Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

There’s a great new site where programmers go to ask programming questions and get answers called Stackoverflow. It is beautifully set up and has become extremely popular. I signed up 16 days ago and quickly became infatuated with it.

I asked a couple of specific Delphi related questions. To my surprise, several people viewed the questions in the first minute. I had one answer within 5 minutes and several answers within a few hours. How can that happen so quickly? I took a look and there are already over 29,000 registered users, and it’s only been live since August and out of limited testing since October. As I write, ther are 41,477 questions asked, most with many answers and comments.

I went in and answered a few questions as well. You can’t help it once you’re there and you see a question that interests you.

But it’s even more than that. Each question and answer can be rated with an up or down vote. You get reputation points based on the votes. You also get badges based on different actions you do or levels you reach. Check out my profile there to see the types of questions and answers I’ve been having fun with.

It becomes almost a game, and it’s addictable. Last night I spent 4 hours wandering through all the questions, learning lots and having fun. It’s nice to have a useful tool that I can enjoy.

But after only 16 days, I realize it’s time to become a charter member of Stackoverflow Anonymous and limit my time there, or I’ll never get out alive.

If you’re a programmer and have never been there, try it. You’ll be glad you did.

Some of you may remember back to Version 0.98.6 of Behold (August 2006). The Everything Report had a slightly different look. People were listed in a table. The first column contained the person’s ID number, and then there was one column for each generation. The table had subtle thin lines, that I thought looked very nice, to separate the people. The best part of this was that you could instantly see what generation someone belonged to, and it was easy to trace up to their parents or down to their siblings.

But TRichView did not handle tables very well then. A large cell in a table could not print, and caused navigation problems on the screen. So in Version 0.98.7 (November 2006), I removed the tables and put in the current display of indenting people by generation with horizontal lines between them.

I don’t like the current display and never did. It’s hard to see the structure of the families with it.

What I was always hoping to do was to connect the people with lines, and my latest idea of maybe moving to a treeview would have accomplished that. However, I’ve decided now to stay with TRichView and just optimize it instead. The good thing is that most of the problems with tables are now fixed in the latest version of TRichView. So as of yesterday, I’ve now reimplemented the tables appearance of the Everything Report. I like it much better. I think most people will as well.

It also allows the possibility of adding a few controls in the left columns (maybe little arrows) that will be able to take you to your parents, grandparents or sibling.

The numbering is back in as well in the left column of the table. I had some comments in the past not to include the numbering. And I did at one time have a button to hide the numbers. But the numbering is necessary to find your way around if you print the document and is also useful to help you identify where you are or which family you are in. For now I’m going to leave it and in the future I’ll possibly add more numbering options.

Be careful when purchasing software online if its price is listed in a currency that is not your own. It is most convenient to let them convert the software price to your currency. And you should expect a good conversion rate, but sometimes they pad it.

I went to purchase my upgrade to ElPack from LMD’s order page. They are a German company and the upgrade is listed at 109 Euros. Click on the “109″ and it takes you to their Shareit vendor’s page and as I write this, it lists the price as $193 Canadian. Thats a 1.7706 exchange rate and seems a little high. I change it to US currency and it gives $149.36. That’s 1.3703 from Euros to US$. By comparison, go to Yahoo Finance’s Currency Converter and the equivalent rates on this day are: 1.5474 and 1.2734. Through Shareit, I’d be paying rates that are 14.4% and 7.6% higher than posted exchange rates.

A small conversion fee of a few percent is expected. You pay it on your credit card and in banks. But to pay 14.4% to get from Euros to Canadian dollars is a bit excessive. Fortunately for me, they allow paying by PayPal. PayPal today gives rates of 1.5845 to go Euros to Canadian. This is just 2.4% higher than the posted exchange rate. That is good.

I purchased my ElPack update a couple of days ago for 99 Euros (they gave me 10 off for being a TRichView owner in a partner program) and through PayPal I paid $160.26 Canadian. If I would have paid directly through ShareIt, it would have cost me $175.30. That’s $15 in my pocket instead of in ShareIt’s.

So I thought I’d check what Plimus’ conversions do to people who are purchasing Behold. Behold’s current pre-release price is $20 US. Go to Behold’s Buy Now page and for today’s rates, that converts to 16.38 Euros or $25.51 Cdn. This gives 0.819 to go US$ to Euros and 1.2450 from US to Canadian$. The exchange rates today are 0.7853 and 1.2151. So at least at this snapshot in time, Plimus is charging 4.3% for the US$ to Euro conversion and 2.5% for the US to Canadian$. That is not too bad.

But be warned. When you buy products online in a foreign currency, don’t overpay. If the difference is too great, then pay them in their currency and use either PayPal or your charge card (check what your charge card charges first) to do the conversion.