New BleachBit Cleaners - Simutrans & TeraCopy and more

I have created Simutrans.XML and TeraCopy.XML CleanerML files (and more. See update below), for use with the popular program, BleachBit. The files are available from my GoogleDrive and need to be placed in the Share/Cleaners/ folder of your BleachBit installation in order for them to become available in the program.

Note: As a precaution, I suggest you obtain BleachBit from the developer, and use the cleanerML mark-up provided by his program.

All the usual caveats apply when using the CleanerML files I have created, and you are free to edit and share them - and I would hope you share your changes/improvements with the developer. Mine have been submitted to the developer, and may or may not be included in updates of the program (The reason why you should use caution with them as the developer may not approve them). Of note, the Simutrans cleaner has facilities to clean out all files stowed in the user height maps, screenhots, and saved games directories/folders. All of this content is either placed there manually by the user, or initiated by the user in Simutrans. So no warnings are issued as it is assumed the user is aware of what he or she has in these locations.

Enjoy, and look forward to more in future.

Update 06/08/2015:

Additional cleanerML mark-up has been created for Akelpad, Audacity, DirMaster, Goldwave, kchmviewer, Paint.NET, SketchUp Make, Textsrch, and VirtualDub, all being Windows software, all being available on my GoogleDrive and Github. I have also altered the mark-up to make it more compliant with the BleachBit developer's own mark-up, and have made it available to him. When/If it becomes part of the distributed BleachBit program in it's current or an altered form is solely up to him.

One additional cleaner - "virtualdub-scripts-and-sparse.xml" contains warnings and mark-up that may delete files that VirtualDub users might not want deleted. I do not expect this to become part of BleachBit (see comment below). The files it targets have the following extensions: .JOBS, .SYL, .VCF, and .SPARSE. All are user created/generated and in my opinion, fall within the scope of what BleachBit is meant to clean. But I am not all users, so I leave it up to you and suggest you heed the warnings if you use this mark-up.

Update: 03/09/2015:

Created a cleaner for Stuffit.

Update: 06/18/2016:

Created a cleaner for PokerTH.

Canadian cities file for Simutrans

I created a different Canadian cities file for Simutrans, the transportation simulator game. I also created a new "en.tab" file which generates city names when no city file present which I feel also renders as more Canadian.  The Simutrans site message forum already has a Canadian cities file, but I wanted mine to reflect a more diverse cultural influence that has existed in Canada.

Changes to the "en.tab" file include the changing of city name generating affixes and prefixes, the generating of stations/stops names, and of course, the game will no longer announce that it has given a "blue riband" for breaking a speed record. I am presuming, with this last change, that the intent was to award a blue ribbon.

If you have a cities file, the "en.tab" file only affects station/stop names and the "blue ribbon" statement. If you want to use the Canadian cities file, depending on your OS language settings, you may need to rename the file in order for Simutrans to automatically load it.

Trash and Hornet's Nests - Cleaning logs and expendable data with BleachBit

Trash and hornet's nests...

When you are tasked with finding, interrogating, and punting unnecessary data from a computer system, the above phrase describes the ever growing phenomenon you deal with. With OS developers serving as the alpha dogs, myriad programmers with a notepad program and a compiler take the alpha dog's cue and run with it, adding ever more reams of data-cruft to our hard drives.

One of my new favorite toys is a program whose sole existence is to provide a standardized tool for dealing with a computer's honey holes of trash and other un-needed data. A link to BleachBit turned up in my inbox, and as of late I've been discovering it to be very capable. It not only will allow Windows users to target this unwanted data; but Linux users can also enjoy purging made easy.

Select targets in the left pane, and read what damage trash wrought in the right.

The program has a number of features that look to be just right for continuous enjoyment.

Trash is addressed by use of a mark-up code that is easily understood by anyone who has ever worked with web page and similar mark-up. Known as Cleaner Mark-up Language (CleanerML), it is XML-based and looks near enough to what you might put in a web page. Objects, whether internal file data structures (Windows registry, SQL databases, etc.) or files themselves, can be located and addressed using CleanerML, and the data viewed or purged. Disk and file content can also be overwritten to avoid recovery. Because the mark-up is open source, you can freely share it, as can others, and all parties enjoy the benefit in doing so.

The program comes with a number of cleaners files which provide the program with the ability to cleanse specific application/process data, or collections of such objects once installed. Sample files are also included. But reading the documention/help on the web site allows you to sample from a treasure trove of shared cleaning code that BleachBit can use and to learn how to roll your own cleaner files.

Adding and removing cleaners is as simple as copying or deleting files from a centralized folder where all cleaner mark-up files are kept. If you feel any cleaner offers too much or too little to be purged, a simple text editor allows you to customize any to your liking, if you have that sort of initiative. This can also be done to nibble down the selectable cleaners and their functions in the left pane so that only relevant cleaners to your specific system are made available.

As many can appreciate, such a publicly and freely accessible/extendable tool is what makes a good tool great. I have only touched on it's features. There are many more. You may find me posting a few additional cleaners of my own for use with BleachBit in the near future when I get around to it. In the meantime, visit the site, and enjoy. Be sure to check the documentation/help pages to find additional cleaners including Winapp2_ini and how it's used with the program. That alone will add hundreds upon hundreds of accessible cleaners to your installation.

Attention Metro Shoppers! Today's Special: Fresh Bagels... Err, Frozen!

Having darkened the doors of a Metro location for many years, it has come as quite a surprise to me that the company's own brand - Selection - which has been marketing fresh bakery products for decades under that name, and the Equality/Master Choice lines that preceded it, have taken to freezing their fresh product, and pretending that there is no difference.

When I inquired at a store - Metro's thriftier store operations - Food Basics, I was told that this is standard practice. Not just for Food Basics, but Metro as well.

Bags of 6 Selection bagels - a bakery product - arrives in a frozen food truck at all their stores.

Moreover, someone in head office arrived at this brainwave idea, and somehow, no one seems to notice the entirety of this brave, new wave in product development and advancement is reducing their selection bagels to a slimy, wet sponge product on the store shelves. Oh, sure! They do dry out inside the nicely moistened bag that has invariably gone from sub-zero and back to room temperature at least twice during it's product life cycle. Each time, the bag fills with the misty, bilge-watery mess as the plastic bag's interior fights with the warm air outside it, and the frozen air surface of the bagels fighting back.

Apparently, the developer of this "lets save a few cents and ship it with the Cap'n High Liner!" is probably one of those clowns that thinks everyone toasts their bagels. "Doesn't every body?" Even if they are the Z-grade, low priced product, it never seemed to enter his/her mind that perhaps, some people don't look forward to waking up in the morning to a plain, slime-covered, wet bagel with butter or cream cheese. The people in logistics could have told anyone at the meeting - if there ever was one where this was discussed as a new protocol - that the mere idea of freezing a fresh product is akin to taking something worth more as a fresh product, and magically transforming it to something infinitely less marketable. Anyone appreciating fresh bagels, Z-grade to pompously up-marketed grade, could tell you the same. If they wanted frozen bagels, they would go to the frozen food section, which is a place these frozen Selection bagels are never stocked.

No sir.

They put these frozen bagels in and amongst all the other fresh bakery products, early in the morning to be found the only product "drying out", as a competitive, alternative product.

It aint.

As an idea or money-saving process, it's dunder-headed. Its just the sort of thing the grocery manager at the Yonge/Eglington store would have dreamed up, surprising his store manager and his customers with a much welcoming sight of frosted, misty bagel bags, every morning thereafter!

And there is one aspect to it that smacks of the real genuine disingenuous of it. Never is the product advertised or discussed or labelled or marketed and manufactured as a frozen food product - which is what it now is.

Had anyone ever walked into a Metro and been overhead by me discussing this whatever-saving precedent it began its life as, I would have promptly and sufficiently left enough verbal excrement running down the collective necks of all those proffering it as a "win". Whatever the win it may seem to be, it is developed, resulted, and tabulated as a loser in anyone's mind, but a bean-counter. And if that is what Metro/Food Basics are stooping to, then let the fucking bean counters eat their own shit. Because wet bagels in soupy bags does not cut it!

Do You Remove Your Shoes and Jacket on a Cross-Town Bus?

I sympathize with those Air-Canada passengers left on the tarmac on a cold day in Halifax when their plane went down. But the fact that people were outside the plane in their socks makes me wonder just what people think of when they take off their clothes upon boarding public vehicles, of which a commercial passenger jet plane qualifies.

The television news shared the concern of passengers that they were left out on the tarmac for over 50 minutes in such cold conditions. The inference being they were cold and shouldn't someone be doing something about the situation? (It apparently took a while for all resources - not just the fire brigade - to arrive).

I sympathize with that too. But when you get on a plane that is routed through Canada, and you are expected to board or depart the plane at a destination that happens to be in Canada during the winter, shouldn't your shoes and jacket be on your person, as opposed to the over-head compartment behind someone else's carry-on luggage?

Doubtless finger-pointing will occur over many issues. But passengers must be responsible travellers, and be prepared for contingencies that can and do occur in flight, or as a flight begins/ends. They should be listening to the emergency procedures, and place themselves in a frame of mind where they contemplate themselves participating in them.

As someone who has flown in and out of Canada, it has been my experience that passengers quite often are oblivious and/or do not care to observe that being prepared is in their own best interests. That talking on your cell phone or blabbing to the person sitting beside you is the last thing you should be doing during the pre-flight demonstration given by the stewards and stewardesses on just what you should make yourself ready for. If you paid attention to them, they discuss precisely the event that transpired.

Planes do go down. People do need to de-board, sometimes in a hurry.

The demonstrations given in all commercial passenger flights refer to events that transpire on the ground. They aren't teaching you how to open the exit door during flight. There would actually be a parachute fitting demonstration were that the case. And since you may be de-boarding on the ground, it would behoove you to wear something appropriate.

An Hour, A Horse, An Hash of A Harry

It seems that many of us have word processors that correct our spelling. Even Blogger, the host of my various screeds, seems quite unwelcoming to my support of the letter U in the word honour or honourable (It underlines every one just as my primary school teachers did). Some of these programs correct words automatically the moment the space following the word is entered. But what is really important is that many of the word-processor-using public, it seems, are apparently unaware that word processors and their developers did not invent and are not familiar with the languages we speak.

It is how you and I and all those that preceded us speak that determines languages and their use - not the written word! Sometimes the written word is our only guide, such as in ancient texts. But language is a living thing that exists in our conversation and heads. It wasn't developed in source code.

The fact that some bit-napper with a penchant for creating rules such as "Nouns beginning with the letter H must be be preceded by An and not A" and simultaneously holds a job in the software industry does not make him or her right. Neither does that get anyone using the word processor off-the-hook for allowing themselves to write wrong in text editors.

It is altogether a different story when people purposely choose to use acronyms and dubious time-saving spelling devices such as "l33t", "LMAO", and the perfect target for derisive arrows, "<3". Whether or not you find these devices of typed text in our language a boon or a bane, there is actually a protocol followed. Even among those of us who avoid these acronyms like plague understand and follow the logic, or illogic, if that is your perception of them. We are aware that little Johnny and Janey L33t-Sp3kker (Yes, northern-European forms exist), are employing well understood forms of written language.

The rule "Any H-word preceded by 'A' should be changed to 'An'" is not a device that any person speaking agrees with "in all situations". There is one quite obvious reason that is observable in practically all speech wherein this rule has occasion to be followed and it is determined solely by how the word beginning with the letter H is spoken. It is so simply observed, or heard, that even a Hello_World programmer of any stripe can master it.

When the H is audible, as stressed and quite clearly distinguished when the H-word is spoken, it is preceded by 'A', such as a horse, a horticultural centre, and a horrible day at the keyboard. When the H is not audible, as in when the existence of the letter H, or it's removal from the spoken word does not alter how the word is spoken, then it is preceded by 'An', such as an hour, an honourable person. As spoken, our and on-or-able is identical, when spoken, to hour and honourable in most spoken English and English variants. If it is spoken in this manner, it should be preceded by 'An'. If the H is clearly stressed when spoken, it should not be.

Even when English speakers use H-words differently than others do, they still follow the rules I outline here. To people in United Kingdom that talk about their friend Harry, he is either an 'Arry or a Harry, depending solely on how they speak his name. Anyone giving Harry full value will say "Oh, he's a Harry of the first order" while others will suggest "'e's an 'Arry I'm proud to be acquainted with."

Why do word processors fail to account for this and saddle us with programs that incorrectly alter our written noun-ish H-words?

Convenience or an aversion to making their rule-ridden, correction-happy word processing sloth become even more glacial by adding a single rule that requires each instance it's used to reference a word list in memory as big as the document itself before it impliments the correction.

Little Stores and Markets Need Unions Too!

As someone who has been a member of a union, I can honestly state that, when the union works together - with it's members and vice versa - they all benefit.

Why doesn't the small businessman do likewise when big-box, corporate cows move in their large operations and decimate the little guy?

For specialty stores, it's much harder. But the mom and pop food and vegetables markets, or variety stores? As far as I can tell, every freaking street corner in a large city is chock full of these places. Why in hell do they whine when the corporate cows move in with their big store operations, and do nothing? I guess it is far easier to close your doors and say "Uncle!"

There are some that have learned.

Organizing and co-operating with your small store competitors to bring a better quality, and/or cheaper product. If you are resigned to losing - then ignore me and your like-small competitors. Otherwise use your head, work with your partners - they can be across town - and organize into a single "logical" business.

Cigarette monopolies dictating your profits on smokes and cigars? Easy. Work together, and CLOSE OFF YOUR POINT OF SALE TO THEM. In fact, when any monopoly moves in, an organized union of small stores can do much to beat the living shit out of the big, corporate cows, and the corporate wholesaling cows.

Denying points of sale - EN MASSE - to little Johnny wholesaler decimates HIS business!

I know from experience that the Canadian wholesalers of all those Pall Mall brands are actually DICTATING PRICE AND PROFITS to every single mom and pop store in town (I live in Toronto). Only every single mom and pop store is NOT so stupid as to allow them to do it! At some stores, if you try to tell the store operator where and how far to go to make a buck, they'll have no hostile feelings about telling them where to go and what they can do with their product.

Big stores and chains can buy in bulk and offer cheaper prices by acquiring product at reduced prices.

Apparently, running a warehouse where large volumes of stuff is housed is a concept small business types are unable to fathom, manage, or undertake on their own, OR TOGETHER. If you look around the web, that is the reaction to big box stores and chain stores and large retail. They act like the only people in the world allowed to operate a warehouse, or to receive large quantities of goods, are big businesses.

I say, that's bullshit.

If Pepsi Cola or Farmer's Wholesaler A-Z  can drive a truck, or a freaking train-load of product to "your warehouse", I am certain you and every small store that works with you operating that warehouse can buy the same damn stuff they do at the same price. Moreover, you can learn to do it better, stronger, and faster. And if you are really smart and get THOUSANDS of those small operators together and run a mega-warehouse, you can dictate prices to the wholesalers that will find themselves dreaming of the profits they lost.

Small stores can have "door crasher sales" too. They only need to learn how to do it as nimbly as their competitor.

PS: Nothing takes the wind out of a door crasher better than finding a better offer for identical or near-identical product at a lesser price. Walmart is supposedly the king of prices. Their ad campaigns hammer away on this theme - dropping prices. I hate to tell you this, but very often, even during the same week of a "price drop" on a product at Wallymart, you'll find the same price or better at practically any of the food retailers operating nearby, or even in the same mall/plaza location.

If they are killing business, there are some communities thriving on making Wallymart and any competitor look damned stupid.