Meta list of most useful threads

[John West]

It occurred to me that, as I still often have difficulty with site searches, it would be very nice to have a list of links to those threads that other picaxers have found to be most helpful, for whatever reason.

I could then make a "cheat sheet" listing of them and the nature of each thread (as it's often impossible to tell from the typical thread title, i.e. "Help! My widget won't work!")

Hopefully this will help me (and perhaps many others) avoid overlooking a lot of useful info due to poor keyword selection.

Please feel free to contribute to the list and comment on what it is that makes the thread useful to you.

I promise I'll make good use of the info, and probably won't be alone in doing so. Thanks.

 

[WHITEKNUCKLES]

Thank you !

Dave

 

[StigOfTheDump]

Maybe the Administrator could edit the "Read this first" sticky. Maybe the title should read "Read this first. What information to include with your post."

There could be clear instructions as to how to create a post. What information should be given in the title.

Which PICAXE and which other Components are being used, and which command is giving trouble.

Also what information is required in the body of the post.

Code, Layout, Photo, Purpose of project, Proposed method for achieving this, as required.

Often I search for a thread and am presented with 7 pages of 'hits'. Then I look at the titles to try to guess which one is most relevant. If it is a thread that I have previously read, in the few months I have been a member, it is a lot easier to pick the right one. Otherwise it's a bit of a lottery.

 

[hippy]

On the issue of post content, especially when asking a question, what to include has been debated in the past. There are no easy answers, and no real way to enforce anything, no way even to make people read or follow any FAQ or advice.

Which reminds me I've got to go through all the finished project section and move questions out of there

 

[JoeFromOzarks]

This really helps when searching topics on the PicAxe Forum:


http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html

site:
If you include site: in your query, Google will restrict your search results to the site or domain you specify. For example, [ admissions site:www.lse.ac.uk ] will show admissions information from London School of Economics’ site and [ peace site:gov ] will find pages about peace within the .gov domain. You can specify a domain with or without a period, e.g., either as .gov or gov.

Note: Do not include a space between the "site:" and the domain.

You can use many of the search operators in conjunction with the basic search operators +, -, OR, and " ". For example, to find information on Windows security from all sites except microsoft.com, enter:

[ windows security -site:microsoft.com ]

You can also restrict your results to a site or domain through the domains selector on the Advanced Search page.

(In this post, a ":" and a "p" makes a - so make sure no space exists between "site:" and "picaxeforum.co.uk" in the examples below)

So, for a DS1307 search on the PicAxe site:

[ 1307 site: picaxeforum.co.uk ] (without the [ or ] and NO SPACES between "site:" and "picaxeforum.co.uk" )


Or for the flash memory in a 1307:

[ 1307 flash site: picaxeforum.co.uk ]

Returned: About 54 results (0.24 seconds)

joe

 

[westaust55]

Searching the PICAXE forum can be difficult for newcomers.
Note that the search engine is a function of the vBulletin software and not lack of options by Rev Ed.

The starting tutorial I wrote ages age and available here: http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11053
may be of interst to some.

Even within that tutorial, the concept of using Google to search was rasied using the format:

topic site:www.picaxeforum.co.uk​

 

[WHITEKNUCKLES]

Hello John West.

After adding this link to my short list of "Best Threads" I wondered if you had gone ahead with your intention in post # 1.

A catalogue of Tutorials would be of inestimable value to all seeking enlightenment but seems unlikely to appear anytime soon.
Finding the magic words for a search is witchcraft and best left to those on the dark side.

The captioned list of Best Threads that you suggested could be an interim source of help with divergent views and also provide interesting reading.

Dave


Is the information in the broken links gone for ever?
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18759

 

[hippy]

Is the information in the broken links gone for ever?
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18759

I couldn't see any broken links so some more detail would be helpful.

 

[russbow]

Even within that tutorial, the concept of using Google to search was rasied using the format:

Ah, a section for Tutorials ?

Now that would be a good idea.

 

[Dippy]

I thought I was hearing voices...

25-10-2010

"
We welcome all this feedback and ideas about tutorials in the website.

Revolution are actually in the process of rebuilding their entire website structure, which is admittedly very dated. There will be a new website early next year.

We are not convinced that this forum is the best way to post tutorials, for the reasons others have already highlighted. However we will certainly have a more versatile tutorials section in the new website. If anyone has any completed tutorials they want to pass on now, please send them on to us."


I still haven't started repairing my roof so I'm just as bad

 

[WHITEKNUCKLES]

hippy,
Some posters tend to feature in my list of Best Threads.

Dave

From the second link in post # 9
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18759

On to the links on post # 6
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=13251



[Quote
In general "SerialPower" might be overkill if you have a 1 master - n slave configuration. See hippy's excellent treatise on this subject: http://www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk/pic...etween_Picaxes or
http://www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk/picaxesi.htm

 

[hippy]

Unfortunately external sites can disappear, breaking links along the way. External content may be gone forever unless the author re-publishes somewhere else or it has been archived somewhere.

I came across a particularly sad case of that recently, where everyone working on a particular project had dutifully put all their information into one place creating a very useful resource. When the holding site considered it no longer appropriate to host that project and removed it there was nothing of the project to be found elsewhere.

 

[premelec]

Clouds... smoke and

We're all being solicited to trust a 'cloud' with our data - haha.. clouds are so stable and they've picked an well suited name for this regression to central computing...

On this topic I wonder if some indexing function could work [like you'd use if you were writing a 10000 page book only for the forum].

Not only do original titles not adequately describe the subject of a post but it may veer into interesting but unrelated subject matter as more posts are added - maybe one big cloud could handle it all

If we could download the whole forum and then use other tools to tease out what we're looking for locally that could work for me. No simple answers... just clouds of interesting posts...

 

[fritz42_male]

I wonder if cloud computing will result in a whole slew of new terminology?

e.g. loss of your data might be a 'downpour' or 'thunderburst'

And this is no surprise to me - many 'free' web services have switched their free hosting off with little regard to the content stored.

The wayback machine is a good resource but not perfect.

I know that bbs setups like this can be archived but I wonder if it would ever be likely to get a 'forum dump' facility to grab a local copy

 

[premelec]

With afternoon thunderstorms frequent this time of year the term 'microburst' is used in the weather news fairly often - and could certainly take on a new meaning in macro cloud servers...