasing a few 100,000 sq. feet of underground storage space with built in cages to hold their preferred prey animals?

[serguey123]

@Medezark said:

  The Reptilians, I thought, were only interested in leasing a few 100,000 sq. feet of underground storage space with built in cages to hold their preferred prey animals?

Humans, by all accounts, I really hope they are selective.  Also I thought that nordics where not aliens at all but the lividity should have tip me off

[Xyro]

Which are the ones that really like gold? And supposedly they created humans via hybridization programs between apes and themselves in order to use the offspring as gold mining slaves? Because even though they were an advanced alien race they didn't know how to mine for gold somehow? They seem like the type who might go after Swampy's stones.

Personally, my favorites are the Forever... @Forever said:

I am of the stars. I am called Forever. Eternity courses through my veins. It is cold beyond your sun where we come from. We seed the universe with the milk of a million moons. You are that seed. Your earth is our experiment...

[SpectateSwamp]

Swamp Search exposes fraud

Geez I started to feel a little dizzy reading these weird weird replys. Oh well it's moving the knowledge train along.

The new GOP say they are for transparency. How about a Swampie with a camcorder in their office. That would do it. Look out fraudsters.

[SpectateSwamp]

2nd Bestest program ever

I used this small program while doing telephone billing system conversions. It is quick and easy to create and it has short term and long term value.

I ask the customer for a screen shot of their most important information from their current system. This example is the subscriber file. It takes me no more than a couple hours to create a pretty good replica of their old Subscriber details.

First I print all the field description info onto the screen. Right after that is being displayed I put a DUMMY input statement. I save that screen capture to a newcust0001.bmp BitMap file. Then I comment out the dummy input statement and put in a display of the newly created newcust0001.bmp Now I can put the subscriber detail up on the screen with simple prints.

With this quick program I can examine the new data in the same format as the client and by holding down the enter-key see it flash through all the conversion records. After the conversion and the old system is gone. The new clients like to be able to refer back to the old system to compare accounts old and new.

Being this was so easy to do. I'd ask for WorkOrder and transaction info from the old system so that they could be referenced as well. We never convert that data but it is important. What was the last work order on the account and check the transactions to see payments etc. Sort of ETL without the "Load". Just the ET.

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/bestest2.txt

So there you go. Source code to the Bestest and 2nd Bestest programs ever. Just use the bestest and maybe peek at the code to see how bad it is and with 2nd Bestest. Use it and use it lots. Years ago (early 70's) a good friend of mine said if he was designing systems they would all be text files. With this combo of 2 bestestes. It makes good sense. Very good sense.

There my most important programming knowledge shared. Almost shared out. But not quite.

[Medezark]

@SpectateSwamp said:

I used this small program while doing telephone billing system conversions. It is quick and easy to create and it has short term and long term value.

I ask the customer for a screen shot of their most important information from their current system. This example is the subscriber file. It takes me no more than a couple hours to create a pretty good replica of their old Subscriber details.

First I print all the field description info onto the screen. Right after that is being displayed I put a DUMMY input statement. I save that screen capture to a newcust0001.bmp BitMap file. Then I comment out the dummy input statement and put in a display of the newly created newcust0001.bmp Now I can put the subscriber detail up on the screen with simple prints.

With this quick program I can examine the new data in the same format as the client and by holding down the enter-key see it flash through all the conversion records. After the conversion and the old system is gone. The new clients like to be able to refer back to the old system to compare accounts old and new.

Being this was so easy to do. I'd ask for WorkOrder and transaction info from the old system so that they could be referenced as well. We never convert that data but it is important. What was the last work order on the account and check the transactions to see payments etc. Sort of ETL without the "Load". Just the ET.

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/bestest2.txt

So there you go. Source code to the Bestest and 2nd Bestest programs ever. Just use the bestest and maybe peek at the code to see how bad it is and with 2nd Bestest. Use it and use it lots. Years ago (early 70's) a good friend of mine said if he was designing systems they would all be text files. With this combo of 2 bestestes. It makes good sense. Very good sense.

There my most important programming knowledge shared. Almost shared out. But not quite.

That's not quite how I would have performed the same set of tasks, but then again I don't know what you had to work with at the time. 

Why not map the legacy data to the new system's data fields and just transport the old data directly into the new systems database?

I surely wouldn't have saved anything as bitmaps. I may have saved the data as formatted .txt output as a backup (for use with something like Monarch) - but it looks like it was already sent to you in that format, or some type of delimited file.  But saving it as .bmp means that in order to perform any useful work with the data you'd have to run it through some kind of OCR, and then through something like Monarch.

[b_redeker]

@Medezark said:

But saving it as .bmp means that in order to perform any useful work with the data you'd have to run it through some kind of OCR, and then through something like Monarch.

What, no wooden table?

[SpectateSwamp]

2nd Bestest - a simple data dump

@Medezark said:

That's not quite how I would have performed the same set of tasks, but then again I don't know what you had to work with at the time. 

Why not map the legacy data to the new system's data fields and just transport the old data directly into the new systems database?

I surely wouldn't have saved anything as bitmaps. I may have saved the data as formatted .txt output as a backup (for use with something like Monarch) - but it looks like it was already sent to you in that format, or some type of delimited file.  But saving it as .bmp means that in order to perform any useful work with the data you'd have to run it through some kind of OCR, and then through something like Monarch.

The data was comma delimited. Quite often it is fixed fields and those get maps.

The only reason the .bmp is created it to display the field descriptions on the screen. The print statements just fill in the record details. Usually I put a goto statement that skips around the field names after I have captured them in a screen print. This program was only used to display the "old data". So the bmp is shown and then record after record is displayed. Just clearing the screen removes the old text and moves the next print line to the top of the form. The bmp is only displayed once and it stays up on the screen. If there was something wrong with an account. I'd display it and save it as a .jpg which I'd email to the client to check.

The client loved this screen. Codes etc change from system to system and it was a handy learning tool. They could see the old codes vs the new ones. On an earlier conversion. My boss said we should get rid of that old info. I took the data down. The client quickly called and demanded it be put back up. We kept that info for at least a year. Then it became outdated and no longer used.

[Xyro]

@bestest2.txt said:

     Input #infile, a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7, a8, a9, a10, a11, a12, a13, a14, a15, a16, a17, a18, a19, a20, a21, a22, a23, a24, a25, a26, a27, a28, a29, a30 
     If ddd = "" Then 
         ddd = Trim(a2) + Format(Val(a3), "0000") 
     End If 
    If Len(ddd) = 7 Then 
     If ddd <> Trim(a2) + Format(Val(a3), "0000") Then 
         GoTo next_customer 
     End If 
    End If 

Sigh...

[Medezark]

@SpectateSwamp said:

The data was comma delimited. Quite often it is fixed fields and those get maps.

The only reason the .bmp is created it to display the field descriptions on the screen. The print statements just fill in the record details. Usually I put a goto statement that skips around the field names after I have captured them in a screen print. This program was only used to display the "old data". So the bmp is shown and then record after record is displayed. Just clearing the screen removes the old text and moves the next print line to the top of the form. The bmp is only displayed once and it stays up on the screen. If there was something wrong with an account. I'd display it and save it as a .jpg which I'd email to the client to check.

The client loved this screen. Codes etc change from system to system and it was a handy learning tool. They could see the old codes vs the new ones. On an earlier conversion. My boss said we should get rid of that old info. I took the data down. The client quickly called and demanded it be put back up. We kept that info for at least a year. Then it became outdated and no longer used.

I think I undesrstand now -- You saved time by not having to develop a full data entry screen (using the .BMP as a background).

[SpectateSwamp]

Simple data dumps are critical

Yup

Displaying the bmp file was just like putting a piece of mylar with the field descriptions up on the screen.

The beauty of this program is that it is Super simple. Nobody gets confused as to what it does. Simple is better. To be able to look at all the important data fields in a conversion right away gets the conversion off to a good start. Many times the data fields are not what their name would suggest. Those fields could have been hijacked for other marketing or accounting reasons. A quick scan of the data exposes those fields.

 @Xyro said:

@bestest2.txt said:

     Input #infile, a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7, a8, a9, a10, a11, a12, a13, a14, a15, a16, a17, a18, a19, a20, a21, a22, a23, a24, a25, a26, a27, a28, a29, a30 
     If ddd = "" Then 
         ddd = Trim(a2) + Format(Val(a3), "0000") 
     End If 
    If Len(ddd) = 7 Then 
     If ddd <> Trim(a2) + Format(Val(a3), "0000") Then 
         GoTo next_customer 
     End If 
    End If 

Sigh...

I'd often make a copies of this program to examine specific data fields; right after the "Input #infile" statement above I would do a check on targeted data fields and skip right to next_customer if they didn't match. I could see how many customers had a certain code, address, extension; whatever.

Jamming the conversion data to the screen with just a couple hours effort. These simple file dump apps were critical to the conversions.

 

Exactly MedezarkSwamp using the bmp as a background.

[SpectateSwamp]

Simple data dumps are fast

This is way better than some dumb old "hello world" example. Bestest2 rocks.

 

[Xyro]

I'll give you a dollar magic stone if you change that to monospace.

By the way, can SSRR search that automatically?  Or do you have to manually index the records first?

[SpectateSwamp]

Forget "hello world" bestest2 is better

 

I didn't fill in all the data. But you can.

Here is what you need:

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/bestest2.exe    The bestest2 program ready to go

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/bestest2.txt      the source code (with changes)

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/bestest2-1.bmp   The background bitmap

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/bestest2input.txt The subscriber / data file just 4 records and incomplete

Create a folder called c:\search\

and dump these files there and run it.

[The_Quiet_One]

 O_O Is that your real phone number?

[SpectateSwamp]

"hello world" bestest2 is better

@RHuckster said:

 O_O Is that your real phone number?

Nope.

How about some of you take the source code and change it to match some screen you have. You could pass me along the changes and I could build 2 exe's for you. One that allowed you to capture the bmp file and another the Skipped that logic and displayed the bmp along with the data. Maybe change it to search for the first 3 characters in a name instead of the phone number?

When you have simple text files like this. Any editor can open and change the data. What more do you need? Not much.

This is an app that any programmer worth his/her salt would want in their toolbox.

This group here has the Bestest and the 2nd Bestest programs ever. But not channel9 - I banned over there. But lots of good threads on this search.

[spenk]

@SpectateSwamp said:

How about some of you take the source code and change it to match some screen you have.

Probably because none of us have VB5 or think this is anything special. It wouldn't take more than 5 or 10 minutes to screenshot an existing application and build a ui that has labels / textboxes in the appropriate places and bind them to any underlying data source.

@SpectateSwamp said:

When you have simple text files like this. Any editor can open and change the data. What more do you need? Not much.

Validation of user input, relationships that are defined and enforced, easy way to query (SQL) a decent UI, the ability to have different front ends, testability. I would generally like those kind of things in any application that works with business data.

@SpectateSwamp said:

This is an app that any programmer worth his/her salt would want in their toolbox.

I really doubt that, I honestly do.

 

[Xyro]

@SpectateSwamp said:

@RHuckster said:

O_O Is that your real phone number?

Nope.

Google suggests otherwise:

http://download.cnet.com/windows/spectate-swamp/3260-20_4-6296232.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Desktop-Search-is-Not-Search---This-One-is-and-Has-a-Random-Option&id=110176
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/pict_exe.htm

Nevertheless ...  Why is the background bmp a screenshot of the program..?  Shouldn't it be the form template?  And why even use a bitmap, it's a simple form, just create it the real way.  That way it could at least be translated into other languages when it takes over the world for being too good at displaying customer data from a CSV file. 

[SpectateSwamp]

Nothing is simpler than Bestest2

@Xyro said:

@SpectateSwamp said:

@RHuckster said:

O_O Is that your real phone number?

Nope.

Google suggests otherwise:

http://download.cnet.com/windows/spectate-swamp/3260-20_4-6296232.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Desktop-Search-is-Not-Search---This-One-is-and-Has-a-Random-Option&id=110176
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/stonedan/pict_exe.htm

Nevertheless ...  Why is the background bmp a screenshot of the program..?  Shouldn't it be the form template?  And why even use a bitmap, it's a simple form, just create it the real way.  That way it could at least be translated into other languages when it takes over the world for being too good at displaying customer data from a CSV file. 

Which way is simpler? Just print statements. Don't need no form building knowledge. This easily translates to any programming language on any OS. What a great beginners program. Maybe I'm wrong but to-date nobody has shown me a simpler way to do the same data dump type display. Nothing is simpler than Bestest2

[The_Quiet_One]

@SpectateSwamp said:

Which way is simpler? Just print statements. Don't need no form building knowledge.

 

Classic SpectateSwamp philosophy. "Learning is hard. Why should I learn anything if I can just do it the half-assed way?"

[Xyro]

Wait, is that what you're asking for?  A better way to format CSV data?

Well here, you can have this one.  Finish the display section for me and wrap it with graphics if you're so inclined:@Some Perl said:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict; use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

# This takes a filename as a param, reads it, and returns
# an array of arrays corresponding to the data in the CSV.
sub load_csv($) {
    my $csv = shift;
    my @entries;
    open CSV, $csv or die $!;
    for (<CSV>) {
        # Split up the fields based on the comma, add them to the entries
        push @entries, [split ','];
    }
    close CSV;   
    return @entries;
}

# A simple display sub.  It just prints a formatted string to
# stdout.  The display section is only partly done because I
# couldn't care to finish it.  Just follow the pattern to complete.
# The names of the columns are largely unknown, so I just left
# them as "undef".  Fill them in with your knowledge hoard.
sub display_entry($) {
    my @entry = @{$_[0]}; #Unpack from array
    #print Dumper @data;
   
    my ($phone1, $phone2, $phone3,                   # a1,  a2,  a3
        $chagetax, $creditclass, $name,              # a4,  a5,  a6
        undef, undef, $county,                       # a7,  a8,  a9
        undef, undef, undef,                         # a10, a11, a12
        undef, undef, $ssn,                          # a13, a14, a15
        undef, undef, undef,                         # a16, a17, a18
        undef, undef, $effective,                    # a19, a20, a21
        undef, undef, $billcycle,                    # a22, a23, a24
        $foreign, undef, $indate,                    # a25, a26, a27
        $daexempt, undef, $printdetail) = @entry;    # a28, a29, a30
   
    my $unknown = '???';
   
    # For details about the below, see
    # http://perldoc.perl.org/perlform.html
    format display =
Phone#: @<<-@<<-@<<<   Name: @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    $phone1, $phone2, $phone3, $name

---------------- Service Information ----------------
Type of Service: @<<<<<<<<<<<<   Effective: @<<<<<<
                $unknown,                    $effective
Service Class..: @<<<<<<<<<<<<   In Date..: @<<<<<<
                $unknown,                    $indate
Service Status.: @<<<<<<<<<<<<   Out Date.: @<<<<<<
                $unknown,                    $unknown

(etc)

.
    # Fill in the rest as you see fit.
    $~ = 'display';
    write;
}


# Load the input file:
my @entries = load_csv('bestest2input.txt');
#print Dumper @lines; # optionally dump them for debugging

# This loops over all the entries and displays them.
for my $entry (@entries) {
    display_entry($entry);
    print 'Press center to continue...';
    <>; # This Perl idiom waits for a read from stdin.
}

The output looks like this:@Output said:

Phone#: 780-778-3051   Name: Spectate Swamp

---------------- Service Information ----------------
Type of Service: ???             Effective: a21
Service Class..: ???             In Date..: a27
Service Status.: ???             Out Date.: ???

(etc)

Press enter to continue...
Phone#: 780-778-3061   Name: Spectate Swamp#2

---------------- Service Information ----------------
Type of Service: ???             Effective: a21
Service Class..: ???             In Date..: a27
Service Status.: ???             Out Date.: ???

(etc)

Press enter to continue...

etc etc

[SpectateSwamp]

Bestest2 still 2nd best program ever

@Xyro said:

Wait, is that what you're asking for?  A better way to format CSV data?

Good going XyroSwamp some pearl rookie will love you for it.

I'm going to make another version of Bestest2 that is a fixed record length. That works far better with the system sorts. Ie sort the file by name or phone# or address etc.

Set up the exe the test data and I'll give it a try. Thanks. Where can I get my own copy of pearl. Can I do things my way?

Data dumps are the building blocks of systems.

[spenk]

@SpectateSwamp said:

Which way is simpler? Just print statements. Don't need no form building knowledge.

This also means it is never going to look attractive though, plus it is far easier to position controls in a designer than it is to position and format text using print statements - your screenshot has mis-aligned content all over the place.

@SpectateSwamp said:

This easily translates to any programming language on any OS.

Apart from ones with a decent screen designer and a more graphical approach to things that is.

@SpectateSwamp said:

What a great beginners program.

It is mediocre at best quite frankly.

@SpectateSwamp said:

Maybe I'm wrong but to-date nobody has shown me a simpler way to do the same data dump type display. Nothing is simpler than Bestest2

I could probably throw something together in WPF in a matter of minutes that could do better, plus it could get it's data from a properly structured object that could come from a csv, xml or database file if needs be. I probably won't bother as you have a track record of ignoring me and the code I have provided in the past.

[Xyro]

@SpectateSwamp said:

I'm going to make another version of Bestest2 that is a fixed record length. That works far better with the system sorts. Ie sort the file by name or phone# or address etc.

Why not use a database?  Those sort of things are exactly what they're designed to do, and they can do them far, far better than any file-manipulating program, Swamp quality or otherwise.@SpectateSwamp said:

Set up the exe the test data and I'll give it a try. Thanks. Where can I get my own copy of pearl. Can I do things my way?

Perl (not pearl) for Windows can be downloaded from ActiveState's ActivePerl project: http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/downloads
[direct download link]

The program doesn't compile to an .exe, the source code is all there is.  Perl reads and interprets/compiles the source while it's running.  (It's actually a bit more complex than that, but what I said is true enough.)

After you install Perl, copy the source to a file, say, bestest2.pl, in the same directory as the input text, bestest2input.txt.  ActiveState will allow .pl files to be double-clicked and ran like a normal Windows program. A note of caution though:  after the program finishes, the output window will disappear, which is normally undesireable. Better would be to use the command prompt to navigate to the program and execute it using the command "perl bestest2.pl".

You might like Perl, don't be afraid to drop VB5 in favor of it.

[SpectateSwamp]

Know nothing more - ever

@Xyro said:

Why not use a database?  Those sort of things are exactly what they're designed to do, and they can do them far, far better than any file-manipulating program, Swamp quality or otherwise

text files move more easily and I can edit them with any notepad utility. With fixed length files and "sort" you have a different type of a database. The example in Bestest2 is a "find" then "get-next" if using and indexed file. Very handy to start at a point and view from there on.  

I'd be crazy not to try build my own Bestest2 using perl. Thanks

The keys to computing EXTRACT (Bestest2) SORT (system sort) REPORT (knock off of Bestest2) FIX (notepad) And if you want to play with that text data use Swamp Video & Desktop Search

That's it. You know everything you need to know.

 

[Xyro]

While I agree with you that databases are rather bulky and not as easy to use as a text file, they excel in those four keys to computing.   "select name from customers where phone_number = '780-778-3061' order by name"

(Not that I'm a fan of SQL, but it's usually far better than a mess of one's own loops.)

Recently I've been working on an application that stores logs to and reports from a database table with over five million records.  No way would I want to write that to a text file and try to manipulate it.  While your example doesn't contain a Notepad-crushing amount of data, the real dataset of all your customers might.  Save yourself the pain and do it right the first time, even if it means taking time out to learn new things.  That's my MO.

[SpectateSwamp]

most important computer program - SSDS

@Xyro said:

Save yourself the pain and do it right the first time, even if it means taking time out to learn new things.  That's my MO.

One more small thing to learn and you'll be hooked. Run the SSDS "golf" option if you have some mpg videos around. Then check the output text file. Knowing that Swamp video will play random selections or non random immediately. Just as easy as SSDS can play the last 3 seconds in slow motion it can "skip playing" the last 3 seconds. Someone makes a stupid / nasty statement. Shut the camcorder off and turn it back on when they have calmed down. You can set the auto playback so that the last 3 seconds don't play. So pad the clean videos with a final shot of the sunset etc.

When you have this kind of control over video. It's worthwhile getting a camcorder. (mpeg)

With video this simple you can shoot and shoot. Then you'll have something to share!!!

[spenk]

@SpectateSwamp said:

Run the SSDS "golf" option if you have some mpg videos around. <random stuff clipped> T

Or you could write your own video player using the media player built into windows to do this - after all I did and it didn't take much time at all.