Software

All Subversion 1.5 Windows binaries are available!

David Vidmar — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:28:43 GMT

Finally, all three releases for Subversion 1.5 Microsoft Windows binaries are available.

CollabNet and VisualSVN were available since before, today I finally spotted Apache 2.0 or Apache 2.2 Tigris builds, so I can start upgrading servers!

My Dell laptop is running loud, fan is almost always on full speed

David Vidmar — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:11:10 GMT

Lately my Dell Latitude D820 has been running very hot and loud. I tried to help it cool with various desk and lap positions, but things went from bad to worse. Google search confirmed my suspicion that dust has killed it’s cooling capabilities.

I could take it to repairs, but that’s no fun. And since times at Vidmar family are very stressful, what better way to take mind off troubles that some“screwdriver fun!?

First, I ran I8kfan GUI, a free tool to monitor temperature and change fan speed of Dell laptops. My CPU was hot, and speeding or slowing down didn’t do nothing to the temperature. Another proof, that dust is was in the way.

Getting to the fan is not easy, as one has to:

unscrew every screw you find on the bottom and back of the laptop,
remove battery,
remove keyboard,
remove hinge,
remove display.

Luckily Dell provides instructions, so it’s not that hard as it seems. Instructions also tell that you should also remove hard drive, wireless card and RAM, but it’s not true.

After opening my laptop, this is what I found.

This is how it will look after you take your laptop apart (glasses optional).

After cleaning laptop is running 15-20°C cooler than before.

One more piece of advice before doing what I just did – there are three kinds of screws. Black, fat and short for hard drive, silver for display and black and longer for everything else. Keep that in mind when putting machine back together.

Subversion 1.5 released

David Vidmar — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:47:03 GMT

If news of last weeks was Firefox 3, this week, for devs anyway, is Subversion 1.5.

Big new feature is Merge tracking which should significantly ease use of branching/merging.

Upgrade should be easy. Upgrade your clients first, those will upgrade working copies automatically. The upgrade the server, which will run on v1.4 repository until you manually upgrade it. Some new features will not be available just using new server, you'll have to upgrade repositories too. This is not done automatically, so v1.4 clients can access it. Once you are read, simply run "svnadmin upgrade" and you are done.

For more information I suggest you read through Subversion 1.5 Release Notes.

Right now, Windows binaries by Tigris or CollabNet are not available yet, will have to wait few more days. VisualSVN server 1.5 is available. I use Tigris binaries, so I'll wait few more days before upgrading both home and work servers.

Also, all clients where upgraded. I use TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN so don't forget to upgrade those too..

Where is Firefox 3?

David Vidmar — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:27:08 GMT

For all Firefox 3 fans who are asking themselves when FF3 will be released today:

Release is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Tuesday, June 17th. For Europeans it means we'll be able to grab it at 19.00.

Update: FileHippo already offers RTM for download!

Free software for Nokia Symbian phones

David Vidmar — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:07:36 GMT

Following one of most popular posts on this blog about Free Software for Nokia 6600, this is some more free titles, collected by Robert:

Tools

Calcium - Slick calculator.
S60SpotOn - Handheld torch.
Tasky - Task manager.
Y-Browser - File manager.

Information

Mobile Weather - Weather forecast application.
Papyrus - Time management. ($19.95!)

Games

S-Tris 2 - Tetris.

You can find a more software in lists on N95 blog and Lifehacker.

Safari for Windows is terribly broken

David Vidmar — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:27:05 GMT

It's one thing to force a software on people, but it's even worse when that software isn't working very well.

When Apple Update offered me to install Safari, I said to myself "why not?". It's been a while since I gave Safari a spin, so it would be time to give it another shot.

At first, I was delighted. It's fast, displays fonts like newspaper. It's, different, it makes me want to buy a Mac! (I guess that was Apple's plan in the first place!)

But my fascination didn't last long. While I played with the plan that I would use Safari for my Gmail and have it open all the time, and only use Firefox for surfing, I checked RAM consumption.

Looks like Safari has a terrible memory leak. Everyone knows Firefox is a memory hog. But in just few minutes, Safari manages to occupy more memory that Firefox running not-stop for couple of day.

I bet some people will try to convince me, that it's all Windows/Microsoft/Bill's fault. :)

Technorati tags: safari, apple, windows, bug, memory, leak, appleupdate, apple update

FolderShare update

David Vidmar — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:36:14 GMT

One of my favorite utils - FolderShare - has been updated yesterday. It's the first update since Microsoft bought ByteTaxi back in 2005.

There are no big new features, just:

updated www.foldershare.com site, which is prettier, somewhat faster, but is now lacking remote computer search,
new icon and rearranged context menu,
faster connect times in Windows Vista.

Upgrade is smooth and fast. Just click Check updates in tray icon's menu and download will start. I upgraded three machines so far without a glitch.

Unfortunately FolderShare still will not let you sync network folders and the limit of 10000 files per synced folder is still unchanged.

In spite of lack of any real changes, this is still news. At least we know Microsoft remembers that they bought software and they plan to keep it alive.

Technorati tags: foldershare, software updates, synchronization, folder, sync

Simplifying my life - Avoiding words when writting articles for a magazine (Marking words in the list using Word macro)

David Vidmar — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:45:08 GMT

Lately I have been writing articles for Monitor computer magazine. When I analyzed what I have written and what lector changed, I easily built a list of words I should avoid.

Since I'm developer I believe that software can help. So I have written three Word macros to help me avoid those words and phrases in my articles.

With three buttons on toolbar and three keyboard shortcuts fixing articles before turning them in is a piece of cake!

I only need to maintain a text file with suspicious words and their suggested substitutes. Format is super simple. Here are few sample lines:

ampak|temveč
blog|spletni dnevnik
direkt*|neposredn*
idej*|zamisel

Finally, here is the VBA code for three macros.

MarkForForbiddenWords opens a file with words I try to avoid and suggestions, reads line by line and marks found words with green squiggles.

Sub MarkForbiddenWords()
    
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Replacement.Text = "^&"        
        .MatchWildcards = True     
    End With          
    With Selection.Find.Replacement.Font 
        .Underline = wdUnderlineWavyDouble
        .UnderlineColor = wdColorSeaGreen
         End With          
    
    intUnit = FreeFile     
    ' change to correct path!     
    Open "C:\Users\David\Documents\checklist.txt" For Input As #intUnit
 
    Do While Not EOF(intUnit)
        Dim strBuffer As String         
	Line Input #intUnit, strBuffer                  
	s = Split(strBuffer, "|")
    
        With Selection.Find
            .Wrap = wdFindContinue
            .Text = s(0)
            .Replacement.Text = Replace(s(0), "*", "") & " [" & s(1) & "?]"             
	    .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll         
	End With                  
	DoEvents     
    Loop      
End Sub

NextMarkedForbiddenWord is much simpler, it just finds occurrence of text with green squiggles.

Sub NextMarkedForbiddenWord()
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "" 
        .Forward = True 
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue 
        .Format = True 
        .Font.Underline = wdUnderlineWavyDouble 
        .Font.UnderlineColor = wdColorSeaGreen 
    End With 
    Selection.Find.Execute 
End Sub

CleanUpForbiddenWords cleans things up as they were.

Sub CleanUpForbiddenWords()
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "" 
        .Forward = True 
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue 
        .Format = True 
        .Font.Underline = wdUnderlineWavyDouble 
        .Font.UnderlineColor = wdColorSeaGreen 
    End With  
    With Selection.Find.Replacement
        .Text = "" 
        .Font.Underline = wdUnderlineNone  
       .Font.UnderlineColor = wdColorAutomatic 
    End With 
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll 
End Sub

Another couple of minutes saved!

Technorati tags: word, office, macro, vba, replace text, lectoring

Simplifying my life - Links of the week (Windows Live Writer add-in that generates content from Delicious and RSS feeds)

David Vidmar — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:37:55 GMT

I'll soon have far less free time that I have now, so I'm actively working on simplifying my life. I don't want to give up things, I try to slipstream as much as possible. So far I think I'm doing quite well.

One big time waster was putting together Sunday's regular weekly links. I bookmark stuff I find on excellent delicious using Delicious Firefox buttons. That part is fast and painless, there is nothing I can do to improve that. When creating a post, I basically copy/paste, cleanup and then some formatting. Booooring...

As I grew tired of that, I remembered than delicious has an API that I could use to automate formatting. If I would be just little bit more careful when posting, Sunday evening could be free again. I could use first tag as category, enter a description, so post generation could be completely automatic.

And that's how DeliciousLinks project was born few weeks ago. Since some stuff is hard-coded, the executable is not ready for publishing. But if anyone thinks this could be useful, I'll gladly share the code.

Let's go to some C# code how I done it.... Prepare WebClient object with right credentials.

WebClient webClientDelicious = new WebClient

                                       Encoding = Encoding.Default,

                                       Credentials = new NetworkCredential(username, password)

};

Get XML of links from particular day. I'll repeat that for all dates in a week.

Uri uriDelicious = new Uri(string.Format("https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/get?&dt={0:yyyy-MM-dd}", date));

string xmlContent = webClientDelicious.DownloadString(uriDelicious);

Then, using Linq to XML, I sort results and fill data in List<Link>

var posts = from post in xdoc.Descendants("post")

            orderby post.Attribute("tag").Value.Split(' ')[0], post.Attribute("description").Value

            select new Link

                           Url = post.Attribute("href").Value,

                           Title = post.Attribute("description").Value,

                           Description = post.Attribute("extended") == null ? "" : post.Attribute("extended").Value,

                           Category = (post.Attribute("tag").Value.Split(' ')[0]).Capitalize()

};

I also parse a RSS feed, I also parse that with Linq to XML.

var entries = from feedElements in rssXDocument.Descendants(xmlns + "entry")

              select new Link

                             Url = feedElements.Elements(xmlns + "link")

                                    .Where(link => link.Attribute("rel").Value == "alternate")

                                    .Select(link => link.Attribute("href").Value).First(),

                             Title = feedElements.Element(xmlns + "title").Value,

                             Description = "",

                             Category = "Software Updates"

};

Then I'll just roll over results, use StringBuilder to build HTML and post body is done.

But where to put this code into? In Windows Live Writer add-in, of course!

First, I add a reference to WindowsLive.Writer.Api. Then I'll create new class that will extend ContentSource.

[WriterPlugin("{06BDBEB7-0D4F-45bf-AD23-2AAE6D98D745}", "Delicious Links",

    ImagePath = "images.delicious_links.png",

    HasEditableOptions = true,

    PublisherUrl = "http://vidmar.net/",

    Description = "Helps to generate link posts using bookmarks on del.icio.us.")]

[InsertableContentSource("Delicious Links")]

public class WlwPlugin : ContentSource

    Settings settings;

    public override DialogResult CreateContent(IWin32Window dialogOwner, ref string content)

        DialogResult dialogResult;

        using (MainForm mainForm = new MainForm(settings.Username, settings.Password))

            dialogResult = mainForm.ShowDialog();

            if (dialogResult == DialogResult.OK)

                content = mainForm.Links;

            mainForm.Hide();

        return dialogResult;

    // ... some more boring code to read and write settings ...

All done! I can get my weekly links post with couple of clicks exactly where I need them. I love it.

This is how my Windows Live Writer looks like now.

Technorati tags: windows live writer, add-in, code, c#

Xobni [review]

David Vidmar — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:42:23 GMT

Greg kindly invited me to beta app called Xobni. (cool name by itself, but it's also word Inbox in reverse!)

It's an Outlook plugin that indexes your mail and the provides different kinds of stats (like average response time of a person) and builds a social network of your contacts, so when you are looking at the mail from a friend you'll get a list of connected contact. Pretty neat.

Xobni looks great and while it's not super useful I do throw a look at it couple of times a day and get a piece of information way faster than I would if I had to browse other mails. But it's also a paradise loosing time instead of doing real work. What more could a geek want!? That alone is a reason to try it. ;)

I didn't find any info if it's going to be free after beta or not, but I really hope Microsoft buys them. Obviously they like Xobni.

You'll learn everything without installing by watching promotional video.

I have couple of invites left, so if you are interested, drop me an email.

Technorati tags: xobni, outlook, add-in, review