| Utility Dump Posted by on September 28, 2006 - you want what? p.m. |
|
Yep, this semester's pretty busy, so completely out of nowhere, I'm going throw some useful utilities at the Windows users in the crowd. I found the first because hunting for files with my laptop's track pad was driving me insane, and then I just got addicted. Yes, wish I were more into Linux too, but eh. SlickRun: SlickRun is a nice little app that pops up a command line at the press of a hotkey. It will run shell commands, but if you don't really care about the windows shell, you can also define your own "magic words" to open and folders, open websites, run programs, etc. It's nice for people who have an urge to stay organized yet hate digging through all their directories. Combine it with some quick little scripting program like Python or something even hgher like Autohotkey and you can probably take over the world. I wanted this so much I was about to write something similar myself, but I figured someone else probably had the same idea and a better idea for how to implement it, and thus I saved myself countless hours of meaningful programming experience. In other news, I hear Quick Silver is a vaguely similar app for the Apple folks out there. In fact, apparently App Rocket and Launchy are like QuickSilver for Windows. Crazy. Hmm tempting, maybe I'll try them out later. AutoHotkey: I mentioned AutoHotkey above. It's a ridiculously high level scripting language for Windows. You can automate it to do tons of random junk from managing files to sending mouse or keyboard input to windows. It saves me time right and left, with the bonus of occasionally confusing the heck out of other people as they're using my computer (I usually just kill it in that case). Virtual Dimension: I hate not having multiple workspaces. Virtual Dimension is a good answer to that for now. I tried the Microsoft power toy for emulating multiple workspaces for about five second, but that was a sad, sad excuse for a utility. Virtual Dimension does it right. Just don't get sloppy and start leaving windows all over the place, otherwise your computer's desktop will start looking like your physical desktop. Top Desk: If you've used a Mac recently and found that tiling window chooser indispensable, then this is for you. I'm still undecided on whether I'm buying this actually, but I don't think I'll miss $10. It can be a huge help for my laptop. Task Switch X: Alt-Tab on crack. Maybe you never thought you needed a better interface for alt-tabbing. Maybe you're right. But if you've got the RAM to spare, there's nothing to lose... IrfanView: This isn't really a time saver, it just replaces something I've always considered broken. If you write a program specifically to view images and, say, ship it with your operating system, what's your excuse when it routinely fails to open images? IrfanView is everything I've wanted, and a little more. I'm one of those freaks who collects art they find online at places like this and this, and occasionally I spend some time looking at all da perty pitchers I collects, so this is actually a big thing for me (note: image gallery screen savers and homework do not mix). I'd rather it didn't try to play file types it can't when you're running through a directory, but eh, it beats the others I've tried. Notepad++: Okay, so if you use emacs or vi, you probably don't care about text editors, but if you don't, notepad++ is great. I mainly use it for scripts, actually. My main gripe is actually the tabbed viewer, usually I want a couple buffers open at once, so I use Metapad for other stuff. Metapad: Just another notepad like app, for those who don't like notepad occasionally breaking. Yeah, yeah, I should use emacs, but I'm sick of running through scattered online help docs. 7-zip: Used for compressing stuff. Beats the alternatives. AjaxAmp: AjaxAmp is a webbased remote control for winamp. It's handy if you want to work on your laptop from somewhere else but still have winamp running on your main desktop with it's massive speakers. Yep. Because it's power efficient. Hmm, I started to edit this, but yeah, who cares? So, does this count as a tech blog? |
|
 |
The Link Dump Posted by on September 28, 2006 - barely |
It's back. It may have been gone for a while, but while the Link Dump was away there certainly has not been a dearth of links. Make sure to check back, because I know there are all sorts of crazy links waiting to be added. |
|
| Joobo Badoobo Posted by on September 29, 2006 - bomp bomp chikow p.m. |
|
I can't believe it's been almost a year since I touched the link dump. Wow. |
|
| 184. Video: Edith and I are up late |
| 183. Video: Edith, the darling lass pictured above, will be performing this later this semester. I'm not sure what the protocol is when you find out your girlfriend is a zombie, but I guess I'm glad to have advanced warning that she'll be eating my brains at some point. |
| 182. Video: Women in Western Art. Pretty niftay. |
| 181. Comic: Copper is updating again! Glee! |
| 180. Japanese Insanity Guitar Bear Pink Japan: WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?WHAT? |
| 179. Video: Pac Man invasion. Old, I guess, but still required viewing. |
| 178. Comic: Piled Higher and Deeper: So awesome! Also makes me not want to go to gradschool. Though, it worked out for my dad anyway, so who knows. |
| 177. Artist: JF Bruckner: Oh yeah, jfb is awesome too! Right, right, more artists and comics, I forget so easily... |
| 176. Comic: Copper: Copper is my favorite webcomic. Every strip is inspiringly beautiful and bursting with imagination, but beyond that, they consistently resonate with profundity without screaming "Look at ME, aren't I profound!?" I tried to write a lot more corny praise, but just go read all of them instead, you won't be sorry. I was hoping to wait for Kazu Kibuishi to get back to it so I could scream about its return, but it's been quite a while already, so I'll just link it again once that happens. |
| 175. Artist: Mitsui. Life must be hard when you're this awesome. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |
| 174. Comic: The Unfeasible Adventures of Beaver and Steve. I don't actually read this often, but the toaster knob makes me want to. That sentence will make no sense as soon as they update. |
| 173. Humor: Kyle linked me to this, but I can't imagine why. P.S. Kyle sucks. |
| 172. Comic: Socks. Okay, Socks is also amazing. I need to read through both these soon. Yargh. |
| 171. Comic: Minus. Leo just linked me to minus, and it is aggggghjustgoreaditIcan'tthinkofwhattowriteitisamazing. |
| 170. Flash Game: Fancy Pants. Fancy Pants!!! Made me want to drop everything and make an awesome speedy platformer with simple but incredibly smooth smooth animation with my roommates. Who knows what they'd do, but Kyle already agreed to it. Right Kyle? Study for your midterms to signify "yes." |
| 169. Random: Revenge of Zoom Quilt. |
| 168. Comic: Sinfest. How could you not know about Sinfest already? :| |
| 167. Apps: doPdf. People keep asking how to write out pdfs. If you don't own Acrobat Pro, apparently this works. |
| 166. Humor: Then Japan puts Berkeley to shame in the flash mob arena. But c'mon, it's Japan, it's probably weird when stuff like that doesn't happen. |
| 165. Humor: Berkeley ninja flash mob battle royale round 1 fight. |
| Show all |
| © 2003-2008 ; Coding and coding errors courtesy of Daniel Ellsworth |