FrontPAQ v4

FrontPAQ is now better. Here is a list of changes:

• The progress bar moves smoothly and not only on the end of files.
• FrontPAQ doesn't show a folder selection dialog if you run it. Instead it displays how to use it which now has changed: you drag and drop things on it. That way you can have it on your Desktop or you can have a shortcut in the quick launch and use it easily by dragging directories or files on it.
• It will search the directory where it is stored for PAQ8P*.exe compressors and use the first one if available. If it finds none then it will temporarily export an embedded one in its directory. If its directory is read-only (eg CDROM) it will use the system temp instead.
• It is compatible with PAQ8PF too which is a much faster compressor with still great compression.
• It includes two embedded compressors: PAQ8PX v64 and PAQ8PF beta 1. You can select any of them when you select the level of compression.
• It now gives proper advice when the "tmpfile: access denied" error is encountered. (reboot or run as admin)

FrontPAQ versions 2 and 3 were made by moisesmcardona and included different compression engines. You can also find version 5 on his site which uses more up-to-date compression engines. I will update FrontPAQ only when I make changes in the front end so you can find the latest versions either on moisesmcardona's site or you can get them from this great forum and drop the one you want to use in FrontPAQ's directory and it will use it instead of the embedded. On the forum you can also discuss about FrontPAQ in this thread.

To download FrontPAQ v4 click here.

SFTM v2.0

Super Fuck This Mind (my Mastermind solver) has been upgraded! Parts of it have been rewritten and it includes 5 new features:

1. You can tell it to ignore combinations that contain a color more than once.
2. Color names can be easily customized.
3. You can now play your own moves instead of the suggestion that will always be given. That way you can continue old games by playing the old moves again.
4. The above settings can either be typed into SFTM whenever you run it or read from textfiles.
5. If it detects a mistake it will ask for the correct combination and spot the mistake you did.

I also included a benchmarking version too which will tell you how many moves are needed on average for different settings.

Here is a screenshot:


Don't forget to read the included README! It explains most things, I think!

You can download SFTM from here. Have fun cheating!

FrontPAQ

You know how much I love 7zip because of it's great compression ratios... What would you say for some even lower compression ratios? What about a way to estimate the Shannon entropy of your data?? Why not give PAQ8PX a try then??? Yeah of course I am exaggerating a bit but the PAQ8 compressor series will definitely give you the best lossless compression ratios you can currently get on Earth. Actually PAQ8PH series have won the Hutter prize twice! PAQ8PH contain dictionaries in them and aim at compressing text. For "everyday" usage the PAQ8PX is likely the best you can find out there. The only tiny winy drawback is that it is awfully slow: just a bit faster than a PSTN line on my CPU. In any case, be it practical or not, you should give PAQ8PX a try and I just made your life a bit easier by making a simple frontend called FrontPAQ that simplifies the compression level selection and also calculates the ETA, the compression speed and some more things. FrontPAQ includes the latest version of PAQ8PX I could find (I found it in this post), is written in AutoIt \m/ so it is a standalone executable and is realeased under the GNU GPL v3. Here are some screenshots showing the whole process you have to follow in order to compress a directory:

(Don't worry, normally you will get more than 3.8KB/s)

So, go on and download FrontPAQ from here.

OnTop v1.0 (and some news)

It's been 3 months since my last post. No, I haven't abandoned my blog, it's just that I'm working on other things too, mostly on anonymous networks like TOR's "Onionland" and Freenet. I also made and learned things that aren't meant to be on this blog (yet). For example I started writing a remote control application in Java (using the marvelous NetBeans IDE) along with a friend (DimBiC) so I also learned how to use SVN. At the same time I moved from Ubuntu to Windows 7 because I only have one laptop (unfortunately made by Sony) which refuses to run Freenet properly on Ubuntu and instead crashes overnight. By the way I am amazed by how nice Windows 7 is, it has nothing to do with Vista. But, still, I miss Ubuntu... Now that I work on Windows again I learned programming in AutoIt. What can I say? I love it... It's not meant for serious programming but writing programs in it is actually funny. AutoIt allows you to play with so many aspects of Windows so easily. It's an interpreter full of system functions ready to control, use, abuse, or expoit your (or someone else's) system! (and it creates standalone portable executables!) So here is what I and DimBiC (a friend of mine) just made: OnTop. A program that sits on your tray and toggles the always-on-top property of any window with just a keystroke (Win+Alt+T). With another keystroke (Win+Alt+Y) you can set the transparency for all inactive always-on-top windows. This is the first version so there might be some bugs which, at the time being (3:42am), I lack the mental clarity to detect and fix. To download OnTop click here. (AutoIt source code included of course...) PS: The cool Marvin icon was made by the guy here.

iDirt

One more natural Apple advertisement. In Patras as well...