Competitions Discussion Thread Part 13

toniq wrote: »

If u can open as many comps into tabs as ur puter allows, i'll be doing the monthlies, then put ur lappy to sleep on Friday evening, so when u want to comp on saturday u have all the comps open and all u need to do is click through, if u haven't thanked and clicked entered u can go back when forum is up and click and close x The forum closure wont affect u as ur comps will all already be open x

My lappy allows 150 tabs before it splutters, some allow less, some more, it will give u chance to get some comps done even with forum down xxxxx

Thanks Cheeky chicken for this tip a few years back xxxxx

Many thanks to Cheeky Chicken and Toni for reposting the tip

If anyone is going to do the above here's a few more tips for you if you are using Firefox

in Firefox select Tools-Options-Advanced-Network click on "Clear Now" to delete your browser cache

while you are there increase your offline storage to 100mb **don't increase any more than this as it might actually slow your web browsing down**

download and install the Firefox addon "AFOM - Memory Recovery & Retention For Firefox" from here
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11922/ this will help to stop your browser from crashing when loading multiple tabs by constantly recovering memory

Note: only do the following below when you are ready to implement Cheeky Chicken's tip above as the following will also disable all of the buttons on MSE also remember to reverse the changes below when MSE is back online all of the other changes you have made above can be left when MSE is back online

next click on Tools-Options-Content and make sure "Load Images Automatically" is ticked then click on Exceptions and in the "Address of Website" box type in moneysavingexpert.com then click on "Block" then "Close" this will stop all images from MSE from loading

this will also help your memory usage and will also speed up the loading of your Tabs

Note: if you decide to install the add-on below before doing the above changes you will need to disable it as the above changes will not work properly if it is enabled go to Tools-Add-ons and click on disable

When MSE is back online you may find the following add-on helpful
Bar Tab which can be downloaded here
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/67651/ with this add-on you will find that you are able to open more tabs in your browser

if for instance you want to open a hundred tabs they will all appear in your tab bar but each tab will only make a connection if and when you click on it this also helps to preserve memory and helps to stop Firefox from crashing

Update: forgot to say that while your multiple Firefox tabs are loading on your keyboard press Control-Alt- Delete to bring up the Windows Task Manager look at the memory usage and wait until your memory stabilises before going back into Firefox and opening any tabs mine stabilises at 0-3 % but yours may stabilise higher depending on what is loaded in to memory

while you are there look at firefox.exe you will see its memory usage constantly changing this is the Firefox addon "AFOM - Memory Recovery & Retention For Firefox" in action and proves that the add on actually works!

hope that this is of some use to you and helps you to carry on comping on Saturday

Best of Luck

I agree Garg, and of course E: 01/01 and 20110101 both use 8 characters, but you will find if you follow the forum that logic doesn't play a big part in it!

Garg wrote: »

Hi,

I'm new to comping, and wanted to check I've got the forum technique right...from wwhat I've read you arrange the posts by thread title. What i'm finding is that i'm getting all the 31st's of months first instead of the competitions soonest to end. It maybe too late to change convention now, but it may be an option in the future, especially as years go by, to use the backwards date format, such as 20110101 to be the first of Jan 2011, as this should put them in order of end date.

Just a thought

Cheers

Garg

I'm just wondering, did you click the big 'End Date View' button? As I've noticed before this sorts the board the complete opposite way I'd have expected it to.

If you click on the word 'Thread' where it says 'Thread / Thread Starter' this sorts the forum the other way so 01/01's would be first, I find it much easier this way round, so that may help you a bit.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop all the 1st's being together, but I find that if say for example you'd wanted to do 01/01 comps, there wouldn't be too many ending 01/02+ as most of them get posted on or after 01/01, the only date that it seems this isn't the case (because of the sheer volume of month end comps) are the 28/02 and the 30th's and 31st's.

Hope that helps and good luck!!

Edited to add: Is the forum reeeeally painfully slow for everyone else at the minute? (I clicked 'Edit' on my post and it went to the 'Go Advanced' type editor automatically, so something's obviously not quite right)

Is the forum going slow for everyone else, seems to be taking ages to load pages :eek: