PuTTY Tray
20 August 2008
in links
tagged with
[links]
[putty]
[windows]
version of putty that makes links clickable. astonished that I didn’t have this bookmarked already, it’s great.
Roderick van Domburg’s Blog » Installing Windows XP from USB
20 August 2008
in links
tagged with
[install]
[usb]
[windows]
Of all the guides I found, this was the one that actually worked. So it’s probably worth hanging onto.
Slashdot | All Your Coffee Are Belong To Us
18 June 2008
in links
tagged with
[coffee]
[machine]
[security]
[windows]
yay, coffee machines with remote-exploitable backdoors.
Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher for Windows
22 October 2007
in links
tagged with
[launchbar]
[quicksilver]
[windows]
yet another QS replacement for windows. This one looks free, though.
Install multiple versions of IE on your PC | TredoSoft
03 May 2007
in links
tagged with
[explorer]
[internet]
[testing]
[windows]
Does what it says on the tin.
The Cocotron
22 December 2006
in links
tagged with
[cocoa]
[windows]
Wow. Clean-room reimplementation of cocoa for windows.
Free FLV Player
02 October 2006
in links
tagged with
[flash]
[macos]
[video]
[windows]
Useful for.. uh.. playing flv files.
http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_standalone_flv_...
Mark Edgar - PuTTY patch for Cygwin terminal
13 September 2006
in links
tagged with
[emulator]
[putty]
[terminal]
[windows]
Use putty as a cygwin terminal for the local machine - lovely. putty is a great terminal, and the fonts are pretty.
Dell Inspiron Inspiron/Latitude/Precision fan control
13 September 2006
in links
tagged with
[dell]
[system]
[temperature]
[windows]
Not that my dell has any fans in it. But it’ll display the CPU temperature in the notification area, which is what I’m after
Tango on Windows Reference
11 August 2006
in links
tagged with
[theme]
[windows]
Make windows XP use the Tango icon theme.
RandyRants.com: SharpKeys 2.0
11 August 2006
in links
tagged with
[keyboard]
[remap]
[windows]
Remap keys under windows 2000+. A long time ago I read enough of the insane documentation to hand-craft a registry file that disables capslock, but I no longer understand or care why it works. It’s nice to have a GUI.
NathanM » WebShot
13 June 2006
in links
tagged with
[screenshot]
[web]
[windows]
It’s a windows website screenshotter. Not useful to me, but here for completeness
http://www.nathanm.com/index.php/webshot-website-screensh...
Internet Explorers for Linux
07 June 2006
in links
tagged with
[linux]
[windows]
Just so I can find it again later
Homepage of Crimson Editor - Free Text Editor, Html Editor, Programmers Editor for Windows
28 January 2006
in links
tagged with
[editor]
[text]
[unicode]
[windows]
Does everything I want - file browser, UNIX line endings, it even gives me the level of control I need over file encodings. and it’s free. Perfect.
Scan Code Mapper for Windows
20 January 2006
in links
tagged with
[keyboard]
[layout]
[map]
[scancode]
[windows]
Grisoft Freeweb: AVG Free Edition
12 January 2006
in links
tagged with
[checker]
[free]
[virus]
[windows]
TaskSwitchXP: Main Features | NTWind Software
11 January 2006
in links
tagged with
[switch]
[task]
[windows]
sharpreader
13 August 2004
in blog
tagged with
[rss]
[windows]
sharpreader - a windows RSS feed reader. Uses .NET, which is all the rage nowadays, apparently.
It’s beautiful, easily the best RSS reader I’ve ever seen, and that includes the one I wrote :-). Proper OPML export / import (It’s amazing how meny readers get this wrong), the interface, although slightly hard to figure out makes a lot of sense once you get the hang of it, and frankly usability and learning curves can go hang once I can use the thing.
The nicest feature, though, is the threading. I’ll notice which other blogs you read have linked to this one, and will do the litte ‘+’ symbol thing so you can expand them and see all the interlinks. It’s niiiiiiiice. I’m suddenly tempted to go back to “lectern”:/programming/lectern and hack this in somehow, though it’ll be hard. Maybe I’ll write a mac one and steal the niche of NNW. Maybe I’ll write a bad alpha and get distracted by some other project. Yes, that seems to be the best idea.
Software interfaces evolve like this, it’s wonderful to watch. Web browsers are another fairly immature tech that grow “tabs” and other interface things, and that’s nice to watch too, even if they’re stupid. Genuinely new types of apps are rare, I can’t think of many off the top of my head, although obviously once they’re pointed out, it’s obvious…
the broken desktop metaphor
13 August 2004
in blog
tagged with
[macos]
[philosophy]
[windows]
There was a throw-away comment by Dan Hill in an article on Elite about the desktop metaphor and the workarounds we have to use to make it work. Now, I don’t think exposé is a work-around. I think it’s the most sophisticated window-management system I’ve ever used, it’s lovely. But it does hilight something that’s need nagging at me for a while. The Desktop.
Now, essentially, the desktop metaphor is broken. It’s not a desktop at all. It’s far too small, for a start, I’ve heard it described as the airplane seat metaphor. But the most important distinction is what’s underneath all your bits of paper. Suppose you have a real desk. Pick up all the things on it and look underneath them. What do you see? You’ve got a completely blank desk. Ok, now hide all your windows and things from your computer ‘desktop’. Got a blank desk? No? Didn’t think so.
Eventually, everyone needs a hack in their windowing system so that they can get at the desktop. Windows has ‘Minimize All’, or in extreme cases, ‘Show desktop’ (there’s a difference between these two. Try explaining the difference to a non-geek). For me, Windows always seems neatest with all windows either maximized or minimized. The fact that the only graphical way of getting at your hard disk is the ‘My Computer’ icon on the desktop means that you need to be able to get at it easily. Mac OS X 10.2 and before never had a really good solution to get at the desktop. There are various third party hacks but the only decent way I ever used was to Command-Option-Click on the desktop, or Command-Option-H with the Finder focussed. This hides everything except Finder windows. Of course, if there are Finder windows blocking your desktop, you’re stuffed. Ah, well.
Exposé solves this - one button and all your windows get out the way. Yay! Finally they’ve solved a problem Windows solved 5 years ago. (Or whenever, I don’t care).
I’m tired of working round this. I can shuffle through all of my windows with Command-Tab, but I can’t get to the desktop without moving all the windows out the way? This is an annoying special case, and I don’t like it.
New philosophy. Nothing will go on the desktop. Nothing at all. I won’t display drives on it, I won’t save files on it. I’m going to change it’s permissions so that I can’t write to it. My default download folder will be a folder in my home directory. We’ll see how long I last before I go insane.
Update - I follow this up here