Shortcut Key for New Folders in Windows Explorer

I don't spend much time in Explorer (I'm a Total Commander fan, myself.) In my opinion the biggest pain in the butt about Windows Explorer is that there's not hot-key for creating a new folder. Well, this little app takes care of that as our friends at LifeHacker explain:

"There's never been an elegant or efficient way to create new folders in Windows without getting the mouse involved. Alt+F+W+F? Definitely not quick. But lightweight application mdAxel can assign a keyboard shortcut to the act of creating a new folder."

Featured Windows Download: MdAxel Creates New Folders Faster

DIY Cheap Wireless for Your XBox 360

While we're on the subject of XBox 360's, here's a way to hack together a homemade wireless adapter for your XBox 360. This is great since the one M$ forces you to buy is about $60 overpriced.

HOW TO: Cheap Wireless For Your Xbox 360

Repair XBox 360 3 Red Lights of Death

Everyone and their mother is trying to sell eBooks on how to repair the XBox 360 "Three Red Lights of Death" (a.k.a. "Ring of Doom") defect yourself. Of course, if your XBox 360 is still under warranty, just call up Microsoft and they'll repair or replace the thing for free. But if for whatever reason it is not under warranty, this eBook purportedly tells you how to fix this 3 Red Lights of Death problem. I'm making it available for free here because I think it's a crock to try and sell it unless you're the original author or have the author's permission to sell it. For all I know the original author of this thing never intended it to be sold (I really don't know either way - so if you are the original author and want me to take this thing down, please let me know.)

I've read the thing and from judging what I've read elsewhere and from the somewhat developed understanding I have of electronics and computers in general, it sounds like this make sense - but I don't own an XBox 360 and I have not tried this myself so I make no claim or warranty as to its effectiveness. Please, don't go opening up your XBox and fucking it all up then crying to me about how I told you this would work. As far as I know it won't, so proceed at your own risk!

If anyone out there has tried this please let us know in the comments if it works - I for one am very curious and I'm sure everyone else who happens on this page is as well.

Download the eBook. Enjoy!

DIY Heat Blocking Curtains

Quite simply, just find whatever reflective material you can and hang it as a curtain.

"Summer is nearing/here, and it's getting hotter in my house. To save electricity with our super expensive A/C, I constructed reflective curtains to block sunlight from warming our house. Think auto windshield. This is super simple and kind of obvious, but it works well."

Heat blocking curtains - Instructables

YouTube: "We're sorry, this video is no longer available"

Do you constantly get this message? I'm willing to bet that you're either trying to watch a lot of banned YouTube content, or you're running Google Web Accelerator. I had this problem before (even with YouTube's own help videos) and found out that it was caused by Google Web Accelerator. All you have to do is get rid of Google Web Accelerator. I don't know that the thing is of much help, anyway. Mine has only saved me about 3 days of time, and I've been running it for over a year.

If you want to check to make sure it's Web Accelerator that's causing the problem with your YouTube videos, try just stopping the thing. Click on the little icon for it, and select "Stop Google Web Accelerator". (Forget about "Don't Accelerate This Website" - it won't fix it.) Then, browse around YouTube and see if the videos come in. If they don't, you're on your own!

Hack Your Hangover

If you can remember this article before you start your drinking binge this weekend, you'll probably be much happier the next morning. It proposes that hangovers are caused by three primary things: Dehydration, "vitamin burnout", and toxins. Prepare well for these and decrease your hangover if not avoid it altogether.

How to Severely Decrease the Chances of a Hangover


If you're reading this Sunday morning, fret not! Pull yourself up off the floor and take a look at these home remedies from Howstuffworks. From eggs to bananas, it sounds like the remedies are about the same as the preventative measures. To defeat this beast that plagues us all, we must first learn to understand it!

How Hangovers Work

Console Session and Remote Desktop Issue with SP3

If you've recently installed Service Pack 3 for Windows XP and noticed that the Remote Desktop MMC snap-in no longer continues your currently logged-in session, it's because SP3 hosed it. You can read all about it in the links below, but the fast track fix is to revert four files in your windows\system32 folder from your old SP2 install:

1. mstsc.exe
   
2. mstscax.dll
   
3. mstsmhst.dll
   
4. mstsmmc.dll
   

If you didn't backup before installing SP3... Shame on you. Now that we got that out of the way, I zipped up these files from my system before installing SP3, and you can feel free to download them here if you're feeling lucky. For all I know replacing files on your system with ones from mine could completely hose your junk, so install at your own risk and for Christ's sake BACK UP THE FILES FIRST!

Console session and Remote Desktop issue - TechNet Forums [via]

Daily Link Roundup of Blogging and Poker Chips

Customer service via Twitter works for unpopular people too Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done Study: Developer activity on Facebook's platform is slowing Poker Chip USB Sticks - What’s Stored On Your Flash Drive, Stays On Your Flash Drive Laser Target Alarm Clock For Heavy Sleepers Or Star Trek Fans Work while working out with the TrekDesk Worst Bluetooth Gadget Yet: PDA Stylus Handset Scented Fruit Speaker Pillows Record-Breaking Lego Tower Stands 100 Feet Tall StopForwarding.us Teaches E-mail Etiquette

Daily Link Roundup of Six Packs and Blockbuster

WeRobot Shirt Features 51 Robots, More Or Less Make a wearable pixel Chill Stick Disguises A Six Pack AT&T launches its own browser, Pogo. Surprise: It doesn't suck. Energy Saver Bar Turns Off Your Gadgets With A Tap Of Your Foot Rocketboom creator pulls plug on auction of Twitter account German Company Resurrects Self-Destructing DVDs Clothing designed to fight back against intentionally uncomfortable furniture Blockbuster sued over role in Facebook's Beacon ad program Hide Cords with the CD Spindle Cable Organizer 2.0 Target Speed Racer Gift Card Flash Drive

Daily Link Roundup of Cyberdyne and Comcast

'Bed Fan' keeps you cool under the sheets Tiny 'Tweezers' Can Pick Up, Move Individual Cells How-To: Make A Sawn-Off USB Thumbdrive Cheap Calls! Truphone Raises £16.5 million In Series B Cyberdyne Building Factory To Construct Consumer Power Exoskeletons The Decline and Fall of Tech on Digg Smooshy stylus for the iPhone / iPod Touch A new reason to hate Comcast Oklahoma Leaks Tens of Thousands of Social Security Numbers, Other Sensitive Data Psystar’s Mac clones: The pics - But is the company even real?

How to Make Your Own CD/DVD Cases & Sleeves

How many times have you burned a CD or DVD only to find you don’t have an empty case to put it in? Well we have it happen all the time, so we set out to find an easy to make CD case that uses only a sheet of 8 ½ by 11 piece of paper. We diligently searched Instructables.com and now bring you our top five. You can click on the image of each case to view how to make it.

This one topped our list because it requires no tracing, no scissors and no glue. The resulting case is sturdy enough to be used more than once and is portable. It completely encases the disk and closes securely. Also, once you have made one you won’t forget how to make it.

This CD sleeve is very similar to our #1 pick, but requires some cutting/ripping. It does however have an optional template posted to help with adding artwork. Like number one it is easy to remember, reusable and portable.

This one lands at three because it requires scissors and a pencil. Also, the directions are in video form which seems like a good idea, but in the end only makes it harder to follow. The directions present 2 ways to secure the case and even though the case is not easy to remember, it is reusable, portable and results in a nicely finished product. This might be a good pick if you're producing the case to give to someone else as a gift.

Although the end result was worth the work, tracing and scissors do not make for an easy build. This CD sleeve is portable but you might have trouble making it again without the instructions. This instructable features both a video and the usual step-by-step instructions which are a big help. Like #3, this one looks nice but requires quite a bit of effort to produce.

Tip: Fold with the tracing to the outside. It makes a nice pattern on back of the case!

This case lands at #5 because it is not exactly portable. Really, it's more of a sleeve than a case. The directions are quite simple and easy to remember though, and the sleeve would be great for in-office storage.

Honorable Mention

These next two cases didn't quite make the cut because they were just too hard to make. Still, we just had to mention them because the results are really cool!

While a template is available, this case is difficult. The intricacies of this case would make it great for giving a CD as a gift. Since our search began as a need for a quick CD case, this simply didn't meet our requirements. Also, it does not seem to last for too many unwrappings and wrappings.

(Confession: We found this case so complicated that we never actually finished constructing it. Darn A.D.D.)

This case has a template you can fill in with your own text and artwork then print. It requires a heavier grade paper than the rest, so it didn't quite meet our requirements. This case would be great when making CD’s for a garage band or a Christmas gift and even includes instructions for doing a double-CD case.

Daily Link Roundup of Space Stations and Flatwires

UK Man Builds Amazing High Tech Shed - It is the ultimate man shed. Space Station Puts 12GB In Your Pocket Wireless Nunchuck for Nintendo Wii by Nyko FriendFeed Is This Years Twitter, But Why? Hide Cords in Plain Sight with FlatWire Fix Desynchronized Video and Audio with VLC Toktumi Opens its PC-based Phone Beta to Public - Get it...Talk To Me

Daily Link Roundup of Hostings and LEDS

DIY Remote Camera Trigger Report: Social network shrinkage in the U.K.? CCTV Busting Infra-Red Headset Makes You Invisible - All criminals need another means of beating detection. Google to sell Display Ads in Web Videos Disable the Right Mouse Button? - Helpful for young children using the computer. How Has Web Hosting Changed in 10 Years? Not Very Much Cleveland Clinic to Test Google Health Retrieve Any File on Your Home Computer via Email, Windows Edition Commodore 64 Titles To Be Available On Wii’s Virtual Console - Paddle Controllers Will Hopefully Return Olympic Committe Rules Revealed: No Posting of Media Allowed - This is going to make for some interesting news. Strap On a Bluetooth Wristband, Stop Missing Calls - We need one of these. Duty Calls - This guy must use digg.

Search for Stored Procedure Containing Text

Today I was working on some inherited code and found myself wondering what a particular database field meant. I tried searching the application's code, but being a good little programmer the previous developer had used stored procedures for all the database calls. So off I went to internetland to find how to find a stored procedure containing specific text. Here's what I found:

SELECT ROUTINE_NAME, ROUTINE_DEFINITION
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES
WHERE ROUTINE_DEFINITION LIKE '%myField%'
AND ROUTINE_TYPE='PROCEDURE'

Just replace myField with whatever your field is called, or (to be more specific) whatever text you're trying to find in the stored procedure. I'm using this on SQL Server 2005, but judging from the query it should be fairly universal.

Scroll Lock Hell

I had an interesting thing happen this morning. I went to work on an Excel spreadsheet, and every time I hit the arrow keys the page would scroll around as if I was dragging the scrollbars. After a while I noticed the little "SCRL" in the lower-right-hand corner of my spreadsheet that indicates the scroll lock is turned on. This was most unusual, seeing as to how my keyboard (a Logitech MX 5000) has no scroll lock that I'm aware of. However, somehow the scroll lock managed to get turned on. Since I have no scroll lock button, I couldn't turn it off. I never did figure out how it got turned on, but I did figure out how to turn it off using Window's built-in On Screen Keyboard. Here's what I did:

1. Went to Run under the Start Menu.
2. Typed "osk" (without the quotes.)
3. A little window with a keyboard appears. Click the "slk" button to turn the scroll lock on and off. When it has a red border (as shown in the image) it's on. Otherwise it's off.

I hope this helps someone else out there having the same issue. If so, leave us a comment and let us know!

Mirror: 101 CSS Techniques of All Time - Part 1

This awesome article's site went down when it hit the front page of Digg. Here's the original link. Be sure and check it out if it's back up, and Digg it.

CSS has fundamentally changed web design, it has provided designers with a set of properties that can be tweaked to make various techniques to make your pages just look right.

Today we are presenting a round-up of 101 CSS techniques designers use all the time. Definitely worth taking a very close look at! This is just the first series , the second part will be coming soon, stay tuned and Enjoy!

Update:

You can check Part2 here.

CSS Sprites

CSS sprites save HTTP requests by using CSS positioning to selectively display composite background images. To maximize accessibility and usability, CSS sprites are best used for icons or decorative effects.

• CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death- Say goodbye to old-school slicing and dicing when creating image maps, buttons, and navigation menus. Instead, say hello to a deceptively simple yet powerful sprite-based CSS solution.
• CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them - CSS-Tricks
• CSS Sprites: How Yahoo.com and AOL.com Improve Web Performance- Learn how AOL and Yahoo! use CSS sprites to improve performance for their busy home pages

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CSS Rounded Corners

Rounded corners is one of the most popular and frequently requested CSS techniques. There lots of ways to create rounded corners with CSS, but they always require lots of complex HTML and CSS. Here are easy ways to achieve this effect.

• Even More Rounded Corners With CSS- Single-image, PNG-based, fluid rounded corner dialogs with support for borders, alpha transparency throughout, gradients, patterns and whatever else you could want.
  Demo :
  
  

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• Rounded corners in CSS- Simple bordered div which contained four divs that each had a background-image and that were positioned in each of the corners.
• Liquid rounded corners- For liquid design and transparent scrolling - tutorial and stylesheet
• Mountaintop Corners- easier way for creating decent rounded corners.
  

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Image Replacements Technique

Thierry Image Placement: Image Placement vs. Image Replacement (FIR)

This technique is mostly for headlines by using CSS to replace normal HTML text, with a background image in order to achieve a particular look.Several different image replacement methods have been proposed, each with their pros and cons.

when you need image replacement you can check the Gilder/Levin Method as described by Dave Shea or, if the replaced text is linked and CSS support for IE/Mac is required, the Gilder Levin Ryznar Jacoubsen IR method.

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Sliding Doors

Sliding Doors of CSS introduced a new technique for creating visually stunning interface elements with simple, text-based, semantic markup.Beautifully crafted, truly flexible interface components which expand and contract with the size of the text can be created if we use two separate background images.

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Sliding Doors" Box– Rounded Corners for All- The goal of this technique was to create rounded-corner boxes with visual flare and the absolute minimal amount of semantically correct markup. While making sure they could resize while keeping their backgrounds intact.

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Image Text Wrap Technique

How many times do you have an image floated left in a block of content, but want to keep that content from wrapping around your image?

This technique allows you to wrap around image text flow control to emulate magazine style page layouts.

• BIG BAER advanced CSS technique - the sandbag div.
• CSS Image Text Wrap
• Fancy text wrapping around an image

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Equal Height Technique

One of the somewhat frustrating properties of CSS is the fact that elements only stretch vertically as far as they need to. So how can we make all columns appear to be the same height? Several techniques was introduced to solve this issue.

• Faux Columns- The simple secret is to use a vertically tiled background image to create the illusion of colored columns.
• Equal Height Columns - revisited- A method to make all columns appear to be the same height but without the need for faux column style background images.

• Equal height boxes with CSS- The trick is to use the CSS properties display:table, display:table-row and display:table-cell to make containers (in this case div elements) behave like table cells. The basic XHTML structure looks like this:

  Here is the CSS used to make this structure behave like a table:

       .equal {            display:table;    }    .row {            display:table-row;    }    .row div {            display:table-cell;    }    

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Turning A List Into A Navigation bar

Why use a list? Because a navigation bar, or menu, is a list of links. The most semantic way of marking up a list of links is to use a list element. Using a list also has the benefit of providing structure even if CSS is disabled.

• Turning a list into a navigation bar- The markup is very simple. It’s an unordered list, with each link in a separate list item.
  

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• Uberlink CSS List Menus
  

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• CSSMenus - Horizontal and Vertical 4 Level Deep List Menu
• Listamatic
• 7 Advanced CSS Menu- A fresh round-up of 7 Advanced CSS Menus techniques, that might be useful for you in your next design project.

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Making Headlines With CSS

Headers in Web pages–marked up with h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, or h6 elements–help the reader determine the purpose of sections in content. If your header is visually stimulating, the odds are better that the section will capture your reader’s eye.

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• Heading Style Gallery- Want something a little more stylish for your content headings (h1,h2,…) than a different font or color? Try one of the heading styles listed here to spruce up your content.
• Typography for Headlines- Improve the typography in your headlines by being more creative, give them more ‘pop’, that sort of thing.
• Making Headlines With CSS- With a dash of design, we can utilize CSS to stylize those Web page headers to catch the reader’s eye and encourage them to read on.

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CSS Shadows Techniques

A technique to build flexible CSS drop shadows that can be applied to arbitrary block elements that can expand as the content of the block changes shape.

• CSS Drop Shadows-Build flexible CSS drop shadows that can be applied to arbitrary block elements that can expand as the content of the block changes shape.

  

  ---

• Fun with Drop Shadows- Most of the existing techniques use negative margins, while this one is a really simple version wich uses relative positioning.
• Drop Shadows By Phil Baines- This set of tests are based on an article found on A List Apart’s technique, but with less CSS coding.
• CSS Drop Shadows II: Fuzzy Shadows- Picking up where Part I left off, in Part II designer Sergio Villarreal takes his standards-compliant drop-shadow to the next level by producing warm and fuzzy shadows.

  

  ---

• An improved CSS shadow technique- A very robust and easy-to-use technique for applying snazzy looking shadows using only Web technology and a few little image elements prepared beforehand.

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CSS Transparency

One of the trickiest things to control, in a CSS-driven design, is the transparency of the interaction between foreground and background content.Below is a list of the best examples of the differing transparency approaches possible with CSS.

• Partial Opacity- Placing text over an image can sometimes make it difficult to read, but with Stu Nicholls’s methods the background for the text is made ‘opaque’ using various methods of opacity (including css3) and the black text is then quite readable.

  

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• Cross-Browser Variable Opacity with PNG- How to overcome flaky browser support for PNG so you can take advantage of this graphic format’s lossless compression, alpha transparency, and variable opacity.
• Two Techniques for CSS Transparency

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Various Link Techniques

• Showing Hyperlink Cues with CSS- The CSS Guy shows us how to get the little icons next to hyperlinks that signify if that link will take you offsite, open a popup, or link to a file (as opposed to another html page). Here’s how to do it in a way that’s supported in IE7, Firefox, and Safari.
• The ways to style visited Links- CSS offers various possibilities to make links more usable and preserve text readability at the same time. We need to differentiate visited and unvisited links, but we must keep text scannable and readable.
• Link Thumbnail- Shows users that are about to leave your site exactly where they’re going. When that curious mouse pointer hovers over a link pointing to somewhere outside of your site, the script displays a small image of the destination page.
• Iconize Textlinks with CSS- If you’re looking for more icons to implement, Alex provides a nice start.

Daily Link Roundup of Micro-Printing and Digital Clouds

New Robotics Challenge Aims To Develop Friendly Highly Autonomous Robots Fine Print: New Technique Allows Fast Printing Of Microscopic Electronics Create Business Cards for Free with Deyey Troika’s Digital Cloud - An amazing kinetic sculpture OTTO Hears All Google May Knee Cap Domain Tasting Art of data-center cabling Walking chair sculpture isn't a chair, but it walks Camera In A Pill Offers Cheaper, Easier Window On Your Insides DIY Roll-Up Keyboard Australian girl switched blood type after transplant

50 Google Calendar Tips

The folks over at VirtualHosting.com sent us their list of 50 tips, tweaks and hacks for making the most of Google Calendar. These include Basic Tips, Scripts, Extensions & Add-Ons, Hacks & Tricks, and Calendar Syncs. It's worth at least a glance to anyone who uses Google Calendar, but where's our Jott to Google Calendar on the list, guys?

Which tip is our favorite? Probably the Display Current Timeline Greasemonkey script:

This simple Greasemonkey script creates a floating red line that displays just where you are during each day so you can keep up to the minute on what appointments are coming up.

Thanks for the tip. Link

Daily Link Roundup

Everex Announces $400 CloudBook - Cheap laptop to be sold at Wally World. Snake Oil Alert: Anti Radiation Cellphone Case Adding A Second Monitor Was Never So Easy - With this USB to DVI device. Sandisk Shows Off Their USB Bling - A flash-drive hidden in a necklace MySpace Subpoenaed In Megan Meier Case - A woman and her daughter use MySpace to harass a 13 year-old girl into committing suicide. CES: Nikko Electronics to Finally Release R2-D2 DVD Projector Thanks Striking Writers, Online Video Going Up, Up, Up, Up Ceramic Hybrid Needles Take The Sting Out Of Shots - Hollow needles so fine patients wouldn’t feel them piercing their skin, clustered together on a patch, can draw blood as efficiently as standard hypodermic needles. Admirable Spirit, but Rules Are Rules - A man with prosthetics will probably not be allowed to run in the Olympics.

New Cards

Each day when I walk down to my (snail) mailbox and open it I wonder what surprises await me. Will it be a bill? Did my latest Popular Science come in? Did that client finally send in their check?

Regrettably, one thing that will always await me is an "OPEN IMMEDIATELY! YOUR RESPONSE IS URGENTLY NEEDED!!!!!1" [sic] credit card offer. I can always count on at least one of these nuisances a day - be it for myself, my wife or my business.

The ironic thing is, I don't think I have ever returned a response for one of these "deals". If I ever do get a new card, I do it the same way as everything else I do: Using the internet! There's tons of information out there that will help a person pick out the best card for him, so why just get a card because it was thrown in your face? You could visit the card-supplier's sites directly (MC/Visa/AmEx/Discover), or even better yet go to one of the many "Apply for a business credit card" sites that allow you to compare multiple card options side-by-side.

(Note: If anyone out there in the audience works for a credit card junk mail shipping facility, please take me off your mailing list... Seriously.)

Add More File Types to Windows Thumbnail Preview

It's always frustrated me that Windows Explorer only supports a few different file types for it's thumbnail preview of your files. Recently I ran into a thing called ThumbView that will add a butt-load of other file types to Explorer's list of thumbable files, including cut, dcx, dds, mdl, mng, pcd, pcx, pic, pix, png, pnm/pbm/pgm/ppm, psd/pdd, psp, pxr, sgi/rgb, tif/tiff, tga/vda/icb/vst, wal and xpm images.

The best thing about it is that it doesn't install any software that runs in the background. The app is actually just a shell extension that only gets called when a preview needs to be generated. Clever programmers out there can even write their own "Thumbnail Extractors" to add support to additional file types.

Download ThumbView Here.

Top 5 Articles of 2007

2007 has been a great year for the Grinn Blog. We've had some great feedback from all of you, and launched two new series articles, This Weekends Tech Deals, and Historic Tech from Today. But the articles that keep you guys coming back are exactly the ones we wanted this blog to be all about: The articles that help you be more productive with your tech, and keep the tech from keeping you down! With that I bring you a review of the top 5 most popular articles of 2005:

1. Incorporate Google Calendar Into Outlook
Published way back in April of 2006, this still remains our most popular article. It is a detailed how-to for syncing your Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook using a program called Remote Calendars.

2. Add to Google Calendar by Talking Into Your Cell
You guys sure like your Google Calendars. This article introduces our Jott2GCal application that allows you to add (and now retrieve) Google Calendar events using the popular Jott service. Since then Jott has released their own Google Calendar implementation, but you guys seem to like ours, so we'll keep developing it!

3. Your Connection to the Server Has Been Lost
We had a problem and had a heck of a time finding the solution. So, when we did resolve the issue, we posted about it to share that solution with you. This article serves to correct the infamous "Your connection to the server has been lost" issue with Battlefield 2142, and apparently it serves it's purpose well because it claims the #3 spot on our list.

4. How to Fix the Azureus Disk Read Error
Yet another case of us sharing in an issue. We found a compatibility issue between the popular P2P application Azureus and Google Desktop. Here, we tell you the simple measures you can take to resolve this issue.







5. 10 REALLY Weird Instructables
If you have yet to visit "The world's biggest show-and-tell", instructables.com, you should start with our list of the wierdest. Does anyone else find a list making the list of our 5 most popular articles a little ironic?

QUICKY: Using TortoiseSVN with Total Commander

One of the best things about my favorite repository tool TortoiseSVN is how it displays the little overlay icons in over files and folders in Windows Explorer to indicate their status in your Subversion repository. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to get these little icons to show up in my favorite file browser Total Commander (formerly Windows Commander.) That is, until now.

In Windows Commander go to Configuration>Options>Display and check the "Show overlay icons, e.g. for links" checkbox, then click Ok. It's the last option under "File display" as shown in the image above. Now you'll see those pretty little icons in any folders you have Checked Out from your repository using TortoiseSVN.

Simple Work Timer

Einstein once said, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." To help me keep track of the time I spend working on a particular project, I wrote a simple little app called Simple Work Timer (or SWT.) It is the simplest of devices but a piece of software that I use more than just about any other program.


All it is is a little window with 4 buttons. The top one displays the hours, minutes and seconds since the timer was started. The second button displays the amount of time that has passed in hours (for example this button would show 1.5 after 1 and a half hours.) The third button starts and pauses the timer. The last button resets the timer to zero.

Clicking either of the top two buttons will copy that button's text to your clipboard. I use this most often with the second "hours" button. This allows me to paste the exact time I've spent on a project into Quickbooks or a spreadsheet for tracking and billing my time.

As the timer runs, the title of the program will display the hours and minutes since the timer was started. So, a simple glance down at your taskbar is all you need to take a peek at your current hours. This will also tell you if you forgot to unpause the timer when you went out for your smoke break, since SWT will also append the text "Paused" to it's program title when paused.

Perhaps you occasionally need to have multiple timers running at once. All you have to do is run multiple instances of the program and it will add multiple, independent copies of itself to your desktop. To help me keep track of which timer is which, I always place the timer in the same location on my screen for a particular client. For example, for my (fictional) client Joe's Widgets I always put the timer in the lower-right-hand corner of my screen. That way if I start another timer for another task, I'll always be able to distinguish between it and Joe's timer. I've found that SWT works very well coupled with Launchy, especially when launching multiple timers.

I've provided two links at the bottom of this post. The first link is to download Simple Work Timer. SWT is Windows only and requires version 2.0 of the .NET Framework. If you don't know what that means, don't worry - You probably already have it. If not, follow this link to download and install the Framework. SWT itself doesn't require any installation. It's just one executable file that you can put anywhere on your hard drive and run it.

The second link is to download the source code of SWT. It was originally programmed in VB.NET 1.1 but I've up-converted it to 2.0 for you and translated it to C# as well. Both the VB.Net version and C# version are contained in the solution in their respective folders. Obviously this program is very basic, but it's (fairly) well commented and could be a good learning tool for new developers. Here's some of the things you can learn from this code:

• A comparison of VB.NET code to C#.
• How to add an icon to your application.
• How to modify the title of your window.
• Using the timer component.
• Copying text to the clipboard.
• Casting and type conversion.

Without further ado, here's the downloads:

Download Simple Work Timer Executable
or
Download the Source Code

Comcast vs BitTorrent: Issue Resolved

Comcast is killing BitTorrent. For weeks people have been reporting experiencing issues downloading using various BitTorrent clients. From what I've seen it seems they're killing off BitTorrent one city at a time. Are you next?

I'll explain (using my superior art skillz) how this all goes down.

Under normal circumstances, your data packets (sugar packets) pass freely between you (Best) , Comcast, and your fellow peers (Friends).



However, Comcast's Sandvine servers (cock) block any BitTorrent packets (Sweet N' Low) that try to pass through it by sending back RST packets.



One way past this is to have your packets (Sweet N' Low) encrypted (sunglasses) using SSH and passed through a shell account (wheel thingie) such as silenceisdefeat.org, as described in this article. This way, Comcast can't see what's behind the mask. This does add a bit of overhead though.

If you're as sick of Comcast as I am (and these people are) perhaps you should consider doing what I'm going to do:




Ditch Comcast and get an ISP that actually wants your business!

Quickly Access Commonly Used Folders

A great way to increase your productivity is to make doing those thing you do most often easier to do. Here's a simple way to make all your commonly accessed folders more easily accessible.

As a web and software developer, there are always folders that I go to often, such as inetpub/wwwroot, or the mapped drive on our network where we store all our licensed images. I am also always in and out of my "downloads" folder - where I save all the stuff I download from the internet. Every time I wanted to go to one of these folders, I had to browse through Explorer to get to it, which gets old after a while.

I've tried several hacks to simplify accessing these folders, but they either limited where I could easily access the folders from, or the process of adding the shortcut was too complicated and not worth the effort every time I wanted to add a shortcut to a folder. Eventually I came up with my own solution. I realized a really easy way to make any folder easily accessible from almost any dialog.


You see, Windows has made a point of making access to your "My Documents" folder very simple. From anywhere you can hit Win+E to open Windows Explorer, and then you're just a click or keystroke away from My Documents. Basically every Browse dialog has My Documents as a quick link in the sidebar, and if not it has it in the drive selection dropdown. However, it's not exactly practical to move all of our commonly used folders into My Documents. Even if we did, chances are that we have a bunch of other folders in My Documents that we'd still have to sift through to find our commonly accessed folder.

The solution? Make a shortcut (.lnk) file in My Documents that points to the folder(s) you commonly access, beginning the shortcut's name with an underscore (_). Optionally, you can also customize this shortcut's icon to be a better visual representation of your folder's purpose.

Double-clicking this shortcut will cause Explorer or the file browser to navigate to that folder. You want to start the name of the file with an underscore so it appears among the first items in your My Documents folder. Here's a breakdown of exactly how to do this. In my example, I'm using the Downloads folder on my D: drive.

1. In Explorer, browse to the folder you want to make a shortcut to.
2. Right-click on the folder and select Create Shortcut.
3. A new file called "Shortcut to your folder name.lnk" will be created. Rename that shortcut to "_your folder name.lnk" (in our example this would be _Downloads.lnk. Note: If the filename doesn't say .lnk, this is just because of your settings and you should instead name the file "_your folder name", without the .lnk.)
4. Take your new shortcut and move it to My Documents.
5. Optionally, you can change the icon that appears for your shortcut by right-clicking on it, selecting Properties, then clicking the Change Icon button and selecting a more appropriate icon.

Repeat these steps for any folder you want to make more easily accessible. To get to your favorite folders just browse to My Documents then double-click on any of your shortcuts. You'll be taken directly to that folder. If you prefer, you could instead put these icons on your Desktop. Then, you could access them anytime by hitting Win+D on your keyboard. However, I don't like having lots of things on my desktop so I prefer the My Documents.

I hope this tip helps add to your productivity.

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Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher

I have a new favorite toy and it's name is Launchy. Launchy is what's known as a "Keystroke Launcher". A Keystroke Launcher is a program that lets you launch other programs, files, web pages, etc. by typing what you want on your keyboard. The idea is that, if you know what you want and have a Keystroke Launcher with a good selection algorithm, it's easier to type what you want than to have to search through menus to find it.

And Launchy has a very good and very simple selection algorithm. It "remembers" what you commonly launch and will make assumptions about what you mean as you type. For example, I commonly launch Firefox with Launchy. At first I had to type out "firefox" into Launchy's interface before it picked up what I meant. Now I only had to type "fire" and it knows what I mean.

But what if Launchy's assumption is incorrect? No worries: If you wait about a second in-between keystrokes, Launchy will display a drop-down list of possible answers to your inquiry. It can even handle most misspellings and typos.

Launchy also has myriad plugins - many of which come preinstalled. For example Calcy provides simple calculator functionality to Launchy. Just type "4+5" into Launchy and as you type the "5", Launchy displays 9. My favorite plugin is Runny which allows you to run customized commands (complete with arguments) from Launchy. Coupled with the Weby plugin which allows you to launch webpages by typing the URL into Launchy, you can set up Launchy to allow easy and immediate access to your favorite web-based applications such as Google Calendar, or