Short one this.

Filezilla is crowded, interfacewise.  Do change the settings under edit/settings - Interface/message log position to be a tab with the queue/filed transfers etc.  This will save space for the important elements like the folder and files views.

That’s it.

Yes, fun today.  Well, not fun but useful.

I have found DVDShrink very useful.  After abandoning video, (except for archives), I have found that even dvd cases can be bulky, and there is nothing quite like being able to your DVD collection around on a hard disk.  Since I dodge around a lot, particularly at the moment, this is very useful indeed, but also from the point of view of someone makng a media centre, this would be a very useful function.

The idea of DVD Shrink is that you can compress your DVDs onto a 4.7Gb disk, in order that you can preserve the originals.  The is a laudible aim, DVDs can be, if cheaply produced, more delicate than people realise.  Because I am putting DVDs on to an external hard disk, I set the compression to allow only 3.9 Gb, because this will fit onto a single file in the FAT32 filesystem, which is what my Western Digital Drive is set to.  I can’t change this now, too much data on board.  For another day.

To continue, DVDShrink will decide that if you are writing to FAT32 then the files must be chopped up in to 1Gb chunks, this is really the only caveat with it, write to NTFS and copy over, it doesn’t take long with USB2.

You should set DVDSHrink up the first time you use it, this is what I recommend.

The options to hide audio and subpicture streams is up to you, I wouldn’t, but then I like to see everything, it can be a bit of a buscuit aisle to choose from though sometimes.  I definitely don’t recommend running in low priority unless you have a single processor.  It really is a very good idea to have a dual processor for this.

This is important.  There is nothing more irritating than having to sit throught the various warning/adverts and threats incorporated into DVDs.  This is the principle reason I try not to watch any of my DVDs unless they are ripped to hard disc.  I’m not the most patient of people and I can get so annoyed by the constant reminders that I’m going to become some sort of criminal, if I do practically anything, that I sometimes stop watching DVDs anyhow.  What does the industry care?  Nothing, I already gave them my money.  By the way, I generally try to resist the temptation to pirate DVDs.  And definitely no uploading.  That is bad.  (Come to that, no downloading either, can’t be bothered).

Note the Split VOB files into 1Gb chunks is unchecked.  Do that.  I have already metioned that this has NO EFFECT if you try and save to a FAT32 Disc.  Remove Macrovision, whcih is just annoying, (yes in theory you are now a crim, see this for a take on it).

I was going to write a lot more, but I’m in the middle of moving things around again, so this will have to do for now.  I will pick this up next entry.

Primary editor for text files of any kind.  Ok, I’m a bit old school, there are better ways for many things.  What Notepad++ offers is a simple interface with directly accessible and fast text editing with colour syntax highlighting.

The keyword recognition is excellent, and in common with may programs of this type it is editable, though the syntax for editng can be confusing for the beginning user to say the least.

That said, this program works generally out of the box, and I use it daily for editing program code for any scripting language, and C++ and other compiled languages.  (Not Delphi, that belongs in the editor).

The tabbed interface has become the modern paradigm for keeping information readily available, and not without reason, Notepad++ executes this cleanly and clearly, there is an option in the setting to turn on per tab closing buttons and I do this so that it behaves like my browsers for this action.

The indenting mechanism is also very intelligently designed.  Selected text is indented or out-dented, (tab or shift-tab), rather than being deleted in favour of a tab.  This is a perfectly natural action for a programmer.

You can change the registry to make Notepad++ handle all the file-types you want from within the program, and while this interface is a little stiff, it is better than other mechanisms available in Windows.  Be warned though, that there is no “undo” for this.  Other programs will have to claims the rights back if that’s what you want.

There are two caveats with Notepad++.  Sometimes, virus checkers pick up the install program as infected.  Get Notepad++ from Sourceforge and you’ll be fine, really.  The other is that syntax highlighting will not work until the file is saved, the clues come from the file extension, hardly a concern for me.

Notepad++ makes a perfect replacement for notepad, but more, it had many add-ins available and by making use of these at whatever rate of learning you prefer, you can make it work for you very easily.  Bonus, it prints syntax highlighted too!

Download: Notepad++

John is quite right in his comment below about the Syntax Highlighting.  Thanks for contributing.

Let’s kick off this week with something that I have found immediately useful. As a geek, I sometimes find that the family has expectations of me that I have not met for myself. One of these was the ability to move files from the house wherever I am. I carry a great deal of memory around with me, (>500gb sometimes) in the form of drives or USB sticks, but the family doesn’t, and why should they? Another member of my family lives some distance away, and I try to help her maintain her machine, but I don’t like remote desktop, and her network isn’t reliable enough for high bandwidth.

I felt a bit guilty when I was asked to rescue a video from a machine that the family use, and I could not, and immediately looked around for a solution. I found, on the BBC website via a Google search, (oh sorry, Famous Web Search Engine, FWSE, as New Scientist would have it), logmein.com, remote access through your browser.

 

Wowee! I haven’t been so impressed for ages! The front page isn’t promising, I didn’t like the design, could I be bothered to get into it? In fact the front page is just a little cluttered, the site turns out to be easy to navigate and use. Understanding your choices may be a little more difficult, there are a few, but I was just looking for a free, simple to use, remote desktop that would not be bamboozled by my firewalls and NAT setup. This promised that.

 

Alright, I was all wrong about the page design, it’s great, I downloaded the server and installed without a problem. On running it, Windows, (Vista, see the page about my setup), asked if I wanted to unblock the program. Of course I did, and away we went. (Bear in mind that you have to make an account, make a good password! This is dangerous stuff, you will be allowing access into your machine from practically anywhere. AND HAVE A WINDOWS PASSWORD, really!)

LogMeIn runs a little taskbar status icon, and if you hover over it, it should say “Enabled and Online”. This was good enough, and I left it.

So I got to University and logged in. You see from the My Setup page that I habitually use Firefox, as updated as I can get, (Yes, I’m trying the Beta, no I didn’t use it for this), and lo and behold it wanted to install a plugin. Well, that’s not unnatural considering what it is doing, so I went right ahead and installed it. No restart of Firefox, impressive.

So I logged in to my machine, LogMeIn gives warnings to the user of the machine that it is about to be taken over, and lets the client take over if there is no response, see what I mean about passwords? It operates right in the browser, scaling as necessary, and can operate in full screen. What a dream!

It operated right out of the “box”, (or it would not be here) and I operated the desktop flawlessly. The colours are initially rendered in 16 colours to save on bandwidth, and you can change this via the simple bar at the top to grey scale or 256, or even full colour, that last being a bit slow on updates, depending on connection.

What is incredible overall is the response time, using the mouse is like having the machine in front of you, sound is automatically piped from the machine, in an experiment I tried using Windows Media Player, and I could barely tell it was coming down a pipe.

LogMeIn charges a modest fee, (about $40) for a years use of this service with enhancements like desktop to desktop drag and drop file transfer, and fast logins. They have a number of services for which they charge, and they represent a variety of things that you might need. Importantly, the basic and most useful service, hassle free remote desktop, is free, and seems set to remain so.

I really like Log Me in so far, I have been using for a few days, and I shall update this when I have been using it for a bit longer. Nice one.

Well! Here is a fine thing! I have just spent the weekend installing Ubuntu 8.04. Now, for the common user, I guess it will work out of the box, so to speak. But not for me.

Why?

Because I am very demanding, for instance, I installed the 64-bit version, and then installed XP in virtual machine, (QEMU, yes, it DOES work first time, but is too slow). I have discovered something interesting. By my standards, XP works out of the box, it’’s able to work first time in fact.

Why do I say this?

Here are the caveats. It’s takes three days to install eveything back to my default state of working, but I have about 30 gig of software to install. I don’t have very fancy or advanced machinery, and I don”t try to do anything clever with the operating system.nnOn the other hand, here is what I install as a minimum, and bear in mind that I may have 20 applications open all at once on my laptop.n

• Office 2003
• Notepad++
• Java 6
• Java 5
• Netbeans
• Eclipse
• Skype
• Live Messenger
• LaTeX
• Windows Media Player, for Synching my MP3 Playing
• CDBurner XP
• Firefox, and numerous add-ons
• DVD Shrink

And a few edits later…

• Google Chrome
• Paint Shop Pro 7
• Ashampoo 6 burner

Hi!  This is it then, a new blog.  Yes, it’s partly a tech blog, partly a commentary blog.  I”m not going to pretend, not even a little bit, that I’m an expert on what I”m commenting on.  When you read this, Your Milage May Vary (YMMV), and you have to make choices about installing software or hardware, or changing your life choices as a result of reading this.  Think of this idea like reading a critic, (though I”m certainly not a qualified critic!), in a newspaper.  I’ll try to be fair, but the experiences reflected here are mine, and you may find that you look at the blog and find it either not useful, or actually counter to your experience.  That ‘’s ok, avoid what I write here if you find it doesn”t fit you.

Why am I writing this?

In a very, very busy life, I find that I have dedicated too much time to things that I have to tweak or read about or fiddle with before they work.  I’m studying, and occasionally working and I have a family, so I don”t really have time for all that, and I know other people don’t too.  So here is my collection of things that worked first time for me, things that are useful, probably free, and definitely have enhanced my way of working.

I hope you”ll visit regularly, and that you find it all useful.