Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

If you need to cut down on your web surfing time to be more productive you might try out the following extensions.

• TimeTracker
• Usage Counter
• LeechBlock
• pageaddict
• MeeTimer

Running multiple versions of Opera is easy, just install to another folder.

However doing so for Firefox is a tricky. I used the following site as a reference, consider this post a mini-tutorial for achieving multiple versions on Windows. I’ve tried this with Firefox versions 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 on Windows.

First make sure you install the Firefox versions in separate folders. To do so you will have to do a custom install so you can point them to separate folders (be sure to create a new folder before you install). Your shortcuts to Firefox in the Quick Launch, Programs folder and on your Desktop will end up being overwritten by each other; Thus, you will end up having to create a shortcut for the other versions later on.

We need to create a few profiles so we can separate our extensions and settings for each version. Create a copy of your shortcut to Firefox and lets rename it to Firefox Profile Manager. Now right click it and pick Properties. In the Target add “ -profilemanager” to the end (without the quotes and be sure to have a space before the dash), now press Apply and OK. Now make sure Firefox isn’t open at all (close all Firefox windows). Now double-click on that shortcut we made (Firefox Profile Manager) and it will open up a prompt. Here you can create a new profile and name it something that makes sense like firefox1, firefox1_5 or firefox2. This will give us a profile to tie a certain version of Firefox to. To set a profile automatically to a certain version you need to make a shortcut to the version of Firefox you want and add “ -P profilename” to the end (without the quotes and don’t forget the space before the dash).

Lets go ahead and do this:

We’ll modify the shortcut to Firefox 2 by changing its Target to something like this
X:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe -P default

And you can set your Firefox 1.5 Target to something like this:
X:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 1_5\firefox.exe -P firefox1_5

And you can set your Firefox 1.0 Target to something like this:
X:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 1\firefox.exe -P firefox1_0

Be sure to change the Start in field in the shortcut to match the folder path used in the target (however the Start In will not need the -P profilename). Also note which shortcut you are modifying (what folder it’s pointing to and what version it is, along with what profile you want it to use), it’s easy to get confused. Firefox will not remember what version the profile used last, that’s why you need to point to the proper folder. Please note, if you have Firefox open while trying to access the Profile Manager it will just open up another window of Firefox. You can’t run more than 1 version of Firefox simultaneously, so if you need to test things, you have to test everything in one version than close all your Firefox windows and then start up the other version.

One annoyance is that it will ask you whether you want the browser to be the default or not. If you change the default to another version it may ask you again when you open the other version (this is the case for both Opera and Firefox). For multiple version of IE, I normally just use an old Win98 or Win2000 box. You could also use a free virtual machine like VMware Player/Server, Microsoft Virtual PC or Bochs. There is a hack to create virtual machines in VMware Player if you dont want to use VMware Server to create them (VMware Player is lighter on resources than the Server version).

Apple already released a version of Safari for Windows, but you could use a PowerPC emulator called PearPC; However, it can take a long time to install OS X and it runs a little slow.

Figured I’d share my results in what I’ve found by researching how to get video thumbnails. I tried MovieSnapshot but the JPGs it created were zero bytes; thus they were useless. Some people have been able to use the command line with VideoLan to create thumbnails, and someone else was able to create video thumbnails with ASP and FFmpeg. However I really didn’t feel like messing with the command line. I found a program called ThumbCell Creator but the reviews weren’t very good for it, so I didn’t bother with it.

After some more searching I found a program called Livid Batch Export Utility and it apparently will do a lot of batch conversions for video, including images. However the thumbnail export is buggy in verison 1.2 and I had to figure out how to get around those bugs. So here are my findings:

Livid Batch Export Utility 1.2 Thumbnail Export Workaround

1. Backup your original videos (the program will overwrite files without warning you)
2. Pick your source folder (the videos to be converted)
3. Pick your destination folder (where you want the thumbnails, must be different than the source folder)
4. At the bottom select Open (this is where you select the export format)
5. Pick BMP (Picture will not work, not sure why)
6. Now you can go back up to Settings (here you can change the color depth and quality)
7. Now click Start
8. Go into the destination folder, you will notice the files have the same video file extension, so you will have to rename each file with a .bmp manually or do so with a app that will rename files in a batch. I like to use a free program called Rename Master. Rename Master will rename a batch of files in a folder very fast (handy app to have). You can use it to change the extensions of your files, but remember to rename the destination folder’s files (they may confuse you off since they have the same names as the videos)
9. So now that you have all your files renamed, you might want to convert them to a web format like GIF, PNG or JPG.
10. You can either use Photoshop to convert files by using an Action or use a free program like Faststone Photo Resizer

NOTE: The bitmaps created by Livid Batch Export Utility will be the same size as the original video and are of the first frame.

Its a pain to have to go through all these steps but it’s the only free and fast way I know how to do this. Otherwise you would have to do a screenshot for each one and crop just the video.

And something else I found out, doing a screenshot in Windows Media Player will result in it being black, however there is a way to fix that.

It seems this is becoming more and more the case. Granted most programs allow you to create your own theme, unless you have several hours to do so, its a pain to set them up. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always like Crimson Editor, it comes with 3 themes, white, gray and black. Dreamweaver and Aptana both give you the standard white background editor. While its clean, staring at a blinding white background while coding usually makes your eyes tired. Ever since Windows, white backgrounds have been more the norm, rather than the old black or dodger blue of the DOS days. I’ve looked into trying to style Dreamweavers and unless I put aside like 10-20 hours (includes testing) I dont think I could make a good theme, unfortunately, no one has one available for download as well. Even Notepad++ gives you only the white background theme. Although someone has a made a ruby blue port. Although one of the major problems with Notepad++ is things are changing in each release and often times I have to manually edit a few things here and there. Of course you only have to modify the languages you use.

Here is a addition to the ruby blue port, which includes the styles for Python (keep in mind this is for Notepad++)

<LexerType name="python" desc="Python" ext="py">
<WordsStyle name="DEFAULT" styleID="0" fgColor="FFFFFF" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="COMMENTLINE" styleID="1" fgColor="8DB0D3" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="8" />
<WordsStyle name="NUMBER" styleID="2" fgColor="808080" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="STRING" styleID="3" fgColor="7BD827" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="CHARACTER" styleID="4" fgColor="808080" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS" styleID="5" fgColor="FFFF80" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="1" fontSize="" keywordClass="instre1" />
<WordsStyle name="TRIPLE" styleID="6" fgColor="F08047" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="TRIPLEDOUBLE" styleID="7" fgColor="F08047" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="CLASSNAME" styleID="8" fgColor="4A9BEA" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="1" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="DEFNAME" styleID="9" fgColor="4A9BEA" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="OPERATOR" styleID="10" fgColor="F0804F" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="1" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="IDENTIFIER" styleID="11" fgColor="FFFFFF" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="COMMENTBLOCK" styleID="12" fgColor="8DB0D3" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
<WordsStyle name="STRINGEOL" styleID="12" fgColor="730080" bgColor="112435" fontName="" fontStyle="0" fontSize="" />
</LexerType>


Here’s how the fonts work in Notepad++
fontStyle 1=bold 2=italics 4=underline add the # for multiple options, so a 3 would be bold and italics. I’ve also noticed that if you use Courier New as your font the bold doesn’t show up so well.

I’ll share what changes I’ve done with my stylers.xml files for Notepad++

Here are some handy extensions to make your Tablet PC experience better on Firefox.

• GeckoTIP - Makes the Tablet PC Input Panel work in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, also has an option for a left-handed scrollbar
• MenuX - Minimal Toolbar buttons designed with Tablet PCs and Laptops in mind
• Grab and Drag - scroll without scrollbars, it works like the hand in Photoshop and Adobe Reader, but it has physics added, allowing the page to scrolll a little bit or a lot based on your pen “flick”, it also has momentum and it slows down instead of stopping abruptly.

The next bunch are Gestures, which will do tasks based on how you move your mouse on your screen. You might give each one a try to see which one you like the best.

• Drag de Go
• NextPlease
• All-in-One Gestures
• easyGestures - the famous “pie menu”
• Mouse Gestures