Autozeep v3

What better way to prove that I'm not dead yet but to post about a new old-school freeware utility. The zipfile even contains a readme.txt file which you should definitely read carefully before you use the software.

Autozeep is a tiny tool that utilizes an often forgotten feature of NTFS: transparent compression of your files on the cluster level (or "block level", I can't remember what terminology Microsoft uses). What this means is that you can have compressed files which can be read and written to without having to manually decompress them. The compression isn't great but it can give you some free space if you are running out which, surprisingly, is not that unheard of since we started using smaller SSDs. Additionally if you are on an HDD with a fast CPU, in theory you may even see an increase in read speed if you are reading compressed files, since the bottleneck is the drive's read spread and not the CPU's decompression speed. YMMV

Windows already has some system directories marked as compressed. For example the directory where the Windows Error Reporting system reports gets stored is marked as compressed, meaning any error report that gets saved in there is on the fly compressed.

Now the bad thing about this kind of compression is writing to the compressed files. As I mentioned, if the HDD was you bottleneck, then it may even be faster to first compress your data and then write it, but there is one more thing to consider that doesn't apply to reads: fragmentation. If you try to edit a portion of a compressed file (I think files are compressed in 4K chunks by NTFS but don't quote me on this) you may end up with a larger compressed representation compared to the one you had before. Now the filesystem will need to find a place for the bigger chunk to be written too, creating an extra fragment for your file. Keep writing to the file and it'll become more and more fragmented. Of course, if you are using an SSD fragmentation is less of a problem.

So to avoid these issues and give NTFS compression a try I made Autozeep. It scans all the files in a directory and compresses any files that have not been modified during the last 30 days. Additionally it will decompress any file which has been modified in the last 3 days. The idea is that you can run this script every 7 days on average and it will keep any files that are rarely written to compressed and everything else uncompressed. At the same time it contains a list of file extensions that it will not even try to compress, like media files or archives since those cannot be further compressed by NTFS.

There are quite a few things that you can customize by editing an INI file (we're talking DOS and Win 3.1 technology here) so make sure that you read the readme.txt.

You can download Autozeep v3 from here.

In other news, I've moved to Poland some years ago and I now work like a Java developer. Which is why I can't take good care of most of my projects lately. But I'm still around and I'm still writing small programs every now and then even though I'm not publishing them.

Sexionnaire

The other day, while browsing Wikipedia, I wondered how hard it must be to have weird fetishes without being able to share them with someone or even to discuss them with your partner. So the idea that struck me was that a computer could ask both partners about their fetishes, then compare their answers and finally reveal only the common ones. So I thought I'd make a website about this. After a little brainstorming I thought that turning this into a full fledged sex questionnaire, aiming to give ideas to couples too, would be even better. So I started making Sexionnaire.

I had my girlfriend help me with the graphics and with compiling the huge questionnaire. It turns out the database is bigger than the site's code. The site is written in PHP from scratch with a little jQuery for the expanding list effects and the asynchronous requests. Anyway the site can be found at sexionnaire.com.

It doesn't need your email or anything else. You just create a questionnaire pair, you give out the proper link to your partner, you click on your link and you both start solving the questionnaires (it doesn't have to be done at the same time of course, the questionnaire links never expire). When you are done you submit your answers and you are taken to the results page. There, if your partner has also finished his/her questionnaire, you will be able to see all the common answers. There is a little twist though: only the partner that gave the least positive answers will be able to see the results. This is done to avoid cheating by checking everything just to reveal your partners answers. If you are the one that sees the answers then you will also be given a link that will help you print cards with all the common answers so that you can play a game with them (put them in a box and draw cards whenever you fell horny).

So give it a try and tell me what you think. The site is over 18 obviously (Although it contains no pictures, yet. Only links to external sites with more info.) and currently only supports heterosexual couples. I'll make a version for homosexual couples when I get a chance.

PS: The questionnaire needs more than one hour to complete but you can save your progress by clicking "Continue later" at the bottom. Just make sure you don't loose the URL, bookmark it so that you can get back later.

PAL v2

Quick post. A user asked me to make PAL pass command line parameters to the executable that it executes portably and so I did. I also fixed a possible bug.

You can download PAL from here.

That attitude will not get us out of the crisis.

I just saw this on Greek national television and I really have to make some comments on it.

Hey,

I'm neither a public service worker, nor a thief.

And, I don't drink ouzo, break plates or say Opa in my daily life. Oh and I don't know Yorgo, Yanni, or Niko from Greece, although I am certain that they're really really nice...

Correct.

My country is a democracy, actually it invented the concept...

Actually ancient Athens invented democracy, not Greece. If you consider that to be the same then your country also threw retarded or disabled children over a cliff (what we (and Nazis) call eugenics). Also modern Greeks OBVIOUSLY have no idea about how a democracy is supposed to work and this is obvious if you look at the way they vote: purely for personal short-term benefit.

I speak Greek and five other languages, and most of the people from my country speak at many foreign languages...

True, most people here speak Greek, English and one more language.

I could probably sew my country's flag in my backpack, but Greece's heritage goes far beyond the geographical borders. It invented the West...

What? It invented the west? What is that even supposed to mean?

I believe in Hellenism... The entire world aspires to its ideals... 

And if I owe anybody any money today -and by the way I am not the only one- it's because I invented the idea of a free market!

What the fuck is this girl talking about? There were people trading over the seas way before "Greeks" inhabited Greece. Also when did YOU (specifically) invent the free market? You, Katerina, did nothing about the "invention" of a free market and I doubt that a free market needs to be invented. It's just natural to trade things and if you do it outside state control, a free market emerges, it is not an invention.

And if you critique me today, it's because I invented the idea of critique.

 Again, when did YOU, Katerina, invent critique? Somebody else in the past did, and the world owes nothing to modern Greeks for that. On the other hand modern Greeks owe, as much as the rest of the western world, to those guys that ACTUALLY invented democracy and critique. Don't think that you are somehow less obliged to those who invented democracy then the rest of the world. We all owe them a lot. The fact that you were born in the same geographical area, speaking a similar, closely related, language with those that invented democracy doesn't entitle you to any special treatment or honor by the rest of the world, you were just "lucky".

I believe in Freedom , so if I need to, I protest...

In this country most people don't even know how to vote. Some of them even protest for the shit they themselves caused. Of course the rest of the people both know how to vote and protest but unfortunately practically nothing changes as long as those people remain a minority.

I believe in the joy of life. I have the right to. There's nothing wrong with that!
I can swim in the waters of over 6000 islands! My country is of exceptional beauty, and tradition.

Good for you and I agree to everything but the last thing. I consider tradition useless (and in some cases dangerous) cause it rallies people around trivial things instead of actual opinions and wants.

And my family is a sacred institution!

 In most civilizations the family is "sacred" in some way. Nothing to see here people, move along.

You call me Greek, but it's Hellene, NOT Greek, HELLENE!

"Greek" is also acceptable as well as many other names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks#Names . I turns out that it stems from Graikos, a son of Zeus. Also we are not the first country in the world that uses another name for itself than the rest of the world.

My name is Katerina...

My name is Kostas...

And I am Hellene...

And I was accidentally born in Greece, surrounded by arrogant and irrational people as well as a few bright exceptions.

BTConvert v10

v10 is a minor update again. Google somehow broke the exchange rates so I switched it to this source. Also changed the Pecunix source to another site. The exchange rates are refreshed much faster now.

You can get v10 here.