Transfer mode set to Awesome http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com Dorkly bits on Exchange, Windows, software and whatever else I can think of. posterous.com Tue, 20 Mar 2012 07:47:35 -0700 Put a miniature, actively-updated version of a window on top of other windows http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/put-a-miniature-actively-updated-version-of-a http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/put-a-miniature-actively-updated-version-of-a http://www.klopfenstein.net/lorenz.aspx/ontopreplica

I've seen this before, but this program has really come a long way since then.

I've recently started following an irc channel (#spree on FreeNode), and I like to see the relatively infrequent updates, but it's a pain to keep remembering to switch to the window.  By the time I do, there's no chance to participate.

I vaguely remembered a program that would let me make a miniaturized version of a window that would stay on top of the others and actively keep pace with the content of the original window.  I couldn't remember the name though, and had a hard time getting google to understand what I wanted (a frequent complaint when trying to search for window-related software in Windows, imagine that).

Finally I found a cousin to the program I was thinking of (don't remember the original, but it was different).  I'd also seen this cousin at that time, but wasn't impressed enough with either of them to keep one.

This time around, though, it looks like this is a fairly mature implementation, with lots of useful options (opacity, sizing, storable settings, region selection, click-forwarding, etc).  It's now showing me just the bottom of the irc window where new comments show up.  It's at 50% opacity and 1:1 size so the text is completely legible.  Even better than miniaturized.

A quick search at alternativeto.net showed that the only other well-known option is a Mac program, so I don't know what happened to the other cousin, but I'm not worried.

You can't get the installer from codeplex (just the executable), so get it from the main site linked here.

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http://posterous.com/images/profile/missing-user-75.png http://posterous.com/users/hgWhd9Ir0seDw Ted Lilley lilleyt Ted Lilley
Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:42:29 -0800 Soluto – Anti-Frustration Software http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/soluto-anti-frustration-software http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/soluto-anti-frustration-software http://www.soluto.com/

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Soluto is an awesome PC bootup analysis tool which helps you decide what software is taking precious time on bootup, among other things.  It has one of the simplest and impressive user interfaces I've ever seef and I'd recommend it for anyone.

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http://posterous.com/images/profile/missing-user-75.png http://posterous.com/users/hgWhd9Ir0seDw Ted Lilley lilleyt Ted Lilley
Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:57:44 -0800 Scott Hanselman's 2011 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/scott-hanselmans-2011-ultimate-developer-and http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/scott-hanselmans-2011-ultimate-developer-and http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2011UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ScottHanselman+%28Scott+Hanselman+-+ComputerZen.com%29

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Scott's superlative list of useful Windows utilities, 2011 edition.

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http://posterous.com/images/profile/missing-user-75.png http://posterous.com/users/hgWhd9Ir0seDw Ted Lilley lilleyt Ted Lilley
Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:46:08 -0700 Cyberduck – FTP client with S3 support and more http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/cyberduck-ftp-client-with-s3-support-and-more http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/cyberduck-ftp-client-with-s3-support-and-more http://cyberduck.ch/

FileZilla is a great FTP client and the clear king of the roost, but it's strength and weakness is that it focuses on FTP and doesn't support Amazon's inexpensive S3 storage service.

At work we use S3 to serve the larger content for our website, kind of like a poor man's content-distribution network.  Pictures and downloads go there.

Amazon has a web-browser based management console, but it's a bit clunky to get it started.  I prefer an application.  Fortunately, Cyberduck is just such an application.

It caters to a wide variety of storage backends and feels fairly intuitive.  It used to be for Mac only, which is probably why it feels nice, but now supports Windows as well.  Also, it's open source.

For S3, there are specific settings in the preferences dialog that I had to set to get it to use S3's less expensive Reduced Redundancy Storage by default.  You can also set default permissions as well.

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http://posterous.com/images/profile/missing-user-75.png http://posterous.com/users/hgWhd9Ir0seDw Ted Lilley lilleyt Ted Lilley
Thu, 06 May 2010 04:45:00 -0700 Font Loader and Register Server Shell Extensions http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/05/font-loader-and-register-server-shell.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/05/font-loader-and-register-server-shell.html

Ran across this useful utility since I’m loading a ton of fonts on my XP laptop (Windows 7 already has this kind of thing built-in).  It adds a context menu entry to load/unload or install/uninstall fonts when you right-click font filetypes.  Nifty.

Warning, though.  It installs the fonts in-place, rather than moving them to the Windows fonts directory.  This means two things: put them in their own folder, like My Documents\Fonts, and don’t delete them.

I only realized that after I installed them, so I moved the files then edited the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts to repoint the file locations.

It also supports adding a register/unregister dll context menu entry, something I’ve done with manual registry hacks before.  That’s cool.

MMoon Software Shell Tools

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Wed, 05 May 2010 17:07:00 -0700 Google Sitemap Generation http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/05/google-sitemap-generation.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/05/google-sitemap-generation.html

Just a quick note.  I've been trying to find a tool to tweak google sitemaps and did an off-the-cuff (read, not thorough) comparison of several free sitemap generators.

The best one seems to be GSiteMapper.  It is fairly sophisticated about what it includes and doesn't include, checking with Google for what is already indexed, respects robots.txt, handles session IDs, etc, etc.  Note it must run as administrator under Windows 7 or else it just sits there doing nothing while it is trying to crawl your site.

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Mon, 03 May 2010 21:40:00 -0700 Stamping Versions http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/05/stamping-versions.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/05/stamping-versions.html

Ok, well, this isn't the most likely thing you'll need to do today, but I needed to put a four-place version number on an executable built with VB6.  Unfortunately, VB6 only used three of the four place-numbers for versions.  I've been looking for a solution to this for a while, and thought I had one when I came across vbAdvance, but unfortunately vbAdvance only seems to work while you are in the IDE.  Invoking the IDE to make from the command line won't load and use vbAdvance's versioning, even when you tick the optional "command-line" box in the add-in page.

There are a number of resource editors out there that will change executable properties after the compilation step, but they are either commercial, complicated or not command-line.

I finally ran across a simple command-line freeware tool to do just this one thing, called stampver.  You can find it discussed at http://www.codeguru.com/tools/standalonetools/article.php/c1403.  It seems to be doing the trick perfectly, so far.  I'm a little anxious about fussing with a file after compilation, but I don't have any other good options at the moment.

The two things to note about stampver: First, it stamps the file and product version attributes separately, so I've had to run it twice on each file, one for each.  Second, the version stamped can be no more places than the string already compiled into the executable.  This means you need to set extra places in a three-place version if you want space for four places after it has been compiled.  I did this by setting all three places to '9999'.

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Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:10:00 -0700 Interactive Python Console http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/04/interactive-python-console.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/04/interactive-python-console.html

One of the great things about Python is exploratory programming, the ability to “dry run” your logic and even design it while working within the interactive interpreter.

The usual Python console is fine for this, although some amenities are missing such as code completion suggestions.  Many more sophisticated options exist as well, such as the excellent IPython, which is basically an interactive console session on steroids.

Don’t get me wrong, IPython is fantastic, however, I’m a bit more GUI in my old age and I like having a variable list available in some corner window of my session.  I’ve always had a dissatisfaction with the GUI Python environments, however.  My former favorite was PyCrust, which is packaged along with the also-excellent wxPython.  It is nothing more than an interactive shell with a couple of those amenities like a variable list.  However, if you don’t do GUI programming much, wxPython is a heavy piece of software to install simply for the shell.

So I’ve tooled along with the interactive interpreter in Pydev, which is itself another piece of software I can heartily recommend.  As an IDE, while I am not entirely satisfied with the cobbled feel of it, Eclipse+Pydev is the best free option for a solid Python development environment that I’ve found.  Again, it’s pretty heavy for just a shell, but since that’s not what it’s primarily used for, you get the shell for free.

Unfortunately, Pydev’s interactive console functionality lags its other features, and it doesn’t have live watches in another pane of the IDE.  That’s ok, though, because there is a great alternative.

Whenever I need to do some Python development in a new environment, I don’t go through all the hassle of setting up Eclipse+Pydev.  Believe me, it takes a while.  There is a fantastic lightweight Python IDE that, as luck would have it, makes a great interactive console environment as well.  That’s PyScripter.  It’s developed in Delphi, meaning it’s fast and the GUI is very functional, while still having a small footprint and packing a lot of power.  If I didn’t like Pydev’s integration with source control and Pylint so much, I’d be using PyScripter (PyScripter also has Pylint integration, but it’s not automated).  While there are a lot of other good free Python IDE’s, and if were earning money with Python software development I might be willing to purchase ActiveState Komodo, PyScripter is a welcome balance of power and ease.

A note on setup.  PyScripter allows different layouts via drag-and-drop.  I put an interactive pane side-by-side with the editor pane by dragging the Python Interpreter tab up from the multi-tabbed pane.  You also want to use the Remote Python Interpreter configuration, which requires an older version of the Rpyc library.  That library is available in the downloads section of the PyScripter website.  Just unzip it and put it in Python’s lib\site-packages directory.  Finally, the wiki portion of the PyScripter website has themes you can download, if you don’t like the available UI looks.  I like the Vista Blue download.

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Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:01:00 -0700 The Essentials – Windows 7 edition http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/04/essentials-windows-7-edition.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2010/04/essentials-windows-7-edition.html

I recently converted my work machine to Windows 7, which is so far a good experience and one I’m happy with.  In the process, I gained a few new software tools and shed some old ones.  Here’s the list of what I consider the essentials for my environment on Windows 7 (not including those from Microsoft Update):

  • 7-zip
  • Adobe Flash Plugin
  • Beyond Compare 3 Pro
  • CCleaner
  • CDBurnerXP
  • CubicExplorer
  • Defraggler
  • DeskPins
  • Disk Space Fan
  • doPDF
  • Eclipse
  • Evernote
  • Everything (search)
  • ffdshow
  • HashCheck
  • Inkscape
  • Java
  • Launchy
  • LogMeIn
  • Malwarebytes Anti-malware
  • Microsoft Security Essentials
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Mozilla Thunderbird (w/Lightning)
  • Notepad++
  • Paint.NET
  • PDF XChange Viewer
  • Picasa 3
  • Python 2.6
  • PyScripter
  • RDTabs
  • RENESIS Player Thumbnail plugin (SVG thumbnails in Explorer)
  • TortoiseHg
  • Virtual CloneDrive
  • Windows Live Sync
  • Windows Live Writer
  • XML Notepad 2007

If this were a home machine, MozyHome Free would also be on the list. I also have some tools, such as Visual Studio, installed on a separate machine, so those don’t make the list.

One interesting thing I learned during this experience is to not use the download links provided by Google when searching for a product.  More than one site had an old download link listed by Google, while visiting the main site search result and drilling to the downloads from there provided the most recent version.  Caveat emptor.

Another pleasant surprise was CubicExplorer.  While it lacks the dual-pane feature I like, it is otherwise a fine Windows Explorer substitute.  I have used several other programs, most recently UltraExplorer and before that xplorer2, but have always become frustrated with some lack of polish in this area.  CubicExplorer is simple and it works, while offering some nifty conveniences such as bookmarks that are simple to manage and, my new personal favorite, the ability to show the sort headers in any view style, details or not.  Nice.

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Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:33:00 -0700 Great Software, Part 2 http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2009/08/great-software-part-2.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2009/08/great-software-part-2.html This is actually part 3 since I already mentioned Inkscape and WinSplit Revolution, but I guess that’s even wrong since I talk about great software in almost all of my posts. No matter.  This is number 2 with that title.
I’ll mention three this time: Acoustica Mixcraft, Super Flexible File Synchronizer soon to be known as ExtremeSync and Launchy.
First, Mixcraft.  If you are a PC-wielding musician, or fancy yourself to be one, such as myself, then you turn green with envy at your Mac brethren who not only have fantastic and simple multi-track recording application in GarageBand.  To add insult to injury, they get it free with their Mac!  I guess that’s why they pay through the nose just to get the entry-level model (thumb at nose).  Disclaimer: I think Macs are great.  I don’t own one and probably won’t again any time soon, but I recommend them to some of my friends, especially musicians.
Mixcraft is a GarageBand clone, which means that it is beginner-oriented but sophisticated enough to do some great recording.  I couple mine with a PreSonus AudioBox USB to do home recording.  I’m extremely happy with the combo.
Mixcraft is an eye-pleasing multi-track recording application with loops, effects, instruments, just tons of stuff to play with.  After having used it for several months, I can say it is quality all the way.  And the kicker is that it’s ultra-cheap for an app in this segment…just $65.  If you’re looking to get into recording on the PC, just get it.  Now.
While messing around with this post, I (finally) started synchronizing my 33GB of music from my laptop to my desktop.  This is no small undertaking for my hard drives.
This leads me to SFFS.  Super Flexible File Synchronizer (forgive the name, it’s worth it and it’s going to be renamed to the more svelte ExtremeSync anyway) is a file synchronizer deluxe.  While a task like this could be accomplished by free software such as the worthy SyncToy or Unison, some of the features in SFFS make it the heavyweight champion of file synchronization.  I’ll modify that statement a bit: I did see other solutions that claimed to have the same features for the most part.  I did not evaluate all of them.
SFFS has a number of different advanced features I’ve found useful.  It can be run as a Windows service, which means it can be an automated file mirroring service.  Appropriately, it emails you the results of its job.
It also is as smart as you need it to be.  Two features useful for keeping repositories of large file in sync are move detection and delta syncing.  It can detect moves of files from one directory to another, saving a network copy, and it can also scan files and only transfer the differences between the files.  Also useful to keep network traffic down.  Since I sometimes keep multi-gigabyte files in sync (virtual machines), both are features that appeal to me.
Finally, Launchy.  I’ve written about Launchy before, but I just need to plug it again since I use it so much.  It’s a keystroke launcher that pops up with the Alt-Spacebar combination and indexes your entire Start menu and Favorites.  It’s the modern day equivalent of tab-completion at the command line.  Note that it is a menu-indexer, not a command-line prompt, however.  If you have a lot of programs or are just into accelerating your computer usage, it’s awesome.

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Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:30:00 -0700 Great software http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2009/08/great-software.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2009/08/great-software.html In a running series, I’ll make mention of the software I think is great and helps me on a day-to-day basis.  In my inaugural post, I’ll plug WinSplit Revolution.  When used in combination with AutoHotkey, it makes my multi-monitor setup easier to use by allowing me to flip windows from one screen to another with the click of a mouse button.
Here is the autohotkey script I use to make the mouse control the monitor switching function.  Holding down the right mouse-button and then clicking the left mouse-button pushes a window one monitor to the left.  Holding down the left mouse-button and clicking the right mouse-button pushes a window one monitor to the right.
~RButton & LButton::Send ^!{Left}
~LButton & RButton::Send ^!{Right}

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Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:18:00 -0700 Cool Inkscape Jazz http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2009/08/cool-inkscape-jazz.html http://transfermodeawesome.posterous.com/2009/08/cool-inkscape-jazz.html I turned a coworker onto Inkscape recently.  Inkscape is a free open source vector graphics program that is great for making illustrations.  Don’t know if it will stick for him but it definitely has for me.  Despite a few kinks in the Windows interface around dropdowns (mainly in the font dialog), it is a very slick piece of software and a joy to work with.
Along the way, I should mention a couple other pieces of software.  Inkscape is fantastic but it definitely plays a particular role in the team of applications I use both for documentation purposes at work as well as general fun with graphics.
Paint.NET is useful for graphic manipulation and effects.  While Inkscape is capable of including bitmap graphics such as pictures as part of your illustration, it doesn’t do a whole lot of processing of regular images.  It mostly works for generating illustrations made from geometric shapes and is great for text as well.  Paint.NET is a great free, open source pixel manipulator that I use for effects and saving screen captures.
I also have to give a nod to two of Google’s free products, Sketchup for simple 3D object generation and Picasa for organizing pictures and doing basic touchups.
Here are a couple examples of things I’ve made using them:
Media_httplh6ggphtcom_qyrcw

Media_httplh5ggphtcom_mjhxe
Media_httplh3ggphtcom_gftyv

Media_httplh5ggphtcom_tydbm

So here are a couple of my favorite pointers when it comes to using Inkscape.  Hopefully they’ll be as useful to you as they have been to me.

Guides and Tutorials

First of all, Inkscape comes with excellent tutorials under its help menu.  Start there.
After those, the first place I go for a reminder or a refresher is a Quick Guide to Inkscape.  The guy who wrote it is prolific on the subject, I see his posts everywhere.  But this guide is short, sweet and to the point with good examples.  Good job.
There is also a free online version of the published Inkscape manual.  This is definitely a more in-depth reference for those advanced features like filters.
As for third-party resources, three good ones are Screencasters at heathenx.org, the Inkscape tutorials blog and Nicu’s howto.  Screencasters is probably my favorite as they walk you through the entire by showing it in video.  The “splat” with my name on it above is from one of their tutorials.
I also use the “glassy button” effect quite a bit (seen in the third picture), which is shown in this tutorial on YouTube.  The only difference I do from this tutorial is that instead of trying to draw a Bezier curve to make the rounded glassy edge, I draw an ellipse that I just use the bottom curve from.  That keeps the curve symmetric, since my hand drawings aren’t.  If you want to get really specular on the glassiness, try doing multiple stops on your white gradient.  The one above employs three or four stops.

Other stuff

One thing that I recently discovered that looks interesting but I haven’t yet used is a tool that makes animated slide presentations from inkscape pictures.  It’s called JessyInk and looks promising.  I believe you need to have an svg-aware browser to view them.  This means that in IE you need to load something like Adobe’s SVG viewer plugin, or in Firefox you may need to enable SVG viewing (had to do this on one of my installations but not another…weird) by going to about:config and setting svg.enabled to true.
That’s about all I can think of for now.

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