kitchi - LED sign controller

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pjwallin
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kitchi - LED sign controller

#1 Post by pjwallin »

I just submitted a database entry for kitchi (currently in Private status) and am looking for people to review and hopefully up-mod that entry.

kitchi is a program for Windows that automatically downloads news, weather, and/or friend-updates from internet RSS feeds to a scrolling LED sign. It can write HTML, marquee (html), and other local files for testing the application, though it's main purpose is for writing RSS to LED signs which are attached to a comport (or USB-to-comport adapter)

Here's a video demo of what it does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR1e5pwVWJ0

Please review:
http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.p ... a&m=Search

Thanks

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webfork
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Re: kitchi

#2 Post by webfork »

First, welcome to the site.
All you need is a one-line Alpha, two-line Alpha or Betabrite, or other scrolling LED sign and this software.
We admittedly have some specialty use programs here on the site, but I'd be very surprised if anyone here had the equipment necessary to test this.

If you have other programs you'd like to see us take a look at, you may want to post something in forums before adding them to the database.

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SYSTEM
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Re: kitchi

#3 Post by SYSTEM »

Orca wrote:Kitchi is a popular search at TPFC.

Really? I wouldn't have thought so.
@Andrew: how much search traffic do we have? If it's not much, it's plausible that merely the clicks of the link in the OP (which is a search link) would bring kitchi to the Popular Searches box.
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webfork
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Re: kitchi

#4 Post by webfork »

Orca wrote:Really? I wouldn't have thought so.
Please stop saying that. If you have an issue with the site search, please post in the thread on that topic or feel free to contact the admin directly. Keep in mind he is not getting paid to work on this site and neither am I.
Orca wrote:what the hell is the kitchi entry still doing in the private database?
It does not have the votes. I'm not going to vote for it because -- as stated above -- I don't have a way to test it.

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Andrew Lee
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Re: kitchi

#5 Post by Andrew Lee »

@Andrew: how much search traffic do we have? If it's not much, it's plausible that merely the clicks of the link in the OP (which is a search link) would bring kitchi to the Popular Searches box.
As I have mentioned previously (and repeatedly tested), clicks on the links under "Popular Searches" do not change the stats.

However, ever since we shortened the search stat window to 3 days. it's relatively easy to make a search keyword turn up in "Popular Searches". I won't detail the possible techniques, but I'm sure you guys can imagine a few. Let's just say TPFC does not have search volume at the scale of Google, so it does not take many hits over a 3-day window to tilt a keyword in your favour.

But remember it comes quickly, but also goes quickly. So as far as I can tell, that search keyword is gone now, so it's not a deliberate, sustained effort to game the result.

A long stats window vs a short stats window have their own pros and cons. I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too, if you know what I mean.

We can increase the stats window further, but that will make the output more static, which was the complaint (that "Popular Searches" never change) that led to the implementation of this change in the first place.

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SYSTEM
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Re: kitchi

#6 Post by SYSTEM »

Andrew Lee wrote:We can increase the stats window further, but that will make the output more static, which was the complaint (that "Popular Searches" never change) that led to the implementation of this change in the first place.
Well, I think a somewhat longer window would still work fine. A week for example.
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Andrew Lee
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Re: kitchi

#7 Post by Andrew Lee »

Well, I think a somewhat longer window would still work fine. A week for example.
Let's try a week then...

pjwallin
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Re: kitchi

#8 Post by pjwallin »

Thanks for the welcome to the site and for taking a look to see if this program is a good fit for a site listing.

I do have some other free software packages at:
http://www.remote-control.net/
Please let me know if any of these would be good candidates for the DB -- I am starting to get an interest again in making another round of programs, but the tricky part is finding something to make that hasn't already been made.
The program on remote-control.net that I use a lot is the FCIVShell program -- it (along with Microsoft's fciv.exe) can scan a directory tree and write out 1 XML file at the top level folder containing MD5 and/or SHA1 hashes for all files it finds in the current and child folders -- there is a known limitation of ~9GB filesize that fciv.exe can work with -- for now, the backup option is that FCIVshell.exe has a feature where it can scan one file (any size) and report the md5 and sha1 results which can be cut/pasted to a neighboring txt file to the scanned file -- I am planning on building a 'version 2' of this type of program, removing the dependency to fciv.exe, adding file-format features, remaining compatible with the previously mentioned file format but without the filesize limitation.

kitchi-rss can be tested by anyone on any computer by having it write out a local file (*.html) with output-type of "marquee" -- double click on the resulting file to get a virtual scrolling LED sign -- the program also /might/ be of general interest as it can also download RSS from multiple sites and then be directed to write out one local RSS file (collect multiple rss sources to one local rss file)

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webfork
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Re: kitchi

#9 Post by webfork »

pjwallin wrote:Thanks for the welcome to the site and for taking a look to see if this program is a good fit for a site listing.
Sure thing. Glad to have you.
pjwallin wrote:Please let me know if any of these would be good candidates for the DB -- I am starting to get an interest again in making another round of programs, but the tricky part is finding something to make that hasn't already been made.
We have a (somewhat old) thread portable software that hasn't been developed. I'm sure if you could give us an idea of what software you want to dig into, we could come up with some suggestions. I for one have been interested in a program that both copies files to a destination at the same time it hashes. This is because normally the machine would read the file list twice (once for the copy, once for the hash), which is literally double the work necessary.

I'm sure you could poll the group and get some more development suggestions.
pjwallin wrote:The program on remote-control.net that I use a lot is the FCIVShell program -- it (along with Microsoft's fciv.exe) can scan a directory tree and write out 1 XML file at the top level folder containing MD5 and/or SHA1 hashes for all files it finds in the current and child folders
We have a lot of good hashing programs here on the site. Can you put together some screenshots or maybe an intro vid?
pjwallin wrote:... the program also /might/ be of general interest as it can also download RSS from multiple sites and then be directed to write out one local RSS file (collect multiple rss sources to one local rss file)
I definitely don't have a need for something like that but it does sound interesting.

pjwallin
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Re: kitchi

#10 Post by pjwallin »

>> I for one have been interested in a program that both copies files to a destination at the same time it hashes. This is because normally the machine would read the file list twice (once for the copy, once for the hash), which is literally double the work necessary.

I'm also interested in this and I've seen some others ask for this software (I was always hoping that someone else would make this, though I might need to make an attempt at it) -- "version 2" of my file hash software will be set up to make this copy-and-hash feature a likely progression -- some people tell me to use ZFS and I will try that sometime soon to see what it can do, but it would only be useful to me if it was able to export its hash codes in XML when writing to a non ZFS filesystem and import its hash codes from XML when copying from a non ZFS filesystem (maybe I'm lucky and it can already do that)

>> "version 2" of my file hash software will be set up to make this copy-and-hash feature a likely progression

Yes, I'll make some videos of my software over the next week or so -- some of my software, like the file-hashing program, is designed to be simple, "point-and-shoot" (point it to a folder and click a button);

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