So when I recently upgraded my laptop I needed some software to open and create documents. Like Microsoft Office.
However my copy of Microsoft Office is getting a bit dated, and while bought legally is bordering on over use on my computers. So I figured I’d give OpenOffice.org a shot.
Opened it up, messed around with it a bit. Changed all of the defaults to save files as Microsoft standard formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc…). Everything overall has gone well.
Microsoft Office has focused on making all the menu options easily available to users. OpenOffice.org is very Office XP’ish. So it is simple (which I like). However I did find one issue. I was creating some documentation for a project at work. Required some vertical text (like the image in this post). Couldn’t find a way to do it at all. So I went to my favorite search engine and started looking around. I found this post from April 2006. Says you have to turn on Asian language support to do this.
Are you kidding me? Some things should be turned on by default… this is one of them. There are times where open source projects get so wrapped up in doing it ‘their’ way that they forget to think of the ‘customers’.
However, in spite of this… OpenOffice.org has its learning curve but for free, you can’t complain.
So I have this domain name for a reason. I'm a bit OCD in nature, and one of those quirks is that I want my task bar to not be cluttered. Just the things I want to see right now.
So I went searching for an application that would minimize things to the system tray (you know that thing by the clock).
I found an application called TrayIt! It works just as you would expect, you hold the shift key and hit the minimize and it goes to the system tray.
Not much more to it than that. I tried several minimizer programs, and this one is by far the best.
So I finally took the plunge and grabbed Windows Live Writer 2009’s Release candidate.
I tested it with my blog engine and found a bug where the publish date wasn’t being honored. Found the issue in the code and submitted the fix to the DNBE team. The other bug I found while writing this post is that only the last image border set is honored, covered that here, so if you stick to one image border per post you won’t have issue.
So now I want to give an overview of the product itself.
It is ripe with great features.
First it gets you away from the lame website based rich text editors.
All the generics of this make, making a post kind of difficult. Adding a picture is what I always found most difficult. With Windows Live Writer you can add a picture one of two ways.
1. Just paste the image from your clipboard to your post.
2. Insert an image via their menus (or drag and drop).
Now here is where Windows Live Writer 2009 separates itself from anything else, the ability to manipulate images. Windows Live Writer 2008 was good, but 2009 takes it to another level.
What the various ways I can post an image, without having to open up an image editor at all.
All of those options without opening an image editor. Also as you can see I am able to post to an album on the fly as well. Windows Live Writer defaults to a Window’s provided album, but there are many plug-ins available for other online albums.
There are really a limitless number of things a person can do with Windows Live Writer 2009, all readily available from the UI.
One of the things alluded to in one of my pictures above was the ability to use plug ins. Currently there are 111 plug-ins available.
There really is no reason to not use Windows Live Writer.
Though I will offer one caveat, the version they are pushing on their site is a release candidate. Not official, so there could be a few issues with it. I have found one, just working on this post.
UI Options:
A few weeks ago my son was struggling with some spelling words, and I was listening to him and my wife talk about them. He then asked if he should go test himself on the computer.
Being the geek I am, I was interested in what she was talking about. Turns out he has been using a web site to help learn his spelling words. I took a look at the site and was impressed. Sometimes I wonder how we learned anything back in the day :-)
One of the big weaknesses of having a Window's operating system was dealing with large files, specifically movies. In XP I never could get consistency and stability. From the editing to the writing of the DVD.
Having recently upgraded to Vista Ultimate, I had my first job where I needed to take some footage that I had captured and make it into a movie. Vista gets an A+.
I used all 'out of the box' software and was able to create a decent movie from the files I had. Then I burned it to five DVD's without a single failure. That is the biggest thing to me. Many times previously that was so unreliable that I'd resort to going to my old employer's and use their MAC!
First I took my AVI that I had captured previously, opened up Windows Movie Maker and made some edits to the file. With some title screen's, transitions and effects. Added a photo gallery at the end of the movie, then went to 'Publish' my movie. I needed to create some DVD's so next Windows DVD Maker popped up and gave me a few options (title screen or auto play, different themes in the title, etc..). Picked my options and 20 minutes later I had my movie on DVD.
Very nice surprise.
In my effort to migrate to my more professional domain I needed to setup a new profile in my email client of choice, Thunderbird. Many other clients have this built in, but unbelievably Thunderbird does not.
Thankfully there is a plug-in to make it happen.
After you install the plug-in you will see the following menu option:
Now what is great about all of this is you can actually have multiple identities open at once. When you select a new identity to open up you get the following dialog box:
So why do this and not just have all my emails checked from one profile? To make 100% sure that when I want to email somebody from OCDProgrammer.com with my OCDProgrammer.com signature, I do.
One of the purposes of the recent site design was to give my actual identity a bit more publicity. One of the things I noticed is that you can customize your LinkedIn URL.
So instead of some auto-generated text at the end of the URL you can have your custom text, or in my case my name.
You can do the same to your profile by logging in, clicking 'Edit My Profile' and then scrolling down to the section that has a link to your public profile:
Then at the top of the page you'll see the option to change your URL.
So looking at my stats I see I get a lot of visitors from my site. Many more than I am aware of (and I'm aware of enough...). But did you know you can save yourself some time and still get to read my blog? There are two ways, one more technical than the other.
1. Get emailed my post. Everyday about 7AM there is a service I use that will email you the previous day's post. Its that easy. Just click this link and fill out the information. You'll start getting the post tomorrow.
2. RSS Feeds. This is a bit technical in nature, but there are programs out there that will allow you to follow any site that supports RSS (like this one, or any podcast, or virtually any blog). If you fall into this category (ie you read several blogs contact me and I'll walk you through the process. Just ask my buddy Brian Richard about how much time it saves you to use an RSS reader. Now one added benefit to this in regard to my site is that not only can you get notified of the new post, but also the comments on each post. My two RSS feeds are:
Post Feed.
Comment Feed.
So as you can see there is really no need for you to come to my site most of the time. The only time you need to come is when you want to read the comments (if you choose option 1) or when you want to make a comment.
One feature that I use to increase my productivity is an application called AlwaysOnTop. Basically it adds a menu to the right click on the title bar to make a window 'always on top'.
This allows me to open up one document (lets say a tutorial on how to do something in Visual Studio) and make it 'on top' while I have my IDE open to walk through the tutorial.
There are a lot of similar applications out there, but none of them that I've found are are good as this one.
I've had two interesting things happen to friends computers over the past few months.
First I got an email from my friends at Tin Roof (by the way, if you want to support a great charity... this is it) telling me that she needed to file an extension on her taxes before she leaves for Nicaragua on Tuesday. However when she started Turbo Tax she was getting an error.
Further investigation by me (via a VNC connection I set up with her a while ago) realized that this was a .NET error.
Turbo Tax spit out the following error: 20888 39915. A Quick search of their site gave this article. Basically blaming .NET and their solution has a link to a program that totally wipes out .NET from your system so you can start over. I downloaded the program, ran it and then reinstalled .NET and her problem was fixed (well after I ran a reboot.bat file that was in the Turbo Tax installation folder, but that's another issue all together).
Then I have another buddy who had been using a program I wrote for my church to transfer files between members of the multimedia team. Several months ago a basic Windows component of it stopped working right. I was at a total loss for a solution (as a simple uninstall and reinstall of .NET didn't help). I let it drop... but I emailed him today with this fix and my hunch is, that this will get him up and running again.
What frustrates me the most about this, is that Microsoft's .NET uninstall doesn't fully uninstall itself. Many years ago I did some work for Lexmark's All in One printers and one of the BIG things they did was make sure that their uninstall completely wipes out any record of the machine being on your system. And really there is no excuse for any other behavior.